• SPOILERS : Beneath the Surface, Need, Point of View, There But for the Grace of God, Torment of Tantalus, Gamekeeper, Children of the Gods, First Ones, Crystal Skull, Double Jeopardy, Forever in a Day, Stargate-the movie. oh, and probably some others.
• WARNINGS : There is some violence which some people may find disturbing.  I truly hope that it does not offend.  I am sure those who have already had a sneak preview of this story would have let me know if I had overstepped the mark too far.
• After the events of Beneath the Surface, Jack finds himself in a very different version of Earth.
• R [A] [AU] [D] [HC] [V]

"Excuse me… er, sir?"

With an eyebrow raised in curiosity, Colonel Jack O'Neill straightened from the stooped position he found himself in and looked around in astonishment. He hadn't been here a few moments ago had he?

Jack battled with his memory. Flashbacks and blackouts, he knew he'd had them recently, but this wasn't quite like either of those sensations. Facts… establish facts. Where? Zip. Second… How? Double zip. Third… Who? J… J-ack. He was Jack, not Jona. Jack.

It was the only detail he could be certain of and he felt like screaming it aloud. His name was Jack.

"No one is allowed inside the barriers, sir." The insistent female voice pierced his consciousness again.

Though thoroughly confused, it gradually dawned on Jack that he was the subject of the reprimand. He turned slowly and his gaze met with that of the small, but well-rounded woman pacing purposefully up the wide aisle toward him. She was pointing demandingly at the cordon marking the area he was standing in. Hastily, he stepped over the rope to plant his feet on the dark maroon carpet running the length of the gangway and smiled in appeasement at the woman.

"Thank you," the woman said with unconcealed relief, splaying a hand across the top of her chest. "These exhibits are very rare and…" her rapid, agitated stream of words soon trailed off as she apparently became aware she no longer held his attention.

Jack had closed his eyes to distance himself from the scene. Something very odd had just happened, he was sure, but as to what, it appeared he was momentarily incapable of determining. His brain seemed to be completely scrambled, and he could only hope it was a temporary condition. There was a strange tingling sensation in his fingers and toes, rather like having received a minor electric shock, but he couldn't see anything nearby that might have caused him such harm.

Having found no solution to the enigma by simply blotting the view out, Jack decided there was nothing for it other than to study his current surroundings again. He scrutinized the room carefully, hoping something would give him a clue as to what was going on. It certainly seemed familiar, and yet something wasn't right. He couldn't remember coming in through those huge wooden doors, or walking up that aisle. So how did he get here?

Silently, he recited his name, rank and serial number. The incantation of long ingrained information somehow started to make things clearer.

In his slowly defogging short-term memory he could see himself emerging through a similarly large, but open doorway, into a high ceilinged room much like this one, but it had been much brighter. Yes, the lights had been fluorescent, not tungsten bulbs.

He was surrounded by antiques, and similarly old things pervaded his memory. Though he possessed no particular clarity as to the differences between those in his mind and those he could now see, but he was quite certain something was missing from the picture. But for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what.

Finally, amid all the personal conflict, he managed to speak. "I'm still in the museum?"

"Yes, sir." She stared at him, searchingly. "Are you alright? Are you lost?" She asked softly, as she edged a little closer to him.

It sounded to Jack that her tone was one she might use when dealing with young children, or was she wondering if she should just come right out and ask him which loony bin had he escaped from? And who could blame her ? He had just spent the last few minutes in a world of his own. "Lost? Yeah, well, I ain't in Kansas that's for sure…" he replied, wistfully.

"N-no…" she stammered, uncertainly, "this is Washington."

"Washington?" Jack looked at her in surprise.

"Yes." The woman's eyes narrowed sceptically, even as she made a polite suggestion, "Perhaps you'd better come with me, sir. We'll see if we can sort you out." She started to take Jack's arm, but he objected to her touch and pulled away from her sharply.

Obviously bothered by this swift evasive maneuver, the woman opened her mouth. Anticipating a call for help, Jack placed a finger across her lips. Effectively silenced, her eyes grew wide in alarm. "No, please," he said calmly. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I just need to figure out what's going on here. Give me a minute. Okay?"

Waiting until she slowly nodded, her plump cheeks bobbling slightly, he removed his finger. "Okay?" She nodded again and kept silent, but glowered with mistrust.

"Look, I know this must seem… odd, but I wasn't here just now." He tried to focus his thoughts back to what he could remember before his seemingly abrupt appearance in this familiar, but unknown place, where something was missing.

Bits and pieces were beginning to come back to him as he concentrated hard. What had he been doing just before the voice had called to him?

A flash. Remembering the tingling sensation, he looked at his fingers. Lightning ? No, more like… from a camera. But the sizzling of his nerves... From what ?

"I touched something…" Jack said quietly, as much to himself as to the woman. He peered anxiously back at where he had first been, behind the rope, and huffed in frustration when there wasn't anything he immediately recognised. Then his gaze settled upon an object on top of the table he had stood beside… a roughly square shaped metallic frame. It was brash and over-carved, and would have detracted from any picture placed inside. Maybe that's why there was no picture, just a dull flat surface, making a rather ineffective mirror. Or was it perhaps too effective? The more Jack thought about it, the less he liked the conclusion he kept arriving at. The flash and that frame were definitely connected, and suddenly he was struck with a vision of what, or more to the point *who* it was that was missing from the scene.

"That." Jack confirmed it to himself as he pointed at the frame, seeing it now for what it was. A quantum mirror. Great, just great, he thought. And with that realization came the overwhelming comprehension that he was in an alternate reality. He felt suddenly naked. Without a weapon or his uniform, this was a potentially hostile situation for which he had no preparation.

Oblivious to the woman's objections, he stepped back over the rope and began rummaging through the other items on the table. The remote control had to be here somewhere… it *had* to be. "Crap," he cursed vehemently when his impromptu search didn't reveal what he needed. How the hell was he going to get back home without it? He banged the last item in his hand back down on the table with a resounding thud.

An utterly horrified expression seized the woman's face.

"Sorry," Jack apologized, though whether the poor old dear was more shocked by his mouth's lack of respect for the sober venue, or the way he had treated the relics, he couldn't be sure. He shouldn't really vent his anger at her. She likely had no idea what he could find so perturbing about such a seemingly benign antiquity. The fact that such a potentially hazardous device was on display in a museum must mean that no one in this dimension knew of its being anything other than the decorative item it portrayed itself as. So, he gave her what he hoped was a placating and suitably pathetic smile.

It seemed to work.

"Come on," she urged, pity finally creeping through her austerity and a warm smile bunching up her rosy cheeks. "I'll take you to the Head Curator's office. We'll see if we can find some way to help you." She moved off ahead of him, obviously having learnt her lesson over the attempt at physical contact, but glanced nervously over her shoulder every now and then to make sure he was keeping up.

Jack followed the woman in an almost dreamlike state. When he wasn't mesmerized by the dizzying sway of the large expanse of floral print before him, he was aware of travelling through dim oak panelled corridors, lined with large ornate gilt framed pictures. Portraits mainly, although the faces were unfamiliar, from varied and earlier periods of history… and he thought ruefully, a different version of Earth altogether.

Eventually, the flowers in front stopped dancing.

"Wait here," the woman told him before she knocked on a not quite closed, heavy looking door at the end of the passage.

She waited until her rapping was acknowledged by a simple, "Come in," from somewhere deep within, and then cracked the door open a little further.

Her figure obliterated any view of the room beyond the door as she turned with a question before she entered. "Oh, what's your name?" she asked.

"Jack," he replied. "Jack O'Neill." He expanded, deciding to leave his rank out of the equation for the time being.

She nodded and then hurried into the room, leaving the door ajar behind her.

He tried to listen to what she was saying, though he could not make out enough of the muffled words to decipher them. He could only hope they weren't just stalling him long enough for a security force or the police to get there.

Stella Grant bustled away from the head curator's office, hoping that a nice strong cup of tea would help calm her nerves.

It wasn't everyday a tall, dark, handsome stranger quite literally appeared before your very eyes. She still wasn't certain of what she had seen exactly, but she doubted the man was some kind of magician. The way he just seemed to be there, where there had been no one just seconds before, must have been to do with the flickering of the lights… nothing and no more mysterious than that. Stella reminded herself that she didn't entertain fantasies… not anymore.

She had managed to deliver the stranger to her boss, and thought she could safely say she had handled the situation quite well. And now, the matter was out of her hands, thankfully.

Except, she kind of wished she'd stayed to see the outcome of the meeting. It was all very intriguing, and no amount of tea was going to stop her wondering what was going to happen to him... Jack. He of the well-worn brown leather jacket, tan pants with more pockets than could possibly be useful and dark green shirt. She etched the vision onto her memory, in the first place because she suspected she would never see him again and in the second… it was rather a nice image to keep. If only she were a few years younger, she might be tempted to hang up her cynical tendencies and indulge a desire or two.

Though she'd told her superior how she had caught the man amongst the exhibits and that he appeared to be lost and confused, she hadn't added anything about how she felt about him. There was something about the man's eyes that made her feel like she could trust him and they seemed to contain a bizarre mixture of wit and pain. He… Jack… looked like he could be dangerous. His lightning quick reaction when she had tried to take his arm had told her in no uncertain terms that he was not someone you'd really want to mess with, but at the same time there was a softness in those mahogany-shaded orbs that cried out for sympathy.

She always studied people's eyes. They spoke volumes to her.

The eyes from across the desk had illuminated with curiosity while she was speaking. Her boss was never one to dismiss anything peculiar, she considered, rather proudly of him. More often than not, there was pain in those eyes too, she thought sorrowfully, and she wished, as she did almost every day, that she didn't know quite so much about that as she did.

Opening the door to the staff rest room, Stella shook her head to clear away where she felt those thoughts were leading. There wasn't anything she could do about it. It was just another one of those situations confirming she had the right attitude toward dreams. They never came true, as far as she could see… at least, not without a very hefty price-tag. So what was the point in having them?

She filled the kettle and put it on the small stove to boil. Yes, a nice cup of tea should clip the wings of all those butterflies in her stomach. While she waited, she pondered how Jack might be getting on upstairs.

When Stella had asked if she should show the stranger into the office, she already knew he wouldn't be turned away.

She had poked her head back round the side of the door and called to Jack, stepping back to allow him entrance as he approached. Initially, she'd sensed a tensing in him, a hesitation as he walked into the room, and she wondered if he would turn and bolt back out of the door, fearful of being confronted. He didn't though, and in some respect he seemed to relax. It was almost as if he had been anticipating an enemy and found a friend instead. Perhaps he had, she'd felt the same way herself when she first met her then new boss some two years ago.

Even though she was almost twice his age and her mothering instinct came into play the instant she was with him, she had an enormous respect for the young man behind the desk. If anyone could help the mysterious stranger in the hall it would be him.

Jack walked into the neat office and nodded politely at the woman who moved back from the doorway to usher him inside. The natural light was muted by thin material screens over the windows, toning down what would have been glaring sunshine into a delicate wash of brightness. Immediately the vast array of large, leather bound books lining the shelves set into more oak panelled walls drew his gaze, until he spotted the man almost lost behind the enormous desk set between the two high windows on the far wall. The man's head was bowed over as he finished his writing with a flourish, but it soon popped up to see who had entered his room.

Jack's countenance floundered once more as he found himself looking at a very familiar face indeed.

While his own voice seemed trapped in his throat, the woman spoke for him. "This is Jack O'Neill, the gentleman who could use some help."

"Thank you, Stella. I'll take him off your hands." The head curator smiled nicely at the woman, obviously sensing her unease at trying to deal with the unusual situation. "Why don't you have your lunch now? Then we'll tackle the cataloguing of that new shipment this afternoon, okay?"

Stella smiled gratefully at having been dismissed. "Thank you, Doctor Jackson," she said as she left and closed the door behind her.

Jack stared at the visage he knew so well, instantly notching up the subtle differences that set apart this man from his friend. The hair was the most obvious… long… longer even than when he'd first known Daniel. An easy smile lit up places in this one's eyes that Jack hadn't seen since the kiss Sha'uri had given Daniel before they'd gone to the map room. A faint scar ran the length of his left cheek, while the one he knew his Daniel possessed on his chin was missing. And the glasses… were thick, clumsy looking, not the lightweight frames and plastic lenses his friend wore.

"Have a seat," Jackson called across the space dividing them, waving his hand at the chair in front of his desk. His manner was overtly friendly and Jack could see no reason not to comply with the simple invitation. He strode casually across the enormous intricately patterned rug to sit in the wing-backed leather chair in front of Jackson's desk.

Jackson settled back comfortably in his matching chair. "You'll have to excuse Stella," he said, nodding toward the door with a gentle amused expression that showed no trace of derision. "She's great with the exhibits, but she likes things all neat and tidy… anything out of the ordinary and she goes to pieces."

The atmosphere was relaxed, Jackson seemingly unperturbed by the fact he had a complete stranger in his office. But even knowing Daniel as well as he did, Jack was not one to give up his guard readily, and a sudden wave of concern washed over him as Jackson moved his hand to hover over an antiquated intercom.

"Would you like some coffee?" the younger man asked. "Knowing Stella, she'll have gone straight to the kitchen to put the kettle on, I could ask her to…"

"Ah, no thanks." Jack cut Jackson off, his eyes fixed firmly on whatever that hand might do. When it dropped away to rest on the desk without having pressed any of the buttons, he pushed some of his anxieties away and decided to start taking charge of his fate. "You're the curator?"

