8After Sacrifices:

C3 'Escape'

Inside the House

Daniel scooped the wounded woman up in his arms. He could see she had several bad gashes. With delicacy, he lowered her into his bed. Over the next four hour, he cleaned her wounds and bound them in the way he was taught during his SGC training. He pressed the blue button at the screen, but they would not answer his calls.

"Unbelievable." Daniel's request for company ended in the woman being beaten. He felt guilty that his attempt to escape only harmed an innocent young woman who he thought could not be a day over twenty five.

She moved her hands, and Daniel walked across the room to his bed where she was wrapped up in the sheets.

"Can you hear me?" Daniel spoke in the softest of voices.

When twenty minutes passes and she didn't wake back up, he climbed onto the bed and wrapped his arm around her protectively. He felt completely helpless and lightly brushed strands of her light bronzed sandy hair out of her face. "It will all be ok. I'll find a way to get both of us out of here."

A light whimper floated out of her lips. Within a few seconds, her eyes opened enough for Daniel to see the pain in her crystal blue eyes.

Daniel put his hand on her forehead to check if she still had a fever. He was lying on his side running his fingertips over her arm…Yes, her fever is gone now.

She immediately reacted as a caged animal when she fully awakened. She smacked his hand away as she yelled. "Keep away from me!" Half climbing half falling out of the bed on the opposite side she managed to stager to her feet. She backed up into the wall. The relatively minor impact with the wall made her cringe as tears streamed down her grimacing face.

Daniel held up his hands in a friendly gesture trying to calm her. He felt guilty that she was hurt and felt her pain within him as if it was he who suffered the injuries. "You're safe now. They're gone. I mean you no harm. My name is Daniel. What's yours?"

The woman bolted from the room. Daniel was astonished at her speed because he thought her wounds would have prevented her from moving that fast.

He reached out to grab her arm as she entered the hallway. She spun around with an expression of complete fear.

He released her instinctively and took a few steps backwards. She moved back as well then halted as if confused.

She felt a wave of nausea and almost collapsed in the floor.

Daniel rushed forward and grabbed her arm. He helped her back into the bed. Minutes later he brought her some tea. He found himself personally sad that such a gentle and lovely woman was subjected to brutal violence. He determined to help her all he could as he dabbed a damp cloth on her forehead.

She finally calmed as the pain from the wounds on her head and arm started to diminish somewhat into just throbbing. Her eyes locked with his in a moment of truth. She glanced at her bandaged arm and started to relax. "You're human." She paused then looked at him again. "You have been taking care of me?" Her hand moved over her left arm where a bandage was.

Daniel stayed where he was and smiled. "Yes."

"My name is Celtia."

"It's good to meet you." Daniel looked down then back up. "I have been trying for days and days to find what is going on. Do you know?"

Celtia shook her head slightly, "Not really. I was on my way to a Simtala Ceremony when light took me."

Daniel took the cup from her trembling hand. He gazed into her eyes with care. "I was traveling too when a light took me. I felt someone in my mind then I woke up here."

She rubbed the back of her head. "There was something." She patted at her dress then folded a piece over showing a pocket. She reached inside to pull out a medallion. "I managed to get this off of one of them."

Daniel held out his hand. "May I?"

She nodded.

He took the medallion and turned it over. It had inscriptions that he did not recognize. "They teleport and can move through the barriers. I wonder if they use these to do it with."

She just watched him.

Daniel nodded for her to follow him. "This is the only room without windows. I don't know if they can see us in here or not, but we'll have to risk it."

They went into the bathroom and closed the door. "Do you know what a Stargate is? A Chappa'ai?"

"The ancestral circle? Yes." She nodded.

"Hold the other side of this and think about it. I'll do the same and maybe it will teleport us to it and we can dial to get out of here." Daniel had no idea if it would work, but he had been reading in an ancient text that there were god devices that allowed one to as it said move through air. He guessed that meant teleporting.

They stood for a while holding onto it then light consumed them.

Daniel's vision came back to him. They were in a cave. He spun around seeing a Stargate, but no dialing device.

Celia let out an excited yell and picked her way quickly over rock to get to the side of the Stargate. "We will go to my home then you can go from there to yours."

"How?"

She reached down between a few rocks then moved forward inspecting the next set. "Here." She picked up a circular device and tapped at it.

Daniel jerked when the Stargate opened an active wormhole. His attention was diverted by a flash of light at the cave entrance. "We need to go. Now." He grabbed her arm and they sprinted into the gate.

On the other side, Daniel was grabbed and drug back off his feet.

"No. Don't harm him. He helped get me back."

Daniel heard her switch into another language explaining something to a group of men who had clothes on the same color as hers.

The men let him go. "Thank you."

She took his arm and they started following the men. "They were about to go looking for me because news came that I did not arrive at my destination. I told them stop all travel with the ancestral circles for now until we understand how those being took us causing us to go to their world instead."

Daniel nodded and told himself he could stay with her people for a while and look over any artifacts they had.

Two Weeks Later.

"But Daniel, how did you know when you went back into the gate that you wouldn't end up with them again?" Sam questioned him.

Jack tuned out all the technical mumbo jumbo just thankful that Daniel had found a way back. He listened again for a few moments then understood that the beings had sent out a transmission that infected gates like a virus sending beings to their world and that he knew the way to buffer it out. "Glad you're back."

"So am I, and I'm going to have a visitor before long. I gave her one of the backup ids."

Jack remembered part of the story. "The damsel in distress?"

Daniel looked at Sam feeling somewhat embarrassed then he nodded.

A/N: Well, a while back Daniel was the one in the bed being helped by a lovely woman…can't blame me for wanting to see it in the reverse.