Author's Warning: This is getting more evil as it goes on... Be warned. Raised the rating because of violence. Oh, and, once again, I've got this feeling that this's been a bit slow... What do you think? Too slow? Please let me know.

Sha're was standing in front of him, smiling at him, as beautiful as ever, the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Though he was chained to the wall and unable to move, Daniel smiled back at her.

Her eyes flashed. Glowed. Her smile changed, twisted into a wicked grin. Her face remained beautiful, but the beauty behind it, that of her spirit, her soul, it faded away. She wasn't Sha're, she was Amaunet. A Goa'uld. She laughed at his soft, weak, human feelings.

"My sweet Daniel," she whispered poisonously, and ran a finger along his cheek, her sharp nail scraping his skin.

He tried to pull away, but he had nowhere to go. He tried to keep his weight on his feet, so his aching wrists wouldn't have to take it all.

"And what should it be today?" she asked, and seemingly out of nowhere, a small dagger emerged in her hand. She toyed with it for a while, and then slid it to his neck. He could feel his pulse racing against the cool blade.

"But no. It will not do, when I do not have a sarcophagus here at hand," she decided, and pulled it away.

Instead, she lifted her other hand. The one wearing that awfully familiar hand device. She caught him in the glowing beam once again. He felt his knees give in, and the pain in his wrists blazed again when he was left hanging from them.

Just when he thought he was going to pass out, it was all over in a flash. Amaunet went down, a dark stain spreading slowly on her chest.

He couldn't see her face properly, but he saw how the glow of her eyes went off once and for all. Amaunet died, and for a passing moment, he could see Sha're's spirit reflected in her eyes again. And then she was gone forever.

Behind her stood Teal'c, a staff weapon still held in his hands.

Tealc had shot her. He had killed Sha're. Daniel had had a hard time trying to learn to trust the Jaffa, and to forgive him for letting Apophis take Sha're in the first place. Now, Teal'c had again proved that he couldn't be trusted. Daniel would never trust him. He would never consider him a friend. He wasn't a friend, he was the enemy.

Daniel had the foreboding feeling that the seemingly endless torture and its unexpected, horrible end had pushed him over an edge. Where, exactly, and what it would mean, he couldn't tell, but it was frightening.

In a blink, they were no longer in Amaunet's stone-walled chamber. They were in the forest, on the dark side of P3X-797. They were surrounded, the Touched were everywhere around. Teal'c turned his back to Daniel and started firing.

This was it. Daniel knew it. He had been toying with the idea for almost a month, and now, the urge was too strong. He couldn't resist it. He might never get such an opportunity again. He'd have to act quickly. He made the decision in a fleeting moment.

He grabbed his standard issue knife and leaped towards Teal'c. He aimed for the lower back, hoping to get the symbiote on the first try.

Teal'c dropped his gun and fell to his knees. Daniel pulled the knife out and lunged again, higher up this time. First, eliminate the symbiote, and then stab him in the heart. Should kill for certain.

The Touched were too near now, about to grab them both, and Daniel went on with his plan. He wrenched the knife out again, and took hold of the blade, offering the hilt to one of the primitives. Let them take it. Let them do whatever with it. And let them put their fingerprints all over it, so no one could ever suspect Daniel.

When they grabbed him and started dragging him away to who knew where, he didn't resist. He didn't want to die, but he wasn't sure if he wanted them to let him live, either.

He saw a few of them move in and nudge Teal'c. Teal'c stayed very still.

God, he had killed Teal'c. But that was what he had wanted to do all along. He had seen it coming since the moment he'd looked at Teal'c, standing there at the doorway with that staff weapon, with Sha're lying dead on the ground.

Daniel bolted up in his bed, panting.

The doubt, the nagging voice of his conscience, it just wouldn't leave him alone. It told him that he shouldn't have done it. But what was done, was done, and he just had to live with it.

Besides, he wouldn't need to go on. He could end it here, in this universe. He would do that. He only needed to take one more life, and then he would never do it again. He would do that today, and then everything would be all right again.

Daniel was already closing his jacket and getting off the table when Jack reached the infirmary.

"Physically, there's nothing wrong with him, except that he's clearly upset," Janet was telling Sam.

"Nothing wrong except that this thing's going to happen again, and get worse, as long as there's two of me in this universe," Daniel remarked sourly.

"I wonder if Jackson's being entirely honest with us. I mean, it seems highly unlikely that it'd hit Daniel first. Maybe he just doesn't want us to know," Sam said.

"I wouldn't put that past him," Daniel replied. "I might... He might do that. Just to keep everyone else from worrying too much."

Jack grimaced at that. Sure, it did sound like stubborn, Daniel-like behavior. Don't upset the others. Don't add to their troubles. Just suffer silently, all on your own. Wasn't that what Daniel had been trying to do all along, when he'd completely refused to talk about his feelings and thoughts over Sha're's death?

"Or maybe he just hates my infirmary," Janet suggested. "I wouldn't put that past either of you two."

"If I've ever said anything to offend you, Janet..."

"No, no, I understand it perfectly well. No need to apologize. So, I think I'm going to need to make a house call on Jackson, if he's so reluctant to come here."

