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Casey sat on the bed in the room she had been locked into. She couldn’t believe what had happened. Duncan had kidnapped her, with no more emotion than a Replicator. They had ringed up to a ship and were now en route to PX3-695. She dropped onto her side, tears filling her eyes. "Oh, Daniel," she whispered, "please come find me!"

The door to the room opened, and Duncan strode in. In a flash Casey was on her feet. She waited until he was close enough, and then slapped his face with all the strength she could muster. Angry welts appeared on his cheek almost instantly. Within minutes, however, they would be gone.

He licked his lip where she had drawn blood with her wedding rings. "I’ll forgive that. I realize you’re still upset. In a few days, we’ll be joined in the Ceremony of Fire, and you will forget Jackson. You’ll think only of me, want only me." His smile was cruel and cold.

Casey looked at the man she had lived with for two years, the man she had been slowly learning to love. This was a side of Duncan she had never seen, had never suspected existed. She looked again into his eyes. So cold. So hard. "I hate you, Duncan MacLeod!"

Duncan reached out and caressed her cheek. "Now, maybe. In time you will come to love me."

"Never! It will never happen! There is only one man who I love, and that man is Daniel Jackson!"

He grabbed her by the shoulders. "Never mention that name in my presence again. He has thwarted me once too often. Finally, I will win."

What he said wasn’t making sense. She was starting to get a very bad feeling. The same kind that she had always had just minutes before a mission went bad. Something was wrong here. Terribly wrong. "You’re hurting me," she said with as little emotion as she could.

The grip became softer, his fingers began caressing her shoulders. "Forgive me, my love. I have waited so long, have wanted you so much that my impatience is making me thoughtless."

This was not the Duncan MacLeod she knew. This was someone else. Someone cold. Arrogant. Angry. She’d met Goa'uld's with warmer personalities. She pulled away from him, threw herself onto the bed, curled with her back towards him. He had told her about the Dark Quickening, how he was almost lost to anger and hate and darkness. Methos had helped him overcome it, but was it possible for it to return? That would certainly explain his behavior…

She felt him lay down on the bed beside her, felt his hand caress her hip, her waist. When he reached for her breast, she pulled away and stood to her feet.

"You cannot refuse me forever, Casey. The fire burns. You will soon crave my touch as I crave yours."

"Not even when hell freezes over," she spat at him.

He stood, his eyes blazing with anger. "I will give you until we reach Lodonia. There we will complete the Ceremony of Fire. Once the rite is finished, you will no longer resist my love."

"Love? You call this ‘love’? You haven’t got a clue what love is, cupcake. You wouldn’t know love if it came up, smacked you in the face and introduced itself! I can’t believe that I wasted two years of my life with you!"

"Do not push me, Casey," he said.

"I’ll push you to hell," she retorted furiously. "Know this: Daniel will find me, he will kick your ass, and then he will take me home. Where we will live together, for eternity!"

He slapped her, sending her spinning onto the bed. "I warned you about speaking his name in my presence. I have duties to attend to. I will be back later. We will dine together." As he was walking out the door, she grabbed the pitcher of water that sat on a table by the bed, and hurled it after him. It crashed into the wall near his head. He turned to face her once again. "Do not test my patience with you. It’s nearly exhausted." With a quiet "swish", the door closed and she was alone was again.

Casey slid to the floor, pulled her legs up and hugged them to her body. She put her cheek on one knee and cried. "Oh, Daniel, please help me!" she whispered.

A   A   A   A   A   A

Daniel lay on the pallet where they had slept. He could smell her scent on the blankets. Tears rolled down his cheeks, unheeded. He needed to find Casey. But he had to figure a way off of this planet, first. All he could think about was getting to SGC, where he knew that Sam and Jack would be able to help him.

In a flash of light, he was standing in the hallway of their home in Silver Springs. He sank to his knees as sobs overtook him. His body sank forward, the weight of his grief making it impossible to stay upright.

A soft hand on his shoulder brought his head up off of the floor. "Daniel."

"Oma! Where is she? Is she safe?" he asked, his voice still full of tears.

Oma nodded. "She is safe enough for now. You know where they will go. I can tell you no more." She was gone in another flash of light.

Daniel lay on the floor, feeling as if his heart would break, the pain of having her taken from him physical, and almost too much to bear. He needed to get to the SGC, where Jack and Sam and Teal'c would help him. Before he could do that, he had to take a shower and change clothes…

Forty-five minutes later he walked into Jack’s office. "Jack, we need…"

Jack looked up from his desk, and nearly had a heart attack. They hadn’t been able to find a single trace of Daniel and Casey since their disappearance. Even Thor had not been able to offer any help. Now the man walked into his office as if he’d never been gone. "Daniel? Daniel where in the hell have you been for the past two months?" Jack demanded to know.

"Oma," Daniel replied simply.

"This should be good," Jack said, sitting back in his chair. He motioned towards the seat in front of his desk. "Please. I’m all ears. Explain to me what the hell is going on."

