So far just one story for this genre. It may be expanded later. I own nothing, am a firm Daniel / Shau'ri shipper, don't particularly care about Sam / Jack and haven't seen anything past the beginning of season 9 (stupid channel 4).

The Thing With Feathers - Daniel finds an ancient tablet inscribed with his name on an alien planet. He steps through the Stargate and arrives on Earth mostly dead. Jack meets a new kind of snake god. Daniel gets Gatewrecked again. Then things get really strange. Summary inside. WARNING: Contains dark (and I do mean Dark) material in one chapter. Clearly signposted. Also full of silly jokes.

Extended Summary: SG-1 goes to an alien planet where Daniel unearths an ancient tablet with his name on it. He takes it home, steps through the Stargate and arrives on Earth not breathing. Jack tries to shoot things and says "Oh fer cryin' out loud" a lot. Carter tries to stop Jack shooting things and is frustrated. Teal'c plots revenge. One of Janet's nurses gets a larger than usual role to play in the action. Butterflies and snakes are of importance, as are Greek Gods, chocolate bars, a Goa'uld called Minthe and Homer. This story has its seriously dark moments but they are clearly signposted.

This occurs in late season 5 (probably). Daniel's not dead, Jonas is never around, Jack is still a Colonel, Carter is a Major, Jacob's not dead, Hammond's still in charge of the SGC, Janet's not dead, and Teal'c still has Junior. Spoilers for seasons 1-5 but (I think) not beyond.

The title of the story is from Emily Dickinson's poem which gets thoroughly mangled. The title of this chapter comes from the movie where the original translation of Stargate is Door to Heaven, which set me thinking. Because I prefer the spelling and the writing of the character, Sha're is Shau'ri.

I disclaim.

Daniel Jackson, doctor of linguistics and archaeology, stepped into the Stargate event horizon on P5X-606 and exited it on Earth 21 grams lighter.

The 21 grams fact had far less impact on O’Neill than the sudden realisation that his pet Egyptologist was dead.

Bellowing for Janet, Jack dropped his kit and lunged to catch Daniel’s falling body. The softest expiration of air he’d ever heard marked the last breath of his friend. Training kicked in and Daniel was on his back with his pulse checked and his airway open in seconds. Forcing air back into his friend’s lungs, Jack caught Carter’s eye and jerked his head towards Jackson’s chest. CPR resumed, sirens screaming around them, they fought for the life of their friend.

Dr Fraiser pushed the Colonel out of the way, her expression as cold and stony as the marble tablet that the MALP carried through the ’Gate and her heart rate fluttering as rapidly as Jack’s.

The stream of orders drifted over Teal’c’s head surreally. With his gentle strong-armed help, Daniel Jackson was loaded onto a gurney. Then the body was propelled towards the Infirmary and the former First Prime could do nothing but watch as the tiny doctor straddled Daniel and pounded his chest, willing him to breathe, yelling commands and demanding vitals, her entire force of being focused on his friend as his was.

Beside him, Major Carter tried in vain to explain what had happened to a shocked General Hammond. O’Neill was already gone, a streak of camouflaged lightning after the blue-eyed, blue-lipped corpse.

Five minutes before Daniel Jackson had been translating an Earth joke into Goa’uld for Teal’c to better understand it while Major Carter and O’Neill had exchanged looks of mutual exasperation. Four minutes before Daniel Jackson had finally understood the Jaffa joke, so witty when spoken in the language of the false gods, and his laughter had not diminished even when he stumbled near the DHD. Three minutes before Teal’c had hefted Daniel Jackson’s pack onto his back and raised an eyebrow at the number of artefacts the archaeologist bore. Two minutes before Daniel Jackson had breath to answer Jack’s teasing about the “stuff” he carried. One minute before he had been alive. Now he was dead and Teal’c could not understand why. There was no blood, no gaping wound, nothing to indicate what had killed him, but dead he was and despite SG-1 and Janet’s best efforts, dead he stayed.

Well, mostly-dead anyway and as everyone knows, there’s a big difference between mostly-dead and all-dead.


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The Stargate glimmered in the moonlight brightly. Moonlight – that couldn’t be right, Daniel thought, there was no natural light in the Gate Room, not 28 floors below ground level and with a mountain in the way.

The stupidity of the thought hit him as he realised that this wasn’t just Not the Gate Room, but also Not Colorado, probably Not the Earth and possibly Not the Galaxy. He hadn’t been Colonel Jack O’Neill’s pet archaeologist for six years for nothing, though, and he quickly sought out and completely failed to find a DHD.

“Oh bqllr,” Daniel swore as he realised that something had, yet again, gone horribly wrong and he was stranded, yet again, on an alien world with no way home. Jack would be muttering about trouble-magnet-accident-prone-downright-careless-about-karma-archaeologists if he was around, but a quick glance showed Daniel what his ears had already told him: Jack wasn’t here. Nor was the rest of SG-1 or the MALP.

Looking around, he saw rocks, rocks and more rocks. There were no trees between here and the horizon, a fact Jack would have appreciated, and the monotonous landscape was broken only by a dark river that flowed sluggishly half a mile from where he stood. Assessing the situation, he sat down on the steps and thought about his assets as Jack had taught him to do: He had his day-pack, some covertly smuggled chocolate and a very limited supply of coffee. What he didn’t have was a GDO, DHD, Plan B or even a P90. The only acronym he could add to the mission’s credit slate was SNAFU although FUBAR was also soon to be a contender.

He snorted as he realised that Jack had finally taught him military parlance when he wasn’t around to hear him use it. Shaking off the brief touch of homesickness, he took stock of his surroundings. This world was dark, cold and devoid of other life. The water might, or might not, be drinkable. The night skies bore no resemblance to any heavens he’d ever seen and he couldn’t pick out a single familiar constellation. Wherever he was, he was far from home and completely alone.

The last world he had been on with SG-1 was P5X-606. It was an archaeologist’s dream: unspoilt, a gorgeous desert planet with the dry heat of Abydos and only slightly more vegetation, just enough trees to lead Jack to make another sarcastic remark about their universality. Better yet, his pangs of homesickness were alleviated by the discovery of a lost city, abandoned and ruined true, but in better condition than any ancient Earth city other than Pompeii. If he’d been excited before he found the Temple though, he was on a hyperactive-child’s-sugar-high-of-a-lifetime when he reached the inner sanctum.

Jack had pouted, but then Jack always pouted when he started in on one of his brief lectures about the possible history of whatever world they were on. He knew Jack found them dull sometimes, but he’d also seen the glint of amusement in his Colonel’s eye whenever certain names came up. Jack thought he didn’t know but Daniel was well aware of his fondness for Homer and anything regarding gods getting their asses kicked, even if it was by other gods. Such instances were rare so Daniel made sure to include plenty of detail when they did arise.

Jack. Jack was going to kill him for this, not that it was Daniel’s fault, no sir. Not that he ever called Jack ‘sir’. Perish the thought. He’d been following Jack across P5X-606, being a dutiful linguist-cum-foot-soldier and keeping his side-arm strapped and his attention on the surroundings and not just on his fascinating new artefacts. The city’s Hellenic ruins had suggested a whole new interpretation of the Greek myths and he’d been torn between staying to study them more thoroughly and rushing back to the SGC to discuss the possible implications of the finds with his archaeological colleagues. In the end, Jack’s urgings to return in time for a hockey game had led Daniel to abandon the site, gather up as many of his finds as he could and dart after the Colonel.

Jack had been keeping a steady stream of bantering comments on the way back to the Gate, most of them about the pornographic mosaics they’d discovered and how lecherous the ancients were, but Daniel hadn’t bothered replying to most of them. He’d been too absorbed in the consequences of his find. The tablet, heavier than it looked, had been carved roughly 3,500 years before, if the Linear A script found all over the ruins were a reliable indicator. 1500BCE Linear A was still in use, a few centuries later and it would have been Linear B and by the time of Homer, early antique Greek. He wondered if these people had been brought from that time by the Goa’uld and never evolved the later languages like the Abydonians don’t think of Shau’ri, damn it, too late, just don’t start crying now, concentrate on the tablet, think of the origin of Linear A – Goa’uld, not so good. Quick, Latin: Amare: Amamus, amaverimus, amatus est… Not that one, vitskertr! OK, recite the early Greek alphabet backwards, that’s better, just remember to breathe or if they had moved beyond the Linear A and that this last surviving script was an historical document from early in their colonisation.

His scriptural problem was simple: the tablet was a Rosetta stone linking Linear A, ancient Greek and a weird mix of Greek and Latin letters. The last made no sense unless read phonetically with a Chicagoan accent when they became comprehensively modern English.

The utter incompatibility of ideas astounded him. Despite Jack’s belief that everywhere evolved the English language despite having none of the Romance or Saxon languages it was rooted in, Daniel knew how unusual it was to find it spoken anywhere off Earth. He’d been laughed out of academia because of his belief that the Pyramids showed that written language was much older than anyone previously thought. He didn’t even want to think what would happen if he ever announced that little grey aliens were speaking modern English before Shakespeare ever penned the immortal lines “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

It wasn’t just the language of the tablet but the content that was bothering him though that was troubling in and of itself. The scribe who had carved this marble spoke of the son of a King who had lived long ago, of his deciphering of the Labyrinth, his defeat of the false-god, his brief marriage to the local princess, his journey to his homeland, the loss of said-princess to a God of another land, his tragic return home and his quest to save his kingdom from the evil usurper that had claimed his throne. So far, so Theseus. That wasn’t what was troubling the young archaeologist the most though.

