He controls the universe.

For a few all-encompassing moments he holds the fate of all he loves. The enemy stops at his command.

He thinks he can feel his entire body trembling with the strain of fighting against a million minds that want to destroy him. His head feels like it’s going to explode.

“There are so many, aren’t there? Too many for your mind to handle.”

The sibilant voice breaks his concentration, and his fragile hold over her slips. He opens his eyes. She’s smiling a perfect, soulless smile.

He is losing. He is going to die. It doesn’t matter so long as he gives his friends enough time to save themselves.

“It is taking all your concentration just to control them.”

She wrenches control from him and suddenly he’s back in reality, back in her ship, back in his fragile body where he can do nothing but watch as she conquers a galaxy.

He steps toward her even knowing how futile resistance is. She smiles.

The blade feels hot, like molten rock, and it slices through bone like butter and oh God ithurtsithurtsithurts.

He falls, choking on blood, and lands against a wall. The thick copper fluid fills his mouth as his damaged lungs rattle to a stop.

She looks smug. He challenged her and lost. Not even Samantha Carter’s memories prepared her for the unwavering strength and resolve of this man. In controlling her brethren even briefly, Daniel Jackson did something no human should ever be able to do. Her victory is made only sweeter by the fact that he’s the strongest man she’s ever met.

It isn’t fair, he thinks, to have to die staring at the mind of a monster behind the face of a friend.

It hurts so much ...

In the last second before the wave hits, he sees the realization in her face, the knowledge of defeat and death and the loss of everything.

An instant before the ship breaks into a billion shimmering pieces, he decides it isn’t so bad to die saving the universe.