"Yes." Jackson nodded. "Well, Head Curator, if you want to be specific."

"A little young for that aren't you?" Jack queried.

"Thanks." Jackson laughed heartily. "Just because museums are full of old relics, doesn't mean that the people who work in them have to be ancient too."

"No, I suppose not," Jack conceded. He found himself drawn to the young man, in a way in which he hadn't immediately taken to the Daniel of his own reality.

When he'd first encountered the archaeologist, all he'd seen was the epitome of an archetypal bumbling professor. One that sneezed… a lot. And the nervous laugh accompanying his theory on what the coverstone's symbols represented did nothing for its credence. Only Catherine's faith that the solution had been found prevented Jack from hoisting the kid up by the scruff of his unfashionable jacket and kicking him out of the mountain.

His opinion didn't improve much with their initial few missions. Daniel blustered about, trod on peoples toes in more ways than one and generally got in peoples faces until they came round to his way of thinking. Shy and affable projecting naturally, inept…certainly from a military viewpoint, and stubborn to a fault, the archaeologist continued to confuse Jack's judgement of him.

Sure, Jack had respect for Daniel, both for his expertise and for his tenacity. On the mission to Abydos, he'd shown he had guts aplenty as they fought side by side to rid the people of their oppressor. He'd even felt sorry for the guy when Jack was forced to haul his ass back to Earth only minutes after losing his wife to the Goa'uld. But *like* him? No. That had come later…

It was only after Jack came to know the young man behind the sturdily constructed façade that he began calling him a friend. Bit by tiny bit, he'd learned of altogether too much crap that had been heaped on the archaeologist over the years, and as a consequence Daniel had buried himself in a psychological blanket, keeping the cold he knew as his life from chilling his soul.

So to hear the young man on the other side of the desk rolling a glib remark off his tongue as easily as he had done, came as quite a shock. Daniel's sense of humor could often be more caustic than Jack's particular brand of sarcasm. He'd been known to stun an unwitting opponent from fifty paces, because no one expected it of him. Jack was sure it was a defence mechanism, as was his own. It came from one too many of his theories being regarded as nonsense, something Jack couldn't help but do on occasions even though he knew he should know better. Daniel had been proved right on too many things to discount anything he said, without good evidence to the contrary. How Daniel had maintained confidence in his abilities under such duress was beyond Jack, and he'd come to admire him for it… amongst many other qualities the archaeologist had revealed along their time together.

Jack instantly liked head curator Jackson. This was a young man who was comfortable with who he was, and was unafraid to show the world. But, the colonel really didn't have time for speculation on the whys and the wherefores of the differences in this reality. He just wanted to go home. "Listen, I'm not one for small talk… how much do you know about the things you've got in here?"

"Quite a lot," Jackson said steadily, leaning forward to fix Jack with an intense gaze. "I am the Head Curator, remember."

There it was again. The man was so at ease with himself, it was disturbing to think of all the things that had happened to *his* Daniel to make him almost ashamed of his own intelligence. Fate, it seemed had not dealt such cruel blows to the one in front of him now.

"No, I mean, really know about these things…" Jack leaned closer too, allowing his hands to rest on the desk.

The two men sat like that for a tense moment, their foreheads only inches apart, before Jackson's face twitched and he dropped back in his seat.

"I'm sorry, I don't see what you mean. Are you talking about the Rothman Expedition exhibits in particular, or…"

"The what?" Jack interrupted.

"The Rothman Expedition… well his latest one, anyway… those were the exhibits Stella found you amongst, wasn't it?"

"I don't know," Jack said hesitantly. "Rothman?" The name stung him particularly hard. It had only been a few months since he'd had to kill the guy. He'd never understood why Daniel had insisted Rothman join the SGC. Jack couldn't stand him… always late, a permanent snuffle and a scientist. Hmmm, hadn't Daniel been like that at first ? At least Fraiser had sorted out the allergy problems and he wasn't particularly tardy anymore, not without good reason, anyway. Though he was still prone to running through the door at the very last minute, clutching papers, files, books, coffee… Everything he'd seen so far of the young man in front of him made him believe this Jackson wasn't quite that ditzy.

Whatever hope there might have been that he could accept the guy vanished as surely as Daniel had done when he'd been zapped by that crystal skull. Rothman had been unable to put aside his academic training and open his mind to the possibilities of what might have happened. It had made Jack appreciate all the more just how special Daniel was… the way he could see around the black and white of a problem.

Pointing to the bookshelves, Jackson explained, "Yes, Robert Rothman, archaeologist, explorer, he's very good in his field."

"So you kept telling me," Jack replied quietly as he followed the direction of the finger with his eyes and squinted. 'R.L. Rothman' was named as the author on every one of a whole row of gargantuan tomes. So the geek really had been bright. Go figure.

Plainly baffled at the remark, Jackson stared at him open mouthed. Now that was an expression Jack was very well acquainted with and it pleased him to see it, but none of this was getting him very far on his quest. "Look, this is getting us nowhere…"

"You're right," Jackson agreed and slapped the table demonstrably. "Let's start again shall we? I'm Daniel Jackson… and you are?" He held his hand out toward Jack.

"O'Neill, Colonel Jack O'Neill. United States Air Force," he said, stiffening into an overly upright position worthy of his rank. After a moment's consideration he reached for the outstretched hand and shook it once.

Jackson gave nothing away in his face as he absorbed the information. "Okaaay," he drawled. "Can I call you Jack?"

"You usually do," O'Neill sighed.

"Excuse me?"

"Forget it." Jack waved off any explanation. How cautiously should he proceed with the questioning? The man that bore his friend's face was clearly not quite the same character. How far would he allow Jack to get with his story before he was discounted as the nutcase Stella had probably already told Jackson he was? God, if he hadn't actually been to an alternate reality himself, he would still be having a hard time believing Daniel's story about P3R 233. He had certainly never fully appreciated what the archaeologist had gone through… until now.

How the hell was he supposed to explain this?

Taking a deep breath, Jack opted for the straight approach. "Right, here's the deal. There's a device amongst your exhibits called a Quantum Mirror. Now I'm guessing you have absolutely no idea what it is or what it does…"

Jackson shook his head, his long hair fell across his eyes, but he did nothing to unveil them again.

Jack continued, giving as much information as he deemed necessary to procure a result. "It's right down there with those… Rothman exhibits. I'll show you which one. " He felt like a drowning man clutching at reeds as he scrambled for words to describe the function of the mirror, without sounding as if he'd taken it from some cheap sci-fi novel. It was pretty much an impossible feat. "It's kinda like a portal to other dimensions, and I know this sounds crazy, but you *have* to believe me." He took a deep breath and swallowed. "I'm from another reality."

Jackson stared incredulously at the soldier, no doubt wondering if maybe Stella had every right to seem worried. "Perhaps there's someone I can call…" he made a move for the phone, but Jack shot his hand out and clamped down on the receiver. The action made Jackson flinch.

"Haven't you heard of the theory where it's possible for every option of a decision a person has to make can be played out?" Jack asked, leaning over the desk, his hand firmly rendering the phone out of bounds.

"Vaguely…" Jackson confessed, "I'm not a physicist, but I've read Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Can't say it made a whole lot of sense, which is probably why they…"

"Well it's all true." Jack interrupted. "I'm not a scientist either and I don't know *how* it works, only that it *does*. And I know you, Doctor Jackson. Doctor Daniel Jackson. Born July 8^th 1965. Archaeologist, anthropologist, linguist. Orphaned as a small boy. Grandfather Nicholas Ballard. Do you want me to go on?"

Leaning back in his seat to put some extra distance between them, Jackson regarded Jack warily. "We've never met," he said deliberately.

"Not in this reality, but in mine… we work together," Jack declared.

"I'm in the Air Force in your… reality?" Jackson spoke sceptically.

"No, you're still a civilian."

"Oh, so, what work do *we* do… together?"

With the young man finally showing a spark of interest in his story, Jack relinquished his hold on the phone. Unfortunately, he could see that he was going to have to tell more than he really would have liked, and it suddenly went through his military mind that he might be contravening his own security measures. Did alternate realities come under the protocols he had helped General Hammond put in place? This was Daniel after all… of sorts...

"We work on the Stargate project," Jack announced, hoping that might ring some bells, without giving too much away.

"Stargate," Jackson repeated, benignly. He pulled a pad of paper from the side of the desk and began making notes.

"Look, I really don't have time for this. I just need to get the mirror and find the remote control for it, so that I can get home. Can we go back to that hall and take a look?"

"Remote control?" Jackson looked up while he continued writing.

"Yeah, it's a small… I dunno… it's like a rock with two smooth panels on it. You use it… somehow… to find the reality you want to go to."

"And you don't have one of these… remote controls?"

"No," Jack sighed.

"Then how did you get here?"

"If I knew that…" Jack trailed off as he thought of being in the other museum with his Daniel.

"What?"

"You… the other you… my you… Daniel. He'd taken me to the museum to see some new exhibition. Well, I was only there 'cause my car was in the shop and he was giving me a ride home. We took a detour…" Some freakin' detour! Jack cursed sourly to himself. "He touched something… I touched something… and voila…" he gestured theatrically at himself, like a conjuror finishing an illusion. It didn't take a genius to conclude Daniel must have had the remote control.

"So you didn't intend to come here?"

"No."

"And you haven't got one of these control things."

"No. If I did I would have gone back home as soon as I realized what had happened and I wouldn't be here wasting your time and mine. But you've got a mirror in that exhibition hall; chances are you've got a controller too. Though it's probably just an artefact to you."

"What if you don't find the control among the other exhibits?"

Jack sighed. "Then I'm stuck here and I don't want to think about that. Can we just look, please?"

Daniel held up his index finger, stalling. "In a minute. I'm curious…"

O'Neill huffed in exasperation.

"You still haven't explained about what work we do, in your reality. I've never heard of…" he consulted his notes, "the Stargate project. What is that?"

"The Stargate is a big ring. It allows us to travel to other planets. And I don't know how that works either. It's all to do with worms and apples, apparently."

He watched Jackson's eyes grow wide with disbelief.

"Yeah, I know," Jack sympathized. Who in their right mind would believe any of this stuff? "Alternate realities, interstellar travel, other planets, aliens… we get to do some pretty wild things. Put simply, we're explorers. We make friends, make enemies, find stuff…"

"Really?" Jackson's eyebrows danced. "Exploring other planets…" he said whimsically and then shook his head. "Why am *I* doing that?"

Jack sighed in annoyance. This was hard work. How on Earth had Daniel convinced the Jack O'Neill of the Goa'uld overrun world to help him? Honesty, probably. He launched into as succinct an explanation as he could manage. "You made the Stargate work. The rest is a long story, but basically, most of the worlds we've visited, have been inhabited by humans, taken from all over Earth. Your knowledge of ancient civilizations and languages has enabled us to communicate with them. Getting out there amongst all that 'living history' is what makes you… ah… *my* Daniel, tick. Frankly, I'm surprised that you're here in this stuffy office. I'd have thought you would have been off in the middle of nowhere doing *the digging thing* that he loves so much."

"Umm," Jackson hesitated, and for a while Jack thought he had overloaded the young man with absurd information, but when the curator spoke again it was clear that something else Jack had said was on his mind. "I, uh, haven't been on a dig since I was little." He leaned heavily on the desk and hauled himself to his feet. "It's not really practical."

Jack watched in grim fascination, as the younger man bent to lock the knee clips of the leg braces concealed by his grey, flannel pants and reached behind to the window ledge, against which two metal crutches were resting. He had always prided himself in being observant, but he hadn't even noticed them. So much for fate being kind to this Daniel, he thought ruefully. Perhaps there was some almighty decree at work in the universe… *universes*. 'Daniel Jackson… for every step toward happiness, there must be two toward sorrow.'

Jackson maneuvered himself around the desk. "Guess the 'me' in your reality isn't a useless cripple then," he said, acerbically.

"No," O'Neill softly replied, overcome by this stark revelation.

"Lucky him," Jackson voiced in a resentful manner.

Jack was shocked at the uncharacteristic bitterness and self-pity in the sound of his friend's voice. It was almost enough to affect his feelings toward the young man, and he was never more thankful that the tone didn't last long.

"Come on," Jackson urged, eagerness surfacing. "Let's see if we can find that artefact you want." With a practised ease that Daniel had never achieved with crutches, despite the number of times he'd had to use them, Jackson headed for the door. Jack followed cheerlessly behind.

They made their way through the maze of corridors in silence, until Jack could not keep his curiosity at bay any longer.

"What happened?" he asked, unable to ignore the disability.

Jackson saw O'Neill's gaze was fixed on his legs. "Oh, an accident… when I was a kid. My dad died…"

"The temple reconstruction?"

"You know about that?"

"A little…" Jack confessed. Despite SG-1's run in with the Gamekeeper, or however that little sadist liked to refer to himself, a couple of years ago, he had never gotten much more out of Daniel as to what had happened that fateful day.

"I could see the lintel was about to fall. I managed to pull Mom out of the way, yanked her so hard we both fell over… she was so mad, I didn't think she'd ever stop yelling at me. Then the whole lot come down on Dad… and me." He paused as if reliving the experience. "My legs were crushed."