The chalice he’d found next to the tablet bashed against his hip and he winced, momentarily distracted. The wedding cup - which reminded him so much of his own that lurked on the shelf in his apartment, ready to spring out at him, a tiger with claws of sharp memory and teeth of impossible regret - bore similar signs of loving care dedicated to its preservation. That wasn’t why he’d personally carried it instead of putting it with the tablet and the dozen other artefacts on the MALP. Like the tablet, it had caught his eye for a foolishly simple reason and yet he hadn’t been able to let either of them go. Like the tablet, it depicted an historic battle between a hero and a monster, the hero emerging triumphant and the fair Princess won and lost in a few brief scenes. Unlike the tablet, it carried only two words and it was these two words that had made him refuse to abandon it even when Jack had “Oh for crying out loud” him as he stumbled under the weight of the artefacts.

Despite being different materials, styles and even possibly eras, the tablet and the chalice had one property in common: they were carved with the same name that was as impossible as it was familiar to him because it was his own.

Even as he faced his new Robinson Crusoe Gate-wreck life, Daniel still found his breath taken away by that simple fact.

Breathing the cold dry air deeply, he put the thought to one side. Solving archaeological mysteries weren’t going to get him home. There was nothing to do, he decided, but start walking in the hopes of finding some help, or at least some shelter. He wasn’t getting anything done standing around here that was for sure. Shrugging his pack onto his shoulders and pushing himself up off the Stargate’s plinth, he started to walk. “It could be worse,” he murmured, “It could be raining.”

The Gods’ sense of humour is not subtle at the best of times. The words were barely out of his mouth before the monsoon started.


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“Mostly dead.”

Janet wasn’t sure how the Colonel managed it, but the words fell like stones through her mental lake of equanimity, breaking her out of her carefully enforced serenity. The sarcastic ripples were only on the inside and she winced as she heard the scorn in his voice.

“Exactly how can he be ‘mostly dead’? I mean, even for Daniel-Lazarus-Jackson, that’s got to be tough.” Teal’c was standing next to Jack and in a less serious time, she would have sworn his lip twitched into a partial smirk.

Janet sighed and wondered why they’d never covered dealing with sarcastic, worried, mother hen Colonels in her many years of training. “He’s not dead, but he’s not alive either. It’s not a coma, it’s not a hypnotic trance, it has nothing to do with the biofeedback mechanisms that can force a person into deep unconsciousness, he hasn’t been knocked out. He just isn’t there.”

She chose not to tell Jack that she herself had declared Daniel dead or that his body had been wheeled down to the isolation room they kept for those SGC members who died of unknown causes. She’d been on her way to tell the Colonel that the fourth member of SG-1 was dead when the scream of one of her nurses had caused her to spin around and run back the way she had come.

She had finished cleaning Daniel up for viewing, removing more tubes and needles than Janet wanted to think about, and was tying the toe-tag on when the nurse had noticed a mark on the body. Her gloved fingers brushed lightly against it, noting the two deep puncture wounds, and Ellen leaned closer, her breath caressing the mark feather softly.

Then Daniel inhaled.

The nurse’s scream was loud enough to rouse the rest of the facility, if not to wake the mostly-dead. By the time she got a grip there was no need to call a medical team – most of the Infirmary staff were in the room. What could have been the settling of the body into death became a resurrection. The nurse had almost had a heart attack and the fight for Daniel’s life had begun again, even more desperately than the last time.

“Right.” O’Neill drew the word out to twice its natural length and left its harmonics twanging on Janet’s violin string nerves.

“Do you have any idea what could have caused his condition?” Janet shot Carter a surprisingly grateful glance. She could deal with worried Majors.

“Snakebite.” The word snake was perhaps ill chosen because at it O’Neill’s back went ramrod straight and his expression switched from open concern to barely suppressed horror.

“Goa’uld?”

There it was, the most feared word in her dictionary. She smoothed herself into calmness and looked the Colonel in the eye as she said, “No, but whatever it was, we don’t have an anti-venom for it. There’s a bite mark on his left ankle, two deep fang wounds and the area around the wound is infected. The teeth must have gone right through his boots. We’ve tried to draw the infection out but nothing is working.”

“But… mostly dead?” Jack’s expression was one she had seen too many times, confused and afraid and not quite willing to admit to just how scared he was for his friend.

Janet intertwined her fingers and gripped until the knuckles whitened, keeping her face carefully impassive. If she let herself feel now, she’d break down and weep. She couldn’t watch him die, not again. “He’s not breathing on his own. His responses are slow. His heartbeat is so erratic that it’s stopped several times and I’ve only just managed to get it back. We have him on a ventilator and an experimental form of a pacemaker that Anise loaned us.” She stopped short of saying that it was the only thing still keeping the archaeologist’s heart beating steadily. None of them needed to hear that. “The machines may be the only things keeping him going. From a medical perspective, he should be dead.”

“But he isn’t,” Sam said it in a half questioning tone, as if the notion was fragile and would break if too much reliant weight was placed upon it.

“No, he isn’t, but he isn’t responding to stimuli and his EKG patterns are flat-lined. If there were a definite cause, I’d say he was brain dead, but as it is, I just don’t know what’s wrong with him. The venom from the snakebite may have caused this, but we’ve had enough alien devices affecting personnel for me not to discount something else at this stage.” Janet looked down at the table and then forced herself to face Jack. “Was there anything on the planet that would have caused his condition?”

“No, nothing,” Jack answered, but even as he spoke the words Carter gave him a sharp glance and he knew he was lying. He just wished he could remember about what.


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The river was further than he’d thought; either that or the strange event that had led him to this place was affecting his perceptions of the passage of time.

The sun was rising by the time his feet found the damp river bank and he sank gratefully to the ground as he found the water clear and pure smelling. Dipping a hand in, the feel of the cool liquid against his colder skin soothed him. He cupped his hands and leaned forward to drink.

“Stop!”

His lips brushed the liquid and stopped. He turned his head to see a young boy running towards him, arms waving frantically, face contorted in fear.

“Don’t drink that,” the boy fell to his knees next to Daniel and pushed his hands so that the water flew across the river in an arc of rainbow coloured drops.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

“It’s the River of Lethe,” the boy said if the fact was patently obvious to anyone with half a brain. “Drinking the water makes you forget.”

Only on the word forget did Daniel realise that the boy wasn’t speaking Goa’uld, Abydonian, English or any of the living languages he spoke, but Homeric Greek. That he was standing by the River of Lethe talking in Ancient Greek to a boy who, he had just realised, bore a striking resemblance to a minor Goa’uld he and Teal’c had once despatched would have bothered him a few years ago, but not any more. Deciding against giving his peaceful explorer(s) speech, Daniel looked down at the water and saw dazed fish flit by under the reflection of clouds that were perfectly fluffy and white.

“Where is this place?”

The boy, a mop of light brown hair set above a piercing pair of brown eyes, considered the question thoughtfully. “Don’t know.”

“OK, so where did you spring from?” Daniel sat down on the bank and gripped his hands in front of his knees, tucking himself up into a small and unthreatening ball. It was not a move that Jack would like, but then Daniel didn’t see much of a threat coming from an eleven-year-old boy and even if it did, he wasn’t in much of a position to defend himself anyway. He might as well make himself comfortable. “I didn’t see a village as I was walking here.”

The boy laughed. “There isn’t a village for miles, not until you reach the sea. There’s just me and the others at the Haven.”

“The Haven?” Rapidly sorting through every historical mention of the word, Daniel found himself adrift on a sea of options.

None of his thoughts, as it turned out, were anything near the truth.

“Yes,” the boy smiled brightly, “the Haven, it’s where I live with Iannis and Mazda and Shau’ri, and all the others who was once possessed by the false gods.”

Thanks to my reviewers. Hope this next chapter doesn’t disappoint. I hope to post 1 per day until it’s done, and if anyone is still interested, a short sequel to follow.

I disclaim. The title of this chapter is taken from Bowling for Soup's song "Smoothie King" from their "A Hangover You Don't Deserve" album. Stargate SG-1 does not belong to me. Did you have to rub it in?

Happy Ending Hollywood…

“He’s crashing!”

The nurse was saying something else but Jack found himself lost in the high pitched wail of the heart monitor as Daniel’s heart skipped beats.

As abruptly as it began, it ended. The momentary blip had almost caused Jack’s heart to stop too, but now Daniel’s was back to beating and his own to racing.

“Dr Fraiser?” Damn, did his voice really just quake?

“He’s back,” Janet hung her stethoscope around her neck and started doing medical things to Daniel. Anise’s device was doing its job, keeping his heartbeat steady and regular even as the rest of his body failed him. Jack found he couldn’t look away as her fingers spread across his throat and chest before, for the briefest moment, coming to rest on his forehead to brush that errant lock of hair away. She might never admit it, but O’Neill suspected that Dr Fraiser’s most frequent patient was also her favourite. “Colonel,” oh hell, were those tears? Jack prayed not. “If I’m going to help Daniel, I need to know what bit him.”

“We’re going back to P5X-606 later today. The General ordered us all to wear hazmat suits just in case, but Teal’c,” he slapped the big guy on the shoulder and felt the Jaffa gaze down at him with that impossible to read expression of his, “says they don’t carry one in his size, so he gets to go commando.”

The joke was awful and not even Carter could raise a dutiful smile in return.

O’Neill sobered abruptly, though that was easy enough as he’d never lost himself behind his joker’s mask. Nodding his head towards the pale and motionless figure in the bed, for Daniel is a childlike figure swamped by the grey blankets and white sheets, he commanded in a tone that belied its own pleading emotion, “Take care of Danny while we’re gone.”

