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 3: Space

Sam and Teal'c were preparing. Mitchell was practically bouncing on his heels, waiting anxiously for the plan to take effect. Vala was helping with one thing or another, with a helpful happy smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. After this much time together, everybody knew that smile was full of shit.

That was Vala though, still going through bursts of time where she didn't want anybody to know she was hurting.

I always knew.

Fifty damn years – how could I not know?

I was observing. Watching what we now had. Watching what we were about to lose. Wondering if I would ever know what I lost here. Being pensive. Vala would say it was my "thing".

When I had boarded the Odyssey all that time ago, she was an annoyance – an annoyance I was fond of, but an annoyance nonetheless.

We would lose the relationship we had built. We would lose all of the new things I now knew about my friends. Teal'c would be older and what I had learned from the Asgard knowledge base would be gone.

But we would have our youth back. Vala and I would have the chance to develop a relationship in a place where I could take her out in the sun. A place where I could buy her shiny baubles and marry her properly. And we could raise children in a house with a yard…

The reminder of the child we had lost raised a deep ache from within and a lump began to form in my throat. I was afraid. Afraid we would never find our way to each other. Afraid we would never have the chance to try for a family again. Here it had been unwise – we could have never raised a normal child in this place where everything was artificial. But what if we never got the chance? What if I never allowed her to get close? What if I never saw how much she loved me?

Or the whole thing could go wrong. Then we would just die.

In all of her hustle and bustle, she brushed by me and I was reminded of how it felt when she would brush by me before this ship. I was reminded of how nervous I would get.

My hand shot out and grabbed her by the elbow. "We need to go talk."

My eyes met hers and she was just as beautiful as she was the day I met her.

"I'm fine old man," she giggled, tugging her arm free and shoving me a little.

I frowned. She was still full of it. I decided to try a different tack. "Who the hell said anything about you?" I glared at her, hands on my hips.

She stopped, her mouth twisting into a thoughtful little moue as she assessed how serious I was. "But, I have to –"

"No you don't," I said lowly and then raising my voice for the others to hear, I shouted to the rest of the team. "You guys will be fine without Vala's help, won't you?"

Mitchell and Teal'c stopped what they were doing but didn't bother to look up from their work. Sam's crystal blue eyes met mine and she smiled slightly, nodding to let me know she knew exactly what was going on here.

"Go, ya' dang love birds," Mitchell grumbled, good-naturedly. "She was just getting in the way anyway."

"And so were you," Sam winked. "I could practically feel you thinking."

"Indeed," Teal'c looked to us with a raised eyebrow.

I smiled triumphantly at Vala, shrugging my shoulders all the way up to my cheeks. "All these years and I still win!" Some things about us had never changed.

And some things had. When she purposely pulled me along by my bad arm, the one that had suffered the most from the arthritis that had periled my joints for years now, I thought about how lucky she was that I loved her. Damn woman.

She pulled me all the way to one of the ship's empty rooms and walked away from me, standing by the window and glancing out at the unforgiving coldness of space outside, leaving me in the middle of the room with her back turned to me.

"Why must you insist on talking about everything?" Her voice was hoarse and her shoulders shook and I knew she was crying. I could see it this time. I may have been clueless the first time she had cried like this in front of me, but this time, I knew.

My eyes began to cloud up with tears of my own. I blinked them back. Somebody needed to be strong here and I didn't want her to have to be the one. "We don't have much time. They'll be ready soon. Are we going to end this back where we started it? Without saying what is on our minds, shielding ourselves from each other until it's just about too late? We are either about to die or forget this ever happened and you want to just let it go by?"

"Of course not!" Vala shouted and she turned to face me with anger on her face like I hadn't seen in a very long time. "What is there to say? I don't even know where to begin! It's all out of our hands anyway, isn't it?"

I could feel my gaze soften and I took a deep breath, sighing heavily. "Come here," I motioned to her, gently.

She stared at me.

"Please, come here."

The relief I felt when she started to walk towards me was overwhelming.

I waited until she was just an arms length away before I spoke again, reaching out to take her hands in mine. "I want you to know, even if you are gonna forget, that I wasn't with you all these years because we were trapped on this god-awful ship. I was with you because—"

"I know. And I want you to know that I—"

"I know. I know."

"Guys," Sam shouted down the hall. "I don't mean to interrupt, but we're almost ready to go."

"Ok," I shouted back, never letting go of Vala's hands, never looking away from the very little I could see of her face here in the dark room, where only the twinkle of the stars served to illuminate anything. "Go ahead."

"You don't want to be there when…" Sam trailed off.

"No," I shook my head. "I need to be here."

Then Sam was gone and we were alone again.