"So, *your* Mom survived…" Jack considered how his Daniel had lost both parents in the accident, and he found himself wondering what differences that alone might have made between the two versions of the same man.

"She died a few years later. Nick said she died of a broken heart, losing my Dad and then having to watch me go through operation after operation to try to do something with these." Jackson looked down angrily at his legs.

"You're not paralysed then?"

"No, there's just no strength in the bones. They're pinned, but there wasn't any pieces left big enough to bolt together to make a decent job of it." A loud chime from somewhere outside alerted Jackson to his watch. He briefly noted the time and pulled a flattish round tin from his pants pocket. Selecting a small white pill from inside, he swallowed it dry.

"Allergies?" O'Neill enquired lightly, expecting an affirmative.

"Not these," Jackson informed him soberly. "Painkillers." Doubtfully, he opened the tin again and took another. He looked across at Jack, who was watching him studiously. "Only s'posed to take one…" he said apologetically, explaining his hesitancy over the second pill. Ruefully, he gave a little snort that wrinkled his nose and added, "Sometimes I wish I was paralysed… the effect would be the same, but at least it wouldn't hurt so much."

"Can't they do anything?"

"These used to help," he rattled the tin before returning it to his pocket, "but not so much anymore… it's the strongest they've got." He paused and shook his head. "Besides, I hate hospitals."

"Yeah, I know."

Plainly amused at the colonel's apparent knowledge of his self, Jackson pressed him further as they continued on their journey. "I can't imagine working for the military."

"Take it from me, my Daniel doesn't exactly see eye to eye with us a lot of the time either. I think he sees it as his duty to oppose us. Still, it keeps life interesting to say the least, even if he is a pain in the butt… Sorry, no offence."

"None taken. I'm glad he has the courage to stand up for what he believes in," Jackson said wistfully.

"Actually, so am I… but don't tell him I said that." Jack laughed. "He's saved us from a lot of awkward situations with his non-military thinking."

"I have to admit, this is all a bit hard to take in. Any of those details about me, you could have got from the staff here. It isn’t proof that you know me." Tipping his head to one side, he corrected himself. "Another me."

"Still can't get used to it myself, but it's very real," Jack said and then had a sudden thought. "Here." He reached into his jacket pocket for his wallet, and pulled a slightly battered photograph from it, pushing the one of Charlie back down as he did so. He had never told anyone that he kept it there. It was a copy of the one he always took on missions… not for sentimental reasons, or so he told himself. Carrying a picture was a much easier option to locate a missing team member than the kind of hilarious charades he'd had to indulge in on the first mission to Abydos when he'd misplaced Daniel.

He handed the picture to Jackson. "Is that proof enough?" he asked.

The younger man studied the faces with interest, and even ran a finger over the image of his counterpart, as if physically absorbing the differences in their appearances. Then Jack noticed a look of puzzlement on Jackson's face. The colonel pointed to the other team members in turn. "That's Carter, she's a scientist as well… and that's Teal'c."

"You have a Jaffa in your team?"

The question took Jack completely by surprise and he stepped away from his friend's double in shock. "You know about the Jaffa?" Jackson had denied all knowledge about the Stargate. How the hell did he know about the enemy who used it as their own?

Jackson almost sniggered. "Of course. Why shouldn't I? There have been Jaffa living on Earth for years."

"Then you know about the Goa'uld as well…" Jack's hackles rose. Suddenly, the playing field had warped considerably.

"The Goa'uld?" Jackson sounded bemused.

Verbal duels with this version of Daniel were becoming about as frustrating as most of those with his own. Wearily, Jack replied, "Yeah, you know… little snakey thing, lives in a Jaffa's stomach."

"The symbiote?"

"That's the one."

"It acts as the Jaffa's immune system. That's about as much as I know. The Jaffa keep pretty much to themselves."

Jack was confounded. How could Jaffa live alongside the people in this reality and someone in a position like Jackson's know hardly anything about them?

"So you know nothing about what the symbiote does when it matures?"

"Matures?"

"Yes, damn it." Jack was getting more irritated by what he could only guess was a sham of ignorance from the other man. How could anyone… especially someone who was supposed to be Daniel be so ignorant of things around them? He had to be being toyed with. "I don't like being taken for a fool," he said threateningly.

"And neither do I, Colonel Jack O'Neill. If that's even your real name." Jackson pulled up and spun adeptly to glare at Jack. "I run a museum, not a mental institution. You come here, frightening my staff and feed me some outrageous story. You're lucky I haven't called the police, in fact…"

"No," Jack implored. "Please… Everything I've told you is true. It's just, I…" God, what was he trying to say? No wonder the guy though he was a gibbering idiot. "I just don't know how you can not know any of this. The Daniel where I come from is more curious."

"If you know what's good for you around here, you don't *get* curious," Jackson replied with a deep hint of malevolence.

"What do you mean?" Jack asked, intrigued.

"Never mind." Jackson sighed and looked around worriedly, as if suddenly wishing he'd hadn’t said anything. He'd headed off again when his shoulders abruptly slumped, and with an eerie insight into Jack's thoughts about whether he was playing a game with him, he said, "I honestly have no idea what you're talking about."

Jack grimaced. If this man truly didn't know what the Jaffa represented, it was about time he did. He caught up with Jackson and fell into step. "The Jaffa are incubators for the larval forms of a serpent-like creature called a Goa'uld. In return they act as a super immune system and give the Jaffa great regenerative powers. When they're fully grown they leave the Jaffa's pouch and take humans as hosts." He watched the curator's face for any sign of aversion to his explanation, but saw only puzzlement at his latest revelation. "They enter the body usually by gnawing their way into the back of your neck and then they join with the brain and nervous system to take control of the body."

After a clear moment of utter disbelief, where his eyebrows had nearly parted company from his forehead, Jackson took a tone that was the closest he had come to being Daniel, "That… doesn't sound very nice," he said.

Jack would have laughed with the relief of it, but for the seriousness of both the subject and his situation. "It's not," he said, a vivid, spine-chilling memory coursing through his mind. He shivered.

"Well, I think I would remember if I'd heard about that," Jackson told him with a glint of a smile.

"Yeah, you'd think so," Jack retorted.

"Why do these… Goa'uld take hosts, anyway?"

"Apparently they can't survive without being in another body. Where I come from the Goa'uld are our enemy. Using the Stargate, and sometimes spaceships, they conquer planets and use humans as slaves. They're about as evil as you can get."

"Oh."

Jackson listened, his face blank, as Jack continued. "They pretend they're gods to rule by false religion, quashing technological development to ensure they remain in power. On some planets even writing has been abolished, so the people cannot learn of their evil and plot against them." As he said this, Jack couldn't help but look around. They had finally reached the exhibition hall where he had first appeared and it was suddenly plain to him what was wrong with the place.

This reality was seriously lacking in technology. The museum he had been in before being transported to this one was full of computerised displays, fancy models and smartly produced captions, as was the trend nowadays to try to make history more appealing. This place had none of that. The exhibits were simply laid out, with typed labels. Now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen a computer in Jackson's office… no little Egyptian figures walking both-big-toes-outward across the screen as it idled. The lights were old style tungsten bulbs, and the telephones were of an antiquated design.

Everything in fact looked old, he thought with amusement, and not just the things that were supposed to be here for that very fact.

The bleak deduction hit Jack like a speeding train. "That's what they've done here, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Limited your development. The Goa'uld have held you back… stopped you becoming advanced enough to be a threat."

"What?" Not even trying to contain it, Jackson sniggered with astonishment at Jack's claim.

"What scientific progress has there been in the last… I dunno… fifty years? Computers? Going to the moon? Nuclear power? Satellite TV? Cell phones?" Jack rounded on the curator, unrelenting.

"You're crazy!" Jackson lurched away from him.

In exasperation, Jack swung away to face the opposite direction, throwing his hands up to his head. As he did so, two huge pictures placed prominently on the wall in front of him seized his attention.

"Catherine?" he whispered to himself, identifying the pleasant features of the elderly lady within the first frame. "Ernest?" he said as he focussed on the second picture, though this Ernest must have faired rather better than the one he knew that had been stranded on an alien world, for the man hardly seemed to have aged at all. If it hadn't been for the old photo Catherine had shown him when they'd had the party to celebrate reuniting the couple, Jack would have had trouble recognizing him.

"What did you say?" Jackson approached him from behind, his voice tinged with awe.

"Those portraits… they're of Ernest Littlefield and Catherine Langford."

"Yes. How do you know them?" Jackson gripped his arm.

"Catherine used to work on the Stargate project too. She recruited you… um, Daniel. We found Ernest Littlefield on a planet where he'd been stranded for years after first opening the 'gate. Why? How do *you* know them?"

"I lived with them after my mother died."

"I thought you said Nick…"

"Nick went off on some wild goose chase to Belize. I never saw him again," Jackson recalled grimly. "That's when Catherine took me in. Ernest Littlefield is…"

But before Jackson had a chance to finish his sentence the pair were surrounded by a group of large uniformed men. Jackson backed away, coming up against one of the men he hung his head in resignation. Jack rolled his eyes and his mouth formed a tight line of foreboding. He nodded slowly in compliance as one of the uniformed men stepped forward and motioned them toward a door in the panelling marked 'Private'.

Just when Jack thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, his stomach flipped when he realized what the soldier was using to point the way… a zat gun. Crap.

~

Stella didn't think the day could possibly get any worse.

First she'd almost been late for work when the tram had broken down. Then there was the mysterious stranger who had appeared from nowhere.

And now the commandant was here. What was that all about?

She'd seen him and his guards go by as she was on her way back up to the exhibition rooms. She had ducked quickly aside, not wanting to have to pass the time of day with him. Not that he ever did have much time for anyone, but the fewer words she had to exchange with the man the better. The very thought of his deep, almost hypnotic voice made her shiver.

At least he didn't have that creepy Rothman chap in tow today as he often did. Stella really didn’t like Rothman. She knew how he used Doctor Jackson's work and got all the recognition himself. He would never be able to go on all those expeditions without the doctor's research. It wasn't fair. Maybe things would have been different if Doctor Jackson could walk properly. She hoped that if the circumstances weren't as they were, the young man would have stood up for himself against them. As it was, she guessed he thought there wasn't much point.

"Miss Grant."

The voice from behind startled her as she stepped out from the nook in which she had concealed herself and she turned with a jump. "Professor Langford."

"Is everything alright?" Catherine Langford eyed her with concern.

"Yes, ma'am," Stella replied, hoping the tremble of her limbs was not too obvious.

"The museum is looking very nice, Stella," Catherine praised. "You are doing a splendid job."

"Thank you, ma'am." Stella beamed with pride. She would have liked Catherine to visit more often, but she only ever seemed to be able to come when Littlefield did. It was odd, because Stella was sure Catherine wasn't the kind of person to follow someone around like that sycophantic puppy Rothman. When Catherine was here, she always managed to slip away from Littlefield to seek out Stella for a chat. Friendly, but never too personal.

The professor leaned closer and talked quietly, "I trust you're taking as good care of Doctor Jackson as well."

Stella remembered the first conversation she ever had with Catherine. It had taken place not two days after she started work at the museum. She had gotten the distinct impression that she was being given the once over by the elderly professor. She hadn't exactly been interrogated as to whether she was a suitable candidate to act as surrogate mother, but that's what it had felt like. It wasn't until she found out Catherine had been just that to the young man, that she realized why.

"I keep an eye on him," she assured, "but he doesn't like to be fussed over." Stella gave the other woman a meaningful smile.

Catherine laughed. "Yes, I know." Then the professor became serious. "Stella, what do you know about the man who arrived here today?"

"The man? Oh… He just seemed to appear amongst the exhibits. I took him to see Doctor Jackson."

"And you have no idea where he came from?"

"No, ma'am." Stella began to feel nervous. She had heard some unsavory things about the commandant and the way he conducted his business. Though of course no one would dare to challenge him. And this wouldn't be the first time that the commandant and his entourage had shown up unexpectedly.

She recalled the discussion she'd been having with Doctor Jackson about the peculiar hieroglyphs on two Isis jars she had just unpacked, when Littlefield had barged in and had taken the artefacts away for further study. It was almost as if he had known that something unusual had been brought in.

Doctor Jackson had been absent from the museum for over a week following the incident. Although, he had told her he'd been helping Rothman with some work on the jars, she was sure she'd seen faint hints of bruising under his shirt collar, and he'd hardly left his office for days because his legs had been weaker than usual. Stella suspected then that she'd gotten proof of the commandant's methods. "Is that why you're here?" she asked bravely.

"Yes, Stella. It is," Catherine solemnly replied.

Stella guessed from the bothered look on the other woman's face that she shouldn't ask any more questions. She could only hope the commandant's sudden appearance didn't mean more trouble for Doctor Jackson.

~

Jack sat up slowly. Where was he now? He remembered stepping through the door, but shortly after the zat gun had been fired at him. As he fell he was sure he'd heard a second electrical zing, and guessed Jackson must have succumbed to the same fate. A glance across the small bare room confirmed his suspicion.

There on the opposite side of the floor lay the Daniel Jackson of this reality. Although his long hair flopped over his face, and his glasses were gone, Jack could still see faint lines crinkling across the young man's brow, making him look vulnerable. He guessed that even in sleep Jackson was in pain, and his gaze drifted along to the probable cause. The curator's legs were unnaturally straight for what should have been a restful position.

