Apologies for the delay… I'm studying to be a nurse and doing a lot of extracurricular activities which leave me with very little time to write. Thank you for the reviews; they are very much appreciated: positive and constructive.

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Alone. She was alone. She hadn't remotely felt like this since Jolinar; not properly, deathly alone like this. How she could have felt so much in such short a time for someone so short-lived and of course, unexpected, she could not fathom. A part of her was missing; it was far worse than that year they had eventually learned to live without Daniel. She sat, frozen, in the steaming bathtub, a distant part of her mind hoping the water would wash away the pain, but it wouldn't. What it was to be human, to feel pain so deeply; so overwhelmingly. Tears filled her eyes, not abating at all. She felt as though she could cry forever. Ever the soldier, she cried silently. Colonels couldn't cry; they shouldn't. Twisted logic of one who had suffered such a fresh loss filled her mind. She closed her eyes and scrubbed her face with her hands. The worst was that she couldn't do anything; she knew there wasn't anything she could have done; no deus ex machina; no last-minute plan to save the day. No. Just unending, burning pain that surged through her body like magma threatening to erupt.

As she brushed her hair back with her hands and slowly into the tub, her eyes closed. She wanted the pain to end; for this misery to be over. Something; an instinct; stopped her. She opened her red-rimmed, raw edged eyes to see Daniel standing in the doorway. She hadn't known how long he had been there, but knowing him, he probably had been there longer than she had liked. She looked at him. She had no words. Guilt and shame burned deep within her. She had failed.

He knew she had wanted to be alone. She had bore the brunt of the pain; of the loss. He was well aware that he couldn't begin to understand. He pushed his own pain down. She was in pain and he couldn't do anything about it. A dim memory surfaced of her crying in the Infirmary; it felt as though a lifetime ago, when he was dying. Maybe it was a dream; he wasn't sure. But perhaps time would dull the pain; perhaps she would learn to live with it. That was of little consolation right now though. All he knew was that he had to be there. From what he could deduce – mainly from accounts from his friends – he hadn't been there for her during that year away. Guilt rose in him again. He couldn't let that happen again.

He slowly entered the bathroom and sat down on the floor next to the bathtub. He reached for her hand. He had no words to soothe her anguish; no placations in the twenty-plus languages he knew. He hadn't been this lost for words since childhood. This was the worst experience he had known her to go through in all the years he had known her. He had never seen her hit so hard; floored so starkly. She usually tried to put on a façade; she was never any good at hiding her true feelings from him. But to see her so broken, so far from the Sam he knew, was heart breaking. All he could do was be there for her; but he wasn't sure how; he didn't know what to do.

He gazed at her softly, pain in his own eyes as her gaze dropped. He reached for a towel and guided her out of the tub as she silently let him, a distant, dazed look in her eyes. She needed time; so much time. He doubted she would ever be the same again. He helped her into the bedroom where he towelled her dry and dressed her in her usual shorts and a tank top, while she numbly complied with his silent prompts. He then helped her into bed as she stared into the distance, her eyes red raw and dry. There was no way he would leave her tonight as he pushed back imperatives and memories of work that needed to be done back at the Mountain.

He lie beside her silently, an arm around her waist, anchoring her to the present as he watched her distant gaze flicker. Soon Hypnos would take her and soothe her mind, if only for a little while. Perhaps, as an old friend had once suggested long ago, dreams teach – perhaps they would help her to cope with the pain, because he really did not know what to do. He switched off the bedside lamp and lie awake, listening to her breathing as he, unable to sleep, thought of enlisting some help.

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She opens her eyes – it is day. She is alone in a luscious verdant field, the scale of which was hard to gauge. She feels the warmth of the sun upon her face and she smiles slightly. She looks around herself to try to establish where she is and what perturbs the most is that she doesn't appear to care where she is. She gazes at the tall cedars and oaks in the middle distance, and she is about to walk towards them when everything around her begins to flicker. This catches her unawares as she is plunged into darkness briefly. The darkness soon melts into a different landscape. Huge tree-like structures with purple leaves and branches laden with white grape-like fruit. The 'grass' beneath her bare feet is blue and much softer than the previous place she was in. The sky melts into an array of oranges as three neon green suns of varying sizes hang in it.

She has no communication devices or weapons; she glances down at her apparel; she appears to be in her pyjamas. Where the hell is she? She looks up as the oranges melt further in parts revealing patches of black punched with breath-takingly beautiful stars. As she struggles to cope with the situation, she wonders if her dreams have taken another level, or if indeed she has been abducted. Then a voice interrupts her racing, panicking thoughts.

"This was our home many millions of years ago, before we learned to become energy. Praxyon was the jewel of this solar system."

She turns around, trying to find the source of the voice that gradually starts to sound familiar to her as she continues to panic. She whispers, scared,

"Jacob?"

A burst of white flames appears before her, making her shield her eyes with one of her arms. The flames take on a humanoid form and slowly dim to reveal a very tall creature with a long neck and limbs; its large blue eyes boring into her soul. Its neck appears to retract so that its eyes are in line with hers. It raises a long-fingered hand to her cheek, the hand feeling surprisingly cool to her skin. She gazes at the creature, unable to find words. It begins to speak, its thin lips changing colour from blue to red and purple as it did so.

"Mother."

She stares at 'Jacob' in shock, muttering, "Some dream."

"This is not a dream." He removes his hand from her face and looks around as the landscape yet again fades, this time into cool inky blackness, studded by more of those stars with distant galaxies of types she has never seen, in the distance.

"We were invaded by those whom you call the Goa'uld; so many of us died. Those that remained learned to evolve with the intention of finding a new home; instead we explore the universe to learn about the peoples within it."

She continues to stare at him, his words barely sinking in. Her curiosity getting the better of her, she says, "There's more? There are more of you?"

Jacob smiles and replies, "We carried our people's legacy to the stars." His smile fades as he gazes at her, her own mind lost in the deepness of his eyes though appearing human in structure, albeit much larger. "Do not be sad, Mother."

She is shaken from her reverie by this, bringing her back to the present, or wherever she was. He continues, "I learned so much about your kind. There is only so much we can learn in our true forms, so we experience other people as one of them." He inclines his head a little and looks humbled. "I appear to have caused you an abnormal amount of distress, which was not my intention."

She frowns, perplexed, her grief expressing itself as anger. "An abnormal amount of distress? You invaded my body without my consent."

Her anger fades, her grief not finding relief in its outburst. She had lost a child even if he had not been real or hers strictly speaking; the sensation of loss was still raw. He touches her cheek again and she closes her eyes. She says softly, opening her eyes again, "What now?"

He smiles at her again, his long fingers reaching her hair. "This is what we do, my people; this is how we learn about our universe. I am sorry for the pain I have caused you, but I have learned so much about humans bond with their offspring."

She can't help but feel a bond towards him; though conception had been far from normal, she was his mother; she had brought him into the world. "Will I ever see you again?"

"Perhaps." Continuing to smile, his hand begins to glow as it hovers over her face, the warmth of the glow feeling as though it is spreading throughout her body. "You must return to your world; you have so much more to do and you cannot do that if you are in grief. I apologise for all the inconvenience I have caused you and your friends." His smile fades. "That was not my intention." He pauses as her eyes flicker closed, her body going limp. "I will always be with you; we are kindred spirits in our exploration of the universe."

She fades into the darkness as he resumes his previous form. The flames converge into a glowing mass and hang in the ether as sombrely as a mass can appear without corporeal form. Jacob turns and then shoots away into the inky darkness, choosing his next port of call.