that I would be loved
even when I numb myself
that I would be good
even when I am overwhelmed
that I would be loved
even when I was fuming
that I would be good
even if I was clingy
that I would be good
even if I lost sanity
that I would be good
whether with or without you
That I Would Be Good
Alanis Morissette

Three more days in which ‘Daniel Jackson’ returned to his new home everyday at lunch time and partook of all the delicacies that Calla had to offer him.

Three more days in which the real Daniel Jackson spent his noon time in the infirmary with sweats, palpitations and pain in his abdomen. Janet could not find anything significantly wrong with him at all. Whatever it was seemed to come and go within the space of an hour or so. The rest of the day, except for a tingle in his head and a dull ache in his lower regions, he was fine. Janet was convinced that it was something he was eating; Daniel might have been inclined to agree if it had not been for the outrageous hard-ons that accompanied these episodes. Janet tried to tell him that was due to adrenaline and endorphins which running like wild horses through his system when this happened to him, in other words, it was nothing to worry about.

Three more days, inside of which, Calla pulled further away from him with each day that passed by.

At a quarter to mid-night on the fourth day the phone in Daniel’s house rang, waking him from a sound sleep and he fumbled to answer it before it woke Calla. “Hello,” he said in a gruff voice.

“Daniel, it’s General Hammond. Sorry to call so late.”

Daniel rubbed his eyes, “That’s all right, what’s going on?”

“We’ve received a message from the Nok home world, they need your help. I’m sending you and the rest of SG1 through the Gate in the morning. I just wanted to give you as much notice as possible, since you’ve got someone depending on you now.”

“Thanks. What’s wrong?”

“They didn’t say, just that they wanted you to come to them. Will Calla be all right? Dr. Fraser told me you should be able to leave her for a week or so but we don’t expect this to take more than two days at present.”

Daniel looked around the bedroom and felt the bed with his free hand. Calla was nowhere to be found. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.” However, he was not sure about that at all. This was not going to be his first trip through the Gate since she had come to live with him but it did look like it might be the longest to date. At Calla's insistence, Daniel had kept up his commitment to SG1 the entire time she was with him, (it was just lucky for her that no one was currently trying to blow up the entire known universe and that an Ally Planet wasn't about to go super nova or something any time in the near future). In other words, those trips had only last a few hours and none of them over night. As he held the phone to his hear, Daniel reminded himself that she had been fine while he was away. “I’ll let her know what’s going on. Thanks General.” Daniel hung up the phone.

The sound of his own voice coming through the speaker woke David; he rolled over and listened to Daniel’s late night telephone conversation. He didn’t know what a Nok was, or where it’s ‘home world’ was or what the ‘Gate’ it was all probably just some government mumbo-jumbo anyway. There was one thing he knew for sure; Danny was going to be gone for three days. He would be damned if that pretty little wife of his was going to be waiting at home when Danny returned. Opportunity knocked and David was all set to answer it. With a happy smile he drifted back to sleep.

Daniel wandered around in the darkness looking for Calla, she was not downstairs and she was not upstairs. On his second trip through the dimly lit house, as he walked through the kitchen and passed the screened-in porch, he caught sight of her in the backyard. Quietly he let himself out and stood watching her. She wasn't doing anything in particular; she was just sitting, alone, in the dark, under the stars, a single candle and stick of incense burning in front of her. Perhaps she was meditating, he thought, and then wondered if he should just return to the house and leave her be for now. A light snow was beginning to fall, under the light of the full moon he watched it catch in her hair, fine white powder against a backdrop of fire. He ventured a step closer to where she sat. Creeping closer he realized she was whispering something to the moon light;

“Father, lover, husband, brother. Father, lover, husband, brother.” Over and over just at a level to be heard under her breath, the night air froze her words and carried them upward toward the God she was praying to. Daniel did not have to guess who that was. There was something wrong with the words and he didn’t know why but he knew they were out of sequence.

The instant he walked out the door she knew he was there. She had felt him wake and then wander around the interior of the house looking for her but when he emerged from the door she could see him in her mind's eye, standing behind her, listening to her.

Calla had sat out here under the light of the full moon for the last hour or so, seeking guidance. Hoping her Father would hear her, she would never give up hope of attaining his forgiveness an din turn his love. Instead, her own voice rose inside her head to answer her questions and to admonish her for asking them in the first place.

Castle keep or two-story house.

Naganti Kanan or Master Daniel.

What difference did it make?

None. A Prison was a Prison and a Master was a Master, no matter how they all looked on the surface.

"Master Daniel?" She asked without turning around to look at him.

