Events on the Horizon: A Stargate Sequel

Chapter 9

Daniel

My heart stopped. Jonas Quinn walked out of the gate arm and arm with her, at least it looked like her. It couldn't be her. She was wearing my jacket draped across her body, her eyes shifted across the room until she caught mine and I stood there frozen in place. A ghost of the woman I loved, radiant and alive. The breath was sucked from my lungs as the world rendered in full pigment around me. Technicolor and radiance exploding from her as our eyes locked. Jonas tossed a heavy rucksack onto the ground and motioned for Jack, but my eyes were glued to her, to Eleanor.

"Daniel?" Her voice was close to a whisper and I nodded. "My Daniel?"

"Always,"  I croaked out and watched as she unhooked herself from Jonas and cautiously made her way closer to me. I ran to meet her, to hold her, to touch her. Her hand was reaching out to touch me and I leaned in, breathless and unbelieving. I breathed and in one fluid motion her hand connected to my face in a stinging slap sending my glasses flying to the ground. I heard Jack shout but his voice was muffled in my head. There was tunnel vision leading just to her rage filled face, a face that looked as if she had seen horrors and nightmares alone. A face that haunted my dreams in the best of ways, and was here now with me.

"You said you'd find me!" She screamed, jabbing a finger in my chest, and the hurt in her voice stung more than any hit. "You said across every life that you'd find me." Her voice echoed against the gate room walls as Jonas and Siler went to restrain her, eyes brimming in tears. "I crossed voids in time looking for you. For you! What have you done Daniel? You gave up on me."

"Let her go." I shouted back, reaching down to collect my glasses and placed them crookedly back on to get a better look at her. Beautiful, savage, honest her. "You were dead." I swallowed and looked back to see my Eleanor trembling in the room but staring only back at me, at my failures. "Your body is in the ground in Kansas City. You died." I walked toward her slowly, hands up to my chest in an act of peace. "But somehow here you are, you found me and I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you had to go through whatever you did to get here, but I'm not sorry that you did because it brought you back here. To me." With each step I took her body tensed. "I heard you Eleanor, from across the universe I heard you, and you heard me I know you did. I knew you were there, I was trying. You were just faster." I couldn't keep the smile from my face.

"So is this it then?" Jack asked from behind her and she spun around to face him.

"I have spent months in solitude to get here, have had my body ripped through the threads of time. You can give me one goddamn minute Jack O'Neill." Her eyes flared and his matched in response.

"Daniel?" He turned to me with an expression of disbelief. I took another step, hands shaking and pulled her into me as I swept her face up to my lips crashing into hers greedily. Wrapping her arms around my neck bringing her in deeper as it all came rushing to me like she had never left.

"I never stopped looking for a way back to you, loving you." I whispered against her mouth and she tugged me in again, fingers twisting through my hair. No one in the room, in the whole of the world, mattered to me at that moment. Every moment alone wondering how I could continue, what the point of it all was, it was for this. For the intertwining of souls into one another melding to one. She was that part of me that found joy, that brought color and life back to me, the part of me that was pure love, and she was, well all of it.

"Does someone care to explain to me what is going on here?" Hammond bellowed from the doorway and I laughed weakly pressing my forehead to hers, looking back into her. She had done it, done everything I couldn't.

"General Hammond," Jonas started, "this is Eleanor Owens, I believe Dr. Jackson has a more intimate relationship with her than I do," Jonas continued, "but she was very respectful during our interview when she came through the gate, she knew a lot about you all. More than I remembered to be fair, and she knew the alpha site."