DISCLAIMER: I do not own any Stargate characters, ideas or themes. They all belong to MGM. I'm just playing with them a little.

Summary: Every possibility, every choice I had ever made, even choices I hadn't, led to an entirely different life until I could no longer tell reality from its alternates.

Rating: T

Spoilers: Every which way from Sunday. The entire Stargate franchise is open season.

Author's Note: Daniel's POV, cuz I love writing for him. Ok, I'm trying this again and this will be a longer one. ME EAT REVIEWS FOR BREAKFAST. So keep me healthy and well-nourished. Thank you.

Title: The Many Paths of Daniel Jackson
By: Every Me Every You

Chapter 2: Adverse Effects

When I finally collapsed onto my bed, it was 4:30 in the morning and I was beat. Done. And not wanting to wake up for a very long time.

My day had started with an internal pep talk and a breakfast revelation…and ended in an 8 hour long stay in the infirmary, an eventual clean bill of health, permission from Dr. Lam to sleep in my quarters on the base, and a demand that I contact her if I experience any adverse effects from the device whatsoever.

Mitchell had sent everybody and himself away from the infirmary about 4 hours ago to get some "shuteye." Vala hadn't moved a muscle – just sat there with me silently and yelled at Dr. Lam that she better be sure I was alright. I kept telling her that I was fine and that she could go to her quarters and get some rest so she could help me with my translation once I was back on my feet. A decisive "no" was the most I had gotten out of her aside from a demand that I be sure to call her if I needed anything once I had headed back to my quarters.

She was probably just sliding into bed herself. Vala. Bed. Not going to think about it.

Instead I turned my attention to the device and lasted about 5 minutes of contemplating the translation before my brain checked out and I was sound asleep.

"No," Sha're's voice, speaking in Abydonian as we usually did, echoed in my head as she peered over my shoulder, taking in the writing on the tissue box that had been sent through the wormhole for me. "Thanks, please send more." A message to Colonel Jack O'Neill, telling him that he had my permission to come through and join us in Abydos.

"Sha're!" I jumped. When had she gotten here? I turned to face her. "What brings you here…I thought –"

"You thought I would not see that you were about to send a message through the ring to Earth?" She said with a sigh and her voice sounded weary.

"No," I said, turning towards her and taking her face lovingly in my hands, pushing a wild black curl away from her eyes. "No, of course I would have told you first. I was simply considering it. I just thought that you were still visiting with Na'ee. If I had realized you were back…"

"You would have still been here…by the ring or with the writing of the gods," Sha're commented. "And I would have come to find you. You would have 'lost track of time'."

It was quickly becoming clear to me that Sha're was upset with me. Sha're rarely seemed upset with me, so this concerned me greatly.

"My wife, you understand that I do not mean to do these things." It hurt me that she may believe I was purposely ignoring her. "It's just that what I have found in this pyramid is so interesting to me. I have never seen anything like it. And once I found it, I needed to understand what it meant. Nobody from Earth has ever seen anything like this. It was a great find and that's what I have spent all of my life doing. Understanding things that aren't meant to be understood. It's what led me to you."

She smiled, but it was a weak smile. "You're words are kind, dear husband, but they are untrue." She shook her head as she spoke. "Yes, I know that you are drawn to your find, but that does not change the need to explore that led you to it. You find your life here to be lacking something." Tears filled her eyes and her voice broke here and my heart along with it. "I have tried to be a good wife for you my Daniel, but I fear that I have failed. You do not wish to remain here. You want something more than I can give you."

I pulled her to me, desperate to comfort her, to keep her from believing what she seemed so ready to believe. I buried my face into her hair, whispering directly into her ear. "No Sha're, you have been more than a good wife. You are my life. I love you dearly. I am simply curious by nature. I wish to know more about our home, just as I wished to know more of my former home when I was there. Please understand, I can make my life's work making sense out of the symbols on those walls."

"And when you are finished," Sha're pulled back from me, her dark eyes pleading and tearful, "who will you share that information with? Will you leave here?" She walked away from me, wandering behind my back as I faced the wall that had, just seconds ago, been blocked by her. "Return to O'Neill and tell him what you have learned? Or will you spend your life trying to understand this and then share your finds with no one?"

