Journeys (3b/5)
Title: Journeys (Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Part I a b Part II a b c d Part III a
"Were you a mother?" Daniel asked once when he visited Oma's sanctuary on Kheb, where Martouf was meditating in the corner. She turned and raised an eyebrow at him. "When you were alive, I mean. Did you have children? It's just that you seem to be collecting us now."
She smiled, amused, then let it fade away. "It was a very, very long time ago," she told him.
"Ah," he said, "but to one who has achieved enlightenment...time is...something something something." This time, she laughed aloud. "Do you forget your life, after all that time?"
"No," Oma said. "Never. And, yes, I did have two sons and four daughters."
Daniel leaned back on his hands. "Wow. That's a lot." Then again, five children didn't seem extraordinary on Earth, if a bit more than the average. Earth had good medicine, though; they didn't worry about half of their children dying before they were old enough to work, nor about how easy it was for a mother to die during or just after the birth. Perhaps Oma Desala's people had been technologically advanced, too. "Did they Ascend with you?"
To his surprise, she shook her head. "The time during which my people learned to Ascend was a time of tumult and uncertainty. Some of us chose this path, meditating and seeking universal truth; others instead sought out new lands or mingled with the cultures they found. My children took the latter path while I took the former."
He watched her as she watered a drooping plant. "Do you wish they'd gone with you?"
"I wish they had been able to experience all of this," she answered. "I wish all people could have that chance, but you know my opinions on that already."
"Well, maybe you shouldn't feel bad for them or anything," he told her. "They might not have seen this plane, but they had adventures you never will, too. I mean, I did a lot of things while I was alive--and I'm not completely proud of all of it, but I wouldn't have given that up for years of meditation to seek enlightenment, either. Your children probably had very full lives. "
Oma finished with her plants and turned to him, her expression soft. "That's kind of you, Daniel." She looked around. "Although...most things that can be experienced in life are also open to us as we are now."
He shook his head. "It's different," he explained. "Even when I loiter on the lower planes, even aside from missing the interactive parts of things...it's not as sharp. Nothing is as...as intense as it was before. Do you know what I mean?"
She studied his expression for a while. Finally, she said, "I think I may have forgotten that about how we used to live."
"I won't," he said determinedly, holding firmly to the memory of the extreme highs and lows of life. "It's too important to forget."
Oma smiled at him again, but she didn't say--and Daniel tried not to think--that ten thousand years of perspective and distance changed things.
"I think you're doing good things, whether or not your blood children took the same path," he offered, but, to his disappointment, she looked more saddened by that than buoyed.
"That's very kind of you to say," she said again.
XXXXX
"Have you been studying Morgan all this time?" Ganos Lal said one day.
Daniel looked up from his book, about to answer, only to pause when he remembered Oma's words. "Uh...s...sort of," he said. "Well, no, not the whole time. But."
When he stopped and didn't go on, she sighed. "You are one of Oma Desala's, are you not?" she said. "Yes, she and I have never quite seen eye to eye."
Even though Oma herself had warned him about this, that he would be marked as one of hers--he wasn't clear yet whether that meant her family, her herd, her army, or something else--he answered, "I'm her student. That doesn't mean I belong to her."
"I don't mean to offend," Ganos Lal said. "But would you prefer that I leave?"
"Are you a spy?" Daniel said.
Ganos Lal seemed surprised for a moment. "Not this time," she said.
"You're not spying on me or Oma," he clarified.
"No," she said.
"But she was telling the truth," he said. "You've spied on people before, for the Others."
"Are there times when you doubt that Oma Desala tells you the truth?" Ganos Lal asked, looking concerned. "We may disagree on occasion, but she is not prone to telling lies."
"No," Daniel said quickly, defensively. "It's not that. It's just...well, perspectives can color a truth without making it a lie. That's all."
"Very wise," she said.
"I'm not asking you to leave or anything," he said. He'd found her interesting before, partly because she deigned to talk to him and partly because she wasn't actively condemning what he tried to do. "Uh...no offense, but if you're not here to watch me and make sure I don't break rules...then why are you here?"
She nodded back down at the book he was reading. "You said before that you found Morgan le Fay an interesting character. You might say I thought the same during her time on Earth, and I came when I learned that you were searching for information about her," she explained. "Last time, you never had a chance to say just what it was you found so fascinating about the topic."
Daniel hesitated, not wanting to put Oma at risk in any way for his curiosity. He wouldn't put manipulation and misdirection past any of the Others, perhaps, but Ganos Lal had said directly that she wasn't here to keep an eye on him or Oma, so...
"Okay," he said, deciding he might as well have someone to talk to while he tried to piece things together. "First of all, as many permutations as there are of everyone in the Arthurian legends, there are probably more of Morgan le Fay. She certainly seems to have spanned a very wide range of characters. I think it's fascinating."
"In some she is a sister or lover," Ganos Lal said, nodding, "in others, a healer or a spirit of the wild, and, in yet others, an evil witch."
"Usually some combination of those," Daniel said.
