Jackson's group began the difficult task of gathering the dead and those too wounded to make it back on their own or on the arms of their comrades. It was a disheartening and overwhelming tasks for men not accustomed to war. They left the enemy where they had fallen in the fields and the brush beyond. Those on the village streets they dragged out and dumped with the rest. There'd be time for what needed to be done for them after they cared for their own.

Jard's men went to the caves and brought out the evacuees. They'd spent less than an afternoon in the cool, darkness of the caves. The children were hardly aware they hadn't just been on an outing. They climbed the worn, dirt path out of the caves and blinked in the bright sunlight. They were greeted with the smell of smoke, but it wasn't until they'd passed the inner fields that they began to see the devastation of the battle. The women covered the faces of the children so they wouldn't see the bodies of the dead, but they couldn't block out the moans and cries of the dying.

Numbly, they walked into the village and stood in the streets, staring incomprehensively at what had once been their homes. The enemy had penetrated deep into the village on the west side. Many of the houses had gaping holes where the enemy weapons had torn through the walls and others were gone completely, burned to the ground. Jard's men gently herded them on to the town square where the floor of the great hall was already covered with the wounded bodies of their defenders. The evacuees collected their courage, rolled up their sleeves, and went to work cleaning wounds, doling out water, and making soup. Jard and his men left them there, dug through the rubble to find their shovels, and joined others who'd already begun to turn the far west field into a graveyard.

Carter and those with her chased the enemy to the Circle and watched the last straggler run into the swirling blue in its center and disappear. Gaping after him, she knew that somehow, someway he'd left Kylanar for somewhere else. She felt an urgent desire to follow him through. But then the blue itself disappeared, and there left in its place was only empty space echoing that in her mind.

She knew what she had to do. Ignoring Traiyana's ranting through Jackson's radio that she was needed to help with the injured, she took the next two days to lower the great ring to the ground and bury it as deep as they could in the rich, brown dirt. She felt as though she were burying a part of herself alive, but she had no choice. They'd been discovered; more warriors would follow these through. There would be no end to it unless the Circle was closed for good.

Staggering back after burying the Circle and the left behind bodies of the enemy along the way, they marched past the new graves in the west field and the battle-scarred section of the village. Carter paused a moment to look over the charred remains of her house, but its loss was nothing compared to that she had felt over burying the Circle with whatever lay beyond it.

She found O'Neill and several other of the wounded lying on makeshift pallets on the floor of the meeting hall. His face was as gray and drawn as she felt. Carefully avoiding jarring his bandaged chest, she stretched out beside him.

He gingerly shifted to let her share a corner of his pillow. "I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to come home," he said.

"You know the house is gone, don't you?" she asked him.

"Ahh, you know what they say."

"No, what?"

"Home is where the heart is."

"Oh," she said raising her face to look into his eyes, "it's good to be home then, Sir."

"Good to have you home," he answered her. For a moment they both lay silent, enjoying the other's presence. There were so many things to say, but in the end he let it all lay unspoken and said instead, "Not that I have anything against a wife showing due reverence and obeisance to her lord and master, but what's up with the 'sir'?"

Another day she might have given him a playful sock but not today. Any other time, even through her exhaustion and not knowing what lay beneath the bandages might have stopped her from hitting him, she would at least have rewarded him with a scornful laugh. But not today. There was no laughter in her today.

"What?" he asked her when he didn't get the response he expected.

She shook her head against him. "I think...I think whoever we were before, you were my commanding officer."

"Whoever we were before," he echoed her hollowly.

"Yes."

"We know who we were."

"I don't think so, Sir. We know what we've been told. I don't know why they've lied, but...that Circle-it leads...somewhere else. I don't think we belong here...I think we came through it. They must have found us, brought us here, and made up a life for us. It's all a lie. Even our names. They just took them off the labels of the things we brought with us. Or maybe things they'd already found."

"I doubt that, Carter," he said remembering the feel of the combat knife in his hand. He'd mangled half a row of grain trying to get the hang of using a sickle, but from the moment he'd felt the knife's handle in his hand, he'd known his throw would be sure and straight to the mark. "Whatever else, that stuff's ours."

"All right," she said licking her dry lips, "maybe it is, but this life isn't. It's just a fairytale they concocted for us."

"None of it's true then?" he asked her, but he already knew the answer. He remembered the distance they'd always felt from their neighbors. He thought of her 'dad' who'd let her go into battle as though he didn't really care what happened to her, and he believed her.

"None of it. We can't believe anything."

"There's one thing you can believe, Carter."

"What's that?"

"I love you."

