"Good-bye, Samantha."
The light dimmed, and it made the pain flare up. Sam called Jolinar's name and reached for her ('her,' now, because of Martouf and Rosha. How sexist, she would later tell herself) but there was nothing to grab.
"The lunatic fringe, is that it, Samantha?" Jolinar said. She was whirled away from her voice and dropped, hard. She recognised what she saw then as death, just as the Tok'ra had promised she would: remains that remained no more, that disintegrated and fell apart until they could not be put together again. Still there, inanimate, anchoring themselves at the back of Sam's consciousness, a code without a key. One thing that Sam would not remember, except in nightmares where the wordless was made flesh, was the small electric surge that was Jolinar's last thought, and the first heartbeat that latched onto Sam's mind and grounded her where she belonged, before returning to its separate life. Even then she struggled for a moment with the first-hand sensations that came crawling back in. She felt something on her nose first, then sheets against her arms and a hand holding hers. She opened her eyes and Jack was there. He looked tired.
"You did it Sam," he murmured. She was becoming aware of people rushing around her and of the glare of red alert sirens. "You won."
Her tongue was heavy in her mouth, sluggish as if from lack of practice. She had to explain because she knew how Jack felt about the Goa'uld. "Wasn't me."
"Oh yes, it was." His fingers tightened around hers, ever warm. "You hung in there."
She had to explain because the enormity of it made her quiver. "The Goa'uld gave its life for me. It saved me."
Jack's grip loosened slightly. He doesn't believe me, she thought. When no response came, the tears, thick and cool, were still a surprise.
*********************************
the ashkra?
"I told them he would come. I thought the Jaffa would believe me."
Sam was disbelieving, too, of Jolinar's calm as the man in an Air Force uniform gunned down the guards. She expected him to turn and shoot them, too, but he didn't. That was what she should have expected, after all, because he was Goa'uld through and through, and that meant a long speech.
if he splattered your brains, Jolinar said a little curtly, that would leave no chance of survival
The ashkra began to talk about orders and a sentence. She couldn't tell whether Jolinar was afraid or not and decided she wasn't. The Tok'ra meant everything she was saying, about freedom and the good fight. It didn't particularly make her feel better. Jolinar had been willing to steal Sam's body, something supposedly abhorrent to her, and willing to kill Jack in the 'gate room. She wasn't sure that there was anything she would stop at.
The ashkra raised his right hand. The ribbon device, so delicately carved, glowed indifferently.
you must trust me now, Jolinar said, and not fight
what are you going to do -
Jolinar spread herself. Over Sam's heart, first, and then over her brain, clamping herself along nerve endings. She slapped away Sam's scream and knocked her down with a punch that was so fierce that Sam nearly blacked out.
i can't save you if -
And it was Jolinar's turn to scream. Her pain flooded over Sam, a thousand needles, some sharp, some rough, some alive and slippery. The choking was real now, the hold on her heart burning. At one point she felt Jolinar slide and fall, and their two minds pass each other. One silver wave crashed against Sam, making the new pain hers, and making her insane.
jackplease!danielteal'cohgoddadohdaddaddaddadohdadidon'twannadiejolinar!
There was a fumbling and hundreds of shivering tendrils, and the pain receded like too much light at the tip of a sunset. Jolinar was holding her and pushing her away; even when Sam understood what she was doing she couldn't find it in her to resist so she could help her, the way she might have fought on to save one of SG-1 until her own head had been shot off.
not your fight
The ashkra lowered his hand. Her heart had stopped beating and her breathing was barely a ripple. She fell to the floor, then asleep.
"Samantha?" The voice was a crackle. "I'm dying, Samantha." Sam couldn't see anything. Darkness everywhere, but she was moving.
jolinar?
"I am going to tell you things. You must listen."
What she heard made little sense. Numbers, co-ordinates, names. Somewhere she heard her name, too, but it wasn't Jolinar's voice. She was moving faster now, almost floating. There was a rip in the distance, and it left an echo after Jolinar's words.
"Come on. You must go quicker."
where
"Home."
jolinar you are crying
The tears were a name, a face, pieces of love and regret, over and over, uncontrolled. Tears.
Martouf.
They came hard and deep now. Anguished and intoxicating.
"Good-bye, Samantha."
