He'd had one of those dreams where everything was so real and tangible, yet he couldn't remember any of the details. He knew something was important, but he try as he might, he couldn't grasp any of the salient details, or recognise any of the faces.

Daniel Jackson sighed, rolled over, checked his clock. 06.35. He groaned, knowing that he wouldn't get back to sleep, and pressed the pillow to his face. The third night in a row, he was sure, that he'd had exactly the same dream and woken with a barely suppressed fear. He knew that all of SG-1 was there, and he was almost certain it was off-world, just by a gut feeling. Bad dreams were nothing new to Daniel Jackson, but this dream, as ethereal as it had been, certainly felt different, as though the events were about to happen. Could he be having premonitions? Well, weirder things had happened.

Fifty minutes later, Daniel, still lost in the fog of his dream, was waved in past the last of the many security gates at Cheyenne Mountain. Just ahead of him, passing the corridor, he spotted the blonde head of the only other person he knew who would voluntarily be at work at half past seven in the morning. And suddenly things began to fall into place.

"Sam! Wait up!"

The figure turned, head up from a sheaf of A4 notes, and broke into a smile.

"Hey, morning! I'm just off to the commissary, - breakfast?"

Daniel hesitated at the invitation. Certainly, he did want breakfast, but his stomach was now, unaccountably, churning. How could he broach this topic with Sam?

"Daniel? You even awake yet?"

Sam's tone was gently teasing, but let Daniel know he'd allowed a silence to go on for too long, so he attempted a similar levity.

"Need coffee..."

Arms outstretched a la a zombie, he ambled past Sam in the direction of the SGC canteen, from which the odd combination of grapefruit and bacon could vaguely be scented. Sam chuckled softly to herself and followed on behind, snapping the folder of work papers shut, happy despite herself at the break.

Moments later, sitting facing each other behind their usual breakfasts (coffee followed by coffee with a side order of coffee and toast for him, the somewhat unpredictable full-cooked with brown sauce for her) Daniel attempted to ease his mind and share his thoughts in a roundabout way.

"Sam?"

"Uh huh?"

"You ever think about the past? Y'know, the road less travelled?"

Still absorbed with her breakfast, trying to figure out what she'd have to do to actually get the sauce from bottle to plate (surely it defied some law of physics!) Sam nodded somewhat non-committaly.

"Of course Daniel. Everybody does...think about the what-ifs, the if-onlys. Not often, but yeah, occasionally I wonder what might have been, like if I hadn't joined the SGC. We'd never have met!"

"What about exes? Or could-have-beens? You know, relationship nostalgia?"

At this point Sam looked up. She was suddenly sure that Daniel was fishing for something. She peered more closely, and noticed the enlargement of the ever-present bags under his eyes. He looked tired, not teasing. She changed her tone, gently putting her hand over his.

"Daniel, something wrong? Have you been dreaming about Sha're recently?"

It was blunt and to the point, but Sam knew Daniel well enough to know the pain that he carried within him concerning his dead wife, and well enough to know he'd carry the pain inside him until he spoke to someone. The commissary might not be the best place but...

"No, not recently. Actually, I've been dreaming about a different ex. Jonas Hanson, to be exact."

Sam's gut tightened instinctively at the mention of her ex-fiancé's name, but she grinned nonetheless at the instinctive comeback.

"Something you should be telling us about, Daniel?"

"Yeah. I think he's alive."