They'd finally done it. They'd fought past another few sentinels -- not just armoured knights, but a gryphon, a unicorn, and a dragon! They were battered and singed, but all of them, Teal'c, Carter, Mitchell, Daniel, Vala, and Jack, who had refused to be left out, had survived to stand here, before the holographic image of Merlin, and listen to him warn them about the last, unseen hurdle. Pass it, and the weapon that could kill Ascended beings would be theirs! Fail, and the trap would surely kill at least one of them -- and anyone who didn’t die by the trap would die later, at the hands of Adria and the Ori, along with countless other "rebels".

"Only the hand of the dead can pass the torch to the living. What is your death worth to you?" the spectre asked. He stood before a stone with a sword embedded in it, much like the legend of Excalibur. In the sword's pommel was a glowing red stone -- the Sangreal.

"Shouldn’t he mean what is your life worth?" Mitchell asked.

"And what torch?" Jack added. "Isn’t that sword there the weapon that we're lookin' for?"

Vala's heart was hammering in her ears. Wasn't it obvious? Surly the Tau'ri couldn’t be that thick! Yet even Daniel seem puzzled, scowling in that way that was so endearing to her now. She'd miss that look. Perhaps it was a good thing that he hadn't figured it out; it gave her a chance to--

She didn’t wait another moment. Hopping lightly onto the dais, she wrapped her hands around the handle of the sword and pulled hard, concentrating on her fierce desire to make recompense and protect those she'd come to love.

It was her fault the Ori had learned of this galaxy, her thirst for treasure. She could have killed Adria in the womb, but she hadn’t, and now her daughter was hell-bent on killing or enslaving everyone, everywhere.

What is your death worth to you? A life for a life. Her death for the death of the Ori. Her life for the lives of everyone in the galaxy. She could only hope her weak, tarnished soul was enough coin to buy the weapon for SG-1.

Pain flared in every nerve-ending as blue lightning shot through her, from the sword's hilt. At first, she thought she'd failed -- she wasn't worthy. But as she fell back, she felt the sword slide free from its holder, heard the tip clatter against the floor beside her, long moments -- they seemed long -- after her body hit the ground, though the handle was still clenched tight in her fingers.

No, not the ground. The ground couldn’t be so soft, could it?

She'd heard Daniel's cry start the moment she'd rushed the dais; she still heard it, a drawn-out note that sounded slow and distorted. The sound had seemed a world away at first, but was right in her ear now, and she understood -- it was not the ground she rest against. Daniel had caught her in his arms.

The sound finally died on his lips, those perfectly-scuplted lips that swam into view, lips that could sling his anger sure as an arrow, or comfort with soft words and a gentle smile. They trembled now, in a grimace of shock and fear that she wished she had the strength to brush comfortingly away, but she couldn’t find the strength. A tear fell past his lips, and she traced its path with her eyes up to his own. Those soulful eyes, eyes that could pin you down one moment, sharp as daggers, and lift you up high the next, into a sky whose own blue paled in comparison to the blue in those eyes. She was glad that they would be the last thing she would ever see.

"Vala," he whispered, his voice choked. "Why...?"

And then she found it, the strength to lift her arm -- not to touch his face, but to complete a more important action.

"Only the hand of the dead ... can pass the torch to the living..." she told him, lifting the sword to hand it to him. "I'll always love you ... my Daniel ...." She wondered if she'd ever spoken truer words, or done a greater deed, in the whole of her life. Then she wondered nothing at all.

As the light went out of her eyes, the sword began to glow. Her head lolled towards him and her hand fell lifelessly to her breast.

"No!" Daniel cried, shaking her, eyes wide in disbelief and horror. "Vala!!"

He lay her against the ground, tilted her heard back, and shared his breath with her. Once. Twice. He moved on to compressions.

Beside him, Sam stifled a sob against Jack's chest, his own eyes glittering and his mouth a thin line as his held Sam to him, unable to tear his gaze, away from the still form that had been so very ... alive, just moments before.

He wasn't a stranger to losing friends in battle, but Daniel ... his heart broke for the man who had once again found and then lost love because of the Stargate. Sometimes he wondered if Jackson's life wouldn’t have been better off if they had never found it.

No, he decided, feeling Sam's hot tears soak into his shirt. "Better to have loved and lost," and all that.