This Jackson was a far cry from the man that Jack knew, which made the circumstances of how the colonel had come to be in this place all the more ironic.

He had only agreed to the impromptu detour from their journey back to his house, after finally being released from medical confinement at the base, because he knew how hard Daniel was grappling with his identity. Though it was more than a week since their return from P3R 118, the memory stamps they had been subjected to were continuing to play havoc with day to day functioning for all of them.

The serious lapses in concentration were becoming less frequent, but there were still times when the names Jona, Carlin, Thera and Tor came more readily to their lips than their true ones.

Daniel was especially disturbed that day, having been unable to decipher a text

SG-11 had brought back. He was worried his lack of progress was due not to the language being new to him, but Carlin's memories having overwritten something he used to know.

Jack had been relieved when the idea to visit the museum seemed to be paying off. Daniel relaxed as he wandered among the exhibits, pointing out artefacts of particular significance for their top secret travels. The familiar territory evidently was reassuring.

Once again replaying the subsequent events, it seemed Daniel had inadvertently activated the quantum mirror, and foolishly, Jack himself had given in to an impulse he normally suppressed, resulting in his current predicament. For the first time since it had happened, Jack spared a thought for what Daniel was probably going through back in his reality. Would Daniel be trying to figure out where Jack had gone? Would he try to follow? God, Jack hoped not. Entropic cascade failures aside, Daniel was definitely better off out of this.

Jackson groaned as he shifted awkwardly, and Jack moved across to him, asking, "How d'ya feel?"

"Like I've been struck by lightning," the young man replied, laboring clumsily to sit up. He submitted with a grateful nod to Jack's helping hands pulling him up so he could lean back against the wall.

"Yeah, something like that," Jack agreed with the description of what it felt like to be shot with a zatnikatel. He sat down next to the younger man and sighed heavily. Raising his face heavenwards, he wondered what this universe held in store for him next.

"What happened?" Jackson asked shakily.

Unable to stifle a sarcastic accentuation, he answered, "Someone decided we were worth kidnapping, apparently. I take it you knew the museum was being watched?"

"What? No..." At first, Jackson seemed offended by Jack's accusation, but then hesitantly, he added, "Well, maybe."

"I think we can safely say that it is. How else would you explain this?" Jack demanded, irritated. "I mean I show up here and then hey presto some guys crawl out of the woodwork and zat me."

Jackson looked at him pathetically, and said, "I was uh… zat-ted… too."

Jack returned a pitying expression. "Yeah, there is that," he conceded. "So, who nabbed us?"

"Jaffa."

"Of course it was," Jack agreed with barely concealed sarcasm. Having accepted that the young man was not responsible for the surveillance, he thought about what they were discussing just before they were ambushed. Putting two and two together, he made a suggestion, "Let me guess... Littlefield?"

"Yeah," Jackson sighed. Bending forward, he grimaced and unclipped his braces, expelling a relieved grunt as he flexed his legs.

Jack winced as he observed the younger man's movements. It didn’t seem as if any of the new positions he tried were bringing much relief.

Realizing he knew nothing about Littlefield, as they'd been apprehended before Jackson had been able to tell him anything, Jack figured that some more information about the man could prove useful. And talking might also help take Jackson's mind off his plight. With that thought foremost, he asked, "So, what's the history between the two of you?"

Seemingly grateful for the distraction, Jackson began to talk. "My parents worked for him. Mom continued after Dad died, but I don't think she really wanted to. He was never keen on Catherine looking after me either. He's in charge here."

Jack was thrown by the apparent contradiction to what he had previously been told. "I thought you were the head curator."

"I wasn't talking about the museum, I mean everything..." Jackson threw his arms up exaggeratedly. It was a gesture Jack knew well, and for the briefest of moments the similarities between the two Daniels outweighed the differences. The likeness however, disappeared swiftly as the worn expression returned and Jackson shuddered. He tugged at his sleeve, and then looked up at Jack. "My watch is gone."

Jack glanced at his wrist. "Mine too," he said. Damn, Sara had given him that watch. Annoyed as he was about losing his favored timepiece, Jack was more concerned at his enforced companion's increasingly frantic search of his pockets.

Obviously frustrated at not having found what he was looking for, Jackson rubbed his hands over his face. "How long do you think they'll keep us here?" he asked. It was the closest tone to a whine that Jack had heard in his friend's voice.

"Your guess is as good as mine. Why?"

Wrinkling features leaving no doubt as to the extent of his distress, Jackson fidgeted uncomfortably. "They took my meds," he groaned.

"You okay?" Jack's eyes narrowed as he observed the younger man's clenched fists. All the curator's earlier relaxed countenance had disappeared.

"For now," Jackson rasped unconvincingly, the effect topped off rather spectacularly by the way the color was leaching rapidly from his face. It looked like he was going to pass out at any second.

"Littlefield knows you need them, right?" Jack suddenly wished he wasn't a man that knew all about attrition tactics for interrogation, where any obvious weakness would be used to break them down. How many times had he been confronted by those kinds of campaigns? How many times had he employed them? And just when had the rules of his existence plummeted to those depths? Jack despised the part of his life that recognized Jackson's dependence on his medication was a prime target for any such ploy.

"Oh, yeah."

Jack heard a wealth of unspoken misery in the tone of the curator's resigned voice.

"The two of you don't get on then?"

"Understatement," Jackson said simply. It didn't sound like he was prepared to spill any details just now, so Jack decided to alter his line of inquiry.

"So, how did Littlefield get to be the bigwig around here?"

"*Commandant* Littlefield," Jackson corrected. "I don't know exactly. It has something to do with when the Jaffa came in 1945. Their arrival brought an end to the Second World War. After that he just seemed to take over."

"You don't know what happened?" Jack asked, amazed. "What kind of archaeologist are you?"

"One that's still alive," Jackson replied cryptically. Apparently sensing Jack's bewilderment, he tried to explain. "Like I told you before, if you're smart you don't ask too many questions." He suddenly drew a sharp intake of breath, and gripped his knees, pain ploughing deep furrows across his brow.

Though the man suffering in front of him wasn't technically his friend, Jack felt a twinge of responsibility. He got up and hammered on the door with his fist. "Hey!" he shouted, "Open up. We need some help in here!"

After a few minutes of continuous pounding, there was a clattering in the lock.

"Well, it's about time," Jack sniped, as the door creaked open.

"Daniel," Catherine Langford exclaimed as she rushed forward. Pushing aside the two men who had come in with her, she knelt next to the young man. Jackson had his head tipped back to rest uncomfortably against the wall. Eyes closed, his teeth had a firm bite on his lower lip, and a sheen of perspiration coated his pale face. Catherine brushed some unruly strands of hair away from his eyes with a gentle swipe of her hand.

Jack watched as the two spoke quietly to each other. Then Catherine looked up, and focussed beseechingly on the shorter of the other men. "He needs his medicine, Ernest," she reprimanded.

It seemed to Jack that the comfort the elderly woman offered might not have been an uncommon occurrence, and he didn't find her behaviour the slightest bit surprising. If truth be told, her actions were about the only thing here that made any sense at all.

In his own reality, Catherine's fondness for Daniel was abundantly clear, if only by the number of times he got asked to tea.

She had hired the awkward, allergy-ridden archaeologist for the task of translating the coverstone, certain that he would solve the riddle that had long puzzled some of the best minds in the country. And much to the amazement and consternation of her colleagues, she had been proved right.

When the team from the first trip to Abydos returned without Daniel, Catherine had been noticeably upset, and succumbed to her imposed retirement. It was almost as if the loss of that near child-like passion and enthusiasm was too much to bear.

Jack knew how that felt. He had thought about retiring himself after SG-1's mission to Oannes had resulted in them believing Daniel had perished on the planet.

Since Catherine's reunion with Ernest, Daniel visited them often, giving the couple as much detail on the SGC teams' wondrous travels throughout the galaxy as their level of security clearance would allow… something Daniel had fought for on their behalf, and Jack had fully supported. It seemed only fair given the efforts both of the elderly scientists had made toward the project.

Ernest also took quickly to the young man who had been paramount in his rescue, which made the contemptuous glare the Littlefield currently in his presence had for Jackson all the more unsettling.

"If they tell me what I want to know, he can have it," Littlefield said without compassion.

Jack was somewhat perturbed to find that the man speaking appeared every bit as youthful as his portrait depicted. He seemed hardly older than Jackson, and Jack fully expected that at any second Littlefield's eyes would glow.

"Get him up, Samuels," Littlefield said harshly, motioning in Jackson's direction.

Another set of familiar features swam into view as the man Littlefield had commanded stepped forward. Jack assumed this Bert Samuels must be a Jaffa, since he was wearing the same type of uniform as the men that had captured them. He also reckoned he wouldn't be any happier to see this version of the weasel than the one back home.

Jack and Catherine, neither apparently willing to surrender the young man's care to the Jaffa, eluded Samuels' approach, and helped the curator to his feet, steadying him while he fastened his leg braces once more.

Littlefield swept out of the room and the rest followed, ushered by Samuels.

They were led to another small room. Jack and Catherine let Jackson down onto one of the chairs set out opposite each other in the middle of the room. Samuels quickly shoved Jack onto the other.

"Hey, watch it!" he yelled. Samuels immediately stepped forward, looking ready to strike. Jack braced himself for the upcoming attack, but Littlefield halted the Jaffa with no more than reproving glare.

Dutifully, Samuels backed away to stand by the door.

Catherine spoke quietly to Littlefield, her palm resting lightly against his chest in a placating manner. However, from the sneer on the man's face, and the displeased way he removed her hand from his person, Jack guessed that her words hadn't been met with much consideration. The commandant moved behind Jackson and whispered something in his ear.

Jack was sure he saw the younger man shiver, before bowing his head, hair falling forward to hide whatever expression graced his face.

Littlefield placed a single finger under Jackson's chin and lifted his head back up. "No need for deference, my boy," he smirked, "but I'm glad to see you finally know your place."

Turning to Jack, the commandant wasted no time in asserting his dominance of the situation, his voice as dark and cold as his eyes. "I am not a patient man, O'Neill. I am used to getting what I want, when I want it, and no one gets in my way. As you have correctly surmised, the conversations you've had with my dear associate here," he laid an obviously unwelcome hand on Jackson's shoulder, "have been intercepted. In fact there is very little that escapes my attention, so for you to try to deceive me would be rather futile… as Daniel can attest. If you co-operate, these proceedings will be much more pleasant for all of us."

Jack kept silent, watching the man in his smartly tailored suit carefully. Littlefield seemed to be gauging Jackson's reaction to the unfolding events, and judging by the nervous expression on the curator's face, Jack guessed he'd been through something like this before.

Presumptuously, Littlefield continued, "Now, I think you're an intelligent man, and as such I'm sure you can work out the rules of this game, but then again it took our resident genius here a few times, didn't it, my boy?" His hand on Jackson's shoulder tightened its grip, causing a wince to cross the curator's features. "What was that?" he asked, leaning close in to the side of Jackson's face. "I didn’t quite hear you…"

"Yes," Jackson whispered.

Littlefield viciously tugged Jackson's hair to pull his head back. "And do you remember the last time you dared to flout my authority?" he snarled.

"Yes," Jackson repeated, eyes widened in sheer terror.

Crap. Jack hated it when he was right about such things.

"Good. Might I suggest you don't ever forget that lesson." Littlefield grinned ominously, and he let go of the younger man's hair after one last savage wrench.

Littlefield faced Jack. "I hope you have learned something already, O'Neill."

"Yeah," Jack replied, "that you're a sadistic bastard."

Without warning, Littlefield backhanded Jackson hard, splitting his bottom lip spectacularly. A shower of red droplets arced away from him as his head whipped to the left.

Stunned by the force of the blow, Jackson's head drooped. Blood dripped from his mouth accumulating in a small splattery pool on the floor.

"That I am, O'Neill. Let's be quite clear on that point, shall we?" Littlefield announced, unremorseful.

Jack nodded, saddened at what his smart mouth had cost the young man. So, *that* was the game. And the rules? Well, there weren't any, were there? As if he hadn't already worked that out.

His gaze wandered across to Catherine standing on the other side of the doorway to Samuels. He could tell she had shut the world out, though she was doing nothing to obscure sight or sound. Her face showed an unwillingness to accept what was going on… could not accept what the man she loved was capable of. If she did still love Ernest. Jack had always found it hard to believe what people put up with in the name of love. Women beaten senseless by their husbands, yet refused to leave them… men harassed to the point of despair, continuing to stand by their wives.

The Catherine he knew would have been stronger than that, surely.

He studied the woman's expressionless face. How many times had she witnessed such atrocities to be able to blot them out so completely?

The undeniably charismatic tyrant responsible for Catherine's hell-bound demise interrupted Jack's deliberations.

"We'll begin with an easy question… tell me which of these is the device you used to travel here." Littlefield waved a hand toward an array of objects on the table against the far wall.

Jack remained silent. Try as he might, wherever he focussed his vision, he could still see the sorry sight of Jackson's face… right cheek startlingly crimson, with a thin rivulet of blood continuing to spill from the ragged slit in the bruise-fattened lip.

