On the 13th of February, every year for the last four years, Major Samantha Carter observed a little ritual.
From the depths of her wardrobe, she retrieved a rosewood box her mother gave her for her twelfth birthday. Previously used for jewellery, in recent years it had served another purpose.
A box of memories.
Specific kinds of memories.
Sitting on the lounge, with her feet curled up beneath her, Sam closed her eyes.
This ritual became harder each year.
Lifting the lid, she revealed four items of varying shapes and sizes. Each was neatly packed into the velvet lining of the case, and she picked them out one by one and turned them over in her hands.
First came an old, worn bible. Leather-bound, small enough to fit in her palm. The worn gilt lettering gleamed dully in the light: *HOLY BIBLE.*
She set the bible down on the coffee table, the brown leather blending with the wood surface.
Next out was a small silvery device with two coloured buttons on it.
The item looked the way people on Earth had imagined future technologies would look like back in the sixties and seventies - silvery-grey with coloured buttons and lights. However, this was no transporter device or ray gun, but something else.
The device was laid down on the table, shimmering matte silver in the lamplight.
Next was a tiny cloth bag whose contents jingled, and she tipped them out in her hand. Three small sinuous circles gleamed up at her, and she laid them down on the cloth bag.
Finally, there was a black velvet package, which she opened with quick neat movements to reveal an oversized square-cut emerald. It's green depths regarded her stolidly, with none of the lightning sparkle of a smaller gem.
She placed that on the table, beside the other three items.
Her own memorial service.
Four items. Four men.
Four men gone from her life.
Her fingers trailed across the bible and she picked it up.
Opening the cover she read the fly-leaf: *To Jonas. May it guide you in dark times. Anna-May Hanson*
She had been engaged to Jonas Hanson for a while, but as time drew on, Sam found herself without the will or desire to marry him. Returning his rings, they parted, and she supposed him gone from her life.
Certainly, it would have been easier than watching him sent to his death.
The dedication was highly ironic. Jonas had lived the last few weeks of his life with delusions of godhood. He had murdered several of his team, who-knew how many locals on P3X-513, and had been about to kill Colonel O' Neill and Captain Connor when Daniel led the revolt against him.
A charismatic man, bold and charming in his own way, silver-tongued and passionate in his beliefs. She'd loved him in her own way. The young woman she was then had wanted a man who would adore her forever; but adoration had turned to worship, and worship to obsession and she had severed all ties between them before the obsession turned to madness.
Putting the bible down, she picked up the silvery object.
Sam had given the Narim of the Tollan a cat; and he had returned her his emotions.
Gently, she turned the device over in her hands.
In five years, it had been used less than a half-dozen times - usually when she badly needed to be loved. After Jolinar's possession of her, following the news of her father's cancer, upon their return from Hathor's planet, and in the painful aftermath of Colonel O'Neill's homecoming from Edora, she had taken the device out and let Narim's love and admiration wash over her like a waterfall, drowning her fears and insecurities in the quiet depths of his feeling.
She had 'played' the device only once after the destruction of Tollana; sitting in her office, trembling as she heard his last words from the transmission. "*.I just want you to know that.*"
They would never know what the Tollan wanted them to know, whether a benediction or a curse. Tollana and her people - including Narim - were gone.
He'd been a man of unusual integrity and will, to destroy his people and his culture doing what he knew to be right: denying an evil race the use of Tollan technology to further their evil. Narim had been able to do what the Curia and High Chancellor Travell could not: the right thing.
Sam had admired him and his people, but she couldn't call what she felt for him 'love'. To her, he was a friend, nothing more. No matter what emotions he felt for her, she couldn't feel the same for him.
Next were the rings. She fitted two of the rings together, slipping the twisted bands neatly into each other with a faint click, and studying the resultant band they created. Goa'uld lettering spelled out the phrase her father had translated for her; *Two as one.*
The rings had belonged to Martouf-Lantesh, exchanged with Rosha-Jolinar a lifetime ago. Such rings signified a bond between two Tok'ra equivalent to human marriage. Five rings in total comprised the set: two rings for one Blended pair, two rings for the other Blended pair, and a fifth ring that could be kept by either partner. Each pair of rings twined in and out of each other, symbolising the host-symbiote blending - not just one heart and mind, but two. Sam picked up the 'fifth' ring: the metalwork depicted two symbiotes joined mouth-to-mouth, their tails ending in human hands which clasped together. Host and symbiote, two two-as-ones becoming one. *We love as one, and we mourn as one.*
Martouf was dead, killed once when Sam shot him twice with a zat gun; and killed twice when the Tok'ra removed the symbiote Lantesh from him. Lantesh survived his host, but later died giving Sam and her team the chance to escape from Anubis' Jaffa on Ravanna.
Of the quartet: Lantesh, Martouf, Rosha, and Jolinar - only Sam remained as the repository of Jolinar's memories through the ages. She had cared about Martouf-Lantesh, but had never explored it beyond the bounds of friendship. The fear of never knowing which emotions were hers, and which were Jolinar's kept her within those bounds.
Independence was a trait the Tau'ri valued, perhaps to a fault. Sam knew that to remain sane, she needed to know if she loved a man herself, not at the promptings of a dead symbiote.
Then, too, the memories from Jolinar were only fragments, but the emotions carried within them were too powerful for Sam to comfortably deal with. They were deeper than anything she'd ever known or would know.
The rings gave a metallic chink as they were set down, the intertwined band of Martouf-Lantesh separating into the two silver bands as they lay on the tiny jewellery bag.
Contrasting with the lightweight rings, the emerald was heavy and chunky. A gift from Orlin of the Ascended. The alien man made the emerald from the 'ordinary, everyday items' lying around her house, and had not known that emeralds did not come large enough to sit comfortably in your palm.
Shy and innocent as a child in some of his mannerisms, awkward as an adolescent in others, frighteningly advanced scientifically; he had lived in her house for over a week, professing his feelings for her. She had been fond of him - liked him, even; but his understanding of the universe to hers had been as the sun to a candle and she felt the difference between them too keenly for there to be more.
The emerald was placed back on the table and she closed her eyes in silent communion with the memories of four men who had loved her, and who were now lost to her.
*
End of Part One
Story Notes: AUTHOR'S NOTES: A response to Alli Snow's challenge on the Sam and Jack list: Is Valentine's Day hard for Sam and Jack to get through? Must feature a stuffed toy and flowers. This part doesn't even vaguely resemble an answer to the challenge, but it's coming! And Sam really has the worst luck with guys, doesn't she?
End Notes: feeeeeed me! Oh feeeeeed me! Seldear
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognisable characters, settings, etc, are the property of their respective owners. Any original characters and plots are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. ... [ read more ]