Vala found herself sitting in clothes similar to those she'd worn in the Ori galaxy, and shuddered, despite the heat of the warm, sunny field she lay in. She sat up and jumped a little when she caught sight of Merlin, leaning heavily on a staff just a few feet in front of her.

"Ugh, not another test!" she moaned.

"No, not another test," Merlin told her, smiling.

"Oh ... am ... is this ... aren't I dead?"

"Yup."

"Oh." She peered at him. "Are you dead? I thought you were Ascended ...."

He raised his brows in amusement. "I am Ascended."

"Oh .... Am I?"

"No. Though you probably will be, someday," he added, and held a hand out to her. She took it warily. "For now, though, you only have a little while to be dead, then you're going back to the living."

She blinked. "But I thought ... the price --"

"And who said that paying a price was necessarily a bad thing? Dying has a way of changing you -- for good or ill is up to you, but you'll never be quite who you were. And besides, it's not like you got off easy -- dying wasn't exactly fun, now, was it? At any rate, it's not as if I'm demanding payment, exactly. It's just that this is the only place where the other Ascended can't reach us, where they can't stop me from 'interfering', as they call it. I mean, I'm not about to leave the instructions to the weapon just lying about, nor would I tell them to just anyone. Soooo, I put a fail-safe in the weapon. Anyone who couldn’t be trusted to use the weapon fairly would be unable to draw the sword from the stone ... but anyone whose intentions were pure and just would be sent here."

Deciding not to point out that she'd never been accused of being pure and just before, she asked, "But ... the warning? ... The whole 'Only the hand of the dead can pass the torch to the living' thing ...?"

"Heh, you young ones take everything too literally, you know that? Besides, death and life are rather relative from the perspective of the Ascended," he added with a shrug. "You'll be passing the torch of knowledge that you gain here, in death, on to yourself, in life. Or, if you prefer, you can think of Ascension as death, and that I, the dead, am passing the torch to you. Look, the point was to get someone brave and selfless to come here, all right?" She blushed with surprise and a little pride; those were two traits she hadn't generally been attributed with! "Now stop asking questions for a minute and just listen ...."

"Jackson," Mitchell said quietly, voice thick with his own grief as he lay a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Jackson, it's over, man. It's ... it's been eight minutes ...."

Daniel had gone back to compressions, but at Mitchell's touch he slowed, then stopped. He felt Mitchell's hand slide free of his shoulder, heard the man walk over to where Sam, Jack, and Teal'c stood. He didn’t feel anything, didn’t hear anything. He wished more than anything to feel Vala wrapping her arms possessively around him like she so often did despite how he would push her away every time, hear her say any of a thousand annoying things she was so want to say no matter how often he told her to shut the hell up. He'd give anything to hear her call him "My Daniel" again.

His eyes fell on the glowing steel.

Anything.

The universe wasn't worth her death. If his choices were living free without her and living enslaved with her ....

He grabbed up the sword and moved for the dais.

Teal'c grabbed him from behind, enfolding him in a steel grip.

"Let me go, Teal'c! Don’t make me lose her like I lost Sha're! YOU OWE ME!"

Teal'c grip lessened ever so slightly, but only for a moment. "We do not know what will happen if you do this, DanielJackson. It is possible the device will only kill you as well, and not bring ValaMalDoran back."

Daniel sagged in Teal'cs arms. "Don’t we owe her enough to try?" he pleaded.

It wasn't fair. How could he have gotten her back, again and again and again -- even when he wanted nothing more than to be rid of her in the beginning -- only to lose her now? When he finally understood how much she meant to him? How much they were connected, beyond the Kor'Mak bracelets?

"What'd did I miss?" came a groggy but distinctly-feminine voice behind them.

Teal'c promptly dropped Daniel.

"Ooomph!" Vala cried as Daniel threw his arms tightly around her. "Hey, the recently-deceased needs some air, here!"

He pulled back, lips parted in an open-mouthed smile as he drank in the living, breathing (or at least attempting to breathe) sight of her. She stared back, a bit surprised -- and maybe a bit pleased -- that he seemed to have been be so moved over the loss of her.

She was even more surprised when, slipping his hand into her hair, he captured her lips, at first desperately, then, as the kiss drew on, more tenderly. She still couldn’t breathe, but she no longer cared.

Finally, he drew back, then rest his forehead against hers.

"Don't ever scare me like that again," he whispered forcefully.

"Is that an order?" she asked, grinning.

"You betcha," Jack and Mitchell said in tandem.