I knew Vala was crying again. I knew because I was starting to. This was more difficult than I had conceived it to be. On the one hand, we could have had so much more, but on the other hand, we were letting go of everything we had been allowed to have on the sheer hope that we would find a way to grasp it again, in a better situation. The others didn't have nearly as much to lose by doing this as we did.

And then suddenly, like old times, she had tackled me in a hug so strong, nobody would believe her age. "I love you," she whispered in my ear, grasping on to me tightly.

I pulled her just as tightly to me. "I love you too. Don't worry, we'll find our way back to each other. I promise." A little of that good ole' Daniel Jackson faux optimism I had always pretended to hold on to, even in the worst of circumstances in order to keep everybody else positive. It never mattered how negative I was feeling at the time.

"I'm sure we will. I know we will. That's not all though…if the ship explodes…I don't want to burn again," she whispered and something inside of me broke.

"Val…" I let the tears come. There was nothing I could say to that. I simply held onto her and said a silent prayer that time would be reversed long before that ever happened. My face buried in her hair, I allowed my eyes to drift shut…

…and when they opened I was lying in an infirmary bed, looking at the face of a much younger Vala. She was perched on a chair beside me, her elbow planted on my bed, one hand holding her face up and the other clenched tightly in mine.

"Darling, you're awake!" She cried.

My finger went straight to my lips in a shushing motion. I needed to think. If we had reversed time, it had left me with my memories and rewound to a different time in my life than I had expected. But wait…I was forgetting something.

"Daniel, I'm going to get Dr. Lam," she jumped to her feet. I pulled her right back into her seat, my hand never leaving hers.

"Wait." My eyes darted around the room anxiously, struggling to get my bearings. But nothing was coming in quite clearly enough.

"You might need these," Vala smiled, reaching over and placing the arms of my glasses over my ears and pushing them up the bridge of my nose gently. "There. Does that help?"

My vision cleared up immediately. And I found myself staring vacantly into Vala's eyes. They may have been rimmed in red and plagued by dark circles, but I had a feeling that was because she was worried about me and that only made me want to stare into them longer.

"Daniel?" Her voice was anxious. "Darling, as much as I love the attention, you're making me nervous."

I took a deep breath and looked away, shaking my head free of the cobwebs that had formed within it. I turned back to Vala, with an overwhelming mix of feelings in my heart. "Val, how did I end up in here?"

She eyed me, and for a moment she looked just as confused as I felt. "You ran in to Bill's office all crazed and you thought Dr. Lam was someone named Janet, someone whom Muscles informed me is dead, and you passed out. And since when in the hell do you call me 'Val'?"

I blinked. Took a minute to process everything. I tried to focus on one reality. But all at once, I was the old man from the Odyssey, the doting husband of Sha're on Abydos and the man being killed by Vala. And this man. This man who was gripping Vala's hand and knew deep down that all of the other versions of life were impossible. But they just seemed so damn real.

And wait…old man on the Odyssey…well that was real, wasn't it? I had been. But only Teal'c remembered.

"Vala, I need you to go get Teal'c for me," I whispered, looking around. "And I need you to help me out of here. I need to see that artifact. And Dr. Lam will never let me go." But what I needed more than anything was for her to leave the room. I needed to clear my thoughts before they got any more confusing. After remembering a fifty year love affair with the woman, a fifty year love affair I was pretty sure had not actually happened to her, I needed to get a little space to sort through all of the images in my brain. Some of them were still pretty damn vivid…

Instead of leaving, Vala grinned in response, leaning over and producing a laptop with the hand that was not still tightly grasped in mine. "You don't have to leave to do that. I took pictures of every damn inch of that infernal rock and scanned them into the computer for you to have a look at. I knew you'd want to."

I couldn't help but react to her enthusiasm. It was just so good to see her so full of energy, of life. All the years on the Odyssey had drained much of that from her. "I love…" I caught myself. I mean really, what the hell? I had to get control over which Vala and Daniel was the real Vala and Daniel before I said something very stupid and my life spiraled out of control. "I love that you did that for me. It really shows how well you know me." I went for friendship, even though I had no idea whether friend Vala, co-worker Vala or 'Why the hell does my heart seize up every time you smile at me?' Vala was winning in my brain right now.

She smiled a dazzling smile in response. "I'll get Muscles."

She turned away and I let her hand slip from mine slowly, her fingers dropping from mine one by one.

She picked up the phone, called Teal'c and told him to come to the infirmary. And I wanted to scream for her to give me some space and to leave me alone so I could sort things out, but it wasn't her fault I was so confused and it suddenly felt like so long since I had snapped at her the way I wanted to right now.

"Oh. I thought you would go get him," I said, unable to hide the fact that I was gritting my teeth.

