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Destiny And The Heart…
by Bethany
“You promised me this would be the last footwear to fall!” Jack squared up to Thor, looking over his shoulder as he could feel the General’s eyes boar into the back of his skull questioningly. “It’s an Asgard thing, sir!” He tried to explain.
“The discovery of Fifth’s humanity gave us an opportunity to study, O’Neill…” Thor met his eyes with more authority than his stature cared to show.
“Me?” Jack asked, weary and perplexed.
“Gave them an opportunity to study her, Jack, like they studied Raven…” Daniel explained, thinking sadly back to the exotically beautiful and tragic figure of the young girl who created the Replicators’.
Sam whispered to Jonas, who seemed confused. “Raven’s the name Daniel gave the android girl we found…”
“Well, I’m sure that makes you happy…” Jack turned to Daniel. The destruction of Raven, at Jack’s hands, had both driven a stake between he and Daniel, and then forged a bond of understanding. Daniel and Jack both now knew what it was to be helpless in the death of a child. “You get Fifth back instead…”
“Jack!” Daniel warned, then calmed. “They made her in the image of my wife, just to get to me… I know that maybe makes me weak that that is exactly what happened, but I let you abandon her, didn’t I???”
“Daniel Jackson did indeed do as you commanded, O’Neill.” Teal’c stated.
“If we are ever to truly reduce the threat of the Replicators’, we must begin a learning process of some kind, O’Neill.” Thor said, as he sat with SG1 and General Hammond in the Briefing Room of the SGC.
“If something goes wrong,” O’Neill pointed at Thor, and paused. “which it did last time, I might add…” He bent down so that he was eye level with Thor. “You tell me who’s going to be picking up the pieces, eh???”
“I assume you mean that you will be expected to…” Thor ventured.
“N-uh, buddy, we all will..!” Jack was exasperated.
“Fifth’s programming cannot be altered, Jack… The Replicators’ said so themselves. If they could alter her programming, they would have… They made her while we were there, among them, as the most efficient means of interfacing with us to gain the information they required…” Daniel spoke.
“And some of us interfaced with her more than others…” Jack said tiredly.
“I don’t think this is the time or place for that discussion, Colonel…” Hammond warned.
“She cannot be altered…” Thor added.
“By our technology…” Jack looked at him.
“The Replicators’ experienced thousands of years of evolution in, relatively speaking, five minutes flat, Colonel… They are the most advanced form known to this Galaxy…” Carter informed him.
“My point exactly!” Jack threw up his hands in sheer frustration.
“I believe Major Carter’s is that no other race, such as the Goa’uld, knows enough about Fifth’s creation to want to take any risks.” Teal’c told him.
“Fine, sensible decision, if you ask me!!!” Jack sat down in his seat heavily, and glared at Thor.
“This transcends even the arrogance of the false gods…” Teal’c added.
“We all hope..!” Jack replied. “Maybe it does transcend theirs…”
“…But if we do not learn from Fifth, their may come a time when someone else is one step ahead of us…” Jonas thought aloud.
“If the Asgard can extract her from the time bubble, Jack, then it could be just a matter of time before someone else has a go… Even the Asgard are not invulnerable… They have taken steps to guard their secrets and their achievements, even more so since the duplicity of Fayre was uncovered…” Daniel tried to justify their actions.
“We must learn from Fifth while we can…” Thor finished Daniel’s trail of thought for him.
“I know they creep you out, Colonel… But really, how the Replicators’ have managed the process of developing skin cells impregnated with nanites, that alone, should be carefully studied… It could solve many medical issues…” Sam enthused.
“Yeah, like whether you want spiders crawling across your face or not..! Jack emphasised.
“How do you think the Replicators’ gave Fifth the memories of your wife?” Jonas asked Daniel, as they sat in the rec-room.
“Sha’re’s mind was once, literally, linked with mine…” Daniel explained.
“How?” Quinn asked reasonably.
“Sha’re once sent her mind down the thread of a device meant to kill me, and into my own mind…” Daniel’s voice trailed off.
“Really?” Jonas asked interestedly, clearly this was something else he found fascinating.
“The strength it must have taken her to break through all those barriers…” Daniel remembered. “But it was her way of telling me to let her go… I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. Amaunet would have succeeded in killing us both.”
“Will you want to see her..?… I mean, Fifth???” Jonas asked him.
“If only to explain why I left her behind…” Daniel thought aloud.
“Do you think she’ll want to live on Abydos?” Quinn furthered.
“I don’t think the Asgard will let her…” He paused. “But maybe, eventually, I…” His voice trailed off. “No, that’s stupid..!”
“What is???” Jonas Quinn asked gently, but insistently.
“… Taking her home…” Daniel’s thoughts were faraway.
Daniel stood before her, in an Asgard environment so oddly opposed to the moment. “I am sorry that I played my part in what happened to you…” He was utterly genuine. “More than I can express...”
“I am as your wife, my Daniel…” She told him.
His heart twinged at her familiar term, shared between he and Sha’re.
“I know your heart…” She touched his chest, her fingers softly strumming the heart beneath. “You have your duties, as do I…”
“You will not be returning with me???” He asked.
“You knew I would not be able to…” She reminded him.
“Yes.” He replied.
“But you wanted to mend some broken hearts, my Daniel?” She looked at him gently.
“I would have liked to patch up a few souls who desperately would want to see her face again…” Daniel admitted.
“We cannot always have what we wish for, but we must be thankful for those diamonds that can sometimes be found in the sands at our feet…” She said, poetically.
“You remember?” Daniel stood closer to her.
“That she who was forced to leave you would say those words?” Fifth paused. “I know your heart…” She put a gentle hand on his chest once more. “It is my home…” She smiled softly. “Were it not for your heart, and your love…Your heart created me, my Daniel…See me, and see a reflection of the beauty you hold within...”
“Sha’re’s beauty…” He breathed.
“I am not truly her, in the strictest sense, but her heart is mine, just as mine is yours…” She tried to explain.
“She is you, and she was me…” Daniel tried to fathom.
“And I am her…” Fifth tried to help both Daniel and herself understand. “If it is meant to be, my Daniel, I will come home, one day, and help to mend those hearts so dear to us both…” She stepped forward, caressed his face with her hands, and guided his lips to hers.
Daniel held the sweet warmth of her hands to his face. Warmth that emanated from her heart, from her undisputed soul…
THE END…