Janet’s look told him all he needed to know, but it was with a heavier heart that he turned out of the infirmary and set off for his office.


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He’d practically dragged Mandras back to the Haven, the boy confused but willing to please his new friend.

She wasn’t there when he reached the stone building. Apparently it was her way to wander down to the wander the rocky landscape during the day, sometimes collecting food or flowers, other times just thinking. They all understood the need for solitude.

There were faces he recognised though, people who welcomed him as a hero. They had been villains the last time he’d seen them, possessed by Goa’uld, golden of eye and black of heart. Now their faces shone with a far more holy light.

Apparently new arrivals had been rare until recent years when they’d been coming faster than anyone could remember. SG-1, Daniel thought with some pride, were the ones doing that. Ra’s host, Apophis’s and the one that made him shudder, Hathor’s. She had been afraid to approach him at first, her personality so utterly different to her nymphomaniac parasite, and she had hung back, hiding her face behind the red hair that lay in tangles against her cheeks.

She thought he was careful not to look at her, but a few gentle smiles cast her way were more signs of his absolute abstraction than the preoccupation with his time with her parasite. At the end of an hour’s lively conversation with the others, she’d gathered her courage into both hands and approached him. Falling to her knees, a position he quickly helped her up from, she begged his forgiveness. He told her that there was nothing to forgive and that she had been far more a victim of Hathor than he, or any of SG-1, had. She had run weeping then, but the others had assured him that the tears were not of distress but of joy that she was forgiven her trespasses.

Every moment he was there, Daniel felt the tension in his body rise as he waited for her, Ammonet’s former host, Kasuf’s daughter, Skaara’s sister, his wife, Shau’ri. She was here, he knew it, could feel it in his bones, and every moment not spent with her was an eternity of agony.

The hours passed like days. The sun rose slowly and was high in the sky before Daniel could settle enough to sit still and not pace the floor as he waited for her coming. They tried to get him to eat, but he had no stomach for it. His lips were moving continually shaping the beloved words in Abydonian and his tongue could almost taste her. He wouldn’t displace that feeling for mere bodily need. He hadn’t slept in more than twenty-six hours, but he didn’t care. Shau’ri was minutes away. She always returned for the midday meal, they assured him again and again.

The others, especially Ra and Apophis’s former hosts, kept touching him, reassuring themselves of his reality even as he kept telling them that he had never been a host and was not, as far as he was aware, dead. That lead to an entire train of thought he would have to ride later when his entire being was not focused on Shau’ri’s presence.

The River of Lethe wasn’t the only thing that could make Daniel forget everything else and the rest of the world vanished.

She was before him.


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“Should you be doing that, sir?” The sir came after a pause, as if Carter wasn’t sure whether to respect his position as her CO or lock him up because of his position as her CO under an altar with his yellow suited butt in the air and his tongue cursing in a way to turn that air bright cobalt, or possibly navy.

“Daniel was crawling around here, damn it,” Jack pulled his hand back and swore at the hurting finger. “Right before I yelled at him to get his archaeologically aged butt in gear.”

His knees were killing him, but something else was killing Daniel and he’d swap a leg to not have to watch his friend die, not again.

Lazarus Jackson was certainly living up to his nickname. He’d been dead so many times that Ferretti was taking bets on the number of resurrections he would achieve by the end of the year and they were already in to double figures. If Jack wasn’t worried that every death would be the archaeologist’s last, he’d have laid on a bid himself.

He could hear Carter shifting impatiently. “Find anything, sir?”

“O’Neill,” Teal’c’s deep voice seemed more god-like than any Goa’uld’s in this strange temple. It echoed and reverberated until it filled every niche and returned doubled upon them.

Jack’s head shot up and he swore again as it crashed into the altar above him. “Oh fercryin’outloud,” he grumbled in one breath, “What?”

Again that rumble seemed to fill the temple. “I believe that Daniel Jackson was bitten by the snake currently approaching us.”

“What?” Carter span around and Jack was out from under the table in less time than it took Daniel to drink a mug of coffee. Well, almost, not even Jack’s jungle cat reflexes are quite that fast.

“The snake,” Teal’c indicated that they should turn around and face the Temple’s front door.

Jack spun and saw the slithering serpent coming. His gun was in his hand even before Teal’c finished speaking.

“That thing bit Daniel?” It was tiny, maybe six inches long and as thin as a whip, bright purple with black markings and a forked green tongue. Its sinuous body movements were deceptively calm as it had already reached the steps at the base of the altar and was hissing at them angrily. It also had minute wings sprouting from behind its head.

“Shehhehehesss ‘Thing’?”

How to hiss something with no s in it is a minor problem when you’re tongue is split in two.

Jack thought he was hearing things and shook his head slightly to get rid of the ringing in his ears. “Carter, any ideas?”

“Not yet, sir,” she was also looking wary. Her grip on her gun tightened.

“It calls me thing? The crawling, shuffling, foul ape calls me ‘thing’?” Again the hissing sound came but this time it resolved into words.

“Did you just hear the snake talk?” Jack was relieved to see both Carter and Teal’c give subtle nods. OK, so not crazy, just turning into Dr Dolittle.

An outraged hiss reached their ears. “Snake? I?”

Images of Miss Piggy pouting and saying ‘Pretentious? Moi?’ ran through Jack’s head. Daniel was right, pop culture was destroying his brain. “OK, so you’re not a thing or a snake, how about serpent?”

“God.” It looked as smug as the snakeheads he so happily blew up at every opportunity. He wondered if the attitude came as standard with the cold-blooded body and forked tongue. “Guardian of this place. Your Lord and Master. Kneel before me or perish in agony.”

“Oh, no,” Jack shook his head in mocking sadness, “We’ve met snakes that think they were gods and now they’re itty bitty tiny bits of snakes that used to think they were gods.”

“Goa’uld?” If the not-a-snake-but-a-god had had eyebrows, it would have raised one.

“Yes.” Teal’c did have eyebrows, but he didn’t see the point of raising either of them at this juncture.

“No true gods,” the selectively-blasphemous-not-a-snake-but-a-god was edging towards them, its little wings burring.

Jack made sure his weapon was pointed straight at its diamond shaped head. Most things died with a sufficiently large bullet in their cerebellum. God, he’d just thought a word like cerebellum, far from pop culture rotting his brain, he’d been hanging out with geeks too long Making a mental note to have a beer and hockey night with Ferretti soon, Jack cocked the gun and showed the famous O’Neill eat-lead-and-like-it smile. “So they aren’t gods but you are?”

“Yes.” At last, a word it could hiss properly. The s echoed around them until a distant stone fell and displaced the sound.

“Did you bite our friend?” Carter’s P90 was also trained on the snake but her manner was far more conciliatory than her Colonel’s.

Jack could have sworn the snake gave Teal’c’s stomach an assessing look. “Bite? No, I merely nibbled. If I had bitten, he would be dead.”

“Daniel Jackson is mostly dead.” Anyone who didn’t know the Jaffa would have said that his face was impassive and his voice emotionless. Anyone who did know him would have said that Teal’c was in a volcanic fury and only just keeping it under control.

“Yes?” The damn thing sounded pleased. Jack only just restrained himself from firing his P90 an inch to the right of it in warning.

“Yes.” His trigger finger was getting really itchy. “He’s been mostly-dead all day and I want to know what you did to him.”

If the thing had had shoulders, it would have shrugged. “Sent him on his way.”

Jack’s finger was really, really, really itchy now. He swapped hands because it was that or blow the damn thing in two right this second. “On his way where?”

Carter gave him a look that expressed her surprise at his keeping his temper this long. He hadn’t even said “Ohfercryin’outloud” yet and she was finding it disturbing. A Jack with a quiet demeanour was a Jack getting ready for a seriously big blow up.

…Itch, itch, itch.

“To his heart’s desire.” Again, the snake-thing hissed where there were no susurrations.

“Ohfercryin’outloud!”

Carter couldn’t help but feel slightly relieved. That was more like the Colonel. Perhaps the coming storm could be averted.

…itch, Itch, ITCH.

“And what is the desire of the heart of Daniel Jackson?” Teal’c’s head was slightly on one side and his eyebrow almost raised, a sure sign that he was going to be treading on the snake soon if it didn’t start offering some answers fast.

…ITCH, ITCH, ITCH!

The snake smirked, or did whatever the snake equivalent was. “To be with his wife.”

“Ahh.” Jack at last scratched his itch. The bullet bore into the temple floor an inch from the thing’s head and it hissed furiously at him in response, its bright green tongue spitting out at him and lashing the steps with bright orange saliva.

“Blasphemer!”

Jack made a point of aiming the gun directly at the snake’s head. It took the point.

The thing arched its back off the ground and swayed before them, its tiny body undulating as it moved hypnotically closer. “Take me to him and I will recover him from his living death.”

Now there was a phrase to soothe the savage tiger-Colonel. The slight expression on Teal’c’s face assured Carter that he was thinking along similarly sarcastic lines.

“And why should we believe you?”

This time the thing definitely shrugged. “I am a God. I speak no lies. My words fork lightning.”

“Certainly forked your tongue,” Jack muttered as he considered the options. “Right, we’re taking it back, but under restraints, OK?”

The other two exchanged a glance. What else could they do? Daniel was lying in an infirmary bed, pulse and breathing so slow and shallow that he might as well have stopped, the ventilator Janet had put him on forcing life into him but not strength. They had to save him. They had to try.

