"Alright, alright!" Carter said as the idiot from SG-9 stabbed her in the back with his gun again. I'll go into the frickin' cave, she thought, fear and irritation twisting together in her stomach.

They approached a throne that was surrounded by beautiful women, where Hansen sat donned in a robe of exquisite cloth. He removed his hood as she stood before him, and said smugly, "Well, it's about time."

Hmm….small cave, outmanned, outgunned…as much as she wanted to, she was going to have to play "nice". "Hello Jonas," she said cautiously. Fear rippled through her, pinning her feet to the ground. Her entire body felt stiff and foreign. But she ignored it; this was something she had to do. No Colonel O'Neill, no SG-1, nobody. It was for her to do and her alone.

Hansen sighed and nodded with his smug smile. "And you never thought I'd amount to anything. It's quite a leap, isn't it? From captain to –"

"What's happened to you, Jonas?"

He paused and stared at her. "Please, sit down." Great, so she wouldn't even be able to run when he lunged at her? She sat, against her better judgment. "These caves," Hansen said, "were once mines. They penetrate the hillside for miles. But these people have been multiplying like – rabbits. They don't have the technology to dig themselves more caves; they don't have the courage to leave the caves, it's like a whole third world country in a bottle."

"And you think you're saving them?" she asked in more of an accusing tone than she'd meant.

"Oh!" Hansen threw up his arms and she winced. "I know I am!" he said in a voice that said nothing else could possibly be true.

Captain Carter swallowed past a large lump in her throat. God, what was she doing? She must be crazy! This man is dangerous! What the hell was she doing making small-talk with him? (Even if it was a debate on his sanity…)

When she didn't reply, he leaned forward so they were a mere few feet apart. "These people," he whispered, "they're human beings – just like us!"

He was trying to guilt-trip her now? What was she, the naughty little girl who wanted to go to a movie instead of going to watch her brother's baseball game? Grief! And if they're "human, just like us" then why are you treating them like common animals! she wanted to demand, to snap.

"How can we turn our backs against them?" he continued. "Kidnapped from earth, forced into slavery for centuries."

"We can't change that!" she argued, starting to feel stronger. He hadn't raped her yet, after all…

"Well how does posing as their god and slowly working these people to death help them?" she demanded angrily. Her conscience had a fit at that; You're going to get yourself killed, it said.

"I hate that word! STOP USING IT! I am NOT posing!" he ordered, glaring at her dangerously.

Captain Carter started to tremble and was very glad she was sitting down.

In a softer, even falser tone, Hansen said, "It is a matter of definition. My people need me. They believe in me, and because they believe, they will work."

"To death," she finished edgily.

Hansen shook his head. "We are building a civilization, Sam. There are going to be sacrifices."

She snorted and looked away, hoping to regain her strength.

"It's better than living in caves, rotting in squander like you've never seen," he said when she looked back, pointing at her. She flinched very slightly, but stared determinedly back at him. Oh, so she's never seen horrid things? That was laughable! Even without her hours during the Gulf War, she'd had him as her fiancé for ages, didn't she?

"I am creating…a great people," he finished.

"In your image," she snipped.

"Yes!" he exclaimed. "It's going to be wondrous!"

She opened her mouth and then closed it, at loss for what to say next.

"You'll see," he assured her, his small, smug smile back in place. "You'll see."

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"I really wish I understood these drawings," Hansen sighed as he was kneeling beside caveman-like pictographs.

"Why don't you ask your people?" Carter asked irritably.

He stood and shrugged, holding his arms out as if to say "who'd have thought it?" and said, "All knowing." He walked down to where a bowl of water was kept.

"You knew I would come, didn't you?" she said. Bastard.

"How could you not?" Hansen said dreamily. "Healer of the emotionally wounded. I was your one failure."

Ha! Her failure? And where did he get all that crap, "Healer of the emotionally wounded" – what was he, writing a book and thought it'd be great to try it out in real life?

"The bird with the broken wing you couldn't heal…" Hansen took a sip of water from the ladle.

"Seem to be flying well enough on your own," she shot back.

Hansen eyed her irritably. "I had hoped that you would understand." He tossed the water onto the floor and put the ladle back. While he was turned, she reached into her discarded vest and brought out her gun. With a quick click, it was pointed at him and ready to shoot.

He paused as he turned.

"I do understand," she said shakily. "You're sick and you need help."

"That's your idea of help?" he asked, waving at the gun.