The light dimmed, and it made the pain flare up. Sam called Jolinar's name and reached for her ('her,' now, because of Martouf. How sexist, she would later tell herself) but there was nothing to grab.
"The lunatic fringe, is that it, Samantha?"
*********************************
In her dreams, Jolinar didn't recognise her. They weren't even dreams, when Sam thought about it, but replays, memories that hadn't found a home yet, because towards the end Jolinar hadn't been that delicate. It made her head throb with dull little flashes, which no pain killer could quite smother. She put one hand under her pillow, where it felt clean and cold, and tried not to think at all. She was staring at the glass of water on the bedside table. It made her want to cry.
She wanted someone else to be here, wanted to hold them and be held, wanted to know for sure that _this_ wasn't the dream. But when Daniel had come and then Cassie, she had been unable to speak a word to either of them, although knowing that Cassie was all right gave her such relief that it was though a fever she didn't know she had had left her. It was easier to touch and smile to Cassie because the girl expected nothing, and simply gave of her love. But Teal'c's sense of decorum made him stand at a distance and wait for permission; Daniel's sensibility left him struggling with his own pain over what had happened to her, and fear for Sha're. Jack was afraid, too, but of what Sam might have become, and what Jolinar might have done to her.
And none of this was over, or perhaps ever would be - not just the trauma of Jolinar's invasion but everything that had followed. She carried something of Jolinar inside of her now, but had no idea how much. In those dream-memories she crept into Jolinar's form and _became_ Jolinar; in certain waking moments it was Jolinar who crept up on her. How could she explain the terror of being thought alone, of being unable to rest, to sleep, of being chased endlessly by your own fear, and not sound out of her mind? Words were often cursed for twisting emotions, for being poor renditions of feelings, for creating distance between people, and it was true they did all that. Because Sam had been without them during those hours, and it had sent her to the edge of a black hole. It threatened to drag her in still, whenever she thought about these moments and started to remember others. There was a perfectly simple psychological explanation for her condition, but for once in her life, Samantha Carter, theoretical astrophysicist and the scientific stuff Jack O'Neill's nightmares were made of, believed in hell.
She finally went to sleep a couple of hours later. There she saw him again, this time much better than in previous dreams. Jolinar, too, had a face now, and a name that came ringing. She watched Martouf reach out to a Jolinar who was also a Rosha, but it was her face that he touched. It startled her (it always did) but he didn't notice.
"We were lucky," Martouf said.
"Yes," she said, not sure where the words were coming from. Not her. Jolinar, probably. And who was Rosha in all this? The heart to the mind, perhaps, because she saw Rosha but heard Jolinar.
"How long are we going to be lucky?"
"Do you believe in fate?"
He smiled. "This is not the place for such an argument."
Sam glanced around her. She couldn't quite see where they were, and it didn't seem to matter. It was dark, with streaks of silver light. Night? "What is it a place for?"
He moved closer. His fingers, which had been wiping clean her cheek, dropped to her jawbone and along the side of her neck. They traced a line through a sheen of perspiration and dirt on her skin. She realised this hadn't happened before. He whispered something that sounded like her name, and she wondered briefly how he could possibly know her name because all this belonged to Jolinar. She tried to tell herself it was a dream, Jolinar's dream, but she closed her eyes when he kissed her and didn't refuse his mouth. First kiss, something of the Tok'ra informed her. Why have you done this? she asked the dream Jolinar.
She got her answer almost immediately, as Martouf touched Rosha again, jolting her, blending them together very close. She watched herself raise her eyes to his own, clear at this very moment but still a haze in her conscious mind, and caress his brow, his hair, his shoulders. She was vaguely aware that this wasn't just one memory but a composite of many others, because his lips were both on hers and breathing against her ear, his hands both holding her hips and slipping between her thighs, and himself both lying beneath and over her. That was where Jolinar was, in this love, with Rosha, and that was why she had refused to speak of it to Sam, until death had stripped her of everything else. That was where she had nothing to fear, where everything she was didn't have to hide, and where the whole sum of her parts added up.
"Soul," Sam said with a smile. Then, to Martouf, "I won't remember when I wake up, and it's so beautiful."
He didn't hear her. His voice was a soft hush. "My love."
"No," she said, as gently as possible.
