Daniel awoke, his head throbbing. He lay still a moment, feeling the cold, hard, unyielding floor beneath him. Then, as he slowly opened his eyes, his breath came in a sharp gasp. Bringing his gloved hand up in front of his face, he wiggled his fingers.

Nothing. He saw nothing. Moving his hand closer to his face, he bumped it into his nose. His frown deepened as he slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. Softly, he called out, "Jack? Sam? Teal'c?" his voice fading to a whisper when he heard no responding answer. Had they abandoned him?

Then, in the stillness, he heard breathing other than his own and realized he was not alone. Reaching out to his right, he fumbled and felt the brim of Jack's baseball cap. Moving his hand down, he felt the steady rise and fall of his friend's chest. Listening in the blackness, he heard soft breathing to either side of him and he realized it must be Sam and Teal'c, so they were all still alive.

Alive, but for how long? If Apophsis didn't kill them, the C4 explosions would. They were doomed either way. The realization death loomed so close shook the young anthropologist to his very soul. He didn't want to die like this. Not on some alien ship, fighting a battle he knew was doomed from the beginning. Fighting for a world where he had never fit in and never belonged, a world that had never accepted him.

He slowly pushed away from the others and on his hands and knees crawled across the cold floor until a metal barrier stopped his progress. He shook it to no avail, then turning his blind eyes upward, he gave a shuddering sigh of defeat before turning his back to the wall and bringing his knees up to his chest.

In only a few minutes it would be over, just as it had been over for his friends on the alternate Earth. Was this how they had felt as they faced death? Jack, Samantha, Katherine....they had faced death, and died, to give him a chance at survival.

A bitter, low sob broke from him. He had survived the destruction of that earth, only to fail here. They would not be able to save his world. It had all been for nothing. In his mind's eye he could see the death and destruction of this earth, an instant replay of the alternate's end.

And now, odds were he would have to watch his friends die again. A shudder rippled through his body, shivering him to the core. "Not again," he whispered softly, "not again!"

He rubbed the heels of his hands into his sightless eyes and turned his face toward where his friends lay. 'Perhaps,' a part of his mind whispered,'if you're lucky, the blindness is permanent and you won't have to see...'

He rubbed his eyes again, this time to scrub away the tears which clung to his long lashes. He had tried so hard to maintain hope they would win, that they would defeat the goa'uld. But now, cold, bitter reality came crashing down hard on his slumped shoulders. He knew the minutes were ticking down the end, just as they had before, in that alternate gateroom when he had faced that world's Teal'c. And once again, hope of survival was quickly ebbing away.

He looked sightlessly toward his friends. He thought momentarily of moving over to be nearer them, but something held him back. They were the team. They were the military. They would fight to the end. He was just the scientist, the geek....the failure.

He could not save earth. He could not save Sha'uri. He could not save his friends. And he could not even save himself.

Wrapping himself in the cold, lonely embrace of defeat, he leaned his forehead against his drawn up knees as he huddled alone in the darkness,listening to the minutes of his life ticking down to its inevitable ending.....

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