“Grab that pot.” If Daniel had been there, he would have frowned at pot and started to explain how the pot was actually a funeral urn of great religious significance but if Daniel had been there, they wouldn’t be having this problem. The whole of SG-1 ached at that moment for one of his lectures, even one of the really boring ones about the importance of pot shards found in middens underneath layers of night-soil.

Now they were in the shit and it wasn’t for archaeological reasons.

Moving with the speed of a man trained to dodge well-aimed water balloons thrown by ex-First Primes, Jack caught the snake-not-a-god-thing behind its head and gripped firmly, forcing its tiny body into the urn with the roughness of barely contained righteous indignation.

The creature hissed at him and attempted to break back out, its green eyes shining with wrath. “I am your God, and you dare to treat me thus?”

O’Neill just managed a smirk at it. “Get used to it. Until Daniel’s better, you’re our prisoner.”

Its cries of rage were cut off by Teal’c slamming the lid onto the urn. “The creature is most annoying.”

“You can say that again.”

“The creature is,” The Jaffa caught Jack’s eye and wisely stopped. The Colonel was holding onto his patience by a thread as thin as spider silk and nowhere near as tough.

“Let’s get back to Daniel. If the little megalomaniac Napoleon in the jar,” he shook it and they could all hear the thing swear inside, “doesn’t help Daniel, I figure we can always send it back to Chaka for supper. I’m sure he’d like a new victim for a game of Toss the Snake-Head.”

The I-am-God-snake-creature hissed at them. It didn’t need to know who or what Chaka was to know that Jack meant business. It wasn’t used to this kind of treatment. It was a God and had been worshipped as such for millennia. True, lately its number of worshippers had dwindled as the planet’s population had slowly gone extinct, but the coming of the bright-minded young Earther had changed all that.

In the darkness, the creature lurked and plotted and smirked. The one called O’Neill would regret he’d ever seen the urn. Curling up on itself, the thing in the pot bit its own tail and sucked meditatively. Justice was sweet, but vengeance was sweeter.

TBC...

I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint. Not so many one liners, but the plot progresses! (Yes, shocked me too.)

I disclaim. Muse yields the title. The brilliant writers of Stargate: SG-1 yield the characters.

Butterflies and Hurricanes

She looked thinner than he remembered; her dark hair bound back and her eyes shadowed with darkness that burned him.

Lightning bolts move slower than Daniel as he reaches for his once and future wife.

Monsoons rain less water than she weeps away.

Thunderstorms are quieter than his cries of joy as he realises she is solid, real, free.

Hurricanes exert less concentrated force than their first embrace.

One glance between them is enough to light the world on fire.

Their tears of happiness are enough to put it out again.

Meteorological phenomena, in fact, are entirely inadequate as similes for their passion. Suffice it to say that it would be easier to part Sam from a Naquada’h reactor, Janet from her needles, Jack from his P90 and Teal’c from his dignity than it would to prise these two a millimetre apart.

For Daniel Jackson, the whole universe was reduced to this place, this time, this kiss.

The others settled in and made themselves comfortable. Answers would be a while in coming, but they had all the time in the world.


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The brain patterns were flat. Daniel’s brilliant mind was gone. The warrior-scholar who had opened the Stargate and the Universe to an ungrateful world was lost. If it were any other member of the SGC but Daniel, Janet would have wept with her head on her crossed arms, knowing they were gone forever, but this was Dead-Again-Can’t-Keep-a-Good-Archaeologist-Down-Daniel. This man had survived more staff blasts, ribbon devices, cave-ins, bombs and Goa’uld torturing sessions than anyone she’d ever met. He had survivor tattooed on his butt, just above the large ‘Property of Jack O’Neill & SG-1, Return In Perfect Condition Or Else’. God help those who didn’t heed the warning. She had to remember that and keep faith in his obscene luck that so often brought him to the brink of death before pulling him back at the last possible moment.
Daniel completely failed to move as Nurse Ellen changed his IV bags and adjusted his central line. Janet caught her deputy carefully smoothing an errant lock away from Dr Jackson’s forehead and for the first time since she’d been called to the Gate-room, a smile flickered across her features. She didn’t say a word to the woman, but added another nurse to the list of Daniel’s admirers. He was, more in spite of his frequent visits to the Infirmary than because of them as the presence of an irascible Colonel O’Neill guaranteed that a comatose Daniel was still a difficult patient, the favourite charge of the staff. She’d seen grown women fight over who got to give him a sponge bath. Occasionally she’d pull rank and do it herself, if only to prove to herself that Daniel was healing from his latest injuries and that he wasn’t dying again.

“Doctor Fraiser.” It was the General and as he was using her title, she knew that it was a professional visit. She straightened up and adjusted her stethoscope as she turned to face him. “Doctor, is there any change?”

“None sir.” Janet wished she could offer him a crumb of comfort but like Old Mother Hubbard, her cupboard was bare. “I’ve done everything I can. Now it’s up to SG-1 and Daniel himself.”

“Keep me informed, Doctor,” for the briefest moment his gaze lingered on her face and she saw his concern for Daniel writ large. Her nurses weren’t the only ones to have a soft spot the size of Texas for the archaeologist. Then it was gone and the cold mask of command fitted safely back over his face. He couldn’t afford to play favourites any more than Janet could herself, but that didn’t mean his heart didn’t ache for his premier team.

The news from the lab wasn’t good. There were no venom or drugs in his blood. Whatever had done this to him couldn’t be traced with standard tests. She was beginning to fear it couldn’t be traced at all. Butterfly bandages in hand ready for the incoming SG-3, Janet allowed herself one last glance back at the still form and turned away. If the General could maintain his professional demeanour, so could she and Nurse Ellen knew better than to say so if she saw tears form in her superior’s eyes.

Her body might be active, her mind might answer the questions of the concerned SG-3, choosing the correct solutions to their various medical dilemmas, but Janet’s heart was in stasis, waiting for the news that would allow it to beat freely again.

“Janet!” Ellen’s professionalism was forgotten as she called out for help. Hammond and Janet both spun round to stare at the nurse. “It’s his skin!”

The fine thread work of veins was glowing golden beneath the skin. They swept up from his ankle and across the rest of his body, the tracery perfect in its anatomical detail. Then the glow wasn’t just golden but silver and purple, amethyst and sapphire, emerald and ruby. Daniel was exuding colour bright enough to make a rainbow weep itself away in envy. He had been a glowing energy being before but this was different, this was a violent mix of outrageous colours that would make 1980s’ fashion designers cry “Too much!” It spread across skin and reached his hair, his face an eerie sea green that highlighted the intensity of his eyes, and changed him from a blonde to a blue. Then the colours shifted and he was a kaleidoscope of shades.

Janet and Ellen watched Daniel for the next hour and saw colours adorn the human skin that were never found there outside of sci-fi movies before. The only constant was his hair. While the rest of him went through every conceivable variation of shading, his hair stayed a sapphire blue.


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The days passed easily, washing away the aching agonies that Daniel had at one time believed to be his eternal companions. Shau’ri was herself and his own. The Haven, as it turned out, was somewhere that seemed impossible to dislike. The sun shone hot, but not burningly so. The skies were blue but the rains came when needed and fell gently like lover’s caresses on the skin. The ground was fertile provided you kept near the river and didn’t mind the prevalent vegetation of highly pollinated flowers. There were springs that provided drinking water and they had even discovered an area of woodland beyond the Haven. The seasons were mild, the crops grew well and there was even a plant that resembled tea.
It could have been a world of fire and rock and pain and Daniel would have been happy. He was with Shau’ri. As it was, the benign world seemed to smile blessings upon them and Daniel’s happiness transcended to bliss.

He thought he might be dead because except for a single year on Abydos, his life has never offered him such joy. Despite missing SG-1 and Earth, coffee, chocolate and anti-histamines, the thought doesn’t trouble him much. It wasn’t like he had never been dead before. He didn’t think he’d been infested with a Goa’uld, Sam had certainly been in her own mind when Jolinar had taken over her body, but perhaps a heavenly afterlife would be impossible without Shau’ri.

Shau’ri. Even now he could barely let her out of his sight. There was magic in her movements, her hair was strung with starlight and her eyes glittered with the promise of eternity. They were going to have their happily ever after, even if it was when they were both dead. Yet part of him still believed that she could be snatched away from him at any moment.

Mandras and the others laughed at them, at the way Daniel would do anything for her. She felt unworthy of a love that had followed her into the grave when she was cursed by the gods and would ask him for nothing, but received the slightest token of his affection as the greatest gift. They were only children and like children they were both wise and foolish, Mandras said, his 300 year experience as a Goa’uld host leaving him far older in spirit than them despite twelve-year-old boy’s body.

Walking back with her now from the City, the capital and only city of this state needed no other name, Daniel wondered again if he was in fact dead. Solar flares could explain the time travel, but everything else was impossible. The sun couldn’t bring the dead back to life but here she was. They could transfer him back through time, but time and space? He was in Greece, but it wasn’t really Greece. It was the mass of city-states that would one day resolve into a full country. He was living in the past. He was living history. He was also living prophecy, a guarantee that if this land was Ancient Greece, then it was also Earth and that one day he would walk across it as a younger version of his current self, declaiming Homer to a laughing Sarah.

Homer had once meant only Odysseus, wine-dark seas and fearful gods. Now it brought to mind Jack and even with Shau’ri’s hand in his, Daniel could long for and miss his best friend and the two other members of SG-1.

