Eleanor

Journal number 38, finished and tucked away in the pack I decided would be my bartering entrance to the SGC. If Daniel had made it, he'd recognize me and at least allow me to come through the gate. At this point there is no telling how far along his new timeline he is, he could have found new timeline me and be living a happy life. As he should, I was supposed to be gone in this timeline. It was supposed to end and he was going to save humanity, save me from the Ancients library, help us all. Or, the idea I didn't care for but was also possible, he had moved on and was with someone else. He had every right to that as well, I selfishly didn't like it. But, with this pack of valuable information I'd still be granted acceptance through the gate to at least try and carve a new life for myself that didn't consist of me worrying about the encroaching wall of what I'd dubbed the void of time swallowing the land around me. My least favorite of all the options, Daniel didn't make it but now I could, and no one in the SGC would believe me unless I could trade these journals for a ticket back. Any of the options left me with knowing that when I jumped back, if I was able to pull this off, I would still need to beg for the help of the Asgards who were not particularly willing to help me the last time. Then by some miracle if they did help me, I would have to start a new life of my own, alone.

What I was certain of was I could not stay here. I had gone out again to try and find things from my own home and found that it had been taken over by the encroaching void. It was moving in, sinking closer and there was no telling how much longer I had. Weeks, months, not long enough for me to continue waiting idly by. I had the internal mechanism built for my single use transportation beacon back into the past. The one positive of the cancer that was the Ancients library burrowing into my brain was that I could build virtually anything but still have no concept of really what it was. Somehow, I have figured out I was an anchor here, and once I returned back to the point of origin, the device that had sucked the life out of me that I used to bring Daniel back from his grave, it should be corrected and this timeline could end completely. What I was crafting though was a single use ticket, and my calculations had to be precise. Problem with that I am not a scientist. I am not Samantha Carter, I'm not Rodney McKay, I'm not Bill Lee, I don't even have a doctorate. I'm just Eleanor Owens, once told I was a glorified human search engine. I took in a deep breath and rolled my shoulders to keep from the cramping in my neck and rewound the mixtape in my battery powered Walkman I had found when I rummaged around the office building looking for any form of entertainment to bide my time.

If I did manage to pull this off, I had found the perfect jumping site to go to. Unlike Daniel, I couldn't go directly back through this gate. However, at the time I remembered Jonas Quinn, someone who worked with SG-1 and Daniel personally, was going to be at the Alpha site just months after Daniel's initial recovery. There was no Iris at the alpha site like there was at the SGC, so if I could come through the gate, I'd demand to see Jonas and hopefully make my way back through him. I had never met Jonas, but read enough reports and heard from Daniel personally that he was trustworthy, and close to SG-1 themselves.

Crafting this device myself was taking me a projected 6 more weeks if I could find all the pieces for it. The metal has to be locally sourced, just as far as the void would allow me, and I was working on fumes. Canned food, stale black coffee, whatever I could manage to just push me along. Oftentimes I'd sit for a moment in my thoughts and think about cream again. Creamer in coffee, ice cream, it was enough to make my mouth water. Then fresh fruit and vegetables, pomegranate seeds bursting in my mouth with a flood of tart juices, the way a peeled mandarin would form a paper thin crusting on the skin if left out for an hour and when you bit into it the tension would pop, or even the sweet crisp crunch of a sugar snap pea right off the vine. I looked over at the opened can of ravioli pasta in meat sauce I had found and grimaced, shoveling a spoonful into my grumbling stomach. It wasn't that it tasted badly it's that eating canned pasta for months at a time took a toll.

"You know imaginary Daniel," I muttered, stabbing the spoon back into the can, "you and I are like this can of ragu."

"Ragu?"

"Ah, you're here today," I sighed. Sometimes he answered, sometimes I spoke to the walls instead. "Well, I have been eating tomato sauce and noodles my whole life, and as a quick comfort food in college I had no qualms with canned whatever. But now, after months of complex rich delicious soul nurturing meals I am back to canned ragu."

"I see, I am just canned ragu."