"You disappoint me, O'Neill. I thought we had an understanding." Littlefield nodded at Samuels, who came forward, grabbed Jackson under his shoulders and hefted him up from his seat. Two rapid jabs, one from each of Littlefield's fists soon had Jackson doubled over his abused stomach, making Samuels lurch forward to maintain his hold. "I had hoped we wouldn't have to resort to brutality, I do so hate violence." Littlefield sighed dramatically.

Seriously doubting the sincerity of that statement Jack choked back a retort. Wisecracking didn't seem to be such a good idea just now. He couldn't stand to see the man with Daniel's face subjected to a beating, and determined not to let his usually uncontrolled mouth make things worse for the curator.

"Which is the device and how do you use it?" Littlefield asked again.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jack replied.

Samuels withdrew his hands from their grip on Jackson, letting the young man fall unceremoniously to the floor. Jackson cried out, and drew his legs up, curling his arms around them protectively. It didn’t save his right hip from being cruelly stamped on by the large man, who then swung his foot back in preparation for another blow.

"Not so fast, Samuels," Littlefield cautioned mockingly. "We must give O'Neill time to reconsider his co-operation in this matter." He held an upturned palm out toward Jack as if to receive his answer, but no satisfaction was forthcoming. The commandant snorted reproachfully. "Tell me about the device you use to cross dimensions."

"I can't tell you what I don't know," Jack replied calmly.

Littlefield gave one nod at Samuels who let fly with his foot, striking Jackson in the small of his back. The young man cried out as his body jerked with the impact.

"I will give you one more chance to do this the easy way. How did you get here?" Littlefield demanded.

"I don't know!" Jack shouted back.

"Wrong answer."

A second fierce kick contacted Jackson's back, jarring his ruined legs from the arms wrapped around them. He rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in the crook of his elbow, shuddering with the panting breaths erupting from his lungs.

Littlefield strode over impatiently and hauled Jackson roughly to his knees. It was clearly the most painful position he could have chosen for the handicapped man. Jack closed his eyes to the view. He had seen Daniel in agony before, with half his chest blown away on Klorel's ship, in the throes of sarcophagus withdrawal, and most recently when his appendix had threatened to rip him away from them. There was no way Jack could look at those tear filled eyes, hear the ragged gasps and *not* see his friend. Damn it, the man *was* his friend, save for a few differences in fate.

Unfortunately, Jack knew his reaction was playing right into Littlefield's depraved hands, and he forced his eyelids open again.

"Back with us, O'Neill? Good. I wouldn't want you to miss anything."

Samuels dragged Jackson back to his seat opposite Jack. The colonel tried to meet the younger man's gaze, but was confronted with a guarded stare. Tremors wracked Jackson's frame as he slumped exhaustedly in the chair. He appeared devoid of spirit, vacant… abandoned.

It shocked Jack to the core. He thought nothing could touch that well of Jackson resolve, and he had to remind himself that this wasn't his Daniel. He hoped he would never see that expression on *that* face back home... assuming he ever got back home…

Littlefield whispered something to Samuels and the Jaffa left the room.

"Are you enjoying the game, O'Neill?" The commandant's tone was carefree.

"Not particularly."

"Why don't we make it more interesting then?" Littlefield said as Samuels returned and passed him an implement. "You seem to know much about the Goa'uld... I wonder if you are familiar with this."

Jack could honestly say that he hadn't seen the type of stick being waved in front of him before, but that didn't stop an icy grip from clutching his gut at the thought of what it might do. Anything the Goa'uld utilized was bound to be unpleasant.

Littlefield jabbed the pain stick into Jack's back. Unable to counter the terrible shock of the weapon, he parted his lips to scream, but no sound came out. Instead a searing ray of light burst from his mouth and eyes. Every cell in his body seemed to vibrate with the charge and when, just a second later, Littlefield deactivated the implement, Jack could have sworn a lifetime had passed.

"That was just a demonstration, O'Neill. I wouldn't like you not to know exactly what you'll be putting Jackson through if you don't start giving me some answers. Now, I will ask you again. How did you get here?"

"I can't tell you anything."

"That’s a pity." Littlefield jabbed the painstick against Jackson's left thigh. The leg straightened in response to the electricity, and remained locked out in an obviously painful spasm for some time after the implement was removed.

"Perhaps I can jog your memory." He pointed to the small frame. "That is the piece you were touching when you materialized here." The commandant paced in front of the table glancing almost lovingly at the objects. "When Rothman brought these artefacts back, there was a local legend associated with them. What it told of sounded like pure fantasy. The ability to alter history. Of course, if one could journey to another reality, the effect from the traveller's perspective would be just like history had changed. I have had them watched closely ever since."

"Looks like a picture frame to me," Jack said, noncommittally. "And a damn ugly one at that."

Littlefield laughed. "In my quite lengthy time upon this Earth, I have discovered some things are not what they seem. I know that you used this device to come here from a different reality. All you need to tell me now is how you control it."

"I didn't."

The commandant rammed the stick into Jackson's back.

Jack flinched as the energy flared from the curator's face. Is that what had happened when it was done to him? He yelled at Littlefield to stop, but the implement was cruelly dug harder into the young man. Jackson's back arched, head flung back in sufferance. The light blazing from him illuminated the ceiling, painting it a fiery orange.

"Stop!" Jack shouted again. "I thought it was me you wanted answers from."

"Exactly," Littlefield enthused, finally pulling the weapon away. "But if you're incapacitated, you won't be able to give them to me, will you?"

Jackson was left gasping for breath. Trembling uncontrollably, he folded his arms around himself.

Jack glimpsed the satisfied smile curling Littlefield's lips at the pathetic sight of his target.

Relentlessly, the commandant continued his questioning. "You wanted to search for a control device. Is it amongst these pieces?"

"A control device?"

Enraged, Littlefield thrust his face toward Jack. "I am not used to being tested like this. I cannot see what you hope to gain from being so obstructive. Your arrival through the portal was witnessed, and I know everything you told Daniel. Why do you persist in denying any knowledge of these devices?"

"Because I'm telling the truth. I have no idea how to use any… portal," Jack said with all the sincerity he could muster.

"Then how did you get here?"

"An accident."

"Really? How unfortunate for you..." Littlefield gloated. "and for Jackson." He pressed the rod's forks into the curator's left knee. Jackson screamed as his leg quaked.

Shutting out the sound, Jack shouted, "I told you I don't know anything!"

"You know there's only one outcome for your stubbornness…" Circling his victim, Littlefield pressed the painstick against Jackson's right hip, and again the young man cried out at the charge coursing through his long-damaged bones.

Catherine's face had screwed up in anguish at Jackson's plight, her remoteness crumbling. And then Jack realized… Catherine wasn't here because of her love for Littlefield, she was here because of Jackson. Maybe she kept the commandant from going too far. And Jack wondered how much worse things would get before she finally played her hand.

"You're sick," Jack spat at the Littlefield. The man was enjoying himself far too much for Jack's liking.

"On the contrary, I feel fine. In fact I feel fitter and younger almost every day."

"Yeah, well Goa'ulds have annoyingly remarkable ways of rejuvenating themselves," Jack carped.

"I am not a Goa'uld," Littlefield corrected him. "But I have to agree they possess some formidable technology when it comes to prolonging life."

Jack suddenly understood how the commandant could appear so young. "Let me guess... wouldn't have anything to do with a sarcophagus would it?"

"You know of the power of the sarcophagus?" Littlefield sounded intrigued.

"I know how badly it screws with your mind." Boy, did he ever. SG-1's mission to P3R 636 was one that nightmares were made of. Grateful as he had been that Shyla had seen fit to restore Daniel's broken body after the rock-fall in the mine; the repercussions of her deed left a long-lasting crevice through the team's cohesion. The princess had coerced Daniel into using the sarcophagus time and time again, making sure he was dependant so he would return to her.

Once back at the SGC and deprived of his frequent fixes, Daniel had quickly sunk into withdrawal, as his body rebelled at their loss. Jack had put aside his own hurt feelings to help the young man through the painful physical symptoms of Daniel's descent from his intoxicated high, but had left most of the emotional healing to sort itself out.

It took months for everything to fall back into their normal places. Daniel, overflowing with apologies, had shunned the team's collective display of forgiveness, for he had seen it for what it was… a show. They had all felt betrayed by the way he had completely failed them, and no matter how glad they were that he was his old self again, that mood was hard to shake.

It wasn't until their own recriminations over the situation surfaced that a measure of balance was achieved. Jack could still hear, "I'm coming!" and the clanking of heavy chains as Daniel struggled to follow the others in their escape attempt. If one of them had stopped to break the shackles, there might never have been need to use the sarcophagus in the first place. His own blame had been overshadowed by what he saw as Daniel's lack of control. That thought alone haunted Jack still.

Littlefield laughed loudly at Jack's claim. "A small price to pay, I think," he said huskily.

Having latched onto Jack's words, Catherine leaped into the conversation. "I told you," she accused. "That's what Clare believed too. She even found some tablets that told of the destruction of one's soul. That's why she wouldn't let you use it on…"

Her eyes inadvertently flicked toward Jackson betraying the attempt she made to halt the words spilling from her mouth, and Jack caught the abrupt rise of Jackson's head as his curiosity apparently piqued. Composing herself, Catherine tried to rectify her mistake by directing her attention elsewhere. She pinned Littlefield with a critical stare. "You used to be a good man, Ernest."

"Being good doesn't get you anywhere," Littlefield scoffed, and turned to Jackson with an evil glare. "Does it, Daniel?" He advanced sinisterly toward the crippled curator. "Has following the petty principles of your parents brought you any satisfaction? Is your miserable existence in this world worth anything… to anyone?

Jack had thought Jackson had detached himself. He was wrong. Watching the young man's face as each barb-laden remark cut deeply into the tattered remains of his psyche, Jack wondered how many times the curator had endured such abuse… For Littlefield knew his prey well and was masterful in his execution of the onslaught of verbal torture.

The commandant leaned in close to Jackson's ear and yet kept his voice loud enough for the others to hear. "Tell me," he crooned, "would you have risked your soul for a chance to walk again without pain ?"

Jackson turned to look almost defiantly at Littlefield; then he glanced briefly at Jack. Finally his eyes settled on Catherine, and his face fell in shame under her gaze. "Yes," he answered.

The commandant appeared positively gleeful at the confession. "If only your dear mother had considered your feelings and let me repair the damage done to your legs…"

"No one could do anything," Jackson said, his voice low and dejected.

From the expression on the young man's face, Jack imagined Jackson was reliving the moment when the doctors, or his mother, or both had told him that conclusion.

"The sarcophagus could have… its capacity to regenerate is incredible. Isn't that right, O'Neill?"

Jack nodded reluctantly. He had been saved from the guilt of a friend's death on more occasions than he cared to remember. Hell, he'd still be walking around with a cross sliced into his own belly now, if it hadn't been for the healing power of the sarcophagus. It didn't stop him thinking that it was best not to fool with nature though, and Daniel's rapid descent into egotism from the machine's effects had proven that. However, if he were to be faced with another life-threatening situation, he couldn't guarantee he wouldn't resort to using a sarcophagus again, if it was available.

"Liar!" Jackson howled.

"No, my boy," Littlefield refuted. "Catherine, did I or did I not offer Clare the chance to cure Daniel completely?"

Jackson's head whipped round to catch the professor's words.

"She turned you down because she didn't want him to become like you," Catherine spat back at him.

"No…" Jackson, his face a study of utter desolation, was shaking his head in disbelief, unable to accept that there had been a chance to take away his disability. "Catherine… you knew?" he pleaded, needing further confirmation that she'd known of the possibility.

"I'm sorry, Daniel," she told him, a little bluntly for Jack's peace of mind. "Clare did what she thought was right."

Littlefield continued on what seemed like a quest to make Jackson despise his mother. "All I know is that she wouldn't help her only son be free of pain. Think what you could have achieved, Daniel... You deserved better than a life behind a desk, slowly decaying like so many of the things you try to preserve." He sighed dramatically, then leaned in toward the curator, and exaggerated his speech. "*You* could have been the successful one, and Rothman wouldn't have got all the glory for your hard work and planning, now would he?"

Apparently phased by the thought of a life that could have been, Jackson sat staring open-mouthed at the commandant. Tears glistened at the corners of his eyes, before he quickly blinked them away.

"Are you sure you're not a Goa'uld?" Jack asked Littlefield scornfully. "You sure act like one."

Littlefield paced as he considered the proposal. Jack wondered if the man thought he'd given him a compliment rather than the gibe it was supposed to be.

"It's intriguing to think that you know me…" Littlefield eventually said with a thoughtful air.

"I don't know *you*," Jack denied.

"Really? I'm sure you told Jackson about my trip through Heaven's door in 1945. Oh, no. What did you call it? Ah yes, the Stargate… Though my counterpart can not have been as lucky as I."

"What makes you say that?"

"If he had discovered the same wonders, I doubt that you would be sitting here now as the result of… *an accident*."

"So, what did you find?" Jack had to admit he was a little curious, and all the while he kept Littlefield distracted by talking about himself at least Jackson wasn't suffering more abuse.

"You may have been there yourself, O'Neill… you did say that you and your *team* travel to other planets, did you not?"

Jack couldn't help but pick up on the way Littlefield emphasized the word 'team', and he found both their gazes lingering on Jackson, but his question still hadn't been answered. "Where did you go?" he asked.

