* * * * *
|| Samantha Carter ||
*...know her face... how do you talk... angel, how do... close to where you are...*
I tossed my head angrily at the sound, groaning as it drew me unwillingly from sleep. My first inclination was to yell, to demand that Martouf turn off the radio. Then my mind caught up with the rest of me and in a drunken sort of way I remembered particulars, that we HAD no radio, and even if we had possessed some type of stereo, it certainly wouldn't be playing an old Heights song.
No, this music came from within.
*...I dream that she is there... tell me, tell me, the words to define, how...*
I swallowed against a raspy throat, feeling the muscles in my windpipe chafe together, and admitted to myself with the slightest stab of panic that I was sick. Two 'days' ago - as well as I could measure days - I'd had a headache, and the day after that a dry cough, but I'd put it out of mind, telling myself that it was just a little cold that would work itself out. But now, as I lay in my mess of blankets, shivering as beads of sweat popped up on my skin and then skittered down my neck, breath rattling painfully in my lungs, I was forced to acknowledge that it was something worse than that.
I didn't need a thermometer to tell that I had a rampant fever: chills coursed through me and my thoughts were badly fragmented at best. How had this happened? We'd been here, probably, for months, and I'd been all right. Of course, I'd heard Jadae let out a sneeze now and then, which I'd thought unusual, since her symbiote Maretne was supposed to protect her host from illness, and certainly it couldn't still be allergies...
*How do you talk to an angel... where you are...*
The train of thought petered out and I felt my mind backsliding into sleep once more. My thirst raged, but the aching in my joints was equally bad, and I knew instinctively that my equilibrium was so out of whack that I'd never make it to the storage room. Instead, I lay there, drifting in and out of awareness, idly remembering that no antibodies or medicines of any kind had been left behind... and why? Tok'ra had no use for them. I was unusually healthy, so it hadn't seemed a problem until now. But this was... what? Flu? Pneumonia? And from where? Jadae? Or was there some other source of contamination I didn't have the faculties to remember?
The strange music finally faded, but in its place were other noises, voices, one of them Martouf's. I was mildly indignant - things between us had been strained since THAT DAY, and I surely hadn't given him clearance to enter my room - but after a few moments it hardly seemed to matter. Nothing seemed to matter, in fact, not my burning skin, or my hair, so drenched with sweat that it dripped. Not the worried voices that barely pervaded my foggy thoughts, or the half-memory of a song I hadn't heard in years. Nothing. Nothing at all.
* * * * *
|| Teal'c||
"Home sweet home," said Jack O'Neill sarcastically.
I understood the use of derision, and not simply because most of what he said of late carried that tone. Even as a Jaffa, a warrior, someone who should by all rights know better, the SGC did not seem "sweet" or "home". The hallways were not as brightly lit as I recalled, and much of the staff was unfamiliar. O'Neill, Warren, Janet Frasier and I walked close together, despite the undercurrent of tension in our group. I knew that I could count on these three people. It felt as though there was very little I could count on.
But the unfamiliar shadows and personnel were the least of all our problems. We had been admitted back onto the base for the express reason that two Gou'ald scout ships were rapidly approaching. Those who commanded such power seemed to think that these vessels would be easily dispatched, that they would not pose a threat to the people of the Tau'ri. In this they were mistaken. Our simplistic plan had worked the first time, but we did not know if there were Tok'ra on board these ships. We did not even know if they would have Stargates aboard. It was an entirely different situation than 'Andromeda', but no one who should have understood this fact seemed to understand it at all.
"We've got 72 hours," said Warren roughly. "72 hours to come up with something. SOMETHING. We can't find the Tok'ra, our three visitors won't lift a finger to help, and the Tollan are too damn busy saving their own butts to worry about us. I say we evacuate the whole base to Argos or Tajyrea and let the Gou'ald take care of the rest of this idiot planet."
"Naw," said the General caustically, smothering a cough behind his hand. "Think how disappointed the Asgard would be."
Tony Warren merely grunted.
Through the hallways and into the control room we went, and I was not surprised when Daniel Jackson was left unmentioned. He was across the country, in New York, taking part in a news program that had been begging for an interview since the SGC became public knowledge. I myself had been invited to appear on several programs over the weekend, all of which I had rescheduled. Daniel would not be urgently needed in the days to come, if what came was battle. I, on the other hand...