"What are you doing out here? It's cold, Calla, come inside. I have something to talk to you about." Daniel extended a hand to her. “What have I told you about calling me that?”

It would have been easy for her to love her new Master. Easy to accept what he offered as being Free of Charge, but it was not. It never was. It was only an illusion; she had lived to long and unwell to believe in such Fairy Tales. Even though he was the same boy she had met so long ago and deep within her heart of hearts, she would like to be something more to Master Daniel than his Cha'Dech that was not to be. Calla did not know what game her new Master was playing with her now, why he would be so forceful and harsh with her during the day and then act as though nothing had happened when night fell. How did he expect her to lie well in his arms when the moon rose when he had been so cold during the daytime? It was almost as though Daniel had become two different men since he moved her into his new house. She very much missed the one that he had been. Calla not could love him but already did, she couldn't help herself, however, she could never give into it. No, that would never do.

Callestah had not endured years with Kanan and watched him murder her children for nothing. Whatever it took, she would survive, if nothing else, she would survive. She must keep her place and her distance from him.

Rising on her own two feet without aid of his hand, she followed him back into the house.

Daniel told her about the phone call from General Hammond, Calla did not seem upset at the news that he might be gone for several days. Something in her eyes told him that she actually welcomed the news. He wanted her to stay at the base while he was away but she refused, telling him she would be fine here by herself and there was no need for anyone to fuss over her as if she was an infant or something.

"I don't mean to treat you like a child," Daniel explained in an exasperated tone, "I just worry about you. Is that so horrible?" As he reached out to turn down the blanket, his eye caught sight of the photograph of Sha’re sitting on his nightstand. Damn her! He had purposefully put that photograph away in the desk drawer of the study down stairs and Calla had found it and placed it back where she thought it belonged. The staff stood quietly in the corner beyond just as it had when they lived on the base.

Calla did not answer him as she turned down the blankets on the bed. “I understand that you must work and that it is important to you. If that means you leave me then that is what it means. There is no need for you to worry about me, I am not your child nor am I your wife, Sha'...”

“Stop it!“ Daniel shouted before she could finish. “Stop using her as a shield against me!“ His voice dropped low. “No, I’m not your husband.“ Daniel knew she hated it when he turned her words around her like this. “Does that mean I can’t care about you?”

Calla ignored him and continued with her own train of thought. “I can take care of myself. I am not a chain around your neck, Master Daniel.”

“I never said that you were!“ Why was he so angry with her? He didn’t know and he was not in the mood to stop to think about it. She had really been acting very strangely the last few days and he had about all he was going to take of it. “Stop calling me that. You know I don’t like it.”

“I think you like it fine.” Calla returned as she climbed into the bed.

“What is that supposed to mean? What is wrong with you lately?!”

“There is nothing wrong with me.” For the first time she had come to live with him, Calla turned her back on him and pretended to sleep.

Daniel did not know what was happening with her but he knew he did not want to sleep in the same bed with her right now and he walked off down the hall to sleep in the guest room.

3:17am Calla’s eyes rolled slowly open and beheld the clock next to the bed. Even though he was not with her, she knew the nightmare was coming to Danny again. Slowly she swung her legs over the side of the bed, her right hip howled in pain as she stood up, but Calla gathered the robe around her and went off in search of her Master. Creeping into the guest bedroom she saw him lying there on the full sized bed, she crawled under the blanket with him and as in nights past, Calla did what she could ease the dream for him, to lessen the brightness of the colors and round the jagged edges just a little bit.

"Danny," came the soft voice, "Danny come away from there." Calla watched the image of her Mother as She wrapped Her arm around the young boy's shoulder and drew him away from where his parents stood. Although Calla hated the dream that plagued her Master, she did love to see the bright image of her Mother in his mind. It had been so long since Calla had laid her own eyes upon Aphrodite and drinking her in, even in Daniel’s nightmare, filled Calla with hope and comfort.

As always, seconds after Aphrodite lead him away from where his parents were working there was a horrible crash and young Danny screamed. Calla watched as the cover-stone fell from the hoist and crushed the young Daniel Jackson's parents before his beautiful blue eyes. Mother offered the small boy comfort if only for a few moments, She stood with her arms around him, soothed his hair, rocked him gently and told him everything would be all right. Danny screamed. Danny cried. In his sleep Daniel let out a harsh breath, Calla ran her fingertips across his brow. “It’s all right, it’s over now.“ She whispered to him in the darkness. When his breathing returned to normal and she was sure the dream would bother him no more on this night, quietly she edged herself out of the bed once more to sleep on the floor by his side.

5:17am and it was Daniel’s turn to soothe a nightmare.