For the first eight months, he had spent every day by the Stargate, waiting for the rest of SG-1 to come for him, looking for a way to return. Shau’ri had gone with him, refusing to be left or leave for a moment, and had worked nearby, tilling the earth with arms that held her husband tender-fiercely at night, listening to her Dan’yel talk of the worlds he had visited, planning a life back on Earth and learning of her son, Shifu. She worked the ground and he tried to translate the writings he had found in the City’s library, stopping occasionally to help her work or to kiss her, incapable of having her so near and not in touch.

They gave up when he finished the last of the translations relating to the Gate and realised that the DHD was gone, destroyed by an ex-host terrified of anyone opening the Stargate and bringing the Goa’uld upon them decades before. He left a message for anyone who came looking for him, tucking the note inside the plastic envelope that had held his last Kleenex. They visited it still, looking for signs of others, but Shau’ri’s garden slowly reverted as they found life in the Haven more and more engrossing.

Shau’ri planted a pomegranate tree in the place where Mandras had first found her Dan’yel, delighted by the fruit, and he never had the heart to tell her of Persephone’s fate. She cared for it as if it were the child they knew she might never bear, yet Daniel felt a shiver of cold dread whenever he looked at it.

Shau’ri had a cure for that. As love made a child grow strong and wise, she said it would do the same for their tree. It became their place, their sacred grove, and whenever Dan’yel lost sight of her, he would look to the west towards the tree and see her sleeping beneath its heavy boughs, a wood nymph caught napping.

She teased him about his habit of watching her sleep and the teasing would turn to play and other things and Dan’yel’s cold feeling would be forgotten until the next time he saw the tree outlined in red by the setting sun, its dark fruits turned bloody by the light.

“Dan’yel!” Mandras was calling him and he could he smell the stew from his resting place by the Haven’s wall.

Carefully wrapping his journal in its protective cloth and pushing it deep into his pocket so that it lay warm against his breast, Daniel shook away his feeling of foreboding and turned his back on the setting sun.

If he’d known what was coming, he would have cut the accursed tree down and burned it to ash, scattered the ash on the sea and salted the earth where it once grew, but hindsight is 20:20 and even on the best of days Daniel could only claim vision of 6:8.


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The trip back to the Gate was uneventful with Teal’c taking point, Jack carrying the funeral urn and Carter watching their six.
Every five or six steps, Jack would make sure to jerk the funeral urn just enough to rattle the snake inside. Rattle the snake – Daniel would have appreciated that one.

“Carter, dial us up.” The god-not-snake hissed at him again, cursing him in language to make a marine blush. The Colonel was special ops though. It would take language to make a linguist blush to ruffle him.

Jack stopped for a moment and jiggled the jar. “Hey, snake-thing.”

Again the creature hissed “Shehhehehesss ‘Thing’?”

That he could still piss wannabe-snake-gods off in only three words pleased O’Neill immensely. “You said you put Daniel into his ‘living death’. What does that mean, exactly?”

The snake is still cursing. “He’s with his wife.”

“Yeah, that’s the bit that’s confusing me.” Jack has to resist the urge to shake more but the snake-thing is being cooperative and antagonising the only thing that knows where Daniel’s mind is would probably bring the combined wrath of Carter and Janet down on his head. “Cause Shau’ri’s dead and Daniel isn’t.”

Jack could have sworn he heard the snake sigh in exasperation. “His spirit has gone further down its road to the Great Path. He will return when his wish is fulfilled. My venom will provide him with the necessary passage home.”

The wormhole whooshed to life and the whole of SG-1 felt the tension in their spines relax a fraction. They were going home with a possible cure for Daniel.

Stepping into the Stargate, O’Neill felt the pot begin to shake and then it exploded, leaving cuts on his hands. Even as he was divided into atoms, he heard the snake-thing spit, “So long, suckers.”

The tiny purple body vanished into the event horizon.

SG-1 dove after it and were confronted by some very confused Marines on the other side.

There was no sign of the snake thing and with it went all SG-1’s hopes for a cure for Daniel.

Fraiser had no good news for them and they were left to linger by his bedside and hope against hope that their friend would prove his nickname correct and pull through by himself.

The myth would later say that it was now that the shadow fell over the SGC and that their souls were lost to darkness because they had lost the light that had led them to a better way.

Daniel had always hated that part or would when he heard it much later and in another place from a personage he had himself dismissed as myth. Too modest, too self-abnegating, too damn humble to realise his own worth, he hid his light beneath a bushel that saved his blushes but did sod all to hide the fact that his goodness burned like the sun at noon.

Truth was that the SGC wasn’t the same without him and that SG-1 would never be the same if they did not win their archaeologist back. Jack was so grumpy that grown captains cowered at his approach, Carter worked until she had exhausted every avenue of possible scientific thought to save him and Teal’c walked around with an expression that suggested that Junior was giving him permanent indigestion and that the favour was returned. The SGC had lost a favourite son and nothing would alleviate that loss but the return of Lazarus from the grave, and it would take nothing less than a miracle to achieve that.


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Now by the firelight on the first anniversary of Daniel’s arrival amongst them, a year of uninterrupted bliss, they spoke of their experiences as hosts. Daniel called it therapy. The others only knew that speaking began to bridge the abyss of pain that they had endured and brought them a step further toward healing their wounded souls.
“The Gods,” how well they knew them to be false gods, but yet the memory of worship lingered, harsh and unconquerable, “they made me watch as they murdered my family, torturing them until they begged for death, killing them and then reviving them in the sarcophagus, killing them again and again until they broke and their souls fled and though their hearts beat and their wounds healed, they were no longer alive. I only wish that theirs were the only deaths I witnessed, the only atrocities I could not stop, but they were only the first.”

Daniel knew this story too well, but it still gave him shivers to hear Mandras tell it.

The boy goes on, dry-eyed and unsmiling, relating a fragment of what he has endured, drawing the poison from his soul drop by drop. “The day I died and came here was not the happiest of my life. Until I was here, I had forgotten happiness. It was a release though, a freeing of the spirit I will never forget. For so many years I prayed, and then I stopped praying, stopped hoping and accepted my fate as a vessel for the demon, the false-god that stole my life and my family.”

Mandras smiles slowly and it is as the rising of the sun after a long, terrible night to Shau’ri. Her own imprisonment was the longest night she’d ever known. It is noon for her soul now and she hopes the darkness has passed forever. “This is not life I would have wished for, but it is enough.”

The words are true for all of them, for none would have chosen this existence so far from all that is familiar and beloved, but compared to before, this is paradise. Each has their own word for it, but the most familiar to Daniel is Jeptha’s, for he calls it the Garden of Eden and Heaven.

However, as everyone knows, even in the Garden of Eden there is danger. Beneath the pomegranate tree is a stone and beneath the stone is a hollow. The hollow waits but is no more than a void, and Nature hates a vacuum.


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Jack was pacing, a tiger trapped in a cage too small for its magnificence. Sam had to stop watching him; he was making her even dizzier than no sleep and only snatched mouthfuls of food already had. Teal’c remained his usual stone-faced self, but those who knew him could see the tension in his ebony frame. The Jaffa was not a happy bunny.
“SG-1.” Hammond let the file drop to the table with a soft thud. Only years of training stopped him from sighing. “Any news on Dr. Jackson’s condition?”

There, he’d said Dr. Jackson, as if he was just another employee, not Daniel the young man he’d come to admire so much and seen suffer terribly far too often. Somehow that didn’t distance the pain at all.

“No, sir.” Hammond found himself wondering when Sam had begun to look so worn. He made a mental note to put all four of SG-1 on stand-down as soon as this later crisis was over. He deliberately made himself ignore the possibility that there could only be three of SG-1 left to stand-down. The other would be lying down, permanently. He winced internally at the thought. Clearly he’d been spending too much time with Jack.

Sam noticed the slight grimace flicker across her commanding officer’s face and wondered if he had indigestion. The meatloaf in the cafeteria was certainly bad enough.

“You requested our presence, General Hammond.” Teal’c actually sounded impatient, well impatient for him anyway. He had barely left Daniel’s bedside for the week he had been mostly-dead and he already seemed edgy after mere minutes away.

The others stared at him for a moment in shock, but his face was now impassive.

“Yes,” Hammond cleared his throat and glanced down at the folder before him. This wasn’t going to be a good conversation. He’d primed his adjutant to ring the Big Red Phone if the shouting went above 15 decibels. “We’ve received a message from our allies amongst the Tok’ra. There’s a threat made against Earth and SG-1 is the team best equipped to deal with it.”

“A threat, sir?” When had Jack become so good at barely-veiled insolence? The words were venomous. George knew that for Jack the only threat that mattered right now was the one that had damaged Daniel and vanished into the Stargate.

“The Tok’ra informed us of a rising Goa’uld power, one who believes that conquering Earth is the first step along the path to becoming a System Lord.” Hammond laid the file down before him and folded his hands together on the table, leaning forwards against the length of his forearms as he spoke. “Her name is Minthe and she poses a serious threat to us. Her fleet of motherships are approaching and she will be arriving within the next week. I’ve spoken to the Tok’ra and both they and I believe that SG-1 are the only ones that can stop her.”

“Oh fer cryin’ out loud.”

4 …Is Not For Me and You

The days pass and they age gracefully, their souls expanding as they love. Even Mandras, trapped for centuries as a child has become a teenager and a temperamental one at that.

It is due to his foot stomping antics after his latest English lesson that they have sought the peace of the pomegranate tree and the soothing sounds of the river of forgetfulness. They chose not to forget but remember when they are in this place. The wonders of Abydos, Earth and every world either of them has ever visited cannot compare to the paradise of this place where they are together.