She didn't have to explain herself any further. Place and time shifted to a forest a few years later, damp and cold, where the air seemed to gnaw at the throat when you breathed. As soon as she saw Martouf, sitting up against a tree, a large burn over most of his chest and half his face, so very pale and dark from the blood seeping to the ground, she forgot that the memory-pain wasn't supposed to be hers. Sam fell beside him, mouth white and wide, unable to recognise him and what this was and where the dread was coming from. She fought the paralysis in her limbs and to be able look away, but she only succeeded to shut her eyes to open them on more horror that wasn't hers. And it wasn't really what she witnessed (she had seen combat) but that gap between that reality and her own. It wrote off her history, it broke the ground beneath her, and it told her everything was truth and everything was lies. She stumbled back to that forest when she managed to remember who Martouf was, if only briefly; once there she placed Rosha beside him. The forest vanished, Martouf and Jolinar along with it, and her dream-self brought forward something that allowed her to stand, that recognised and fitted that particular nightmare.
Antarctica.
But it wasn't simply Antarctica, with the cave and DHD under ice, but another forest. She could feel Daniel and Teal'c there, not too far, outside her field of vision. Jack was standing some meters from her and grinning at her, as if he hadn't expected to see her but was pleased she had come. Sam smiled back at him, giddy and not sure why until he tripped and went to the earth with flailing arms, shouting out in pain, and she remembered this was meant to happen. It was very cold now, of course, so she took him in her arms but was too tired and frightened for protocol. It came easily, in spite of the strange little voice that murmured this was wrong, out of kilter, and not the way things were meant to be. She snuggled up to him, one hand under his jacket, her face deep into his neck.
"It's all right, Jack," she said. "You're going to be fine." He rolled onto his side to embrace her, and she let him tangle his legs with hers. It wasn't clear how long they stayed that way, or why they eventually let go of each other, but the next thing she saw was Martouf and Rosha looking at them, a perfect reflection, Martouf on the ground and Rosha by his side. She stared at them staring at her for a while. The instant that she realised she was dreaming, she looked at Jack and realised what she was feeling. In that same instant, some shame or embarrassment made her shiver. She woke up with a start.
"Sam?"
She didn't want to move until the quizziness was gone from her stomach and she understood this world as real. Because it didn't come fast enough she fumbled for whoever had said her name, in the hope that she would stay here. She caught a hand and laced fingers together.
"Hey there."
She squinted and blinked a face into focus. "Jack?"
"Come on now, Sam. I'm not that ugly."
The dream settled itself at the sound of Jack's voice, but she couldn't speak when she opened her mouth. She decided to wait for her heartbeat to slow, even though she saw him flinch at her silence. She felt too raw to look at him properly.
Too close, the whisper came.
Sam barely heard it. She sat up, slowly to give herself time to believe she would be okay.
"How are you feeling?" he said. "And don't lie to me, you're looking great."
"Now who's lying, sir?"
They were both surprised by her reply, but he didn't let it linger. "I thought I might, so you wouldn't have to bother. Water?"
"Yeah, thanks."
"It's on the other side of the bed."
He was right. She smiled. "So you didn't come down here to make yourself useful then."
"Absolutely not. I came down here because Daniel was _trying_ to make me do something useful and help with some of his rocks."
"He never stood a chance."
"Are you ever going to answer my question?"
Jack had ended the game as swiftly as he had started it. She looked at him, mystified then angered by the hard grey of his gaze. But when she asked herself why he wanted a fight, she understood the fight was with himself. He'd had to fight to ask that question for the same reason that she was ready to fight not to answer it. Neither of them wanted to consider it. It was almost funny to think of it, the two of them trying to save each other from themselves, and how alike they were in their hiding. The anger left the air like a sigh.
"I'm tired," Sam said eventually. "Just tired all the time."
He brought his chair closer. "The doc says it's shock, but not as we know it. Said it with a straight face, too."
She smiled again. "Something like that, I guess. Just - dealing with chaos."
Hesitation was not something Jack was used to, and what he said next was blurted out. "After what happened to Kawalsky, I swore that nobody anywhere near my command would go through this again. I'm sorry I couldn't live up to that."
"None of us had a choice, sir."
"For crying out loud, Sam!" He jumped to his feet. "Since when does that have to do with anything?"