Daniel told Jack what he knew. "Oma told me that I know where they’re going," he finished, frowning.

"Okay, where would he take her?"

The young archaeologist looked up with haunted eyes. "I don’t know. Damn it, Jack, I don’t know! It’s like what happened to Sha’re all over again."

Jack tossed the pen he had been using to sign his name to the zillion forms onto the desk. "If Oma says you know, then the answer is somewhere in that scientist head of yours. We just have to find it." He sat back and sighed.

Daniel paced the room. It was a simple question: where would Duncan MacLeod take Casey? He smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. The question had a very simple answer. "PX3-695!"

Jack was already picking up the phone. "I’m sending SG-3 and 5 with you. You head out in thirty minutes."

A   A   A   A   A   A

Casey glared at the man across the table from her. She had refused to eat, even though her stomach was growling and the food smelled delicious. She sat, her arms across her chest, refusing to speak to him.

Duncan threw his napkin down on the table. "Casey, this is useless. We are fated to be together. It was preordained for us before we were born."

"Bullshit."

"Casey, you feel the fire, just as I do," he said. He reached across the table to touch her cheek.

Casey flinched, waiting to feel those damnable flames. Nothing happened. She could see that Duncan was startled. "The only fire I feel is the one that burns for Daniel."

His eyes blazed at her. "I have warned you-"

"What is it about Daniel that bothers you so? Is it because he’s smarter than you? Better looking maybe? How about the fact that he’s a sensational lover? Maybe it’s because you know he is going to kill you when he finds us. He will find us, Duncan. You can bet your head on that one!"

Duncan stood, threw one last angry glance at her, and left the room.

Casey waited until she was sure that he wasn’t coming back, and then began eating, stuffing food in her mouth as her hunger took control. Her mind continued to work on the problem of Duncan’s behavior. It was wrong. Totally wrong. He wasn’t even speaking the same. It was almost as if he were someone else…Oh dear god! She hadn’t seen the flash of the eyes, nor did he have that freaky dual voice, but every other behavior fit the pattern: Goa’uld.

Surely when Oma had taken them so abruptly to that planet, she never had been able to pronounce the name correctly, everyone at the SGC would have been looking for them. And that would include the Immortal teams. If Duncan had gone on one of the search and rescue missions, and then been infested with a snake…she shook her head. The Goa’uld had their own agendas. They wouldn’t have given a damn about what Duncan wanted. His love for her would mean nothing to them.

The problem continued to circle in her head. Concentrating on finding an answer kept her from screaming in frustration. She curled up on the bed. "I love you, Daniel, wherever you are," she whispered.

In a room not far from hers, Duncan lay on the floor, his head spinning. He had no idea where he was, nor how he had come to be here. He seemed to lose consciousness at random times, always waking here, always with a headache, always with the feeling that something was happening that he wasn’t aware of, had no control over. He stood to his feet, and began banging his fists against the door. "Who are you? What do you want? Answer me, damn it!" The only response was silence.

A   A   A   A   A   A

Daniel looked at the temple in despair. It had been destroyed. All that was left among the rubble was the altar. His only hope was that Duncan hadn’t already been here with Casey. It had been nearly a week now, but the planet they had been on didn’t have a Stargate. Which meant a ship…wait…how would Duncan get a spaceship? "Oma!" He shouted at the top of his lungs. This had gone on long enough. Oma knew what was going on, and he intended to find out. She didn’t answer him, or at least, he didn’t think she had. But suddenly he knew that not all was as it seemed.

"It’s not Duncan," he told Jack, pacing. "Or if it is, he’s not in control."

"Snake?"

"That would be my guess."

Jack put his hands on his hips. "Here’s the problem with that theory. He hasn’t been off world since he was here the last time…when we all…uh…came back. When we let him out of the cell, he headed straight for Seacouver."

Daniel dropped to the ground. "I have a really bad feeling about this. Everything the villagers said about Casey’s…abduction…was that the man who took her was a ‘kelchuk’…walking dead. They said his eyes were that of a dead man."

"Since that place didn’t have a Stargate, we’ll assume he had to go to a planet where there is one. If he’s a Goa’uld, then he’d have one of those big honkin’ ships, and chances are that he’s already been here, and he’s the one that did the redecorating on the temple there."

Daniel flinched visibly at the words.

"If he’s not a Goa’uld, then there’s the chance he either hasn’t made it to a Stargate, or he plans to come here by ship. In which case, he probably hasn’t checked in yet."

"So, we sit and wait for him?"

Jack shrugged. "Not much else we can do, Daniel. We don’t have any other clues. This," he said, looking around, "is the only lead we have."

Daniel jumped to his feet. "I can’t lose her, Jack. I can’t."

The older man put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. "You won’t. That’s a promise from me." He walked back through the 'gate. He was going to call in some favors from Jacob Carter. One way or another, he was going to make sure that Daniel succeeded this time.

The SG teams set up observation posts around the gate and around the ruins of the temple. Then they sat back to wait.

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