I laughed taking in another spoonful, "no you beautiful idiot. Everyone else in my life is canned ragu, and you were a meal to fulfill all my senses. When I do make it back, you're not going to want whatever canned food I am, you'll have moved on, and I will be stuck pretending to enjoy canned food forever while mourning the delectable feast that was Daniel Jackson."

"If to you I am the main course, then you will always be dessert. The most anticipated and the most enjoyable of the two." His words in my head were intoxicating and crushing to know I was just speaking with the insanity of my own thoughts. I whispered and I love you and went back to my tinkering.

Sam

I pushed open the door into Daniel's office. When I came in this morning I noticed his car was in the parking lot, but I hadn't seen him walking the halls or getting ready for our off world jump this afternoon. The room was dark, only a small glow coming from the monitor's screen saver of his desktop bouncing light in a corner. He was slumped over the desk making a small whistling sound, his face smashed in between his bicep and the spine of a closed book. Walking over I attempted to make enough noise to startle him awake, but he was deep in slumber. My hand pat his back and he jolted upright fumbling for his glasses on top of his head and blinking into consciousness.

"We jump in an hour," I said as quietly and calmly as I could.

"Th-thanks. Thank you." He yawned and nodded.

"Did you sleep here again last night?"

"No, no I just came in early and um, well I wanted to get some reading done."

"Not to intrude too much, but I noticed you took next week off for personal leave?" Jack had brought it up to me and asked if I wanted to take leave as well, and hinted we could take leave together but I couldn't right now. I couldn't sort through my own thoughts with him there next to me.

"I did, I have requested an archived collection to poke around in at Berkeley."

"You know that you don't have to take leave to go Daniel, if it's work related..." I trailed off hoping he would answer the questions I wasn't wanting to ask outright.

"Eleanor's birthday is today." He whispered. "And I am going to help Teal'c's new colony instead of spending it with her. Instead of packing a picnic and eating under the cherry blossoms down the road for lunch, I am here. There's no lemon cake with lilac flowers on it, there is no picking her up because she went out to dinner and had too many cocktails with her friends, with you Sam." He looked at me misty eyed, "you and Janet, and some woman in finance who I don't even talk to. There's none of it. It's this, and don't get me wrong, I want to help. I want this colony to go well, and thrive and grow." He grew silent.

"But it feels like a part of you is missing. Always." I answered and he nodded.

"I know Jack thinks I'm crazy, but she's there, somewhere, and based on everything Teal'c said I'm taking leave to search for anything I can get my hands on to get her back." He stood up and stretched his body raising his arms in the air and I understood everything he had said, what he felt. There was nothing to say though as we walked together to get ready.

3 hours later we were walking through the mountainous cliff sides the Jaffa had decided to set up as a permanent village. Daniel had provided examples of Machu Picchu's irrigation for the free Jaffa to use in their own plans, and the mountain was thriving. Children ran past kicking a ball along the carved path from the gate, some variation of oxen were hobbling along on a plateau and Teal'c proudly pointed out the crops growing along the stream and inbetween the stone houses starting to form. I was amazed, it was thriving and a unified village. Daniel's eyes even started to twinkle again when Jack slapped a hand on his shoulder and mentioned this continued because of his intervention from the time jump. Janet had tagged along on the jump in order to start a round of vaccinations in the smaller children and create a medical bay for training some of the younger adults in natural local antiseptics for medicinal use.

My eyes wandered on Jack, who had a makeshift soccer ball and was kicking it back and forth to a collection of five other kids. The laughter that bellowed out from him warmed my cheeks, his absolute joy in just a small moment with them, when he wasn't Colonel O'Neill, but he was Jack. I desperately wanted what Daniel seemed to have had, someone to long for, someone to care about, and I cared about Jack. I knew cared about me, but I also saw the crippling defeat that Daniel was going through now that she was gone. How he seemed to delusionally believe that he would just find her again. I could never allow myself that, not when both Jack and my job depended on choosing the greater good over ourselves. I knew Jack, and he would choose me every time, but I don't know if I could.