"Perhaps people did not know how else to explain all of her characteristics," she suggested.
Daniel nodded. "I'm sure that's true, but I wish I knew what her intentions were. No one is just an evil witch for no reason. I mean, she's just...she's against Merlin and Arthur most of the time, and Merlin was an Ancient, too, according to"--he raised his voice--"what little about the Ancients the Others let me read!" He returned to a normal volume. "But what about everyone else in Camelot? Was there some sort of war between them for power? Was she called evil because Arthur was the hero?"
Ganos Lal had pursed her lips, though he thought he saw a barely-concealed smile. "Yelling at the Others will not help you, Daniel Jackson," she advised.
"Yeah, I know," he said, and held up the book he was reading. "But wouldn't you be annoyed if your books had blank pages everywhere?"
She considered him, then said, "So I know now what interests you about Morgan le Fay. But why seek out her stories in the first place?"
He shrugged. "I'm just wondering about the Ancients, and she and Merlin are among the few names I have to go on. You know, the Ancients left so much...culture, and, and...and technology behind, and yet..."
"What?"
"I don't mind mysteries," he told her. "But I'm also not usually constrained to books with blank pages!" he yelled at the ceiling.
"It is not the search for answers the frustrates you," she observed, "but the fact that the answers are being deliberately withheld."
"Yeah," he agreed. "But it's okay. I've spent my whole career working around restrictions. I'll figure it out eventually. Hey--wait...you said you were alive during Morgan's time? And Merlin's, presumably."
She tilted her head, then corrected, "I had already Ascended by then...but yes, I did have some interest in observing the happenings on Earth at that time."
"During King Arthur's reign," Daniel said, reaching for another book as he spoke.
"Yes," she said. "Ambrosius Aurelianus. That is the Arthur of which you speak."
"Wow." Daniel stared at the pages. "What I don't understand," he said, "is why there were Ancients on Earth several hundred years ago. And if they were there, why aren't they there anymore, or why aren't their descendants anywhere to be found?"
"Perhaps," Ganos Lal suggested, "they felt that it was not their place to take the Tau'ri's matters into their own hands."
"That's ridiculous," he said absently, scanning quickly down a page about Ambrosius Aurelianus--his history, his mythology, his links to Arthur, Uther, and Merlin... "Or, rather, I hope it's not true, because if it is, it means the Ancients are a lot more heartless than I always imagined."
She was quiet for a while after he said that. "Their time had passed," she finally said. "I suspect they felt it was time for them to leave."
Daniel looked up. "Oh, please. Help from the Ancients and their knowledge and technology could have prevented a lot of suffering. Merlin obviously thought that. He didn't have qualms about using his power--his genetic advancements or technology, whichever it was--to serve his cause. Or to serve his king and people, as the case was."
"Merlin, as you call him," Ganos Lal said, "was, in fact, Moros."
"Moros," Daniel repeated. "O...kay. That...doesn't mean anything to me."
"An Ancient," she clarified. "He merely took the appearance and identity of a Tau'ri, as Myrddin, Merlynum, Merlin. Can you tell me the implications of that?"
Feeling like he was being lectured, Daniel said, "So he lied. I'm all for letting the truth be known at all times, in theory. But if it takes a deception to do some good...well, given that I died on an undercover assignment, I can hardly say I don't understand that need."
But she shook her head. "It is not the deception that should disturb you, Daniel Jackson, but rather the fact that Merlin was the most powerful person on Earth then. Do you know what that kind of power can do to a man? The belief that he had the right to kill in the name of his chosen king, perhaps, or to manipulate events and politics to his liking? And what do the stories say of Myrddin?"
"They say a lot of things," Daniel said uneasily.
"That his abilities drove him mad, for example?" Ganos Lal prompted.
He nodded. "I guess so."
"Would you put a man above that simply because he was Ancient? Think of all that power in the hands of a man driven nearly mad with his obsessions."
Daniel leaned back in his chair, looking up at her thoughtfully. "Well, they say history is written by the victors," he conceded. "I guess it's not just Morgan's alleged story I should be questioning, but also Merlin's, since they were both lying in some ways. If one side was biased, the other probably was, too. He's depicted more ambiguously in the Prose Merlin and the Vulgate Cycle, for instance."
"It's important to keep an open mind," she agreed.
"Wait, but...wait," he said, thinking. "If Merlin and Morgan were contemporaries, why do you say Merlin was the most powerful person on Earth, not both of them? In fact, a lot of the legends say he was her teacher, which implies he was more powerful--what does that really mean when you take the 'magic' assumption out of it? He was better at technology? He had more technology? He had more political influence?"
She folded her hands on the table and looked at them, as if thinking. "That Merlin was more powerful than Morgan is a conclusion about which you should be suspicious," she said. "Perhaps Merlin was more inclined to use the advantages he had to solve the Tau'ri's problems."
"Which would...okay," he said. "So Morgan wasn't competing with Merlin, exactly; she was trying to stop him from using his technology to help people."
