Warnings: Some sexual content, some disturbing events.

Previously:

As they walked towards the Jeep, Daniel rubbed at his sternum. "I have to say that her poking me like that felt kind of familiar."

"Well, it's a start," Jack replied.

Ella

As Ella drove away, she glanced in her rearview mirror. She saw the two men bathed in red light. They were watching her. Anger flared through her and she looked back to the road, driving automatically. She let her anger push away everything else. It felt good. It made sense. In all of the chaos of tonight, the only thing she understood was that she had been lied to. Daniel wasn't and never had been dead. But he had abandoned her.

Once she arrived home, she did her usual nighttime chores on autopilot. Sort the mail, feed the cat, brush her teeth. Slam a frozen dinner into the microwave for a late meal. She wouldn't think about how sad Daniel looked when she faced him on the roadside; how he had tried to talk to her. Fuck him. He had left her…he had forgotten her…

He must have been so scared. That thought returned with a wave of nausea.She had thrown up when Jack told her that Daniel had been found in another country with no memory. She suddenly didn't feel like eating the meal that was heating up. He must have been so scared.

A crack formed in her infuriated façade.

Ella squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hold on to her anger. When she opened them, her gaze fell directly on the photograph on her bookshelf. It was the photo that Jack O'Neill had given her the day he told her that Daniel was dead. Her anger began to dissolve into grief. Not for herself this time. She began to feel grief for Daniel and all that he had lost. Was it all still gone? Did he remember his parents? Did he remember his wife? She picked up the picture and carried it with her to her couch.

She stared at the young faces, frozen in time behind the glass. They both looked ridiculously young. Daniel's hair had been long and shaggy and his glasses were huge. Young Ella's own face was unlined and unmarked, but she was already showing a wariness in her smile that made her seem older than she was. It had been taken on Ella's thirteenth birthday. After Daniel had been beaten up. Before she had become Brian's favorite target.

She wished that there had been pictures taken during the museum trip that Daniel had taken her on. She had fallen in love that day, with all the intensity that a fragile little 13-year-old heart could hold. When they had reconnected as adults, it had been so different. But he had still been Daniel.

And she had still loved him. There had been a few others. A boy in high school. A few in college. She had actually been seeing someone when she met Daniel in the grocery store, years ago. But none of them could compete with her first love. Daniel had been her hero. How could a normal boy compare?

She thought of Daniel as she had last seen him. During the last few months, he had seemed so tired and weary. He couldn't talk about it. Just wrote it off as "work stress." But there was more. Ella could tell. She knew him too well. Their time together became more intense. She began to suspect that he used sex with her as a way to push off his own deep sorrow and keep her from asking too many complicated questions. She hadn't minded, not really. But she had been worried. More than once she woke to an empty bed with him standing in the living room, staring into the night. When she asked what he was doing, he simply replied "Questioning." She would wrap her arms around him and rest her cheek against his back, trying to give him the comfort he wouldn't ask for. Daniel never pushed her away.

And then he was gone. And she had been alone.

What had happened to him? Jack had told her that Daniel died to save the lives of many others. For three months, Ella had scoured old newspapers trying to find some international or domestic incident that seemed like the one. None of them seemed right. But then, she had no idea what she was looking for. What had Daniel done? Would she ever learn the truth?

Before, she had understood what they were. They were friends. They had become lovers. There were things he could not give her the same as she couldn't give him the domestic married life she knew that he had dreamed of. The whole wife and kids thing held no appeal to her. Not then. She had her job. She saw too many kids that didn't get enough love. She wanted to be there for them 100, and fearedthat she wouldn't have enough for children of her own. Daniel accepted that and never pushed. After all, there were parts of himself that he held back from her. In her heart, Ella felt they had failed each other equally. But they had shared so much and loved so much that it had been worth it. Tears started to fall as she thought again about what it had been like for him. He had been lost with no memory and no history. What if he had been hurt? And tonight all she had done was scream at him, blaming him for the pain of the last year. Almost hitting him in her rage.

But what was she supposed to do now? Daniel was back, but he didn't know her. And she was not the same person she had been. She wanted more. Her life had changed. Was there still room in it for Daniel? Did she want to let him in?