Daniel stands up slowly, careful not to disturb his Shau’ri’s sleep. His hands stretch out high above his head and he smiles into the sunset.

The pomegranate falls and he catches it an inch above his wife’s beautiful dark head. He juggles it for a moment, smiling at himself for his hypersensitive awareness of any dangers that could await her, as if danger could find them here.

She stirs in her sleep and he waits until she is settled again before moving a few steps away. There is a stone tablet he left nearby and he is banned from the library until he returns it.

The enforced four hour break was secretly plotted by Shau’ri and Mandras so that her husband would see the sun for the first time in days. She’d stolen the tablet from Dan’yel’s bag and Mandras had left it out by the river side where Dan’yel loved to rest. It is half agony and half ecstasy for the scholar. He cannot be unhappy when he is with her, but he had almost finished translating the last scroll of a set that suggested that Helen of Troy had in fact been a host of the Goa’uld, Hathor. Paris’s judgement had been to choose a new host for her, and he had sought out the most famous women in the Ancient world, stealing them away from under the disjointed noses of the other Goa’uld.

Hathor-Helen had been so pleased by his gift of the most beautiful Queen of the day that she had made him her Prince and fled her then husband, Menelaus otherwise known as Hephaestus, to Ilium, or Troy as it was now remembered. He wondered what modern scholars would have made of the Trojan War being fought not over a human woman but a Goa’uld Queen, not to mention the Trojan horse being no horse but a rebel Jaffa, his pouch hiding the weapon that brought the walls of Troy down around their ears. Odysseus’s great journey had been through the Stargate. He had lost his home co-ordinates after pissing off a powerful System Lord, Daniel guessed one called something like Poseidon. That had done nothing for his prospects of survival or his chance of returning to his home-world where his beautiful wife Penelope waited for him.

He tells none of this to the others. The power of Hathor’s aphrodisiac has not been so soon forgotten by any of them. They do not need to know that the stories that delight them are based in fact that has been all too real for years past. Most of all, he hides it from gentle Maia, who deserves no such torture as to know the fate of her parasite’s previous host. It was only last week that she had first teased him about his gathering flowers for Shau’ri, only for him to sneak a single white blossom into her red hair when she wasn’t watching. Shau’ri had glowered in pretended jealousy and then kissed him and whispered what she would do to him later when they were alone. His scarlet blushes and the lost in paradise look in his eyes had caused the others to laugh themselves stupid.

It is his secret joy, too, that he believes he has met blind Homer, and he imagines what it would be like to tease Jack about the differences between the practical-joker and his beloved H. Simpson. The old man died the day after Daniel first found him, but it was already a memory to treasure forever. The words they speak over the campfire are his apprentices’ memories of his poetry and day-by-day Daniel writes them down, not in English but in Antique Greek. He may never hear the true bard’s version but this is close enough. The scrolls are innumerable and unfamiliar, so much is lost between the time of this great Homer and the next, and he whispers the words night by night into his wife’s ear, losing himself in them and her.

The stone tablet is the one from P5X-606 but he barely registers the strangeness of its carving now. She waits for him beneath their tree and after so long apart, he finds no peace in paradise without her.

He returns on feet made swift by love to find Shau’ri still resting, her head turned away from him and her hand carelessly holding a pomegranate in her lap.

It’s getting late. They need to return to the Haven to prepare the dinner. He plucks a flower that reminds him of a daisy and traces it across her face to wake her. Even if his gentle touch fails, his inadvertent sneeze ought to rouse her but she sleeps on.

“Shau’ri,” he whispers, leaning in closer, “beloved wife, sleep no longer.”

The coldness of her skin startles him. She is never cold.

They would joke that the desert was in her blood that Abydonian heat burned within her still. In bed, she would complain of his feet being like the water from the deepest pool and he would tell her ice was colder. Then she would remind him that she was a mere desert rose and had never seen ice. It was stupid Earth stuff and in his anxiety to soothe her non-existent fears that she was not enough to hold him to Abydos or wherever the Haven was, the coldness of his feet would be forgotten.

She is cold now, though, and unmoving. He rests his hand against her cheek but already knows the truth. He sweeps her up into his arms and gazes into her beloved brown eyes, their brilliance dulled by more than sleep. He does not see the wound on her ankle. She had stood to pluck a fruit and not seen the danger before it claimed her. When she did see it, it was far, far too late.

Cradling her against his chest as Jack once cradled Charlie, Daniel sits beneath the pomegranate tree and wishes to go where his wife is.

The not-a-snake-but-a-god slithers away into the underbrush.

This time it does not grant his wish.

Hours pass.

Tears do not fall.

He has shed enough for three lifetimes and there are none to mark this final passing.

Night comes on tar feathers, marring their faces with shadows.

It is the darkest night Daniel has ever known.

***

“Dr. Fraiser!” SG-1 is screaming for her and it is on feet of lead that she races to Daniel’s side.

“What?” She is out of breath, more from concealed anxiety than the sprint.

“He’s crying.”

The tears that do not fall in the twilight world where Shau’ri is only newly dead cascade here where she passed years before.

“How is that possible?”

O’Neill gives Carter a look that says ‘I thought I was supposed to be the stupid one’.

“I mean, Daniel isn’t there to cry, is he?” Sam was staring at the monitors, waiting for the brain patterns to do something other than flat-line, to change into waves and tell her that yes, Daniel was still in there somewhere. They failed to even flicker.

Dr Fraiser shook her head. “According to all my tests, Daniel’s brain dead, and sometimes physiological reactions occur even after death has occurred.”

“No.”

“Teal’c?” Dr Fraiser spun with the rest of SG-1 to face the Jaffa.

For the first time since they’d come through the Stargate and seen Daniel fall, the warrior wasn’t nearly frowning. “Daniel Jackson is not brain dead. The dead do not weep.”

“Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep.” Sam quoted softly without really knowing why.

Jack ignored her. “Daniel isn’t in his body so why is he crying?”

Then, abruptly as they began the tears stopped.

Jack groaned deeply and pushed his hands through his hair. He could swear he had ten new grey hairs since the morning. He’d given up on the idea of being a brunette for any more years, but he’d really been hoping he wouldn’t be as bald as Homer Simpson before the next year. Daniel’s latest trip to the infirmary was grinding that hope to grey dust. “Just wake up, Danny, please.”

The prayer was as soft as the touch of a butterfly’s wing and for a moment, the brain monitors bleep. Daniel was coming back to them.

The pattern is gone as soon as it appears, only the slight fluctuation above the base line on the sheet showing it was ever there.

The sleeper dreams on.

It is the watchers turn to cry.

***

This is not Greece, Daniel knows that now, because if it was, the entrance to the Underworld would be a mythological place and the River of Lethe would not be real.

He stands at the mouth of the cave and stares into the black depths, almost as dark and vast as his grief, but only almost. Shau’ri has been dead for three weeks. Nothing is as all-consuming as his pain.

The soft slap of waves on sand reminds him that there is a river to be crossed.

The deep growl of a dog reminds him that there is a guardian to be passed.

The clink of coin on coin reminds him that there is a ferryman to be paid.

The hiss of a snake reminds him that there is a god to be supplicated.

There is nothing and no need to remind him that there is a woman to be brought back to life and light and hope.

***

Teal’c waits, in Jack’s phrase “as patient as a brick”, by the side of Daniel’s bed. Jack can be made to leave with physical force, but not even the bravest marine is willing to laid a hand on the sentinel Jaffa.

Teal’c knows that Daniel Jackson is strong, that he has been through much and come through whole. He is not a trained warrior but he has the bravest spirit of anyone he has ever known. He has forgiven Teal’c the unforgivable crimes of the abduction and murder of his wife. He has a soul that is pure. He has survived dying at least six times at the last count and has faced down more System-Lord-False-Gods than Teal’c has had staff weapon burns. He will survive to laugh again at his friend’s untranslatable Jaffa jokes.

For Teal’c, this knowledge is absolute but it does not stop Teal’c from wanting to punch and crush and hurt the thing that has done this to his archaeologist. There is nothing he can do but wait, however, and Teal’c has long since learned the value of patience when waiting. O’Neill wastes his energy on fretful motion and nagging questions. Teal’c understands that to truly wait is to sit silently, eyes open and seeing, entire being concentrated on the bright spot of hope that comes at the end of waiting, and to be very, very, very angry. This absolute fury can be sublimated into patience. Revenge is a dish best served cold and a favourite proverb on Chulak is ‘a watched corpse never cools’.

The Jaffa can only hope that it will not be Daniel Jackson’s corpse that is cooling when the time comes to unleash his rage.

***

Shau’ri is dead.

He has gained and lost the world again.

There is no sun if it cannot shine on her face.

There is no breeze if it cannot stir her hair.

There is no music if it cannot move her feet.

There is no fire if it cannot warm her bones.

There is no food if it cannot nourish her body.

There is no life if it cannot be shared with her.

There is nothing without her.

He breathes deeply and lets the darkness take him.

As if it hadn’t already.

***

“Sir.” Sam is standing by the bedside as Jack stirs himself from a sleep that has lasted hours and feels like seconds. The bed in the VIP room has become a home for SG-1 in recent days. Janet orders one of them to it every few hours and sends the largest, toughest, most whine-resistant orderlies to check that they remember to sleep. One hovers now, cowed by Carter’s glare but more afraid of the petite Doctor’s wrath than either the Colonel or the Major. “Sir!”

“What, Carter?” Special ops do not allow for slow waking. Jack is fully conscious from archaeologist-haunted REM dreams in seconds.

