"SAM!"

Janet and three nurses were barely able to restrain Jack as he thrashed about violently, trying to free himself from their grasp. "SAM!"

"Colonel O'Neill!" Janet yelled sternly, trying to get him to look at her.

"Where is she? I can't feel her!"

"What?" Janet asked, wondering about his sanity.

"I have to get to the Stargate!" His eyes flashed feverishly as he tried to disentangle himself.

"Hold him down!" she commanded the nurses, who did their best to comply. Janet quickly retrieved a syringe from her supplies and stepped to Jack's side.

Readying the syringe, she felt a gentle hand on her forearm - not forcing the syringe away, just wanting her attention. Looking from his hand to his eyes, she felt a pang of pity for the man. Feverish, panicked, half-crazed. All these words would describe how he looked at that moment. "Janet," he whispered, his calm voice at odds with his horrified expression. "Please. Please. I have to get to her."

She briefly considered it, against her better judgment. She almost let him go.

Almost.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. Trying to focus on the injection, and not the person, she administered the sedative.

He jerked away violently, and it stung Janet to see the betrayal on his face. Jack fought again, desperate, seeming to still have almost all of his strength. Janet gasped when Jack punched one of the nurses. The nurse lost his balance and fell, medical equipment clattering to the floor around him. Then Jack was halfway out of the bed, the two remaining nurses losing the battle. Shaking, Janet grabbed a second syringe.

"No! No!" a wide-eyed Jack yelled when he saw her advancing, holding his hands up. "I have to go! I have to get to her!"

The two nurses took advantage of his distraction. Holding him down, one of them nodded at Janet, who stepped forward and plunged the syringe into his arm.

Jack screamed in protest, an angry, primal sound, powerless under the force of his captors. His eyes stared at her with hatred. Janet removed the syringe and blinked back the beginnings of tears.

He still struggled, but this time lost the fight against the sedative. Jack's eyes slowly lost their light as it took effect. He reached out to Janet and grasped only air. Waving the nurses aside, she reached forward and gently grabbed his hand, which he angrily batted away, not having the strength for anything else. She settled him back down into the bed anyway. He struggled to keep his eyes open, and then finally lost the battle. Jack descended into an uneasy unconsciousness. He tossed and turned, murmuring Sam's name in a feverish panic. Janet watched him, confused and concerned.

She had given him twice the normal dose. With this amount in his system, he shouldn't be moving at all.

* * *

Teal'c had impeccable timing, Sam thought, barely coherent as she watched the large Jaffa lunge in Jornan's direction. In her haze, she felt herself being lifted, a voice near her ear. Daniel was murmuring comforting things to her as he gathered her into his arms. Sam struggled to speak, eyes fluttering. "Re..."

"It's okay, Sam," he said comfortingly. "We're getting you out of here."

She was powerless to help him, not even able to put her arm around his neck. He hoisted her into his arms, getting a solid grip on her. He smiled reassuringly. "Let's get outta here."

Daniel was halfway out of the room when the first blast hit him. In her periphery Sam could see Jornan had some sort of weapon. She panicked. "Dannnn!"

Daniel staggered, but didn't fall. Managing to get his feet to catch up with his body, he regained a shaky balance and continued toward the door. Jornan aimed again. Right before she squeezed her eyes shut, Sam saw a flash.

Daniel shook as he absorbed the blast, clenching his teeth as his legs gave out. He leaned Sam forward as he fell, so he managed not to land on her, but beside her. Daniel screamed, sounding almost primal, his voice distant.

No. Not Daniel. Sam blinked.

It was Teal'c.

Sam looked over to see Jornan take aim again, and Teal'c moving faster than she had ever seen. Daniel, who had turned his head just enough to watch the two men, scrambled to cover Sam with his wounded body. She strained to see.

"No, Sam," Daniel said gently, turning in front of her so she couldn't see. "Don't look." She heard a staff blast as she sank into comforting darkness.

* * *

Jack's mind was alone. He ascended painfully from the depths of his unconsciousness, aware that somehow Jornan wasn't there anymore. He reached out with his mind, cautious at first, then becoming more bold. Nothing.

At first he felt relief. There had been a pressure pushing into his skull that he didn't know was there until it was gone.

But why couldn't he sense Jornan? Panic quickened the rise to wakefulness. If he couldn't feel Jornan, he couldn't feel Sam. As his memory came back to him in pieces, he remembered begging Sam not to go back to Gelna.

Panic back full-force, he fought through the remaining layers of unconsciousness and squinted against the light behind his eyes. He moved his head slowly. With Jornan gone, his head had room to clear.

He tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry. He was desperately thirsty. And he still felt like he was burning. The fever had not abated yet, and he still felt somewhat confused. Where in the hell was she?

He had to tell her. He had to tell her what he'd been dancing around for the last of couple weeks. If it wasn't too late. Terror shot through him when he thought he might've lost his chance.

* * *

It didn't feel like more than an instant had passed, but it must've been longer than that. Sam blinked and took in the anxious faces of Janet, Teal'c, Hammond, and two faces she didn't recognize. Realizing she was back in the SGC infirmary, she was able to relax - somewhat.

Her eyes felt like they were scraping the inside of her sockets and she willed herself to look at the faces around her bed. One was missing. "Daniel?"

"Over here, Sam." He waved cheerfully from a bed a few feet away. He looked a little beat up, and he was bandaged all around his midsection, but he didn't seem too concerned about it. "Don't worry. I'm fine." Sam managed a smile, relieved.

Among her friends were two unfamiliar faces. She hadn't seen these people before.

