Work Text:
With Freedom Comes Peace, and with Peace Comes Liberty…
by Bethany
“How come Irisa was allowed to heal us all, when Oma told me that we were not allowed to interfere, and she told me that she could not heal me?” Jonas said to Daniel, as they sat, one either side of a lab-work table, books, reference notes, databases, and god knows what spread before them.
“I don’t know… But she did say that her people were split into several factions…” Daniel half looked up, half completed jotting down a rough draft of some research the General had asked for an Official copy of…
“Do you think that just because we didn’t go with her, stay with her people, that we missed our chance?”
“I don’t think so… She told me we must all go on our own journeys. We probably weren’t going to be sticking around with her forever anyway.” Daniel mused. “Every time I’ve spoken with one of Oma’s kind, they have all said that we each have a path to take…”
“And that the decision to go to their way of life, their level, must be our own, made at the right time for us, I know…” Jonas seemed satisfied with his and Daniel’s conclusion, and went back to working on another report of his own.
“Ready to go, are we?” Jack enquired in his usual tone of voice as Jackson and Quinn entered the gateroom.
“We had some reports to finish off for the General…” Daniel explained, patiently.
“On PXC-” Jonas began.
“3PO…” Jack grimaced, but cheered up when he saw that Teal’c had gotten his insiders joke. “Don’t tell me anymore… I don’t want to know!”
Daniel felt the cold rush of invigorating night air blast his skin. The radiation he had suffered on Jonas’ planet had deadened how he received the sensation of that night air on his hands. That, in itself, was an odd sensation all of its own. But his cheeks were easily able to receive the icy chill, and he was glad he had warn his contact lenses, because his glasses would have fogged over instantly.
“Hey, Danny boy… Let’s get goin’, shall we???” Jack brought him to his senses. But he had sensed something more waiting for them out there. He looked over at Jonas, knowing that, sometimes, his colleague, who had spent time in the company of Oma DeSala’s group, could also detect the undetectable these days.
“Err, Jack…” Daniel warned.
“Err, what?” Jack said, but though his tone was sarcastic, his eyes and his stance communicated the will to listen.
“We’re here because we need to take out that Naqadah plant, aren’t we?” Daniel reiterated.
“Yes, Daniel, I think you’ll find we are…” Jack agreed in his own way.
“Yes, well, leaving aside the obvious insanity of that, I don’t think that’s all we’re going to have to deal with…” Daniel revealed.
“Daniel, say it straight, huh?” Jack paused, re-focused more kindly. “We don’t have an awful lot of time here, Danny boy…”
“What is it?” Teal’c asked.
“What’s going on, Daniel?” Sam Carter furthered.
“Yeah?” Jonas asked, looking a bit peeved that he had not also ‘detected’ this instinct.
“Come with me… I shall explain.” Heru-Ur stepped out of the shadows, like a terrible golden fulfilment of prophecy. His body armour glistened with horrendous clarity against the backdrop of a crystal clear night.
Daniel Jackson, Jack O’Neill, Samantha Carter, Jonas Quinn, and Teal’c were marched to He’ru’er’s lair.
“WE KNOW NOTHING…” Daniel Jackson defiantly thundered, as one of Heru-Ur’s henchmen knocked the hamstrings in the back of his legs into convulsive spasm (They’re gonna snap soon, that’s for sure… Daniel thought.) and, for the tenth time, sent him clattering to the floor.
“What’s the matter? Got nothing more sophisticated, eh?” Jack O’Neill taunted, as he himself was being taunted. His cheekbone and jawbone were fractured, at the least. “You need a better tutor at this stuff, kid!” He laughed as the pain of another blow from which he could not defend himself, reeled him around, and, this time, felled him on the hot coals in the outer rim of the jousting ring. His elbows fell into the fire for agonising moments, and he forced himself to dig them in even further, giving himself the leverage (that his tied hands and feet could not) to narrowly miss the butt of the torturer’s staff weapon.
“Why did you lure us here? SG1 hasn’t encountered you in years…” Jonas tiredly, defeatedly asked…
“I’m not going to tell you!” The rough older Jaffa stated coldly. He spat at Jonas. He tightened the chains and shackles that pinned Jonas to the cold stone wall, like a scene from some old horror movie.
“You are the one supposed to tell ME information!!!” Yelled the man who held the prison keys inches from Sam Carter’s face. He swung them savagely, blackening her other eye.
“Shulva!!!” Heru-Ur hissed at Teal’c. “My armies have been defeated because of you!”
“That, I am very glad to hear!” Teal’c looked the snake in the eyes, which glowed like white hot coals, those that Teal’c had been dragged past, and had had to be Zatted before he’d give up trying to rescue O’Neill from. “Tell me, how did they die?”
“Apophis was on my tail from the minute you stole his son in my name…” The Goa’uld screeched.
“And even when we killed Apophis, you still could not find a backbone to stand up with,” Teal’c smiled. “Other than that of your host…”
“Silence!!!” Heru-Ur aimed and fired a staff weapon at Teal’c, just enough to make him slouch to the frozen floor unconscious.
“Why are you here again?” Daniel asked. “Have you come back for me?” Daniel asked her. “You know we talked about you, don’t you?” He enquired of Oma.
“I have come to set you free…” She told him.
“So, you have come to take me back with you then?” Daniel thought.
“No, Daniel. Not this time… We are all different people with different destinies, even when we start at the same point…” She told him.
“So, my journey isn’t over then, is it?” Daniel realised.
