Title: Roundelay V:
Refrain
Author: Jewels
E-mail: jhantor@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: All publicly
recognisable characters and places are the property of MGM, World Gekko Corp
and Double Secret Productions. They're not mine, never have been mine, even
though I wish they were.
Summary: Final part of
Roundelay (really this time). Breaking the mould of the previous 1st person
stories.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Mild for 'The
Tok'ra', I suppose. Nothing you need to worry about. The treaty from D&C
happened, but nothing else in that ep did.
Archive: Wherever I say.
Category: Angst, drama.
SMR (kinda), AU
Notes: I know, I know. I
said the fourth part was the last part. It was meant to be. However, my muse
had other ideas. This /really/ is the last part, and contains the answers to
foreshadowing I hadn't even realised I'd put in earlier. I suppose I was
subconsciously putting them in, knowing, in the end, where this journey would
take me. The resulting story is much more plot driven than its predecessors.
Hope that doesn't lose me readers. :) I'm thinking that the pacing's maybe a
little too rapid in this story. Things are really happening very quickly now,
maybe a little too fast. Maybe this is a byproduct of my desire to get the
damned story finally finished. I'm very eager to finally move onto new stories
and stuff. I've got some interesting stuff lined up that I really can't give my
full attention to because I've been working on this.
Additional notes: I do
bizarre things with pronouns in this story when talking about people who are
blended with symbiotes. I keep switching between singular and plural. Strictly
speaking, it's all grammatically incorrect, but it's all deliberate for my
purposes. Just before you all flame me for not being able to type.
Additional additional
notes: This fic is rated a PG-13. I don't personally like ratings and don't
hold with them - after all, do we rate books? Especially since my stories tend
to be a bit fuzzy on how you'd rate them. This story is nowhere near
dark/violent/sex-ridden enough to qualify for an R rating, it's not exactly
something for the kiddies either. If you're under the age 14-15 range, then
this story might be too much for you. It's got nothing /explicit/ but it does
give you a bit more than you'd expect in your usual PG-13 fic. This is just
before you all flame me for improperly rating my stories.
**
Part One: Of Sleepless
Nights and Moonlit Seas
**
She was a Goddess, and Her
name was Anqet.
She ruled her world and
her people with the power of the Goa'uld, of technology so powerful is was
indistinguishable from magic to these primative people that inhabited the
sphere she had claimed for herself. She was not of the System Lords, but she
knew all that could change soon. If she proceeded carefully.
Her new host, an
interloper with flaxen hair, had seemed like a mere fancy at the time of her
taking. A whimsy to be tried on for size. But then she discovered who this
creature had been, and suddenly her host became a prestigious acquisition. A
host that possessed the combined knowledge of the Tok'ra and the Tau'ri. And
very suddenly, the System Lords were very interested in what Anqet had to
offer.
It was rather fortunate
for Anqet, in that case, that none of the Lords realised that the rather
ephemeral nature of all these memories was making it rather hard for the
Goa'uld to access them. The death of the host's previous symbiote had resulted
in some subtle, but rather irritating, changes to her central nervous system,
and it was difficult to repair.
Still, Anqet had no doubt
that, given time, she would triumph over the pitiful collection of misfiring
neourons that opposed her. And then she fully intended to use every advantage
to gain her the rightful rank of System Lord. It would be a small price for
their collective to offer her such a position when she knowledge she possessed
could bring down two of their greatest enemies in one fell swoop.
It meant, however, that
the Tok'ra spy she had found in her midst needed not be kept alive when the
initial questionning of him proved unsuccessful. Why keep him alive and invite
attack from the Tok'ra (or even their allies, the Tau'ri) when soon enough she
would gain all the information she needed from her own host?
It had been a long time
since Anqet had performed a good execution. There just weren't enough traitors
in her court anymore to justify a long drawn-out death.
As Anqet sat in her
chambers, preparing herself for her appearance ahead, she caressed the ribbon
device that wrapped itself around her wrist with metallic coolness, mentally
visualising the moment when the energy brought forth by her own mind would
snatch the Tok'ra's life away, dispersing his energies to the ends of the
universe, and, startlingly, felt the phantom memory of fingers not her own
trailing across the hand device, settling it properly on her hand and causing a
peculiar fluttering in her chest.
"You're still trying
to force it." A smooth male voice whispered in her ear, and Anqet was
chagrined to find herself whirling, looking for the owner of the voice. She
was, of course, alone in this place, her inner sanctum. The voice was only a
product of her mind, of the disorganised memories that fluttered through them
thanks to the damage already done. Anqet closed her eyes and tried to banish
the memories, succeeding in only worsening the manner as the blankness of her
inner vision was replaced by the liquid blue of the Tok'ra crystalline tunnels.
Anqet felt a brief burst
of excitement. Was this one of the memories of the Tok'ra? Was this something
she could produce and give to the System Lords as proof that the memories were
there, accessible, and she deserved her amelioration in rank and status?
The same hand slipped over
hers again, holding it steady as the hand, clothed in a ribbon device like her
own, aimed at a set of damaged crystals. Target practice of some sort?
"You seem to believe
that when you use this weapon, you must bend it to your will." The voice
carried a gentle undertone of amusement as it instructed, Anqet still unable to
see his face, and her frustration growing at such a thing.
"Isn't that how you
make it work?" Anqet's host's voice.
A soft chuckle. "When
you use your weapon... what did you call it?"
"An MP5."
"When you use an MP5,
must you force it to do your will? Must you make it function with sheer
determination?"
A slight snicker.
"Not really. I usually just press the trigger."
"Exactly. This is no
different. You are so used to your MP5 and how it works that it is simply
second nature. You activate it, and it does what you wish it. With this, you
simply activate it, and it does what you wish. Granted, the interface is a
little more instinctual than what you are accustomed to but you must simply
adjust your mindset." The voice became softer, and Anqet had a feeling
that the speaker moved closer to her ear, feeling ghostly breath on her own
neck. "The knowledge is contained within you. You know this. Selmak once
told you of it. All we are doing here is reawakening your skills." A
pause, and the voice sounded like it was indicating something with a jerk of
the head. "Now try again."
A wave of energy flowed
out of the hand device, impacting on the crystals and shattering them into
thousands of tiny shards.
Anqet's field of vision
changed as, in the memory, her head turned to look at her instructor. And all
Anqet could see were clear blue eyes.
"See." He said.
"I told you you could do it."
"Your Glory!"
The voice of Anqet's First
Prime jerked her out of her reverie in such a manner that she felt somewhat
shaky, and her heart pounded, until she regained enough of herself to dampen
down on her host's andrenaline and reduce her to normalcy. "I thought I
instructed that none were to disturb me." She growled, the ribbon device
in her hand flaring an angry red in an indication of its wearers state of mind.
The First Prime looked
distinctly nervous, but, to his credit, pushed on with what he was saying.
"Your Worship, forgive me. But the Tok'ra is prepared for death, and the
appointed hour has arrived."
Startled, Anqet
surreptitiously checked the timepiece built into the wall of her chambers, and
found that much more time had passed than she had thought had while in that
vision of the past. "Of course." Anqet spoke, rising gracefully from
her kneeling position amongst the cushions strewn across the floor. It would
not behoove a Goddess to be surprised by the lateness of the hour, after all.
"Bring the Tok'ra to the courtyard. Gather the people."
"Yes, my Lady."
Her First Prime said, quickly departing.
Anqet unconsciously ran
her fingers, in the same manner as those phantom hands had done, over the
ribbon device, and smiled in anticipation. By the time she reached the square,
she had managed to banish the thoughts that had emerged from that experience to
the part of her mind in which she had locked what little of the host survived.
Keeping it there for future study, as she would preserve a curious specimen of
animal.
Her First Prime was
already there, decked out in the more ostentatious version of the armour he
normally wore. The ceremonial variety that Anqet insisted her Jaffa wear on
'special' occasions, and caused more than a few lascivious thoughts to surface in
the Goddess's mind. Yes. There was a definitely a reason why he was kept in his
position other than his obvious skills with a staff weapon. As he saw her, he
stepped forward, silencing the people of her world with a bellow.
"Ten'vret!
Kree!" The chattering that had been in rife throughout the square started
to die down to a low murmured hush. "Behold! Your Queen!" And
gesturing theatrically, he turned to Anqet.
Smiling in a condescending
manner, a Goddess stepping down from her position in the sky to grace her
people with her presence, Anqet stepped out from behind elaborate drapes,
throwing her hands open to receive the cheering of her servants, calling,
"Kree'nak taz'khac. Toren k'le." The formal blessing bestowed upon
the crowd, the chanting grew louder.
With a gesture, she
quieted them, and spoke clearly, in the common language of the people so that
none misunderstood her meaning. "There has been in Our presence a
spy." She said, making eye contact with as many of the crowd as possible.
"A traitor." An angry whispering sprung up at that. "From the
Tok'ra." She gestured imperiously.
Her First Prime appeared
with his second in command, dragging between them a man decked in what had once
been the finery of Anqet's court. However, since his capture and torture within
her palace, it had been stained by dirt and bodily fluids of all sorts. He
looked tired more than anything, straining to raise his head enough to stare
dully at Anqet.
"I know you're in
there, Samantha..." the host of the Tok'ra was daring to speak. Proof that
the Tok'ra needed to be eradicated. Treating their hosts like people. Giving
them a voice. No wonder they were so weak. They allowed themselves to be
infected by the creatures they should have dominated. "I knew you. Fight
her, Samantha." His voice was so quiet that Anqet doubted anyone save
herself or the Jaffa holding him had heard him over the angry murmurs of the
crowd.
Anqet saw her First Prime
glance towards her querilously, and her face hardened. How dare he address her
host in the presence of her servants? Or at all, for that matter.
"This," she said, speaking loudly so the crowd could hear her.
"Is what We do to traitors."
The Tok'ra barely had the
strength to look at her as she held the ribbon device above his head, letting
him savour the anticipation of death for several moments before activating it,
and feeling all the nerves in her body tingle as she poured her energies into
banishing the Tok'ra to the next plane of existence. He was so weak he barely
lasted a few moments.
'No sport at all,' Anqet
thought bitterly as the Tok'ra's head rolled back, eyes wide and unseeing, and
the crowd let out a bloodythirsty roar as they witnessed his demise. She
signalled for her Jaffa to dispose of the body, and started to turn, intent on
heading back inside her palace.
But then she froze. For an
instant, she thought she had seen shrounded in the robes of her Ten'vret
people, two clear blue eyes that she recognised from something other than her
own memory. Two clear blue eyes that she had seen in her vision of the Tok'ra.
**
Anqet sat in her throne
room, upon the elegantly cushioned chair that was raised on a dais, and
impatiently dismissed the slave girl who had been caring for her mistress's
pleasure and sitting back in the throne in dissatisfaction. The incident from
that morning was still causing her much distraction. She was almost certain
that it was Tok'ra that had arrived on her world. Tok'ra that knew her host
before it had been brought to serve her. Perhaps they were even there to
attempt a rescue.
And for some reason she
couldn't fathom, she knew she /had/ to see this Tok'ra.
"Jaffa! Kree!"
She barked, and the senior of the Jaffa stationed in the throne room stepped
forward, bowing his head as he awaited her instructions. "You will half
the perimeter guard on this palace." she instructed.
"Half, my lady?"
The Jaffa's curiosity momentarily overwhelmed his deference.
"Are you disobeying
my orders?" she snapped, glowering at him, vision momentarily paling into
a washed out yellow as her eyes flared.
"Of course not, my
lady." The Jaffa hurriedly agreed,
"And all the throne
room guards will be dismissed." She concluded.
"But-"
"They will be
dismissed!" She yelled, causing all in the room to flinch. "Now!
Leave me! And you will not disturb me further."
And in less than a minute,
the room was cleared out.
Anqet was left alone. Left
alone to contemplate, and anticipte.
It wasn't long, however,
before the doors to the chamber swung open and Anqet almost growled with
disgust. Her Jaffa coming back to gain her instruction on some matter no doubt.
'Snivelling children,'
Anqet thought unkindly. 'Unable to suckle at their mothers breast without
orders to do so.'
"Jaffa, kree!"
she snapped, putting every menacing thought she possessed into the command.
"I gave orders that I not be disturbed."
But it was not the Jaffa.
It was someone else she recognised. The blue eyes.
Tok'ra.
"Kal'nek shree
Jaffa!" The one with the blue eyes snapped, the voice that of a symbiote.
"Kal'nak shree Tok'ra."
Anqet felt her eyes flare,
raising her hand device. Why had she allowed them to come this far into her
palace? What had possessed her? Or was it some remnant influence of her host?
How ignominious. To be
controlled by an animal.
"Don't!" The
older one warned, raising his weapon thrateningly. Anqet didn't doubt he would
use it.
Anqet stood up slowly,
jewelry clinking softly as she did so, and stared at the pair of them. Finally,
after some aggressive searching through her host's mind, she managed to put
names to faces. The older one was her host's father, and the other, younger
one, was something... who meant something special to her host.
"We know you."
Anqet said, a slow smile creeping onto her face "You are of the Tok'ra.
Two very important members of the Tok'ra at that." She grinned. "This
must be Our lucky day." she said, deliberately using a Tau'ri phrase she
had plucked from the host mind, knowing the effect it would have on the two of
them. She raised her hand a little higher.
And that was when she felt
two arms clamp around her neck. She struggled briefly before recognising the
hold for what it was, and everything disappeared into darkness.
**
When everything became
light again, she was lying on the floor, the Tok'ra and a female standing over
her. "We have to get her to the Chaapa'ai somehow." One was saying.
"I know, but she's
rather conspicuous in that getup, don't you think?"
"She's awake!"
The female. And Anqet cursed her, starting to move to make her escape.
Then the blue fire of a
zat'nik'atel hit her, coursing through her body and sinking her into a world of
darkness and pain.
**
Samantha Carter awoke,
clutching at her chest and feeling the aftershocks of a zat'nik'atel blast
rippling through her as if she had been shot only yesterday, rather than well
over a year earlier. She shuddered, flopping back onto her bed and waiting
until her nerves stopped twitching enough to allow her to get to her feet and
stumble into her bathroom, splashing her face with cold water in an effort to
revive her and bring her back to the here and now.
Narva, the capital city of
Tollana glistened out of her window, the stars that hung above it reflecting
off her bathroom mirror and into her eyes, soothing her with their unchanging
sameness from night to night. A gentle reminder that whatever problems plagued
her, that in the grand scheme of things, it perhaps didn't really matter.
Maybe not in the grand
scheme of things. But it certainly mattered to /her/.
She hadn't had that dream
in a long time. At first she'd managed to get some rather effective drugs from
the Tollan doctors that stopped her from remembering her dreams upon awakening,
and in time, she'd managed to bury the memories where they couldn't rear up
during her sleep and cause her to wish she were dead upon awakening.
At least that was one of
the less terrifying dreams. Unlike recalling when Anqet had tortured one of her
own people for no other reason than boredom. Unlike when she remembered how the
self-proclaimed goddess had sent an army down to a planet, and then surveyed
the mass of dead and mangled bodies on the battlefield, before retiring with
the lament that all the gore ruined her shoes. Or when she'd ordered the
children of a village slaughtered after hearing a rumour that a Tok'ra symbiote
was residing in one of them. The ones that left her screaming for hours, or
sobbing her heart out. Her neighbours didn't appreciate the noise, and she
learned to activate her soundproofing before retiring for the night.
Why had the nightmares
started coming back after all this time? Well, that wasn't hard to work out.
When SG1 had appeared
through the Tollana Stargate and had been confronted with her presence, unaware
that she was still alive, the combined strain had just been too much for her to
take. With the painful presence of Martouf and Jacob, and the upwelling of
emotions that had accompanied their arrival, being confronted with spectres of
her past life was enough to bring all the memories and emotions she had worked
so hard to bury to the surface, forcing themselves on her consciousness and
demanding she experience them all over again.
Wasn't this what she had
fled from?
Sam didn't know where the
Tok'ra or SG1 were at that moment. Upon seeing her, after a stunned silence,
Jack and Daniel had started bombarding her with questions. What happened? Where
had she been for the last two years? What was wrong and why was she wearing a
Tollan outfit?
It had been too much for
Sam, and she resorted to what had worked for a long time. She fled. But this
time the memories refused to be left behind.
It was the early morning
on Tollana, the darkest hour of the night before the sky started to brighten
with the rising sun. Sam knew she couldn't get back to sleep now, and she
didn't want to, knowing that her past would only haunt her as she lay attempting
to sleep.
So she pulled on her
clothing, not bothering to make any effort at picking out an outfit, just
throwing on an old utility jumpsuit that was lying about in her wardrobe, and a
sturdy pair of boots. Finally donning a cloak against the cold of the night,
she left her apartment and simply started walking, attempting to clear her mind
with the simple act of walking.
For a while, it helped. If
she just focused on putting one foot in front of the other, getting to the end
of the street, around the next corner, across the foot bridge, she could
distract herself from the thoughts that were scratching at the door of her
mind, baying to be let inside.
And then, all of a sudden,
she had reached the river, and the ornate bridge that served as a crossing over
it. It passed over an estuary, so on one side was a series of trees lining the
river, and on the other side, it gradually widened to enter the sea, which
spread out to the horizon, the nearby harbour just visible off to the left
before it disappeared behind the edge of a cliff. And there was a person
already there.
Osarena stared at her with
hollow eyes as Sam approached. "What are you doing here?" she asked,
even her voice sounding dead. Her eyes were swollen, as if with crying.
"Walking." Sam
answered, slowly coming to a stop aside the technician, leaning on the barrier
as she was, gazing out to sea. "Try to forget. You?"
Osarena stared at her, as
if the mere fact that Sam was being civil to her was something to marvel at.
Finally she seemed to mentally dismiss it, and said, "The same as
you."
"Ah." Sam said,
giving her a sidelong glance. "Something to do with Narim."
Osarena flinched, as if
slapped, and turned her head slowly away from the vista before them and stared
at the blonde woman beside her. "Why do you say that?" she asked
softly.
"Just a wild
guess." Sam said in response. "You weren't around this morning.
Coupled with the reaction he gave me in response to your name." She
paused. "I've seen the way you look at him."
Osarena blinked, and Sam
could have sworn she saw tears glisten before the woman turned away.
"Nothing like the way he looks at you."
Sam reared back slightly,
brow furrowing. Is this why Osarena hadn't been there when bidding farewell to
the Tok'ra? "Did you two have a fight of some sort?" she asked.
Osarena whirled this time,
mouth slightly agape in shock. "How can you not know? Didn't Narim /tell/
you?" she gasped.
"Tell me what?"
Sam demanded, eyes narrowing and her voice becoming steely. Osarena didn't
respond, just quickly turned away, hands gripping the barrier so hard her
knuckles turned white. Comprehension came over the other woman. "You told
my dad and Martouf where to find me."
It was just her luck
wasn't it? Another woman she had counted as a friend had betrayed her.
Sam just sighed tiredly,
unable to summon the energy to bestow the fury she wished upon Osarena.
Besides, the woman was clearly distraught, and Sam couldn't bring herself to
add to it, in spite of however much she would have like to. Maybe she felt
guilty enough. Maybe that was the reason for the tears.
"You bitch." was
all she said, in a very tired voice.
"I deserved
that." Osarena said softly.
"And a lot
more." Sam agreed. She raised her head from her hands in which she'd
buried it momentarily, examining Osarena thoughtfully. "So why'd you do
it?"
Osarena laughed
mirthlessly. A short, sharp bark of noise that had nothing to do with
amusement. "Because I'm a petty, jealous idiot." She said, shaking
her head and examining her hands. "Who didn't realise what doing it would
cost her until she was too late."
Sam straightened, waving a
hand. "I never wanted Narim," She lied. "Not that way. You could
have had him."
"No, I
couldn't." Osarena said slowly, turning to look at her. "Because you
had him. Heart and mind. I wasn't quick enough."
The pair of them fell into
silence, staring out on the sea. Sam thought she could make out one of the
fishing trawlers controlled from the Narva main computer heading back into the
protected harbour on schedule, delivering its load of fish for consumption and
saving a few specimens for scientific study. In spite of the fact that the
planet had been thoroughly surveyed, the Tollan people still had many things to
learn about their new home.
"I heard about what
happened at the Stargate." Osarena finally said, not removing her own gaze
from the peacefully rippling water.
"The whole city
probably knows." Sam groused. "Damned gossiping artisans."
"Well, it's not like
they have any real work to do." Osarena pointed out, her tone derisive.
She was silent for a moment, then asked, "So what are you going to
do?"
"If I knew
that," Sam answered after a long pause. "Then I wouldn't be out here
at three am, walking through the pitch dark with a woman who betrayed me as my
only company."
Sam knew her words stung
the technician, but was too emotionally exhausted to care.
"You can't run from
your problems forever." Osarena finally said, turning her gaze
infinitesimally to look at Sam. "Especially not the ones you've got. I
wouldn't want to be in your position for anything. I have my problems, but
they're not as emotionally damaging as yours."
"Nice to know you
care." Sam bite out sharply.
Osarena sniffed slightly
before answering. "I did care about you, Samantha." she said,
sounding a little arch, and a little sad at the time time. "Even when I
was wracked with jealousy because Narim looked at you the way I prayed to all
the gods the Tollan ever believed in that he would look at me. I did care about
you." She straightened, moving to make her departure. "I'm just sorry
our friendship has ended this way." And with that, she strode off, up the
steep hill and towards the row of buildings that contained her own housing.
And Samantha was left with
nothing save her own gnawing thoughts and the sea for company.
**
Part Two: Decisions and
Discussions
**
Sam spent a good deal of
the rest of the night wandering around the city, up and down the hills and the
regimented streets that had been carefully plotted out during the relocation of
its people from their doomed homeworld. She eventually returned to her
apartment as the day started to lighten, somewhat wetter than when she had left
earlier that night. In her musings, she had strayed a little too close to the
sea front at high tide, and had been soaked by the arcing waves as they slapped
violently against the walls. It had certainly proved an effective distraction.
A message light was
flashing discretely on her personal console when Sam arrived back at her
apartment, a light she didn't recall seeing as she left. But then, she hadn't
exactly been in the right state of mind to notice anything at the time.
"Play message."
was all she said as she walked towards her bathroom, pulling off her soggy cape
and wringing it out gently before draping it across the heating element.
"Samantha," The
voice that drifted across the space between rooms was quite familiar to her as
Narim's. But at that moment, all Sam would have welcomed was a nice, normal
word from her boss or her coworkers about when was she going to be back at the
lab or what was she doing in a few weekends time? Anything other than talking
about what was going on at the moment.
"Oh... piss
off." was Sam's less than articulate response to the image. There was no
answer, naturally. The date stamp she had glimpsed at before she had activated
the message told her it had been received last night, and she hadn't noticed.
"I hate to have to
ask you this," Narim's voice hesitated, but Sam didn't pause in towelling
her hair dry. "But we need you to come to the Curia building tomorrow.
It's a matter of some urgency and I'm afraid..." This time, when he
paused, Sam straightened and peered around the door to stare at the visual
portion of the message. Narim looked distinctly uncomfortable, glancing to the
side as if consulting someone else. "I'm afraid that your friends need
your help."
Sam closed her eyes and
tossed her towel aside in a fit of irritation. What help? They didn't know she
was here. What help would they need from a dead woman?
Well then. If they hadn't
expected to need her, then they still wouldn't need her know they had been
corrected as to the state of her existance. She would go to the Curia in the
morning, find out what was so important, and then politely tell them to deal
with it themselves. Sam stood slightly straighter, feeling a little relieved at
having made so definite a decision after days of uncertainty.
She glanced at the time.
By her count, she had at least two hours to make it look as if she hadn't been
awake all night, wandering around and getting soaked to the skin by errant
waves.
**
The Curia building itself
was somewhat akin to a rabbit warren in its complexity. Sam would be
embarrassed to admit it, but she never entered the facility without a
map-holding datapad concealed about her person with which she could use to
navigate her way to her destination. She didn't spend all her time there, so
her lack of knowledge was understandable, but it still made her rather
embarrassed to see grey garbed workers moving around the buildings as if its
layout was second nature.
As such, she always gave
herself a five or ten minute headstart whenever she was summoned to the Curia.
Today was no different, especially when she realised she had never been to the
chamber in question. It was a governmental briefing room, rather smaller than
most Tollan rooms, but adequately provisioned for any sort of small meeting.