"You won't find anything," Sam was being the pessimist-realist once again. That was one side of her that Jack could do without. "The ECF seizures don't leave any permanent marks, do they?"

"Aside from overwhelming systemic stress when it gets worse, not really," Janet shrugged. "But the least I can do is check that he hasn't accidentally torn any of those stitches open."

"Take a few guards with you, will ya," Jack told her.

He couldn't get past the idea that Jackson might have some other reasons for not telling them whether he was suffering of ECF or not. He'd not have another person attacked, if he could do anything to prevent it.

As she left the room, the three relatively unharmed members of SG-1 walked over to visit the fourth, again. Teal'c still showed no signs of coming to.

"Janet actually said it looks like the symbiote's about to wake up," Sam noted. "And when it does, that means Teal'c's going to heal a lot faster, and then he'll come around soon, too."

"And I really hope he can tell us something about what happened," Jack added, and placed a hand on the unconscious Jaffa's head. "Come on, T. We could use your help here."

Jack heard Daniel breathe in sharply, and looked at him, concerned. But apparently it wasn't another bout of ECF, just a wave of complex emotions. Daniel was blinking fast, like trying to fight away tears, and his mouth was a thin line.

"I'll be in my lab... Let me know when there's any news," Daniel said tonelessly, and walked away.

Jack was about to follow him and give him a few pieces of advice, when the gate activation alert sounded.

"It's got to be the Tok'ra," Sam said. "And not a minute too early."

Sam had been hoping she'd meet her dad again, but he wasn't among the three Tok'ra who came through the gate. Instead, Martouf was there, and two others she didn't recognize right away, a middle-aged woman and a young man.

"Samantha. Colonel O'Neill. Good to see you both. I'm afraid Selmak and Jacob are away on a very important mission, so we could not contact them. However, the two I've brought with me are among the most experienced of the Tok'ra when it comes to matters of technology. They are called Thea-" he pointed at the woman, who nodded "-and Nahet," he gestured at the young man.

"Pleased to meet you," she greeted them. "Can we start right away? We're in a bit of a hurry here. The presence of two Daniels in our reality is causing a temporal disturbance that hurts them both."

"So soon already? That is interesting," Thea commented right away. "How does it manifest, exactly?"

"I'll explain it all in a while. Please, let's get going," Sam hurried them, and started leading the way towards the lab with the mirror.

She saw the Colonel raise his eyebrows and nod. Just go on, hurry up, and don't spare them one bit, he was telling her.

She certainly made them work as hard as they could, and did the same herself. The unhappy truth was, they were just as much at a loss with the mirror's technology as she was. They had to start from what Sam and the Area 51 scientists had managed to gather, and try to work their way up from there.

The Tok'ra did bring one all-important advantage. Though they didn't really understand how the mirror worked, many of its components were familiar to them. They had even brought some spare parts with them, based on the knowledge Sam had given them in advance, when she'd first contacted them for help.

They would get this thing fixed, but it might take a full day.

"Daniel?" Jack called from the doorway.

"Yeah... If it's not good, I don't want to hear it," Daniel snapped at him. He didn't even bother to look up from his translation.

He was working fast, but he didn't think the quality was up to his usual standard. In a very concrete way. His scribbles were hardly legible. Worse than a corrupted papyrus in Hieratic Egyptian. And the text he was producing... Although it did correspond to the original, it certainly wasn't English.

"It's good all right. You must've heard the Tok'ra came through? They're going to fix the mirror in no time."

"That's good," Daniel nodded. "Anyone tell that to Jackson yet?"

"I'll stop by to let him know."

"So, he didn't kill Janet when she went to check him, after all?" Daniel asked in a slightly accusing tone. He hadn't liked what Jack had implied, insisting her to take backup when she went to see to Jackson.

"He didn't. I think it was almost the other way around. The Doc wasn't too happy when she found him bleeding again. He'd broken all her careful handwork of sewing him together. I can guess she wasn't too gentle when she redid it," Jack actually sounded like he felt for Jackson.

Maybe Jack was finally getting over all those stupid suspicions. Daniel couldn't understand why Jack would insist on not trusting Jackson. Actually, Daniel felt offended about that. It felt like Jack didn't trust him. Because Jackson was him. Daniel felt closer, more similar to him now than ever, since they were both suffering from ECF.

"Anything I can do for you? Get you a cup of coffee?" Jack offered.

"No, I think I've still got some that's just... a few hours old, and still lukewarm..." he turned his attention to the text again, away from Jack, away from Jackson, away from Teal'c and all the thoughts and emotions he didn't want to face.

"Just the way you love it. Right. I get the clue. I'll leave you alone. Just... Daniel, please, please let us know if anything's wrong. The Doc's so going to get you if you don't show up at the infirmary for a check up every time you've been through one of those... entropic seizure thingys."

"Sure, Jack," Daniel mumbled.

He really wasn't sure if he would, though. He knew what to expect now, and he knew he'd recover pretty fast, if the first two times gave any clue. He hadn't let anyone know of the second one, yet, the convulsions that had struck him after he'd spent an hour or so alone in his lab. If Jackson had gotten away with it, Daniel could do that as well. Let them worry about Jackson, the mirror and Teal'c's attacker first. Daniel's problem would be solved as well when they'd take care of those.