Littlefield had crossed to the window and was gazing skyward, as if he were trying to locate the destination in the heavens. His voice simmering with reverence, he gave Jack his answer…

"Abydos."

"Miss Grant."

It was a stuffy-nosed greeting, and even before Stella looked up from the papers in front of her, she knew exactly who's voice it was. She cringed. Oh no, not Professor Rothman. Did he *have* to turn up *now*, when she couldn't find Doctor Jackson for love nor money? Stella supposed she would have to deal with the loathsome unshaven fellow herself. And she'd thought the day couldn't get any worse…

"Stella…"

He never called her Stella. In fact it was the first time she could think of that he'd ever been to her room. She didn't think of it as an office... barely large enough for the single bookcase, work-table and chair… let alone her ample frame, Rothman stood just inside the doorway, looking flustered.

"Have you brought any new pieces up from storage recently?" he asked.

"No." Wishing the man would just go away, her answer was purposefully curt.

Instead, Rothman encroached on her space. Stella's stomach roiled. Did he have to come so close? And he hadn't even asked if he could enter. The cheek of the man! If there was one thing she couldn't stand it was bad manners… and beards. "I left an artefact here… in the cellars. It's gone. I need to find it."

"Professor Rothman, I am incredibly busy at the moment," she lied, wanting to tell him to do his own damned searching, "can't you…"

But the explorer cut her off. "It's something I brought back from Belize. I put it in a box and marked it '15/001a - not for display'. Are you sure you haven't moved it by mistake?

"I can assure you, Sir, that I run a very tight ship where the labelling and storage of artefacts," she said crossly, twisting to pull a file marked, 'Rothman EXP 15', from the bookcase beside her. Stella leafed briskly through the inventory, making the pages rustle noisily. Unable to find what she was searching for, she looked again, slower and more methodically this time. Swallowing hard against the sudden panic attack at the realization that her records were not complete, Stella nervously faced Rothman, preparing to be reprimanded. "It isn't listed," she admitted.

"I know that," Rothman announced. "It wasn't supposed to be."

Stella screwed her face up in puzzlement. If he was *that* worried by the find going missing, why wouldn't he have had it cataloged? And why give it a number linking it to another piece if they weren't going to be displayed together? She looked again at the entries. Artefact 001 was that peculiar frame… hideous thing… she remembered that one alright. She hadn't even wanted to put that out, but Doctor Jackson had insisted… because Commandant Littlefield liked it. Well, that said a lot.

"We *have* to find it, Stella, quickly. It's very important."

She looked incredulously at the man she despised so much, and found herself having a change of heart. Rothman appeared anxious… almost fearful… and she got the impression that, for once, he wasn't thinking about himself.

The explorer sighed heavily, his face showing that he had come to a decision to tell her just how bad things were, and Stella was sure her heart missed a few beats as she heard Rothman say, "Daniel is in great danger."

Jack was stunned. Abydos… Littlefield had been on that distant planet fifty years before he had led his team there.

"Ah, from your reaction, I assume you *have* been there," the commandant offered.

"Yeah, I've been there. Great people, shame about the sand…"

Littlefield laughed. "Yes, the sand *was* very inconvenient. Though personally, I wasn't all that enthralled by the locals either."

On some weird level, Jack was immensely glad about that. It exonerated him of being in the same evolutionary category as the man. He had loved the Abydonians… had almost envied Daniel when he'd stayed behind on the planet. The life there, while hard in the extreme, was kind of carefree. The people unhindered by the modern day stresses most people heaped on themselves in an effort to climb the social scale, or the need to possess the latest gadget; people who grasped every minute they'd been blessed with, and lived it to the full.

"However," Littlefield went on, "I made one allegiance that changed the world… literally."

It didn't take a lot of figuring out. There was only one explanation for what the commandant had just declared.

"You sold Earth out to Ra…" Jack said with a satisfied smugness that came from drawing the conclusion so adroitly.

"I gave him back what he thought was rightfully his," Littlefield amended Jack's supposition.

"And you, of course, didn’t come out of the deal too badly…" Jack donned a wry tight-lipped smile. "So, what did you get in return?"

"Everything I ever wanted..." Littlefield professed grandly, his black eyes shining more icily than ever.

"Money, fame, love?" Jack questioned glibly, though he'd already guessed the answer that was to come.

"Power."

"Ah." Jack nodded sagely. One word said it all… and more. "But now that's just not enough, is it?" he retorted sarcastically.

"The Goa'uld have much power. They believe they are invincible. I used to believe it too, but after much research, I have discovered other forces have been at work on Earth in the past. Jackson has been helping me locate the evidence. The Goa'uld know nothing of this technology you, O'Neill, have proven, and there is so much more in the universe still to attain… every possible universe."

As the commandant spoke, Jack saw a glimmer of the Ernest Littlefield from his own reality… filled with wonder and excitement. Even though the scientist had spent fifty years in isolation, his spirit had never been quelled. Was that the initial driving force behind the Littlefield here? When had the desire for power above all things become his motivation? Was it only after he'd met Ra and been introduced to the sarcophagus, or had it always been there? Was the line between the quest for knowledge and that for domination so fine?

He would never willingly give someone so corrupt the ability to cross dimensions, allowing them to plunder other worlds for their own evil intentions, but he couldn't let Jackson's torment go on. The trouble was he didn't believe the truth would appease the commandant, but it was the only option open to him. "Well, I'm not at all sorry that I have no idea how to work that thing, and even if I did, I wouldn't tell you."

Just as Jack had expected, his pronouncement wasn't well received. Littlefield rammed the rod into the curator's lower back. Only a dull glow emanated from Jackson's mouth and eye sockets, but his legs locked out, causing him to fall from the chair. He hit the floor with a clatter from his braces.

Jack wanted to throttle Littlefield. He lurched forward in his seat, but saw Samuels immediately shift in his direction. He wouldn't stand a chance. Words were all he could use, and unhappily, Jack knew it wouldn't be enough. "I told you I don't know anything. Torturing him won't get you the answers you want."

"No?" Littlefield twisted a control on the painstick, and then held it firmly against Jackson's back, pinning him where he had landed. One cry escaped the young man's lips before his whole body became a rigid frame of agony.

"Ernest, please!" Catherine pleaded.

"Ah, I was wondering when you would protest," Littlefield snarled at the elderly woman. He strode across to her, leaving the curators' tremor-ridden body behind him.

With the object of his torment removed, Jackson rasped dreadfully as he strained to pull air into his lungs. When his oxygen level was finally replete, he groaned deeply, and gingerly drew his legs up to knead the still spasming muscles.

"Catherine, my dear, you have no idea of the potential of the object this man has shown us."

Catherine side-stepped the approach of the commandant, and hurried to the stricken curator. Leaning over the young man, she added her hands to the crude massage. "Let me get his medication," she begged.

Her plea met only by a steely gaze, she shrieked at Littlefield, "Why are you doing this? Daniel is no threat to you."

"You are so wrong, my love. He knows more than even I gave him credit for." Littlefield smiled lasciviously.

Intrigued, Jack watched the exchange. He was glad to have a distraction from the aftermath of violence inflicted on the young curator, but then the conversation steered his way again, as Littlefield gained ground on him.

"I wonder, O'Neill, is your Jackson as clever as mine *thinks* he is?"

"What makes *you* think I know what you're talking about?" Jack countered.

Littlefield reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out Jack's wallet. He flicked through its contents, briefly perusing one small photograph, he glanced across at Jack. "Fine looking boy," he commented.

Jack winced.

Then he brought out the picture of SG-1, Littlefield peered closely at the faces. "Mmm, Apophis' first prime? Such interesting friends you have. I'm impressed." He returned the picture to the leather folds, and tucked the wallet away again. "No doubt your travels have been as fruitful as I hope mine will be. What have you found to enrich your world?"

"Nothing much," Jack truthfully replied.

"I find that hard to believe."

"Yeah, well, there aren’t that many advanced species willing to share." Even though he knew Daniel's argument that it was just as important to have friends with superior technology as it was for them to have it themselves, it still galled Jack to accept how materially little they'd acquired from their supposed allies.

"Share? What a novel concept."

From the man's tone, Jack thought Littlefield would have gotten on well with Maybourne and his cronies.

"And you, I suppose, would just take what you want."

"Naturally."

"So, how come you didn’t use that approach with Ra?" Jack asked, still intrigued as to when the scientist had acquired his ruthlessness.

"I was alone… unarmed. The only option was to join forces. You would have done the same."

Jack had a sudden pang of pity for what Littlefield must have felt back then… sent through the Stargate in a diving suit with no clue as to what would be waiting for him on the other side, or even *if* there was another side. Although fifty years later, the project had the benefit of probe telemetry before taking their first intergalactic journey, Jack hadn't exactly been accompanied by an army himself. It was the actions he and Daniel had taken to get to know the Abydonians had encouraged the oppressed people to rebel against their God. Such was the power of friendship. "We killed Ra," he announced.

"What?"

The astounded expression Littlefield suddenly adopted, provided the single moment during the entire inquisition that he hadn't appeared to be in complete control. It spurred Jack into a boastful rant.

"Oh, yeah… and Hathor, Seth, Sokar…"

"Then you must have exceptional weaponry." The commandant returned quickly to his sly self. "Which is just what I aim to procure with the aid of the inter-dimensional portal."

"We don't have vastly superior stuff," Jack said adamantly. "We just make the most of the advantages we do have." Unconsciously, Jacks gaze wandered to the crippled curator.

Jackson was still panting heavily as Catherine helped him to sit up. Enervated by his ordeal, the young man was sagging against the elderly professor, and she rubbed a comforting hand up and down his arm, as she drew him tightly to her. From behind the long fringes of hair draped over his eyes, Jackson peered up hopefully at Jack. "You… you really killed them?" he gasped.

"Yep," Jack affirmed proudly. There was something odd about the way Jackson had spoken. It was almost as if he were contemplating doing the same, but for someone who supposedly hadn't known of the Goa'uld's existence until a few hours ago, that seemed a strange way to behave.

Littlefield's face however, had turned thunderous. He kicked Jackson's hip. The action had the dual result of extricating a pained yelp from the young man, while at the same time gaining his attention. "Do you have any idea how long you would have lasted if the Goa'uld *had* come here? They'd have done away with you before the day was out… only the strong prevail. They have little need for intelligence. With Ra's forces controlling the Stargate however, I had little option but to find alternative means to acquire the wonders of the universe, and required your skills to help me do so, though it pains me to say it."

Striding to the table, the commandant picked up a box from the back, which had been hidden behind the other objects. He came across and dropped it into Jack's lap. "Open it," he demanded.

Jack stared at the box, hesitating. From the corner of his eye he saw a defeated look in Jackson's eyes. In a very Daniel-like gesture, the young man captured his bottom lip between in his teeth, and his head flopped forward. Cautiously, Jack lifted the lid, and stared at the contents.

Littlefield had just handed him the quantum mirror remote control.

Jack couldn't believe he'd been through all that crap... correction he'd only been interrogated, it was Jackson that had been through the crap... and Littlefield had the controller all the time. And judging by the overly dramatic way in which he'd produced the thing, he apparently knew what it was too.

Littlefield went over to squat in front of the curator. "Did you really think you could hide it from me?" he asked, taking hold of Jackson's chin. "You've tried my patience once too often, Daniel."

"What are you going to do?" Catherine asked anxiously.

"What I should have done a long time ago... You've outlived your usefulness, my boy." Littlefield grabbed a handful of Jackson's shirt, wrenching the young man from Catherine's arms.

Jackson brought his hands up to twist around the commandant's wrist in an effort to free himself, but Littlefield's grasp was too strong. Pulling a gun from a shoulder holster under his jacket, Littlefield jammed the muzzle against Jackson's temple.

Catherine screamed, "Ernest!"

Jackson reactively flinched, as if he'd imagined the weapon had been fired.

Unaffected, Littlefield snapped back the hammer on the old fashioned pistol.

"You pull that trigger, and I smash this." Jack placed the control down on the floor, and positioned his foot six inches above it.

The commandant though, wasn't worried by the intention. "And destroy your only means of getting home? I don't think so, O'Neill. That device is the key to overthrowing the Goa'uld," Littlefield pivoted his head to look at Jack. "Wouldn't you like to see that? No matter which reality? What will persuade you to tell me how it works?"

"Nothing." Jack replied evenly. "You're no better than a Goa'uld yourself."

"Professor Rothman, what's this all about?" Stella bustled after the explorer, down the corridor.

"I have to check something…" Rothman hurried ahead. He stopped in his tracks as soon as he entered the exhibition room. "No."

The word floated back to Stella, sounding somewhere between an exclamation and a sigh. As she caught up to him she realized what was wrong… half a table of exhibits were missing.

"I can't understand it, Professor. Who would have taken them? They were there this morning. I know for certain, because…"

"Because what, Stella?"

She felt Rothman's gaze boring into her, his absolute attention on her words. "I caught a man touching them. I took him to Doctor Jackson."

"Who was he?" he asked.

"I have no idea. Well, he said his name was Jack O'Neill, but I don't know any more than that. He just seemed to appear from nowhere."

"From nowhere?"

"Yes, I was cleaning… over there." She pointed to a display case near the window. "One minute the place was empty, the next… there he was."

"And he was touching the exhibits?"