When she arrived, she found that it consisted of a roughly circular room with a
small reflecting pool in the centre, a mosaic of a Tollan plant (transplanted
to the Tollan agricultural facilities) resembling a lily inset into its base.
Two tables in rough semi-circles were arranged around the pool, and around the
edge, a few plants were placed here and there for colour against the white
drapery.
Also present in the room
were SG1, who took up a table on their own, her father and Martouf, and Narim.
She shouldn't have
faltered as she did. She knew they were going to be there. But maybe it was the
look they all gave her as she entered the room, stepping quietly and quickly
over towards the only seat left available on the far end of one of the tables,
next to Narim. She folded her hands in her lap and quietly stared at her
fingernails until she realised that the focus of this discussion was, in fact,
to be her.
"Thank you for
coming, Samantha," Narim said, apparently chairing the meeting.
"Hey, Sam." Jack
said softly.
Sam just bobbed her head,
trying to avoid meeting the eyes on anyone in the room.
"To tell you the
truth we... ah..." Daniel was the one to speak, leaning forward earnestly.
"We didn't plan on including you in this for... obvious reasons, but once
we found out you were alive..."
"We came here to
speak to them." Jack said, waving a negligent hand towards Jacob and
Martouf. "The Tok'ra said they were here."
Sam frowned a little, and
glanced towards her father and Martouf.
"Earth and the Tok'ra
have a treaty now, Sam." Jacob said, giving her a gentle smile.
"Ah." Sam said,
speaking for the first time. "Missed that."
"Yeah, well, we kinda
need the Tok'ra's help." Jack said, looking vaguely uncomfortable with the
whole idea. "We went looking for it on Vorash, but they all clammed up and
told us to come here." He stopped, staring intently at Sam. The 'And now I
see why' going unspoken.
Sam shifted uncomfortably
in her seat and tried to mentally wish herself a little smaller.
"Truth is," Jack
drawled, continuing in his explanation. "We wouldn't have a problem if the
Tok'ra had given us the proper information in the first place."
Lantash's eyes snapped
with irritation. "We gave you the knowledge we possessed at the time,
O'Neill. The fault is not ours if the situation changed."
Jack just waved his hands
in a 'whatever' gesture. Narim leant forward, smoothly interspersing himself
into the potential argument. "Perhaps we should explain to Samantha why we
asked her here."
Jack glanced to the woman
sitting to his left, who seemed to be only paying half a mind to the
conversation around her. "Harrison. You were more closely involved in the
Project than the rest of us. Why don't you start off?"
Major B. Harrison, as her
uniform labelled her, started at the address, returning her attention from her
inspection of the walls and back to the conversation at hand. "Yes
sir." She said quickly, and paused a moment to gather her thoughts. She
looked over and looked Sam in the eye. The woman found it somewhat unnerving.
The Major who was so obviously her replacement in SG1 was the only one who
seemed to dare look at her so directly. Perhaps because they'd never known each
other. "There's a planet we've designated P4T-269. It's a rather
unremarkable moon in orbit of a jovian. Oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Lots of
trees."
Sam frowned. That sounded
distinctly familiar; the name plucked at her mind with an insistence of a
half-buried memory. In her thoughtfulness, however, she didn't see the nervous
looks Lantesh and her father kept casting her.
"We've been using it
as a base of operations for a scientific research project." Harrison said,
fingers flicking over the white surface of the table. She did not, Sam noticed,
elaborate on what that project was. "Basically for the purposes of
secrecy. There are things you can hide on an alien world you can't hide in the
middle of Nevada. A few days ago, one of the SG teams that had been guarding
the scientists made it through the Gate with severe casualties. Jaffa came
through the gate, and took most of the science team and the other SG team
captive. The rest were killed. Turns out the planet wasn't as abandoned as the
Tok'ra had told us."
"The Tau'ri,"
Lantash interrupted, obviously feeling compelled to speak in defense of his
movement. "Asked us if the planet was inhabited by the Goa'uld. Since the
only Goa'uld to stake a claim to the world was dead, we believed there to be no
threat in occupying an otherwise empty world." He was suddenly staring at
her with such intensity that Sam wondered what she was missing.
Then it hit her, causing
her to physically sag back in her chair. "Brek'tak." she uttered, the
name coming easily to her mind now that her memory had connected the SGC
designation and the world name in her mind. Lantash closed his eyes, inclining
his head in brief acknowledgement. "Now I see why you wanted to talk to
me."
"Anqet claimed the
planet." Jacob confirmed in a gentle tone. "It seems that since she
just vanished one day, her underlings weren't sure whether or not she was
dead."
"Turns out,"
Daniel said, taking over the narrative. "One of those underlings has
finally decided that she's been absent so long that she must be dead, and has
started to stake his claim over her territory."
"What do you want
from me?" Sam asked weakly, unable to bring herself to open her eyes and
look at her teammates. Her former teammates.
"Information."
Teal'c spoke, succintly as always. "Jacob Carter informed us of your
possession by a Goa'uld. We wished to know if you could provide us with
information the System Lords possessed as to the size and nature of Anqet's
army."
Sam did open her eyes
then, looking towards Narim and the Tok'ra. "You didn't tell them."
She said, a faint wondering in her voice.
Narim shook his head
softly, and Sam sighed.
"Tell them
what?" Jack prompted.
Sam turned to look at him.
"Anqet was the Goa'uld who used me as a host." She said, the words
coming out far easier than she expected. She felt somehow disconnected from
them as they were uttered, and noticed Harrison's eyebrows arching almost as
much as Teal'c's.
"Then you can provide
us with a lot more information." she said.
"Actually,"
Jacob broke in, looking as if he would rather be back on Naetu rather than
proposing this idea. "We think she can do a lot more than just provide
information."
Sam felt Narim's
comforting arm resting on her forearm, although it didn't register in her mind
as the world went hazy, and she shook her head, attempting to deny what her own
father was suggesting.
A return to the Hell from
whence she came.
"No... you can't make
me." she whispered fiercely.
"No, we can't."
Jacob said, looking at her with deep sympathy. "We're asking."
"Wait a minute,"
Jack leant forward. "What are we asking?"
Jacob returned his
attention to SG1 as Narim tried to calm Sam with murmured reassurances in her
ear. "Sam can pose as Anqet. She knows the Goa'uld, she knows the
underlings. And they know her. As far as they know, she's not dead. Her First
Prime's been keeping the illusion that she's still alive. Why, we don't know.
Until now, it's been enough to keep them in line. If she turns up and orders
them to release the prisoners, then they probable will."
Harrison looked at Sam,
who had turned almost as pale as the room decorations. Then she looked at Jack.
"If she can't, we'll have to do this any way we can. We can't allow the
information they have to-" And Jack shushed her with an impatient motion
as Narim glanced in their direction sharply.
"We need to get our
people out." He said simply, looking directly at Sam, who stared back at
him, feeling as if she were drowning under his scrutinising gaze. "We
could use your help. But we're not going to make you do anything."
Sam swallowed, her throat
deprived of moisture. "Can I think about it?" she asked weakly,
glancing from one to the other.
In her heart, though, she
already knew what her answer was going to be.
**
It didn't, however, mean
that she was unsurprised when she entered the Stargate courtyard, bag slung
over her back and heading towards the small group that had gathered in preparation
to leave Tollana. And she would be going with them. In a few short hours, she
had made the decision to go with them. To return to the life she had fled. To
voluntarily expose herself to that nightmare again.
What on Earth did she
think she had left unfinished that necessitated her returning to that?
"Don't go." It
was Narim, standing at her shoulder, having intercepted her as she stepped into
the courtyard. He had caught her before she had joined the rest of the group,
successfully keeping their words out of earshot.
"I have to." She
responded distantly, unsure of whether she was actually saying her words aloud,
so separated from them did she feel. "I don't know why, but I have
to."
"Why not stay
here?" He pleaded, reaching out and grasping her hand, and holding onto
her as if fearing she would step out of his life forever if he let go.
And perhaps she would.
"I thought you were
happy here."
"I was."
"And now?"
"Now?" Sam's
eyes slid to the side, watching the omnipresent artisans as they daubed in
another section of the mural. "I don't know. Nothing makes sense any
more."
"Then stay
here." He said, eyes sliding briefly towards SG1 to make sure none were
approaching to interrupt before returning to look at her. "You shouldn't
go if you're less than completely sure."
"I feel like..."
Sam trailed off, trying to pin down the ephemeral sensation that was rippling
through her. An echo of her symbiotes? Or something else? "Like this is my
last chance." she finally settled on, looking him in the eye, mentally
pleading with him to understand her. Even if she didn't understand herself.
Narim lowered his eyes,
unable to look at her for a moment. "I don't want to lose you." he
finally said.
Impulsively, she threw her
arms around his neck, putting more into the display of sudden affection than
anything else she had in a year. "There's someone else for you here. Even
if I'm not around." And she pulled back, before turning her head to the
person that she'd noticed on her way in.
A fair distance away, but
not so far away that she couldn't see clearly everything that was going on,
Osarena stood partways up a hill, staring at what was going on. At Samantha and
Narim.
He turned back and looked
at Sam, curiosity in his eyes, obviously wondering what she knew.
"She loves you."
Was all she said. It was all she had to say.
Narim stared at her a
moment, then leaned forward a little and kissed her chastely on the cheek.
"Good luck." He said, warmly, before giving her hand a final squeeze
and dropping it. She smiled distantly at him, and turned slightly to walk
towards SG1, her father and Martouf.
When she turned back just
before reaching the group, she saw Narim approaching Osarena and the woman
turning to her. A few moments later, he reached out and brushed his fingers
against her cheek.
Sam turned away.
The group were watching
her carefully as she approached.
"Got everything you
need?" Jack asked cautiously, and Sam merely nodded in response, raising
her bag slightly to indicate it. It wasn't hard to pick what she wanted to
bring with her. She had never had that many posessions to begin with. Jack
paused, looking at her intently, then reached out and placed a hand on her
shoulder. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked, his manner
giving every indication that he'd call the whole thing off there and then if
she said no.
But she couldn't very well
do that now, could she? "I'm sure." she said, offering him a slight
smile and a confidence of voice that she did not feel.
"Okay then." He
said, glancing towards Daniel. "Dial us up."
Daniel jumped, almost
surprised at the mundane order in the midst of the unusual scene, and then
stared at the Tollan DHD for a moment, before figuring out its operation and
tapping in the code for Earth. Jacob put an arm around his daughters shoulders.
"You'll be alright,
Sam." He said, squeezing her gently. "I promise."
"Cross your heart and
hope to die?" Sam said, her vague smile not reaching her eyes.
Jacob just gave her
another, somewhat sadder, squeeze as the wormhole opened, and he and Sam
followed SG1 back to Earth, with Martouf following just behind.
**
Part Three: UPS Never
Worked This Quick...
**
It was either a very
poorly designed projectile, or an extremely squishy box. In fact it was
neither. The fairly hefty hide-wrapped package came sailing through the event
horizon and hit the ramp's surface with a dull thud. The impact jarred the
contents slightly, creating a dully metallic 'chink'. A few moments later, the
wormhole disengaged and the SGC's Gateroom was left filled with a puzzled
silence, as the guards contemplated the package as if wondering whether to
shoot it, or marvel at the fact that it was possible to get a parcel delivered
from the other side of the galaxy in less time than it took to get an
ambulance.
Then Jacob Carter entered
the Gateroom, after having seen the parcel's arrival through the control room.
"Ah, excellant," was all he said as he jogged up the ramp and picked
up the package, extracting a plastic flimsy that had been stuck into the
bindings that held the parcel together. It was covered in Goa'uld characters
that seemed to meet with Jacob's approval as he read them, nodding his head and
returning to the control room.
"This is the material
I told Erinye to send us when we ordered her back to the Homeworld." he
said, in explanation, to General Hammond, who stood watching him warily.
Hammond had seem somewhat disconcerted around his old friend since SG1, with three
extra people, returned from Tollana, one of whom he had thought dead a long
time ago.
"What is it?" he
asked as Jacob pulled at a corner to glance inside the parcel and make sure it
matched up with whatever was on the flimsy. Probably a list of contents or something.
"Equipment." was
all Jacob said, somewhat evasively, in return. "Is there somewhere I can
put this?"
Hammond nodded, gesturing
a guard forward and instructing him to take the parcel and put it with the rest
of SG1's equipment, and then he and Jacob started back to Hammond's office,
where they had been before the summons from the incoming wormhole.
As they reached his
office, Hammond turned slightly towards Jacob as he held the door open for the
Tok'ra and said, "You never answered my question."
Jacob sighed heavily,
running his fingers over his head as he took a seat opposite of George's desk,
before folding his hands in his lap. "Would you believe me if I said it
just slipped our minds?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.
Hammond shut the door firmly
and crossed to his chair, feeling sour at such a response to his query.
"Not in the slightest." He said, taking his seat and giving Jacob a
glower.
Jacob, for his part,
sighed and dropped his gaze to his lap before looking up again. "At first,
we didn't tell you because when we grabbed her, she was still host to Anqet,
and we weren't sure she would survive." He took a deep breath, obvious
pain on his features as he recounted what had happened to his daughter.
"Then, after she was separated..." He seemed to search for words for
several moments. "She was a mess, George." He look hard at his old
friend, conveying to the General all the desperation he had felt at that time.
"She wouldn't communicate with anyone. Wouldn't even react. The Healers
couldn't help her. We didn't know what to do. Then one day, she just
disappeared. And it was a year before we found out where she was. And a few
days later, SG1 showed up."
There was a silence as
Hammond took that in, and then he sighed. "Not an easy situation, huh,
Jacob?"
Jacob smiled mirthlessly
at that. "You could say that."
"To be honest,"
Hammond continued, "I always wondered what was up. Every time you came
here, you always looked twice your age. Even with Selmak taking care of you. I
put it down to Major Carter's death. Obviously more was going on."
"Yeah," Jacob
said softly. "It's one thing to know someone you love is dead. To be able
to mourn them and move on. But when they've just disappeared... and you don't
know if they're dead or not..." He trailed off, and when he spoke again,
his voice bore the telltale distortion of his symbiote.
"It was a painful
time for Jacob, and to be honest, it still is." Selmak said, looking sad.
"It was hard for him even to think about it then. Do not blame him for not
speaking of it to you. You would have demanded far too much that he could not
give."
Hammond nodded slowly.
"I understand that, Selmak."
"I know you do,"
Selmak said, raising his head to look at Hammond. "Through my shared
memories with Jacob. He and I are one, and as such I consider you a friend,
General, even though the time of our acquaintance has been brief. I hope you
would not blame myself, or the Tok'ra, for keeping this from you."
Hammond blinked, not
expecting such a sentiment to come from his friend's symbiote. And,
surprisingly, the idea didn't bother him as much as he would have thought. He
sighed, leaning back, "Blame you, no. I don't blame you. Disappointed in
you, yes. I honestly thought the Tok'ra took us more seriously as allies than
that."
"The Council's
thoughts on the matter are divided." Selmak said, obviously displeased
with such a stance by the Tok'ra leadership. "Some are in favour of our
alliance, and others believe we should return to our isolated state. That
forging relations with other races leave us open to attack. Such opinions run
split throughout the Tok'ra. As such, information is often left
unconveyed."
And then Jacob returned.
"It's not that the Tok'ra don't trust you, it's just that experience has
taught us to be wary." He said, a humourless smile graced his lips.
Hammond left the 'us and
them' part of Jacob's words uncommented on.
"Where is Sam
now?" Jacob finally asked.
Hammond blinked at the
sudden change in conversation track, but answered without mentioning it.
"She should still be in the Infirmary getting checked out. Doctor Frasier
will probably want to run her through the full series of tests." And make
sure, he didn't add, that she is who she says she is.
"It'll be good to
know she's healthy." Jacob said, distantly.
Hammond suddenly felt
moved to reassure his friend. "Jacob. I'm sure she'll be alright. Sam's
always been a strong woman."
"Strong, yes."
Jacob shook his head. "Something happened though. While she was Anqet's
host. Apart from the actual possession. She was just so traumatised. The Tok'ra
have had contact with former hosts of the Goa'uld that aren't as torn up inside
as she is. I don't even think Erinye knew, and she was the only one that Sam
confided in."
"But unless she tells
us," It was Selmak again, switching between himself and Jacob with nary a
blink of the eyes, confirming Hammond's long-held suspicion that the head-dip
was all for show. "Then we may never know."
**
"Well, Doc?"
Janet Frasier looked up
from the myriad results and reports on her desk to look tiredly at Teal'c and
Jack O'Neill, who had just been released from the standard post-mission scans
and checks, and had, by the looks of things, come to see her immediately. She
didn't even need to ask what they were referring to, but she did anyway,
feeling the need to gather her thoughts before she was bombarded by questions
from Samantha Carter's former teammates.
"Well what?"
"Is that Sam?"
Jack asked.
Janet sighed.
"Physically, as far as I can tell yes. She has the same scars from where
we had to remove all that shrapnel from two and a half years ago. The signs of
the same broken bones. Her blood work hasn't come back yet, but I'm guessing
that'll show us more. Mentally though..." Janet closed her eyes briefly.
"You only have to look at her, and she's different."
Janet would never forget
the moment when she had entered the infirmary to see the living breathing
incarnation of her supposedly dead friend, only to be brought up short when she
had looked into those eyes that seemed so dead, and yet filled with so much
pain that if it weren't for the medical results in front of her, she would
hardly have believed belong to the same Samantha Carter that was like a second
mother to Cassandra.
"She is not the same
woman." Teal'c said, putting into succinct words what Janet had been
struggling with since seeing Sam. "Her soul has suffered many battles, and
has not come out unscathed. I have seen it in warriors who have fought long,
and do not wish to battle any more."
"So what's the deal
with this Carter chick? I mean, everyone's talking about her, but I don't get
half of what they're saying." That came from Brenda Harrison, who entered
Janet's office just behind Daniel. Janet saw the faces of SG1 sour slightly.
Brenda hadn't been with SG1 for very long, and had never seemed to fit in with
any of them. Personally, Janet put it down to the fact that they saw it as an attempt
at replacing Sam. They accepted Harrison because it was orders. But it didn't
mean they had to like it. And Harrison seemed fine with that. An engineer
transferred from Area 51, she spent most of her time around the technical crew
of the SGC anyway.
"The deal is that she
was taken over by a Goa'uld." Jack said, slightly annoyed at Harrison's
flippancy.
Harrison wrinkled her
nose. "No offence, but we've seen ex-hosts before. None of them seem quite
so... well... forgive me, but screwed I think is the best word."
Daniel sighed sadly,
looking towards Harrison. "We don't know either. We barely know what
happened to her. What could have been so awful as to turn her like
this..." He trailed off, and Harrison didn't seem to be in possession of a
come back. She just bit her lip thoughtfully and glanced towards the corridor,
down which Sam lay in the infirmary, waiting for the medical verdict on her.
"Who's that guy
that's with her?" She asked.
Janet frowned, wracking
her brain for who had been with Sam when she had examined the woman. "Ah.
Martouf."
"And he's..."
"Martouf is
Tok'ra." Teal'c said, as if that was all she needed to know.
Harrison took the hint,
and fell silent.
"So she's going to be
able to come on this mission?" Jack said, turning back to Janet.
The doctor nodded, picking
up and fingering the edge of Sam's medical file, which had been buried in
records and had taken a while to relocate. It had been sealed after her death,
and never expected to reopen. "According to my preliminary findings,
there's no physical reason for her not to travel off-world." She gave a
short bark of lifeless laughter. "But I get the impression that these are
only a formality. She's not 'officially' part of the SGC anymore. Martouf said
something about Tollan citizenry. We couldn't keep her here if we wanted."
"Why's she here
anyway?" Jack asked softly, almost to himself. "She didn't seem very
happy to come back."
"Who knows what she's
been through?" Daniel said, pragmatically. "Who knows what thoughts
are going through her head?"
"She does."
Teal'c said, simply.
**
Sam absently rubbed at the
crook of her elbow, smoothing out the small beige circular plaster that the
nurse had just pressed onto her arm after taking enough blood to stock a small
blood bank. Martouf stood nearby, Lantash in control, leaning against another
bed.
"A remarkably
barbaric method of extracting fluids," Lantash spoke, moving slowly
towards Sam, and giving the medical tools in the tray next to Sam's bed before
giving it an expression of distaste and looking down at Sam's arm as he reached
her side. "It can only be performed a certain number of times before the
vein collapses. And I would imagine it is not without pain." He had reached
out to gently trace the edge of the self-adhesive dressing, but Sam pulled her
arm away, shivering.
"Don't." She
said quickly, before seeing the slight look of hurt on his face, rapidly
covered. "You're... prickly." she said, somewhat in explanation.
Martouf spoke now, giving
Sam a sad sympathetic smile. "I am sorry our presence makes you
uncomfortable. Not being exposed to symbiotes for a while would doubtless
heighten your sensitivity." He paused, probably consulting with Lantash.
"We can leave, if you like."
Sam hesitated, fighting
her instinctive urge to push him away. The alternative was remaining here, in
this sterile room of concrete and softly beeping machines that, after a year of
Tollan technology, seemed unbearably primative to her mind. Alone and in silence.
"No." She said finally, shaking her head and forcing herself to look
him in the eye. "It's alright. Stay."
Martouf nodded gently,
moving to the seat that was placed beside the bed and sitting on it gingerly,
as if worried sitting on it the wrong way would cause him to fall off. Sam
recalled, with amusement, the first time Martouf had ever tried to sit on the
workstation seat that were in her lab. They had a tendency to bounce when sat
upon, and unless one knew that and was prepared, it tended to cause the
would-be occupant of the chair to wind up falling to the floor. The image of a
Tok'ra sprawled on the floor of her lab, looking rather bemused at her
laughter, had stayed with her for weeks.
Sam felt a smile tugging
at her lips, and quickly erased it. But not quickly enough.
"What's so
funny?" Martouf asked her, tilting his head, hands folded in his lap. He
seemed to be consciously restraining himself from reaching out and touching
her. He had always been quite a tactile person, tending to touch people when
speaking to them, although his diplomatic training had managed to train the
instinct out of him. Obviously he was employing that now.
"Just...
memories." Sam said, then glanced at him. "Good ones. Don't have many
of them."
"Those memories should
be cherished." Martouf told her. "Savoured for when circumstances are
not so favourable." He looked down at her. "What else do you
remember?"
"I remember..."
Sam closed her eyes briefly, thinking back. "I can remember a world with
three moons, and the sea was an odd purple shade. You were there."
Martouf smiled distantly.
"Reelas. The Tok'ra used it as a staging world briefly. Jolinar and I were
on the initial scouting party."
Sam looked disappointed.
Perhaps, he thought, she had hoped that the memory was one of her own, and not
that of her erstwhile symbiote.
"What else?" he
prompted, hoping to gain a pleasant memory that came entirely from her. Hoping
to gain that faint smile he had seen from her moments earlier. Briefly, it had
brought light to her eyes and made her look vaguely like the woman he once
knew.
Sam looked like she wasn't
going to say anything for a moment, then seemed to change her mind, her
expression shifting as if something had caught her vision, just in the corner
of her eye. "I can remember a forrested world with small purple birds that
looked vaguely like eggplants. It was raining and... we were under shelter. You
put your arms around me to keep me warm because I'd gotten so cold and
wet." She looked up at him. "Another experience with Jolinar?"
Martouf smiled, bringing
his hand towards her, but arresting the motion before they came into contact,
resting his arm against the edge of the bed. "No. That was you and I. When
we went on a joint Tau'ri-Tok'ra mission to gather some intelligence. We were
separated from your team and forced to wait out a storm before proceeding back
to the Chaapa'ai."
Sam didn't seem to know
whether to be happy that she had found a memory of her own, or dismayed at the
fact that she hadn't realised it was her own. "How could I not remember
that?" she asked, somewhat wonderingly.
"Your mind was
undoubtedly damaged when we removed Anqet." Martouf said gently. The
Healers had been afraid of that. They hadn't known whether there was any memory
disruption, since Sam had hardly been cooperative. And she had left without
submitting to a more thorough scan. "It may heal." He said, although
privately, Lantash voiced the opinion that without the aid of a symbiote, she
would likely never be able to segregate the memories of herself and Jolinar,
which were already mixed.
