Daniel laid his head down on the briefing room table he leaned up slightly but addressed his query to the flat surface.

"So let me get this straight. Your Daniel disappeared while he was talking to the council on the planet you found me on, right?" There was general assent from those around the table. "But when you checked the whole council was gone too." Another round of nods the archeologist couldn't see. "But the council came back and said they saw another Daniel, the evil one we assume was Major Dan?"

"That is correct Daniel Jackson." Daniel looked up, he was still tired from his jaunt in the woods and his arm was beginning to throb, but who knew what his doppelganger was getting up to while he was sitting here trying to explain what to him was so painfully obvious.

"So why didn't you have someone talk to them about how to go to where your Daniel was taken." John glanced at Sam who shrugged.

"They had some kind of a mourning ritual going and wouldn't speak to us. We formed a search party to survey the surrounding area, and had just made camp when you came stumbling out of the trees calling me Jack."

"And no one's been back to check out their story especially since you realized I wasn't the Daniel you wanted?" Daniel stared at them dumbfounded.

"What's wrong Danny? We were planning to go back as soon as you got your sea legs back." said Sam. Daniel winced at Sam's use of the name, he barely tolerated it from Jack, uh John or whatever the hell his name was. He took a deep breath and remembered that these people were not his team, not the friends he knew.

"Great," he said flashing Sam his best surface smile, "when do we leave?"

"First thing in the morning," said General Hammond. Daniel frowned and glanced at the clock it was barely noon.

"Why wait?" he asked as everyone got up from the table.

"Because you're dead on your feet Danny," said John helping him up. "We need you a hundred percent when we go and see the council." Daniel felt a hand on his shoulder and turned it was Sam.

"I'll see you in the morning Danny." She said giving him a peck on the cheek and a quick hug. Then she was gone out the door. Daniel stood dumbstruck.

"Earth to Danny?" John waved a hand in front of his face. "Come in Danny?" Daniel cringed and turned away.

"Jack," said Daniel absently moving out of range.

"It's John," he said, "remember Danny?"

"It's Daniel," he said, "no one's really called me Danny since my parents died." He looked up at John, "it just didn't seem appropriate." John broke the stare first looking around the now empty room.

"I'm sorry, it's just you look so much like him."

"I know and you look like Jack did a few years ago. I guess it wasn't just me that gave him all his grey hair." John raised his eyebrows and put a hand up to his head unconsciously touching his salt and peppered hair.

"So your Colonel O'Neill,"

"General." John frowned.

"I'm a general?" Daniel nodded.

"Yeah, for a couple of months now, and Sam's a Lieutenant Colonel." John gave him an 'are you kidding me' look, but Daniel just shrugged. "It was Jack's first act as commander of the base." John's face cracked into a smile.

"You had me going there for a minute, but the commander of the base was too much. There is no way." Daniel just smiled at him and walked out the room. "Dan, Daniel come on, me a General? Really?" he walked out of the room in the corridor to find it empty.

Major Dan was bored. He thought that messing with General Jack and company would raise his spirits while Daniel got comfortable and complacent, but the whole thing was beginning to bore him. Dan glanced at his watch.

"Time for a little change of venue," he said spinning in his chair to a computer terminal. He typed a few commands in and saved his changes. "I hope you're wearing a warm jacket Dr Jackson."

'Well,' thought Daniel, 'that's not something that happens everyday;' he had stepped out of the briefing room and into an ice cave.

"Unless you're me." He sighed under his breath. Daniel looked around and thought it bore and unsettling similarity to the cavern they'd found Jack and Sam marooned in after an overload made the wormhole skip to the second gate. Except on his earth this area had been turned into a massive research station and was crawling people.

"Freeze!" the hoarse cry came from behind and above him and Daniel turned to the unmistakable sound of an MP5 begin readied to fire. He looked up to see, who had spoken and saw a very drawn and cold looking Samantha Carter perched on the top of a large ice shelf. "Who are you and how did you get in here?" Daniel raised his arms automatically in response to the weapon pointed at him.

"My name is Daniel and if you don't know me then, the other part will take a while." Sam considered him for a moment before lowering her weapon.

"Stand fast, I'm coming down." She said turning from the edge, moment later she came sliding down side of the shelf her gun still ready. She approached Daniel slowly.

"Can I put my arms down?" he asked his arm was beginning to ache. She paused some feet away, and nodded.

"Tell, me again." She said.

"What?"

"Who are you?"

"My name is Dr Daniel Jackson…" he began,

"No!" cried Sam clearly more than a little stressed, "I know who you're supposed to be, but you're not him." Daniel teeth were chattering as he rubbed his hands together for warmth. He was only wearing basic fatigues and the cold was starting to seep through. Sam blinked as Daniel hopped from foot to foot. "But you don't look like a hallucination." She said a little puzzled.

"How can you tell?" he asked blowing on his hands.

"Figments don't feel the cold." She said eyeing him warily. Daniel drew his sleeves over his hands, and crossed his arms to hold in as much heat as possible. "Who are you?" she asked again.

"I'd really love to tell you, but I'm freezing here is there somewhere we can warm up a bit?" Sam regarded the man before her, the first human life she's encountered since being tossed out of the Stargate a month earlier. Maybe he was a figment and she'd just gone nuts, as she suspected was happening anyway. He was clearly unarmed and since she's been considering the merits of her sidearm for the last few days, she didn't see any harm in humoring her delusion.

