"Daniel?" the dinosaur said. Daniel frowned. He hadn't thought the ruler could pronounce his name at all. He felt a soft touch on his forehead, not claws, but a snout. There was something strangely familiar about the feeling. "It is all right," the dinosaur added--in English, of all things, and it didn't sound Goa'uldish anymore.
"Daniel?" someone repeated his name again, but the voice was not dinosaurian. It was familiar. The voice he'd heard just before they'd taken him. Jack! Jack's hand landed on his shoulder, just like back in the cage. "Daniel, relax, it's okay. You're home."
Daniel blinked, trying make sense of the two blurs that looked like Jack and a dinosaur. There seemed to be other people behind them. Out of thin air, his glasses appeared on his nose. Or not out of thin air, since it was clearly Jack pushing them in place. The surroundings fell into focus. It wasn't just Jack and a dinosaur, but also Sam, Teal'c, and Leo Ramsey.
It all added up. Now that he thought about it, he didn't even feel like he was lying on the floor of the Goa'uldosaurian throne room. He wasn't hurting anymore. There was a soft pillow under his head, and the sheet covering him was warm and thick. Then there were other little things that didn't fit, like the needle in his arm, the patches on his chest and the oxygen things in his nose that were a sure sign that he was in the infirmary.
"Do you not recognize me, Daniel?" the dinosaur asked.
Now that he could see properly, he actually could recognize the dinosaur. Daniel licked his parched lips, cleared his throat, and tried, "Ghhrrwuaghr?" The way it came out, he could've been just growling anything. It didn't sound anything like the dinosaur's name.
"Yes, it is I," the dinosaur answered nevertheless. "But it is a new me that you have not yet met. I am now also Ranys, of the Tok'ra. You saved my life."
"What happened?" Daniel asked, his English sounding barely any better than his Dinosaurian. All in all, he felt groggy, but not nearly as bad as he should've expected. Considering that the last memories he had were of the ruler zatting him with the hand device, and he'd been certain he'd not survive one more of those prolonged blasts.
"Barney saved our asses. Though, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have succeeded without Teal'c and Sam. Oh, and we freed the dinos, too," Jack explained simply.
Daniel could barely believe that. "Really? No more Goa'uldosaurs?" he asked, and made to sit up on his bed. He didn't get very far, though. His muscles weren't doing what he told them to. All he managed was a slight twitch.
Jack's hand pressed his shoulder gently. "Take it easy, Daniel. You've been out for over two days," he said.
"Huh?" That long? He'd never been out for more than some hours after the zat-hand device blasts before this.
"Yeah, well, most of that is probably courtesy of Doc Fraiser, she insisted on keeping you sedated. Didn't want you to go through any unnecessary stress."
"But I'm..."
"Doc seemed pretty concerned at first, but she says you're going to be fine. No lasting effects, unless it's some scars from all those claw marks. If all goes well, you should be out of here in less than a week. She said you'd probably feel a bit weird when you woke up, but that it's to be expected, it's just all the drugs."
Daniel nodded, and turned his head to look at Ghhrrwuaghr. "So, I still owe you one," he smirked at the dinosaur.
"You helped to set my people free. You do not owe me anything," the dinosaur answered. "Now that I have seen you wake up, I'm reassured enough that you will be fine again. I shall soon return to my world. We have much work ahead."
"I can imagine," Daniel said, his voice sounding stronger already, at least to his ears. "You'll... You have to start from scratch, redefine yourselves, your society, all that you are."
"It will be challenging, but it will also be rewarding. We shall be the people that we should always have been, instead of the pawns of some alien parasite. Of course, I now represent that very race of alien parasites. As is tradition, I must rule for one cycle of the moon, but after all is settled, I hope to stand aside. The Tok'ra may have use for me as well."
"Ghhrrwuaghr, there's something, something very important you must do." It came to Daniel in a sudden flash of intuition. The thing that was most important of all. The stargate. The one amazing secret of Dinoland was the strange fact that the gate seemed to be unknown to most beings in the universe. He didn't know how that could be, since the address had been on the Abydos Cartouche. But whatever the reason, it must always stay that way. "You have to bury the gate. To keep anyone from ever coming there again to disturb you. The Tok'ra have ships and other means of keeping in touch with you."