Sam sighed, lowering her
gaze to the fingers she had laced over her chest when she had lain down on the
bed. "You know, with anyone else, that very accomplished combination of a
bedside manner and diplomatic training would fool them." She raised a
finger without unlacing her hands. "I know you better."
"Yes," He mused.
"You do. Probably better than anyone."
Sam looked up at him
thoughtfully, and opened her mouth to respond-
"Sam! I just got your
results."
Sam broke off whatever she
had been about to say and sat up from her lying position. Martouf restrained
the urge to support her as she seemed slightly dizzy from such a quick motion,
but she quickly recovered and focussed on Janet Frasier, who had just entered
the infirmary. SG1 were in tow, hanging back until the Doctor had finished with
her.
Janet Frasier approached,
brandishing Sam's medical file and gesturing with it expanisively. "I've
finished with all your bloodwork, physical exams, etc, and as near as I can
tell, you're in perfect health."
"Physical
health." Sam quantified, eliciting a frown from Janet.
"Yes." She said,
fiddling with the file. There was an awkward silence. "Um... I have other
patients to check on." She says, excusing herself quickly and departing.
SG1 approached, Jack in
the lead, who smiled gently at Sam. "Good to have you back, Major."
Daniel came closer, as if
to support Jack's words. "Yeah, welcome home, Sam."
As Martouf looked at
Samantha, he realised that it was hardly possible that she could look less like
she had come home.
Did she even have a home
any more?
'Like Jacob said, we're
her family, we understand like none of these will,' Lantash said, murmuring
into Martouf's ear from inside his own mind.
'Do we?' Martouf asked his
symbiote silently, as Sam smiled and mouthed platitudes to her former
teammates. 'Really?'
To that, Lantash had no
answer.
**
Part Four: Reflection
**
Samantha Carter walked
through the corridors of her former workplace like a ghost. People who didn't
recognise her, or hadn't been around when she had served with the SGC, looked
at each other in puzzlement, wondering why this woman in Tollan clothing was walking
around the place unescorted and looking like she was half dead. The ones who
remembered her just watched her in silence, before turning and muttering to
themselves.
And Sam ignored them all.
How long had she been
walking? She didn't know. Truth to tell, she'd lost track. Underneath the
mountain, there was nothing to indicate the changing of the time of day; the
light levels didn't shift in the slightest, and Sam no longer had a watch.
"Are you lost?"
Sam whirled at the
unexpected voice. She'd wandered into SG1's equipment room somehow, her feet
obviously working on autopilot while her brain was shut down. Jack O'Neill was
standing behind her, an armful of clothing in his hands that he was dropping
onto a bench. Obviously some harried airman had shoved the pile into his hands.
That, or Jack had taken up being SG1's official launderer.
"What? No..."
She said quickly, shaking her head. "Just..." She struggled for an
excuse for her presence that wouldn't sound too trite. "Looking around the
place. Looks... the same as ever."
"Well, I don't know
about that." Jack said, shoving the equipment into a storage locker.
"New coat of paint maybe. You should have seen the place last time we got
these hostile aliens - are there any other kind? - through the Gate. Carbon
scoring /everywhere/. So we went from gunmetal grey," He paused
dramatically. "To battleship grey."
Sam felt her lips
twitching reflexively, and stared at the uniforms as the locker door closed on
them. Three extra sets. Ah. So one of those would be hers then. Probably the
smaller one. Her fingers absently brushed over the soft synthetic fibres of the
Tollan garment she was clad in. She'd have to get rid of this. It was far too
impractical.
Jack eyed her, as if
taking note of her fidgeting with her robes, but made no comment on it, instead
folding his arms and leaning back against the locker to look at her.
"Enjoying being back?" He asked, cautiously.
Sam bit her lip and sat
down on the bench delicately, as if wary against breaking it by sitting down
too rapidly. "I don't know what I expected." She said, finally.
"But this wasn't it. The looks people give me in the corridors." She
shuddered, then looked up at her former commanding officer. "The ones that
don't know me look at me like I'm an alien in their midst. The ones that
do..." She shook her head and turned away. "They just look at me with
pity."
There was a slight
rustling as Jack sat down beside her. "The rat bastards." he said,
eliciting a mild smirk from Sam.
There was a pause, and then:
"What happened to
you, Sam?" he asked, resting a hand on her shoulder gently. Unlike her
father, or Martouf's touch, it elicited none of the skin-crawling sensation of
a naqada reaction. The sign of a symbiote.
"Shit happened."
She answered, her voice harsh, before standing up and pacing as much as the
small space of the room would allow.
"Apart from the usual
shit." Jack said, leaning back slightly on the bench. "You've
changed, Sam."
"A Goa'uld'll do that
to you." Sam said, hand reaching up to scratch the back of her neck, where
there had used to be a scar from where Anqet had entered her body before the
Tok'ra had removed it upon her rescue.
"No. There's
something else."
Sam stared at him for a
very long moment. "No." She said finally, her body very still.
"There isn't."
Jack took the hint. There
were things in his past /he/ definitely wouldn't want anyone dragging him
through again, and he sure as hell wasn't going to put her through it.
"So." He said, clapping his hands together. "Looking forward to
this mission?"
Sam's lips curved into a
mirthless smile. "As much as I'd look forward to a root canal. Which,
incidentally, I've never had. Tollan dentistry is quite advanced."
Jack waved a dismissive
hand. "Way smarter than us. Got it. Bet they don't even have
lawyers."
Sam cleared her throat.
"Well, actually..."
"Forget I
asked." Jack said quickly, but Sam saw the amusement in his face before he
turned slightly away from her.
There was a silence that
after a few seconds, started to stretch into awkwardness. Sam contemplated
making her excuses and leaving, but stoically refused to do that, undoubtedly
it would make things even more uncomfortable. Although how that could be was
beyond her. To these people, she'd just come back from the dead. "Who's
this Harrison woman?" she finally asked, after casting about for several
moments to find a suitable topic of conversation. This question that had been
niggling at her for a while finally surfaced.
Jack turned back to her,
looking faintly surprised at the change in conversation. "Brenda
Harrison?" He clarified, and before Sam could offer a nod of agreement, he
shrugged and continued, "She's an engineer. Transferred in from Area 51 to
serve as someone who could look at all the Gould technology we kept picking up.
Not anywhere /near/ your league by the way."
Sam felt a faint smile
crease her mouth.
"Later got assigned
by Hammond to SG1 when your replacement, Captain Saunders, lost a leg after a
Goa'uld ambush. He was a good guy, but after that... well, he obviously
couldn't continue."
Sam pressed her lips
together. "What's she like?"
Jack hmmed softly.
"She's... competant. Bit full of herself. That's what happens when you're
posted at Area 51 I suppose. They all think they're so much /smarter/ than
us." A slight pause, and then, "Hangs around the tech guys. I think
she's sleeping with Siler."
Sam blinked, and then
uttered a brief bark of laughter. "That's unusually gossipy of you,
Colonel."
Jack shrugged, looking a
little embarrassed. "Yeah, well, Palmer cornered me in the mess hall one
day."
Francine Palmer. Base
gossip. Sam remembered her well. She was a woman to whom you told nothing if
you wanted a secret kept.
"That explains
it." she said dryly.
She took a deep breath,
and sat down on the bench, cradling her face in her lap; her will to continue
on the facade of cheeriness having evaporated. "What am I doing here,
Jack?" she asked softly, not looking up.
Again that touch with the
absence of skin-crawling. "You're gonna help us get our people back."
He said simply, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze.
She tried to smile, but
simply couldn't summon up the energy.
**
Major Harrison, it seemed,
was the one providing technical information for the briefing, standing in front
of the same display that Sam had so many time, which was currently displaying a
map of the area around the Stargate to a radius of several days travel that had
been gathered through numerous UAV excursions while the Earth Science teams had
been stationed on the world. She, Martouf and Jacob were ranged on one side of
the table, while the remaining members of SG1 sat on the other side.
Us and them, mused Sam.
The divide between herself and her former comrades was clearly apparent.
"This," Harrison
gestured to a point three days foot travel away from the Stargate. It was near
the base of a small mountain, and appeared to be situated in the middle of a
sandy expanse, the treeline halting a few hundred meters away from the slope. A
computer graphic represented the Goa'uld facility. "Is where SG2 informs
us that the Goa'uld stronghold is located. In an easily defensible area. They
didn't have any concrete numbers of Jaffa for us, but they saw several
mid-sized barracks which could mean we're dealing with numbers up to or above
three hundred and fifty."
"Gotta love those
overwhelming odds." Jack said, looking up at Harrison from the printout
version of the information she was delivering.
"Our
objectives," Harrison continued, ignoring Jack's interruption except for a
raised eyebrow, "Are to try and extract the scientists and SG team, but
also, to retrieve this." She changed the view to a standard SGC packing
container. A stock photograph taken from the Science Team's archive. A number
was stencilled on the outside. The lid was open to reveal a number of
components inside, packed in cut foam. "This was the science team's main
project. There aren't any pictures of it assembled, since they'd only managed
to complete it just before the Goa'uld arrived."
"What is it?"
Martouf spoke up. He and Jacob were also at the mission. For obvious reasons,
since they had been instructed by the council that they come along and provide
requested Tok'ra support.
Harrison looked startled
by the question as she turned to address Martouf. "A prototype shield
generator." She answered.
Sam shifted in her seat,
glancing over at the Tok'ra. It was Jacob who next spoke. "But I thought
Earth was a long way from developing that sort of technology."
Harrison nodded her head.
"We were. But with a discovery of an unstable naqada variant, we were able
to produce a greater output of power than tests with even weapons grade naqada
had produced."
Sam blinked. Harrison had
managed to capture the Goa'uld inflection for the mineral perfectly.
"That's quite a technological leap." She said, glancing around the
table at the others.
"We had some of our
best scientists working there." Hammond said, turning slightly to address
her.
Sam nodded, feeling oddly
distant from the Earth personnel there. She was no longer 'in the loop', so to
speak.
"Sufficed to
say," Harrison continued, a wry smile twisting her mouth. "That if
the Goa'uld get a hold of our prototype, it would be a very bad thing.
According to SG2, they managed to hide it before they were captured. Hopefully
it'll still be there."
"And if it's
not?" Jacob asked, staring intently at Harrison.
"Then we have to go
in and retrieve it." She said firmly.
Jacob turned slightly and
said something in Goa'uld to Martouf, who just responded with a short phrase.
Sam's mind automatically translated it for her. Something about seeing if they
could get a look at this new technology. She didn't know why they bothered.
Daniel could translate easily. It was probably a status thing; to emphasise the
fact that they weren't under SGC command. Or something.
She really didn't care.
Sam absently wondered when
the idea of a new technology, left as yet undiscovered by her, had started to
fail to arouse her interest.
"Originally,"
Hammond continued, taking over the less technical side of the briefing.
"We were going to stage an assault with several armed units to try and
retake the device and rescue, but with..." He faltered a moment, as if
wondering how to address her. "With Major Carter's recovery," was the
term he finally settled on. "We're presented with another option:
infiltration."
Jacob leaned forward,
speaking now. "With the General, we've come up with a plan. Sam will act
in the role of Anqet," Martouf threw a sympathetic glance towards her,
which she ignored. "With the rest of us acting as her entourage. We can
get up to the Goa'uld's base, get inside, and hopefully get everything we need
and get out again."
"We have something
that might help." Hammond said, nodding to Harrison, who scrambled to
extract something from her pocket.
"We've been using
these to train new SGC personnel." She said, producing what looked like a
small black adhesive disc, attached to a wire, in turn attached to a small
battery pack. "I don't exactly know how it works," she said, as she
attached the small disc to just below the apple of her throat, and flicked the
on switch. "But it's very effective." she finished, her voice
metallically burred.
Just as if she possessed a
symbiote.
Martouf and Jacob looked a
little surprised at the voice, and Sam tilted her head. "You can't mimic
the glowing eyes or the actual presence of a symbiote though." she pointed
out.
"Hopefully you won't
have to wait around long enough for them to realise you don't /actually/
possess a symbiote." Harrison said, arching her eyebrow. She gave off such
an unerring likeness of a smug Goa'uld that Sam felt unease creeping up her
spine.
"Can you turn that
thing off now?" Jack said, apparently having the same thought.
Harrison smiled slightly
and turned off the battery, before reaching up and tugging the disc from her
throat, absently smoothing her skin once it was gone. "Be warned,"
she said, her voice unaltered and human again. "It tickles."
Sam shivered as she thought
about what she was going to do. She was going to go to this world where they
thought she, or rather, the thing that had possessed her, was a Goddess. Where
she would have to act cruelly and dispassionately. Where she would speak in a
voice devoid of humanity.
Where she would have to be
something she hated.
Sam felt her fingers
digging into the upholstered arms of the chair in which she sat, her nails
biting into the leather. She just wanted to flee. To go somewhere where no one
could find her again, and just stay there.
But the memories would
find her. She couldn't escape from them, and so she would go.
She felt Martouf's fingers
reach out and brush over the back of her hand. He had obviously seen her tense
and hoped to soothe her. She stiffened slightly, but didn't move away. After a
moment, he withdrew his hand.
"Major?"
Her rank. Someone was
addressing her. She looked up into General Hammond's face.
"I asked,
major," Hammond said patiently. "If you were ready for this?"
There was a terse silence
in the room as they waited for her response. She knew that if she said yes, she
would go do this for them. Maybe even get killed in the process. And if she
said no, she'd be alive, but...
"Sure." She
said, with a casualness she did not feel. "Ready as I'll ever be."
Martouf, Jack and Jacob
looked less than convinced, but Hammond nodded. "Good. Then you leave at
0800 tomorrow."
Sam started counting down
the hours.
**
Sam had been unable to
sleep. Without the view of Narva's bay out her window... without even the
presence of a window, she had found sleeping difficult. She felt vaguely
suffocated by the tonnes upon tonnes of rock above and around her, and so
decided to watch the sun rise.
She was rather fortunate.
The morning sky was dusted with thin wisps of cloud, and the sun was rising,
spreading glorious reds and oranges throughout the sky. Making it look like the
vista before her was aflame.
She hadn't seen a sunrise
- a natural sunrise - like that in a long time. And she revelled in it.
She had snuck out of the
mountain: she still remembered the sneaky ways in and out of the mountain,
having been forced to use them so many times. And she'd climbed as high as she
was able to while still remaining in easy reach of the entrance back into the
SGC. There were security patrols, she knew. But it wasn't as if she was trying
to escape, and so she didn't give them much thought.
But even so, she hadn't
been able to get much peace.
"You might as well
come out." she said, after she felt she had enjoyed the sunrise long
enough. "You're not doing a good job of hiding."
"We weren't trying to
hide." It was her father, approaching her from behind, before perching on
the fallen log next to her. "We've tracked enough hosts to know how far
away to stand to avoid being sensed. We just wanted to keep an eye on
you."
"'We' being you and
Selmak, I assume."
Her dad nodded his head,
but it was Selmak who spoke. "In this we are of one mind. We worry about
you." he said gently, reaching up to stroke her hair. The gesture was
so... motherly was the only term that Sam could think of. She supposed that was
what came of her dad possessing a symbiote who had been a woman nearly all her
existence. Did that mean she had two parents in one body?
She missed her mother.
Still, the gesture was one
of such comfort and understanding, in spite of the creeping sensation, that she
rested her head against her dad's shoulder and closed her eyes, admitting
quietly, "I don't think I can do this."
"It's not too late to
back out." Selmak pointed out, his hand still stroking her hair
soothingly. "No one would blame you."
"That's just
it," She said softly. "I can't. I know I have to do this. I don't
want to though."
Selmak was silent for a
moment. "All of us do things we do not wish. For the good of others. When
we only serve our own wishes, then we become no better than the Goa'uld."
"Profound." Sam
commented.
"Selmak can be a
profound lady at times." Jacob commented wryly. "I think it's because
she's been hanging around so long."
"'Oldest and wisest
among us.'" Sam quoted with a faint smile, somewhat amused that her dad
had mentally labelled Selmak as 'female'. With the switchover, his hand had
stopped moving and Sam felt oddly bereft of the touch. "I need to do
this." she finally said, closing her eyes and wrapping an arm around her
father's waist. "I feel that if I don't do this... these memories... what
I did, what happened... it'll get the better of me." She lifted her head
off his shoulder and looked him in the eye. "I can't live like that. I've
done that for too long."
"You're going on this
mission because you believe you're looking for something." Selmak said,
eyes flaring brightly in the morning light. "What is that?"
Sam took a deep breath.
"I don't know."
"I wouldn't worry
about it." Jacob said, with a chuckle. "Things have a habit of
working out for the better."
Sam muffled a snicker.
"Now who's being profound?"
Jacob laughed out loud at
that. "Must be hanging around Selmak too long. She's being a bad influence
on me."
"Nah." Sam said,
hugging him tightly. "I like this new you. Much more talkative."
"Well, if you're not
going to chat, one of us has to."
Sam sobered at that.
"It's hard." she said, sighing. "Relating to people. It's so
awkward. Reminds me of after Mom died. No one at school knew how to react. The
teachers walked on eggshells and no one talked to me. Probably thought I'd
start bawling on their shoulders or something." She paused, thinking for a
moment. "Although I probably would have."
"You must have been
very lonely." Selmak again. Another might wonder at why the symbiote had
asked the question. After all, it resided in her father. But the three of them
knew how estranged they had been in that period.
"Yeah." Sam
agreed softly, and was embarrassed to feel her eyes tear up. She blinked
furiously. Determined not to start crying now.
She might not stop if she
did.
It was Jacob who leaned
forward and kissed her gently on the forehead. "We're here for you, kid.
Always."
Father and daughter stayed
there until the sun was well in the sky, and it was time to leave the planet,
and to face whatever of Sam's past was waiting for her.
**
Part Five: Abandon all
hope, ye who enter here...
**
Every world had its own
individual smell, Jack O'Neill had found. Some smelt musty, some acrid. This
was a new world, with a new smell, and for some reason, it smelt of cheese.
Limburger cheese at that.
There was an association
he could have done without. He /really/ didn't like cheese.
The Stargate was in the
middle of what could have passed for any English country meadow. Wild grasses
sprung up all the way to the treeline, which was only a moments walk away, and
a stone pathway lead off to somewhere. Obviously, they weren't going to follow
that path, and Harrison and Teal'c were already consulting a compass to
determine which way to go. On either side of the Gate, however, were two
objects that Jack wouldn't have expected to see. They were marbled obelisks
reaching up from the ground, and their faces were decorated with etchings in
Goa'uld.
Sam, Jacob and Martouf
were the last through the Stargate, the three of them all looking a little
uncomfortable in their SGC general-issue fatigues. Jack never thought he'd see
the day when Sam had looked uncomfortable in her uniform.
"O'Neill!" It
was Teal'c, calling out from where he stood by the DHD, which Daniel was
checking in preparation for sending the MALP back. "We have located the
direction in which the base is located."
"Good." Jack
replied, before turning slightly towards Sam. "Any signs of Jaffa?"
he asked, as she stood there, sweeping the area with a pair of binoculars
slowly and methodically. It seemed so right to be serving with her again,
giving instructions as if she were still his 2iC. But when she removed the
binoculars, and turned towards him with such hollow eyes, he knew he was
deluding himself. This wasn't the Sam Carter he'd known.
Jack tried to suppress the
queasy feeling that turned his stomach, and waited patiently for her report.
"None that we can
detect." she finally pronounced, tilting her head slightly to include
Jacob and Martouf in her statement.
"Good," Jack
said, stepping away from the Gate as Daniel finished sending the MALP back to
Eath.
Sam moved to step away
also, but she paused by the obelisks. "These are new." she commented,
staring the pillars in curiosity.
Daniel just looked at her
quizzically. "What?" he asked, sounding a little confused.
"These," Sam
said, pointing at the gold-etched obelisks. "They weren't in place last
time I... last time Anqet was here."
Before Jack could wonder
at the slip, he heard: "What do they say?" Harrison was speaking from
her position near the DHD, being one of the only two there who couldn't read
the rather angular characters.
Sam looked up at the
obelisks, tilting her head slightly and glancing from one to another, before
snorting in amusement and starting to head off on the trek towards their
destination. The Tok'ra were quick to follow her, staying close. At a gesture
from Jack, Harrison hurried to catch up, making sure that the trio didn't leave
her sight. Jack stared after her for a moment, then glanced towards Daniel,
raising an eyebrow to indicate that he, too, wanted a translation.
Daniel glanced at the
markers and said, "Well, they're kinda a... warning."
"Well?" Jack
prompted when Daniel trailed off.
"It says 'Brek'tak',
the name of this world," Teal'c spoke, having glanced at the obelisks
himself. "'Breeding ground of despairing souls'."
Jack shook his head.
"Gould melodrama." He muttered, and started after Carter and the
Tok'ra.
**
It was easy for Brenda
Harrison to tell that the Tok'ra were being very protective of the woman her
teammates seemed to know so well. They shot her rather protective glances as
she approached, keeping up with them. Not that she believed they were going to make
a run for it. Not /seriously/ believed anyway. She knew one of them, Jacob, was
Carter's father, but the other one... she really had no idea what he had to do
with all of this. And no one had been very forthcoming. Even Francine Palmer,
which was something new. All she had been able to get out of the rather
gregarious lieutenant was that it was just 'so tragic... really'.
Still, it wasn't as if
they were flanking her and making it impossible to approach, and so Harrison
decided this was the perfect moment to 'expand her knowledge' as one of her
college professors had put it, and talk to the woman herself. Stepping slightly
quicker for a steps brought her side by side with the blonde haired woman, who
was looking distinctly uncomfortable.
"What's up?" Harrison
finally asked, as Carter hooked her finger in her collar and tugged at her
jacket for the second time in as many minutes, grimacing as she did so.
"These clothes
itch." Carter said shortly, barely glancing her way. "And they don't
fit properly."
"Oh." Harrison
said, then shrugged after a moment. "Yeah, they are kinda generic, aren't
they?"
She reached up and
scratched at her head subconsciously as she said it. She had already managed to
wash most of the dye that an ill-timed practical joke on her last leave had
caused to turned her hair a rather vivid red. She had managed to turn the hair
a sort of vaguely reddish colour before she returned to duty, so as not to be
sanctioned for dying her hair such a ridiculous colour, but it hadn't exactly
looked very natural. The Tok'ra had been very insistent that she needed to have
hair that looked natural ('vivacious red' hair dye apparently not being in use
among the Goa'uld), and so she'd had to dye her hair black, to cover up the
previous colour. And for some reason, the dye she used was making her scalp
itch, and Carter's scratching was setting her off.
"After wearing Tollan
clothes for so long, these feel very... primative in design. By
comparison."
'Snob,' thought Harrison,
and wrinkled her nose slightly.
"Well, it's not like
military issue is the height of fashion." She said, feeling moved to
defend the Quartermaster's stock of uniforms, in spite of the fact that she had
been guilty of a few tirades about their fatigues in the past.
Carter finally turned and
looked at her, giving her the same patronising look one would a child. "I
know that. I did used to work in the SGC you know."
Harrison frowned and
finally said, "Look, if you don't want to talk to me, just say and I'll
piss off."
Carter glanced at her
again and sighed. "Sorry. I'm just... not very communicative at the
moment."
"Yeah, I guess
not."
"What have you
heard?" Carter said suspiciously.
"How long have you
got?" Harrison said, offering the former-Major a wry smile. "You seem
to have wracked up an impressive list of accomplishments... good or
otherwise."
Carter didn't seem eager
for her to expand on that list, and so Harrison kept silent on that subject.
"I gotta admit,"
She finally continued, after the silence between them had lasted for a few
moments. "I was kinda curious about you. I mean none of the guys,"
She gestured to the rest of SG1, who were following close by, spread out and
eyes watching the foliage. Harrison wasn't with them as they'd already assigned
her to keep a watch on the Tok'ra. "Ever really talked about you.
Especially the Colonel. Well, that's a lie really. Daniel eventually coughed up
information, and Teal'c gave me something about you being a formidable warrior
and a great loss, but they never /talked/ you know." She shrugged,
realising she was rambling a little. "But I know they missed you."
She added finally.
Carter seemed to wilt a
little. "Yeah, I get that a lot." As she spoke, she shot a glance
towards the two Tok'ra that were following nearby.