Vala turned and looked at me and she looked disappointed. "You…want me to leave?"

"Yes, I just need a minute to think."

"I shouldn't have stayed." She gathered whatever glossy magazines she was reading now and made to rush away.

My response was what felt like long worn instinct – the instincts of an old man that I wasn't. I reached out and re-took her hand in mine. She looked so hurt by what I had said and I just couldn't bare it. Not after everything I remembered us going through together.

"Val, I'm sorry. I don't want you to think I don't appreciate you staying here with me. I really do," I told her sincerely. "I just…I can't explain it until I've looked at my notes and spoken with Teal'c, but I've just endured something pretty confusing, and I need a minute. I just need a minute."

She took a deep breath and jutted her chin out in that statement of defiance she tended to take on whenever I was telling her something she didn't want to hear. "Well, I don't think I should leave you alone."

"Just let me talk to Teal'c and then you can worry over me all you want," I teased. "I may even welcome it."

This made her smile, her face lighting up with that ear-to-ear grin that told me I was in so much trouble. I couldn't help but return it. She was more beautiful than I had ever allowed myself to see. Because however much I wanted to separate this world from what I had seen in that last…dream, for lack of a better word, she was still the same woman who took care of me after she had bumped into me while on her rollerskates, knocking me over and causing me to break my arm because I had been too engrossed in whatever book I was reading to see her coming.

She turned to leave and the moment she had, I had the laptop on my lap and was looking through my notes with motivation. I had to keep all of the conflicting thoughts out of my head and focus on the issue at hand. And there was only one way my brain had ever developed to do that effectively…work. Thankfully, that was also one of two things necessary for me to understand my current predicament.

It jumped out at me almost immediately. I had mistranslated a plural noun as a singular one. The text said "The only way one can be enlightened is by understanding, living and experiencing all of the universes," or the "multiple universes" but not simply "the universe". It would have been a simple mistake, really. A simple mistake that changed the text in a way that made a whole world of difference.

"Dr. Jackson," Dr. Lam interrupted, "nobody told me that you were awake. I would have noticed, but SG-9 just came back from an altercation with the Lucian Alliance. It was not good."

I winced, putting away my computer. "Everybody okay?"

"Everybody but Colonel Winchell," she sighed. "He's critical. He was very close to an explosive they set off…got injured in the fallout. But we're working on it."

Damn. Colonel Winchell was a good man. I didn't know him that well, but I knew of him.

"What do you think?" I asked as she began to run through the regular examinations.

"What I think isn't really relevant. I hope we'll be able to pull him through it," she told me. I could see her immediately get uncomfortable with the level of emotion she was allowing me to see.

I could sympathize. Nobody on this base really wanted the others to see the kind of stress this job could put on us. There were only really five people who got what this job could do to me sometimes. And only one or two of those got to see that any more than sporadically.

"Let's talk about you now," Dr. Lam said with a sigh and a slight smile. "You seem to be in perfect health although you didn't seem to be sleeping quite enough before you collapsed in Dr. Lee's office. Since then you have been in a sleep state for nearly 48 hours straight."

"48 hours!" I acted surprised. In truth it had felt like 50 years. As a matter of fact, if I hadn't been focusing my memories on the way things had been before, I wasn't sure I would have been able to understand where the hell I was now.

Dr. Lam smirked a little. "Ms. Mal Doran never left your side. I don't think she wanted to now either." She scribbled a few notes on her chart before looking back up at me. "Back at Dr. Lee's, you referred to me as Janet. I assume you were talking about Dr. Frasier. Do you want to tell me what's going on?"

"Yes, but I really need to speak with Teal'c first, if that's alright," I explained. I was starting to get impatient and I was pretty sure the feeling had made its way into my voice. I wasn't all that good at hiding impatience.

Dr. Lam crossed her arms over her chest and eyed me skeptically. "Why?"

I heaved a deep sigh and stared at the scratchy infirmary bed linens. "That's personal."

"Dr. Jackson," Dr. Lam shook her head, "I'm a doctor. Which means I've pretty much seen it all. There is nothing that will shock me."

My face must have twisted in about a million different directions, my mouth flopping open and closing like a fish as I struggled for an answer to that statement. "I don't even want to know what you're thinking. I need to talk to Teal'c for a mentally personal reason." My nose screwed all the way up as the possibilities of what she could have been insinuating cycled through my mind. "Not physically personal."

She cracked a smile and I realized she was joking…this was a rarity for Dr. Lam. She had certainly had me going.

"That's just wrong," I narrowed my eyes at her just as Teal'c made his way into the infirmary, rushing to my side.

