A/N: I'm snowed in for the day, so I finished the next chapter ahead of schedule! I'll do my best to get another chapter out a little later today, but I can't promise anything since my Internet connection is being temperamental. A huge thank you to everyone who's read (and reviewed!) so far: ) I hope the rest of the story lives up to your expectations!

Descension Back To Normalcy

"Oh my God," Daniel breathed as Sam's house came into view just after ten o'clock the next morning. "You actually thought you could stay here last night?"

"I'm a big girl, Daniel," Sam snapped tiredly as he expertly parked in a barely big enough space on her unusually busy street. "I'm not afraid of the dark."

"Are you afraid of what can happen if you can't lock your doors or windows?" Daniel countered without a hint of anger in his voice. "Because I am."

"I know," Sam replied with a sigh.

Are you? She thought uncharitably even as she said the words. You didn't seem too concerned when a total stranger from another planet was walking through solid objects to pay me little visits at home.

"Sorry," she apologized without elaboration a moment later. He didn't need to know that she was apologizing for the nasty thoughts chasing through her head and not for over-reacting to his concern.

"Don't worry about it," Daniel replied, shrugging it off and getting out of the car. "The only thing you should worry about right now is what paint chips Jack and Teal'c will come back with."

"How did I let him convince me it was a good idea for the two of them to pick paint colours?" Sam asked as they walked up to the front door together. Yes, Jack had bounced the idea off her over breakfast, but she'd already been more than halfway through her second cup of coffee by then. There was really no excuse for agreeing to allow two men whose favourite colours were actually peridot and concrete grey to make decisions about the interior design of her house.

"Puppy eyes," Daniel reminded as he pushed the partially open door open wider and allowed her to pass. "And he got Teal'c in on the act."

"Remind me to…" Sam trailed off as she stepped inside and let her eyes adjust to the relative darkness of the house. "Wow!" she exclaimed, looking around. What she could see of the house had been cleared of all the destroyed furniture that had littered the floor last night and some of the worst holes in the walls had already been replaced by fresh drywall.

"Oh good, you're here," Major Feretti greeted as he walked past the two newest arrivals. "The plumber wants to talk to you downstairs about pipes cracking, the window guy left brochures on the kitchen floor, the counter guy left his on what's left of the counter in the bathroom and the floor guy is upstairs right now."

"You guys have been busy," Daniel observed. "How long have you been at this?"

"Siler and his group left about an hour ago. They got here around midnight," Feretti replied, pressing himself flat against the wall behind him in order to allow a member of SG-5 to haul the remains of a table out through the front door. "Oh yeah! Your stuff is under tarps in the backyard. We sorted it into stuff we might be able to save and stuff that's probably gone."

"Do I want to know which pile is bigger?" Sam asked, making a face.

"Probably not," Feretti responded with a grimace. "Could one of you let the door guy in? He should be here any minute now," he added as he headed out the front door.

"You do it," Daniel instructed, squeezing back against the wall as the remains of what looked like it had once been a bookshelf were carted outside by a member of SG-11. "I'm going to go see what I can do to help out."

"Okay," she replied distractedly as she turned her head to follow her destroyed furniture's journey out to a waiting pick-up truck already loaded down with large pieces of broken wood. "Wish me luck."

"Why?" Daniel asked, his forehead furrowing in confusion. After all, picking a new front door was nothing compared to saving the planet from aliens with a god-complex on a semi-regular basis.

"They should be here soon."

"You need a miracle Sam, not luck," Daniel chuckled as he made his way up the stairs, dodging various SGC personnel hauling an assortment of destroyed furniture out of the house.

Heading into Sam's bedroom, Daniel stopped and asked a member of SG-3 if the attic had been cleared out yet. Receiving a 'no', he opened the closet doors and found the stairs that led up to the attic already unfolded. Climbing the short flight of steps, he found himself looking around a completely destroyed room. It didn't take long for him to find the remains of Sam's mother's wedding dress. It lay in a puddle on the drenched floor beside a ransacked black steamer trunk. Picking up the sopping mess revealed that it was ripped in half and then slashed in several places for good measure.

"Daniel?" a voice called up from the bedroom.

"Up here," he responded loudly. Twisting the dripping fabric delicately, he tried to wring out the dress without exacerbating the damage the NID had done to it. As he did so, his dislike of the organization ratcheted up another notch. It was one thing to destroy Sam's house under the pretense of searching it; intentionally destroying irreplaceable items whose only value was sentimental in nature was just downright cruel.

"Did you find…" Jack began as he bounded up the stairs. Upon seeing the mess of white material in Daniel's hands he didn't bother finishing the question. "Oh boy!" he added, shaking his head in dismay.

"I'm going to sneak it downstairs and hide it in my trunk, but don't tell Sam," Daniel informed him, gently gathering the dress into a ball that he hoped would be small enough to inconspicuously remove from the house. "So, how did the paint thing go?"

"She can't be mad at me," Jack announced smugly, rocking back on his heels and jamming his hands into his pockets.

"Why not?" Daniel demanded, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"I brought her back every paint chip in the store," he said with a smirk, proud of himself for finally managing to outsmart his genius 2IC.

"When we get stuck painting multi-coloured stripes on the walls, I'm going to kill you," Daniel groaned.