"Yes," she replied. She would not be weak this time. "You're coming back with me."

"Well, then you'll have to use it, Sam," he said, sighing as though defeated. He took a step toward her. "Go on!" he encouraged softly. "Still loaded, pull the trigger." He took many more steps toward her.

Shit! she thought, panicking. He's doing it AGAIN!

"DO IT!" he bellowed, "For so help me, that is the only way you're going to stop me!"

Carter flinched visibly this time and her arms wavered, but a second later the gun was pointed solidly at him again.

"What's a few deaths in comparison to the lives of my people!" he demanded, patting his chest with both hands to stress the words.

"Killing their savior might…irritate them a little bit, but at least I'll be gone."

Yes, at least! So why haven't you shot the bastard yet? she snapped at herself inwardly. Her vehemence wavered again, but she pointed ever so determinedly. "Don't make me do this," she spat out the plea, looking and feeling miserable and scared.

He held out his arm, pointing lazily at the gun as he moved forward. "Go on," he whispered, "pull the trigger." That voice was familiar to Carter; it was the same, lulling voice he used when he wanted to get her to do something. In the beginning, anyway, when choice was an option to her. It seemed to put one under a spell they couldn't break. "One more fraction of an inch…"

Failure pricked in her fingers as Hansen gently disarmed her, the gun moving swiftly into his hand from hers, like a parent taking a sharp knife from a small toddler before they hurt themselves. Tears threatened and she wanted to die on the spot, though with Hansen and his handy gun there, that might happen quite soon…

"You had the gun," he whispered. "You appeared to have all the power. But I was in control. That is the strength of a god."

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Hansen led her from the cave. He showed her the field and the workers – "his people".

"It's going to be magnificent!" he said happily.

"What's the point, Jonas? By the time it's built there'll be no one left to worship you."

"Oh…please! Mere survival for these people will require unquestioning faith, pue devotion. They must believe in me if I am to lead them into the desert to the Promised Land. I am merely separating the weak from the chaff. Besides…" he said with amusement, "I'm supposed to be crazy, aren't I?"

"I never said you were crazy," Carter defended, thinking, even though it's true…

"But you think it, don't you?" Damn, the man could read minds! Ugh! "But that's okay," he said soothingly. "I still have faith in you, even if you don't believe in me – yet. You'll come around," he finished confidently.

"I don't think so, Jonas," she said quietly, looking at the workers below simply to avoid his eyes. His evil, awful eyes.

"Come here," he said, grabbing her arm.

No! No! Help, HELP! she screamed inside. Well, she had been wondering when he was going to rape her…

When he didn't, her whole body shuddered with relief. Hansen led her back into the cave and unveiled a strange device.

"What is it?" she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. She circled it and ended up at his side. Crap! she thought. Am I an idiot or what?

"It looks like something the Gou'ald left behind. What I've gathered from the local folklore is that the ancient…gods," he swore out the word like it was the work of the devil, just like she did when she said his name, "used this device to make the sky…orange, to protect the people from the sun-sickness."

"Some sort of shield," she muttered, nodding.

"Yes," he grumbled.

She looked at him. "You don't know how to work it," she said flatly. Little celebration horns tooted and confetti sprinkled everywhere in her mind.

Carter snorted. "You never cared about my coming here because you wanted me, Jonas, you just wanted me to turn this thing on for you," she said accusingly. Well, it wasn't a big deal. She was used to it by now, and besides, even if it weren't that way, she wouldn't want him anyway, the bastard.

"Oh, no!" he said coaxingly, walking around the device to face her. "I sincerely hope that you will, one day, agree to be my goddess." He put his hands on her arms gently and she fought back a shudder. He was close – way too close. Close enough to…no, he was much too close. God, she had to get out!

Good lord, she thought, he's reusing the same pathetic line he used on me before, only with "goddess" in the place of "wife". Thank god I'm not going to fall for that again.

A moment passed and he stepped back, his hands falling from her arms. "Turn it on," he growled.

"And if I don't?"

He paused and glared at her. "Then we will watch every last cave-dweller die in the sun before I kill us both."

Hansen shook his head at her slightly as he walked away from her and the device. "He hath not failed one word of his good promises!" he said loudly, waving a finger in the air. He looked over his shoulder a moment before reaching into his robe, pulling out a black Bible and opening it. "I've been carrying this for…years," he said, lifting it so she could see, his back still turned on her. "All along I've been looking for God," he said. "And here I am."