"Simplistic," Ganos Lal said, "but an adequate explanation."
Daniel made a face. "Then maybe I do agree with Morgan's portrayal as the evil one, or the less good one." When she looked surprised again, he said, "You disagree?"
"Not every tragedy attributed to Morgan le Fay was truly her doing," she said.
"That's not the point--what was she doing?" he countered. "Standing around, trying to stop the person who actually wanted to help people, even if he didn't always succeed? That's as bad as..." He flipped open to a page. "...as...uh...sending a plague to the planet Vagonbrei, for example--"
"That one wasn't Morgan's doing," Ganos Lal said. "It was a natural illness that the people of Vagonbrei blamed on her. In fact, Morgan was never on that planet at all. It's far more likely that Ambrosius and his knights--Merlin's pawns--were the ones who inadvertently carried the infectious parasite to Vagonbrei during their travels. It is all well and good to make an effort, but the deadly results of Merlin's exploits speak for themselves."
That was different. "Arthur was one of Merlin's pawns," Daniel repeated. That was a rather telling choice of interpretation.
Ganos Lal turned to Daniel's bookshelf and pulled out yet another book that he knew hadn't been there before. "Tales from Camelot," she said, handing it to him. "Perhaps you will find something rather different from the Tau'ri tales."
"There was a non-Tau'ri Camelot?" Daniel said excitedly, already opening the book.
"Next time we meet," she said, "perhaps we can discuss Merlin and Morgan again."
"Yeah, I'd love to--" Daniel started, looking up, then stopped. She had disappeared.
...x...
Once, the sound of whistling startled him, and he looked up to see a heavyset man in a trench coat scanning the shelves. As if noticing his gaze, the man paused, turned toward him, and winked.
Taken aback at the acknowledgement of his existence, Daniel looked around, saw no one, and pointed to himself, mouthing, Me?
The man shrugged. "Having a good time studying?"
"Uh...sure," Daniel said.
With a grin, the man in the trench coat waved, then disappeared.
Daniel frowned at the spot where he'd just been. "Huh," he said aloud.
The man appeared again a second later. "I'm Jim, by the way," he said, and then vanished again.
...x...
"Daniel," Oma said.
"I'm reading, Oma," Daniel said, not looking up.
"What did Ganos Lal want?" she said.
"We were talking. That's all." He glanced at her. "She offered to leave, you know. I asked her to stay so we could talk."
Oma raised her eyebrows. "Let me guess," she said. "About Morgan le Fay."
"She knows a lot about Morgan," Daniel said, "although maybe it just seems that way in comparison because none of the Others will let me learn anything about the Ancients, and, by the way, Oma, neither will you, so she's the only one telling me something useful."
The silence that followed pulled him away from his book to find Oma standing before him with her arms crossed.
"I didn't... I don't mean you've never told me anything useful," he said, a little guilty. "It's just--"
"You are becoming obsessed," Oma said coolly. "You've made progress, Daniel, but ever since you stopped brooding over the SGC this last time, you've done nothing but sit here and research the tales of King Arthur."
"I started that before I met Ganos Lal," Daniel pointed out, "and that is not all I do. Oma, you don't think she's corrupting me or anything? I asked her, and she said she's not spying on us."
"You...asked," she repeated, then unfolded her arms and closed her eyes. "Only you, Daniel, would ask a master of deception whether she was deceiving you."
"I'm not an idiot," he said. "But I tried to think of any loopholes in what she said and couldn't find anything. Direct dishonesty would probably be a bit of an impediment to the state of mind one needs to achieve for Ascension."
"That's not always true," she said.
"Really?" he said. Then again, he hadn't always been honest in his life--or afterlife--and he was here, so perhaps he had to be more careful about how literally he took things.
Oma waved her hand. "But in her case, it probably is. Just remember--you can't trust her." She turned to leave.
Before she could walk out, Daniel said, "Well, then, how do I know I can trust you?"
She stopped.
Daniel stared at her unmoving figure and, for a moment, wondered if he was going to watch her turned back until she walked out. Still, even though he did believe Oma was trustworthy, he didn't quite regret asking the question. "I would have thought," Oma said evenly, "that I've given you more than enough reason to trust me by now."
"And...and you have," he said quickly. "Look--I trust you. But I can't distrust someone on your word alone without some reason. You know that."
Oma turned and leaned in the doorway to his library, her arms folded again over her chest. He wondered if she had modeled that mannerism after Jack or his other friends, too, like so many of the mannerisms she took on in here. "I told you before that each of the Others has a different opinion about the way things should be done. Ganos Lal is no exception."
"But...since the Others are always mad at you, isn't that a good thing, if she doesn't really agree with them, either?" Daniel said.
"There are many ways to disagree," Oma said. "Ganos Lal has at times followed a path more extreme than my own and at times followed the Others' laws in their strictest form."
"What do you think she wants?" he asked.
"That," she said, "I don't know. And that's why I don't trust her--why I wouldn't trust her with you if I had the choice to control your meetings with the Others."