Harrison wrinkled her nose
a little. They weren't exactly shouting their conversation, but she was willing
to bet that the pair were hanging on every word.
"I'd've thought you'd
be happier to see them." she said.
Carter paused in her
tracks, startling Harrison, who almost carried on walking past her. Fortunately
she managed to stop in time to catch the thoughtful look Carter gave her, and
hear her comment of, "So would I?" Before the woman carried on.
This time, she didn't move
to talk to her. But just continued following from a distance. There'd be plenty
of time to talk later.
**
When it came time for them
to make camp for a night, and they had located a suitably defensible location,
it would only have taken them a little while to set everything up. However, an
awful lot of time was spent helping Martouf, who had never seen a tent before,
let alone try to put one up, when he managed to connect two pieces of the tent in
a way that should have been physically impossible. There was a good deal of
sniggering from Selmak that sounded suspiciously like Jacob was making
wisecracks in the background as Harrison and Daniel tried to help the rather
befuddled Tok'ra sort things out.
"Ugh... I'd forgotten
what these were like." Jacob was saying as he cooked one of the SGC's
MRE's that he had been provided with. "Looks like a science
experiment." He poked the viscous liquid with a plastic spoon.
"Or canteen
food." Daniel added, peering into the container. "What is that stuff
anyway?"
Jacob seemed embarrassed
to respond, so Selmak did it for him. "Hot chocolate and baked
beans."
There was a resounding
"ew" throughout the small group.
"I think he just
wants to eat it all as quickly as possible." Selmak confided in a
conspiratorial whisper.
"So, what do the
Tok'ra consider 'proper' mission food then?" Jack asked, pulling out his
own foil-wrapped package and tearing it open.
"Actually, worse than
this." Jacob said, taking a small mouthful and surprisingly not grimacing.
It seemed that his grumbling was all for show. "They're sort of a small
rectangle of highly concentrated nutrients in an solid organic
suspension." He shook his head. "Tastes like shit, but they're time
released so you eat one and don't have to eat for another three days. And with
a symbiote to regulate your metabolism, you could last a long time."
"Obviously, we don't
eat that on the homeworld." Martouf pointed out, sounding amused at
Jacob's melodramatic description of the taste. "Only on extended missions
into Goa'uld territory."
"That's a question I
always wanted to know the answer to," Daniel said, leaning forward,
"How do you get all your food? I mean, you're underground and in hiding an
all."
Martouf shrugged. "A
combination of hydroponics, hunting and surreptitious trade on free-commerce
planets not under Goa'uld control."
"Ah," Daniel
nodded. "Sounds... interesting."
Martouf grimaced slightly.
"Not when you get tapped for food preparation."
"I can imagine,"
murmured Sam as she stood, with the intent of crossing to her tent and
depositing her water canteen back with the rest of her gear.
She was aware of several
pairs of eyes following her as she headed away from the group, and heard Jack
mutter, "Is she okay?" to her father. Since she didn't hear an
audible response, he must have just gestured his answer.
When she returned, she
pretended that she didn't hear some of the muttering cease as she approached
and fought the urge to sigh, aiming to return to her place by the small fire.
"Hey, Carter? C'mere
a minute."
Sam blinked at the summons
from Harrison, and wandered over to the log that the woman was perched upon as
she rummaged through her backback. "I just figured you'd want to get a
look through this stuff, pick out what you wanted, before we got closer to the
base."
"What's that
then?" Sam asked, rather puzzled.
"You know,"
Harrison commented, as she pulled out the small bag she had stowed just
underneath the MRE's in her backpack. It looked plain and black, but when she
opened it, there was a rather astonishing assortment of makeup contained within
it. "I think this has to be the first time I've ever been on a mission
where I've been /ordered/ to bring makeup. I went a little overboard."
Sam even looked a little
impressed at the quantity she possessed.
"How long have you
been collecting that stuff? And do you spend /any/ money on food?"
Harrison giggled, for a
second acting like any other woman gossiping with her friend. Although they
were hardly friends, at least makeup was something they seemed to be able to
share. "Hell, no. I eat in the mess all the time. How do you think I keep
so thin?"
Sam laughed softly,
picking through the makeup and looking at it all.
"I think you'd suit
the pinks." Harrison said, rummaging around and digging out one or two
pale lipsticks and accompanying eyeshadows. She gaving Sam a scrutinising look
and then nodded. "Yes, definitely."
"Yes," murmured
Sam. "Got to look my best in order to be a tyrannical dictator."
Harrison paused in going
through the makeup, blinking owlishly at Sam as the other woman plucked out a
metallic bronze lip colour that had been bought expressly for the last party
Harrison had been to. "Erm..." She didn't exactly know how to respond
to that.
"Major-" Sam
started.
"Call me
Brenda." Harrison said, waving the lipstick in the air. She figured that
if they were discussing makeup, they could at least move away from addressing
each other by rank. Although did Carter even have a rank any more?
"Brenda," Sam
finally said, drawing a deep breath. "You don't have to do this for me.
I'll sort it out myself."
Harrison smiled slightly,
extending the selection of lipsticks towards the woman. "What are you
talking about?" She said, deliberately misunderstanding. "All we're
doing is chatting about makeup. Just like anyone else. As simple and as
uncomplicated as that."
Sam looked at her, as if
expecting her to make something of it. To return to Sam's bringing up of her
impersonation and how she was going to pull it up. But after a moment, her
expression softened (artificially, Harrison thought, as if she were hiding it behind
a mask), and she accepted the makeup.
"Yeah, thanks."
she said.
Harrison didn't say
anything further on the subject, but suddenly heard distinct sniggering from
the direction of several of the males of their party, who kept suspiciously
glancing towards them as the pair rummaged through Harrison's collection of
makeup.
Harrison frowned at them.
"Something wrong here?" she asked.
Jack just looked amused.
Probably at all the 'girl talk' revolving around makeup. "No. Nothing at
all."
Harrison decided at that
moment not to divulge the fact that Teal'c had, at one time, pointed her in the
direction of a lovely shade of eyeshadow, and just proceeded to ignore him,
pulling out another blusher and staring at it. When she finally looked up at
Sam, ready to recommend this particular shade, she saw the woman looking rather
distant, and gave her a nudge with the end of the mascara tube.
"Are you
alright?" She asked, drawing back as Sam flinched slightly, as if coming
out of a trance suddenly and without warning.
"Excuse me a
minute." Sam said, her voice oddly disassociated with her body language,
picking up her wash bag and heading off towards the sound of water.
"Sure," Harrison
nodded absently, taking note of her departure even as she picked up another
lipstick and turning it on its end to read the name. "Hmm... blushing
nude."
When Martouf found a way
to slip away from the camp and follow Sam a few minutes later, she pretended
not to notice.
**
He found her near the
small stream near their campsite, attempting to scrub her face clean with water
and a flannel she took out of the bag she had brought with her. She, more than
any of the others, needed to at least stay presentable. It would hardly befit a
Goa'uld ruler to be dirt-stained and unclean in appearance. He stood a little
distance away, watching her. Careful to just stay at the edge of her ability to
sense him with clarity. She would still know he was there, but not how far away
he was.
Suddenly she let out a
sigh. She was still crouched on the bank next to the stream, staring at her
reflection. He didn't know what she saw there, but when she reached out and
slapped the surface of the water with her hand, disrupting the image, he knew
it wasn't something she was happy with. Martouf offered a quiet suggestion and
they started off in her direction.
"What did the water
do to you?" Lantash asked as he got within earshot of her.
"It was pulling faces
at me." Samantha said, after she had gotten over her initial startlement
of hearing his voice.
Lantash shifted
uncomfortably. He really didn't know what had possessed them to follow her. He
had been quietly eating the Tau'ri prepared foodstuffs, when Samantha had
looked up from her discussion with the Tau'ri woman over whatever it was they
had in that bag, he had been unable to look away. He could practically sense
her becoming more and more uncomfortable over the passing moments, and when her
attention had been pulled away by Harrison, she had fled.
So why he had been
compelled to follow was a mystery to him.
"I am certain it was
merely being playful." Lantash said, unable to resist the opportunity to
tease her, if only a little.
And she responded as he
had hoped: with a light laugh that was barely audible, but was such a welcome
change from her perpetually despairing attitude.
"I needed that."
she admitted.
Lantash feigned
bewilderment. "You needed to attack the water?" he asked.
Sam snorted in a most
undignified manner. "You know what I mean," she chided with a roll of
her eyes. "I can't even carry on a conversation about makeup of all things
without getting... all sorts of thoughts." She shook her head a little
sadly. "Sometimes I wish I could just forget it all... you know...
everything? Just back to being plain old Sam Carter, USAF major, who didn't
know anything outside her own little world apart from the stars she could see
through her telescope."
Lantash smirked at her.
"Samantha, I'm rather certain you didn't mean
that."
"Not really,"
Sam admitted. "But it's a nice fantasy sometimes."
She leaned back on a
fallen log, and, after a moment, Lantash settled beside her. She continued in
an absent manner, as if relating the weather, rather than close personal
thoughts. "Once, I wondered what would have happened if I'd never joined
the SGC. If Jolinar had never jumped into me. If I'd gone and become Selmak's
host, instead of Dad." She shook her head, rubbing her arms as if cold.
"Ah, but if Jolinar
had never taken you as a host, then we would perhaps never have met."
Lantash pointed out, a hint of a smile on his features. "Good things can
come out of bad circumstances."
"Oh, I don't
know." Sam said, looking off into the middle-distance somewhere.
"Things might have worked out anyway. We might have stumbled across the
Tok'ra homeworld and found you anyway."
Lantash wagged a finger in
the air, chiding gently. "Yes, but we would not have known each other. The
Council would have left you there, and our peoples would not enjoy the
relationship they have today."
Sam rolled her eyes.
"'Enjoy'?" She echoed, tilting her head.
Lantash grimaced slightly.
Obviously she had heard one or two things about the Tau'ri-Tok'ra alliance and
its rather rocky recent history. "Well... we have a relationship of /some/
sort, you must admit."
"Yes." She said
thoughtfully, turning to look at him. "We do, don't we?"
Martouf put forward the
thought that they had moved on from politics.
Rather abruptly, she
stood, forest debris crunching underneath her foot as she moved away a little,
obviously uncomfortable with the tone the conversation had suddenly taken.
"Did you come out
here just to find out what was wrong with me?" She asked him, turning back
towards Lantash, arms folded across her chest. She jerked her head back in the
direction of a camp. "I know they're all talking about me."
Lantash stood, stepping
towards her. "What makes you think that?"
She waved a hand. "Of
course they are." she said dismissively.
Lantash reached out,
grasping her upper arm in his left hand. "Samantha, do not sell yourself
short. The Tau'ri and Tok'ra alike care for you deeply."
Samantha lowered her eyes
a little, but didn't pull away. "No one's cared for me for quite some
time."
"That's not
true," His hand slipped down to her waist, almost of its own volition.
"We care."
Samantha looked up at him.
"Lantash-"
"Even when you did
not want us to."
Samatha closed her eyes,
the look of pain that flashed across her features giving lie to the time she
was thinking of: when she had been released from Anqet's control before running
away from the Tok'ra.
He pulled her close,
resting his other hand on her face, which still felt slightly cool from the
cold water wash she had just given it. She shivered slightly at his touch, and
Lantash felt something faintly like the brush of sheer fabric against his
fingertips where they touched her skin. Martouf had once put forward that the
reason that they didn't have this exact same intensity of sensation when they
came into physical contact with anyone else with a symbiote was because the
naqada in her system floated throughout her bloodstream. The sympathetic
vibrations were spread throughout her body, exacerbating the sensation.
Even for him, with his
much more limited detection of the naqada in her body, it was a heady feeling.
Samantha had closed her
eyes, obviously feeling what Lantash felt, through the body of his host, but
far more acutely. She was faintly flushed, and he saw her lick her lips
quickly.
"Samantha..." he
murmured, prompting her to look up at him.
"I can see how hard
this is for you." He said, brushing his fingers across her cheek. "If
I could spare you from this I would." She closed her eyes briefly again.
"I would do anything to spare you from pain."
Her eyes snapped open
again, meeting his eyes with her own. "I know." She said, her voice
husky, almost in mimicry of Lantash's own.
Her breath felt warm
against his face, so close were they standing. Lantash simply wanted, if only
for a brief second, to show her exactly the depth of his feelings for her.
Feelings that ran deep between both himself and his host, that bounced back and
forth between their minds as if reflected between two mirrors.
He leant forward
capturing, gently at first, her lips with his own, and when she didn't pull
away when he drew back to draw breathe, he leaned forward again, his ador
imbuing the kiss with increasing passion. As she returned the kiss, his arms
slid around her gently, pulling him towards her.
Host and symbiote revelled
in the sensations that danced between them. And neither wanted the moment to
end.
**
Samantha Carter, for one
brief moment, forgot about the memories that had preyed on her mind for years.
Forgot everything other than the tingling that threatened to sweep her away as
her body reacted to Lantash's very presence, other than the wonderful things he
was doing to her mouth.
She wanted this. She
wanted these feelings. The feeling of his lips pressed against hers, his hands
roaming her back. Making her feel, for one brief moment, wanted, needed and desired.
In a way she hadn't felt in a long time.
And then the memory of the
last time lips had been pressed against hers passed through her mind, and Sam
almost choked, body suddenly going rigid. Lantash seemed to notice the
difference and drew back, searching her face for a reason for her sudden change
in attitude.
Sam warred within herself
for a moment, trying to decided what to do. Finally, she forcibly pushed him
away, feeling a little twinge of guilty at the slightly hurt expression that
crossed his features. "Samantha," It was Martouf back in control, his
voice not grating on her ears as Lantash's burr did. "What is it?"
Sam tried to control the
trembling she could feel in her limbs. "This is... wrong. The... the last
man that I..." She broke off, faltering, unable to look at the concerned
expression on Martouf's face.
"God, this would
bring it all back." Sam ran her hands through her hair, as if trying to
pull the harmful throughts away from her brain with the motion. "This
mission... what I'm doing..." She suddenly straightened and glared at him
balefully. "You couldn't have rescued me one day earlier, could you? /One/
day! That's all it would have taken." And she started to stalk away
angrily.
Martouf, obviously
completely befuddled by her sudden rage, started after her, grabbing her arm to
stop her. "Samantha-"
She shook him off, about
to open her mouth to stage another verbal assault, but broke off when images
flashed behind her eyes. Taunting her with the past, like a waking dream.
Sam closed her eyes,
fighting the assault of memories that flooded across her mind's eye, taunting
her with remembrances. She didn't realise how much time had passed as she stood
there in a reverie until she felt the crawling-prickly sensation of Martouf's
hand touching her arm to get her attention.
"Sam?"
"Teneb." She
said, sharply, forstalling anything else he might say. She opened her eyes and
met his gaze with her own. He seemed rather puzzled at the non-sequitor.
Probably wondering what a long dead Tok'ra operative had to do with anything.
"Don't you remember him?" she asked harshly. "You saw me execute
him in a town square and about an hour later you essentially clubbed me over
the head and hauled me back to the Tok'ra."
Comprehension dawned on
Martouf's face, although some meekness remained. "We were attacking
/Anqet/." he pointed out.
"You couldn't have
attacked her earlier? Gotten there sooner? Then I wouldn't-" She broke
out, her voice catching in her throat. Finally she forced herself to speak, her
words coming out in short, clipped sentences. "I tortured him. While Anqet
had me."
Martouf shook his head.
"It wasn't you. You had no control over-"
He didn't know. She cut
him off with a sharp wave of her hand. "That's just the point. I
did."
Martouf froze, hand rising
slightly off her arm. "What? I don't understand."
She swallowed, trying to
force out the words. "Teneb was tortured, I was in control. He was my
friend, and /I/ tortured him."
**
In truth, although she
didn't admit it to Martouf, Teneb had been far more than that to her. He'd been
her lover.
Although lover was such an
overly romantic designation for what their relationship had been. A better term
would have simply been 'partners'. They'd met when Teneb had been sent to help
the SGC install several TER's into the Gateroom in the wake of the Reetou
incursion onto the base, assisting them in hardwiring them into the SGC's
systems. They'd been attracted to each other, working closely day in and day
out trying to adapt the alien technology to the Earth based systems. And as the
only one capable of translating the SGC technical schematics into something
Teneb could understand, she spent a lot of time alone with him in her lab late
into the lab, pouring over blueprints.
At some point, they'd
fallen into bed together. They'd not been looking for anything particularly
meaningful or lasting. Teneb, she had known, was very fond of a Tok'ra woman,
who seemed to be taking her time to even notice him. And Sam had almost been
trying to define herself as separate from the memories of Jolinar in her mind.
Trying to prove, almost, to herself that Jolinar's memories didn't colour all
her relationships with the Tok'ra.
Their affair had continued
to last throughout Teneb's stay on Earth, and they had resurrected their
relationship once or twice when Sam had spent extended periods with the Tok'ra.
But eventually, it had simply died away. The physical side wasn't a problem;
Sam had grown to like the tingling sensation of the naqada in her bloodstream reacting
to the presence of a symbiote while she was with him, and they'd been quite
compatible. They had loved each other, but it hadn't been in that way.
Still, each had cared
deeply for the other, becoming close friends.
So when Sam had seen him
again, chained up in Anqet's 'dungeon', she had started crying in the corner of
her mind that was still hers while Anqet had slowly approached Teneb, a
predatory look crossing her features.
"Samantha..." he
said, almost before he could stop himself.
"You know my
host..." Anqet said wonderingly, walking around Teneb as if to examine his
souls from all angles. "How interesting... and how do you know
her..."
Teneb looked at her
curiously, wondering how it was that Anqet could /not/ known. But he didn't
respond.
Anqet closed her eyes
briefly, forcibly pulling the memories up to the surface. "Ah yes... you
and she were intimate. Repeatedly. How... lovely." she said, smiling at
him. As if she wasn't his captor and tormentor. "Hmm."
And then she had pulled
out an electronic key card, and had released his cuffs that held his arms above
his head. He sagged against the wall, his arms unable to lower fully, and
stared at her suspiciously. "What do you want?" he demanded.
"Information." Anqet
responded simply.
Teneb set his jaw.
"You will get nothing from me."
"Well, isn't that a
pity." Anqet said, drolly. "Very well. Then you will simply
die." She stepped close to him, a rather sadistic smile gracing her
features. "Want to talk to your /dear/ friend one last time? Or better
yet... how about I have her kill you. Perhaps it will give you some comfort in
your final moments."
Teneb looked at her, her
gaze steely. "I thought 'nothing of the host' survived." he said
acerbically.
"I am not so foolish
as to put that across to a Tok'ra of all people, as many other Goa'uld like
to." Anqet said straightening, before almost idly backhanding him across
the face, the rings on her fingers cutting gashes in his face. It kept him off
balance for a few moments while Anqet continued speaking. "Hardly 'nothing
of the host'. But what there is, I keep under /tight/ control."
And then Sam almost fell
over, and she felt the power of her own limbs return to her for the first time
in so long that for a second, she didn't remember how to control them. She staggered backwards against the wall,
body suddenly shaking as she attempted to push herself to her feet proper.
"Teneb..." she croaked, staring at him intently, needing to say
something to prove she had control of her own voice.
"Samantha,"
Teneb choked out, blinking rapidly, trying to clear his eyes of the blood that
trickled down from his forehead into them. Even in his state, he saw her state
and tried to reassure her. "It's alright. You're strong, endure this."
Sam tried to restrain
herself from crying, but the collective pain from the last ten months had built
to such a well that she immediately started bursting into tears. "I... I
can't stop her." she choked out, her breath hitching in sobs.
"I know..."
Teneb whispered as he finished standing fully, not too far from her. "It's
okay. I forgive you."
Sam started to reach out,
if only to brush her fingers over his face one last time. But halfway through
the motion, her hand suddenly shot out and grabbed Teneb by the throat, raising
him a little way off the floor before hurling him into the nearest wall. She
heard the sickening crack of several ribs cracking under the assault.
"Teneb!" she
called out, panic gripping her like a living force as she stalking over to him
and kicked him.
"This isn't me. I'm
not... I can't stop her!" Sam cried, trying to stop her hands from moving,
trying to remove the control that Anqet had over her body, if only for a
moment.
Teneb looked up at her
from where he lay, gazing directly into her eyes, and the strength she saw
there, coupled with the certainty of what was about to happen to him would have
been enough to move her to tears had she not already been in that state.
"I know." was all he said simply, and it was enough.
"I'm sorry," she
whispered, and couldn't stop the tears that fell freely from her eyes while her
body, out of her control, proceeded to methodically inflict pain on the man she
had called one of her dearest friends. She didn't know who, of the two of them,
was in worse pain.
**
Lantash was the one who
heard the soft feminine crying drift through the walls of the tent, and was
quick to call his host's attention to it, jerking Martouf out of the reverie he
had slipped into. Martouf had been unable to even entertain the thought of
sleeping since the 'conversation' (a rather euphemistic term if there ever was
one) they had had with Samantha. He was grateful for the distraction, until he
realised which direction the sobbing was coming from.
As she crept out of the
tent, he didn't see anyone (presumably whoever was on watch had gone on patrol)
in sight of the small campsite, lit only by the light of the stars of this
alien world. It didn't take long, with Lantash's help, for Martouf's eyes to
adapt to the dimness and to locate where the sound was coming from, especially
considering there were only two women in their number.
He crept over stealthily,
barely making a sound on the leaf-strewn ground, and hesitated a moment outside
Samantha's tent. Was this really such a good idea?
In the end, with some
judicious prodding from his symbiote, he scratched at the tent flap in an
effort to get her attention and avoid as much awkwardness as possible. However,
it seem that she couldn't hear him, as he received no response, and the soft
sniffling continued unabated. Finally, he pulled open the flap, gingerly
stepping inside.
Samantha lay on the floor,
sleeping bag pushed down to her waist and twisted uncomfortable about her legs
as she shifted to and fro in her sleep. Tears stained her cheeks, and she was
mumbling to herself, Martouf's ear picking out a garbled mixture of Tau'ri,
Goa'uld and Tollana vocabulary.
'Even in sleep her speech
is confused,' Lantash noted sadly, his mindvoice tinged with regretful and dusky
blues. 'Where one's thoughts should become clear to one's self.'
Martouf crept forward,
sealing the tent flap behind him and kneeling down next to Samantha's body. He
reached out to gently brush his fingertips against her temple and stroke the
side of her face soothingly.
'We did this for Jolinar,'
Martouf commented, remembrances swirling just beneath the surface of his mind.
Jolinar and Rosha had been
plagued by endless nightmares after escaping from Naetu. She would awake in the
middle of the night sobbing and shaking, and refusing any entreaties of her
mate to share the experiences in the hopes of alleviate. She always held her
silence. And both Martouf and Lantash had always been able to see how much it
hurt her, even though their mates tried to hide it.
Hopefully, for her own
sake, Samantha would be more forthcoming. Although she had stilled a little,
she was still in the throes of her nightmare. "Teneb-" was the only
vaguely coherent term he could discern, choked out through tears.
Both of them could only
imagine what it was that was going through her mind. And they didn't want to
subject her to it any more.
"Samantha,"
Martouf said softly, leaning towards her so that he could wake her up without
having to be too loud, which would undoubtedly rouse the rest of the camp.
"Samantha." he repeated, a little more forcefully.
She practically jumped in
response to the sudden sound, brought out of her sleep startlingly quickly.
Martouf ruthlessly suppressed the urge to flinch at the motion.
"What are you
doing?" She asked softly, as if she hadn't been sobbing her heart out only
moments earlier.
"You were having a
nightmare," he said, fingers not cearsing in their gentle stroking, even
thought it was doubtlessly what she was referring to. "I could hear you
all the way across the camp," he said, "I came to make sure you were
alright." Her eyes went to his hands and he added softly, "Do you
want me to stop?"
There was another silence,
punctuated only by Samantha's ragged breathing. "No," she finally
allowed, closing her eyes and relaxing a little. "I like it when you do
that to me. It's... soothing."
Lantash contemplated
reminding her they had never touched her in such a way, only ever Jolinar
before, but they remained silent, not wanting to confuse her further.
"Want to talk about
it?" Lantash asked, taking over the host body without breaking the motion
of his hand.
"Not really,"
Samantha said tiredly. Lantash said nothing, accepting her decision.
"I was remembering
Teneb." she said suddenly, startling both of them with the confession.
