Janet did her best to abide by her own recommendation, difficult though it was when her friends looked so broad-sided. It took all her will-power to go against her instincts as a healer and walk away from their confusion and pain. But she did it. Janet went into her office and tasked herself with paperwork. She wasn't willing to be out of easy access if she was needed but she could close her office door and give them a semblance of privacy.

A soft knock brought her attention up and Janet's hopes and fears churned in a single cauldron as she saw Carlin/Daniel poke his head inside. He looked hesitant and cautious. "Um... hi."

Janet opened her mouth and just stopped herself from calling him 'Daniel'. "Hello. Do you need something?"

Carlin/Daniel frowned and Janet wanted to grab him and shake him and make him remember being Daniel. He looked so much like him, his expressions and mannerisms bang-on, but he didn't know it.

"I just... I wondered if I could talk to you."

Janet closed the file on the desk and gestured him inside the office. "Of course. What's on your mind?"

Daniel/Carlin made a strange face as he stepped tentatively into Janet's office and he said, "That's... an interesting choice of words, all things considered."

Janet smiled a little and cant her head as she looked at him. He looked a little more weathered and soul-battered and somehow that made him look more like Daniel than Carlin. "You sound like you're confused."

Daniel/Carlin's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline as he shook his head at the observation. "You can't imagine."

"Sit down," she offered as she gestured toward a chair. "If you don't mind me asking, is all this," she motioned at Daniel/Carlin's uneasily tense body and continued," because you think it might be true?"

Daniel/Carlin, at that point sitting in a chair at a ninety-degree angle to Janet's, crossed his arms tightly over his chest and he nearly whispered, "I... I think I remember things, but I'm not sure."

"What do you remember? Maybe I can help you clarify some of your memories."

Daniel/Carlin tucked his arms closer about himself and his blue eyes slid away from her before he said, "Actually... I'd like to know about the woman."

"Woman?"

Daniel/Carlin nodded. "I dream about a woman a lot. I used to think it was just a recurring dream, and nightmare, but now... it seems more substantial, more real. Something about being here at the..." Daniel/Carlin searched for the word, "the 'SGC' makes it stronger. I can remember more details about her than ever."

"Tell me."

Daniel/Carlin nodded tensely. "She's someone important to me. She's very beautiful, brown eyes, curly black hair, and such soft lips. She's from the desert, another world far from here, I'm sure of that much about her. We're together and I love her very much and I am happy with her then something terrible happens. She's taken away and I try to find her but she... she dies."

Janet ached for him and not for the first time. She nodded and gave him a moment to regather his composure before she said softly. "Your wife."

Daniel/Carlin flinched but his face was unmoved, as though he'd in some sense known the answer all along. His expression was fixedly sickened.

Janet looked down at her hands. "I'm so sorry you remember that. I mean, about what happened to her." If anything had come out of this memory loss it should have been forgetting the bad times.

Daniel/Carlin went very still, didn't make a sound, then he said lowly, deliberately, "In the dreams... memories... I'm with her when she dies and as she's dying she... she says my name."

"... Carlin?" Janet ventured.

Daniel/Carlin gave an infinitesimal shake of his head and looked up at her, his gaze intense. "Daniel."

An unseen but certainly felt explosion in the confines of Janet's office rent the air between them. Janet wanted to cry and cheer at once, hug him equally for joy and sadness. She watched him closely, hunted for signs of 'Daniel', and they were there. They were mixed-up and confused as all hell, tangled in 'Carlin', but there was definitely 'Daniel' in his eyes.

"Daniel," Janet said, dually address and confirmation of his previous statement.

Daniel nodded then cocked his head in absent thought and said, "Well... she didn't say my name that way. She... sh...Sha're... Sha're called me 'Dan-yel'."

Janet smiled sadly but sweetly. He was back. If he remembered his wife he was half-way to everything Daniel Jackson was.

Daniel's eyes distanced and Janet watched him immerse in memories. It was a titillating sight. She watched him rediscover the sands of Abydos and his arid beauty, the love of his life, just by the shift of his face muscles and the gleam in his eyes. His face changed, gentled and softened, with the unfolding memories and Janet felt the first enormous relief she had in hours.

Daniel blinked heavily, as though pulling away from a private heaven, and he looked down at the floor. His voice, when he spoke, was emotionally laden and heavy with affection. "I loved her very much."

"Yes, you did," Janet said.

Daniel, in the following silence, brought up a hand and scratched at the growth of hair on his jaw.

"Daniel," Janet said, thrilled that he looked up at her when she said his name as if he was that man. "Do you remember who you are?"