Daniel thought about that. "It's not like the Others want to talk to me, for the most part," he said, "so you don't really need to worry about that."
"I am an outcast for what I do," Oma said matter-of-factly. "They paint you with the same brush, and you haven't given them a reason not to do so."
"Well, I'll be careful with Ganos Lal and...and whomever else I meet. I promise I will."
He could tell she wanted more than that--a promise to stop talking to any Others without supervision, perhaps--but she only nodded. "Do be careful around them," she said.
Before she could leave, two of the Others sitting in the corner looked up suddenly. Daniel froze, not sure whether he'd done something wrong, but the Others weren't looking at him--instead, they rose from their seats and walked away.
"What was that?" Daniel asked.
Oma shook her head. "Nothing you need to worry about."
"Oma," he said, exasperated.
"The Others like order," she allowed. "You're not the only one who likes to tweak their order sometimes. They're just going to keep an eye on things. It happens sometimes."
"Oh," Daniel said, and wondered if the Others could tell how much he wished he knew just what sort of disorder was going on and whether or not he could add anything to it.
XXXXX
It was when SG-1 was stuck on the Alpha Site with rebel Jaffa and Tok'ra that the real problem of Jacob and Lantash's blending surfaced. Selmak's presence might have calmed the masses, but Martouf and Daniel watched together as the Tok'ra began to whisper about what it meant to have a Tau'ri host blended with a symbiote who had spent so much time on Tau'ri.
"They do realize there's an assassin around, right?" Daniel said. "'The enemy of my enemy...'"
"The problem is that they do not know who their enemy is," Martouf pointed out. "That is one of the most dangerous skills of an ashrak, through either disguise or cloaking technology."
In the end, it was the ashrak who brought them all together, but not without a few casualties. "He needs to be careful," Martouf said, watching Jacob help with the cleanup when all was over. "Battle lines are being drawn, and some may fall between the Tok'ra's ideals and those of Earth."
"Which side do you think they'll come down on?" Daniel asked.
"The right one," Martouf said. "But I doubt it will be the easy one."
...x...
In any case, relations remained cordial enough that Malek helped when SG-1 met Egeria, the Tok'ra queen, during Jonas's first real mission on the team. Daniel fetched Martouf to watch, too, and the man was suitably awestruck as he saw Egeria for the first time. She seemed...wise. Merciful, kind, and just what he'd imagined the great Tok'ra queen would be like. It was easy to understand why she had gained the reputation on Earth of being a just advisor to a good king. Daniel wished he could have met her.
Besides, the Tok'ra and the SGC received a drug from her that could replace an immune system, the same way that a symbiote replaced the immune system of a Jaffa. No one could complain about that.
XXXXX
There was a...a thing.
Daniel didn't know what else to call it, but it was sort of dark and had lots of fire, although, since something was stopping him from going in (the Others, most likely), he supposed that was probably meant as a deterrent rather than a representation of reality. Or maybe it actually was just that dark and fiery, which meant it was a place he wouldn't have wanted to go as a human. As an Ascended being with no physical flesh to be seared from his nonexistent bones, though, it might have been interesting, not least because someone clearly didn't want him to see it.
"Have you seen this?" Daniel asked when he'd dragged Martouf with him to look. "What is it?"
"I don't know," Martouf said. "This is a galaxy far from any we saw on the lower plane."
"Maybe it's populated by fire-creatures."
Martouf seemed amused. "Or maybe," he said, "it does not fulfill the precise requirements for life to exist, and it is not populated at all."
"But then why can't we see it?" Daniel pointed out. "You try it. Look more closely and see for yourself."
After Martouf had tried it and been rebuffed, he stopped and shrugged. "Have you asked Oma?"
Oma was on Kheb, as he'd expected, but when he sought her out, she had hidden herself away and a monk was speaking to a small party of Jaffa. Daniel stood back and waited.
After SG-1's brush with Oma on Kheb and the small army that had been sent to search for Shifu, the secret of Kheb had spread surprisingly fast and far. These days, it was almost impossible for any Jaffa not to know of the movement spawned by Bra'tac and Teal'c, and there were occasionally small groups of Jaffa who found their way to Kheb, too.
It had taken him some time to realize, but Oma didn't really have power anywhere but Kheb, at least not on the lower planes. Elsewhere, she could speak if she was careful about it--as she had done with Daniel while he had lain dying--and stop other Ascended from misusing their power--as she had done with Daniel on Abydos, to teach a lesson. Anything else, from lighting a candle to stirring a thunderstorm, was something she could only do on Kheb.
He rethought his assessment of the way she appeared when she visited him on his own terrain or anywhere other than on Kheb. Perhaps she conformed to the characteristics his mind expected--idioms, speech patterns--because she had no other choice, not because she was consciously picking his brain. Perhaps the Others had bound what abilities she had, except here on Kheb, and what was physical form to them now but something they chose and manipulated in their minds?
None of the Jaffa Ascended that day, but they would at least spread the word of Ascension and of Kheb to other Jaffa. If nothing else, it would undermine the Goa'uld even more.