"Yes." Stella was surprised that the explorer seemed more curious than annoyed. Then she remembered Jack going back to the table and picking out one item in particular. "I think it was that awful looking frame."

Rothman began pacing, his hands absently scrubbing over his beard. She could hear him muttering excitedly. He paused briefly to ask, "And then what?"

"Like I said, I took him to Doctor Jackson. That's the last I saw of him." Stella thought for a moment. "And I haven't been able to find Doctor Jackson since. Oh my God, you don't think that man took these and has done something to him, do you? Perhaps the Commandant's men were following him… I wonder if that's why he came…"

"Commandant Littlefield's been here?" Rothman spun on his heels. His eyes were blazing with intensity, yet his face had turned ghostly pallid. Stella would never have believed someone's complexion could lose all color in the blink of an eye. She'd always thought Rothman and Littlefield were like two peas in a pod. Why would he be so anxious that the commandant had been here?

"Yes, and Professor Langford. When I spoke to her, she said they had come because of the stranger."

"When did they leave?"

"I didn't see them leave. Actually, I haven't seen any of them since they arrived… and I can't find Doctor Jackson either. I checked his office but it was empty."

"Well, if they haven't left, I know where they'll be." The explorer grabbed Stella's arm. "Come on," he urged.

A muffled gunshot abruptly shattered the silence of the museum. And Rothman and Stella ran.

Jackson seized his chance. With Littlefield distracted by Jack's threat to crush the quantum mirror's remote control, he flung out a hand and knocked the gun from the commandant's grasp. It skittered across the floor, and Jack launched himself toward it.

Samuels reached into his pocket, but before he could bring the zat gun up, Jack had shot him. The Jaffa staggered back until he met with the wall. Sliding down, Samuels gripped his stomach, blue and read streaks bubbling between his splayed fingers. By targeting the Goa'uld larva, the colonel had left no margin for the Jaffa's possible recovery from the wound.

Jack, meanwhile, had trained his gun on Littlefield. The commandant dropped Jackson and lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Now, O'Neill, surely you wouldn't shoot a defenceless man…"

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't," Jack dismissed Littlefield's submissive stance.

"I will let you return to your own reality. All you have to do is show me how to use the control device."

"Now see, I don't get how you think you can bargain with me. I seem to be holding all the cards here." Jack waggled the gun at Littlefield, motioning for him to sit down.

The man complied, but held out his hand as he did so. "I have this," he said. A small disk was strapped around his wrist. "If I were to activate it, a battalion of Jaffa would be here in seconds."

Jack looked to Catherine who nodded glumly back at him.

"Put the gun down, O'Neill."

The door suddenly flew open and Rothman and Stella stumbled in, almost falling over each other.

"Ah, Professor Rothman, what excellent timing you have," Littlefield called over to the explorer. "Would you deal with this gentleman?"

Rothman pulled out his own gun, and fired it… not at Jack, but at Littlefield.

Surprise crossed the commandant's features as his hands flew up to his chest, a trickle of blood oozed between his fingers. He twisted, facing away from everyone and slumped to the floor.

"Daniel, are you okay?" Rothman hurried over to the curator and helped him sit up, while Stella remained in the doorway, hovering nervously.

"Yeah, Rob." Jackson looked up at the explorer. "Nice job," he said, nodding toward Littlefield.

Shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly, Rothman replied, "Had to be done sooner or later."

"Well, this is cosy," Jack sniped. What the hell was going on here?

"Sorry." Swivelling his head guiltily toward the colonel, Jackson explained, "We've been wanting to take Littlefield down for some while, even now wasn't really a good time, but it seems we'd run out of options."

Jack's head was spinning. He couldn't fathom how quickly the situation had turned around. "You lied to me," he accused Jackson harshly, failing to keep a tinge of hurt from coloring his voice. "You knew about the Goa'uld all along."

"I didn’t know I could trust you," the curator defended. "You could have been working for Littlefield. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd tried to get information about the resistance out of me."

"Resistance?"

"Yeah, such as it is. When my parents discovered a temple in Egypt, they unearthed a hell of a lot more than they bargained for. It was the site of some kind of massacre. They found a whole mess of skeletons… several Jaffa, and a lot of human slaves. But there were two other human bodies that were… different. Each had the husk of a serpent-like creature entwined around its spine."

"A Goa'uld," Jack said.

"Yes. Well, at the time they didn't know that… but they found a tablet made of a previously unknown material, the technology was far ahead of anything we had, and the writing was similar to ancient Egyptian. Mom managed to translate some of it using her knowledge of hieroglyphs, and set about deciphering the rest."

Jackson raised his arms and Rothman obligingly lifted him to his feet, and got him settled on one of the chairs. Then the curator continued his explanation. "All the discoveries proved that the Jaffa had been to Earth long before Littlefield claimed to have made contact with them. I guess when they got too close to the truth he had the murder attempt made, but only Dad died, so he used Mom… and then me to try to find anything else that had been left on Earth, by the Goa'uld, or any other aliens."

Pausing for breath, Jackson began to knead his thighs, his knuckles whitening with the pressure.

"Of course, that's not what we were led to believe we were discovering. It was just supposed to be the archaeology of ancient cultures. After Mom died, Littlefield recruited various people to do the expeditions, but was never satisfied with their work. I'm not sure if he ever realized that they had little success because I was steering them in the wrong directions. None of them could have been that smart, or they would have seen the deliberate mistakes I made in the strategies."

Jackson abruptly ceased the diatribe. A wince crunched up one eye in an intense expression of discomfort.

Catherine moved over to Littlefield and searched his pockets. She found the pill tin and handed it to the young man. "Thanks," he whispered, gratefully. He took three of the tablets, waving off Catherine's reproving glare. After a few moments, the lines of pain eased, and he carried on talking. "Then Robert came along… he actually queried what I was doing. By that time, I pretty much didn't care what happened to me, so I took a chance on letting him in on the secret. We've been working together ever since, to try to come up with some way of deposing Littlefield."

Jack gave him a quizzical look.

"Hundreds of people every month are taken for slaves and hosts. And you were right about us being held back in our technology. Scientists and inventors are the first to be… relocated. I think he's been watching me for a long time. I really thought he didn't know I could read Goa'uld. The only person other than Robert that knew was…" Jackson whipped his head round to stare at Catherine.

"Forgive me, Daniel," she pleaded. "I had to tell him. He would have had you killed. He would have killed *me*."

Jackson nodded slowly in acceptance of her confession. "Did he murder Mom too?" he asked, his voice cracked a little.

"Yes. He wanted her to take my place, since I wouldn't use the sarcophagus to delay the ageing process. Clare refused him. He used you to get at her, but still she wouldn't give him what he wanted, so he dealt with her the way he does all things he's tired of."

She looked down at Littlefield's body. "He still loved me," she said winsomely. "All the women he could have had, all the women he *did* have… but he still loved me. I loved him, once… before… all this. He *was* a good man. You remind me so much of how he used to be, Daniel, and how you should have been… intelligent, intuitive, so full of life and passion. It tore me apart to see your anger for what happened to you stripping away your spirit."

"Yes, I was angry," Jackson fairly snarled, his voice amplifying as he asked, "Why the hell shouldn't I be?" He smacked the side of his fist down hard on his leg, demonstrating his frustration. He looked up and away from them all then, and Jack could see the tears leaving glistening trails down his cheeks, as the sunshine pouring through the high slot window reflected off them.

Jackson sniffed, and childishly wiped his face on his sleeve. "But I'd do it again tomorrow," he said softly, "if I thought I had a chance to help someone, like I tried to save my Dad. Ernest gave me something to fight against… *him*, and what he was doing. It gave me a reason to carry on. Sometimes I was tempted to push him too far, so he'd kill me and I wouldn't have to bother with anything anymore, but… I guess it's just not in me to give up."

Jack had to agree. If there were ever another sonofabitch more stubborn than he, it was Daniel Jackson. He knew of several other people back at the SGC who could attest to that… and a number of Goa'uld too, for that matter.

Looking to Catherine, Jack sought an answer to one of the questions that had been troubling him. "If you knew Littlefield was that bad, why the hell didn't you leave him?"

"Ernest needed Daniel. If I had left I would never have been able to forgive myself for what he might have done to get what he wanted. He is… was… unscrupulous. And if I'd tried to take Daniel with me, he would have tracked us down. There was nowhere we could have hidden. His hold over the people is too great."

So, Jack had guessed correctly. She had stayed for Daniel's sake, at least in part. Though with what had transpired earlier, it seemed Littlefield had still managed to inflict some serious rounds of torture on the young man. "And of course it had nothing to do with saving your own ass," he accused sourly.

"Jack, please," Jackson implored, in a tone that was all too familiar. "Catherine was there when I needed her… when there was no one else," he defended the professor.

As another tear slipped out and trickled alongside his nose, a troubled look crossed the curator's face. "W-would it work now? After all this time?"

"Wha…?" Jack began, wondering about the sudden change in Jackson's demeanor, but then the words made dreadful sense. "The sarcophagus?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yeah," Jackson sighed. He glanced at his legs. "Do you think…?"

"No! Don't think!" Jack couldn't help but shout back at him, but instantly regretted his callousness, and he added somewhat more appeasingly, "I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work. Not unless you used it a lot… and by then you wouldn't be *you* anymore. Believe me. I know."

"I suppose," Jackson conceded ruefully. "I'm sure Mom would have used it if she thought there was a chance."

"She did the right thing, Daniel," Jack told the young man. He heard an echo of what the archaeologist had told Teal'c mere moments after the Jaffa had killed his wife. Why was it that the *right thing* for Daniel was always to be a source of more pain. Determined to get Jackson away from the subject of the sarcophagus before it festered into something tantalizingly irresistible, Jack asked, "Just how big is this Resistance movement you've got going?" It was a question that had been on his mind since the curator had first made mention of it.

"Well, we haven't really got it off the ground yet. There's me and Robert, obviously and a few scientists in hiding that we know of. Unfortunately, most people thought of Littlefield as a hero, and the Jaffa as peacekeepers. We'd be hard pressed to overcome that swathe of opinion, which was why we were waiting until we'd found something more conclusive of other life out there that might help us.

"Nick found something in Belize that he thought would free us from their rule, but he disappeared without being able to tell me what. I assumed Littlefield's people had gotten him too. When I sent Robert there, he found the mirror. The references to the people that made it told that they despised the Goa'uld. We thought if we could contact them somehow, they might help us.

"Unfortunately, one of Robert's assistants turned out to be spying for Littlefield, and gave him the intel about it being a device to alter history. We had no idea that it could send someone to a different reality."

Rothman finally joined in the conversation. "We hid the controller, but…"

"Obviously not well enough," Jack finished for him.

The other two men nodded soberly.

"Nick did find something in Belize… a crystal skull." Even as he spoke, Jack didn’t know why he was telling them this. They couldn't possibly win. Two archaeologists and a handful of followers, no matter how determined they were, would hardly be able to undermine years of seemingly benevolent Jaffa intervention. The Goa'uld's rule was positively invisible. Why would anyone see the need for change?

Jack was suddenly reminded of the idealistic soldier in that old H.G. Wells story 'The War of the Worlds'… nothing more than a dreamer, full of ambitious hopes and plans, but with no way of putting any of it into practise. It was a gloomy analogy to make, but his mind made no apology for it.

Jackson looked to Rothman, but the explorer shrugged and shook his head. Evidently, he hadn't found anything like that on his travels.

By explaining the skull's importance, Jack thought he might be giving the men false hope, but how could he not give them a clue? SG-1 had already helped save one alternate reality from the Goa'uld by helping them to contact the Asgard, maybe he could instigate freedom for these people by similar means. "If it did the same to him as on my Earth, he would have been transported to another planet. One where the resident aliens consider the Goa'uld to be an enemy."

"Then there might be hope for us yet." Jackson's face lit up at the possibility of salvation.

Jack wondered.

"Well now," Jack began, picking up the mirror's remote control, "it's been lovely to visit, but I really should be getting back to my own reality." Boy, did that sound weird.

There was a crashing noise from somewhere, and Stella went out into the hall to investigate. "Jaffa," she called over to Jackson when she reappeared moments later. "Lots of them." She went straight to Samuel's body, and snagged the zatnikatel. More staff fire hurtled through the corridor. Keeping low, she leant out of the doorway, and began firing back. "Littlefield must've alerted them," she added. "I'll do what I can to hold them." Loosing zat bolts as she went, Stella sidled into the hall.

Watching as the flowery mass dealt out such carnage, Jack didn't know whether to be more shocked or impressed by her actions. However, he had no time to ponder on his feelings. He picked up the remote control, crossed to the mirror and started to fiddle with the device.

The mirror turned on, but none of the worlds he managed to display were familiar. He cursed, quashing the urge to bang the device on the table as he would the TV remote back home if that failed to produce the channel he wanted.

Damn. Why hadn't he sat in on the lesson the alternate Kawalsky had given Daniel into using one of these things?

He brushed his finger over the control again. Suddenly, the interior of a museum appeared. He peered closely, trying to find something to help him identify the place as his own reality, and nearly whooping for joy as he spotted the battered backpack stuffed down by a chair near the door at the back of the room. It was Daniel's.

"Have you found it?" Jackson hobbled up beside him, and leant on the table for support.

"Yeah," Jack sighed gratefully.