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Jacob Carter stared at the memorabilia taped to the inside door of his daughter's locker. The smiling, pudgy baby faces of his grandkids, her niece and nephew. A picture from Cassy. An old, yellowed memo from O'Neill reminding members of SG-1 to leave all unnecessary equipment-'as in books, DANIEL!'-earthside when going on to 'p-wherever we're going tomorrow' because senior officers would not be coerced into carrying more than their share of the load on the fifteen-mile hike the mission would entail. A long-outdated duty roster and a calendar to match with his birthday circled in red.

He'd celebrated that day savoring the cup of coffee Selmak graciously conceded to in honor of the occasion and opening the card Sam had handed him during his last visit home. He'd laughed at its funny punchline, set it aside, and hadn't given his birthday or his daughter another thought. By then, she'd forgotten his birthday as well. His birthday, his name, and his face. There probably wouldn't have been a thing he could have done about it if he'd been informed of the situation. But, he'd never know. George's message, like too many in the past, hadn't been passed along. She'd been gone for months, and he was only finding it out now.

"She's really gone, isn't she?" he asked his friend.

"If you could just get the Tok'ra to-" George started wearily.

"I can't...we can't. There are players out there you know nothing about. That planet couldn't be in a worse location. We've got a very touchy relationship with the folks who control that area of space. We can't jeopardize it."

"Not even for Sam?"

"Not even for Sam. I'd give anything to be able to change that, but I can't."

"So these folks...they're responsible for this?"

"Very unlikely. They aren't planetdwellers, George. I imagine the worlds in their territory are of no more significance to them than the rocks in your backyard are to you. And the folks on them even less."

"Then you could Gate in? My hands are tied, Jacob, but you could-"

"No, I can't. The Gate's gone. Buried or out of commission-we've been trying since I got your message."

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Jackson stopped by to check on O'Neill before heading home. He was relieved to find Carter curled up next to him. Looking down at his friends, he smiled his first smile in days and left them sleeping. They'd finished burying the dead that morning and begun the backbreaking labor of tearing down the ruined houses. He was ready for a bath and his own bed.

He sidestepped Ylyn's welcome home hug and kissed Talyn's cheek with his hands held carefully away to keep from smearing her flowered apron with his dirty hands before climbing into the bathtub and soaking away the filth of battle. When he climbed out, he could still make out the cloying, lingering odors of death and smoke over the clean smell of the soap he'd scrubbed with. He thought they'd follow him all the rest of his days and certainly into his dreams that night.

But, he was wrong. Waiting in the cave wondering if any of them would survive, Talyn had known she couldn't lie to him any longer. She'd determined then she'd tell him the truth-as much of it as she could-as soon as possible. She could see he was bone-weary, but it was time. While she served him his supper, she revealed things to him that made sleep impossible and pushed the memories of the last few days to the back of his mind.

He smiled at her when she sat down opposite him at the table. She reached out a trembling hand and grasped his. "I've something to tell you," she began, looking directly into his eyes and steeling herself to say the words that would destroy their life together. He stared into his bowl of stew while she talked. Bits of grease coalesced on its surface as it slowly cooled. His hunger had faded away with her words.

He knew he should be angry. But, if he felt anything, it was relief. He wasn't the horrible man he'd feared he was. A man who could forget his own wife and children. A husband who'd only after months of living with her begun to feel the remotest feelings for his wife. A father who could gaze into his newborn child's face and not feel anything at all. A man whose love for the child playing at his feet was nothing more than fond affection. He'd thought something was horribly wrong with him, but it hadn't been him at all.

When her words ran out, he didn't know what to say. She'd lied to him, deceived him, and somewhere between all the falsehoods of her life with him learned to love him. She'd believed she was doing what she had to in order to care for her children. It had never been malicious. She'd never intended to hurt him. It would though. Once the shock had worn off. Once he had time to realize the extent of her betrayal. He gently freed his hand from hers and rose from the table. Ylyn held out his arms to him, but he shook his head and said, "Not this time, Buddy." He walked out into the evening dusk and turned toward the town hall.

The rows of wounded had thinned down considerably this evening. Many of those who had a home to return to had been carried to their own beds. It was only the homeless and the severely wounded here now. Traiyana moved among them checking bandages and offering murmured encouragements. When she glanced up at him, Jackson turned his face away from hers and moved down the row to his friends. She'd been in on the deception-the whole village had, in truth. But Traiyana was the one who'd fed him the cover story. She'd murmured comforting lies and explanations and made him believe that regardless of what he felt he belonged in a dead man's home.

O'Neill and Carter were both asleep when he reached them. "Hey," he said quietly not sure if he should wake them. Not sure if he was really ready to share what he had learned. Or what he expected them to do about it. O'Neill jerked awake at the sound of his voice, and Carter followed him a few seconds later. He lowered himself to sit cross-legged beside them.