"Yes?" Oma said once they were gone. "What do you need, Daniel?"
"There's this thing," Daniel said. "I can't figure out what it is."
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "I see," she said.
"Really?" he said.
"No," she said.
"Okay," he said, starting over. "I was wandering around, and there's this...it's like an entire block of existence I can't get into. At first, I thought it was just a couple of physical galaxies that were closed to me for some reason, but there are corresponding parts of the higher planes, too, and..." He trailed off, unsure how to explain, but she looked thoughtful. "You know what I'm talking about, right, that whole...thing?"
"Are you talking about origin?" Oma said.
Interested, he perked up. "Origin? Of what? Of life?"
She shook her head. "Daniel, if the Others are restricting your access to something, why would you think that I would be able to tell you?"
"They don't watch you on Kheb," he said.
"Mm," she said. "Not completely true...but in this case, I'm not sure I want you to know, either."
"Why would you not want me to know something?"
"Because you have given me little reason to have confidence in what you would do with that knowledge," she said.
Frustrated, Daniel stood, noting that his robes had changed from that of Oma's disciples to his familiar Abydonian garb. Her eyes didn't leave him as he paced to the doorway of her temple and back. "How am I supposed to understand anything when no one will tell me? I'm not even asking for answers--I'm just asking not to be blocked when I look for answers! At this point, Ganos Lal is the only one willing to give me information the Others are withholding."
"What?" Oma said, standing up. "Ganos Lal did what?"
"It was just a book."
"Tell me what she gave you," she said. "Daniel, tell me."
He took a breath and let it out slowly. More calmly, he explained, "There's not a lot on the Ancients that the Others will let me learn. I found a reference to a lost city, and it looked important, but I turned away, and as soon as I looked for it again, I couldn't find it. And of all the names I've found--like Chaya, Trebal--the only two I could match definitely to any legend or history were Merlin and Morgan le Fay--"
"Which is why you've been researching them lately," she said, nodding.
"--and still, the only references I have access to are books written by Tau'ri scholars, things I could've read on Earth if I'd chosen to. Ganos Lal gave me something on Camelot--the planet, not the one on Earth. It's not a straightforward history or anything groundbreaking; it's mostly stories passed down by Camelot's people, but still, it's not a Tau'ri book, and it says some interesting things about Merlin. So I assume it's one of the things the Others weren't letting me see. It's not the first time she's given me a book to read, either."
"Ganos Lal just...gave information to you?" Oma said, frowning.
"Yes," Daniel said.
Oma folded her hands in front of herself and stared at the floor. Eventually, she shook her head. "I don't understand her," she said. "She follows the Others and yet pushes them further than any of us would dare."
Daniel shrugged. "Anyway, apparently the Others don't want me to know much about the Ancients, and they don't want me to know about that other place, either--the origin of...whatever it's the origin of. Are they afraid I'll do something wrong if I see whatever it is?"
"Probably," Oma said. "I warned you they would be wary of you, and that was before you tried to help Jack O'Neill and Martouf Ascend."
"What about Martouf, then? He's been more obedient than I have, and he's been blocked, too."
"Martouf is still new here. I doubt it will be long before he is more accepted by the Others."
Daniel shook his head. "All of this starting to sound like abo ragl ma slokha. All anyone will tell me is that I have to listen because something horrible will happen if I disobey."
"Abo... The man with the burned leg?" she repeated, then said, "Ah. The monster who eats little children who don't listen to their parents. I suppose you were told that story often as a child."
"No," he said pointedly. "My parents didn't try to frighten me into submission with monsters. That didn't happen until I Ascended to some enlightened plane of existence."
Oma looked away from him for a moment, and then back. "That's too bad," she said. "And stop trying to guess an answer out of me."
XXXXX
Sam dreamed that she was in her lab, building a naquadria reactor. It wasn't the first time she'd dreamed of something like this--not necessarily with a reactor, but sometimes with a program or some crystals--and, for the first time, Daniel decided to slip in and join her in the one place he might talk to her without her being spooked.
Daniel leaned against the other side of the lab bench to watch her work. "Whoa, don't touch," Sam said, slapping his hand lightly when he ventured too near within her dream.
"How's it going?" Daniel asked.
"Well," Sam said, sounding optimistic, "if the results of the maclarium test pan out, I think we can extrapolate to make a pie with the naquadria and insert the filling directly into the reactor. It might go a long way toward stabilizing the hyperdrive we've been working on."
Trying not to grin, Daniel nodded solemnly. "Make sure you leave a slice for Jack."
"Nah," Sam said. "The colonel doesn't like naquadria. Too radioactive or something."
"Sounds like him," he agreed. "You think it'll work?"
"I'm hopeful," she said, shrugging. "Dad says it looks like it'll work."
Daniel balanced his chin in his hand as he watched her. "Oh? Has he visited lately?"
"He comes by sometimes," she said, shrinking a little bit until Daniel was staring at a young girl, no older than himself. "It's hard to talk to him, though. He doesn't get it."