"The day he died. The day I was rescued." She bit her lip.
"Remembering what a sadistic, psychotic bitch Anqet was."
"Most Goa'uld
are." Lantash said, unable to keep the disgust in his voice from showing.
"No, you don't
understand." She said, her voice rising in agitation. "To torture
Teneb she..." Samantha swallowed convulsively. "She released
me."
The full horror of what
she said suddenly hit Martouf, and he suddenly became very still.
Perhaps thinking that he'd
rejected her now that she was talking, Samantha sat up, pulling her knees
towards her chest. His hand automatically followed her movements, hovering just
above her skin rather than actually touching her again.
"I could feel everything,"
she whispered, as if to speak any louder would reduce her to tears again.
Still, her eyes well up with fresh liquid that spilled down her face. A few
drops landed on Martouf's fingers. "Every touch, every sensation. I could
speak again, I could cry." She shook faintly under the effort of keeping
her emotions under control. "And I couldn't stop her from using my body to
torture him, beat him and-" She hesitated then gestured slightly towards
the lower half of her body.
Martouf didn't need an
explanation. It seemed that Anqet had drawn no lines in tormenting her victims.
"I couldn't stop her.
I couldn't stop her, and he must have thought I hated him." Samantha
uttered brokenly, voice growing in anguish. "Thought I didn't care."
"I'm sure he didn't-"
Martouf tried to say, hand drifting down to squeeze her shoulder in a
reassuring manner.
"Why not?" She
asked, looking up at him. Her eyes looked painfully red. "It's so easy for
people not to care. Hardly anyone cared about /me/."
Martouf opened his mouth
to deny that, but Lantash kept him quiet.
The sobs were racking
Samantha's frame with greater intensity now, and all he could do was wrap his
arms around her, and let her cry quietly as she tried to speak. "On
Tollana, no one really cared. Narim came close, but it was always this distant
sort of caring. Like you would a precious specimen of something you don't want
to disturb. I didn't have any friends..." She tried to laugh a little, but
it came out sounding twisted. "God, the only woman I thought of as
something approaching a friend turned out to hate my guts and betrayed me
because she thought I'd stolen her love's attention."
"Your father and I
never stopped caring about you," Martouf whispered as he held her, her
head having slipped to his shoulder, his words almost lost in her hair.
"We never stopped looking for you. We wanted to know you were safe."
Samantha snorted
derisively. "I was safe. Not much else, but I was definitely safe."
She suddenly jerked her
head off his shoulder, looking intently into his face. "You don't know
what I've been through. You can't /understand/."
Martouf cupped her face in
his hands and stroked the tear-streked cheeks with his thumbs. "No, I
can't. But can't I care for you without understanding? Offer you a shoulder to
cry on." Samantha's gaze flickered downwards to, he knew, his tear-soaked
shirt. "Both proverbial and literal." he added, receiving a ghost of
a smile in return for his quip.
"Anqet didn't do it
to torture me." She finally said, as if trying to downplay what had
happened. "She didn't even acknowledge I existed except in the form of
half-forgotten memories that came together to form a remnant personality."
Her voice was almost inaudible, and it was only through the ability of a
symbiote to enhance the senses that Martouf and Lantash caught what she was
saying. "She wanted to torment Teneb with the woman he l... that he
knew..." she hastily backtracked over what she had been saying.
"That doesn't make it
any less horrific." Martouf said softly.
"You don't know. You
weren't there." Samantha said, falling back on the familiar refrain.
"No, I wasn't,"
Martouf had sudden remembrances of Jolinar after returning from Naetu, thanks
to Lantash's thinking down that pathway at the back of their mind. How she had
fobbed him off, claiming he wouldn't understand. It had always left them
thinking something else had gone on. And in the end, how they had to accept
that, if they were ever to move on. "And I don't know." He stroked
her face gently again, Lantash's sympathy joining with his own to make the
feeling grow exponentially. "But I'm here for you /now/. And that's all I
can offer."
Samantha stared at him for
a moment, and he could feel her trembling under his touch. Finally, she started
to move her hand towards him, and Lantash absently wondered to Martouf if she
intended to prise his touch away from her.
Before either of them
realised what was going on, however, her fingers, cool from the night air,
slipped to the back of his neck and into the back of his shirt, fingertips
aligning themselves along his spine. Then, very gently, she pressed down,
fingers moving in small rhythmic circles.
Martouf's sudden hiss of
an indrawn breath seemed incredibly loud in the stillness of the tent. She was
applying pressure directly to Lantash, or at least the portions of the symbiote
not hidden by bone, in his position of being wrapped around his brainstem. The
sensuous ripples the symbiote broadcast fed directly into his own nervous
system, producing a form of
recursive pleasure as the
sensation passed back and forth between the two of them.
He looked down at Samantha
when he had managed to regain some semblance of control, and in the parts of
their mind that still seemed to be functioning, they noted that she seemed oddly
impassive considering what she was doing.
'We should stop. This is a
bad idea.'
But before they could act
upon that, Samantha's other hand slipped to the back of his head, pulling him
towards her, proceeding to devour his lips with her own.
As he pressed her back
down to the floor of the tent, it was the last thought they had in quite some
time.
**
As Martouf/Lantash crept
towards his own tent some time later, he was grateful for the depth of the
night both for being dark enough to hide the shame that crossed his features
and for ensuring that their small campsite was abandoned. That shouldn't have
happened. He shouldn't have taken advantage of her like that.
'Although,' Martouf
pointed out as they sidestepped around the still smouldering remnants of the
fire to reach his tent. 'She /was/ the one who instigated it.'
Lantash's mindvoice was
entangled with sour tasting tendrils of shame. 'And did we stop things? We knew
we should not.'
Martouf shook slightly as
he walked. 'We knew she was vulnerable.'
It was not an argument.
Each was giving voice to the thoughts the other was having. Self-chastisement
squared.
There was no sound that
caused them to suddenly halt, every sense on alert for the other presence they
had suddenly become aware of. It was the faint gleam of the starlight streaming
through the leaves of the trees reflecting off darkly painted metal that gave
the other away. Brenda Harrison stood, just outside the campsite perimeter,
where she had obviously been standing watch before noticing Martouf's departure
from Sam's tent.
Neither Martouf or Lantash
had even heard her approach. There were some Tok'ra who couldn't manage that
level of stealth.
They stood there for a
long moment, staring at each other. Martouf/Lantash had no idea what the woman
was going to do. Unblended humans tended to react emotionally when comfronted
with unexpected circumstances. Would she confront him with what she obviously
knew? Would she tell the rest of the group? Would she go and check on Samantha
to see what had been going on?
Finally Harrison inclined
her head slightly towards him, cap momentarily obscuring her eyes, and turned
away, continuing her patrol.
Martouf let out the breath
he hadn't realise he had been holding, and quickly entered his tent, sealing
the flap behind him.
**
Part Six: Who'd've Thought
It'd Be Such A Small Galaxy...
**
"I thought there
wasn't meant to be any Goa'uld positions away from the main building."
Jacob said in an undertone to Jack O'Neill as he raised a pair of Tok'ra
electrobinoculars to his eyes and looked through them, frowning slightly as he
looked towards the small encampment of perhaps nearly a hundred or so Jaffa.
"There wasn't."
Jack ground out, directing a glare in Harrison's direction.
The Major contrived to
look affronted. "It's not my fault if they changed positions since we sent
out the recon UAV." she hissed, fighting the urge to raise her voice for
fear of being heard by those who they would rather not have hear them. She
shifted uncomfortably in her position, lying on her stomach, peering over the
steep mound a fair way from the camp. Only Daniel, Martouf and Sam had held
back, sticking closer to the treeline.
Jack turned to give her a
faint glower. "Next time, check twice." he told her.
Harrison made an annoyed
noise and slid backwards, pulling herself into a crouch when she was far enough
down the mound not to be seen in such a position, before rapidly moving towards
the treeline to give the other three members of their team an update on the
situation.
"What are we to do
now, O'Neill?" Teal'c asked, as he lowered his own set of binoculars to
look at his commanding officer.
Jack seemed to contemplate
that for a moment, then elbowed Jacob lightly to get his attention. "They
part of Anqet's force?" he asked.
There was such a long
pause that Jack thought for a moment that he'd have to repeat the question, but
Jacob finally answered, "Yes. They bear her symbol."
All Jack could think was
that they must have /really/ good magnification on those things. "Right.
So Sam could do her Gould routine on these guys?" He asked, glancing back
towards Sam, who lurked in the shadows, watching everything carefully. She
seemed unusually pale, and had ever since she had gotten up that morning. Jack
put it down to the food. If you hadn't had it for a while, your body tended to
rebel and declare the MRE's a poisonous substance until you got used to them
again.
Jacob lowered the
binoculars from his eyes and turned to give his daughters former commander a
searching gaze. "Do you think she's ready?" he asked, staring at the
man intently.
"I think she can
handle it." Jack replied, tilting his chin up slightly.
"Right then,"
Jacob said, abruptly raising the binoculars again. "You go tell her, and
get Martouf to get our equipment. Then come get me."
**
The 'equipment' in
question was the package that the Tok'ra had sent through the Gate to Earth a
few days earlier, and when Jacob opened it, it revealed that the contents had
been:
"Clothing?"
Harrison looked down at it and crouched down to finger a hemline with the
critical expression one would assume when tasting a particular wine. "Now,
if I knew the Tok'ra had a mail order catalogue, I would have gotten a dress
like Garshaw's a long time ago."
Jacob rolled his eyes
before they flared, giving rise to Selmak. "They are disguises." He
said, bending down to pick up half of the package. Upon closer inspection, the
package contained two outfits. One was light blue and gauzy, the other a dark
royal blue and made of heavy velvet. "This is yours, Samantha."
Selmak said gently, extending the pile of clothes to her.
Sam stared at the clothing
for a moment, before she reached out and took it with obviously shaking hands.
"Martouf, give me a hand?" she asked almost inaudibly, before she started
deeper into the trees in order to get changed in semi-privacy.
Martouf glanced at Selmak
for permission to leave the group, and received a nod in response. He ignored
the raised eyebrow from Harrison that was intended from him and him alone, and
started after Sam.
As Martouf headed away,
Selmak picked up the remaining clothing and shoved it into Harrison's arms. She
reflexively grabbed onto the garments, clutching them to her chest, shooting
Selmak a puzzled glance. "What's this?" she asked.
"You will also be
attired properly for this mission. You are to accompany Major Carter as her
handmaiden." Selmak informed her, frowning at her.
Harrison raised a hand.
"Ooooh no. Not at all."
From the sidelines, Jack
sniggered at Harrison's sudden reluctance to assist in the mission. The woman
/could/ be rather unintentially comical at times. Daniel just rolled his eyes,
well used, as was the rest of the team, with how Harrison reacted to certain
situations. This was a woman who despised fancy dress parties and had declared
them a Government conspiracy plot, after all (rather an odd declaration,
considering she was involved in a top secret government project that involved
aliens from other planets and hid the existence of said aliens from the world
at large).
"I'm not wearing
this." Harrison clarified, staring at Selmak.
"Yes, you are."
Selmak said stubbornly.
"No, I'm not."
"Yes you - don't be
childish!"
"I'm not! You can't
expect me to wear this, I mean, what the hell is this?" Harrison demanded,
holding the offending object, the overcloak of the whole affair, between thumb
and forefinger and at arms length, as if its very existence was hazardous.
"And why do /I/ have to wear it?"
Selmak sighed, looking
more than faintly annoyed at Harrison's dramatics. "Because Colonel
O'Neill is too tall, Teal'c is a Jaffa, and Doctor Jackson does not possess
breasts. Just put it on."
"But it's
/ugly/." Harrison protested, wrinkling her nose, almost like the robes
smelt bad. It had to be admitted: the overcloak and accompanying dress were
hardly what would be called the height of fashion on Earth, but they did look
quite well made, and the fabric wasn't something that could be found on Earth.
Someone else might have found it exotic. Harrison merely saw it as an insult to
her sense of taste.
"I must inform you,
Major Harrison," Teal'c said, looking like he was attempting to maintain a
thin veil of stoicism over his amusement. He himself had already changed into
his Jaffa armour, although they knew that the symbol of Apophis might give him
away. Their only hope was to claim that Anqet had tempted him to her side. A
long shot, but better than simply leaving Sam with only Harrison's protection.
"It is standard attire for a handmaiden to a Goa'uld."
"And you can fit
weaponry under the cloak." Harrison mused as she turned the outfit this
way and that. She looked up, glancing between Daniel and Teal'c, eyes narrowed
with curiosity. "Why is that?"
It was Daniel who
answered. "Sometimes, from what I understand, female Goa'uld's handmaidens
can be a sort of bodyguards. A last line of defense should someone get all the
way through the ships, weapon emplacements and Jaffa. More often than not
though they're more like..." Daniel fidgeted and then fudged the truth
slightly. "Glorified slaves with little to do except do whatever they're
told."
"And you want me to
play one of these handmaidens?" Harrison demanded, looking towards Selmak,
frown creasing her face. "You do know the women have the vote now."
Selmak looked like he was
about to snap something very unpleasant to Harrison, and so Jack decided to
intervene with a smooth, "Harrison, you'd better get changed now."
Recognising the order for
what it was, Harrison grumbled slightly to herself before scooping the clothing
under her arm and disappearing into the trees, with a muttered admonishment to
them all not to peek.
Selmak exhaled sharply.
"Does she deliberately attempt to annoy people?" he snapped in Jack's
direction.
Jack shrugged. "Only
people she /really/ likes." He said, trying to suppress his smirk.
"It's working."
Selmak grunted, grabbing the electrobinoculars and going to do some more spying
on their unexpected guests.
He gave Daniel a sharp
glare when the archaeologist made a sound suspiciously like a strangled laugh,
but when Daniel managed to keep a straight face under the Tok'ra's scrutiny, he
huffed and stalked back to the treeline without another word.
**
Sam shifted uncomfortably
in the attire of a Goa'uld Overlord, and the mettallic bits and pieces that
were attached to the bodice chinked quietly with the motion, accompanying the
clacking of the beads around her neck, and the chime of her bracelets. It was a
rather musical piece of clothing, when one looked at it that way, but in Sam's
mind it was uncomfortable, tight in /all/ the wrong places, and far too
revealing and lacking in warmth for a world that seemed in a constantly
autumnal state. The bodice was of a rigid bronze-shaded material, the front
part of which was covered in pieces of shaped metal that made it appear to be
akin to an breastplate. The rest of the outfit was a swirl of gauzy sky-blue
material that swirled about her, from the skirt to the shawl-like coverings
that did little to keep her shoulders warm.
"I think I'm going to
catch my death." Sam muttered as Martouf helped fasten herself into it. It
was hardly the kind of garment that one could shoehorn themselves into by one's
self.
"You look very
beautiful." he remarked, and Sam bit her lip, declining to comment.
"Long time since I
wore this." She finally said, somewhat brusquely as she tugged on the
bodice. "Not got any particularly pleasant memories associated with
it."
Martouf was standing
behind her, fastening the clasps of the bodice, and he paused in the motion a
moment before continuing. "I'm sorry." he said.
Sam tried not to shiver.
"Well, you were hardly responsible for Anqet's wardrobe choices." she
said, attempting to brush off his words.
Sam felt his fingers
resting gently on his shoulder, felt the warmth from his hand seep into her
skin, warming her however briefly. She closed her eyes and took a slow breath,
not reacting otherwise, but secretly revelling in the contact. She didn't know
what might have happened next, but would never find out, as he snatched his
hand away as if the contact burned him, and she turned slowly to face him, to
see him abashedly clench his hands into a fist.
"Martouf, I-"
The words stuck in her throat as he looked at her, guarded curiosity in his
eyes. She found she couldn't speak for a moment.
"I think I'm
ready." she finally said, somewhat awkwardly.
"Are you
certain?" It was Lantash who spoke, after a brief pause that made Sam
think they had switched over after she had spoken. His voice was grave, the
effect worsened by the gravelly distortion of the symbiote's voice. Sam
wondered, distantly, as she had in the back of her mind so many times before,
how /exactly/ such an effect was accomplished by the symbiote. He raised a
hand, much more certain in his movements than his host, but his hand hovered
above her cheek for a moment before he suddenly changed his mind and rested his
hand on her shoulder.
'He regrets it,' Sam
thought, fighting the urge to swallow convulsively and close her eyes. 'They
both do.'
And Sam knew she had been
the one to instigate it. The fact that they seemed to find it all so difficult
now... that their normally comfortable relationship was gone.
But then... it's hadn't
existed for nearly two years? How had she suddenly expected to have it all
return to normal again? How could she have been so naive?
"Yeah," she
said, attempting a firm smile. "I'm certain."
There was a brief pause
that Sam had come to recognise as a changeover between host and symbiote. It
lasted less than a second, and when it was over, Martouf gave her a tremulous
smile and reached out to her. After a brief hesitation, Sam reached out
similarly and for a moment they rested in each others arms. The hug being
totally platonic, just wanted for a feeling of comfort.
The contact was
reassuring, but there was an uncomfortable undercurrent to it all, as if
Martouf were reluctant about touching her, and the embrace was quickly over.
Martouf pulled away, pulling his hand behind his back so as to resist any
attempt at touching her, however accidentally.
"I'd better go.
They'll be waiting." Sam said hurriedly and awkwardly, and turned on her
heel, intent on returning to the group.
"Samantha..."
Martouf's voice halted her
and she turned around to look back at him. He approached her slowly and then
raised a hand, brushing the backs of his fingers gently over her cheek. She
closed her eyes for a moment, focusing on the sensation without commenting.
Then he pulled away.
"Be careful." he warned.
"Always," she
whispered, and headed back towards the others.
**
By the time Sam returned
to the campsite, it was to hear the good-natured teasing of her teammates
towards her replacement.
"Come on, Harrison!
Can't be that bad." Jack was saying in the direction of the trees, where
presumably Harrison was lurking.
"You're a man! You
know nothing of women's clothing."
"Oh, I don't
know," Daniel said, as he fiddled with his radio, shooting Jack a rather
amused look. "There was last Christmas party..."
"Shut up,
Daniel." Jack snapped, frowning a little. "Harrison, suck it up and
get out here. That's an order."
There was a pause and then
a sullen "Fine!" before Harrison reappeared from the foliage.
"Don't laugh,"
Harrison muttered, as she crept out from behind the trees, overcloak slung over
her arm. In comparison to Sam's attire, Harrison's was positively conservative.
A long sleeved, high necked dress that went all the way to the ground was
hardly scandalous. But it was clinging, the deep blue fabric hugging every
curve of her body before flowing almost organically around her legs. There was
no adornment. But Harrison, even off duty, would rarely be seen in anything so
feminine. Mainly her attire consisted of oversized sweatshirts and trousers.
Her fatigues were generally as figure hugging as her clothing got. Small wonder
then that she looked uncomfortable.
"You look great."
Daniel said, in an attempt to reassure her. But all it resulted in was a rather
embarrassed glare.
"Yeah," Jack
said, waving a hand to indicate her dress. "You should wear that for
Siler."
Harrison made an annoyed
sound that indicated she'd given the response she was about to give a great
number of times. "For the last time, Colonel, I'm not seeing Siler."
She started to sling the overcloak around her body, turning her into a small
pillar of blue velvet.
"Sure,
whatever." Jack said dismissively, before turning to Sam.
She seemed very small.
Standing here, swathed in the elaborate garments of Goa'uld, she looked nothing
less than intimidated and daunted by the task ahead, and not a little bit cold.
He almost reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder in reassurance, but the
way in which she wrapped her arms around herself discouraged him from making
physical contact with her. But even in her rather uncertain state, she outshone
Harrison in all ways: her clothing, her appearance, a general regality about
her. Harrison just seemed to disappear into the shadows behind her. Which, he
supposed, was half the point.
"You sure you wanna
do this?" he asked her, frowning in concern.
A little way behind her,
Jack could see Jacob fidgeting with his electrobinoculars. He could just
imagine that her father was just as uncomfortable with the situation as Jack
was, but obviously his Tok'ra sense of duty had convinced him this had to be
done.
Jack just didn't like it
at all.
When Sam fidgeted a
moment, his mouth flattened into an even thinner line.
"Just say the word
and we'll call this off." He said. "We'll find another way."
Sam's head raised and she
met his eyes, edges of her mouth turning upwards in a mirthless smile. "No
you won't." she said simply. "Which is why I'm going to do
this."
**
The Jaffa camp was like
any others Harrison had observed in her time with the SGC. There were a few
flags and pennants, hastily driven into the dirt whenever the Jaffa had pitched
their tents. They were designed to be easily picked up and carried by the
troops as they marched towards their destinations. There were a few open spaces
where Jaffa practiced their combat skills, and the larger tents served as
makeshift barracks and mess tents were dotted regularly throughout the camp.
Both she and Teal'c were
sweeping the area with their eyes as they approached, Teal'c just ahead, and
Harrison just behind of Carter, taking note of Jaffa emplacements, the general
attitude of their warriors, and any possible escape routes should they need to
make a quick exit if the need arose.
Carter, for her part, was
playing the role of Goa'uld matriarch to the hilt. She walked with her head
held high and proud, looking about herself with disdain for the masses that
surrounded her. Watching her out from under the voluminous hood of her robe
brought more than a little chill to Harrison's spine.
She remembered once when
SG1 had been captured by a Goa'uld who had gone by the name of Nekhebet.
Harrison had been hit over the head with the wrong end of a staff weapon and so
hadn't been exactly in a fit state to pay attention to what was going on, what
with the concussion and the bright red blood that had been flowing into her
eyes, but the attitude of Nekhebet almost perfectly matched the one Carter was
displaying.
It almost made Harrison
grab her sidearm and take her down then and there.
But she kept herself shrouded
in her robe and followed last in line, and fought the urge to hide behind
Teal'c's bulk and let her Jaffa friend protect her from the enemies that were
now surrounding them from every side, most of whom were muttering and
whispering as they caught sight of the woman who seemed to be their monarch,
gone for two years.
She couldn't see Teal'c's
face, due to the virtue of the concealing helmet he worse, but she could
imagine him glowering at those who spoke in hushed tones around them. After
they had proceeded a good way into the camp, a man with the golden emblem of
Anqet imprinted on his forehead stepped fowards, eyeing the group in
suspiciously. He wasn't as tall as some of the Jaffa, but he wore an intense
expression that could have been associated with one who thought deeply. He
seemed to be perpetually frowning, and he was unarmed, leaving that to those
Jaffa who were flanking him, all armed with staff weapons and aggressive
expressions.
"Who are you?"
he demanded, eyeing Teal'c with suspician. He didn't even glance in Harrison's
direction. Presumable a Handmaiden was beneath notice.
"Surely, you
recognise your own Queen." Carter said, her voice strident and firm,
tolerating none who would differ from her in opinion. She stepped around
Teal'c, who noticeably tightened his grip on his staff weapon, the eyes of the
helmet that the Tok'ra had brought along gleaming faintly in the light.
The First Prime drew back
slightly, staring at her intently. He seemed unsure of how to respond, but
Carter kept staring at him intently, daring him to contradict her words.
Finally, he dropped to one knee, bowing his head and spoke in low, sonorous
tones. "My lady." was all he said simply.
Harrison had a momentarily
bizarre thought that he sounded like James Earl Jones.
All around them, the Jaffa
were dropping to their knees, the knowledge of who she was spreading throughout
the camp like wildfire, and before too much time had passed all the Jaffa in
sight were on bended knee.
"Where have you been,
my lady?" The First Prime asked, attempting to look at her without raising
his head from looking downwards. "We thought you had abandoned us. We were
going to retake this traitor's stronghold in your name."
Carter hesitated almost a moment
too long, as if weighing what Anqet would have said. "Perhaps it would be
a good idea to discuss this in private." She said, gesturing imperiously
for him, and the Jaffa around them to rise.
"Of course, my
lady," The First Prime said, as he stood, he gestured to a large and
slightly more ornate tent than others. Harrison couldn't read Goa'uld, but she
guessed it was the command tent. He started to lead the way towards the tent,
the other Jaffa parted before them like the mythical red sea. It wasn't far to
the tent, and just before they reached the tent, Carter paused.
"Handmaiden,"
She said, turning towards Harrison. "You will remain outside while my
guard scouts the camp."