Jackson leaned in toward the mirror, having to compensate for his lack of glasses with nearness to the scene. "Another museum?" he asked, smiling.

"It was a moment of weakness," Jack said dismissing the young man's obvious amusement. "Guess Daniel's still around somewhere… that's his pack. He's probably giving the curator hell…"

"Yeah, some people will do that." Jackson was still grinning, and Jack found himself joining in. With his pain under control, the curator's easy manner had returned. But their moment of tranquillity was all too brief.

The sound of a shot from behind made them both turn, the smiles dropping instantly from their faces. Catherine's body was finishing its descent to the floor, the neat hole in her chest barely leaking, as her heart had already stopped.

Rothman turned, his gun still smoking. "Thank you for opening the portal for me," he said coolly, levelling training the weapon at Jack.

"Catherine…" Jackson whispered a cry of despair, lurching forward as if to go to her.

Jack got his hands around the curator as the young man teetered, dangerously close to toppling over. Unsteadily, though perhaps more from shock rather than his disability now that Jack was supporting him, Jackson twisted to confront Rothman.

"Rob?" he questioned, seemingly devoid of any particular train of thought.

"Who's the smart one now, Daniel?" Rothman jibed. "Did you really think I'd go along with your pathetic plans? You're as gullible as that old fool." He nodded toward Littlefield's body.

Jack was smarting from his own lack of foresight. Was he getting so old that he was no longer able to suss out the good guys from the bad? Or were things *so* completely screwed in this world that not even Sherlock Holmes could have made a reasonable deduction. Actually, he thought, rather acrimoniously, a bedroom farce would probably have fewer twists than the plots uncovered in this place.

He spared a glance to the young man he still had a hold on. Jackson's face bore the unwelcome marks of betrayal and hurt. Though which was the greater of the two emotions, Jack wouldn't like to speculate on. Carefully, Jack maneuvered himself round and guided the curator's hands to the table, freeing himself from his supportive role. If he could just make a lunge for the gun, Jack thought he might be able to salvage the situation. "So," he drawled, putting a foot forward, "we have a new player in the game. Who are you taking your orders from, Rothman?"

"Not another step, O'Neill," the explorer warned. "I don't take orders from anyone," he replied in answer to Jack's question, his gun never wavering from its aim. "Not from Littlefield. Certainly not from *him*." He shot a sneering look at Jackson. "I work for one person only… me. I said 'not another step'!"

Two more shots rang from Rothman's gun. Jack dived sideways, but Jackson had been fractionally quicker. His body crossed in front of Jack's, jerking twice violently as the slugs ripped into his chest.

As Jack hit the floor, another weapon fired and he looked up to see Rothman slam down face-first, his back smoking from a staff blast. Stella peered around the doorway, and then came into the room. She nudged the explorer's leg with the butt end of the staff she held. Satisfied, when the man didn't so much as twitch, she sought out Jack. "I always knew he was a bad'un," she said. "You haven't got much time. There are Jaffa all over the place. We're surrounded."

Then she caught sight of Jackson. "Daniel!" she cried, starting across to him.

"N-no, Stella," Jackson rasped. "Keep watch. Jack has to… to get away."

Anxiety shining in the woman's eyes, she reluctantly obeyed her superior and went back to stand by the door, determinedly holding the staff weapon at the ready.

Jack levered himself up and looked apprehensively at the young man lying next to him. Jackson's shirt was soaked with blood, and the young man was trembling.

"Daniel…" he called in a hushed voice, gripping the curator's upper arm with one hand, while scooping the shoulders up off the hard floor. He let Jackson rest sideways against his chest, using one arm behind the younger man's back to support him.

Jackson blinked open his eyes, the shock of his injuries already registering in their depths. "Go, Jack…" he whispered. "While there's still time."

But Jack had promised Daniel he wouldn't leave him behind again, and he had to remind himself he wouldn't be… here was where *this* Daniel belonged. It was hard though. How could he just walk away when the young man had just sacrificed his life for him? The same as his double had done on Ra's ship so long ago.

"I'll find some help," he said. Who? Where? There was so much blood… and no hope. But if his Daniel were lying dying, he'd want for someone to be trying to do something.

"Too late," Jackson wheezed, fumbling to bring his hand up to clutch at Jack's fingers. "Look after him."

Had the curator been reading his thoughts? "I'll do my best," Jack assured him, "but he has a nasty habit of jumping in front of weapon's fire meant for me too."

Jackson chuckled breathlessly, his blue eyes seeking out Jack's. "I… I hope you beat them." His back arching as a spasm of pain seared through him, blood welled in his mouth and he coughed it out, wiping his lips with the back of a shaky hand.

Jack grimaced and held the young man tightly, hoping to alleviate some of the upsurge in suffering. "We will… someday. If we have to take every goddamn one of them down one by one…" Just like they had been doing up to now. Slow, and not all that sure, for there always seemed to be another waiting to take the eliminated one's place, but each Goa'uld that got what it deserved was a victory… a small one, maybe, but worthy of celebration.

He gripped the curator's blood slicked hand. "The next one we get will have your name on it."

Nodding, a faint smile curved Jackson's lips. He slumped against Jack, but then he looked up, his face strangely serene. "It doesn't hurt anymore," he said quietly, his voice sleepily slurred. And Jack realized the young man didn't just mean the most recent wounds. Jackson's hand relaxed, and slipped from the colonel's, leaving his fingers smeared deep red.

Jack gently let the shoulders down to the floor, and brushed his thumb over each of the curator's eyes, closing the lids for the young man who could no longer do it for himself.

Stella had been firing volleys into the hall, she ducked back as returning shots blasted chunks out of the doorway. "You'd better go," she called to Jack, sadness sweeping over her features as her eyes lingered on the unmoving body of her fallen friend.

"The mirror should be destroyed. It can't fall into their hands," Jack told her.

"I'll see to it," Stella told him. "Now, go."

Jack nodded, and went back to the table. He took one last look at Daniel Jackson, blood spread in a morbid pool alongside the still form, and hoped he would never have to look upon his friend that way. Checking that the image in the mirror hadn't changed, he reached out his hand and touched it.

"Jack!" Daniel was rushing over to him before the flash had died in his eyes. "My God, Jack! What the hell happened to you?" The archaeologist was taking his arm and helping him across to the chair by the door. "Where are you hurt?" he asked, his voice full of concern, and his eyes roving across the colonel's body.

When the electrical tingling had relinquished its grip on his senses, Jack was able to determine just what had the young man so overwrought. Blood covered his hands and was splattered over a good portion of his shirt and pants. It took a few moments longer to register that none of the redness actually equated to any bodily harm he had endured. "It's okay," he managed to grind out at long last. "It's not mine."

"Then who's?"

You don't wanna know, Daniel, believe me. "Let's not get into that right now, huh? I think we have other things to worry about." Jack flicked his eyes to a spot behind the archaeologist, and Daniel turned to see one of the museum's security guards striding over to them.

"Oi, what's goin' on?" the uniformed man called over to them.

"My friend fell and cut himself," the archaeologist explained.

"Is he alright?"

"Yes, but look I need you to call the head curator down here straight away."

"Why?" The guard eyed him suspiciously.

"Because I believe there are a number of items here which were stolen from a private collection. I have been tracing them for months and I am duty bound to retrieve them, but I want to do this by the book."

Jack could feel his eyebrows rising as Daniel expounded his story, and when the guard walked away to contact the head curator, he challenged the young man. "Stolen… from a private collection?"

"It's the best I could come up with at short notice," Daniel vindicated himself. "I've already been in touch with General Hammond. He's going to work something out with the local police to back up the story so that we can confiscate the mirror and anything else that looks suspicious. That reminds me… I'd better ring him and let him know that you're back."

"You've been here all this time?"

"Of course. You scared the proverbial out of me, Jack. I couldn't just leave, knowing you were… well, I had no idea where you were, 'cause I turned the controller off, just as I heard you being zapped by the mirror and of course when I switched it back on, a different reality came up. I tried loads of locations, but I couldn't see you in any of them, so I figured the best thing to do was to stay here and hope that you managed to make your own way back sometime soon. Which, thank God, you did. I put my pack over there too, so as you'd know it was the right place to come back to."

"Yeah, that was a great help… thanks."

Daniel hadn't finished, though the adrenaline rush of having his friend returned to him was finally running out of steam. "Besides," he said sheepishly, adding a further reason for why he had stayed in the museum, "you had the keys to the car."

Jack patted his pockets. Crap. Littlefield probably still had them… and his wallet. He groaned as he realized how many things he'd need to get replaced. House keys, car keys, locker key, credit cards, photos… At least those kinds of things *could* be replaced.

"You okay?" Daniel was peering at him, perturbed.

Jack waved him off. "Yeah," he replied. "I was just thinking about all the things I lost when I was there."

"Oh," Daniel answered.

Jack knew Daniel couldn't possibly know exactly what he'd meant by that comment… and he didn’t want him to… not all of it. There had been a seriously wide chasm opening between the two of them over the past few months and although Jack had been aware of it, he hadn't felt the need to address the problem like he suddenly did now. The question was… How?

Having sorted out the items to be transferred to the SGC, Jack and Daniel had snagged a ride to Jack's house in one of the SFs' jeeps. Showered, changed, and relaxing with a beer, Jack had related as much of his trip as he deemed necessary to placate Daniel's seemingly ever growing list of questions.

Daniel was mortified by yet another reality having to succumb to the Goa'uld. "Shouldn't we go back there? See if we can help?" he asked, his face screwed up in all kinds of anguish.

"No." Jack replied flatly. "It was too late for them. The Goa'uld had been in control there for too long." It was easier to say than the real truth, that Ernest Littlefield as good as ran the planet on the Goa'uld's behalf. Jack was taking the coward's way out, and he knew it, but there was a big part of him that didn't want to defile Daniel's affection for the elderly scientist.

He'd thought long and hard about what to tell Daniel of his sojourn into another reality. Ever since he'd found himself on the right side of the mirror, the archaeologist had been quizzing him… especially about the blood on his hands and clothes.

He had to give Daniel something he couldn't argue with, he added, "Besides, the mirror should have been destroyed after I came through."

Daniel still looked pensive.

"Forget it, Daniel. It's history… someone else's history."

"But…"

"You can't save them all, Daniel," Jack snapped, but regretted it.

"I suppose," Daniel reluctantly agreed. "It just seems so unfair."

"*Life* isn't fair. You, of all people, must understand that." Jack wanted Daniel would see where he was coming from. The archaeologist had been on the receiving end of a multitude of tragedies, yet despite that, he always believed there was hope for something better. This time, Jack just wanted Daniel to let sleeping dogs lie. He didn't want to have to explain.

Hesitantly, Daniel lowered his eyes and asked a question that had obviously been burning inside him. "What was he like… the other me?"

Jack considered the question for a moment. "Similar," he replied, noncommittally.

"Similar?" Daniel blinked.

"Well, there were some differences… Look, I don't think it's a good idea to go into what made you *you* and him *him*… It doesn't serve any purpose to dwell on what might have been." Jack had caught himself thinking about the possibility of Charlie still being alive and well over there, and had quickly re-routed his thoughts. It didn't matter. It wouldn't change what had happened here.

"Why?"

"It just isn't. Okay? Trust me. There are some things it's best not to know."

Daniel stared at him.

Jack saw the bemused expression. He'd wanted to stop Daniel asking questions about his double, worried that the truth might hurt him. The other Jackson had found a way of keeping one parent alive, for a few years longer at any rate. He knew how much his Daniel would beat himself up over not being able to do the same. However, his terse words were hurting Daniel almost as much, so he decided to give him something to think about. "He was a good man. Just as you are."

Daniel's face twitched with the briefest of shy smiles.

"Can we leave it at that?" Jack asked, hopefully.

"Okay," Daniel agreed. After a heartbeat he added, "If you think it best."

"I do," Jack confirmed.

"Okay." Daniel sighed deeply.

"You can't save them all, Daniel." Jack reiterated his earlier sentiment, hoping the repetition would infuse it into the archaeologist's brain.

"You already said that," The archaeologist groused.

"Nice to know you were listening," Jack said good-humoredly.

"I always listen to you, Jack," Daniel declared. "I may not always do what you say, but I do listen."

EPILOGUE

Jack stared down at his clone, feeling odd.

"Are we still so far from real to you?" his duplicate asked, its voice tinged with a mechanicalness that had never been there when it didn't have its guts and biofluids pouring all over the floor.

If anything, Jack thought he should be even further alienated from the being in front of him than he had ever been, but he no longer saw the differences he once did. He peered directly at his mirror image, and answered, "No. I guess not." It was true. It didn't matter that the Jack O'Neill dying before his very eyes was not made of flesh and bone, it… no… *he* was just another version of himself. Just as the Daniel Jackson in that other reality had been Daniel.

Cronos was dead.

That Goa'uld's ass belonged Daniel Jackson, Head Curator of the Washington Museum… and Daniel Jackson, clone… Goddamnit! Hell, just make that every Daniel, and every Jack, and every Carter, Teal'c, Hammond… in fact every whoever fighting the Goa'uld… whichever reality they be in, whatever they be made of.

God, help them. God, help them all.

AUTHOR'S NOTE : Thanks to Carrie for encouraging my brain to conjure up a further twist at the end, and of course to Jmas for beta-ing.

© June, 2002 The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.