AN: Short chapter, gomen, but it is the second half of the epilogue and... *drum roll* THE LAST CHAPTER OF HYNE'S RETURN  hey look ma! miracles do happen!! I finished a fic! I finished a fic!  *collapses* I swear, one of these things is going to kill me one day o.O  *sighs* well, a week to get settled at Uni, and then it's back to the History Repeating Arc X.X

Rating: R maybe PG-13 (R in standing with ff.net's policy of picking the highest rating)

Disclaimer: SG characters are (c) MGM (thankie to Morrigan for that :p).  FF8 characters are (c) Squaresoft, original characters are mine – ask nicely and I might let you play with them, s'long's you don't break them...

Warnings: SxS Maybe angst (I do like to torture my characters sometimes :p), language (prob nothin u ain't heard b4, but still...)

~Chapter Forty-Three: Dreaming's End : SG1 Epilogue~

Daniel woke with a start.  He was slumped over his desk, head resting on his arms, one hand clutching a pencil, the other wrapped around a now-cold cup of coffee.  Damn, he hadn't thought he was that tired.  Releasing both cup and pencil, he sat up, pulling off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose in an effort to clear his sleep-fogged thoughts.  That had been one hell of a dream.  He stretched, and yelped as aching muscles protested.  What the hell?  He wondered, experimentally stretching again.  The aching was already dispersing... but... why the hell were his muscles aching in the first place?  He hadn't slept in *that* much of an awkward position.  The aches vanished abruptly, making him wonder if it had just been his imagination.  Shaking his head, he replaced his glasses and turned to the papers on his desk.  What had he been working on when he fell asleep? 

A small sheet of what looked like parchment caught his eye.  Pinning down the bottom with a finger, he scanned what was written on it...

"You have a song on your world... 'Dreams can come true'  but the reverse is also true...  Reality can become just a dream...  what else are legends?"

On top of the note, pinning it to the desk, was a small vial.  Squinting at the script Daniel managed to make out the word 'elixir'.  He frowned in concentration, hadn't that been what they called those healing potions in his dream?

***

Sam woke to the urgent beeping of her computer.  A message?  Who would be sending her messages at this time of – she checked the clock by her bed – the morning?  Groaning as she realised that the noise would not stop until she got out of bed and read the message, Sam reluctantly rolled out of her bunk.  The floor was cold, not like the dry warmth of her dream...  That was odd...  Part of her mind seemed quite content to accept that the strange events in her memory ~were~ a dream, a theory supported by the fact she had just gotten out of her bunk.  But the another part seemed convinced that somehow those events had really occurred, a theory the inexplicable twinges of muscle pain were supporting.

Dismissing the aches – which had now faded anyway – as a result of lying awkwardly in her sleep, Sam sat down wearily at the desk and opened the message...

"Stars are not always worlds, and worlds are not always planets...  you use the stargate in one way of many, for it is not a 'stargate' but a gate to all worlds, all worlds... real, dream and imagined... its true power source is not mere electrons but the mind, for the mind is also home to all worlds...  Your race is young yet... but you shall know your age by the gift I give to you, though it lies unused for many millennia to come..."

The last vestiges of sleep vanished from her mind.  She remembered, from her dream, Jack making a deal with some powerful being.  A deal that was supposed to result in the three of them returning with valuable items...  She scanned the desk for new additions, quickly finding one.

Nestling in a smooth black box, on a bed of what looked like crushed velvet, but felt softer than feathers, was an orb.  It seemed to be made of crystal, but inside smoke swirled in an agitated dance, a rainbow of colours flickering within its heart.  She sucked in a breath of surprise...  Hadn't the soldiers in her dream all carried things like these?

***

"Sir?!"  The shout, muffled by both the door and a pillow, accompanied by more thunderous knocking finally convinced Jack O'Neill that maybe, just maybe, he should see who wanted him.  And what for.  Which was what said knocker would get if there wasn't a damn good reason for all this racket.  It was – he checked his watch, the backlight almost blinding in the darkness – only 3am for Christ's sake!

"'m coming, I'm coming!"  He yelled back, finally emerging from the warmth of his bed.  Damn strange dream.  Wasn't the first time he'd dreamt of imaginary missions though, despite the fact that he normally visited planets in his dreams that he'd already visited for real.  Damn strange.  Nothing really worrying though.  He hadn't given anything away about the SGC, and he didn't, apart from a little stiffness that he always experienced on waking, seem to have gained any new injuries.  He felt pretty confident that he was in the real mountain complex as well, so that ruled out another G'ould attempt to fool him into thinking he was home safe, when he wasn't.

Fully alert from the moment he had decided to get up, it took Jack O'Neill under a minute to throw on some fatigues and open the door.  The marine who had been hammering on it threw a hasty salute as Jack squinted in the harsh base lighting.

"What?"  He growled, deciding that anyone with the gall to rouse him at such an ungodly hour – and especially when there was clearly no alert or training exercise ongoing – was not deserving of permission to stand easy.

"Visitor for you Sir."  Eyes adjusted to the lighting, Jack glared at the marine.  A visitor.  At this time of the morning.  His attention shifted as someone behind the marine shifted nervously, and his eyes widened in surprise as he recognised the FedEx uniform.  The courier was only young, early to mid twenties at a guess, and looked as though he too had been roused from sleep to deliver the parcel he was clutching.  Dragged from sleep, Jack amended, glancing at the unruly bangs of chocolate brown hair that graced the blue-eyed boy's head.