Harrison bobbed a little
courtesy and offered a murmured acknowledgement in rather uncertain Goa'uld
that Selmak had tried to drill into her over the last few days so she wouldn't
stick out like a sore thumb in her role as servant. She kept her voice low so
that any mistakes in the words she made would be hard to hear. A lowly handmaiden
wasn't supposed to speak any other language than Low Goa'uld to their
superiors, apparently. A sort of harsher version of that spoken by higher
ranking Jaffa and their Goa'uld masters.
Harrison inclined her head
in acknowledgement, and, as Sam ducked into the tent, Teal'c looked to her.
"Be vigilant."
he instructed. Or rather, he utter the Goa'uld words: "Kat'vaar", of
which Harrison had no knowledge. Still, she wasn't going to let on that she
didn't speak the language.
And so, like a good little
Handmaiden, Harrison bobbed her head and took up a position just outside the
tent flap as Teal'c moved away. After a moment, one of the camp's Jaffa came up
beside her, also taking a guard position outside the main tent. Harrison was
forced to crane her neck to look at him, up and up and up...
'Damn, he's tall.' she
thought.
He was built like a rugby
player, with the height of a basketball player. The combination of the two did
nothing to calm Harrison's nerves. The Jaffa looked down at her, frowning at
her sudden curiousity. Harrison swallowed convulsively and smiled tremulously.
"Greetings." she said awkwardly.
'Really tall,' she
clarified to herself.
**
The inside of the tent had
apparently been rapidly cleared once word had reached the Jaffa who had been
inside the command tent realised their Queen was heading towards the tent with
the intention of having a 'private' discussion inside. There were no chairs
inside save a long low slung couch, but a middle sized table was placed
directly in the centre of the tent with several maps spread over it, with what
looked like empty mugs serving as paperweights. At a glance, Sam could see that
they were maps of the surface of the world they stood on, with weapon and troop
emplacements marked on in bright red.
Sam tried to hurriedly
collect her thoughts, to frame her words as Anqet would have. To say that it
was difficult would have been an understatement. She had spent nearly all her
time since she had been released from her living nightmare trying to repress the
memory of what she had gone through. And now she had to live it all over again.
"It pleases us that
you are willing to attack this traitor in our name." Sam said in the
formal version of Goa'uld, the one used only by the Goa'uld themselves.
Personal pronouns weren't the same in that dialect as in others. She walked
around the tent, eyeing the objects within it appraisingly.
The First Prime, whose
name was Maktan, she recalled, was staring at her thoughtfully. "You come
poorly protected, my lady." he said.
Sam glanced at him, before
turning her attention to a jar of powdered ink. 'Just add water', she read on
the label. "There is a small entourage of my followers not far from
here." she said, not exactly lying. "I decided to come ahead alone.
To see who had formed a camp under my banner."
Maktan moved around the
table, stepping closer towards her. "My lady, you disappeared from your
palace two years ago, leaving no signs of where you went, and now you suddenly
return. Why?"
Sam glared at him, her
manner full of affronted pride. This would have been an excellant moment, she
thought, for her eyes to have flared. If she had had a symbiote. "You dare
question your Queen?" she demanded, her voice full of wrath. For a second,
she remembered in a flash how Anqet had spoken to her underlings in this way.
And in that moment, a warm rush of pleasure at the sudden assertion of her
authority flooded through her, quickly followed by horror that she could be so
pleased by the thought of so totally dominating others.
"Of course I would
not, my lady." Maktan said softly. "If you were my Queen."
"What are you talking
about?" Sam demanded, struggling to retain the regal note in her voice
without it succumbing to the gnawing fear she felt.
Before she could stop him,
Maktan had stepped close and had moved aside the piece of opaque cloth that hid
the wires of the voice-distortion device that the SGC had provided her with. He
gave her a knowing look before he pulled the tab away from her throat and stood
back, raising an eyebrow speculatively at her. "I know that you are not
exactly who you claim to be, Samantha."
**
Jack and Martouf were the
ones currently watching out, binoculars trained on the encampment, watching
carefully to see if something was amiss. If something went wrong, then it'd be
a good bet that they'd see hoards of raging Jaffa running towards them, staff
weapons raised. And if that happened, there probably wouldn't be much they
could do about it. After a few minutes of watching, Jack lowered his
binoculars, hunkering down a bit further behind the slope. Martouf didn't move,
continuing to scan the camp.
"See anything?"
Jack asked, squinting at Martouf in the sun before he replaced his sunglasses
over his eyes.
There was a pause, then
Martouf shook his head. "No activity out of the ordinary. Samantha has not
left the command tent since she entered, and Teal'c appears to be scouting
around the camp."
Jack nodded slowly as he
disgested the information. There were a few moments of silence between them,
broken only by the warbling of alien birds in alien trees, and the rustle of
breeze through leaves. And under it all, the sounds of the camp nearby drifted
across the intervening space. Jack could hear a few scattered phrases of
Goa'uld being uttered, and the grunting of warriors as they sparred in
training.
"So what's going on
between you and Carter?" he asked suddenly.
Martouf jerked slightly in
response to the question, before slowly turning to look at Jack. "What are
you talking about?" he asked.
Jack had to admit, Martouf
was good. If it hadn't been for the slight flinch, and the fact that Jack knew
that he knew /exactly/ what Jack was talking about, he might have been fooled
into thinking that Martouf was totally innocent of knowledge.
"You know damn well
what I'm talking about," he responded in a low voice, glancing in the
direction of where Jacob and Daniel stood nearer the treeline, apparently going
over a map of the area. "You and Carter."
"What about us?"
Martouf asked slowly, returning to his scrutiny of the nearby camp.
Jack eyed him shrewedly.
"I did hear you, you know."
Martouf froze, unease
creeping over his features.
Jack waved a hand
dismissively. "Don't look so shocked." he said. "For one, Carter
isn't under my command anymore, plus she's a free woman, she can do whatever
you like. Secondly, when you're in the military you... get used to things.
You'd be surprised what'd happen in the barracks after lights out. No one got
any privacy."
"I didn't realise the
Tau'ri were so... at ease about it all." Martouf muttered, raising his
binoculars again in order to avoid meeting Jack's eyes.
"Not all are."
Jack said, shrugging. "But she is my friend." he added, staring at
his companion intently. "And she's been through a lot. A lot I don't know
about. And if I find out you've been adding to the pain she's been going
through-"
Martouf brought the
binoculars down sharply, glancing in Jack's direction with surprise on his
face. "I would never do any such thing." He said, with such a burr in
his voice that Jack momentarily wondered which one was speaking: Martouf or
Lantash. Maybe both.
"Good." Jack
said firmly. "Don't make me regret trusting you."
He raised his own
binoculars again, but not before he saw Martouf looking at him thoughtfully.
"In response to your
question," It was Lantash who spoke, and his voice seemed sad. Not an
emotion Jack normally would have associated with the fiesty symbiote. "I
do not know what is happening between ourselves and Samantha."
Jack heard him shift
uncomfortably, and turned to regard the Tok'ra, who looked more than a little
uncomfortable about speaking of this to a man who had never exactly been the
staunchest of friends. Or even a particularly close acquaintance. Although they
had fashioned a sort of mutual respect following their experiences on Naetu,
both of them were perfectly aware of Jack's distrust of anyone who possessed a
symbiote.
"But know that she
initiated it." Lantash continued, looking at Jack gravely. "I would
not have done anything if she had not wanted it."
"Right," Jack
said. "Keep telling yourself that."
From Lantash's stung
expression, Jack guessed that the Tok'ra had had exactly the same thoughts.
"It was a
mistake." he finally whispered, before his voice suddenly switched to
Martouf's. "On both our parts. It shouldn't have happened."
There was a look of such
sadness on the Tok'ra's face that Jack didn't say anything further, and the two
of them returned their attentions to their task of watching, and waiting.
**
Sam Carter offered a
faintly tired smile to the Jaffa who stood across from her, still waiting for
her response. "I suppose I should have realised I couldn't have fooled you
of all people."
"No," Maktan
said, dropping into the low couch. "You should not."
Sam sighed and sat down
next to him, the motion causing all the metallic jewelry attached to her gown
to clink together madly, forming a discordant melody. "I didn't know how
you'd react."
"Any differently from
the last time?" he asked, a faint and sad smile on his face.
"That /was/ a long
time ago." she pointed out. "I didn't know if you'd had a change of
heart." She kept her voice low and gave him a fond look. "You /are/
the First Prime of a Goa'uld who is taking back a stronghold in her name."
"I knew you were
still alive." he said honestly, staring at her intently. "I didn't
realise you'd been freed from Anqet's rule."
Sam shook her head slowly,
sadly, staring at him. "You could have taken your chance to leave. To
escape. When Anqet was gone, there was nothing to stop you from leaving and
making your own way."
Maktan gave her another
thoughtful look. "As I said. I knew you were still alive."
There was an uncomfortable
silence as Sam digested what that meant.
Finally, Maktan spoke
again. "So why /are/ you here, Samantha?"
Sam sighed, leaning back
against the couch further. "Several Tau'ri scientists were captured by the
Goa'uld who decided to take over this planet... which one was it?"
"Yiddae." Maktan
answered her.
"Yiddae." Sam
repeatedly thoughtfully, her mind taking a moment to place the name.
"Anqet never did like him. I think she was planning to have him killed
before I... was rescued." she finished, with a sidelong look at Maktan.
If he responded to her
phrasing, he gave no sign, so she continued. "Well, they were captured,
and they had developed a technology Earth apparently doesn't want the Goa'uld
to get their hands on. We... myself and some... friends, are here to rescue
them and recover the technology."
Maktan was silent a
moment, thinking that over. "Then this army will help you."
Sam shook her head slowly.
"You don't have to." She said, even though this had been her assigned
aim in coming there. "This isn't your fight."
He reached out to touch
her hand gently. "This is your army, my lady," And his voice was full
of more honest respect than he had ever used in all his dealings with Anqet.
"We pledge our lives to you."
Sam felt her eyes misting
up. "I've missed you, you know." she said, her voice cracking.
He squeezed her hand.
"I've missed you too."
"Thank you." she
said, before bowing her head, trying to regain her ability to speak.
When she raised it again,
Maktan had stood, looking every bit the military leader she knew him to be.
"What about your
friends?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I can send Harrison
out to tell them what's going on." she said, glancing towards the tent
flap.
"Harrison?"
Maktan said questioningly.
"Yeah, the ah...
handmaiden that came with me."
As Maktan nodded in
comprehension, Carter raised her voice, clearing her throat briefly before
yelling, "Handmaiden!"
**
Harrison blinked up at the
Jaffa who stood beside her, gaping in amazement. "You /are/ joking!"
she said, eyes wide. "Seventeen children?" she repeated, somewhat in
shock.
The Jaffa nodded gravely
in response to her astonished question, confirming the information.
"Wow," Harrison
said, shaking her head. Built like a Greek god and apparently quite adept in
the lovemaking department. How come they never came that good back in good ol'
Colorado? "How does your wife find time to sleep?" How did they find
time to get more kids?
The Jaffa opened his mouth
to respond-
"Handmaiden!!"
"Oops. My cue."
Harrison said, raising a hand to gesture in the direction of the tent. Starting
in the direction of the entrance, she paused, "Oh, and don't worry, I'm
sure that... little rash will go away in no time." And she smiled brightly
at him before ducking into the tent, remembering at the last moment to tug down
her hood so that it properly obscured her eyes. Unfortunately, it ensured that
she could barely see which way she was stepping.
"Yes, your
worship?" she said softly, deferentially (while heartily trying to keep
all trace of sarcasm out of her voice).
Carter's gestured sharply
as she stood, or that's what Harrison guessed she did from the clanking that
the movement caused her jewellery to emit. "He's on our side, Major."
Harrison blinked, tilting
her head upwards to risk peeking out from under her hood. Carter's voice was
unaltered, and Harrison could see the voice-altering equipment - it had been
pulled out of its hiding place and was disconnected. Her hand drifted to the
handgun hidden underneath the voluminous folds of her robes. "Ma'am?"
she asked, questionningly. Suspicion warred within her as to what was going on,
and she briefly wished that Teal'c hadn't gone walking around the camp. She had
no doubt that he had remained close by, but suddenly in her mind, it wasn't
close enough.
"It's alright,
Harrison." Carter said, a faint smile on her features. "He's an old
friend."
Harrison's hand tightened
on her sidearm. "How old?" she asked, attempting to keep her voice
light.
"I am aware that
Samantha Carter is not Anqet," The First Prime said, looking at her
intently. "That she was taken as a host by the Goa'uld."
"Really."
Harrison ground out. "And what do you intend to do about this?" She
felt her muscles tense up, in preparation for a confrontation.
"Nothing," The
First Prime responded. "In this, we are on the same side. This force is
going to the stronghold to retake the facility in Anqet's name." He gave
Carter a sideways glance, "And there are other matters of importance that
ensure we are on the same side."
Harrison felt some of her
muscles relax, but she didn't relinquish her grip on her gun. The implications
of having a small army of Jaffa to assist them...
"I see." She
said shortly. "Shall I inform the others?" she asked.
"Yes. And quickly.
It's safe for them to come here." Carter said, looking to the First Prime.
"Right."
Harrison said, and without another word of acknowledgement, spun on her heel
and exited the tent. There, the guard was still standing there, looking
definitely curious about what had just transpired. Harrison doubted he had
heard anything through the heavy tarpulin of the tent, but she didn't like the
look nonetheless.
"Do me a
favour," she asked of him. "Find the Jaffa who accompanied my lady and
myself into the encampment. Her Worship wishes his presence." That way,
Teal'c would be around if anything was going on. Harrison trusted her teammate
to remain impartial where she doubted the soundness of Carter's judgement. The
guard nodded and picked up his staff to go and search out Teal'c.
With a queasy feeling in
her stomach, she started the trek back towards the others. She didn't release
her deathgrip on her sidearm until she came into sight of them, and the camp
was far behind.
**
"I don't like
it." was Jacob's verdict.
Jack saw Harrison's
fingers twitch over the barrel of her sidearm. She had shed the heavy cloak for
the moment, dropping it to the forest floor in a puddle of deep blue velvet,
and held the weapon in her hands rather than discard it to the ground. He
figured it was safe to assume that Harrison was in agreement with Jacob on this
issue.
"We have to trust in
Samantha's judgement," Martouf pointed out. "We have no
alternative."
"You would say
that." Harrison muttered, and Jack saw Martouf give her a sharp glance.
Before he could give himself time to wonder about that statement, however, Jack
waved a hand at the pair of them, cutting short any returning comment the
Tok'ra might have given.
"Harrison," he
said, looking sternly at his second in command. While she had never integrated
with the team very well socially, he had learned to count on her in the field,
and to trust her judgement. He knew this was going to have to be one of those
occasions. "Did it seem to you like Carter was in danger?"
Harrison glanced back
towards the slopes just beyond the treeline, in the direction of the camp, her
fingers twitching again. "Nothing overt, sir. And Carter certainly seemed
convinced. I didn't get Teal'c's perspective on things before I came back here."
"I find it hard to
believe that a Jaffa would serve a Goa'uld so loyally, even going to the degree
of taking back a stronghold in their name," Daniel said, looking
thoughtful. "And then be perfectly willing to accept and assist the former
host and a group of Tau'ri." He looked around at the group. "It just
doesn't make sense."
"Something else is
going on here." Jacob said, voicing the thought that they were all having.
"And how much do you
want to bet that Carter knows exactly what it is?" Harrison said, giving
Martouf a sidelong look.
Martouf said nothing.
Jack sighed heavily.
"I don't see we have a choice. We need to get our people out, and since
Carter seems to have blown our cover," He inclined his head towards
Harrison, acknowledging her contribution of that information. "We don't
have any other choice, I think."
There was unhappy, but
unanimous agreement with that sentiment. They had no choices but to go to the
camp, and see what was going to happen next.
**
Part Seven: Best Laid
Plans
**
Harrison lurked by the
entryway of the tent, almost invisible in the shadows as befitted a Goa'uld
Handmaiden. They hadn't wanted to chance someone walking in and seeing her out
of her place. No point in attracting needless attention. The rest of the team were
standing around the main table in the command tent, various expressions of
displeasure on their faces. Except on Sam's face, who just looked tired, and
Maktan, who watched everything with silence and thoughtfulness. Teal'c had
returned from his scouting of the camp, and was frowning distinctly.
"I don't suppose
you'd care to explain why exactly you trust this... individual?" Selmak
asked, his voice suspicious as he threw a sidelong glance in Maktan's
direction. The First Prime didn't respond to the mild taunt.
Sam shook her head in the
direction of her father. "I don't suppose it would be enough to ask you to
respect my privacy in this?"
"Under normal
circumstances," Selmak said, returning his attention to Sam. "That
would be sufficient. However too much is at stake here to resort to such
whimsies."
Sam stiffened at the
implied insult, and she narrowed her eyes at her father's symbiote
"But I think we can
leave it for now." Jack interjected suddenly, hoping to diffuse a possible
row as he saw Sam take a deep breath with the probable intention of starting an
argument on the subject. "Maktan... is it? What exactly are you proposing
here?"
Maktan spoke up for the
first time since the team had arrived, stepping a little closer to the table.
"You need to infiltrate the facility. Unfortunately, as you can see,"
There was a map of the compound they were going towards on the table that the
team was ranged around, "It is too heavily guarded for even a small team
to infiltrate. Even with Samantha posing as Anqet, you would have only managed
to garner yourself a little extra time." He straightened faintly.
"What I /propose/ is that this army will attack, as planned. We will
provide a distraction to draw the main force to here," He tapped the map
at a point that Harrison couldn't see from her vantage. "And if you enter
here, there should minimal defences left to deal with. And what resistance
there is will not be able to call for help."
"A workable
plan," Selmak admitted, stiffly. "If it succeeds."
"What about your
troops?" Lantash said, staring hard at Maktan. "Surely you do not
believe that they will follow those of the Tau'ri into battle."
Maktan straightened,
glowering at the Tok'ra. "They are loyal to me." He said, as if that
were all the explanation required.
"And I am loyal to
Samantha. We will follow you into battle."
Jacob looked like he was
about to continue to question Maktan, but a harsh look from Sam silenced him on
that issue.
"What option do we
have?" She said, her voice brittle. "As it stands, this is an
impossible mission. This way, at least, we have a chance."
Jack looked at her, then
beckoned Jacob to join him in the corner of the tent with a crooking of his
index finger. As the two withdrew from the table, Harrison turned her head
slightly to peek out of the crack in the tent flap that she stood next to.
She could just make out
the sounds of Jaffa talking to each other, about their Goddess returning, about
how she must be here to bless their holy battle against the blasphemous Goa'uld
who had taken her place, how the priests would pass this day into legend. She
could see them keeping a small distance between themselves and the Command
tent, watching it reverently.
She felt sick, and
couldn't watch it anymore.
Jack and Jacob had
returned to the table, both looking uneasy. She could tell they knew they had
no alternative than to trust this man, and neither of them liked it one bit.
"Fine." Jack was saying, shortly. "We'll do it. But understand
that if it goes sour, I am holding you personally responsible."
Maktan inclined his head.
"I will endeavour to do my best to help you, and Samantha, Colonel."
It seemed to be the end of
the meeting. Sam seemed to think that her presence was no longer required, and
headed towards the exit.
Maktan laid a hand on her
arms, stopping her. Harrison took clinical note of the way that Martouf
stiffened in response to the motion, and it did not go unobserved by Tealc or
Daniel either, who exchanged curious glances.
"The Jaffa have heard of your return," he reminded her gently.
"They'll want to see you for themselves."
Sam hesitated for a long
moment, then nodded regally. "Very well," she said.
Maktan turned to the
others. "A Goddess must have her entourage," he said, a faintly
amused tone in her voice.
Harrison muttered
something unrepeatable that sounded faintly like Gaelic, and tugged on her
cloak, stepping forward. The others exchanged glances, and after looking at
Sam's pleading expression, grudgingly stepped forward in tacit agreement to
accompany her on her 'walkabout'.
All of them were left with
faintly sour feelings in their stomachs. Except Maktan. He looked at Sam like
he saw the Goddess that she wasn't.
**
"You know what I feel
like?"
Daniel's attention was
pulled away from the Jaffa's preparations to break camp to Harrison, who was
walking towards him slowly. He had been watching Sam walking among the Jaffa
like the goddess she was playing, bestowing her blessing upon those who served
her. She played the superior, smug Goa'uld far too well for Daniel's liking,
and he gained a sour feeling in his stomach as he continued watching her. So,
in a way, he was somewhat grateful for Harrison's distraction.
He raised a quizzical
eyebrow at her as she picked her way carefully across the muddy ground.
"Chicken tonight?" he asked glibly.
Harrison might have rolled
her eyes, but Daniel couldn't exactly tell with the cowl pulled over her head.
"No. A Jedi. One of those ones from the new movie. I swear there was a
woman wearing /exactly/ this outfit. Except she had these tattoos."
Daniel gave her a sidelong
look. "/You've/ seen the new movie?"
Harrison straightened, not
looking in his direction. "Teal'c dragged me there. Absolutely
insisted."
Daniel snorted,
remembering walking into the ready room to find Teal'c and Harrison playing
with a couple of Teal'c's training staffs as if they had been swords
(lightsabers, even?), and then suddenly realised, as Harrison spoke to him in
low tones, that she had used the brief spate of conversation to move closer to
him so they could speak more privately.
"Look, don't kill me,
ok? I wouldn't ask the Colonel this but... I really need to ask." Harrison
glanced towards Sam and then dropped her voice to a near whisper. "Do you
trust Sam? I mean really trust her. Even knowing everything that's /happened/
to her?" She gave him a speculative look from under the lip of her hood.
"Yes." Daniel
responded instantly, but there was a note of doubt underneath his voice that
Harrison obviously picked up on.
"Really?" She
said, glancing briefly at Sam, and the fabric of her travelling robe that
swirled about her with her movements.
"Getting taken over
by a Goa'uld /changes/ people, Daniel. We both know that. Let's not forget what
happened to poor Lieutenant Davison. And it's happened to Carter /twice/."
"One was a
Tok'ra." Daniel said, feeling moved, for some reason, to defend his former
team-mate on that level, although the recollection of the young SGC officer who
had taken his life after being taken over by, and then freed from, a Goa'uld
caused his stomach to clench and churn uncomfortably.
The young man had been
captured and taken as a host on one of the SGteam missions, before being
recaptured by the SGC a few months later. He hadn't been able to live with the
atrocities he had committed while possessed by the alien after the Tok'ra had
managed to extract it, and shortly after he was released from the infirmary he
had broken into the SGC and held the Tok'ra representative hostage, screaming
at her and calling her a creature of evil. After a standoff, he had seemed to
suddenly break down, shooting himself without warning. Daniel could still
remember the horrified scream of the Tok'ra as she ran away from the body as he
collapsed to the floor, her clothing soaked with blood.
Her colleague had wrapped
a cloak around her shivering shoulders as the woman had sobbed her heart out,
and gravely informed the SGC that it wasn't unknown of for past hosts to be
unable to cope with what they had done. The majority managed to cope,
convincing themselves that it /hadn't/ been their faults, as they weren't
responsible for their actions at the time. But occasionally, people couldn't
handle it. It was just human nature.
Jack had been forced to
leave the room before he threatened to kill them himself.
Now, it was Harrison's
turn to snort. "Same difference." She was fiddling with her sleeve,
and when Daniel looked down, he could see the hilt of her knife just poking out
of her sleeve, where she had secreted it. Harrison always had a habit of
fiddling with her weapons when nervous. It usually happened just before she
pulled them out and used them.
'How does an engineer get
quite so trigger happy?' Daniel wondered absently.
"I know you knew her,
but what I see doesn't exactly endear trust." Harrison hissed, shooting
nervous glances to see if they were being overheard. Special glances were given
to the Tok'ra, who had far more acute hearing than anyone else. "Look, if
you tell me, seriously, Daniel, that you really do trust her with your life, I
won't say another word."
She gave him an intent
look, her eyes only dimly visible.
Daniel said nothing,
simply looking away and increasing his stride to take him away from the
pseudo-Handmaiden, avoiding the question.
He thought he heard her
say, "That's what I thought," before she returned to her previous
position just behind Sam, but he wasn't quite sure.
He just stared at Sam, at
the expression she wore, and wondered how much she had changed. And whether
that change was for the worse.