Sam led Daniel to her camp in what remained of a small temple that she'd uncovered searching for the DHD. He looked around as she lit a few of the torches around the place, they were clean burning and she couldn't figure out what they were made of, but in the end she didn't really care all that much anymore.

"Who else lives here?" asked Daniel absently taking the jacket she offered him with a small 'thanks'.

"No one." said Sam.

"But you have equipment here for two people." Then he saw them, a pair of his glasses perched on what could have been an altar. He picked them up but they were snatched from his fingers quickly.

"Daniel Jackson is dead." She said looking at the broken lenses and then up at him. "He died, when I couldn't get the gate to work." Tears slipped uncaring down her paled cheeks. "I'm sorry, I let you die Daniel." She sobbed.

"Oh, hey" Daniel couldn't stop himself, he wrapped his arms around his friend and hugged her to his chest, she hugged him back after a pause and they stood there holding on to each other. "I'm sorry," he whispered, in Sam's hair. "I'm sorry your Daniel is dead, but he wouldn't blame you. This isn't your fault." She drew back from him then.

"You're not him, are you?" she asked sniffing back the tears, her eyes red and sore. Daniel used his sleeve to wipe her tears.

"No, I'm not him. I'm what you might call an alternative. Did you guys find the quantum mirror yet?" Sam shook her head. "Well..."

Jack cursed under his breath at the report that Carter had just handed him. There were at least three other incidents that could be the one Major Dan was looking for, but O'Neill was damned if he knew which it could be. The deadline was fast approaching and he needed to make a decision soon.

Samantha, for no one would dare call her Sam, sat quietly stoking the fire in what had been her frozen prison for the last month.

"That's really weird," she said eventually, "I mean in your world I'm some top astrophysicist, a colonel and a doctor. Man, I never even finished my doctorate. I'm still a Captain." She said with a bitter smile. "My husband, Jonas is always telling me I should take some time, and finish my dissertation." Daniel failed to hide the surprise that Sam was married and not to Jack either. "Oh," she said, "I take it I'm not married where you're from?"

"Err no; Sam doesn't have the best of luck with men."

"Yeah, I expect she's too busy all that saving the world business." Daniel smiled.

"So you're married to Jonas Hanson then?" he asked. Carter's face dropped.

"Oh, hell no; I drop kicked his ass into the great beyond. My husband is Jonas Quinn." Daniel almost spit the coffee she had given him.

"From Kalowna?" he asked.

"Yeah, you know him in your reality?"

"Yeah, he erm stood in for me on SG-1 while I was on… sabbatical."

"Oh, yeah? He's a good man, I was so sorry when his world was destroyed."

"What?"

"The scientists on his planet were experimenting with some sort of Naquadah derivative."

"Naquadria."

"Yeah, that's it. Anyway they screwed it up and blew the planet and the Gate to pieces. Jonas had been visiting the SGC at the time and when it came time to take him back there was no where to go back to." Daniel was silent for a moment. "I take it that didn't happen in your world?"

"No the erm test was stopped before it went critical. Everyone but one person in the room died of radiation poisoning."

"Wow." said Carter. Daniel smiled at her.

"Yeah."

"So who was it?"

"What?"

"Who didn't die?"

"I would have thought that was obvious, Jonas didn't die. He had some kind of unique radiation immunity. I wasn't around much after that I'm not sure it was ever really explained why he survived and the other scientists died." Daniel shrugged off the thought and pulled a small notepad from his pocket. He scribbled something down and handed Samantha the sheet. "Here." He said.

"What's this?"

"Reset the DHD, use that address and then dial home from there."

"Why?" she asked frowning. "You know why the 'gate won't work, don't you? Tell me." Daniel smiled kindly at her. He knew instinctively that his time here was almost up and he didn't want to leave his friend stranded.

"You're just getting a busy signal." he said, "You need to hang up and try a different number. Tell them to check seismic events for the time you leave, around fifty miles out of Mcmurdo."

"Antarctica?" she questioned looking at the piece of paper and then back up but he was gone.

Major Dan smiled "It think your catching my drift there doctor." He was pleasant the surprised to find his doppelganger saying goodbye at the exact moment he'd decided to mess with him again. "Let's see if we can't bring you completely onto my wavelength." Dan hit a few keys at his terminal and a cold smiled slid across his face.

Samantha hit the last symbol with a trembling hand and palmed the center of the DHD. With something like elation and mind numbing fear she stepped through the event horizon and emerged on a warm sandy beach. A warm breeze caressed her cheek and she felt an almost hysterical laugh bubble up inside her as she fell back on the sand. After a few minutes she realized it was getting dark and so she summoned up her strength and found the pedestal for this planet's DHD. Hands shaking even more she pushed the long engrained symbols for earth and activated the Stargate. She sent her IDC and closed her eyes before entering the wormhole.

"Welcome back Captain." came a voice from above her eyes fluttered open and she saw the control room and she was standing on the ramp. Jack was walking up to her, patting her on the shoulder and it was suddenly too much for her; her knees buckled and she fell slowed by Jack to the ramp.

"Easy Captain." he said, as he pulled her backpack off. Her vision blurred and for a moment she thought she saw Daniel stood on the ramp he was dressed a cream sweater and he looked happy.

"Thank you." she whispered before the image faded and her eyes closed.

Comments? Questions? Praise? All are welcome.

Thanks CynicAlb