Wait. Yes she had. At least the woman. Large, dark, doe eyes stared at Sam anxiously. Black hair cascaded down her back. Sam furrowed her brow and realized she was looking at the woman from the painting in Jornan's hall.

This was the much loved/much hated Pentaya.

She didn't recognize the man, but spotted Tanjin lurking in the background.

"What the hell?" she slurred accusatorily. Teal'c grinned widely.

She managed to point a shaky finger toward the little worm when Daniel cut in. "It's okay Sam. He's the one who brought us to you. He helped save all of us."

Sam stared at him doubtfully.

"No, really. He's on our side."

Sam looked at the other new face. This man could only be Phin, Sam thought, shaking her head in an attempt to clear the haze. They had been talking in low voices, and had fallen silent when Sam stirred. Her brain was fuzzy. "What?"

The new couple smiled and exchanged glances with her friends. Their faces were open, friendly. These were not the evil, horrid people she'd expected. Their soft expressions were concerned as they looked at her.

"I am so deeply sorry," Pentaya said to Sam, her voice lilting and musical. "We had no idea you'd be drawn into this." Her brown eyes were genuine.

Phin spoke. "We were convinced the plan was foolproof. We had no idea travelers would arrive."

Daniel smiled down at her reassuringly. "Sam, half of what Jornan told you was true - Pentaya was his wife, and she did take the other set of crystals to Phin. But everything else you've heard was either Jornan's suspicions or an outright lie."

Pentaya began to speak softly, musically. "Jornan and I married when I was very young. I was hand-picked from a group of girls who had been groomed to be his potential queen." She paused. "When I was first chosen, and for the first few years of our marriage, I thought I had been truly blessed."

Her face darkened. "But as time went on, I began to see a different side of my husband. When he wanted something that couldn't just be handed to him, he became evil and cruel. He was determined to get what he wanted at any cost: power, land...women." She looked down, and Sam was mystified as to why she looked ashamed.

"And when he came across the crystals, his depravity increased more than I thought possible." Her doe eyes filled with tears. "Once he realized their power, he used them as often as he had the chance. When he could read other's emotions, he could use it against them and manipulate them."

"That would explain Jack's odd behavior over the last few days," Hammond said, quite possibly making the understatement of the decade.

"It didn't work as well on him. Their physiologies were too different for the transfer to be fully effective. Also, Jornan wasn't quite as successful at controlling his own emotions this time. His intense anger over my leaving clouded that ability."

"Why did you finally decide to leave?" Sam asked, a little more understandable now.

"Several days before you first arrived on Gelna, I had had enough. He thought he found a Shelnar spy, and used the same set of crystals on him. He couldn't get the man to confess, so he used the knowledge he gained from the transfer to find his family and have them killed." She blinked, hard. "The transfer told him the man was innocent, but Jornan was so sure he had been right."

"I couldn't take it anymore - his cruelty toward myself and others." She looked gratefully at Phin. "I knew the Shelnars would help me, so I took a chance and ran. I realized I had to take the crystals with me. But in my haste, and grabbed the wrong pair." She blinked back tears, and Phin put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"What does the other pair do?" Daniel asked, fascinated with the artifacts in spite of himself.

"They reverse the process. I meant to leave those, hoping Jornan would reverse any transfers still in effect."

"Do you have them now? How can we use them to help Jack without Jornan?"

Teal'c's deep voice spoke for the first time. "Unfortunately I had no choice but to take Jornan's life. I believe that with him gone, the connection should be broken."

Pentaya nodded. "Indeed." Daniel suppressed a smile.

"We snuck back here to retrieve the original pair," Phin said, picking up the rest of the story. "Tanjin helped arrange our travel, and made us aware of Jornan's plan when we arrived a few hours ago."

"Tanjin?" Sam slurred incredulously. The little man smiled nervously.

Pentaya smiled at him. "He has helped us from the beginning. If not for him, I would never have been able to escape."

Daniel picked up the story. "Jornan realized he could use Jack's military experience to gain the upper hand in the war against the Shelnars and try to get Pentaya back - "

"I know," Sam murmured weakly. "He said as much before you came." She blinked. "How did you know to come?"

"Well, we should've never left you alone in the first place," Daniel looked regretful. "But Tanjin came to us and told us he'd been forced to drug you."

Sam stared at the group, slowly digesting what she was hearing. "I need to see Jack."

"You should get some more rest first," Janet advised.

"No. Now."

* * *

Jack's sanity was cloudy at best when they finally wheeled Sam into his room at the infirmary. She was still too shaky to walk. Jack started to fight through the haze when he heard her soft voice.

"Sir?" She said, then "Jack?" when she heard him almost sob.

Relief coursed through him. "Sam," he rasped desperately, just as weak.

Janet had wheeled her bed right next to his. With all the strength he could muster, Jack managed to lunge toward her, wrap his arms around her waist, and pull her into his bed with him. She went willingly, exhausted and needing to be near him. Regs be damned.

She was able to lie on her side and rest her head on his shoulder. She gently nuzzled his neck as she wrapped her arms protectively around him, blinking back tears.

"I kept trying to find you...in my mind....and I couldn't anymore." Jack was almost crying but he didn't care. "I was so afraid. I need to tell you…"

"I know," she responded weakly, brokenly, stroking his cheek. He was still feverish. Worried, she tried to disentangle herself.

Jack immediately held her tighter. "Where are you going?"

"Your temperature is still too high. I don't want to make it worse."

His response was to gently push her head back to his shoulder. "You're not going anywhere."

It had been a half-hearted attempt anyway. Sam returned her hand to his cheek. "Try to sleep. I'm here now."

He kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes, able to rest peacefully now.