Thanks to Entropic Cascade for quite possibly suggesting Noah. lol. : D Thanks!
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As her team entered the village from their side, Sam said, worried as she kept her P-90 readied for the first sign of trouble, "It doesn't look like they can see us. I don't know why I get worried about that."
Teal'c said, swinging his staff weapon around in response to being run through by three local children, "It is prudent to expect the unexpected."
Vala remarked, smiling at some bickering children who couldn't see her, "If you keep expecting it, it won't happen… What are we looking for?"
Sam shrugged and replied, sounding almost helpless, "I don't know… but we know from past experience that the places we end up in are not accidental."
"Ah-ha, good point. Do you… have any idea why we're not where we found the pretty little stone?"
"Nope."
"Ah. Ok. Might I enquire as to where the legendary tape was found?"
Sam looked at Teal'c, who replied with a raised eyebrow, "In the vicinity of the Giza plateau."
"Right! So… Oh. I think this Daniel knows me then."
When they looked at her in confusion, she continued with a shrug, "Oh, we go way back. There was a little matter of the Prometheus."
Sam remarked with a little smile, shaking her head in disbelief as they carried on walking, "I don't think he'll be happy to see you in that case. He was grumpy about that for ages."
Glancing at a smirking Teal'c, Vala asked, surprised, "He was?"
Sam smiled as she heard Daniel mentally rant in her head. "Oh yeah."
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Cam remarked, looking around as they walked into the village, smiling, "Oh, this is good… just us boys. You two doing ok?"
Daniel smiled slightly as he looked at Jonas, who replied, running a hand through his cropped dark blond hair, "Fine, I guess. A little stressed."
Daniel added with a raise of his eyebrows, "Oh yeah."
Cam said, exhaling as he tipped his hat at a woman who looked straight past him, "Yeah… about that. This is gonna work out. I mean, you guys have crazy powers on this time travel adventure so maybe we could go back… just like we've done before."
Daniel replied, "Right. This is the same as 1965."
"You know, I'm somewhat… no, wait, considerably disturbed that you had to reassure yourself."
Jonas remarked, "Well… it isn't, ah, omnipotence or omniscience. The guy's only human."
Daniel smiled slightly as he surveyed his surroundings, and Cam said, "Which is a good thing." He looked at Daniel, "Jackson, any idea why your crazy wife brought us here?"
Daniel replied, "No idea, but despite being insane in the membrane, each time Sam's taken us back, it's been for a reason."
"You're not saying that 'cos you married her and she could very easily kick your butt… right?"
'Choose the wrong answer and say sayonara to little Daniel.'
Daniel cleared his throat in embarrassment, trying to be discreet but Cam guffawed on noticing his reaction, Jonas too, and the southern Colonel said, "Hey Sam, how's it going?"
Daniel closed his eyes and then opened them, replying in Sam's voice, "Just fine, Mitchell," the reply wiping the smiles off both Cam and Jonas' faces. Daniel smirked when Sam's consciousness retracted to her own body, and then the men stopped in their tracks on seeing the back of a Jaffa straight in front of them.
Jonas and Cam looked at Daniel, extremely concerned as the latter asked, "Yo… Jackson? Iron Maiden can't see us, right?"
"Wrong."
A sneering Her'ak, First Prime of the Goa'uld Anubis, swung around and shot Daniel in the chest at point blank range with a staff weapon, before turning his weapon on the others. As Jonas tended to Daniel's wound, an angry Cam kicked the staff weapon from Her'ak's hands before remarking, throwing his P-90 to the side, "How about we make this fight even, you weaselly bastard?!"
The southern Colonel grappled the First Prime to the floor, each man dealing heavy blows to his opponent, when suddenly Her'ak began to burst into flame and Cam, on the floor at the time, rolled away quickly as the Jaffa exploded, screaming in pain.
Cam sat up and looked at where Daniel was to find an upset Sam slowly dropping to her knees as the locals, now obviously seeing them, gathered around them at a safe distance. Sam drew in shuddering breaths as she cradled Daniel's head in her lap, a glowing hand hovering over his chest, Jonas, Vala and Teal'c kneeling around the couple.
Daniel, breathing shallow breaths, looked up at Sam and said, grimacing at the pain, "I hate saying goodbye to you. I'm so proud of you, and our babies. Goodbye, my fair Guinevere. I love you."
His eyes closed and Sam shook her head and maintained her focus, but after a long moment, when nothing happened, Cam kneeled by her side and held her in his arms as her hand dropped in frustration. Jonas checked Daniel's pulse as Vala furiously wiped away tears, and the Kelownan looked up at Cam, shaking his head dolefully.
Cam closed his eyes to blink back his own tears, and he held onto a now hysterical Sam, who said between sobs, thumping his shoulder and sounding very distraught, "No… Daniel. No! This can't be the end. No."