"He been through security?"  It was a daft question, but then it was a daft situation.  Who the hell sent parcels by FedEx, to a secure – or supposedly secure – military complex, at 3-in-the-bloody-morning?!

"Yes Sir.  Box as well.  Not a peep."  He grunted an acknowledgement.  For some reason his mind seemed to want to see someone else as the courier, almost giving him double vision.  The same boy, different clothes...  Different attitude...  The dream?

"If you'd just sign here."  Jack realised that without conscious thought he had taken the parcel, and the courier was now holding out a clipboard and pen.  Obediently he signed and dated the record, then watched in bemusement as the marine shepherded the courier away.  Strange.  He shook his head, dispelling thoughts of his dreams, and the courier, to wonder instead at the contents of the parcel.  The marine had said that the security hadn't found anything dangerous, so what the hell was it?  More to the point, who the hell had sent it?  And why, in God's name, did his thoughts keep drifting back to that damn courier?!

With a sigh of frustration for his thoughts, which seemed to be spinning in circles to little avail, Jack wandered back into his room, switching on the light before closing the door.  He had planned to go back to bed, but now he was up and his mind was active there seemed little point.  Instead he sat down at the desk, placing the box down after shaking it soundlessly.

So.  No rattle when shaken.  Could just mean the contents were tightly packed.  With a shrug – after all, what was the point of playing guessing games when he could just open the damn thing – Jack took a knife from the desk drawer and carefully slit the parcel tape holding the box closed.  He waited a few minutes.  Not that he thought security would miss anything of human construction, but it never hurt to be careful.  Besides, the way his thoughts were spinning, always coming back to that damn dream, something wasn't quite adding up.

There was another box inside the cardboard parcel.  It was black, leathery to the touch and looked very expensive.  Hardly the sort of container one would expect a trap in.  But then, disguise was the idea, wasn't it?  He lifted it out, placing it to one side on the desk as he checked the bottom of the parcel.  A scrap of paper was there, and in a sudden fit of paranoia, Jack raked through a draw until he found a pair of tweezers, using those to pull it out rather than his bare hands.

"All a werewolf requires is a silver bullet in the heart...  You have found the werewolves, but you cannot yet forge the bullets..."

The cryptic message did nothing more than add to his confusion.  Tossing the now empty cardboard box in the general direction of the bin, Jack pondered the situation for a moment.  Everything kept coming back to the dream, so, what if it ~wasn't~ a dream?  He remembered...  Of course!  The energy being who had called herself Hyne!  Somehow she must have managed to manipulate them so that they now thought it was a dream!  Without realising it, Jack was already assuming that both Daniel and Sam were in the same, or similar condition to himself.

But that meant that this parcel, well, the elegant black box, was the gift, or one of the gifts, that she had promised in return for their aid!  No longer wary of the 'Trojan horse', Jack O'Neill picked the message up to study it again.  Werewolves and silver bullets...  He groaned.  Even though he was awake, it was still way too early for these sort of cryptic clues.  He sighed.  Well, the fighters of that world, whatever world it was, were able to destroy a G'ould, although it was an admittedly close-run thing.  So, maybe the 'werewolves' were the G'ould?

Deciding that there might be another clue within the black box, O'Neill studied the elegant catch.  It turned out to be simplicity itself to open, and the lid fell back smoothly on oiled hinges to reveal the contents.  Inside, neatly packed, lay twenty silvery bullets.  They shimmered, like a heat haze without the heat, and felt almost electrified when he touched one.  He frowned.  Hadn't he seen something like that in his dream?  Yes, he was sure he had.  He tried to think back, although the memories were already fading.  Maybe Sam or Daniel would remember...

Jack O'Neill grinned mischievously.  Hell, ~he~ was up at 3am, why shouldn't he have some company?  With a smirk that would have made the Cheshire cat envious, O'Neill set out to wake the others, and see just what they could remember between them...

OWARI

(The End)

"And when we woke from life, we thought of all those we had known and wondered, 'did we dream them, or did they dream us?'"

Anon

AN: woohoo!!  Finished!!  Although it was trying to develop another damn plot at the end there *glares at muses*

O'Neill: *glares* you woke me up at 3am for a FedEx delivery?!

Zephyr: *shrugs* I woke the others up too

O'Neill: yes, so I'm not going to get much satisfaction when ~I~ try and wake them up

Zephyr: you might, if they've gone back sleep

Daniel: you expect me to sleep after having a legend dumped on my desk?

Sam: likewise only, uh, what did I get?

Zephyr: GF in a GF orb

Sam: and that now makes ~so~ much more sense *glares*

Zephyr: You're not supposed to understand it, yet.  Maybe in a few millennia...

O'Neill: and how do we know that pulse ammunition will work with our weapons?

Zephyr: huh?  How'd you know what ammunition you got?

O'Neill: *smirks* I tracked down that courier, ~Squall~, and asked

Zephyr: cheat!  *grumbles*

Well, it's been an interesting ride folks :)  hope everyone who stuck with me has enjoyed themselves, and again, if you want an excel spreadsheet of how the chapters fall time-wise, please feel free to either ask in your review (I'll need an e-mail address to contact you) or e-mail me direct and ask – I don't bite, honest ;)