"He's going through a lot," Daniel said carefully. "What doesn't he get?"
Sam shrugged again, despondent, then straightened up and became her usual, tall self. "I'm a big girl, though. I'm fine. I mean, things are actually...pretty good. I'm happy for Martouf and all."
"You have friends," he told her. "The team. Janet. You can always talk to your friends if...you know, if you need to. Just because things are good, that doesn't mean they're easy. I know it's awkward with Jack sometimes, because of your positions, but--"
"I'm fine, really," she said, reaching up to ruffle his hair. With the casual, oblivious logic of dreams, she added, "Hey, by the way, where are you working these days? There's a fish tank on your desk."
"I noticed that," he said. "Do you think I could work here with you for a while?"
"Sure," Sam said easily.
Daniel opened a book and read, enjoying the familiar sound of her tinkering next to him.
"There's this new guy," Sam said suddenly. Daniel looked up and found that she was looking straight at him, her reactor gone. "Jonas. They're his fish."
"I know," Daniel said. "He really seems to like those fish."
"Yeah, he does," she said. She opened a tool drawer and dug through it. "I think we like him."
"Good," he said.
She stopped digging and looked at him again. "You think so?"
Daniel shrugged. "As long as he's got your six."
"He works hard, but he's not very experienced yet. Well, he survived Replicators, which were pretty nasty, but that's not really the same as most combat situations--"
"You guys can handle that. There are other things that are important, too."
Sam nodded. "Yeah, he's got our back. And I can talk to him about...about stuff."
"Then that's good," Daniel said.
"It's not the same," she said.
"Things change, Sam," he said. She nodded. "I miss you, too."
"Yeah." She smiled. "All right." He went back to reading beside her.
...x...
"Daniel," Oma sighed when she found him there. "Get out of her head."
Swallowing hard, Daniel closed his book and said, "Uh, Sam? I have to go now."
"Where?" she said, not looking up.
Did it matter what he said? Even if she remembered this in the morning, she would think nothing of it. "I have to sit in on SG-11's next mission briefing," he improvised.
"Oh, that's right," Sam said, as if she'd expected him to say that. "See you in the morning, then." She looked up and suddenly looked concerned. "Daniel, is something wrong?"
Daniel shook his head. "No, of course not," he lied. He quickly stood up and managed to give her a smile before he turned toward the door of her lab. "See you later, Sam."
"'Bye," she called after him.
...x...
Oma didn't look quite as angry as she could have when he finally stood before her. "Why do you do this?" she said.
Daniel stared at his feet.
"Look at me," Oma said.
He looked at her. "I just wanted to talk to her," he said.
"Manipulating a person's dreams..."
"I didn't do anything to change her opinions or influence her actions," he said.
"Maybe not," she said, "but this a dangerous road you're walking."
"I won't do it again," Daniel said. "Can I go?"
"Don't do it again," she warned. "Not frivolously like this." He nodded and turned away.
XXXXX
"What have you learned?" Ganos Lal said the next time they met. She paused, though, when she saw he was reading about the SGC, not about their shared pastime. "I don't mean to intrude--"
"No, it's okay," Daniel said, and held up his latest memo. "Do you know about the SGC on Earth?"
"A bit," she said, glancing at the sheet he was showing her.
"They're going public with the program," he said. "Well, slightly more public than before. Apparently, Anubis's threat is too great to conceal from the entire rest of the world anymore."
Ganos Lal raised her eyebrows but didn't look particularly interested in intraplanetary politics.
"There's a powerful man--politically powerful--trying to convince them to hand control of the Stargate to the NID," he explained. "That's a...an organization with sort of fuzzy and ill-defined morals. I suppose it would be considered a frivolous use of my powers if I dropped into the meeting to convince them otherwise?"
"You know the answer to that, Daniel Jackson," she said.
Daniel reluctantly put the memo down. "Right. Anyway--"
The library shivered around him, just for a second, then steadied again.
"Um," he said, looking around warily. Ganos Lal stiffened and glanced over her shoulder, then turned back, her gaze assessing. "I didn't do anything," he said quickly. "Is it just me, or was this not the first time that's happened lately?"
She folded her arms. "To whom have you spoken since your Ascension?" she asked.
A bit apprehensive, he said, "Not many people. You, Oma Desala, Shifu son of Sha'uri, Martouf. Um. Oh, one other person, too, called Jim, but that was literally an exchange of about three words. Why?"
"I was curious," Ganos Lal said, smiling briefly at him. "It is nothing to worry about."
But that wasn't it. There was more to it, but he really hadn't done anything wrong this time and had come to understand that he wouldn't learn anything by pushing people for information. "Right," Daniel said again. His library had settled again, and there didn't seem to be anything he could do, so he put that aside. "Anyway, I read the book you gave me."
"And?"
"And I think you didn't like Merlin very much," he said. "Obviously, he wasn't perfect. Maybe he was a bit more evil than I'd thought--or, at least, more careless--but everything you've told me so far has been to make out Merlin as the wrongdoer, including the stories in this book."