"I know this already, Daniel. I have spoken of it with others, with Jack, Teal'c and Sam. Leo, as well."
Daniel had completely forgotten about the paleontologist. "Oh. I'm sorry, Leo," he said quickly. They'd given the man his dream, a place with living dinosaurs, and now they were going to take it away again.
"No, don't be," Leo replied. There was something strange about his tone, oddly pleased. "I'm going back to Dinoland with Barney."
"But the gate..."
"The gate will be buried. I'll be on my own. I know. You did the same when you stayed on Abydos, didn't you, didn't you? I've already been given the official permission for this. I'll manage. It's all an aging paleontologist could possibly hope for. I'll spend the rest of my days there, and leave my notes with the dinosaurs, so some day, someone may collect them. Although I am leaving behind the work I've already done. My studies on the newly found species, Neotroodon Sapiens Stellaris."
Daniel grinned. Leo had finally decided on a name for Barney's species. It was a bit long, but then again, just Neotroodon would work fine, and they could even use it publicly. Just introduce this as a new species found somewhere far away, not mentioning that it was Sapiens--as in, wise, and Stellaris--from the stars.
"We both thank you, from the bottom of our heart, Daniel," Ghhrrwuaghr added. "It is thanks to you, more than anyone else, that our lives have been completely changed, and all to the better."
Daniel didn't know what to say to that. He just blushed at it. Leo reached for his heavy, somewhat lax hand and shook it firmly. Ghhrrwuaghr bent closer to give him another dino kiss. And then they left, leaving him in the company of his three team mates.
"He's right, you know," Sam said softly, now stepping closer to him, grasping his hand. "You were the one who requested for another mission to P4X-215 in the first place, and for a mission specialist. Without that, none of this would've happened. No paleontologist would ever have learned of their dream come true."
"And if it was not for your compassion for Barney, and swift thinking in contacting the Tok'ra, he would not have survived to see this day," Teal'c added in his steady, deep voice.
"But I..." Daniel tried, but Jack stopped him again.
"Shush, just take the praise as it is. You went through hell because you wanted to help these dinos. I know, because I was there, I saw it all. It's just fair that you should get some credit for it too."
"Jack, I'm sure I wouldn't have made it without you. And neither of us would've made it if Sam and Teal'c and Ghhrrwuaghr hadn't done whatever they did to get us out. But what about Grruarch--I mean, Denver--wasn't he there too?"
Daniel saw the others exchange troubled glances, which almost told him enough without any words at all. He frowned at them, the bad news making him feel even more uncomfortable about the earlier praise.
"She didn't make it, Daniel," Sam said sadly, confirming his fears.
"But her death was a noble one, and she shall be remembered as a hero among her people," Teal'c added.
"She?" Daniel repeated, confused. Of course, the Goa'uld-Dinosaurian language did not have grammatical gender. The pronouns for 'he' and 'she' were exactly the same. But he'd thought...
"Aha," Jack replied. "We had quite a bit of time to talk about things with Barney when you were asleep, so we finally found out. Barney's a boy, but Denver was a girl."
"She wasn't his..." Daniel started, feeling even worse about it. He'd seen how close the two dinosaurs had been, how Grruarch had always stayed near to Ghhrrwuaghr when he had been injred.
"...his mate? No, she was his niece," Jack answered. "They're considering making a statue of her, a memorial of the victory over the Goa'uld. Might be that some of us will be in it too. Probably you. Though, since they're going to bury the gate, they might have to use Leo as the model."
The dinos making a statue of him? With Leo posing as him? Sad though he was, that was just so completely ridiculous that Daniel couldn't help laughing. "You're kidding, right?"
Jack smirked, and ruffled Daniel's hair. "Yea, of course I am," he admitted. "The truth is, we wouldn't let them do that. So, we gave them your picture."
(THE END)
Author's End Note: That was it--part II of DinoGate all done. Part III will probably come some day, but can't say when. Thanks for reading this one, and please let me know what you thought. :)