Ella's cat jumped into her lap, giving her a deeply concerned look. As Ella stared into the large, amber eyes, she knew the answer. "Oh, Tink…" Ella sighed, as she scratched the marmalade cat. Tink had no answers, just continued to knead her human's legs. Ella's anger was gone and her intense grief was fading. None of this was Daniel's fault. Daniel would never have abandoned her if there had been anyway to prevent it. They were too important to each other. He had saved her and, once or twice, she had saved him. Maybe they couldn't go back to what they were before, but Ella couldn't imagine not taking this third chance to have Daniel back in her life.

She still had Jack O'Neill's card. Tomorrow she would call him. He could put her in contact with Daniel. While she was at it, she would apologize to Jack as well. She had been monstrously rude to him. He was no more to blame for her pain than Daniel was. She was pretty sure that he would forgive. He seemed like a pretty good guy.

Ella felt like she had lived through an emotional train wreck today. It was definitely time for bed. First, she went to wash her face. The bathroom mirror did not reflect a pretty image. Puffy eyes, red nose, bedraggled hair. She could feel a bruise from where she had fainted in the grocery store. She thought about how she had looked that first night at the Greerson's, so many years ago, the first time she had met Daniel. She had not been exaggerating when she told Jack O'Neill that she had been barely civilized when she met Daniel. All of the love and care that her mother had given her the first nine year of her life had been shoved to the back of her mind by the time she was 12. As an adult, Ella often mused that she had hid it there for safekeeping. At any rate, three years later, self-care, even routine tasks such as washing and brushing her hair were not priorities for her. But Daniel found ways to remind her, never judging her. He understood.

Smiling to herself at the memories, Ella brushed her hair. She turned out the light and went to her bedroom. The phone at her bedside beckoned to her. She didn't have to be alone tonight. All she had to do was call and he would come. But, no, she decided. She needed to work through this on her own. As she drifted off to sleep, her thoughts moved back to Daniel. He must have been so scared…

OoOoOoOoOoOo

Ella dreamed…

…she was kissing him. His lips, his smell, his taste. It was all so familiar and it was so good. His arms wrapped around her back while his sensitive fingers trailed down her neck. Ella moved herself so that she straddled Daniel's lap, a knee beside either hip. She moved closer, feeling him rise beneath her. His hand moved down, tracing the lacy edge of her bra, then grasping her firmly, making her purr, making her moan. She arched her back as Daniel's lips followed the path of her pulse, lingering at her collarbone. She released a sigh of pure delight. It was always so good with Daniel. With him, she never felt too fat or too stupid. Daniel felt like coming home.

Daniel's strong hands grasped around her bottom and he rolled so that she was lying underneath him, he legs wrapped firmly around his waist. She closed her eyes, as he gently knitted his fingers through her hair. He gripped her hair tighter.

It hurt!

The dreamscape shattered, spinning crazily off of its axis. On her knees, too dark to see, she was choking. Ella knew, she knew, it wasn't Daniel she was with. It was him. Not Daniel, HIM! He was forcing himself into her mouth, killing her, one hand wrapped around her neck, the other yanking her hair so tight, she thought he would rip it from her skull. Stop, please stop, she thought, but she was dying. No one would ever hear her. No one would ever care because she was getting what she deserved. I'm sorry, she prayed. Please God, I'm sorry. Make this stop. She could hear a faint pounding, God tried to hear her, but she knew that rescue would never come. She deserved this. She was dying, forever dying, begging for him to stop, pleading for air, praying for God to forgive her. But she knew she wouldn't be absolved. She would spend her eternity on her knees in the closet, praying for forgiveness from a sin she never meant to commit.

Gagging, thrashing, smothering a scream, Ella fell out of her bed, landing hard on her hands and knees. Her head spun as the dream dissolved and the real world pushed into her awareness. She gasped for air, fresh oxygen clearing her mind. It had been years since she had had that dream. She pulled her phone down to the floor and pressed Speed Dial.

"Please come over," she whispered tightly once the connection was made. "Please. I need you." She clicked the phone off and grasped her knees, rocking slightly as she breathed in and out. He was coming, he would be right over…

TBC