I didn't know how to answer that question. Frankly, she was right. I would want to contact Earth. I would want to tell them what I had learned. And I couldn't be sure if that was why I had searched this place out to begin with. I loved her enough to stay here but that didn't mean that I didn't want to jump at this opportunity to speak with anybody who understood things as I did, who understood my culture, my offbeat comments, my references without needing to explain them and losing everything in translation.

I turned to face my beautiful wife. And I lied. At least a little.

"I would be fine never seeing anyone from there again, if it meant spending my life here with you. I love you. I want everything with you. A family, a life. How can I prove that to you?"

"Bury the ring again, dear husband," she requested, her voice barely above a whisper as though she feared my response. "Bury it and leave us to our life together. Keep us all safe and never unbury it again."

"Ok," I yielded. "I will bury it. Right away."

Hours of work later, the gate was buried under a mound of rock and gravel and any hope I had ever had of leaving this place was gone. My heart was also buried under a weight of a different kind.

It wasn't that I didn't love Sha're or Abydos. It wasn't that I ever wanted to leave forever, but for a little while, to find something, anything to investigate, I couldn't help but desire such a thing. Digging for secrets of the past was such a crucial part of who I was. I left the pyramid, putting out the torch I had lit there before I went.

It would be the last time I ever went there. I spent the rest of my life with two gorgeous children (who looked like their mother), a loving wife and the ghost of everything I had left behind vivid in my mind.

My eyes shot open and I looked around in confusion, taking in my quarters at the SGC.

This was real. That was not.

I found I needed to make that distinction very forcefully in my mind so I wouldn't get too mixed up. It very much felt like I had just spent my life on Abydos, never returning to Earth again.

It wasn't a strange dream for me to have experienced. After all, Sha're and I'd had that very discussion prior to my sending the tissue box through the 'Gate to Jack. The only difference was, I had somehow managed to convince her that I wasn't going anywhere and she had allowed it without much of a fight. That had been why she had felt the need to kiss me the way she had before I left to bring Jack, Sam and Kawalsky to the pyramid. It was an innocent pleading that I not leave her…as if I ever could. No amount of my curiosity would have willingly made me leave Sha're behind.

Fate had never allowed me to prove that to her.

The strange thing was how real this was. It felt like I had spent a lifetime in that dream.

I attempted to shake it out of my head and lay back down to go to sleep. It took me a lot longer this time, with thoughts of Sha're, Skaara, Kasuf and all of the other family I had left behind in Abydos weighing heavily on my mind. Still, eventually I had managed to fall asleep again.

Pain. And dammit, I was dying. I knew I was. Just waiting to die now. Lying on the floor on the very edge of a platform, bleeding from a staff weapon wound in my abdomen. Hearing Mitchell scream for Sam.

I could tell she had just died against the console. Could hear the sick thud of her body hitting it. That, or she was dying like me. Unable to move, barely able to breath, awaiting the inevitable.

God, how had we ended up in this mess? That bastard Ba'al – coming back in time, shifting everything around us. Making Teal'c his first prime, and Vala his queen. Bile rose in my throat at the thought.

He had killed Jack and changed our entire timeline and now all that we had left rested upon Mitchell getting through the 'Gate and changing everything. I could almost smile a little when I heard the sound of his body crossing the event horizon. He made it. This wasn't all for nothing. Mitchell would go back and fix the timeline and as long as he had succeeded, I would have never died like this. This would not be real.

It sure felt real.

A slight roll of the eyes and I could see as Teal'c was shot. And then all opposition ended and I could hear the metal clang of the ring transport being activated.

Though I knew whom I was about to see, I prayed to anyone that would listen that I would die before I got the chance. Apparently, nobody was taking my calls.

My Vala was gone.

The thing that had purchase over her body had dressed it in a black and gold ornately decorated dress and black boots and had curled her hair and for a moment, I found myself waiting for her to worry over me and tell me that she had been faking the whole time, just like she had been on P8X-412 when she had pretended to be Quetesh to attempt to convince the people there not to follow the Ori. This plan would have been just as foolish as that one, but perhaps she had pretended in order to kill Ba'al.

I was pretty sure my dying was making me delirious. There was no way. Quetesh had her and there was no way I was ever going to see Vala again. Not in this lifetime.