"DanielJackson! ValaMalDoran expressed the importance of your speaking with me. She implied it had something to do with what may be causing you to fall ill."

I grinned widely. "Yes! Yes! I need to speak with you. Dr. Lam?"

She was about to answer. About to leave. And I was about to get the answers I was waiting for. But…no such luck. Never could I have that much luck.

"Dr. Jackson!" General Landry's voice boomed through the infirmary. "Glad to hear you're with us once again. How are you feeling?"

My head dropped to my chest. This was beginning to get infuriating.

"I'm fine Hank," I spoke through gritted teeth. "Just fine. Now can I please have a moment to speak with Teal'c alone, so I can start piecing together what the hell is going on?"

"Hank?" General Landry's considerable eyebrows rose high over his head.

I looked first to Dr. Lam, then to Teal'c. Teal'c was doing that eyebrow-raising thing he loved so much.

"General Landry…sir…" I muttered, not truly feeling the need to apologize. After all, I had called the man Hank for many, many years.

It hit me quite strongly that I was, at this moment, the old man from the Odyssey, pretending to be fifty years younger. But that simply wasn't true. The distance I felt from my real self was getting more and more unnerving.

Landry was giving me a markedly concerned look. I had begun nervously drumming on the edge of my mattress with my fingers.

"Please. Just a minute," I added. The concern on everyone's face grew. I wanted to explain, but I couldn't. Because if I was simply having strange hallucinations, that was one thing. But actually experiencing what had happened on the Odyssey…that was an entirely different can of worms.

"You can have more than a minute," Landry finally replied. "You can have an hour. And then I would like your team to come to the briefing room to discuss your condition. I'll let Dr. Lam decide if you will be joining them. Dr. Lam?"

"I'll be back in a few minutes, Dr. Jackson," she nodded, moving out of the room behind her father.

I took a deep breath, allowing my eyes to drift closed just long enough to realize that every time I seemed to do that I woke up experiencing something different. They shot open again.

"What is it that you require of me?" I could tell by Teal'c's tone that he was more than a little curious about why I needed to talk to him so badly.

I took another deep breath before dropping the bombshell on him. "I need you to tell me what happened on the Odyssey."

Teal'c stared at me incredulously. "You know I can not do that, DanielJackson."

"You have to."

"No."

"Even if my life depended on it, Teal'c?" I hoped I could convey the urgency of the situation in my voice.

"Does your life, in fact, depend on knowing what happened on the Odyssey during fifty years you never actually lived?" He had that eyebrow raised. He wasn't buying it.

"Alright, alright, alright!" I shouted impatiently. "Why don't I tell you what happened on the Odyssey?"

"You were not there," he answered stoically, but I could tell I was getting to him. His eyes reflected his genuine concern.

"Of course not," I answered. "If I was not there I wouldn't know that Mitchell went crazy up there. Repeating everything over and over every day. Tearing up his room. I wouldn't know that you and Sam got…closer. I wouldn't know that Hank died. And I certainly wouldn't know that Vala and I had a relationship. A real relationship. Complete with a miscarriage, because when am I ever really happy for any kind of extended period of time? But we loved each other….until the day that damn ship exploded. We actually loved each other. Is that about right?"

Teal'c's shocked expression wasn't really like him. He was blown away…and it showed. "Indeed," he said in a low voice, his eyes darting around as if trying to understand.

"What?" Mitchell's voice boomed from the doorway.

My head whipped over in his direction. And there in the doorway were my four other closest friends, lined up in a row.

"You and Carter got 'closer'?" Jack directed at Teal'c, air quoting my term obnoxiously.

Sam only seemed to look confused. "You can't possibly know any of that."

"Surprise!" Vala squeaked, her eyes like saucers. "I brought your friends."

It seemed she wasn't taking this well. The idea that she was disturbed by the idea of our relationship made my stomach churn.

"I…uh…I…th-think I may understand why you wanted your space from me," she stammered. "How very unnerving for you….huh? Well, I'll leave you to the others now."

With that she raced out of the room at full tilt speed as fast as her long shapely legs would carry her.

I made to follow her. Got tangled in the wires that had me hooked to a million beeping noisemaking machines. Got hit by a wave of dizziness and flopped back down on the bed even as everyone remaining in the room rushed to my side.

"Damn it!" I punched the mattress as I watched her turn the corner and speed all the way out of my sight before she'd ever had the chance to hear that I wasn't unnerved by it at all.

I was relieved.

A/N: Don't even say it – this whole story wasn't just a ploy to get Unending out in the open. That particular alternate timeline just made too much sense as far as proving that Daniel was seeing something real instead of something he made up in his head, because Teal'c could verify it. This is all much bigger than that, I promise. And I know you were thinking it. ;)