“It’s Dad, sir.” Jack’s boots are back on and his jacket halfway over his shoulders before the next words are out of her mouth. “He says he can help Daniel.”

Bullets are over-rated as comparatives of speed. Jacks with Daniels to save are far better measurements of velocity. Bullets move in miles per second. Jacks move in electron vibrations per parsec.

Jacob is unsurprised by his speedy entry but Selmac raises an eyebrow at his sliding stop before them.

“You can help Daniel?” Jack isn’t panting because panting would leave no breath to bark out the question. He only allows his chest to heave when the words are fired out.

“I believe so,” it’s Selmac that answers, Jacob feeling too aware of what Jack’s response will be if they can’t help the archaeologist.

“Dad!” Sam was running behind Jack only to be left in his wake. Now she casts her glance between the men, her breath catching in her throat as she sees the hope on the Colonel’s face.

“Sam,” Jacob takes control. Selmac means well but doesn’t always understand the emotions of the Tau’ri when it comes to friendship. The Tok’ra are less keenly attached to each other, except for their great loves, and the depth of the bond between SG-1 can be hard for them to fathom. The last thing he wants is for a well-meant but misguided phrase to cause Jack to attack them, verbally or otherwise. “Jack, we think we can help Daniel.”

“You think?” The scorn poured into the words is enough to give Jacob a cold-burn. “The almighty-Tok’ra only think they can help Daniel? Last I heard you guys could do just about anything you God-damn-wanted.”

“Colonel,” Jacob is aware of how strong his daughter is as she puts a hand on Jack’s arm and forces him to calm down. He couldn’t have done the same thing in her place if his life had depended on it. An angry Jack was a force to be reckoned with but a worried Jack was a force to be avoided at all costs.

“SG-1 to the Gate-Room! SG-1 to the Gate-Room!” The intercom system was never more cursed by Jack than at that moment. Jacob grinned internally as Selmac voiced deep gratitude for the reprieve.

“Whatever it is, do it.” Jack was off running again, slow enough for Sam to keep up this time, and Jacob was left alone with Selmac in the briefing room.

“God help whoever’s come calling,” he muttered to his Tok’ra other half, and started the walk down to the Infirmary with a worried heart.

***

There is nothing in the cave but the darkness of absolute night. His small lamp doesn’t do much to light the way even before the oil runs out after the thirtieth hour. He stumbles through blindly, hands stretched in front of him.

There is nothing in his mind but the darkness of absolute grief. He is not the best friend of Jack O’Neill, leading light of the SGC, for nothing though. The air is warm, soothing even, and the pack of food he has brought with him is lasting well.

There is no way of calculating the passage of time. His watch stopped working months ago, so he talks to the ghosts that surround him instead. He is in Greece, this is the Underworld and he is a scholar. He does what Jack would have done under the circumstances and reviews what he knows.

In the darkness, the Latin is comforting. Homer’s passages too few, he walks with Aeneas and the Sybil into the abyss.

Later it is others who keep him company, Frost, Blake and most of all, Dante. Others do not love the end of his Divine Comedy, but Daniel finds comfort in the Paradiso. The book is of love and in the endless dark it is a candle. The light it gives does not spread far, but Jack would be muttering about “better to light a candle than curse the darkness” and Daniel has been foulmouthed enough for the day.

Cerberus is huge. Daniel imagined him no smaller but did not think of the rank stench of three-headed dog and Stygian slime. The dog’s breath is magnified, tripled, by its mouths and if there were air to breathe down here, Daniel would be choking.

He has spent hours thinking of all the means to trick his way past the dog. Heracles who dragged him out of the gloom into the King’s palace was stronger than Teal’c. Orpheus was a greater musician than Elvis. He realised his own weakness and took strength from it.

The Guardian of the Underworld is tricked into letting him in by the simplest method Daniel knows, learned from Jack on that first Abydos mission: bribery with Fifth Avenue bars.

***

“His brain patterns are improving.” Ellen, Janet’s most trusted staff nurse, has flown on rainbow coloured wings to deliver the joyous news to her boss.

They both know whom she means.

Lightning bolts are slower than Janet as she runs into Daniel’s room and finds Jacob Carter standing above him.

He looks over at her wearily. “I’ve done all I can for now.”

“It’s more than we’ve been able to do.” Daniel’s colour has increased and yes, Ellen was right, those EKG patterns are definitely improved.

“Doctor,” Jacob looks weary now and Janet knows that however he looks, he must feel worse. It was the Tok’ra that recommended SG-1’s investigation of P5X-606. No-one is responsible for what happened to Daniel, but he blames himself as much as she knows Jack does. “What happened to him?”

It’s all she can do not to shrug. Exhaustion grips her shoulders into place. “We don’t know. He was fine until he exited the Stargate and then he was dying. As it is, only Anise’s pacemaker device is keeping his heart rate steady and as for the rest of his organs, I don’t know how much longer they can withstand the stress of whatever this is.”

“Anise’s what?” Jacob has barely spoken before Selmac takes control. “We know of no such device.”

“But…” Janet’s fingers fall from toying nervously with her stethoscope. “The device, it came with your message, she said it was of no use to the Tok’ra but that we might have need of it.”

Selmac-Jacob’s face contorts in confusion. When they speak, it is in Jacob’s voice. “Message?”

***

“You dare come before me without a gift and beg of me this boon?” The God – for who else could thunder so? – raved at the archaeologist.

“I bring gifts,” Daniel replied as un-cowed by Hades as he had been by Osiris, Apophis, Ra and Anubis. “The Prized Cup of Ra’ne’kel.” Abydonian for false-gods-with-chips-on-their-shoulders, but Hades didn’t know that. It was laid before the Lord of the Underworld and seemed diminished in the darkness. “Time.” Daniel’s digital watch joined the cup, glowing faintly. “And the food of the Gods.” His very last Fifth Avenue bar, parted with most regretfully of all.

“Paltry thing,” Hades scorned the food but Persephone’s hand reached out as soon as his attention left it.

The slight moan that escaped the back of her throat as she bit down and the wash of bright colour that flooded her cheeks made the God spin to face her, dark robes whirling about him.

“Wife?” His voice comes out as a softened snarl and she faltered. Daniel realised that even when speaking to his bride, Hades could not stop being the Ruler of the Dead.

Persephone ran; her beautiful face pale again and contorted in fear.

Hades smashed his fist against his throne’s arm. “Women!”

The last time Daniel had heard that tone it had been when Jack had been yelling “Archaeologists!”

At the thought of Jack, his fearful homesickness tripled instantly. He already missed each and every one of SG-1, but the pain for Jack was worst. He shook it off as he had once shaken away the desperate need for his parents. The act left his soul quivering softly inside. Not a trace was displayed on his face.

“Hades, God of the Underworld, Lord of the Third Kingdom, Ruler of the Dead, hail.” The invocation rolled easily off his tongue. The mythology might be Greek rather than Egyptian, but it was as familiar as the names of the Gospels. “I beg of you this boon, I wish my wife to be returned to life.”

“You want your wife back?” Hades pressed his chin against his fingers. “Do you have any idea how many requests for returns to life I’ve heard?”

Daniel shakes his head.

“Not one for more than three thousand years.” The God grinned at him savagely. “You are the first since Orpheus.”

Jackson waits in silence. Like all Gods, Hades loves the sound of his own voice and it’s been a long time since he’s had such an attentive listener.

Hades speaks for minutes, rambling about his power and the lack of initiative of modern heroes, who simultaneously ignore the history of their illustrious forebears and fail to come up with really interesting deaths of their own. At last, he recalls why the archaeologist stands before him. “So, who is your wife?”

“Shau’ri, daughter of Kasuf of Abydos.” The words are beloved and leave Daniel’s mouth sweetly.

“Ah, the former host of the Goa’uld Amaunet.” Daniel refuses to react. Hades is impressed. His God-voice usually cows mortals into submission with only the “ah”.

“Shau’ri, daughter of Kasuf of Abydos,” Daniel repeats, “Sister of Skaa’ra of Abydos, mother of the Harcesis child Shi-fu, wife of Daniel Jackson of the Tau’ri. She was once the host of the Goa’uld Amaunet but she was freed from that burden. Amaunet is dead.”

“And so is Shau’ri.” Hades tilts his head thoughtfully. “If I offered you back Shau’ri of Abydos but only as the host of Amaunet, giving you two lives in one body, would you accept?”

Daniel should have known the question was coming. This was Hades, cruellest of the gods. Others are more capricious he is even-handedly horrible. His confusion lasts only a moment. “She is Shau’ri. To bring her back as the host of Amaunet would be to condemn her to a living death.”

“So you would leave her here?” Hades steepled his fingers and looked over their tips to the man standing so proudly before him.

“I would take her as the host of Amaunet and save her from that living death as I take her from this one.” Fire isn’t blue, but if it were, the brightest shade would match the flash of Daniel’s eyes. “I would carry her to Cimmeria to Thor’s Hammer, if she cursed me every step of the way, I would free her from the Goa’uld again if it took my life to do it.”

“You love her so much?” Hades voice is not ice cold, it’s at absolute zero, yet a spark of interest dances in his eyes. “You would die for her?”

“Yes.” The defiance in Daniel’s voice stokes that spark into a forest fire.

That fire burns hotter than Daniel can imagine. The Devil himself would be singed by it. Hades leans forwards, his entire being focused on the man before him. “Would you live for her as well?”

At which point Daniel should have been very, very afraid but wasn’t. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to regain Shau’ri. Heroes are people willing to sacrifice everything they have and are and can be for something or someone outside their own selves. No one ever bothers to wonder why there aren’t any old heroes.

