What Price? by Stacy L.

What Price?

By: Stacy L.

CATEGORY: POV, Drama, Episode Related

TABLE FIC PROMPT: 080. Restraints (from 50_darkfics) and 098. Vulnerable (from 100moods).

SEASON/SPOILERS: Season 10. “The Quest: Part 2”

WARNINGS: Dark

COMPLETED: January 12, 2007

AUTHOR’S NOTES: This story contains many spoilers from “The Quest: Part 2”. If you don’t want to be spoiled then don’t read this story! If you don’t mind being spoiled then please read and enjoy!

This story serves as a table fic response to the LiveJournal challenge communities 50_darkfics and 100moods.

Daniel’s POV

No restraints bind me, yet I’m as much a prisoner as if there were. She believes I will help her to access the knowledge I now possess. I try to convince her it’s gone, all the knowledge and all of Merlin’s memories are gone, disappeared when I drained my body by accessing the abilities such knowledge provided me with. I used my power to give my friends a fighting chance and in so doing I drained my body of strength, of energy and became so weak that I lost consciousness. She took advantage of my vulnerable state and brought me aboard one of her ships. I knew it would happen. I knew it was a choice: sacrifice myself to give them a chance or allow her to destroy them. I chose the former and now here I sit on the floor in darkness, a prisoner of the Ori, one of great value, one they won’t want to let go of, for within me lies the knowledge, the power to destroy them all.

I believe I now fully understand what it is that Merlin had told me before giving his life to place his knowledge into an Ancient conduit for me to retrieve. I have a new battle I must wage and this battle is for my very soul, for I fear that Adria will do whatever it takes to force my hand. She knows the knowledge I hold is invaluable…to her, to them, to the whole Ori race and she wants that knowledge so she can destroy it. I fear my only option at the moment is to play ignorant, to put on a convincing act that all knowledge of the Ancients fled me on that planet though I fear that front will be very difficult and challenging to maintain. I have already nearly forgotten the names of my friends. I’ve nearly forgotten who I am. Our memories Merlin’s and mine are a jumbled mess vying for control within my mind. I fear that I will inadvertently tip my hand and she will know of how I misled her.

If Adria strikes out and uses her powers to subdue me will I be able to stop the powers of defense now contained deep within me or will they become automatic and unconscious like I had called that water bottle to my hands on the planet? Did I do that consciously or had just thinking of it, of being thirsty, of needing a drink, of craving it alone trigger that ability? Can I control the powers I now possess? Merlin believed it could be done and several times I have proven it, but still it drains me these abilities I now possess. They drain me and leave me vulnerable, leave me defenseless. If I use them I will have no escape and if I don’t I’ll lose myself. It’s a sinister line I walk and the choice is ultimately up to me of which way I will fall.

What will happen to me should I hold onto the memories, the knowledge now occupying my mind? Will I lose myself? Will I forget my life? Will I forget who I am? And if I continue to deny that I still hold the knowledge what will she do to gain it for herself? She has already said she doesn’t believe me. She is certain that knowledge still resides within me so what will she do to claim it for herself? She won’t kill me that I already know. The knowledge is my bargaining chip. It’s what will keep me alive, but what lengths will she go to gain the knowledge I will deny her until death?

Now rest, she tells me, for we have a lot of work to do…

She believes I still maintain all the knowledge Merlin has given me, and she’s determined to take it from me. Now, now I must fight to prevent that from happening. The Ori continue to grow in numbers inducting followers by the thousands, determined to wipe the universe of all unbelievers and here I sit the only one presently capable of building a weapon that could destroy them once and for all, but what price will I have to pay? What sacrifice will I have to make to eliminate this formidable foe? Will that sacrifice be my life, my body, my mind, my world...?

Or my very soul?

** The End **

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