I wished the last thing I had said to her wasn't bickering over whether or not Ba'al could escape his extraction. I wished it had been something of meaning. Of value.

Her grey eyes glowed gold and she grasped my face roughly in her hands. Her voice sounded, low and metallic. "You would lead in an insurrection against your god? Why would you do such a foolish thing?"

I didn't answer. Didn't know if I could. Didn't intend to try. It was all too much. Mitchell could die if he took on Ba'al alone on the ship. Teal'c was as good as dead. He had been wounded and Quetesh or her Jaffa would certainly kill him for being a shol'va. Jack was dead. Sam was dead. I was very nearly dead.

And though I never would have admitted it to her or anybody else, I was watching a woman I had loved being moved around like a marionette by something evil that was living inside of her.

And I was doing it for the third time. There should be a cap placed on how many times a man should be allowed to have the same horrific experience.

For an entire year I had tried to make myself believe that somehow the change in timelines had caused Vala to avoid becoming a Goa'uld. It was the only way I had been able to cope with the idea that she had disappeared from right under my nose and I had been unable to stop it. Again.

She gripped my face in her hands, harder this time, possibly breaking bones in the process.

"Where did your friend escape to?" She asked. "Tell me now and I will place you into the sarcophagus and allow you to heal. Then you could be my Lotar and serve me the way you should."

Something sick in me, whether it be the sheer desire to live or the chance to have another opportunity to free Vala from this vile creature made me consider it for just a second before hocking up anything and everything I could muster up in my mouth at her face.

My last act of defiance.

Even as her hand crushed my windpipe and I gasped for a breath I couldn't even take, a solitary tear rolled from my eye to the ground beneath me as I mouthed her name one last time without a single sound.

"Vala."

I threw myself to a seating position in my bed, my hands coming to my throat, almost unable to take in enough air, as if it had all just happened, as if somebody had just crushed my windpipe and killed me.

This was not a memory with a couple of variations like the dream before had been. Or even a wish or guilt. This was…insane. A whole other life stemming from the extraction. I could remember where I went for coffee for the entire year that I had been pretending not to be Daniel Jackson.

My leg! I threw the covers off of me and rolled up my sweatpants on both sides. Both legs were present and accounted for. I heaved a sigh of relief before processing what this could mean. For a moment, I had been truly unsure of whether or not I had both of my legs. And honestly, right now I wasn't quite sure if I was really on Abydos, really in my bed or really dying in front of a time machine.

I mean, I had a pretty good idea which was real, but everything else had felt just as real as I had experienced it.

I jumped out of bed, pulled my sneakers onto my feet and ran out into the hallway before I really knew what I was doing. In sweatpants and a t-shirt, I rushed out at top speed, not even stopping as I checked my watch, which led to an interesting collision between myself and the wall. It was 14:00 hours.

I kept running until I had burst into Dr Lee's office where he, Dr. Lam, Mitchell, Teal'c and Vala stood around the artifact that had done this to me, whatever was happening to me. Even as they all turned to look at me, I bent forward, my hands leaning on my knees as I gasped for breath, tuning out the concerned looks of all of them.

But when I straightened up, only one pair of eyes caught mine. Worried grey eyes that lacked their normal twinkle, and thankfully any golden glow to speak of. She was still my Vala. This was still my team. Teal'c was alive. Mitchell wasn't in 1929. They were fine.

My eyes couldn't leave hers and I examined her face, taking it in, noting all the differences that existed been her and Quetesh. She offered me an awkward little smile and a nervous look that told me I was making her quite uncomfortable with all my staring.

"Daniel?" She laughed nervously. "Are you alright?"

"Are you?" I asked, my mouth moving completely against my will.

She stepped towards me, her eyes narrowing. "Of course I am, silly. Why would you ask?"

I didn't answer. Regaining my breath, I straightened turning to Dr. Lam who was studying me like I was the potential cure for cancer.

"Dr. Lam," I addressed her, motioning with my hands, trying to keep myself talking, because I wasn't really feeling so great at the moment. "Adverse effects, I think I've got 'em."

My vision blurred. Then righted. And I took in the face of Dr. Janet Frasier. Very much alive.

"Janet?" I said in disbelief. Then the world spun out and everything went black.