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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

This was going to be the first sex scene chapter but because of fear of Level 28 being taken out, I'm not putting in any explicit details, only the knowledge that yes, a sex act did take place. If you wish to read the actual sex scene, I'll be posting it with the other deleted/alternate scenes after the last chapter.

And don't forget! Something happened to Jack while he was temporarily possessed by Anubis. The effects of this will be seen after Sam returns.

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IMPORTANT PLOT NOTE:In Greek mythology, Dionysus is "twice born" because supposedly, his body is torn to shreds by the Titans and all is eaten except his heart which Zeus implants back into Dionysus' mother, Semele, so he can be reborn as "Zagreus." Just thought you might want to know.

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And now…

PART EIGHTEEN: The Mistress

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"You know what I could really use right now? A barbecue," Adrienne said as they all sat around a campfire that night. "Maybe some beer. Or both."

Daniel smiled and looked at Jack who was fighting back a smirk as he poked the fire with a long stick. The injured villagers were asleep now. Everyone was relatively safe for now. Whoever had planned the attack would have thought them dead by now and nobody had any interest on that planet so they all took watch in the clearing in the forest.

"I could use some pasta. Fettuccini Alfredo. There's a nice little Italian restaurant a few blocks from my place that serves the best fettuccini of life," Daniel said after a short moment of appreciation for Adrienne's O'Neill-like randomness.

"Reigalo's? Yea they're good. Cartini is better but it's Mediterranean, about 4.7 miles from Cheyenne," Adrienne responded.

Jack and Daniel looked up and stared at her from a moment. She dismissed her own weirdness and slid down the log onto the dirt by Daniel's legs.

"I could go for some O'Malley's," Jack said out of nowhere. They weren't expecting a response from him. He'd hardly spoken all night.

"I'm pretty sure we've been banned from there, Jack," Danny said.

"How come?" Adrienne asked.

"You don't know?"

"Nope. It wasn't in the files and it never came up. What does steak have to do with off world reports?"

"You remember the little episode with the armbands that--"

"Enhanced all your natural abilities?"

"Yup. Well it made us kind of crazy and we had some serious cravings for red meat and somehow it resulted in a bar fight at O'Malley's. Thus we are banned," Daniel said.

Adrienne raised an eyebrow somewhat Teal'c-like. She wondered how he was doing but taking Aileia back to safety was the best thing for all of them. Then again, nowhere was it safe anymore.

"I still want steak," Jack said and threw the stick into the fire carelessly.

"You are such a freakin' kid, Dad," Ree said, shaking her head with a smile.

"You know what? I could use some steak too," Daniel agreed.

"Want me to get you guys some fresh steak?" Adrienne said. Jack looked at Daniel. Daniel looked at Adrienne.

"We're not that desperate."

"I'm gonna go check the Gate again. Something's got to be wrong if it won't lock after so long," she said and got up off the ground, heading towards the cliff.

After she'd left, Jack and Daniel continued talking, taking advantage of the fact that Jack was saying anything at all.

"What do you think is happening over there?" Jack asked.

"Who knows? If the Goa'uld did infiltrate the SGC, why would they lock out the Gate? Could they be keeping it open to prevent an escape like in the alternate universe?"

"Ba'al's army was gone, Daniel. I'm not so sure it's him at all."

Daniel looked up from the fire at Jack. "What do you have in mind?"

"I dunno. But there's something bugging me about all this. It's all too much of a coincidence. Just after Teal'c goes through, it shuts down? How do we even know it's the Earth Gate? We stopped trying after Adrienne told us Ba'al would attack," Jack said, drawing in closer to the small fire, lowering his tone so no one but Daniel across from him could hear. "What do you think it could be?"

Daniel paused for a moment and put on his worried face then whispered, "Adrienne..." and looked up behind Jack, who turned around as soon as he saw Daniel's expression.

Surely enough, there she was. Ree. With a face of stunned horror or hurt. Jack began to apologize when he saw she was holding onto her stomach with both hands. She looked down and saw blood but it was not hers.

She'd been to the village again.

She knelt down on the rough forest ground and threw up. Daniel went to help her, pulled her hair back.

"So much for genetic engineering," Jack said and took a sip of his canteen, going back to his fire as if nothing. Adrienne took slight offense. It's not something Jack would say before, not with so little care. What had happened to the man her mother spoke of with such passion and reverence? What happened to the man that bore a legend?