***

“What the hell?” Jack watches as the Goa’uld sinuously saunters across the Gateroom past the shocked marines. Her smell is a pungent aroma of ambrosia and attar of roses.

“I am Demeter.” She is beautiful, a sunlit field of ripe wheat, a rose in full bloom, the delicate blossom of a water-lily, fresh and gorgeous.

General Hammond’s rich voice echoes through the room. “Why is this woman not under restraint?”

Her head tilts on its lovely long neck and she casts Jack an innocent look. “You would restrain me? I mean no harm, I come to help.”

“Yeah, well we’ve heard that before,” Jack snorts. “Marines!”

She blinks and the marines find themselves asleep. “I am not a Goa’uld.” She pronounces the word the Tok’ra way. “You may not understand me and who I am for he who would is mostly-dead, is he not?”

“Colonel O’Neill, would you like to explain to me what the hell is going on?”

“I would if I could sir, but I don’t know myself.” Jack shifts into his questioning a crazy-Danny-lover position. “Miss Demeter, and I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but who in the whole pantheon of false gods are you?”

“Not a god.”

Jack waves his hands. “Well thank someone for that.”

“Sir!” Carter complains briefly before Teal’c’s dignified look cuts her off.

“I believe Demeter is one of those referred to by the Goa’uld as the Ter’fin’aki, O’Neill.”

“And who are they when they’re at home?”

“Those who are to be avoided at all costs.”

“I like her already.”

“You have lost your Daniel Jackson. I have lost my daughter.”

“Danny can’t be picking up girls, he’s mostly dead, for Christ’s sake.”

“The daughter of Demeter, in traditional Roman mythology, was Proserpina or Persephone, sir. She was abducted by Hades to the Underworld where having eaten 6 pomegranate seeds she was forced to spend 6 months of the year with him and the other 6 with her mother on Earth.”

“I knew that.”

Carter and Teal’c exchange longsuffering looks.

“The snake thing said he nibbled Daniel. Now he’s hanging out with some chick in the Underworld?”

***

Daniel sleeps against his will. The days have been long since he last slept and Morpheus cannot be denied longer without caffeine and there is none here.

Shau’ri’s face haunts his dreams. That is nothing new. Every night since they first met he’s dreamed of her. On Abydos, bodies curled around each other like nestling kittens, he slept only to dream of her. Even unconscious in sleep, they were never apart. Together, they’d dreamed of all that was and is and would be in an ecstasy of hope. Now his dreams of her are different. The same one recurs every night. He dreams not of what is or will be but of what was so many times before. It’s becoming as much a part of him as his own name.

Her body moves familiarly with his in the universe’s oldest dance. He remembers this bliss from four hundred and twenty-three hot Abydonian nights. This is how he always thinks of her; her dark curls cascading heavenly over his chest; her mouth alternating between caressing his skin and caressing his name. He draws her so close that it is physically impossible to be nearer and she clings to him with equal intensity in the coolness of the night. The firelight flickers over their bodies with a heat that pales in comparison with that which they create.

She never looks more beautiful to him than now, yet as her shining eyes meet his, he sees only ugliness. Her eyes, her pillow, her bed, everything is golden. It is Shau’ri’s face and Amaunet’s mind. This is not Abydos but Apophis’s home world. The memory is not Daniel’s but his. Daniel’s stomach turns and if he had control of this dream, this body, he would pull away with a cry.

As it is, he is trapped into the motions that follow and even in his revulsion there is enforced ecstasy. Whoever did this first, it’s Daniel’s experience now. He is the one with the scratched back, the neck bruised by fierce kisses, the hair clenched between repulsive loving fingers. The woman beneath him writhes in pleasure, in two-toned sultriness she calls “Dan’yel” in her satisfaction and he murmurs back “Beloved, beloved”, not in Abydonian or English but Goa’uld. He is Daniel but he is Apophis too, he must feel the enjoyment equally as both. She is Amaunet though, not Shau’ri, and whatever gratification she feels is denied her host.

Shi-fu was conceived this night. Along with the memories of technology and torture that Oma wisely buried deep within him, there is this. When he showed Daniel what would be if the absolute power of that knowledge were given to him, he gave him this as well. When he had all the knowledge of the Goa’uld, wielding the greatest power on Earth, saving the world and damning himself, Daniel slept alone and no one ever asked him why. They thought they knew but they didn’t. If asked they would have said that he was loyal to Shau’ri, and he is, but not as they think it.

In the briefing room when Shi-fu had first come to them and given him the vision of the future, he had been so diplomatic. He had said only “Fathered the child” as Jack struggled for words that they seemed almost innocuous, but the truth is so much simpler and harder to say. This action may be fathering a child but it isn’t love making, having sex or even fucking. It’s rape of the mind as well as the body and Daniel will never forget it, can never be allowed to forget it. He never did in the vision. Every night for a year he sleeps, endlessly alone, and in his dreams he rapes his wife, for whom he would sooner die than risk hurting, and every night he knows that what he suffers is a grain of sand to the Gobi desert of her pain. The memory of that year lingers always.

She is always on his mind. People think they understand that sentence but they don’t. Shau’ri is with him in every breath he breathes, every thought he thinks, every sip of coffee he gulps so hastily down and if he winces at the hot burn of his drink, no one notices that his hand trembles at the memory of her pain. Daniel would rather be trapped forever insane and at the mercy of Machello’s device, would rather die, would rather be a host than ever remember this again. He fervently believes that he has seen it enough, been through enough, to lay this pain to one side forever.

Unfortunately for Daniel, Hades has other ideas.

***

Demeter tilted her head at Teal’c in hope of understanding. “Chick? I am afraid my grasp of your language does not include the vernacular, Colonel Jack O’Neill.”

“He means girl.” Sam put in before Teal’c can think of a dignified but unfortunately insulting response and Jack can dig himself deeper.

“Look, Demeter, we’d love to stand here all day and chat about American slang, but right now we’ve got a butt ugly Goa’uld headed our way with a fleet of motherships and about ten minutes to get out that gate and kick her ass before we forfeit our world. I sympathise, I really do, with your problems with your daughter but unless you know where Danny is and how to get him back, this conversation is over.”

“Minthe approaches.” She said it so calmly that Jack nearly strangled her on the spot.

He sighed long-sufferingly. “Yes, Mint-toothpaste does. That’s why we have to go and at the moment you’re standing in the middle of our means out of here.”

“This stops you from rescuing your friend?”

“Yes, it does.” Carter cut in before Jack can answer.

“Then she must be dealt with first.” Demeter blinked slowly. “It is done.”

“What?”

“General Hammond,” Teal’c intoned, turning his face to the bullet proofed window. “Does Minthe’s fleet still approach?”

“Sir,” They can only just hear Walter through the General’s microphone. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Her ships, they just… well sir, they… they…”

“Spit it out son!”

“Fer cryin’ out loud!”

“They turned into blue whales and fell into the ocean, sir. Those that didn’t turn into pots of begonias and hit Minneapolis.”

Every member of the SGC but one mouthed wordless syllables of shock and stared at Demeter. Teal’c alone raised an eyebrow and said, “I too have read Douglas Adams. Surely the impact of the crash would kill the whales?”

“What?”

“The power required for that kind of huge mass-transmutation must be incredible!”

“What?”

“They were still three days away! How is that speed of travel even possible?”

“Huh?”

“The whales live. The begonias also.” She smiled. “I am Ter’fin’aki. Anything that can be done will be done.”

“And the entire fleet being turned into blue whales and begonias?”

“Could be done.”

“Right.” Jack considered it all for a minute. “So could you make the Bears win the Superbowl?”

“It is done.”

“Alright!”

“Sir!”

“Oh fer cryin’ out loud, what? Mint-toothpaste is whale-meat and the threat’s gone. Can’t a guy have a little fun with his sports team results?”

“Daniel?”

“Oops?”

***

“Your wife loves you more than life itself.”

Daniel waits in silence. The Underworld-God, like so many of the gods he has met, loves the sound of his own voice.

“Mine does not. I took her from the world of sunlight into this land of the shade and she will not forgive me for it. Do you know what it is to live with an angry woman for 5,000 years?”

Daniel shakes his head. He can have no comprehension. Shau’ri’s anger was always fierce as the midday sun and as short lived. She would scream and throw something at his head and then he would apologise and they would fall into bed and forget the world for the rest of the day.

“Make my wife love me and I will return you to the world of light and life.”

“I came for my wife. I won’t leave without her.”

“She is dead. I cannot return her. Her soul must remain here.”

“You let Eurydice go until Orpheus looked back and broke the bargain.”

“Ah, I had forgotten you were a scholar.”

“I would walk from here with your word that she was behind me and never look back if you let me.”

He means it. The agony of doubt would be nothing to the agony of regret.

“I know. I do not ask it of you.”

“Name your price.”

“My wife’s love. Your heart’s tears.”

“I haven’t wept since Shau’ri died.”

“Then I will make you weep.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You would walk out of the Underworld with your wife and never look back but you cannot shed a tear? Then I will have to help you. But first, Persephone!”

The girl approaches in her white robes and Daniel realises she is impossibly beautiful. She is a spring dawn, a rosebud bursting into bloom, a dewdrop on a perfect bluebell.

She is nothing compared to Shau’ri but when he looks back at Hades, he realises the depth of love that the God holds for her.

“Make her love me,” he whispers as Persephone darts away again, a ghost of life in a world of the dead, “And your wife is free.”

Daniel knew then that he was going to be in the Underworld for a very long time.

***

“But begonias?”