A sad Teal'c helped them to their feet, and then picked Daniel's lifeless body in his arms. Cam, upset at being helpless in the previous situation, said, sniffing back involuntary tears,
"I'm sorry, Sam. I'm so sorry. He's gone. Jackson's gone."
Sam sobbed harder as Jonas touched Vala's shoulder as tears ran down her face as she stood in front of Teal'c to look down at Daniel's lifeless body.
"Ok… please don't tell me the future's even more screwed up than it already was… is… will be…"
They all started in surprise on hearing Daniel's voice, and they turned to see a slightly younger and buffer looking Daniel, dressed in similar clothes to the natives. Alt-Daniel looked around at their stunned faces and continued,
"Right, so who do we have here? Teal'c…" His eyebrows shot up. "Sam… like the hair – it suits you." He looked at Cam oddly and remarked, "Weren't you in hospital… ok, never mind." He nodded at Jonas, "Jonas, and…" His eyebrows shot up on seeing Vala and he said in disbelief,
"You can't possibly be on the team!"
Cam shook his head and said before Vala could reply, "Jackson, we've got no time for bantering."
Alt-Daniel nodded quickly and said quietly, his eyes finally moving to the prone figure in Teal'c's arms, "That's the second one."
Jonas asked, "What do you mean?"
Alt-Daniel looked at the body for a moment in quiet reflection, and then said, looking around at the rest of the team, his eyes growing sadder on seeing how upset Sam was, "We have to go. I know where you can hide. Follow me."
Sam stared at Alt-Daniel wide-eyed and Cam put an arm around her, asking as he looked around, "Are there any more Jaffa?"
"There will be if we don't get hidden. You just killed Anubis' First Prime."
Alt-Daniel quickly led the team into a nearby hut, where several women took Daniel from Teal'c's arms, laying him down on some bedding in another room. A man and two other women quickly ushered the team into an underground storeroom, an upset Sam grudgingly following suit when alt-Daniel personally persuaded her.
As they sat on the floor, surrounded in the dusty darkness by staff weapons and other Goa'uld weaponry, Cam remarked uneasily, looking around, "So… uh, once an SG-1 member, always an SG-1 member, huh?"
Sam, still distraught, smiled slightly as she followed Cam's gaze, replying, "It looks like it."
Her gaze fell on alt-Daniel and her smile vanished. Just then, they heard shouts from above, the sound of many metal boots, and Sam tried to get up, saying, "They'll take him."
Cam and Jonas held her down, and Sam said, her voice quiet but desperate, "He's on his own… I can't leave him, Cam… I can't. He's all alone up there. Please, Cam."
Cam held her tightly in his arms as dust fell upon them, and he said, slowly rubbing her shoulder as he looked up at the ceiling, "I need you to hold it together, Colonel. Can you do that for me?"
Sam nodded against his chest after a moment's hesitation, and they heard the Jaffa leave the hut above. A man called down in accented English,
"Dan-yel, the Jaffa are gone."
Alt-Daniel called up, "Thank you, Katep."
The team made their way up to the hut, where the rest were seated but Sam sprinted into the other room to see Daniel's body covered up in cream and Earth coloured cloth. She slowly peeled back the covers and choked on a sob on seeing the wound on his chest again. She threw the covers away and sat at his side as she held his hand, kissing it as she began to cry again, feeling utterly lost and empty.
"I made a promise that I'd kick your ass if you died on me. Dammit, don't make me a liar, Daniel. What am I going to tell our babies?"
Crying, she lay by his side, an arm across his stomach as she watched the lips that would never speak to her again, that would never kiss her again, that would never gape at anything of interest again. It was the end. He was gone. This time, there were no alien interventions, no opportunities to ascend to a higher plain of existence… He was dead.
She closed her eyes and smoothed his stomach as she sobbed against his shoulder, whispering as her entire body shuddered, "Please, Daniel. Please don't do this to me again. I need you, our babies need you… we all need you."
She touched his lips, vainly sniffing back tears as she said, gazing at his face, the features that she could trace in her sleep, "My Galahad."
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"Wait… wait a second, Major Mitchell…"
Cam said, correcting alt-Daniel, "That's Colonel… um, Lieutenant-Colonel to be precise... but you can call me Mitchell if you want."
Alt-Daniel nodded, and said, picking up from where he had left off as he paced around the seated members of SG-1, "So… Sam and I get married, you lead SG-1 before Sam gets promoted, eventually to lead the SGC… and you marry this… hijacker…"
Vala smiled slightly as Cam shot the Archaeologist a glare, and then it hit alt-Daniel. He paused and said, gesturing to the other room,
"Oh… Oh God, that's why… oh."