“Our journeys never are…” She stated.
“They simply take another route…” Daniel ventured.
“As I said, we are all different, even when we have the same beginnings…” Oma reiterated.
“You’re talking about other realities, aren’t you?” He asked.
“There are many different kinds, as many as there are possibilities, as many as exist our final destinations.” Oma spoke to him.
“And mine is not with you… Yet.” Daniel had learned to listen to these instincts.
“Yes, that’s right, Daniel… Trust in those doors that have opened within your mind.” She had read his.
“So, if you have not come to take me with you, then how can you help me…?” Daniel asked. “And why have you decided to, again? You have already given back Jonas.”
“We were as you now are, Daniel. We remember what it is to be you. We cannot let your soul be wasted. You told someone that once…” Oma revealed.
“When?” Daniel asked. Then, he realised. “In another… reality?” He looked at her. “Do you visit there as well?”
“We are aware of its existence. It is, as is this, another level…” She explained, sounding as if she were as faraway as there right now…
But not to Daniel. At least, not entirely. “Have you visited Jonas, too?”
“He will come to us in his own time…” She told Daniel.
“It is all part of his journey, isn’t it?” Daniel thought aloud.
“Yes.” She replied. “As it was also that he take refuge with us when he was dying. We did not interfere. We offered him haven, and he decided to come with us…”
“So, how are you going to get us out of here… You will help me get the others out as well, won’t you?”
“You must use your new discoveries… What you are only just beginning to be aware of, Daniel. You can rescue them. You can be much more…” Then, Oma DeSala vanished.
“How???” Daniel asked the thin air.
Daniel was marched past Sam’s cell. She did not notice him. She lay, a bedraggled heap, in the cold grey corner. He could let this go on no longer… The Jaffa shoved him ruthlessly in the back with the coil of a Zat gun.
“In!” The Jaffa stomped around…
Daniel freely got inside his cell, the refuge he needed to figure out this puzzle.
The Jaffa moved on.
Daniel slowly, deliberately, gratefully lay himself out on the floor. The scars on his back hazed the cold and cobbled texture on his bruised vertebrae. Gotta get outta here, Danny boy, he mimicked the way Jack often spoke to him, before ya back breaks… Daniel fell asleep.
“Jonas!… What are you doing here?” Daniel said, in his dream.
“I’m not so sure we’re dreaming…” Jonas wondered around. The cell in which, now, they both stood, had taken on a very odd golden glow, one warmer though, than that of Heru-Ur’s armour.
“Oma sent you, to help me figure this out, I bet…” Daniel’s mind was already whirring.
“You saw Oma?” Jonas asked, this time, no hint of feeling left out, more wonderment.
“She told me I could figure out how to get us all home… God knows how!” Daniel was exasperated, but calm, somewhere, where it counted. In his soul.
“Guys??? YOU OUT THERE???” Jack yelled, from his own cell.
Both Daniel and Jonas ran for the entrance to the cell they currently shared.
“Jack! WE ARE HERE…” Daniel called. “How come we can hear you… You’re not that close by… Are you???”
“Thought is sometimes all it takes… I have helped you both to see this…” Oma DeSala appeared.
“Where are we?” Jonas asked her.
“We must have brought ourselves closer to getting out of here…” Daniel realised.
Oma DeSala smiled.
“Without knowing it?” Jonas was bewildered.
“When I got back to my cell, I thought I’d fallen asleep when I saw you here, in this cell…” Daniel began realising.
“Are you saying this is not your cell?” Jonas was so intent on Daniel, he almost ignored the presence of Oma DeSala.
“We got ourselves partway out of here, Jonas…!” Daniel smiled, relieved.
“And this glow…” Jonas held up his hand in right in front of his eyes, so that it was the only thing that intruded on the space between himself and Daniel. “… It’s coming from us… Isn’t it??? Have we Ascended…?” He looked at DeSala.
She looked at Daniel.
“We’d know it if we had… We’ve simply taken another step, that’s all…” Daniel shared. “Now, let’s get out of here…” Daniel walked up to the cell ‘doorway’, and found it simply that. Nothing stood in his way. He turned back to Jonas. “It’s like Jack said, we haven’t got an awful lot of time here…” He beckoned to Jonas encouragingly, and smiled at Oma DeSala who looked on over them.
The two ran down the long hallways, together, until they had gathered their other team-mates.
“Lucky we weren’t off at the restorer’s…” O’Neill quipped, as he dragged his weary mind into top gear along with the pace of his body.
“Those Sarcophaguses are good for nothing…” Daniel agreed.
“Except eternal life…” Jack agreed.
“There are other ways to achieve that…” Daniel said.
Jack tried to decrypt what his friend had just said, and then, decided it was better to concentrate on getting out of here. He helped Carter who was so very exhausted, she was beginning to lose the ability to keep up…
“Thank God you’re all going to be okay…” Dr. Frasier stated happily, as she stood before each of them, their beds all lined up on her Infirmary, separated only partially, by concealed curtaining n folded frames at the head of each sickbed.
“Thanks to Daniel Jackson and Jonas Quinn…” Teal’c stated wearily.
Daniel looked at Teal’c. He smiled, for as long as his mind could concentrate on the task. He was so very tired. His body was. But his mind was rejuvenated, healed, through the hope of another open doorway.
“… Yeah, Doc, can we just get some shut eye now…?” Jack hadn’t lost that tone in his voice. It seemed nothing could rid him of it…
Daniel’s heart smiled. All was right with his world…
THE END…