**
SG1 and the Tok'ra that
accompanied them had set out from the Jaffa camp a few hours ahead of the
army's estimated time of departure. The plan was that they would arrive at the
compound with plenty of time to spare getting themselves into the best position
to infiltrate the compound, to allow them to observe the numbers and movements
of the guards, and to get ready for the battle.
As soon as they had
reached the small woodland that was the last barrier between them and the
compound, Harrison had started complaining about how awful her outfit was.
After all, it really wasn't her colour, the material tore so easily, and it was
/so/ uncomfortable, and wouldn't it be so nice to get back into her own
outfit...
"Daniel," Jack
said, breaking through Harrison's litany of complaints against her costume.
"Do you think that Harrison likes her outfit?"
"Actually yes, why
else would she talk about it so much?" He answered Jack, watching Harrison
for her response.
"Ha ha, very funny,
guys. Come on, can we stop? I really want to change."
"Please, anything to
make her stop." That was Jacob, looking like he wanted to strangle
Harrison if she continued talking.
"Oh alright, since
you asked so /nicely/." Jack said, waving the group to a halt and pulling
off his backpack to rummage around in it.
"What about you,
Sam?" Jacob said, turning towards his daughter, who was slightly ahead of
the main group.
Sam grimaced as she pulled
her heel out of the mud. "Exotic looking as this outfit might be,"
she groused, "It is /massively/ impractical. You can tell Goa'uld never
actually /do/ anything." She looked as if she'd give anything to get back
into the fatigues that had itched her so previously.
Daniel obliged, tossing
towards her a canvas pack similar to the one that Jack was handing to Harrison.
Harrison was already
halfway out of her clothing, and there was much coughing and sudden shuffling
as the male members of her team sought to give her some measure of privacy by
turning away. Daniel thought he heard her murmur something about men and their
ability to be embarrassed that he was certain wasn't complementary. Sam got
dressed as quickly as Harrison; quicker even, as there was less of her clothing
to remove.
Harrison uttered a
completely satisfied sigh as she finished getting changed back into her
fatigues, planting her feet firmly into sturdy boots, and lacing them, before
mussing her hair with glee and putting her cap on. "Much, much,
better." she said.
Sam looked similarly
relieved, although she was not as vocal about it. She simply smoothed down the
hair displaced from the action of getting changed, and set about lacing her
boots. Daniel found he was waiting for her to offer more comments on the
discomfort of Goa'uld clothing, or something along those lines, but she remained
stoically silent.
He missed those comments.
"I can see how you'd
not like that outfit anymore," Harrison said, slinging her rifle over her
shoulder as the group started moving towards their destination again. "Of
course, I hear that the Goa'uld has a great influence of its host. Maybe its
dress sense would have rubbed off on you."
Sam glanced at Harrison in
faint surprise at the statement. "Anqet was removed from me. Anything she
held over me is gone now."
"Really,"
Harrison said in a slow, sceptical drawl. "Sure you're not still being
influenced? You do a very convincing Goa'uld impression, Major."
"So do you," Sam
said, her arms folded across her chest.
"You're the one
getting very friendly with First Primes who should really only know you as a
Goa'uld." Harrison said. Their 'discussion' was starting to attract
attention, the others slowing, trying to draw close enough to be able to
intervene if things turned nasty. Their voices were still low enough to be
classed as a 'private' conversation.
"Whatever is between
Maktan and me is none of your business," Sam said in a low voice, coming
to a stop and glowering belligerently at Harrison.
"It's all our
business if it affects our mission," Harrison said.
No one was making any
pretence of not listening now. Jacob and Martouf were exchanging worried glances,
while the rest of SG1 just watched the two women with faint expressions of
alarm.
"Our mission would
fail without assistance," Sam said.
"You don't know
that," Harrison flicked her fingers vaguely in the air. "I think
you're dangerously compromised, /Major/,"
She spoke the other
woman's former title almost as an epithet. Her voice at such a low volume that
the only people other than Sam, who the comment was aimed for, to hear were
Daniel and Jack, who stood close enough to hear her.
Sam glared at her,
"Are you sure that you're not letting your imagination run away with
you?"
"Ah, so I was
/imagining/ that you were the one fucking a snake in a tent in the dead of
night." Harrison hissed venomously.
Sam went white.
"Harrison! You're
outta line!" Jack snapped at the woman, who sullenly fell silent,
clutching her rifle tightly and giving Sam once last final glare as she stalked
off to move to the point position that Jack indicated she should take.
Quizzical glances came from those who had stood too far away to hear the
statement, but Jack wearily waved them down. Martouf couldn't understand the
absolutely furious glower that Harrison threw in his direction before she
passed him, and all he could see of her was her back.
"We should be able to
see this building by now, right?" Daniel asked, changing the subject in an
effort to dispel the suddenly tense atmosphere.
There was a moments tense
silence as the party looked about them for sign of the compound their were
aiming for.
"There!" Martouf
said, pointing.
Dimly, through the trees
they could see the harsh, aggressive lines and sharp corners that was the
hallmark of Goa'uld architecture, along with the ever-present gold paint that
they covered everything with. It was ostentatious by anyone's standards, but
for the Goa'uld, it was the absolute norm.
They hid in the treeline,
silently scoping out the area, planning for the battle that would be upon them
in a few short hours.
**
They could hear the
footsteps of the approaching army, and in an unspoken signal, they had
assembled in the positions they needed to be in before they made their move on
the compound. The guards on the walls looked distinctly unnerved; although they
couldn't make out the words, the guards were gesturing to each other nervously,
apparently commenting on the army. They were gripping their staffs tighter, and
their eyes strayed to the direction the footsteps were coming from.
Then there was silence.
There was the sound of
distant shouting. It must have been Maktan, Daniel decided. Offering a
'surrender-or-die' ultimatum to whoever it was guarding the front entrance.
"Everyone
ready?" Jack whispered, glancing to either side of him, receiving nods
from everyone except one person.
Sam didn't acknowledge
him, she just stared towards the voices. "I remember wielding that
army," she said softly.
Harrison's fingers
twitched where they rested almost on Daniel's arm, and he looked at her. She
was biting her lip and looking at him with an 'I told you so' look in her eyes.
Daniel refused to think on it.
From the far side of the
building came the sounds of staff weapon fire, abruptly rending the air with
their screams. After a few moments, the breeze brought a faint smell of ozone
drifting towards them, giving testament to the sheer among of weapons fire that
must have been going on just out of their sight. The guard level facing them
abruptly thinned as the majority of the sentries were abruptly redirected to
fight the battle that had begun by the front gates. But there were still guards
remaining. Apparently they were wary of an attack from behind while they were
otherwise occupied. But while there were still Jaffa there, there were
distinctly fewer than there had been a few moments earlier.
"Much better,"
muttered Jack in satisfaction.
**
Part Eight: Once More Unto
The Breach...
**
They had taken out the
guards around the entryway quickly and efficiently. They had made it inside the
compound proper to find the corridors virtually deserted. What few Jaffa there
were seemed to be hurriedly heading towards the front entrance to confront the
army attempting to beat their way inside.
Martouf and Jacob managed
to locate a computer terminal not long after they breached the building, and
had picked out the most likely places that a Goa'uld would hold a group of
captives, and the group had taken off to try and follow a route that would take
them past these holding cells.
They had planned what
would happen. They would locate the team of scientists, Sam, Daniel and Martouf
would then take them out of the compound and try and get a headstart on heading
towards the 'Gate. The remainder of the team would try and retrieve the shield
generator or, if necessary, destroy it, before similarly high-tailing it back
to Earth. It wasn't a particularly complex plan, but hopefully one that would
work.
As they moved down the
hallways, there was a curious tension to the air. There was the need to move
slowly, to be cautious and able to avoid detection. But there was always the
knowledge hanging over their heads that the army attacking the compound was
probably the equal, or even lesser, to the army /within/ the Goa'uld facility,
and their victory wasn't certain. They all wanted to run, but settled for a
rapid near-jog in an attempt to merge stealth and speed.
Harrison was holding a
small scanner, which clicked every so often. From what she had said as she was
pulling it out of her pack, it was supposed to pick up on the radiation emitted
by the power source of the generator that the Earth scientists had been working
on. "We seem to be going in the right direction," she said, as they
headed down the hallways. "The power signature's getting stronger."
"Here!" Teal'c
sudden speech startled the rest of the team. They had overshot where Teal'c was
standing by a few meters, and he was reading the Goa'uld panel next to what
looked like a heavily fortified doorway. "It is a prison cell."
Daniel stepped close and
read the inscription. "It gives the location they were captured from and
their number. Looks like it's our lot."
Martouf was attempting to
work the door controls. "I cannot override the locking mechanism."
"Teal'c?" Jack
said nothing else, simply gesturing the Jaffa to the door.
"Stand back!"
Teal'c's order sent Daniel and Martouf ducking out of the way as he levelled
his staff weapon at the lock, frying the mechanism totally with a single shot.
The backup systems took over, unlocking the door and causing it to jump open a
fraction. Teal'c and Jacob both wedged their fingers into the small gap between
the doors, and pulled with all their might.
The smell that came out of
the chamber was enough to turn even the hardiest of stomachs. Harrison clapped
a hand over her mouth and looked like she was trying hard not to retch. Jack
cautiously preceeded the rest of the group into the dimly lit room, rifle held
tensely in his grip.
Inside were nearly a dozen
bodies, lying unmoving on the oddly stained stone floor. The postions they had
fallen in looked uncomfortable, they could only be dead, but still, Daniel, who
had immediately followed Jack, knelt tentatively down next to the body of a
young man next to him, feeling for a pulse in his neck. The man couldn't have
been more than thirty years old, and he was wearing a white labcoat covered in
hardened brown stains.
"Dead," he
finally pronounced, standing up.
A little distance away,
Teal'c was carefully rolling over one of the other bodies. A female. Her eyes
stared hollowly at the ceiling, and blood was encrusted around her neck.
"Their throats have
been cut," Teal'c said, gravely.
"Oh God." That
came from Sam, who felt compelled to leave the chamber. The smell made sense
suddenly; the heavy metallic taste in the air overlaying the distinctive smell
of death. The stains on the floor abruptly became obviously dried blood.
Outside, she was confronted with a pallid Harrison, but the woman had an odd
expression on her face. It was one of utter determination, and faint relief.
It was the latter that Sam
couldn't understand.
The rest of the team
quickly left the chamber, glancing back inside, Sam could no longer see the
bodies. They had probably vapourised them with a zat'nik'atel. They couldn't
take them back to Earth, and it would stop a Goa'uld resurrecting the
scientists only to torture them to death again.
What surprised Sam was how
easily she accepted that thought.
'Narim would have been
horrified,' she thought, almost absently. 'Poor man had no stomach for such
things.'
Then Sam forced herself to
stop thinking along those lines, and tried to focus her mind on the mission.
Her father's symbiote was speaking.
"We need to find this
shield generator, Harrison, is that scanner still doing its job?"
"Yes..."
Harrison cleared her throat and answered in a firmer voice, "Yes, it is.
We seem to be heading the right way. We're in a central corridor. If we carry on
eventually we should find where it's being held."
"Let's move,
then," Jack said, allowing the rest of the team to preceed him down the
hallway. He came up to Sam and rested a hand on her shoulder. "You
okay?" he asked quietly.
Sam swallowed, managing to
swallow past the sickly sweet taste in the back of her throat.
"Yeah," she said, pointedly looking away from the now empty chamber,
and moving off down the hallway. "Fine."
She didn't hear Jack's
infinitesimal sigh before he followed her.
**
They had been walking for
nearly five minutes, and Jack was about to impatiently remind Harrison that
they were rather short on time, when the engineer finally came through.
"Wait!" Harrison
held up her hand, moving the scanner about in a slow arc, before turning to her
left and walking to the oddly shaped doorway in one of the larger recesses in
the corridor walls (this was something at which Jack had always wondered; why
did the Goa'uld put in so much cover for enemies in their corridors, not that
he didn't appreciate the bad design, of course).
"It's through
there." She declared, pointing at the doorway and closing down her scanner
before slipping it back into a pocket.
They could clearly see
that there was a walkway that crossed over to a new part of the building, and
lead to a laboratory that seemed to be deliberately isolated from the rest of
the structure. For safety's sake perhaps? The doors were transparent, and
Harrison was already working on the locking mechanism. Just as she managed to
get the door open and it started to slide open, there was a distinctive 'whomp'
noise, a flash of light, and Martouf was thrown to the floor, hit by a staff
weapon blast. Jacob ducked into the archyway with Harrison, while Sam, Teal'c
and Daniel scattered, finding cover for themselves and started to return fire
at the group of over a dozen Jaffa that seemed to have found them.
Jack grabbed the material
of the shoulder of Martouf's jacket, and hauled him into a small recess in the
corridor wall, getting him out of the immediate line of fire. There was a nasty
looking burn on the left side of his torso, and the distinct smell of charred
flesh. Fortunately, it seemed, the wound had cauterised with the heat of the
energy weapon, so there was not bleeding.
"Marty? You okay?"
Martouf was obviously in
pain, clutching at his side, but even as Jack watched, the pain drained from
his face, and the Tok'ra nodded sharply. He guessed that Lantash had done
something to Martouf that he didn't feel the pain. Maybe given him an adrenaline
rush. Jack didn't care; they still had a reasonable able-bodied fighter, and
right at that moment, that was what they needed.
Jack ducked as the flash
from a staff weapon energy bolt seared the air mere inches over his head,
yelling across the hallway. "Jacob, Harrison, you two get to that lab. The
rest of us'll cover you. Retrieve the generator or destroy it. Either way, get
it done quickly."
Neither of the addressed
said anything in acknowledgement, simply nodding tersely in response and ducking
through the archyway and running towards the laboratory at the end of the
walkway. Sam took advantage of cover fire provided by Teal'c to move up to the
entryway, continuing to fire from her new position. They were taking down a
large number of Jaffa with their actions, but they must have been able to call
for help before they started to engage the SG team, as more seemed to turn up
to replace their fallen comrades.
Jack sent a fervant mental
plea to Harrison and Jacob to hurry up, and joined his teammates in attempting
to hold off the Jaffa as long as possible.
**
The laboratory that Jacob
and Harrison hurried into was sound proofed, which meant that the weapons fire
was oddly muffled, almost unrealistic in sound.
"It's that one!"
Harrison declared, pointing at one particular box, with black stencilled
numbers on the top. She turned around and glanced back towards the walkway,
checking to see if there was anyone unfriendly following her.
"Let's make
sure." Jacob said, moving to open the container.
Harrison glanced back at
him, tension written all over her face. "It doesn't matter, Jacob! Just
grab it and come on!"
Jacob was already kneeling
by the container. "I'll just check it's the right one!"
"It must be, it's the
only one large enough. Come on!! We don't have a lot of time."
But Jacob had managed to
unfasten the catches and was flipping back the lid. He froze mid-motion.
'That,' Selmak said,
anxiety rising, 'Is not a shield generator.'
Jacob stared at the
device; at its configuration, at its design. And he could only come to one
conclusion.
"It's a bomb,"
he breathed. "A massive bomb. That's what the Tau'ri scientists were
working on."
The distinctive sound of a
safety being clicked off a gun brought Jacob whirling around, and he looked up to
see Brenda Harrison staring down at him, gun held firmly in her hands and
unerringly aimed at his head. Her expression was calm, collected.
She knew.
"A question for you,
Jacob," She said, her voice oddly light. "Would you believe me if I
said it's nothing personal?"
**
Later, Sam would wonder
how it was she managed to hear the single shot from a gun in the heat of the
pitched battle between the Jaffa and her teammates. But at the time she heard
the sound, she instantly realised which direction the noise had come from, and
her heart had leapt into her throat.
"Dad..." she
whispered, and scrambled to her feet.
"Carter, get
down!" Jack's tone was nothing less than authoritarian, and yet Sam didn't
even hear the order. She leapt in the direction of the lab entryway, ducking
reflexively to avoid getting her head blown off, while her teammates were
forced to suddenly provide cover fire for their comrade, who had apparently
taken leave of her senses.
She didn't realise any of
this. She entered the relatively safe shelter of the walkway and started
pelting towards the lab as if all the demons of hell were chasing after her. Or
she was chasing after them.
She burst through the
doorway noisily, her weapon raised and ready.
Harrison abruptly got to
her feet, whirling around with her gun aimed directly towards Sam's heart. Sam
blinked, looking down at the device the other woman had been crouching next to.
Placed on its side was a rather hefty amount of C4 explosive, and an unarmed
detonator. It seemed that Sam had interrupted her placing of it.
But that wasn't kept her
attention. It was the body not far from Harrison's feet: her father, bleeding
profusely from a gunshot wound in his chest.
"Oh!" Harrison said,
her voice the epitome of breathy and scared. "Thank God you're here,
Samantha!" She gestured with her gun towards Jacob. "He tried to
attack me! I don't know what happened!"
Sam simply raised her own
gun, aiming it towards Harrison as the other woman snapped her arm around to
re-aim at her. Her affected fright was suddenly gone, replaced by utter
calmness.
"Do you really think
I'm that stupid?" Sam asked harshly, forcing herself not to look at her
father's body. If she did, she didn't know that she'd be able to do anything.
Think. Breathe. Anything.
Harrison shrugged lightly.
"Can you blame me for at least trying?" she asked, her expression
neutral.
"Put the gun
down." Sam said, trying to force as much authority into her voice as she
could while deep down in the pit of her stomach, blind panic started to gnaw
away at her.
"I don't think
so," said Harrison, before waving a free hand in the direction of device.
"You see there are some people back on Earth who were /very/ insistent on
getting this back to Earth. Of course, now I'm going to have to destroy it, and
a good portion of this moon along with it." A shade of something that
might have been sadness drifted across her face. "It's a pity that your
father recognised it for what it was."
"Who wanted it?"
Sam demanded, eyes narrowed.
Harrison tilted her head,
mouth flattening into an unimpressed line. "Who do you /think/?" she
asked.
"And the
others?" Sam said, finding this question more important than any others.
Found herself needing to know the answer. "Did they know?"
Harrison smirked.
"What? You really think Hammond would have authorised a mission to
retrieve a weapon capable of decimating a continent? I thought you knew him
better." She sighed heavily. "Now, if you really don't mind. I'm afraid
I'm going to have to kill you."
It all happened in an
instant. As she raised her weapon, and before Harrison could get off a second,
and doubtlessly just as lethal shot, Sam felt herself squeeze the trigger of
her own weapon, and saw Harrison stumble backwards, a bloom of red suddenly
appearing on the other woman's chest. She lay there on the hard stone floor for
a moment, groaning. One hand tried vaguely to reach up to her injury, before
her body suddenly and abruptly went slack. Without the aid of a symbiote,
Brenda Harrison expired quietly, and quickly.
The world seemed to have
shifted into black and white for Sam as she dropped to her knees next to her
father, clutching at him and tears starting to well in her eyes. Tears that,
for the first time in a long while, were shed not for herself and what had happened
to her in the past. They were shed for another, for a loved one who was
starting to pass.
"Sam..." she
heard her father whisper, barely able to hear him over the sound of her own
harsh breathing.
"No," she
whispered, pressing her forehead to his. "Please don't leave die. You
can't. I've only just come back."
**
There were no more Jaffa
coming at them, and even the distant sound of battle had faded. One side had
won. Whether it was their allies or their enemies, SG1 didn't know, but it was
fairly certain that whoever it was, they should really try and make their move
to depart and quickly. Teal'c and Jack led the way into the laboratory, with
Daniel supporting Martouf just behind them. Lantash had managed to suppress
most of the pain, but from the look on Martouf's face, there was only so much
the Tok'ra symbiote could do for him.
Daniel was so intent on
aiding the other man, that he almost walked them both into the backs of Teal'c
and Jack, who had frozen in the doorway of the lab.
"Oh God." Jack
was murmuring.
Brenda Harrison lay dead
on the floor. Sam was cradling her father's head in her lap, the gaping wound
in his chest showing there was no way he could be alive, she was bent over him,
and they could hear her soft crying.
"Help me,"
Martouf said quietly to Daniel, who followed the other man's instructions and
set him down by Jacob's body. The Tok'ra proceeded to lay his hand on his
superior's forehead, closing his eyes and obviously trying to get past his own
pain and focus.
"Harrison killed
him," Sam said, her voice almost inaudible. "And I killed her."
Martouf was staring in
stunned silence at Jacob's body, his hand now raised a little bit above his
friend's forehead. He slowly raised his head to stare at the woman who kneeled
at the other side of the body. "Samantha?" he asked quietly, his
voice shaking.
"There was no other
way." Sam's voice sounded distant, separated from her body.
Jack stared at the scene
before him, not understanding, and snapped, "Carter!" trying to get
her to focus and speak more coherently.
Sam raised her head,
looking directly at him. There was one thing that drew his attention. From her
lips trickled a small line of bright red blood.
Her own blood.
"I couldn't let him
die. And Selmak with him." Sam said, her voice miraculously calm and even.
Like she hadn't even realised what it was she'd done just yet. "He was
beyond saving. Selmak... is all that I have left." She raised a hand to
her lips, wiping away the blood, and staring at her red-smeared fingertips.
Martouf had moved a hand
to Samantha's forehead, and he closed his eyes, concentrating. "Selmak is
weak. But alive." He finally pronounced, and when he opened his eyes, it
was to find Samantha staring at him with a startlingly peaceful expression on
her face. That, most certainly, was not what he had expected.
**
Part Nine: Epilogue
**
Some days, Hammond wished
he had retired when he had originally planned to. Before the Stargate program
had been restarted, and before he had managed to get himself placed at the head
of one of the most strategically important facilities on Earth. If not /the/
most important.
But then he would think
about what he'd be missing, and, in some small way, it helped him cope with
that feeling.
Unfortunately, this was
one of those days where he contemplated packing up and walking out, going
straight to his daughter's house and playing with his grandchildren. If only to
remind himself that not everyone in this world was a backstabbing, politically
motivated saboteur who was out to get him.
Like apparently one of his
most trusted officers had been.
Jack tossed the file on
Hammond's desk he had been reading from. "Major Brenda Harrison. NID
special operations officer."
Hammond looked briefly
stunned for a moment, before he pulled the file closer and started flipping
through it. The image pinned to the first page was awfully close to Harrison's
SGC file, except in this she had short cropped blonde hair. "How did you get
this?" He asked.
"I have my
sources." Jack said obscurely, before quickly changing the subject.
"Apparently she was assigned to the SGC to keep an eye on all the Goa'uld
technology that was coming through. Her assignment to SG1 was a lucky
happenstance."
Hammond shook his head as
he carried on reading through the file. "Fluent in Goa'uld, expert on
Goa'uld technology. Assigned to the SGC for long term observation." He
looked back up at Jack. "How much damage did she do?"
Jack looked uncomfortable.
"You mean apart from reporting back everything we've been doing to the NID
for the past year?" He sighed, dropping into the chair on the opposite
side of the desk from Hammond. "The scientists that were researching on
our off-world base? They were on the payroll of the NID. According to what
Siler's determined from looking over the device, and from what little we've
managed to get out of the recovered scientists, it wasn't a shield generator at
all. It was a naqada enhanced weapon. The sort of thing that, if let off in the
right place, could probably send most of the eastern seaboard crashing into the
Atlantic. Seems that's why they were building it off-world. Just in case the
scientists got careless."
"And since
Harrison," Hammond said, realising what it was that Jack was telling him.
"Would have been the one to check over whatever was shipped back from the
site and send it on, no one would be any the wiser as to what was going on."
He leaned back heavily in his chair. "This is a major breach of
security." he said, understating the issue vastly.
"Her assignment was
to make sure neither the SGC, Goa'uld or Tok'ra got their hands on the
weapon." Jack continued, "That included destroying it if need be. Or killing
anyone who got in the way." Jack's voice became abruptly roughened, and he
cleared it sharply.
Hammond looked at him
shrewdly. "One of these days, Jack, you're going to tell me exactly where
you get that information."
Jack's mouth twisted.
"You don't want to know, General. Trust me."
Hammond sighed, looking
down at the file. "There's nothing much we can do about this. Nothing we
can prove."
Jack paused, before
reaching into his jacket and pulling out a somewhat rumpled manila envelope,
looking at the address on the front contemplatively before handing it over to
Hammond. "She probably figured she wasn't going to come back alive from
this mission. Security went through her lab this morning. And found a letter to
her family."
