TITLE:  Evolution Missing Scenes and Tag

by Rebecca Ratliff

EMAIL:  rmratliff@adelphia.net

DATE: February 2004

ARCHIVE: If I haven't submitted to your archive, please ask.  (I'll say yes, I just like to know where it is.)

CATEGORY: Missing Scenes & Tag

RATING: R

WARNING: Language, previous violence

SPOILERS: Evolution (major) Abyss(minor)

SEASON/SEQUEL INFO:  Season Seven.  Gates of War series, follows Ashes

SUMMARY: Evolution parts 1 and 2, missing scenes and tag.

DISCLAIMER: All Stargate SG-1 characters are the property of Stargate SG-1 Productions (II) Inc., MGM Worldwide Television Productions Inc., Double Secret Productions, Gekko Film Corp and Showtime Networks Inc.This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. Anybody that you don't recognize is probably mine, so if you borrow them please send me an email to let me know where they are and have them home by midnight.  :)

FEEDBACK:  Much appreciated.

Chapter 1

Sirikat prowled the lab, perching somewhere out of the way whenever Nyan got annoyed with her, but then jumping up and pacing again when sitting still became unbearable.  Daniel and Dr. Lee had gone to Central America to find a mysterious artifact and promptly got themselves captured.  Jack was on his way down there to rescue them. Meanwhile, Sam and Teal'c had gone off with Jacob and Bra'tac to recon Anubis' base on Tartarus.

Finally the archaeologist threw his hands in the air.  "Sirikat, I can't work with you stalking around like a cat in a cage!  Jack will get Daniel out of whatever mess he's in.  It isn't the first time something like this has happened, you know."

"I've had a terrible premonition, Nyan.  I'm very sure that Daniel and Bill are being held under very bad circumstances.  I'm trying to send them healing energy but something very strange is happening.  My spell turns back upon itself as though someone had reflective shields up.  I'm frightened for them."

"You mean they're being tortured."

She nodded miserably.

Nyan said, "Daniel is very strong, and he knows that Jack will get him out of there.  He will be alive when Jack finds him."

"What about Bill?  He...not a strong person, and once he tells them whatever he knows, why would they keep him alive?"

"We'll just have to hope for Jack to hurry."

Daniel collapsed back against the chair as the current stopped and the pain let up for a while.  He wanted nothing more than to pass out, but Rafael knew what he was doing.  He never let it go that far. So Daniel made as much use of the short rest as he could.

The pain came again, no warning this time.  Whenever it took him by surprise, he couldn't help crying out.  He hoped Bill couldn't hear him.  He knew it never lasted long, but at the time--every time--it felt like forever.  He could almost hear Jack's voice:  Keep breathing and ride it out.  Survive.  It really was that simple. Which was really fortunate because he couldn't have managed complicated right then.  

He could have sworn he felt a gentle hand caress his forehead.  He opened his eyes, to see a beautiful pair of warm brown ones looking back at him.

"Sha're--!"  He said that aloud, and Rafael and the other guerrillas exchanged puzzled looks then started laughing.  She wasn't really there, of course....

"Yes, I am.  There is still so much you do not remember, my love. But I am with you, as I always will be.  This will pass.  You are stronger than you know, my Dan'yel.  Remember the white light. Remember.  There you will find all the strength you need.  Remember."

"Remember what?  Sha're?"  He had heard her, and answered, in Abydonian.

Sha're faded and the pain came slamming back.  White light?  What? He grabbed at elusive strands of memory that darted through his fingers like silvery fish in a clear sparkling stream.

A woman...Sha're?  No, Oma Desala.  It had been shortly after his ascention.  Attacks of phantom pain from the radiation...she'd taught him how to deal with it until he'd stopped having them.  Yes.  But he wasn't ascended any more.  It was just wishful thinking on Sha're's part.

Or was it?  The body is just a temporary vessel for the soul.  He was still the same person.  The light had never left him, he just had forgotten where to look for it.

The light was within.  Stillness.  Peace.  Strength enough for this moment.

The pain was still there, but he knew he could draw upon that inner strength to get through it, so he wasn't afraid of it any more.  That was Sha're's gift.

Daniel had started seeing her shortly after he found her picture and learned that she was dead.  At first he had just thought he was seeing things and he'd almost told MacKenzie to lock him up.  After all, at that time, his memory had still been very spotty and he'd suspected he was cracking up completely.  But then he had decided that he didn't really care whether she was really there, or just a creation of his subconscious.  What mattered was that she'd been there with him, as much as an intangible spirit could be in the daytime and real and alive in his dreams.  