The image of the death of his mother and father had faded only second before (or so it seemed like seconds, you know what time is to a dreaming mind) and then he was standing on a portico made of pink marble overlooking the sea. The breeze was steady and strong, the moonless night sky was cold and unforgiving.

Raised voices behind him took his attentions from the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below him. The voices were loud but the words unclear, all he could tell for sure was that one voice belonged to a man and the other a woman. In the dream, he turned slowly from the open sea toward the windows behind him and peered inside. A woman with long honey-blonde hair ran past him with a man hot on her heels. He reached out and grabbed hold of her arm yanked it impossibly hard and turned her around to face him. Daniel caught sight of the harsh gaze in his deep brown eyes, the long black wavy hair on top of his head and the weapons hanging on his thick leather belt. A sword, a dagger and a small mace. His resemblance to Kanan was striking, same build, same powerful voice and eyes. Daniel knew him, even here in the dream, he knew the man, he was Ares. Daniel watched as he shook a large finger in her face and shouted at her again.

In Greek.

Daniel’s sleeping mind struggled to understand the words that his waking mind would normally interpret within seconds. It was something about a boy and how dare she interfere with the plans he had made for his daughter. The tall man backhanded her and the woman with the honey-blonde hair and frightened sapphire eyes fell to the floor.

Daniel had seen her before, in another dream, not so long ago. She was the same woman who had smiled so brightly and kissed him so softly, giving him the gift of telepathy so that he could reach out to Calla. She was his Lover and Consort, the Lady Aphrodite.

There was another voice now, a younger voice, crying, screaming. An adolescent girl with auburn hair came running into the room from some place that Daniel could not see. The tall man with the dark hair turned his cold stare upon her and the young girl froze in her tracks. Aphrodite raised herself from the floor to her feet and held her arms out to the girl but the man pushed her away. “Oxi!” The little girl defied the man who was her father and stood between them, one small arm holding the man back, attempting to stave him away from her mother. Ares picked her up and tossed her half way across the room, out of Daniel’s line of sight and Aphrodite ran after her, both of them were now out of his vision. Lord Ares, God of War, did not run but rather he strode slowly toward where the girl and her mother had gone a cold smile on his face.

Someone screamed.

Daniel tried to let himself in to the abode and could not. He ran down the long portico looking from window to window until the sight of the woman with the golden hair met his eyes. The Lady Aphrodite was lying in a pool of her own blood on the floor with the dagger sticking out of her heart. The little girl sat over her mother’s limp body with her small hand clutched to the daggers hilt.

The little girl tilted her head to look out the window, she stared straight at him, and her mouth dropped open as her hand fell away from the dagger. Her small arms reached out to him as he stood so far away from her on the portico.

Daniel sat bolt upright in the guest room of his new home with his hand clutched to his chest and the racing heart beneath. The first thing that came to his mind was the look on that little girls’ face. It was Calla, of course it was. She looked so damn familiar to him in the dream. So young and so goddamn familiar. Daniel's waking mind reached and reached for the memory of the pervasive sense of deja vu that was running through him and could not attain it. As his mind ascended further and further away from the dream, he became aware that all around him the room was shaking, the clock by the bed fell off the nightstand and crashed to the floor. The picture hanging on the wall across the room bouncing and wobbled before it too crashed to the floor shattering the glass in the frame. Daniel realized he had woken from a horrible nightmare only to find himself in the middle of an Earthquake.

Daniel’s hands reached for the woman who should have been beside him and was not, it was then that he remembered he had left her in their bedroom earlier while he had gone off to sleep here without her. He swung him legs over the side of the bed and stepped upon something soft.

“No.” In the pale light of the new morning, he looked down to see Calla sleeping on the cold floor next to the comfortable bed he had been sleeping in.

“Oxi, parakalo. Siynomi.” She cried softly in her sleep.

With his mind now awake, he had no problem interpreting her words; No, please. I am sorry.

“Calla,“ Daniel’s hand stroked her hair, “wake up. Calla wake up.“ She did not wake; her cheek did not so much as cuddle to the warmth of his hand. With a heavy heart, Daniel realized, he had his answer as to what had happened to Aphrodite and why Ares had taken his young daughter to the likes of Kanan and left her there to rot. He knew Calla’s secret and the bad bad thing she had done. “Jesus,” Daniel muttered as he ran a hand across his face.

End Chapter Twenty-One
Daughter of the Gods: Every New Beginning
By Moon Mistress
Continue to
Chapter Twenty-Two

This story and all stories in the Kingdom of the Gods & Daughter of the Gods series are copyrighted to Lisa Beth Darling these stories may not be transferred outside of this URL in any fashion.