Hammond took the letter.
It was unsealed; Harrison would have known that the military would want to read
it before even thinking about passing it onto her family. "Wonder why she
didn't leave it with the NID." he mused.
"Probably didn't
trust them to give it to the family." Jack said, sighing slightly.
There was a faint rumbling
audible through the walls and floor as the Stargate activated. Hammond was
expecting it, so he didn't even turn to glance towards the window of his office
that looked out onto the briefing room. But still, his stomach did a brief flip
as he realised what it meant.
Jack must have realised
what it meant as well, for he fell abruptly silent, waiting.
There was a tentative
knock at the door, and at Hammond's answering, "Enter", Sergeant
Davis poked his head into the office, a faintly disturbed look on his face.
"Sirs," he said,
nodding to both Hammond and Jack when he saw the Colonel also seated in the
office. "The Tok'ra are here for the... ah..." Here he faltered.
'For the funeral.'
No one said it. No one
needed to.
"Thank you,
Sergeant." Hammond said, dismissing the man, who nodded and averted his
eyes from the suddenly tired look on the General's face and withdrew back to
the Control room.
"Right on
schedule," Jack said dully, obviously straining to inject some levity into
the situation, but failing miserably. "Let no one say the Tok'ra are not
punctual."
"They'll keep for a
minute." Hammond said, running a hand over his head.
Jack gave him a thoughtful
look. "What did you do with the device?"
Hammond stared hard at
him. "Unfortunately, the device was damaged during the firefight, and upon
examination back at the SGC it was found to be non functional and was disposed
of appropriately, and by order of the President." He paused, then lowered
his voice slightly. The unspoken method of speaking 'off the record'. "He
doesn't want NID to get their hands on that thing any more than anyone else.
Not to mention that if the Russians or European powers found we had a weapon of
mass destruction, they would not be happy."
That went without saying
really. Of course, they probably already knew. They always seemed to find these
things out somehow.
Jack would have said
something else, but a knock on the door by an airman, who opened in response to
Hammond's call, had him getting to his feet, as the Tok'ra leader Garshaw swept
into the office, followed closely by two more Tok'ra.
Martouf/Lantash, and
Samantha/Selmak.
Jack couldn't look away
from her. Sam was wearing the clothing she had come from Tollana wearing;
apparently she had no others. It had only been a scan few days since Selmak and
Sam had joined, but already the former Major seemed to be possessed of a
lightness of spirit that had not been there before.
"General
Hammond," Garshaw said courteously, inclining her head and shaking her
hands out of the encompassing sleeves of her travelling robe. "I am
honoured to stand before you once more, but the cirucmstances are not those in
which I would desire our reacquaintance."
Hammond merely shook her
hand and said, "Likewise, Councillor," rather than attempt to match
her for flowery prose. "I must admit, I was expecting to see more of your
people."
Garshaw smiled faintly,
but it was a sad smile, with no humour behind it. "Per'sus wished to
attend, as did a great number of our movement. Jacob was much loved among us.
We convinced him, however, that only those closest to Jacob should to to the
Tau'ri. The rest would have to suffice with our own traditions. We would not
wish for the SGC to be inundated with mourners, after all."
Hammond nodded to the
Councillor with a similarly small smile. "That's much appreciated,
Madame."
"We've arranged for
transport to take you to the service," he told her, gesturing to his
office door. "If you'll follow me?"
"Thank you,
General," The Tok'ra leader said.
As Garshaw moved to follow
Hammond out of the office, Jack turned to Sam, whose eyes had been faintly
unfocussed during the conversation. She seemed to snap out of it, however, as
he turned his attention to her. She tilted her head upwards and met his eyes.
He found himself relieved by the life he saw there. He had been expecting that
cold, brittle look he had been glimpsing since he had met up with her again.
But it wasn't there.
Maybe this Selmak thing
wasn't so bad.
"How are you feeling,
Sam?" Jack asked her quietly.
She tilted her head
upwards slightly, the corners of her mouth turning upwards. "Better."
Jack's eyes went to
Martouf, who was standing impassively just behind her. "How're the Tok'ra
treating you?"
Sam's smile managed to
reach her eyes now. "They're treating me just fine, sir." She told
him. "Although those crystal tunnels are extremely cold. Crystal doesn't
heat well."
Jack said, "I can
imagine," feeling a smile creep onto his face simply at seeing her own.
"Samantha,"
Garshaw gave her a meaningful look and tilted her head to the exit.
Sam smiled gently.
"Got to go," she said breezily, and moved past him to follow the
Council woman. Martouf followed her, giving Jack an unreadable look.
Jack sighed heavily.
Stilted interaction with a formerly close friend aside, the worst was still to
come.
**
The funeral for General
Jacob Carter had been a typically military affair, although Mark, Jacob's only
son and Samantha Carter's brother, had not liked that particular part. His
father's military friends were all there in full uniform, although Mark had
received a tiny shock when Sam hadn't turned up in her uniform, instead a sort
of gauzy grey, black and silver affair that looked vastly impractical, but Sam
had worn comfortably. He had asked a Colonel O'Neill (which was what the name
on his uniform said, at least) whether he knew what that was about, and the man
had just stared at him for a very long, uncomfortable moment, before he told
Mark that Sam wasn't in the military any longer and had no uniforms.
Mark had a feeling there
was more to the story than that, but had decided not to push.
After the ceremony, they
had returned to Mark's house for a small reception. His wife, Laura, had
disappeared for the moment, probably taking their children to bed. His daughter
had been rather besotted with a grandfather she had only met a few times,
whenever he was around on brief leave from whatever it was he had been doing.
So all through the service, she had been crying, and upon reaching their home,
had fairly cried herself to sleep.
He had been moving quietly
around the subdued group, mostly military people, oddly enough, who claimed
they used to work with Sam. He had to wonder why his father, who had said he
was on detatched duty, would form attachments with the people at Cheyenne, who
supposedly worked on radio telemetry. Or something.
He greeted George Hammond,
the Texan general he knew had been a friend of his father's, accepting the
words of sympathy demurely before moving on to greet a petite brunette Doctor,
and the large, oddly silent fellow who she had been talking to her. He was
wearing a stetson. Indoors. Mark decided not to point this out to the odd man,
who wouldn't give him his name for some reason. The man looked large enough to
drop kick Mark through a window, and in Mark's mind, that made him a person you
did not want to offend.
He had been doing this
mingling for some time when he realised there was one person he had barely
spoken two words to since she had arrived at the funeral. She had swept past
him, two companions with her, and they had sat either side of her while they
were in the chapel. Her head had been bowed, and a few times he had caught her
lips moving as if she were talking to someone. He had thought that she was
perhaps praying, although Sam had never been a religious woman.
His eyes were drawn
towards the back of the room, where those three people were standing slightly
apart from everyone else. His sister, an older woman, and a man; the latter two
Mark did not recognise. He had noticed others going up to them, speaking
briefly, probably offering condolences, and making a small effort at
conversation. But no one stayed longer than a few minutes. The trio seemed
slightly separate from everyone else, and Mark decided to go up to them.
As he drew closer, he
realised that one of them had noticed his approach, and whatever the three were
talking about, they had abruptly stopped. But what suprised Mark is that he was
almost sure that they hadn't been speaking English. It was strange, what little
he had heard of it. It sounded guttural and made up, like Klingon on Star Trek.
But Sam smiled gently at his approach, and the other two turned around to see
what was coming towards them.
"Mark," Sam said
warmly as he came up to her, holding her arms out in welcome.
The embrace he received
from his sister was somewhat awkward, as if she was having trouble remembering
how to hug someone properly. It was odd; Sam had always been quite
demonstrative when it came to her feelings for other people. "How're you
doing?" he asked her.
"Been better, but
then I've been worse," was Sam's soft, and oddly spoken answer. As if
there was more she wasn't saying. Mark and Sam had spent years estranged from
each other after their mother died and Sam had joined the military, but they were
still brother and sister. There were just some things that siblings couldn't
hide from each other.
"Ah... Mark, I
haven't introduced you," Sam said hurriedly. "This is Mark, my
brother."
The dark haired woman
inclined her head and smiled. "Greetings."
The man next to her
offered his hand courteously. "I am honoured."
"This is... Yosef,
and this is Martouf." Sam said, pausing awkwardly before the names for
some reason that Mark couldn't discern.
"Interesting
names," he said, smiling faintly as he shook their hands.
The pair glanced at each
other. "Um... quite," was all Yosef said, sounding somewhat nervous.
Odd. She hadn't looked nervous when he walked up. But now her whole countenance
had changed. Knowing Sam, she was probably associating with someone not all
there in the head.
"They worked with Dad
just before he died." Sam continued.
Or maybe not. Mark nodded
his head slowly. "You're both in the military then?"
"You could say
that." Martouf said, sounding deeply amused. Mark had the distinct
impression that this Martouf was laughing at him.
Mark, now closer to his
sister than he'd been during the funeral, glanced at her and asked, out of
curiosity, "Where'd you get that outfit? Looks expensive."
"Tollana," Sam
said, smoothing out an invisible wrinkle in the fabric.
"Oh," Mark
hesitated. "That the new place in the high street?"
"Not exactly,"
Sam said, blinking at him with a faintly teasing smile skittering across her
face. "I could tell you how to get there, but then I'd have to kill
you."
Yosef coughed.
"Mark, while you're
here..." Sam paused, and her eyes skittered off to the side. "Uh... a
friend of dad's, Selmak, she uh... wanted me to pass on a message."
Mark didn't see Yosef and
Martouf exchange smiles. He watched his sister pause, as if listening to
something, before she refixed her eyes on him.
"She says...
said..." There was another odd pause, and Sam closed her eyes. Mark felt a
brief pang. She must have been so torn up. He knew that dad and she had been
close. After a moment, she opened her eyes, and her voice seemed different
somehow. Stronger. "Your willingness to make up with your father was a
great comfort to him. He missed you dearly when the two of you were alienated,
and in his final moments, he was glad that he had had the opportunity to make
his peace with you."
Mark tried to swallow past
the lump in his throat, his mouth suddenly dry. "She was there when he
died?"
Sam inclined her head
infinitesimally. "She was."
"Was it...?"
"There was no
pain." It was Yosef, and bizarrely, she was speaking with excactly the
same gentle strength that Sam was. She placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Selmak made sure of that."
"We grieve with
you." added Martouf quietly.
Mark felt choked up for a
moment, and drew a little strength from Yosef's hand on his shoulder. At some
unspoken signal, she removed her hand, and he looked up, back at his sister.
"Tell Selmak thank
you." Mark said, not trusting himself to speak above a whisper.
"I will," Sam
said, turning away slightly from him.
The conversation it
seemed, was over, and Mark found himself walking away before he even realised
he had been dismissed. Laura, his wife, saw him wandering through the crowd and
came up towards him, spare drink in hand.
"What's wrong?"
she said as she saw the peculiar expression on his face.
"Sam's associated
with some really weird people these days," he said to his wife.
She just looked at him, turning
her nose up slightly. "Well, of course dear, she's in the military."
"I mean really
weird." He qualified, looking back towards the group he had just walked
away from.
Laura laughed. "Well,
it's not like they're aliens or anything, so stop fussing."
Then her attention was
called away as Daniel Jackson appeared to start choking on his tea.
**
Standing alone in the
small back sitting room of Mark Carter's household hours later, when most of
the guests had left the Carter residence, Jack held a letter in his hands, the
words written on it dimly visible in the light from the street lamps that
spilled through the windows.
An intelligence officer
had handed it to him, after checking that it contained no information that
could be of use to them, and telling him they had found it in Harrison's lab,
addressed to him and him alone. Jack had dimly noted the rather sympathetic
expression on the man's face. Obviously he had read it, and knew what it
contained. Jack had been more than a little surprised to have received a last
letter from his late and traitorous second in command, but surprise had quickly
turned to a faintly crushing sensation as he read it. He had never told Hammond
that he had received this private communication.
Jack held the neatly typed
letter in his hands, creases having appeared in the formerly pristine piece of
paper after repeated handing of it on his part. No matter how many times he
read the contents, they didn't seem to be sinking in.
Dear Colonel O'Neill,
Horribly formal, isn't it? We've known each other
for nearly two years now, and we're still on ranks.
Or presumably we were. If you're reading this, I'm
dead. As a doornail. I won't bore you by writing a
bitter missive, after all I'm not dead right now,
and by the time you read this, I'll probably be
beyond caring.
I thought long and hard about what to put in this
letter. Obviously a different one from the letter
to my family, which you will have doubtless have
discovered by now after going through my lab. You'll
probably know what it says, because if I'm dead
enough to warrant my lab being searched, it's because
you know.
I also won't bore you by pleading to you for some
sort of posthumous forgiveness for my actions. I
offer no apology for what I did, as everything I did,
I did for Earth, whether or not you agree with the
methods of my superiors. You probably know everything
you need to know by now, so I won't reiterate.
The only thing I'm sorry about is deceiving you,
Daniel and Teal'c. I know you resented my assignment at
first, and I know that I never quite mixed with the
group. I know you were all hurting over what happened
to Major Carter. You especially. I like to think that
eventually you saw I could be trusted and started to
treat me as more than an outsider. The only thing I'm
sorry about is betraying that trust. I wish I hadn't
been assigned to SG1, I could have carried on merely
funnelling information, but, alas, that is not the
way of things.
One last request of you, sir. And if everything we went
through as SG1 means anything to you, please honour it.
Make sure my daughter is alright, please? She had a
hard enough time when her father was killed, and if anyone
should tell her of my demise, I humbly request that it be
you. She always liked you, after all. Especially after
you gave her that damned dog.
I understand, though, if you feel you cannot do this.
Yours sincerely,
Brenda Harrison
p.s. I was never screwing Siler.
Jack smiled faintly upon
reading the last line, remember how often he had teased her on the subject
after she and Siler had wound up kissing under the mistletoe one rather raucous
Christmas party down in one of the bars in Colorado Springs proper.
For all he had mistrusted
her in the beginning, Harrison had eventually seemed to be a suitable
replacement for the Major that they had all thought killed on some alien world.
She had eventually been able to make Daniel laugh, and had enjoyed sparring
with Teal'c, and had seemed like a good person, albeit with dubious taste in
hair dyes. He had been surprised, along with Daniel and Teal'c, that six months
into her service with SG1, they found out she had a daughter (that she was raising
alone after her husband had been killed during a botched mugging) when she was
hurriedly called out of a briefing to her daughter's school, where her eight
year old child had just broken her arm after falling from the school's climbing
frame. Her teammates had gone with her to the hospital for moral support, Jack
accompanying her a second time, and giving her and Meghan, the child, a lift
back to their home while Harrison's own car was in the shop for repairs. The
next time he saw Meghan, when Harrison had invited her teammates to her home,
he had given her a stuffed toy dog that had a bandage over its foreleg
(surreptitiously lifted from Dr. Frasier's infirmary).
And now he would have to
go to Meghan and tell her that her mother was never coming back to her.
There was a stinging in
his eyes, and a dryness in his throat, but Jack gave no outward signs on this,
merely folding up the letter and replacing it in his trouser pocket. Just in
time, it seemed. Behind him, he heard the distinctive sound of the door being
opened, and he was thankful that he would not have explain the paper's
importance.
He looked up at the figure
that had entered the empty room. "Carter?"
"Colonel
O'Neill."
Jack cleared his throat
and corrected himself as the oddly accented words came back to him.
"Selmak?"
Selmak inclined her head
in acknowledgement of the question of whether she or her host were in charge.
"Samantha is sleeping."
Jack gestured to his
throat. "You're not using the... ah..."
"The vocal
distortion?" Selmak smiled faintly. "No, I believed that it would be
best not to 'frighten the natives' by using a voice so obviously alien."
Jack looked at at the
woman before him. She wore Sam's face, spoke with her voice, but to look at
her, see her posture, hear her accent and feel the steely, alien glint in her
eyes, and he knew it was not his friend. It was so profoundly /wrong/.
"How's Sam doing?" he asked, trying not to let his discomfort show.
"She is...
damaged." Selmak closed her eyes sadly, shaking her head. "On such a
fundamental level. There is a self-hatred there. And a desperate need to be
loved. A feeling of being unworthy. It distresses me that my host feels thus,
and I can only hope that through our partnership I can help her in some small
way."
Jack folded his arms,
leaning back against a side table that was pushed against a wall. "And she
couldn't have done that without getting a snake in the head?"
If Selmak took offence at
his words, she gave no indication. "With respect to the doctors of the
Tau'ri, no. This sort of damage is beyond anything your people will have seen.
And I confess, it is beyond anything I have ever seen. I have taken hosts near
death, whose bodies have required painstaking attention to rebuild on the
cellular level, but a host's mind is another matter. Even if I could repair the
physical damage, which is, unfortunately, beyond even my ability, the kalesh of
a person, their soul, is something that no amount of medical aide can
cure." She sighed. "Most hosts do not react in such a negative
fashion to being taken over by a Goa'uld for a relatively short period of
time."
Jack frowned, clearly not
understanding.
"Let me try to
explain," Selmak said, speaking slowly as if trying to find the right
words to use. "Anqet never fully integrated herself with her host. She was
trying to extract memories from Samantha, and thought that the best way to do
that was not to subsume the host personality. Ironically, if she /had/, she
would have been much more successful. Samantha, in that way, had a certain amount
of leeway. That leeway led her to experience the full horror of what was
happening to her.
"When Anqet slept,
Sam found herself with free reign in her mind. That was how she found a friend
in Maktan. The first night that happened, she tried to escape, but he caught
her, and quickly found out what was happening. He came to her every night while
Anqet slumbered, and they forged a friendship of the sort only found in shared
enslavement. He by his position as First Prime, she as the host of a
Goa'uld."
Jack stared at Selmak, not
wanting to know, but feeling he would kill himself if he didn't ask. "Was
she... was she in control the whole time then?"
Selmak hesitated. "I
am not saying that. But..." The Tok'ra paused, trying to think how to
phrase it. "While she not in total control, she could have stopped what
was happening at any time. She did not. In some way, experiencing this torment
daily convinced her that there was nothing she could do about it. She was
terrified of her own thoughts, fearing they would betray her and her freedom.
So she did nothing. I cannot say I blame her for that. But now I know she let
her lover die when she could have saved him. And I fear for Samantha's sanity
if she ever discovers that."
Jack swallowed, his throat
dry. "You'll be hiding that from her, I assume?"
Selmak bowed her head, not
meeting his eyes. "I will. It is for the best. The Human mind often
suppresses Human memories that would threaten their mental stability. The
damage to her ensures this is not the case. So I will do that for her. I will
suppress those memories, and as long as she is with me, I will devote myself to
healing her, body and soul. For that is the least I can do to one who gave
herself freely to me."
Jack thought this was
perhaps the most he had ever heard Selmak say. "I hope you can help
her," he said sincerely.
Selmak gave him a faintly
sympathetic smile, seeing the pale look upon him. "I hope so too."
She withdrew silently, and
Jack shivered, feeling a chill in the air that had nothing to do with how warm
it was there.
**
Martouf had been rather
fascinated by the Tau'ri funeral service. The Tok'ra had a simple ceremony for
commemorating those who had passed. It was merely a gathering of whoever could
attend, upon which whoever had been close to the deceased would say a few
words. They couldn't really arrange anything elaborate with the bodies. Most of
the Tok'ra that passed on were enshrouded in cloth, and laid to rest in
specially grown rooms that were then collapsed, merging the Tok'ra body with
the rock itself, and ensuring there was no way that the Goa'uld could find and
resurrect the bodies should the base be compromised.
He had found the Tau'ri
ceremony gloomy, and rather depressing.
On Martouf's homeworld,
there was a ritualistic three days of mourning after someone died. For three
days, there were feasts every night, during which the life of the deceased
would be talked about and celebrated. On the first night, they would take about
their childhood, on the second, their adulthood, and on the third night, they
would talk about their death, and how they would be celebrated in the Halls of
Varin, in the afterlife.
Martouf had kept it rather
well hidden from his symbiote, who was scornful of religion of any sort, as
were most of the Tok'ra symbiotes, that he still kept those stories he had been
told to him in childhood by his mother close to his heart, and he thought of
his family, long dead, and imagined them celebrating their reunions with their
ancestors in the Halls, watched over by the Great Lord Varin, and the Lords and
Ladies who had risen up and defeated the Foul Gods of long ago.
And now he imagined Jacob
there as well. And he imagined that his friend was with his wife, who Martouf
knew he had missed so dearly.
Of course he knew that
Varin and the UnderLords had been the original slaves brought to his homeworld
from the Tau'ri, and the Foul Gods were the Goa'uld, who had been driven off
the planet by the uprising, deciding that they really weren't worth their time.
That was what Lantash had told him, in laborious, pedantic detail when Martouf
had first shared these treasured stories with his symbiote, and since then,
Martouf had kept any such ideas hidden away in the private corner of his mind
that Lantash kept away from out of respect.
The Tau'ri tradition was
so different to what he had been expecting from them. There were so many people
crying and sobbing. For one to grieve was naturally, Martouf understood, but he
didn't understand the wallowing in grief that seemed to be the cultural norm
for them. But Sam seemed to feel better for having undergone the ritual, so
Martouf would not say a word against it.
Her eyes were redrimmed,
he saw, as she entered the Gateroom, where he was already standing on the ramp,
and had been waiting for her. On the rather long trip back from the house of
her brother (in a bizarre contraption that as far as Lantash had been concerned,
was entirely too cumbersome, and should be entirely replaced by transport rings
if at all possible), they had been sitting in the back seat, and silently she
had been crying, leaning on his shoulder and soaking his shirt front. He had
said nothing, simply stroking her hair and letting the tears come.
She seemed better for it,
and that was all he could ask for. Selmak was good for her, he decided.
He took a few steps down
the ramp, smiling at her, as Garshaw entered the Gateroom with Hammond, and the
remaining three of SG1. They had been in the conference room that overlooked
the Chaapa'ai, discussing something to do with the Tok'ra. Martouf had not been
let in on the details, but he hadn't come to the Tau'ri on the matter of
business. He had been there to pay his respects to Jacob, and to be there for
Samantha.
"I understand,
General Hammond," Garshaw was saying, "You will have full support
from us in this matter."
"That's all we ask,
Ma'am," Hammond said, nodding and accepting the hand she offered. Garshaw
seemed to be becoming quite adept at the Tau'ri gesture.
"Chevron seven,
locked."
The Chaapa'ai had been
dialling noisily behind Martouf and now it activated in a burst of energy that
he didn't see, but his hair was ruffled faintly by the air displacement from
the vortex forming and then dissipating over the event horizon.
"Samantha,
Martouf," Garshaw said, beckoning her two subordinates with her as she
made her way up the ramp.
Samantha took one last
look at her former teammates, where she had been standing nearby, and started
away, offering a softly spoken farewell to them. Jack O'Neill was the one to
call her attention back to them as she started away, following Garshaw.
"Don't be a
stranger," he called to her.
She turned back to him,
and gave him a dazzling smile Martouf chose not to see. He still remembered
vividly what had happened to them in the forest, in that campsite, and in a
quiet discussion with Selmak when Samantha had not been listening, he had
learned how disturbed Samantha had been at the time. Lantash and he had
subsequently agreed that they would make no issue of the matter with Samantha.
They would not mention it or act in response to it unless she did.
It was rather painful to
do so, and know that even after that, she might not feel for them as they did
for her.
She paused before the
Stargate, eyes closed as she faced the event horizon, breathing deeply as if
steadying herself. A tear faintly glimmered in her eye. He stopped, on the
verge of stepping into that energy himself, looking at her in concern. She had
seemed to be becoming so happy. She had spoken to him of the peace of mind she
felt now that she was blended with Selmak, the ability to express her emotions
once more. But... if the thought of returning to the Tok'ra was causing her
tears...
"Are you going to be
alright?" He asked her as she stood there, the gently rippling light
illuminating her face and giving her a faintly ethereal look.
She was quiet for a long
moment, and he was about to repeat his question when she took a deep breath,
and looked towards him with a peaceful expression. "I think I am."
she said, sounding happier than she had in years. She reached out, brushing the
back of his hand with her fingertips in a casual gesture that somehow sent
shivers up his arm. "I know I am." she whispered, and without looking
back, stepped through the Stargate.
Martouf just smiled and
followed.
- The End