Rafael backhanded him across the face, starting his split lip bleeding again.  "Speak Spanish, gringo!"

Daniel suddenly understood why Jack always mouthed off at their captors.  Aside from his mother bird act, of course.  Whether Daniel made a wise-ass remark or not, he was about to get another shock.  So he looked Rafael in the eye and told him exactly what he could bend over and do with a mangy mastadge--in Abydonian.  A moment later he was screaming again, but the rage and frustration in the other man's eyes carried him through the next few minutes.

In his anger, Rafael miscalculated and let it go on a little too long.  Daniel finally passed out.  When he came to, he was being dragged back to the shed.

Several hours after rescuing Daniel and Bill from the guerillas and the zombie, Burke and O'Neill finished giving the bandits' camp a good search.  Jack had thought about leaving the healing device on for a little while to get Daniel's leg started healing, but both men had insisted on turning it off immediately.  They were frankly scared to death of it.  If Daniel was afraid of an artifact rather than consumed with curiosity about it, that was enough to convince Jack. As soon as Daniel had figured out how to shut it off, he and Bill tore into as many ration bars as Jack let them have all at once. Then they'd both sacked out, exhausted.

Once he and Burke were sure there were no more guerillas hiding in the camp, Jack went into the larger shanty.  Daniel was asleep--with a woman kneeling beside him.

"Hey, you, get away from him and keep your hands where I can see 'em!"

Then things took a turn to the weird.  The woman's head snapped around and for a split second, he recognized Sha're.  Then she disappeared.

Daniel woke up instantly and the next thing Jack knew he was staring over the unwavering business end of an AK-47 at two blue eyes colder than sea ice.  It was the kind of situation that had friendly fire written all over it.

Jack hoped he looked absolutely nothing like a Central American guerilla because he wasn't sure at that moment if Daniel could tell the difference.  Moving very deliberately he let his P-90 fall to his webbing and asked in as non-threatening a tone as humanly possible, "Daniel, want to clue me in here?"

Daniel pointed the AK-47 somewhere safe and yelled, "Christ!  Are you fuckin' nuts?!  I almost shot you!  You of all people ought to know better than come around me yelling and waving a gun around right now!  Jesus!"  He fell back to the mat, breathing hard.  He'd been half a second away from shooting his best friend.

"My bad," Jack admitted readily.  After what Daniel had been through he'd be on a hair trigger for a while.  "I guess I kinda lost my common sense when I SAW A FREAKIN' GHOST!"

Burke had been outside giving Lee some water--the older scientist had been unable to force himself back into the shanty to confront the memories it contained even if it was cooler in there--but the CIA agent had come to the door to see what was going on.  "Hey, we got zombies, why not ghosts too?"  He obviously hadn't seen anything.

"You're not helping!"  Jack told him.

Burke shrugged and went back to Lee.

Daniel put the rifle down and rubbed his eyes.  "Wait.  You saw her? You saw her, Jack?"

Jack nodded.  "Yeah, Danny, one second she was right there and the next she was gone.  But I saw her."

"I thought..."

"The same thing I did when you showed up in my cell in Ba'al's dungeon."

"I still don't remember.  One of these days you're going to have to tell me the truth about that.  I know I made a decision--a wrong one--"

Jack's gaze fell on the battery and the jumper cables.  "Maybe, Danny. Maybe it was the only one you could have made at the time. Anyhow, I'm not gonna tell you about it today.  Did they use that battery on you?"

"Yeah."

"God.  I'm sorry, Daniel.  Let me see the burns."

Daniel pulled his shirt away from one on his shoulder.  "The device healed them all.  The only thing I've got to worry about now is this hole in my leg."

Jack's hand closed on his shoulder.  "You better drink some more of that water and try to rest.  I'll be right outside, we don't know for sure there aren't more of them."

Daniel took the lid off the canteen and drank.  It was warm and tasted of mud and purification tablets, but that was a pretty good combination now that Tel-Chak's device was turned off and he was once again feeling the effects of dehydration.

O'Neill wasn't particularly upset with Daniel for not wanting to tell anybody he'd been seeing ghosts--if he'd been falsely diagnosed as psychotic and drugged up in a mental ward, he would have been careful what he told people too.  He was careful what he told MacKenzie in their regular psych-evals.  But they'd both seen her.

The adrenaline rush of staring down the barrel of a rifle burned itself out and he suddenly felt the need to sit down.  He upended a crate and waited for the welcome sound of rotors.

Sirikat had fallen into an exhausted sleep in her small room on base when the phone rang.  She quickly dressed and raced to the infirmary where Daniel and Bill were being treated.