Daniel frowned oddly and glanced toward the office door. "I... I know I'm not me... I mean, not exactly who I thought I was. I know I'm not really Carlin, I think." Daniel sighed in frustration. "It's really confusing. It's like the man I thought I was is falling apart, disintegrating, and there are these patches of someone else filling in the holes."

"It's all right, it might take time to recover everything."

Daniel looked at her then, penetrating, and he asked bluntly, "Am I Daniel Jackson?"

Janet blinked at the forth-right question. "Yes, you are."

Daniel continued to stare at her before he said, "Because I don't know him, this 'Daniel', well enough to be sure, but I have to trust that this other 'identity' that's overtaking me is this 'Daniel' you all say I'm supposed to be. I don't know what else to call what... who I am becoming."

"Daniel... I know it must be very disorienting but you have to believe that you're with friends here and we only want what's best for you. We would never do anything to harm you... any of you."

Daniel closed his eyes. "I think I know... I think Daniel knows... whoever it is I was before Carlin knows." Daniel opened his eyes again and looked at Janet. His gaze was still guarded and wary but less spurious and defensive. "I don't have all the pieces but I have impressions and I get the feeling... I get the feeling I can trust you... that you're a friend."

Janet smiled and Daniel, after a moment, smiled faintly back. It was a start well in the right direction.

"What about the others?" she asked. "Are they starting to remember who they really are, too?" Janet was beginning to question her decision to leave the former SG-1 alone to acclimate to the shocking news in private. It went against her better angels to deliberately leave herself so unaware of her patients' states.

Daniel seemed to physically retreat from the topic of the others. "I... I don't know. We kind of stopped talking after you and, uh, the general told us. Thera's gotten really quiet and Jonah... he's troubled."

"Troubled how?"

Daniel gave a half-shrug and it was disquietingly unDaniel-like. "He's acting... distant. He should at least be talking to Thera, at the very least interacting with the..." Daniel trailed and Janet let him.

"Do you remember the fourth member of your team?" Janet finally asked, and to Daniel's look she quickly amended, "General Hammond said SG teams are comprised of four people and I assume you caught on to the fact that the other SG-1 member isn't Kaegan."

"No... I know she's not... like us. As to the other one of us... I don't... Tor." He frowned then said, "I'm... I'm not sure if that's his name, his real one, but he was big, dark guy with a gold birthmark on his forehead..."

"That's him. His name is Teal'c."

"Teal'c," Daniel said, as though trying it out with his mouth and committing it to memory.

"Do you know what happened to him?"

Daniel frowned and said, "I think he's dead. I think he died before I was... before I became Carlin, because Carlin doesn't have any memory of him at all. There are just these vague images in the back of my mind of him."

Janet looked down sadly. She'd suspected Teal'c was gone when he didn't come back with his team. Despite it all, that renewed sense of loss bit at Janet. It seemed to be almost asking too much for all four of them back when they had been blessed to see three thought-dead SG-1 members return. Now the return of their memories would be bittersweet, because they would remember Teal'c had been a dear friend and they would know to grieve his loss.

"Doctor Fraiser?" Daniel asked in a small, meek voice.

"Yes?"

"Could you... could you tell me who I am? I just... I feel like there's a lot missing, a lot of connections I can't make, but maybe... maybe if someone else helped..."

Janet didn't fight the urge to reach over and touch his knee. "I'll tell you all I know about you... and maybe some things you don't." She smiled almost wickedly (though with due care) at him and Daniel's eyes widened then he offered up a very careful smile in return.


Jonah felt besieged by forces he could not control. When the doctor lady and the bald man had come to them and told them they were a missing team of alien world explorers... something in him had broken loose. He'd been overcome, like the deluge of a tidal wave, with a sense of grandeur, a sense of something so much bigger than anything Jonah had ever been. Until that moment his life had been simple, the attack on the planet not withstanding. He was Jonah, the miner, the worker, the regular guy. Slave labor aside, he had an easy life. He did his work, he kept his people alive, and in every spare moment he could get he spent time with Thera. In a breath's span that was snatched away and something was ripping at him, tearing apart his world.

He did not like it.

He was being compromised, infiltrated by a stranger, a stranger with his face, someone with a past and he tried to use that to lay claim to Jonah's very existence. And Jonah couldn't fight it. This was not an enemy he could raise a weapon against, this was himself. That was the hardest part, to know the intruder stealing everything from him was himself. How could he fight that?

Jonah willed the seeping memories to stop, to keep at bay this 'Jack O'Neill' everyone here seemed to think was he. He wanted nothing to do with the man, he had a life to live. He had a daughter. He didn't need O'Neill and he certainly didn't want him.

