Daniel tossed Sam an MRE packet and sat down to start heating his as Teal'c and Connor worked on the campsite perimeter. She stared at the packet, not at all hungry but knowing she needed to eat, and finally tore it open.

"I know he made you nervous, but he seemed sane enough at the SGC," Daniel said, digging through his pack for a bowl. The man never wanted to eat from the packet.

She sighed, wanting to dodge the conversation. "I guess so."

"For awhile there, Jack thought you were gonna go back to him."

For awhile there, she'd thought that, too, and she just flipped the MRE packet over in her hands.

"Were you?"

Sam sighed, looking for an easy way to explain the impossible and coming up empty-handed. "Have you ever been crazy, all-out, head over heels for someone?" she asked him finally.

To her surprise, Daniel nodded. "Yeah."

"Sha're," she realized, and he nodded again. She winced. "But that's... different. You two were isolated. And it didn't last very long. And it didn't fall apart on its own."

"So... what? She just doesn't count?" the archaeologist shot back.

"No, no, of course it counts; it's just... not the same kind of thing. It kind of kills the metaphor." Though, if she were completely honest with him, she'd tell him flat-out that a year wasn't enough time to fall out of the infatuation stage. Maybe Sha're hadn't been the woman of his dreams at all, and they just hadn't been together long enough for him to figure it out. Shoving that thought aside, she wracked her brain for another analogy and finally settled for stealing Janet's. "Have you ever smoked?"

Daniel immediately opened his mouth to answer, then thought about it for a moment and asked, "Smoked... what, exactly?"

Surprised, Sam's eyebrows slowly lifted.

"I... uh... Well, look," he defended. "There was this stuff on Abydos, kind of like..." Realizing he was merely digging himself a deeper hole, he cleared his throat. "But I suppose that's not really important, right? So, uh, no, I've never smoked. Cigarettes. Which is what you meant, I think. Cigarettes."

She shook her head. "Never mind."

Well, that confession had been awkward, and he shifted his attention to the MRE, dumping it into a bowl and taking a bite. "This tastes like chicken."

Immensely grateful for the change in subject, Sam glanced at Daniel and asked, "So what's wrong with it?"

"It's macaroni and cheese."

Oh. Well, that made her even less enthusiastic about her own dinner – not that she had an ounce of appetite, anyway. She tossed it back in its overwrap and hoped no one would notice.

But that left them in silence. And she couldn't stand the silence, because it meant that someone could ask about Jonas at any moment. So when Connor sat beside her, she tried again. "So, uh, any indigenous lions, tigers, or bears I should lie awake worrying about?"

He shook his head. "The plant life's all that seems to live very long in the sun."

"Now, how could something like this actually happen?" Daniel asked from beside her. "I mean, the SG teams are supposedly made up of well-trained professionals."

And there it was. She looked away, which unfortunately left her looking at Connor, who said, "Well, when we first met the cave dwellers, they immediately bowed down to us – thought we were gods."

"Well, that's a fairly common phenomenon," the archaeologist said. "I mean... it happens."

"Except Hanson didn't deny it. Told us it might be safer if we allowed them to think he was a god for awhile. Said it was the... system of government they needed to retake their world."

"And you were okay with that?" Daniel's tone echoed Sam's thoughts exactly.

"Frakes was our anthropologist," the other man explained. "He agreed with Hanson that it might be safer. But the longer we stayed here, the stronger they believed."

And the easier it was for Jonas to play along. Sam set her teeth.

"In our fourth or fifth week here, a young child wandered out of the caves – must have gotten lost. Hanson went out after him. He was gone for two full days before he came back, carrying the child – barely alive – in his arms."

Of course he had. Jonas had always had a soft spot for children – he'd wanted his own. Their own. Pain struck deep in her chest. "The cave dwellers must have loved him for that."

"Yeah, they did." Connor shrugged. "He wasn't the same after that."

She blinked. "You're saying that's what sent him over the edge? The sun?" She knew better, and even if she didn't, that theory sounded so ridiculous...

"It wasn't any one thing," the other man said with a sigh. "If it was, me and Frakes, we could have seen it coming. Done something about it before..."

"Before what?" Teal'c asked.

"There were a few cave dwellers who got the idea that Hanson was just a man like they were. Thanks to Frakes and I. He had them tied to stakes and left out in the direct sunlight. If they lived seven days, they were allowed back in the caves."

She knew Jonas was capable of killing – that was his job. She'd watched him beat a man to the ground and refuse to stop. But leaving them to roast in the sun? That was... was torture, and suddenly she was glad she hadn't eaten. Her stomach flipped, sending its acid straight up to the back of her throat, and she was pretty sure she was going to vomit before Daniel's voice distracted her.

"A number of significant biblical events took place over the course of seven days."

"By then they were blind. Giant, bleeding burns all over them," Connor went on, and she just prayed for him to stop, to take it back, to admit that it was all a lie. "Just took them a little longer to die. Personally, I'd rather eat a bullet."

Sam couldn't take any more, and she was debating how big the perimeter was – how far away she could get – when her CO said softly, "I'll take first watch."