"Perhaps he was," she said.
"Maybe," Daniel agreed. "I don't think it's that simple. I think you liked Morgan better--my question is 'why?'"
Ganos Lal gazed impassively at him. "I think that Morgan tried very hard to do what she believed was right. And what is the conclusion you have drawn of Merlin?"
"That..." Daniel said slowly, thinking through the little he had been able to read and see, "...he tried to do what he thought was right, too. He had some sort of quest. This...this Sangreal thing, maybe, or whatever objective the Sangreal represents. I think he had good intentions and was...overzealous in his methods."
"Such as the Black Knight he created to guard his research," she said. "Many innocents were killed by that guardian."
"See? There you go again," he said, gesturing with a hand.
"I'm only speaking the truth," she said.
"Come on--Merlin's Black Knight guarded his research and killed people who tried to get at it, but Morgan le Fay had a whole set of traps and a dragon to guard her..." Daniel frowned, paging back through the book he'd just been reading. "...her whatever she was hiding. No, wait! It says she was guarding the Sangreal, too! She..." He paused, thinking. "Huh. So Merlin was looking for some Holy Grail--metaphorical, I assume--and Morgan was trying to stop him from getting it. I guess I'd need to know what the Sangreal was to make any sort of judgment."
"Perhaps it was dangerous," Ganos Lal suggested. "Perhaps she was protecting people from Merlin's misuse of it."
"That's possible. Still, consider what he accomplished," Daniel countered. "Whatever your opinion concerning Ambrosius, you have to admit Merlin helped his king and his people accomplish great things."
"They weren't his people," she pointed out.
"That didn't make them less important," he answered immediately, and then stopped as her words sank in. That was a phrase he'd heard before--recently, in fact, and rather often, though not specifically in reference to the Ancients. "Wait. What was Merlin searching for that was so important, this Sangreal?" he asked.
Ganos Lal hesitated, then said, "A weapon--one far too powerful to put in the possession of one man, especially one who was willing to decide it was right to help a king kill thousands as a stepping stone on the path to accomplishing his goal. Can you imagine the destruction that kind of power would cause?"
He could, all too clearly. Still... "Pardon my bluntness," he said, "but this is what annoys me about all of you up here. If Merlin was so terrible, why didn't you step in and stop him?"
Instead of the same old answer, though, she said, "Morgan le Fay did that adequately."
"Right, I noticed," Daniel said. "But...why?"
"She was an Ancient, just as Merlin was," Ganos Lal reminded him. "What he did came dangerously close--too close--to exposing himself as a superior being to the Tau'ri. Ambrosius and his knights already followed his every whim; someone had to stop him from going too far."
Daniel closed the book. "A superior being? He was human, too--just with better technology."
"I meant that he was more powerful than they were, not that he was possessing of some moral superiority," she clarified. "The result is the same. In any case, Merlin was something rather more than human."
"He was Ascended, wasn't he?" Daniel demanded. "That's why he had more power than everyone else around; that's why it was millennia after the Ancients died out but he was still around. That's why Ascended beings like you think he was the villain for stepping in."
"He...was not Ascended, no," Ganos Lal said.
"But...wasn't he an Ancient?" he asked, confused. "They'd died out or left by then, hadn't they?"
Ganos Lal raised her eyebrows. "He was an Ancient. He was simply...more than that, as well."
Daniel pushed down his irritation when it became clear this was one of those things she wasn't going to tell him. "And Morgan le Fay?" he said. "Was she 'more than Ancient,' too?"
"Morgan was very likely more powerful than Merlin at the time," she said, "but held back for fear of doing too much, like he did."
"Then she was a coward," he said.
"Do you feel Merlin's ends justified his means?" she said.
Taken aback, Daniel said, "I don't know. I think it depends on what those ends were--sometimes, someone just has to act. But when there were lives at stake, I don't think Morgan's means justified her end."
"Why should Merlin have been allowed to decide who should live and how?" she said, her tone more curious than condemning.
"He had the power to help!" Daniel said.
"Having power does not mean that one must use it," she replied.
Incredulous, he gaped at her for a minute, not sure why he was so surprised--it was what he'd been hearing all along, after all, but it was the first time he'd heard someone say it so plainly. "So the way you see it," he said, "Morgan was the good one, because even if she had the power to stop a disaster, she would have stood by and let people die instead." When she started to answer, he barreled on, "I mean, no, sure, it's okay, because they were inferior to her, right?"
"You are understandably equating their dilemma to your own difficulties in obeying our rules," Ganos Lal said. "But--"
"I'll equate it to whatever I want!" he burst out. He'd had this same argument before with Oma, but at some point, it had started to sound less convincing. "It's like the Tollan for...for looking down on people less advanced than they are, and all of you for--"
"And what of your SGC?" she countered. "Have they not, in the past, refused to disclose information or trade technology for fear that another lesser society would use it for evil?"