Cam nodded, and alt-Daniel, stunned, sat down and said, looking into a clay pot, "The Uprising happened a few months ago. You guys still have the Stargate in your time, don't you?"
Cam, Vala and Jonas nodded, Vala replying, "Yeah, why wouldn't we?"
Alt-Daniel nodded, as though in deep contemplation, and he said after a moment, looking into the fire in the centre of the circle, "They're all dead. The Jack, Teal'c and Sam from my timeline were killed by Ra because they refused to stand by and watch him kill people. That created an alternate timeline, with Ra deciding to take the Stargate with him when he fled Earth. In an ironic twist of fate, I survived."
He sighed. "Sam – my Sam – refused to get our Puddle Jumper back from a Jaffa patrol. Because of that, an alternate team came back… a very different team. Their Teal'c shot their me because I… he was a Goa'uld spy. Apophis had implanted a symbiote in him."
Alt-Daniel closed his eyes as he hung his head, thinking of Sha're, and he continued, "The Uprising was successful and we left another video to point out major features of our timeline so an alternate team…"
Jonas nodded eagerly and said, "We know. We've got the video back at the SGC. There is fish in Jack's pond, by the way."
Alt-Daniel raised his eyebrows slowly, and then asked, looking around at the team, "So… tell me… what are you doing here?"
Cam replied, "Well, we're looking for a small red stone, about the size of your palm, called the Star of Ma'at. You won't know what it…"
Alt-Daniel nodded and said, his face lighting up, "The Star of Ma'at. I've heard of it. The pyramid that we hid the video in had a tablet mentioning it. We didn't know what it was though."
Teal'c asked, "What of the alternate versions of myself, ColonelJackson and O'Neill?"
Alt-Daniel bowed his head and said quietly, "They're all dead. Jack and Teal'c were shot by a Jaffa patrol before Ra left Earth, and Sam… she died shortly after losing her baby."
The team exchanged looks, and Cam asked, "I'm sorry to hustle you, Jackson, but do you have the tablet? We really need to look at it. We've ended up here instead of Deir-el-Medina for a reason and I think it might be you."
Alt-Daniel nodded and pulled the tablet from his robes, showing it to an intrigued Jonas. Cam said, suddenly curious,
"Oh. One more question… what the hell was Anubis' First Prime doing here?"
Alt-Daniel replied, looking up from the tablet, "I have no idea. Anubis came here a couple of days ago looking for the Listener. His ship's in orbit and his armies terrorise the area twice or sometimes thrice daily."
The team exchanged looks again, and alt-Daniel said, suspicious as he looked at them, "You know who the Listener is, don't you?"
Vala said, gesturing with her hand, "It's an Ancient thing."
Cam remarked, looking at Teal'c, "Well, we need to be succinct, so who better to do it than our very own Rambo?"
The Jaffa raised an eyebrow at the southern Colonel before proceeding to relate the entire story of the Guardian and the Listener to an increasingly stunned alt-Daniel while Jonas looked at the tablet, busily taking notes as a suddenly bored Vala looked over his shoulder.
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Cam sat down next to Sam, her eyes red-rimmed as she held onto Daniel's hand, watching him. She said softly, sensing the Colonel's presence,
"I can't feel him at all. All those times when I thought I couldn't feel him before, I must have felt him to some degree. Compared to all those times, there is nothing here. He's gone."
Cam, worried, turned to Sam, and she turned to him, asking wearily, "How's the other Daniel taking things?"
He shrugged, replying as he scrubbed his cropped hair with a hand in a gesture of frustration and grief, "Not too bad. It's a bit much as you can imagine."
She nodded, her lips against Daniel's hand, and he asked, gently rubbing her shoulder, "Do you want to come sit with us? You could use the change of scenery."
She pressed her lips together for a moment and then said, her eyes still on Daniel's body, "I can't believe he's gone… God, I'm a widow, Cam. It should have been me taking that staff blast… I'm the one who brought you here."
"And that's exactly the reason why you shouldn't be shot. Look, it's going to work out…Jackson wouldn't want you to be miserable like this. He'd want you to carry on with the mission."
She, looking absolutely lost, replied, "What's the point, Cam? The key to my powers was him… and now he's gone."
He held her in his arms, gently releasing Daniel's hand from her grip, whispering as she began to cry again, "Come on, Sam… let's go in the other room. Jackson's gone home."
She whispered back, "Just give me a minute."
He released her, his features etched with worry as she kneeled over Daniel, whispering something in his ear before kissing him on the lips. Taking the golden scarab off her necklace, she prised open his fist, placing it in there and kissed his hand before slowly getting up. Cam escorted her from the room, the two Colonels looking back one more time when they reached the doorway before leaving.