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"Where do you want to go, Sam?" Orlin asked almost cheerfully.

"What do you mean? Where can we go if we're in my head?"

"We're not in your head."

"Ok, where can we go if I'm dead?"

"Anywhere and everywhere."

"You know where I want to go," she said. At some point, the grand Washington park turned into an ocean with a sky so clear, the horizon blended into the blue sea.

Orlin's smile slowly faded and his sorrowful eyes looked away at the endless water. They had walked across it as if through the park but now they had stopped. Sam stared him down until he looked back up at her pleading eyes and said, "I could never make you stay with me, could I?"

"I'm sorry, Orlin. But if you love me, you'll send me back to him."

He gave her a sad smile and extended his hand. When she took it, the sea went away and the sky became covered by the signs of a coming sunset. They were on a cliff by the Stargate overlooking a grand valley.

And there he was. Jack. Standing beside Daniel looking straight into the sunset.

"Jack! Daniel! It's me! It's Sam..." she yelled, running up to them but Orlin's hand fell upon her shoulder and she stopped. They didn't turn around. They were talking.

"They can't see you Sam. I can't send you back until you hear this," Orlin said.

Sam couldn't hear it as if she were standing behind them. She heard them in a distance, echoing even. "...Heaven left me when she did," she heard Jack say in the faraway tone.

"I don't understand. Why this?" she asked Orlin, walking around Jack and standing right in front of him, looking up into his eyes as he spoke. There was pain there, guilt. And she was the one that had put it there.

"They're on this planet right now, Sam. The Stargate will not engage until after you return. Adrienne will make sure of it. Do you still want to go back? I could leave you here but I can't insure you'll ever be as you were. Parts could be missing. You could remember all you did as Ba'al but not remember Jack. You could forget things. A millisecond could mean years off your life, erased. Is he worth leaving behind eternal salvation?" Orlin spoke.

She still looked straight into Jack's eyes, following his lips as he spoke, as they quivered at the mere thought of her. She put both hands on his face and went to kiss him but Daniel had said something that had scared him and he ran off after Adrienne. He passed right through her as if he were made of light.

Again she was left alone. But for a moment, it was as if he were looking right at her like he'd never before. He hid nothing. He hadn't looked away for fear she might find out the kind of man he was. He feared nothing because all he saw was what he felt when he looked at her... like he was looking into a most beautiful, natural thing that stirred life into him.

For once his eyes hid nothing. And she knew how he felt for her, and be it a chance they could be together again, she'd tell him how she felt too. Not as a goodbye, but a hello... a new beginning.

"I want a second chance, Orlin. I want to feel like I did, even if it doesn't last long. It's all I have left. It's all I really want. But first, I want you to take me somewhere. There's something I have to do."

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It was still night on the planet. Daniel figured night lasted longer for some reason. He wished he had Sam to give him a long explanation why. He could ask Adrienne but it wouldn't be the same. He'd be too distracted as he was whenever Adrienne spoke. She'd become his only companion now.

Jack had gone to sleep in the clearing by the fire. He didn't hear Daniel and Adrienne leave.

"What did you want to show me?" Daniel whispered as they walked through the lush green forest. The vibrancy of the leaves' color shined through the complete darkness of night and shadowing trees.

And then they reached it: a clearing on the other side of what they now figured a plateau. Cliffs and dead ends followed them everywhere. Daniel didn't think the clearing anything special, and then Adrienne pointed to the night sky once hidden beneath an endless canopy.

The third moon was as bright and as large as anything Daniel had ever seen. It's blue-tinted light lit their faces as if a mere day's shadow and cast its spell over them.

He hadn't noticed that Adrienne's hand had reached his until she was so close next to him on the ground that her head lay atop his chest and he found himself stroking her hair absentmindedly. Even after, he continued still.

"Ree? Do I live to see you grow? Did I, at least?" he asked sheepishly.

She gave a mixed giggle and responded, "Yeah Danny. You saw me grown."

"Was I like an uncle or something?" he asked somewhat joking. She laughed again.

"No, not at all. I've looked like this for quite some time. You never treated me as a child. You knew I never wanted you to."

"So when... when you first kissed me a while back in that ventilation shaft... Well you said you'd done it so you could read me and tell if I knew where Dionysus was but--"

"You want to know why I did it? If it related to anything between us in the future?"

"Yeah."