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"The main control seems to follow the same circuitry as the 'Gate does," Carter said, peering at her tool and the device.

"Just turn it on," Hansen said lazily and impatiently as he read his Bible.

Captain Carter looked at him incredulously. "What if I can't?" she demanded.

Just then, she heard people walking into the cave and stood. "Colonel O'Neill!" she said as her CO walked to her with the same SG-9 idiot that'd captured her behind him.

"Captain," he said shortly. "I see everything's turning out exactly as we planned." He looked pissed. Well, he was on an alien planet, captive of he own people, and dressed in a native's smelly, sweaty robes that hadn't been washed in…ages…

Hansen sighed and walked over, removing Velcro straps from O'Neill's wrists. "Shoot him," he said as he walked back to his throne.

"No!" Carter exclaimed, horrified when the SG-9 idiot raised his gun and clicked the safety off.

"Alright, alright," she mumbled in defeat, kneeling back down beside the device.

"Wait, you're gonna turn that thing on in here?" Colonel O'Neill said as though they were both mad.

What choice do I have? she wanted to yell. She never had a choice; well, never any good ones anyway. And getting Colonel O'Neill shot just wasn't acceptable.

"Do it now," Hansen said lowly. "And I'll spare him." Hansen glared pointedly at Colonel O'Neill.

Carter looked to her CO, who gave a small, "um, yeah, that sounds good" nod and waved his bound hands at her to say, "hurry it up".

With one quick snap of a switch and futz with a wire, an orange beam shot up from the device. She'd concealed the fact that she could turn it on for as long as she could, and her timing had been good enough to help Colonel O'Neill…for a little while, anyway.

Hansen got up and walked to the device, smiling up at it drunkenly as though it was his savior. "It's beautiful!" he breathed.

Colonel O'Neill stared at him as though he was insane, mad… And Carter didn't blame him.

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"My children," Hansen began powerfully when all the people had gathered at the Stargate. "Today is a great day! The sun has remained in the sky, a killer for you! I have the power to save, and cast down! But fear not. Stand still, and see the salvation of the lord. Today, we'll bury the Doorway that threatens to bring forth demons to undo us."

Carter watched him. He was insane. Only he could stand there, a "god" while Colonel O'Neill and Lieutenant Conner were about to be sacrificed. And only he could have the "Doorway", the Stargate, lain on its side so it was a ring in the ground, just to make it look like the doorway to Hell.

"But first!" he said, "I will send those EVIL undoers that have already invaded our world BACK to the hell from whence they came." Hansen dialed the DHD, pausing before he pressed the orange "activate" button in the center. "Fear not," he said grandly, "for I, the Lord your God, control the Gateway to the Underworld!" He pressed the orange button, and the Stargate activated with a loud whoosh and a wave that sent the people cowering and screaming.

"You said you wouldn't kill them," Carter said lowly.

"I'm not," he hissed under his breath, "I'm sending them back to earth."

"Without sending the signal to open the iris they'll die!" she said.

"Please, Sam, I'm having a moment here!"

Hansen turned back to his people. "I am the Lord your God!" he cried out to them. "There is nothing I cannot do! There is no one greater than I! No one is more powerful than I!" He lowered his arms and mumbled to the member of his team, "Toss them in."

The SG-9 idiot prodded them in the backs and they walked forward and stopped at the edge. Just before he was about to shove them in, a young man dressed in Colonel O'Neill's clothing ran up.

"Wait!" he hollered. "Do not!" He shot the SG-9 idiot with Teal'c's staff weapon.

Hansen drew his gun and Carter saw her chance; she twisted around and kicked the gun out of Hansen's hand. He turned and slapped her in the face hard enough to throw her back onto the stone steps, and Colonel O'Neill growled lowly, his glare enough to kill a man.

The young native fired another shot that missed Hansen, but scared him nonetheless.

"Listen to me!" Daniel said as Carter tried to get up, wincing as she rose off the steps. "No matter what Jonas has said to you or shown you, he is not a god!"

"Don't listen to him!" Hansen roared. "They are demons!" he pointed at Colonel O'Neill and Conner. "Minions of the devil! I am your savior!"

"We're not demons, f'cryin out loud!" Colonel O'Neill barked.

"This!" Daniel yelled, bending to pick up Hansen's gun from the ground. "This is not a magical power, it is called a gun and it is a machine!" He unloaded the gun with a simple click.

"Do as I say, or you will ALL die!" Hansen threatened.

"Do as he says and you will die!" yelled Colonel O'Neill.