"What's up?" O'Neill asked him. Carter sat up and rested her head on her folded knees like a little girl waiting to hear a bedtime story. He took a deep breath and began the tale, but it wasn't a story to put them to sleep.

When he was finished, Carter said, "She's still lying to you, Jackson. There wasn't an accident in the caves...maybe she did have a husband who died, maybe she really did need you to replace him so she and the kids had someone-but you didn't conveniently lose your memory breathing in cave gas. None of us did. We don't belong here. They just made it up."

"What do you mean?" he asked her.

"Their Circle-it goes somewhere else. I think we came through it. Maybe it's what wiped our memories or maybe that happened before we came through. Maybe we were exiles and the people on the other side wiped our memories and dumped us through like so much trash. I don't know. Maybe the villagers did this to us."

"I can't believe that," Jackson said. "They're good people."

"Are they?" O'Neill asked.

"I thought they were," Jackson answered him. "But let's say they aren't. What could they gain by lying to us?"

"Well, Talyn got a husband, Traiyana got an assistant, and the village got us to slave away for them," O'Neill pointed out.

"Come on, O'Neill, you're not that hard of a worker. Sure things would have been harder for Talyn, but she and the kids wouldn't have been put out on the streets to starve. If they did this, they had a better reason than that."

"Maybe we should just ask them?" O'Neill snarled back.

"I don't think so, Sir," Carter said. "If they did this, they could just do it again if we give them reason to."

"Good point," O'Neill conceded. "So what do we do? Just play along with this little charade?"

"I don't know," she answered. "But, we can't expect Jackson to go back to her after all she's done."

"No," Jackson agreed with her. "I can't go back there."

"Are you sure?" O'Neill asked surprising them both.

"You think he should just pretend she hasn't betrayed him, Sir?"

"No, I just think he should think about it a bit. He walks away; he loses a lot more than her. That kid loves him. That's worth a lot. He shouldn't just throw it away without some thought."

Jackson gave it some thought. "She may not have meant to, but she loves me. I'm not sure I'm ready to throw that away either."

"You're worth more than that," Carter told him, her voice hard.

He rubbed a tired hand over his eyes and shrugged. "Am I? You said maybe we were banished from the other side. Maybe we deserved to be treated like this?"

"Aagh! Don't start that nonsense," O'Neill muttered at him. "No one deserves to be robbed of who they were and lied to."

Carter spoke to her knees. "I don't know. Maybe we do."

"Not you, too!" he snapped at her. When she wouldn't meet his eye, he added, "We've already gone over this. You're not some evil monster, Carter and you never were!"

"I blew those men up, Sir! And then I walked right over their pieces chasing the rest of them to the Gate-Circle! The ones that weren't dead, I just left there to die in the dirt...do you really think I can be a good person and do that? Do you know how many of them were out there?"

"Enough."

"Sir?"

"Enough. You left enough of them lying out there that they aren't clanking all through the streets putting snakes in people's heads." All three of them shuddered at the sudden images of writhing tails and glowing eyes. "You did what you had to do, Carter. That's all any of us can do."

Jackson wondered if that summed up his problem as well. Had Talyn only done what she had to do? He didn't know. He thought of O'Neill's words. Regardless of what he decided about Talyn was he prepared to lose Ylyn and the baby? O'Neill and Carter didn't have a home to go to, but they had each other. Was he prepared to be both homeless and alone?

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Darail came to see she ate and to try to talk her into coming home for a few hours of rest. She gratefully sat and ate what food he had brought, but they both knew she wouldn't be going home yet. There were fifteen injured men and women still under her care. She thought two of them would die before the sun rose in the morning. She belonged here.

"It won't do them any good if you end up on the floor beside them," Darail stated.

"I'm fine," she told him.

"You are not fine, Traiyana. You can't lie to me."

"Why not? I've grown quite good at it."

"Traiyana." He knelt beside her and took her in his arms.

"This is a judgment on us, Darail."

"For slaying the god?" he asked her.

"No, for our deceit. For my deceit. I brought this on us. The wounded, the dead. All my fault."

"No," he assured her. "There'd be far more if you hadn't kept them with us. We couldn't have stood against the god without them. You were right to keep them here."

"I don't think so," she told him. "And I think it is time to tell them the truth."

"And let them go? Do you really think only the one god will come?"

"Carter had the Circle torn down and buried. There will be no other gods coming after us."

"Buried the Circle...is that all it took?"

She gave him a sick smile and said, "One hundred years of waiting and being afraid, and all we had to do was bury the Circle."