She took a moment to think of how she was going to word it and shifted a little atop his chest. "There was this one day. I was 7 years old, and looked a little different than now. It was my rebellious phase and had cut my hair off to my ears and dyed it green. Grew back the next day. But you came to me at my lab and you sat across from me and said, 'Nothing you do or say will ever change how I feel about you.' That's the day I knew I loved you. It never really went away."

He took a minute and smiled then said, "But were we ever..."

"Yeah. Before I was married, the night before actually, you came to my room and we-- well, you know. I knew it was goodbye but it didn't change my situation. My genes told me I had to marry Dionysus. There was nothing I could do. You came to my bedroom a few times after that but--"

"It wasn't the same?"

"Hmm. Never will be. That night was the best of my life, just 'cause you were there," she said, her tone steady as she looked up at the wide open range of stars and moons.

"We had an affair. But why did you tell me I'd always have Janet?"

He could feel her trembling slightly. It hurt her to think of her past. "My marriage and my love for him ended after a year, but you and Janet lasted a lot longer. I was the mistress, Daniel."

"But it wasn't the same, was it? Me and Janet?"

"No. You never had what we had."

"Spontaneity? Raw passion?" he joked, trying to change the subject. She'd slipped off his chest and they rested on the ground side by side, facing each other's lustful eyes.

"No, a ventilation shaft full of memories," she laughed along. "But yeah. Passion had a lot to do with it. Why have a mistress when your wife's a beautiful doctor?"

"A shaft full of memories... But it's all different now, isn't it?"

"She's different. She's not your Janet anymore. And I'm not the same Ree. And we don't have a shaft at our disposal."

He paused, thought about it, and decided this was the best thing. "No, we're not," he said and caressed her cheek before kissing her slowly then passionately until it became a struggle for the top until Daniel painstakingly stopped his lips and moved off. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't--"

She stopped too, short-breathed. They both got up and paced a little before they realized it didn't matter and stopped walking and just faced each other again, Ree's hand to her lips. "You kissed me. And you meant it."

"And you kissed me back... A lot," he said, slightly stunned. "Tell me, what am I feeling right now?"

Ree raised an eyebrow and gave a devious smirk before she felt the guilt fall upon her and she stepped away from him. And then he said something that made her stop in her tracks: "I did mean it, Ree. Everything I said, now and on that first day. I don't know what happened in the future but all we have is the present and right now, no matter what you say will happen, I could never feel with anyone else as I feel with you right now."

It made her eyes sorrowful but she turned around anyways and ran right back into his arms.

"Make me forget, Daniel. Make me forget everything wrong with the world," she whispered before they fell back onto the floor of the forest clearing, wishing desperately that their noises didn't reach the other side of the forest where Jack dreamt, as usual, of Sam.

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The halls of Level 28 were lonely without SG-1. The air smelled of broken dreams and sour-sweet romances, no more than usual. But now a missing presence filled the ventilation shafts. There was danger everywhere.

Nobody could get a lock on Aileia's planet from any Stargate. Teal'c had called on the Tok'ra for help but it would take a few days before a ship could reach the planet. In the meantime, Teal'c and Aileia awaited news while the interrogations began.

Teal'c had protected her but he had to know himself, so he went to the infirmary the next morning and took her to breakfast. If any information might be revealed concerning what happened on the planet might slip, so be it. He knew she'd only tell him what he needed to know. And usually, nobody really needs to know anything at all. That was her response and he'd taken it. But later at lunch, he went to check on her and found her crying on her bed in the infirmary.

"They shot him, Teal'c. Right in the heart, because of a stupid deal. My own people."

A half hour after Teal'c left, a young man dressed as an airmen came to her bedside and asked, "Well, we don't see many in your condition around here. What are you going to name it?"

She was surprised he'd ask something like that so cheerfully seeing how tearful she seemed. "I don't know. They told me it's a boy today. Maybe after his father."

"Try Zagreus," he said bluntly with a wry smile and left. The name stuck out in her mind.

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To be continued in PART EIGHTEEN:

--What's really keeping the Gate from opening?

--When's Sam coming back?

--What's Jack dreaming of?

--Did Daniel and Adrienne just sleep together! (They did. That was just a shocked response.)

--What has Dionysus been planning all this time? Was he the airman?

--Is Aileia's child going to be Dionysus' second coming?

--Does he plan to get killed?

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