"Do not betray me!" Carter was immeasurably pleased to hear fear in his voice. "Look, I have done for you! I will bring you out of the caves, into the light! Today," he stepped back, "I fulfill that promise!" He turned to the device and switched it on. "Behold, the magical power that belongs to your GOD! I give you the sun – I give you the WORLD!"

They stood and waited as the beam shot out of the device

Nothing happened. The natives peered into the sky, bewildered as it did not turn orange.

Hansen grabbed her. "What's wrong?" he growled.

"I don't know!" she said, wincing and trembling.

"Fix it!" he yanked her up and tossed her at it.

"It's a machine," said Daniel. "I can use it and so can you, just like Jamalah can fire that staff weapon." The young native man nodded. "I'll show you how."

Hansen turned to him, looking at him incredulously.

"There are two devices, and both must be turned on for the shield to work," Daniel continued. "Watch." He nodded to Jamalah, who fired his weapon once more as a signal.

A moment later, another beam shot out from the distance, and the two beams bent, connecting, a shield falling all around, tinting everything orange.

Hansen grabbed Carter again and sprinted for the Stargate. "I'm taking you with me," he growled.

But before he could leap to their deaths, Colonel O'Neill tackled him to the ground. Carter fell into an undignified heap on the other side of the pathway, but she didn't mind the undignified part so much, seeing as she was alive.

Meanwhile, the angry crowd rioted, picking up Hansen with their combined forces. They tossed him into the orange-ish Stargate, cheering when he was gone, yelling, "Ahhhhhh!"

Carter stared at the scene with sadness. She should be rejoicing more than any of these people, but now that he was gone forever, she had mixed feelings. Granted, she would never forgive him for what he did to her, nor would she change what happened, but for some reason her spite and hatred was slowly seeping away, leaving her with only pain, sadness, and fear. The pain would scab, the fear would fade, and eventually the sadness would ease with time, but none of it would go away quickly. The wounds were too deep to heal like a paper-cut or the common cold.

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"Uh, I think we're ready," Carter said, walking up to Colonel O'Neill, who stood in front of the Stargate. The 'Gate had been stood up to its former glory just a few hours earlier, and now it was time to go home.

"Think we should tell them to bury the 'Gate after we're gone?" he asked, fiddling with Hansen's Bible in his hands.

"Teal'c seems to think the Gou'ald won't be back."

"I think we should come back and check on these guys," Daniel suggested as he walsked over to them.

"I think we've done enough, don't you?" Captain Carter asked quietly.

Daniel hesitated, but tilted his head back and forth in a submissive way as though to say, "uh…yeah…good point", and walked back to the small group of natives he'd been talking to.

Carter felt somewhat ashamed and stared at the ground. She just couldn't shake the feeling that she'd done something wrong, that she was to blame for…for something. It was stupid and she knew it…but it was there…

"Something else on your mind?" asked O'Neill, watching her with his soft eyes.

"I had the chance to end this, Colonel," she said. "He literally asked me to do it."

"Killing a man is no badge of honor, Captain," he said.

"I know," she murmured in agreement.

"Look, I'm no expert on this thing…" He waved the Bible slightly. "But I generally remember one Commandment…I think it's the first…"

"I am the Lord your God and you shall take no other gods before me?" she asked with a nod of her head.

He paused. "Okay, it's not the first one. I'm talkin' about the no-killing one. Every time you break it, you're one step closer to Hansen."

She gave a weak smile at that, but it soon died from her face. "Thanks," she whispered. Colonel O'Neill gave a small series of nods and handed her Hansen's Bible. She took it tentatively, and he went to talk to the natives.

"You gonna be okay?" he asked to Jamalah, who nodded.

"Yes," he replied, and shook the Colonel's hand. "The world outside the caves is very big, yes?" he asked when he moved on to shake Daniel's hand.

"Yeah, it's bigger than you can imagine," Daniel said, and when he had shaken Jamalah's hand, he turned and walked to the Stargate, the rest of SG-1 following. He then dialed the 'Gate, and when the wave of energy flashed out, Captain Carter inputted the code to open the iris.

Colonel O'Neill leaned in to ask, "You got it?"

She whispered back, "Yeah."

The two of them went up the steps to the Stargate, followed by Conner, Teal'c, and Daniel.

Life's going to be even more interesting from here on out, she thought just as she went through. Very interesting, indeed.

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This isn't the end of the series; we still have a few more chapters to go :)