He should be surprised when he walks into the tent and sees three people that are supposed to be dead, but he isn't.

Daniel takes a moment to just breathe in their presence. He'd been without them for so long that it was almost too much to of a sensory overload to have them be... there.

Everything is just that little bit wrong though and Daniel realises with a pang that the people before him are strangers.

The current Samantha Carter looks jubilant at his arrival and Daniel watches her nervously bounce from foot to foot, but there is something else mixed in with the happiness and Daniel can't place it on this woman. He had always admired Sam's grace and confidence and both those things are oddly missing. Teal'c is dressed in full Jaffa armour and is standing at attention. Jack is casually leaning and looking his usual self, but there is sadness in his eyes that Daniel recognises from when they first met, and Daniel is worried to see it.

"Well, this can't be a good sign." He sighs.

"Why's that?" Jack asks, clearly looking annoyed that Daniel isn't as pleased to see them as they are to see him.

"Where am I?" Sam had clearly recognised him but Daniel knew the fact he was missing didn't bode well. He mused wryly that he must have had a knack for dying, no matter what the timeline.

"Ancient Egypt?" Daniel almost snaps at Jack, but he stomps on it because he's also relieved that there is definitely some of his Jack buried in the sad shell of a man before him.

"No, I mean the me from your timeline." He clarifies, smiling tightly. There is a moment where despair floats across Sam's face and Jack looks guilty.

"I killed you." Teal'c states, matter-of-factly.

"Why?"

"You were a Goa'uld spy." Teal'c answers in the same tone.

Daniel shrugs. "Good reason."

"It was horrible." Sam sighs dramatically and Daniel glances at her for just a moment, wondering just who the hell this woman is and what happened to her to make her so dramatically different from the Sam he loved. It horrifies Daniel to feel slightly irritated by this Sam's presence.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Why are you here?"

xxxxxxx

When everything went to hell, it went to hell fast.

Teal'c was spotted by a Jaffa patrol and taken, although it took twelve men to finally bring him down and only because by then he was barely alive. The twelve year old boy and fifteen year old girl he'd been with, helping them to fix their shelter, had been tortured for only a short time before admitting that there were three other strangers that had accompanied him.

The Jaffa now knew to look for an older man, a woman with hair the colour of the sun and a younger man who could speak like a native but had the blue eyes of a demon.

A few hours later, Sam had been at the oasis gathering water. Out of the corner of her eye she watched the six Jaffa close by with mounting tension. Furthest from her mind was that they were there for her. She was worried instead that they might have thought to take one of the women she was with. When she leant over to retrieve one of the pots of water, her dog tags had slipped free from her robes. All too late, as the Jaffa descended on her with a cry, did she realise that she had been the target.

They yanked her hood from her head, exposing her blonde hair to the light of day. She was beaten ruthlessly as the other women she had been with scattered with terrified cries.

Jack would have been harder to spot, if he hadn't been cresting the hill just as Sam was taken down. He had hurtled towards the Jaffa, pulling his P-90 free from his robes. A tiny, rational part of his mind had advised him to stay hidden so he could rescue her later, but that part had been drowned out by his horror at watching an armoured foot connect solidly with the small of Sam's back, tossing her like a rag doll.

If it hadn't been for the twelve additional Jaffa lying in wait, Jack might have had a chance.

Daniel had watched as a sobbing woman tore into the encampment, heading for Katep.

Katep had looked up at Daniel and he had risen, dread washing over him.

A Jaffa patrol had been only a few minutes behind the woman but Daniel had been dragged to an underground bunker, hidden away with the children and the youngest of the women. He huddled in the dark, his face burning in shame and sorrow, knowing that his friends would be tortured for hours on end to disclose his whereabouts and also knowing that they never would.

The public executions, only three days later, had been a last ditch effort to flush him out. It had nearly worked. Daniel had been held forcibly down, screaming and thrashing, as one after the other his friends met their fate. Later, when the Jaffa had questioned them, the villagers had told of how the blue-eyed man had wandered into the desert, driven mad with grief.

They left out the part where he was brought back.

xxxxxxx

"Are you absolutely certain about them, Colonel?" General Hammond looked from Doctor Daniel Jackson, to Doctor Samantha Carter and then back to Jack O'Neill.

Jack followed his gaze, watching as Daniel fiddled for the millionth time with his helmet and Sam winced, struggling to keep upright with the overburdened pack she was carrying. He had watched as Daniel had helped her on with it the first time and seen her topple backwards.

He hadn't laughed like that in a while.

Jack knew it was crazy and that these two people were horribly ill equipped for what lay ahead, but something deep inside had woken up when he'd seen them sitting in his boat, wearing the lifejackets he had forced on them even though they were still sitting at the dock.

Something he had thought long dead.

Jack had absolutely no idea how to explain this to the bald General now standing in front of him, eyeing the fidgeting civilians with well-founded concern.

"No Sir!" He said simply.