"It means," she said, "that there was nothing anyone could do. I didn't have a choice, you didn't have a choice. And I think maybe even Jolinar, in her own eyes, didn't have a choice."
"That's bullshit. That snake had a choice."
"She saved my life, Colonel."
"Make it Jack. That's an order."
"She saved my life, Jack."
He sighed. "You said that before."
"Because it's true. She never took over my body as the Goa'ulds we know do. If she had done so, I would have died with her. She - created a buffer for me, when the ashkra used his device."
"So you got your body back," he said. "Explain why we should be grateful to her."
"We should be grateful that she was who and what she said she was, until the very end. I am." He wanted to fight again - Jolinar this time, or what was left. Sam's opinion of her. And she didn't mind at all. I'm grateful, too, she wanted to tell him suddenly, that I know we would die for each other, and that it's the first time I can say that of someone.
"Just like that?"
"No." Sam winced. The little knocks along her temple were coming back, sharper this time. "Not just like that. Just the only way I know how."
"Why 'she'?" he asked after a short silence.
"Because -" She paused. Why did she have to think about it? Why did these memories have to come and go? She couldn't talk of Martouf yet, and certainly not to him. It was all too intimate still. Her eyes fell shut. "Because the host she told me about... that she had to leave was female." She hoped that if she stayed that way, he would leave before it started, but he didn't. She slipped onto her side as she started to cry; it was exhaustion more than anything else, but she didn't have the strength to tell him that.
"Look at me, Sam." She did, but it was difficult. He lifted a hand to her face to push away some hair, but left his fingers to rest on the cusp of her jaw, one thumb stroking the side of her neck. "Kawalsky was a real cry-baby," he said. "You got nothing to be ashamed of." She chuckled into the pillow. Jack grinned. "Total wreck of a man."
The knot in her stomach unravelled itself. She wiped some tears off her cheeks, feeling foolish only because they meant nothing. "Janet said that Jolinar messed up my body chemistry -"
"I don't need an explanation." He dropped a kiss on her forehead. "Maybe I should let you get some rest. Do you want me to send Daniel and Teal'c down?"
She smiled. "Daniel driving you crazy?"
"You have no idea. He just chases me around and around, saying 'wait 'till Sam sees this', and 'Sam is going to love that.'" He grimaced. "He's even tried to explain some of that stuff to me."
"And?"
"And what?"
"Was any of it interesting?"
"I don't know. I blacked out." It was her turn to make a face. He looked at the clock above Sam's bed. "I've gotta go. The General and I have to figure out what sort of a report I'm going to write on this." He squeezed her arm. "It's good to have you back, Captain."
She nodded. Jack turned with a wave and a smile, and left. To care about someone was a good feeling to have, and she was happy to be wanting him to stay and to see that he wanted to. But she also knew that, like Antarctica, the big fright was over and that life would return to normal. Fear was poor counsel, she knew that, too, and any feeling that came with it ought to be distrusted. They were all age-old reflexes at the most. She looked forward to the comfort of SG-1, of Jack's complaints about Daniel's rocks, of Daniel's big wide open arms to the universe, and of Teal'c's silent words. These things at least were real and true.
The infirmary was humming softly around her, not a little mocking. She knew better than all that.
THE END.
Story Notes: RATED: 15 (some sexual situations alluded to, and language)
dial_home_device@yahoo.co.uk
ARCHIVE: Sam & Jack and Heliopolis, if it is agreeable to them. Dustbin of your mind otherwise.
GENRE: Sam and Jack friendship, hints of more, angst
SPOILERS: In The Line of Duty (and NOT Point of View, as I've been known to think). It helps to have read 'Mind Games.'
SUPPLICATION: Feedback always appreciated. C'mon, you've read it, it can't be that much more of an effort... :)
dial_home_device@yahoo.co.uk
ARCHIVE: Sam & Jack and Heliopolis, if it is agreeable to them. Dustbin of your mind otherwise.
GENRE: Sam and Jack friendship, hints of more, angst
SPOILERS: In The Line of Duty (and NOT Point of View, as I've been known to think). It helps to have read 'Mind Games.'
SUPPLICATION: Feedback always appreciated. C'mon, you've read it, it can't be that much more of an effort... :)
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 ]