"Then we can't tell them the truth. He killed the god, Traiyana...what will he do to us when he knows what we've done?"

"I don't think we have any choice. I had to give them their weapons. When they have time to think, they'll be able to guess the half of it. We have to hope they will understand why we did what we did. We have to hope they can forgive us."

After Darail had returned home, she reluctantly moved down the rows of the wounded to make her confession to O'Neill, Carter, and Jackson. She would have liked his support, but it had been her decision. She was the one who must do this.

Jackson shook his head as though he could deny the whole sorry mess; Carter stared passed her as though her previous lies had forfeited any right she had to exist; and O'Neill stared into her with his stern, unwavering gaze.

"You didn't think maybe you should approach us and try to talk to us before you jumped to the conclusion we'd lead these gods to you?" he bellowed at her once she was finished.

"No," she answered, "the other with you had the brand of the gods on his forehead and their seed in his body."

"The other?" he demanded and frowned as she told them of the one she'd sent away through the Circle. "Why didn't you send us, too?" he asked.

She shrugged and shook her head. "You told me if I sent you away, you'd only return again looking for your past. I couldn't afford that. I made the decision...the others only did what was required."

"Sure," he started, but she was called away before he could finish.

For a moment, the three of them sat silenced by all they had learned then O'Neill let out a long string of curses, and Carter reluctantly dragged herself up to follow Traiyana. Jackson watched her move wearily away. He shrugged his shoulders at O'Neill and said, "Now what?"

Talyn, her face streaked with tears, was still sitting at the table when he went home. He took the sleeping baby from her arms and settled her into the cradle before sitting down across from her and taking her hand.

"So tell me about your husband," he said. She raised her head to look at him, and he gave her a gentle smile.

"You don't hate me?" she asked.

"No. I don't hate you," he said. "I think maybe...maybe we can start over. Be friends. See where things go."

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"Now what?" Jackson had asked the evening before and though he'd lain awake through the night, O'Neill was no closer to an answer. He climbed out of his bed right before Carter collapsed into it coming back after helping with the dying. He sidestepped those coming to offer him hot mush for his breakfast and walked out the door.

His shoulder wound pulled as he moved, and he was thankful for the bandages holding it in place. His legs were unsteady under him and he was shaky, but it could have been worse. He'd had worse he was sure, though that was one memory maybe he should be glad to be rid of.

The smoky haze following the battle had long since faded away. The day was clear though there was a chill in it now that hadn't been there before. The leaves had begun to turn. After months and months of summer, fall was coming.

It was not the only change in the air. The people he met smiled genuine smiles at him, they nodded greetings, and some actually took the time to shake his good hand. He wasn't sure what to make of it. Did they think because he hadn't walked out of the village the night before, he was just fine and dandy with their lies and deceptions? But then, there was no shame in their faces, none. They were still unaware that he knew the truth. As far as they were concerned, the game was still on. So what had transformed his cold and formal neighbors into warm and friendly folk?

He turned down his street. The black and charred ruins he'd expected to see weren't there. They had already been cleared away and villagers swarmed over the site preparing to begin rebuilding. Carter's dad was one of them. He nodded a friendly hello and called O'Neill over.

"Ah. It's good to see you up and about. We're about to start framing things in. Any changes you want to see made while we're at it?"

"What's going on?" he asked. "Why are you doing this? There're plenty of others who need houses, too."

"True enough, and we'll get there. But we thought it was only right we saw to yours first."

"Why? Traiyana told us the truth. You don't have to pretend anymore."

"Oh," the man said. His face turned red, and his shoulders slumped in defeat. "You know then we never wanted to lie to you. We were frightened...afraid."

"That's what I keep hearing."

"And we were wrong, of course. No one could doubt that the minute you took command. Then when you killed the god-well, that's why we're here. You saved us. A place to come home to is the least we can do."

"You expect us to stay then?"

"Where else would you go? They say they've buried the Circle. There's nowhere else for you to go. You're welcome here. And you need people-we all do."

O'Neill thought about that. They were stuck on this side of the Circle for the rest of their lives. There were no other villages. He and Carter could head off on their own. Find a nice, quiet place far away from these people who had earned nothing but their contempt and distrust. They could, but he didn't want to do that to her. He wasn't that good of company to start with, and if something happened to him or when old age caught up with him she'd be on her own. For her sake, he'd have to swallow his injured pride and learn to forgive these people and encourage her to do the same. They'd have to accept the hand they'd been dealt and get over it.

They wouldn't like it, and it wouldn't be easy for either of them. The least he could do was surround them with friends. "A bigger porch," he said. To the man's puzzled look, he explained, "We'll need a bigger porch".