But it seemed inevitable with every passing minute that he would become someone else.

Jonah would look at something and it would go from foreign to familiar without warning and he could not escape it. Everywhere he looked the alien world became not so alien and with every new-found discovery of recognition Jonah weakened.

Jonah would not concede defeat to some person presuming to take his life. Whoever this 'O'Neill' guy was could get his own life and leave Jonah the hell alone.

Jonah had been sitting by himself on a gurney near the corner. He'd retreated, withdrew, and sat alone away from the others to wage his private war. He'd been sitting and succumbing. It seemed there was no way to stop the transformation and Jonah was enraged and overcome with grief. If he disappeared would it mean he would never see his daughter again? Would he never touch Thera, never hold her or kiss her? Jonah had a life, he had happiness, and this bastard O'Neill would steal it all.

Already one of the most precious things in Jonah's life was tainted. Somehow Thera had changed. It was nothing she had done, rather it was something that had engulfed him. On the heels of General Homer's words Jonah had felt a gaping chasm open between him and Thera... and he had to move away. It was wrong to be so close to her, to look at her the way he did, to think of her the way he did.

Jonah missed his lover. He needed her. He was losing himself and the only person who could ever hold him better than he was her. Jonah was dying in a way, and he couldn't die in her arms. He'd never thought life could be so cruel.

And then he remembered Charlie.

The boy in his dreams, the nightmares so long haunting him, rushed into vivid clarity and he was floored. Agony swallowed him whole and it was more than he could take.

Jonah had made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up, then he sank, as though boneless, down to the floor and remembered. Charlie, jesus. He remembered the gunshot that cracked in the mid-morning air, the moment his heart stopped and the world slowed to a crawl, he remembered the fragile body on the floor and the gun near his hand, and the blood. How a small body had bled so much.

Jonah had stayed in the bathroom what felt like an eternity, too unsteady to stand. Jonah expected Thera to come and comfort him, Jonah wanted her to, but O'Neill knew another woman with the same face wouldn't and it seemed O'Neill knew his blonde better than Jonah knew his. Thera never came and Jonah sat on the tile and broke into a cold sweat.

Jonah cursed this O'Neill and his pain, hated him for trying to usurp Jonah's very being, but he would also surrender because Jonah could not renounce Charlie. Charlie was his son and he would be O'Neill to have him, even if it was only to inherit broken memories of a lost child.

Jonah sat in the bathroom and slowly died. The life that replaced his was new of old. The man that slid into Jonah's skin was like a kindred soul, so much the same but still so very different. Experience of a thousand heartaches hardened him. The training of a soldier and a killer overtook the mild, unconcerned mine worker he once was. He became a different kind of father, parent to a slain child.

Thera never came because Sam never would.

Jack finally pulled himself off the floor and staggered to the sink. He splashed cold water in his face, rinsed out his mouth, then looked up in the mirror. He knew the man he saw in the reflection, he knew that soul-deep pain in those brown eyes. He knew who he was. The remnants of Jonah inside him grieved for Jack, and Jack grieved for Jonah. As Jonah Jack had known happiness again, he'd been free, but as Jonah Jonah forgot Charlie. It was a sacrifice neither could accept.

Jack emerged from the bathroom, shaky and devastated, but Jack was a master at putting up a good front... Jack remembered how to do that as Jonah never had. Jack put on his game-face and met the world head-on.

The infirmary was burgeoning around him, assailing him with memories. He knew this place, it cried at him in blood-curdling screeches. He remembered pain and death and recovery in this room. It wasn't an alien laboratory, it was the SGC. Those three letters made sense to him now, they meant something more than nonsensical alphabet soup.

Jack glanced around the room and like a magnetic pull his eyes went to Thera's bed. She was lying on her side, sheet dropped down to drape at her hips, and Jack could see the baby lying on the bed next to her. Her hand was gently resting on the small creature's stomach and her eyes were locked on the small face. Jonah flared in him and he wanted nothing more than to go over to her and touch her, touch the baby.

Jack fought and turned away. He had to get out of there.

Deep inside him Jonah was in pain... he'd lost Thera.

Jack went to the infirmary door and an SF, one of two on duty, stopped him. "I'm sorry, sir, you can't leave the infirmary."

Jack looked the airman straight in the eye and said, "Get General Hammond, I want to speak with him."

Jack was back and with his aura of authority intact because the airman only paused a few seconds before leaving to fetch the commander of the base while the other eyed Jack uncertainly.

Jack hung around in the doorway as he waited. It was easier to hover there than risk going back inside and having to turn away from Thera. What remained of Jonah inside him made Jack uncertain he could be strong enough to walk away a second time.