Disclaimer: I don't own the concepts, I don't own the characters, I make no money, I make no sense and I get no sleep, though on a positive note I absolutely love feedback (in other words, please review).

A Stranger's Hand
(Sam's POV)

The world seems distant, distorted, everything does. I know my friends are here --Daniel, Janet and even Cassie-- and I know they are worried but I can't bring myself to even acknowledge their presence, not now. Instead I stare at the hand resting on my pillow. I can see that it is only a few inches away and I flex its fingers slowly. It's such a simple thing, something I had always taken for granted only now the fact that those fingers respond to my command suddenly comes as a surprise. Has it really been only a few days? Somehow I can't quite believe it. Time is relative and even if its only been a few days since I tried to save a dying man's life, it's also been an eternity... an eternity that has left me feeling more than a little lost in a body I can no longer recognize as my own.

Who am I now? Am I still me? Will I ever be me again? Somehow I don't think so. I wish for the fingers of that hand to flex again and once again they do. They are my fingers but at the same time they are not and I wonder if they'll ever be again.

Jolinar is gone now. She is dead and I am still alive --alive and back in control of the body we once shared-- but at the same time I can tell that something is different. It's as if even after her death her ghost were still haunting me... as I fear it will do until the day I die because the body I inhabit once belonged to her, it once answered to her command. I can still feel her inside of me, like an echo, like a terrifying second presence with its own will and memories, a will that once overpowered mine. I can't forget that, not even now, not even after she sacrificed her life to save me. While she was in me she became a part of me and I know that even though she is dead she will never be truly gone, just like I know that the body we once shared will never be completely mine again.

I may be able to flex the fingers of the hand that is resting on my pillow but I'm still having a hard time trying to come to terms with the fact that that hand is actually my hand, that those are actually my fingers.