It appears my formatting keeps being screwed up! Sorry. Hopefully my stars to break up time will show up on this one...

For the excellent people at CBO. This one goes out to Timzy.

Enjoy!! Reviews are always appreciated!!

***

Emmy woke with a start and looked frantically around the room. It was a room she knew well, yet it seemed different today. She heard someone clear their throat and she looked up to see a familiar face.

"Sam?" she asked, confused. It looked like Sam, but she was much too young.

Emmy tried to lift an arm to rub her eyes and felt a tugging, keeping her from doing so. She looked down to see that she had been restrained. Her eyes went wide with fear.

She heard some yelling from across the room and discovered her brother was fighting with all his strength to break free of his own restraints. Her thoughts were broken with the sound of her godmother's voice.

"How'd you get on the ship?"

Emmy fell back on her bed, finally remembering what had happened. She bit her lip.

"Let me out of here!" she heard her brother demand.

"Johnny!" she yelled back. "Calm down! Yelling won't exactly encourage them to believe we're not here to kill them!"

Sam raised an eyebrow.

Emmy looked back at the woman who'd been like another mother to her. The woman who no longer knew who she was. "Look," she began, "we haven't come to hurt anyone. You were about to be destroyed by an Ori ship. You were going to put the ship into a time dilation bubble." Emmy paused. "We came to help. So you wouldn't have to spent the next twenty-six years trapped on this ship."

"How did you know that?" Sam questioned.

Emmy and Johnny exchanged looks. "We're from the future," Johnny said, realizing how ridiculous it sounded.

"From the future?"

How were they supposed to explain this without giving away who they were? "We, uhm," Emmy choked on her words. "We know what happened – or, what was going to happen – and we stopped you. We fixed the problems. We turned off the Asguard Core so the Ori couldn't track you anymore. We only wanted to help. You can even check the crystals we put in, if you like. I promise they're just to help." She cleared her throat. "We just want to leave. Promise, we'll never interfere again!"

"You came all the way to the future just to stop us from being stuck in a time dilation bubble?" Sam asked sceptically.

Emmy and Johnny nodded.

"Why?"

"It's, uhm, hard to explain. It's just really important for, uhm, Earth's survival," Emmy stuttered.

"You have saved the world a number of times," Johnny added. "Haven't you?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"So we just came to make sure Earth didn't lose its most valuable defence," Emmy interrupted.

"Uh-huh," Sam replied as she turned to leave.

"Wait," Johnny called. She stopped and turned back. "Can you please undo these restraints?"

Without a word, Sam continued out of the ship's infirmary.

"So much for gratitude," Johnny grumbled sarcastically.

"Can you blame them?" Emmy asked. "They have no idea who we are. We just popped in and started playing with their ship!" She sighed. "And we can't even tell them who we are or why we came," she added with a low, melancholy voice.

"I know," Johnny conceded.

***

Vala wandered into the infirmary to visit the unexpected visitors. Everyone else was on-edge about the newcomers, but she wasn't worried. She'd be able to tell if they were lying to her. Plus, prying for information from them would distract her from her immense boredom being cooped up on the Odyssey.

"Hello!" she greeted them, skipping into the room.

Emmy sucked in her breath and Johnny choked on his words. They exchanged a look which was a combination of so many different emotions that it's impossible to completely describe.

"I'm Vala," she introduced herself. Both of the kids were silent.

"We know," Emmy squeaked quietly.

Vala ignored the comment. "Any you are...?"

It couldn't hurt to tell just their names, could it?

"I'm Jonathan, and that's my sister, Emerald." He went to wave a hand at her, but was once again disappointed by the binding.

Vala saw his frustration and decided to use it to her advantage. She walked over to him and lightly stroked her fingers against his chest, sliding them down to his bound wrist. "Do you want some help with that, darling?" she asked in a sultry voice. She winked at him.

Johnny looked at her with wide eyes and squirmed as far away as he could manage, which wasn't very far. "No!" he exclaimed, in a much higher pitch than he'd used since his voice changed years before.

Emmy stifled a laugh at her brother's discomfort, but had to admit, she felt incredibly uncomfortable herself.

A flicker of discouragement passed over Vala's face, but it quickly disappeared. She just stood, pretending nothing had happened.

"So what brings you to our little corner of nowhere," she asked with a hint of resentment in her voice.

"Oh, y'know, this and that," Johnny managed. "Saving all your asses and getting tied up in return."

Emmy shot a glare at her brother.

"Yes, but what I don't get is why you were trying to save us in the first place," Vala remarked.

"We already explained this to Sam," Johnny mumbled angrily.

Vala looked over at Emmy for a response.

Emmy rolled her eyes. "You were gonna be trapped in a time dilation bubble if we didn't," she explained again. "We just wanted to stop that from happening. For the good of the Earth and all the other planets in this galaxy."

"Sam said you claim to be from the future?"

Emmy nodded.

"Well, if you're from the future, then how did you know we were trapped in a time bubble thingy, instead of just blown to tiny bits by the Ori ship?"

"Pfft, you'd be surprised how far technology has come in the time you missed," Emmy lied.

"Well how did you get here?"

"We can't tell you that," Emmy replied.

"A magician never reveals his tricks," Johnny added.

Vala sighed, slapping both hands on her thighs as she stood up and left.

It was only minutes before Mitchell, Jackson and Teal'c joined the duo.

"What, are they tag-teaming us now?" Johnny asked Emmy with a roll of his eyes.

Teal'c walked calmly over to Johnny and towered over him with an intimidating look planted on his face. His stance was powerful, and probably would have scared anyone else, but Johnny had spent so long with him that he knew deep down Teal'c wasn't nearly as intimidating as he appeared. Still, a slight shiver ran down his spine. The Teal'c he'd known had also known him since birth. This one had no idea who he was or if he was even on their side. He did his best to cover his fear.

Daniel approached Emerald, looking far less powerful and scary than his teammate. As he looked down at her, he couldn't help but feel a strange nudging in his stomach, a feeling like he should know her. Her eyes mirrored his so closely that he couldn't help but feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Outwardly, he showed no sign of this, though, and took in a deep breath.

"Why are you here?"

"Oh for goodness' sake!" Johnny exclaimed. "Stop asking us that! For the hundredth time, we came to save you so that the Earth would have a fighting chance in future battles with the Ori. Okay? Got it? Maybe you want to write it down so you don't forget and come in to ask us a fourth time!"

Teal'c glared down at him and he shut up instantly, muttering, "Sorry," under his breath.

"How do we know you're not Ori followers?" Cam asked.

Emmy shot him a look to indicate the stupidity of the question. "Because we would've just let you die in the blast."

It continued for awhile, the question and answer period, with the men asking serious questions and the prisoners answering sarcastically. Even Emmy was losing her patience. They were much more fun when they'd been trapped. Still, deep down, they knew this would all be over if they just explained who they really were, but neither could bear to interfere with future events more than they already had.

***

"They're lying," Vala proclaimed, once all of SG-1 and General Landry had gathered around a table in the commissary.

"About what?" Mitchell asked.

"I don't know," she replied, "but they're definitely lying about something."

"Well you're going to need to be more specific," Daniel said.

"Well until we know for sure if they're on our side or not, we should keep them contained. If they're really from the future, they could have knowledge and technology we've never even dreamed of," Sam stated. "They could potentially be a major threat."