"Jack, are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Punkin.  Better for seeing you."  He hugged her.  "How's everything here?"

"Jonathan took me to the house a while ago to check on Brownie, and we looked in on Jamie at Mrs. Murphy's.  Were Daniel and Bill hurt very badly?"

He realized that she knew they had been tortured.  "Not as badly as they could have been.  The assholes beat the crap out of them, let 'em go without food and water, and when that didn't make them talk, they worked them over with a car battery and a set of jumper cables--and let me tell you that hurts like hell.  Then Daniel got shot in the leg on the way out of there.  But Doc says it's all relatively minor, physically anyhow, and they should get out of here tomorrow."

Sirikat replied, "That thing you brought back with you has some sort of wards that kept me from sending them healing energy.  What is it?"

Jack said, "It's something like a sarcophagus.  I know it brought this one guy back, but he was more like a zombie."

"I've heard of the walking dead, but never saw any.  And I hope I never do."

"How are you on ghosts?"

"What means, 'how?'  Now and then, there are ghosts.  Does that thing call them?"

"Uh, no, not that I know of."

"Then what do you want to know about them?"

"Is this place haunted?"

"Oh, of course," she said.  "Many have given their lives in defense of this place.  They watch over us still.  Does that surprise you?"

O'Neill thought about Charlie Kawalski and all the others who had died here over the years.  "No, it doesn't surprise me a bit."

"Why do you ask me that?"

He laughed at himself.  "'Cause I saw one, that's why."

"Oh.  Yes, you probably did.  Like lighting the crystal, remember? The path is there.  Follow it or not, the choice is yours."

"Now you sound like Karumai."

"That...more or less what she told me once."

"Any word from Carter?"

"Not unless it's been within the last two hours," Sirikat said. "That was when I decided to lie down for a while."

Warner came out.  "You can see Daniel now, but Bill's out like a light."

O'Neill said, "He was taking it pretty rough on the flight back here.  Did you sedate him?"

"Yes.  You won't disturb him."

Daniel was sitting up in bed eating cheese crackers.  He looked a lot better now that he had been cleaned up and got a few bags of fluids in him.  Unlike Dr. Lee, he had slept on the plane.  "Hey. Sirikat."

"Daniel.  It...good to see you well.  I brought my crystals, if you would like me to do a healing spell."

"That device healed everything, except my leg.  I'm too tired to worry about it right now, but if you could do something about that tomorrow, I'd appreciate it."

She nodded.  "Tomorrow soon enough."

Daniel said, "Jack, you're not going to drive home, are you?  Did you get any sleep on the plane?"

"No, Bill needed the company.  By the time I got home I'd just have to turn around and come right back.  I'm gonna crash here for a few hours after I report to General Hammond.  Daniel, are you gonna be OK?"

"I will be.  I won't say it wasn't bad, but we've both been through worse," Daniel replied.  "It's just--you expect it from the Goa'uld, but--here at home--"

"Yeah."

"Don't blame Bill for telling them how to turn that thing on.  He didn't just give away the store.  He held out for as long as he could."

Jack nodded.  "I know that, Daniel, he has as many burn scars as you do.  Nobody's gonna blame him, except Bill himself.  Get some more rest.  I don't care if you did sleep on the plane, you still look like something the cat dragged in."

"Thank you so much, Jack."

O'Neill laughed and he and Sirikat left to find General Hammond.

Daniel rested in the cool silence and waited.  After a little while, Sha're was there.  He smiled, at last he knew she was really with him.

She sat on the side of the bed.  The mattress didn't dip--she didn't so much as rumple the blanket.  But Daniel could feel the warmth of her hand on his, and that was better by far than the empty wreck his life had been in the long months between her death and his ascension. He finally knew the one truth that ever really mattered.  This love was forever.  There was never an ending.

Sam Carter leaned back against the teltac's bulkhead and asked, "So who's gonna tell Seshat that her martyred and sainted husband has really been alive and working for Anubis all this time?"

"I see no need to tell her at all.  Let him keep his honor in her eyes.  He has paid for his crimes, and Seshat has done nothing to deserve the shame," Teal'c replied.

Jacob said from the peltac, "He took a new host since the last time Sel saw him, so we couldn't actually swear it was the same guy, but if it is then Seshat has to know.  We've got to assume that he told Anubis everything, and one of the things he probably knew was the short list of planets where she could have gone to ground."

Teal'c inclined his head, "You are right, JacobCarter."

Bra'tac agreed.  "I am not looking forward to this.  She has lost far too much already."  The old warrior shook his head.  One more reason to fight, as if they needed more.

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