"At least we never called another human society the 'lesser,'" he said, "and okay, some people probably thought it in private, but we don't make policy based on judgments of worth. We gave aid when we could, even if we didn't always give weapons--"
"Because you feared they would be misused," Ganos Lal said, taking a step closer, and if Daniel had been any less frustrated with everything, he might have been intimidated.
"Because if the SGC ever did something to unbalance another society, they didn't have the power to control or...or solve the situation afterward," he said. "The SGC has themselves to defend, and that has to be their first concern. But Morgan and Merlin had all that power. Maybe if more had taken Merlin's path and he hadn't had to avoid Morgan all the time, the Ancients could've accomplished more! This is so typical of you Ascended beings, that you'd think Merlin was wrong for trying to help. You'd rather sit by and watch instead of using your power to do good."
She frowned disapprovingly at him but did not argue directly with his point. "You are one of us now, Daniel Jackson--you hinder only yourself when you speak of 'we' and 'you.'"
"Funny how it doesn't seem like I'm one of you," he said, irritated. "I'm treated as an inferior being to all of you. What is it you're all so ashamed of that you don't want me to see?"
"Perhaps it is not our shame," she said, her voice suddenly, absolutely emotionless so that he couldn't even tell if she was hiding something, "but rather our fear of what you would do with that kind of power in your hands. You are not incorruptible, Daniel Jackson, just because you managed to achieve Ascension."
He stared at her, realizing what he should have realized long ago. "You don't want me here," he said flatly, very firmly not caring what they thought. "You and all the Others. I'm the...the bastard child among all you pure-hearted people. That's why there are so many restrictions on me--why I can't find things they don't want me to learn."
"Do you know why it is forbidden for one Ascended being to help a mortal Ascend?" she said. "Those who are truly good will achieve Ascension on their own, as was done--"
"Well, things change," he snapped. "The problem is with existing for so long... It's the same thing the Goa'uld and the Asgard have suffered: you don't change and you stop questioning things, and then when the universe changes around you, you sit back and shake your heads in disapproval until those changes sneak up and stab you in the back."
"Is that what you truly believe, Daniel Jackson?"
"Yes!"
"And where," Ganos Lal said, "would you draw the line to decide where to stop? Change is very well, but there is potential for great evil among those like us."
"I thought no one could get here without being 'good at heart,'" he bit out.
"Yet some have."
"Well, I'm sorry to be the stain on your pure-hearted world."
She frowned. "I wasn't talking about you."
"Let me ask you something," he said. "If you saw a village on the lower planes dying of an illness, would you save them?"
"I could not," she said.
"Yes, you could!" he snapped. "You wouldn't."
"It is not for me--or for any of us--to meddle in the ways of nature," she said. "There is a balance that cannot be disrupted."
"Then you would have as good as killed them," he said. "You know what? If that's what you mean by 'truly good,' then I'm proud that you don't count me among your exalted number."
"You would interfere in the life and death of millions," Ganos Lal said. "Is that correct?"
Daniel rubbed a hand over his face in frustration. "No. Maybe. I know it's wrong on some level, so you don't have to quote the reasons at me. But...but maybe it's just as wrong not to. I don't know how much I can take of doing nothing because of a set of rules I'll never fully understand."
"You are not the only one who feels that way," she told him. "But I would take great caution with those views."
"Right--it's evidence of my impurity, yes? Is that why I can't find any of the Others to talk to them? Even when they come here to spy on me, they still won't talk to me."
"I have told you before," Ganos Lal said, "that I am not here to spy on you."
"Then why are you here?" he demanded.
She was still infuriatingly calm in the face of his growing anger. "You speak from the heart," she said. "I find you intriguing."
"You shouldn't listen to me, then," he said darkly. "Whatever comes out of my impure heart might taint yours."
"I didn't mean to say that you don't deserve Ascension," Ganos Lal said. "I believe you are essentially good, but you must understand that there are rules that--"
"Thank you for the books," Daniel said. "I appreciate the help."
He wasn't looking at her anymore, so all he could feel was her consideration on him as he returned to looking at his news on the SGC. It felt childish, but he didn't really care--unless he adopted their way of thinking, he was never going to be anything but a child and a problem to them, and at the moment, the thought of willingly being like them was terrifying.
Finally, a book was placed gently on the desk next to him. He glanced at it--another one he'd never seen before about Merlin and the quest for the grail--but before he could ask Ganos Lal about it, she had disappeared.
A low whistle came from the doorway.
Daniel looked up tiredly and saw the grinning, large man in the trench coat he'd met briefly that one time before, this time leaning casually in his doorway. Jim, Daniel remembered. "They're really somethin', huh?" Jim said, jerking a thumb out the door as if Ganos Lal had actually, physically walked out that way.
"Uh," Daniel said. Despite himself, he looked around to see if there was someone else in the room.
"I'm talking to you, kid," Jim said, chuckling. "Can I come in?"
"Uh," Daniel repeated, then shook himself and said, "Well, yeah, I guess. Sure. Come in."
Continued in Part IIIc...