General Hammond was waiting for us, and he, Warren and O'Neill immediately launched into discussion. Janet hung back, close enough to overhear but far enough towards the window to look down upon the Stargate. Her expression was strange: somewhat rueful, somewhat wistful. I believed I knew her well enough to decipher her mood. She was wishing for what O'Neill called 'the good old days', the days before Andromeda and the Pandora Act. Despite my newfound fame - which flattered me; I could not help it - I could readily sympathize.
Behind me, O'Neill coughed again, louder this time, loud enough to cause me to turn and regard him carefully. Warren appeared curious, Hammond utterly concerned. Jack O'Neill himself was pale, one hand rubbing his chest through the material of his shirt.
Janet edged past me, buoyed by a doctor's and woman's instinct to do more than simply stare. "Jack, what's wrong?"
He shook his head, made a choking sound, and doubled over. "Son of a bitch..." I heard him mutter as he pitched toward the floor, eyes closing and muscles going slack just as I caught him. The doctor launched herself forward, shouting that everyone else stand aside and for someone to get her a stethoscope. I gently deposited O'Neill on the floor for her convenience, watching intently as she knelt down beside him.
"Jesus, he's burning up."
The requested stethoscope was quickly thrust into Janet's hands, and she wasted no time in fitting one end of the instrument into her ears and placing the other on O'Neill's chest. "Fluid in the lungs," she reported tersely, glancing up at General Hammond. "I swear, sir, when we arrived ten minutes ago he was perfectly healthy."
"Let's get him to the infirmary," he replied, face tight with stress and concern. He shot a glance of his own out the window, at the Stargate, and clenched his hands at his sides. "God, we don't have time for this."
* * * * *
|| Daniel Jackson ||
"So what you're saying," prompted the man with the hollow cheeks "is that you formed an alliance with the Tok'ra without really knowing much about them. Whether they would be trustworthy or not... whether they weren't just leading you on for their own benefit."
I did my very best to school my features, because glaring on television was glaring at the audience, and that was generally a bad idea. "Alan, if you're being chased down a dark alley by someone with, let's say, a knife, you're going to stop and try to get help from the first capable person you see. You're not going to stand around and try to decide if he's a nice guy or not. What you people don't understand is the constant fear we lived under for all those years, never knowing when the Gou'ald would come back... again, and having the responsibility of protecting this planet."
"Besides," countered the man on my other side, the show's co-host. "You did know something about them."
"We knew what Teal'c told us, what he had learned during his time as First Prime to Apophis," I said grudgingly, well aware of where this was leading.
Predictably, Alan Colmes, a thin man with equally thin hair, reached for the press release on the desk before him. "There was also an incident involving Lieutenant Colonel Carter, was there not?" he asked in a snide voice that told me he really didn't need to ask. "She was… taken as a host" - he wrinkled his nose imperceptibly; it was hilarious how uncomfortable these newspeople were with today's rather sci-fi vocabulary "By a Tok'ra named Jolinar."
"That's right," I said stiffly, trying not to sweat under the bright lights or pay too much attention to the men behind the cameras.
"You initially thought this Jolinar was a Gou'ald," pressed Hannity, the co-host, a man pudgier than his comrade but with a full head of dark, fluffy hair.
"We didn't know any better. Jolinar was being hunted down by an assassin," I insisted. "Her only purpose was to hide out in Sam-- in Colonel Carter until she threw the Gou'ald."
"Only it didn't quite turn out that way," cackled the program's other guest, a mousy woman from L.A. whose image was being played on a screen near the cameras. Her qualifications and credentials were unknown to me, but obviously she didn't have the backing or desire to fly out to New York, as I had. "I've read all the unclassified documents, Dr. Jackson, and a couple classified." She smiled snidely. "You were at first under the impression that Jolinar was a Gou'ald. Now maybe you 'didn't know any better' at the time, but it's a point I'd like to make. Furthermore, though Colonel Carter recovered fully from her ordeal, after the Tok'ra supposably 'gave its life for her', it changed her, didn't it, Doctor?"
"No," I said flatly.
"I beg to differ," the woman sneered, her name and title appearing on a bar at the bottom of the screen. Celia-Rose Clark, Stargate Program Analyst. Analyst? What the hell did that mean? Who the hell gave her the right... I burned with fury, suddenly thankful that Ms. Clark was on the other side of the country, and even more grateful that Jack had taken to shunning the media. The one thing we didn't need was a rap for violence against our own people. "She received memories and intuitions from what remained of Jolinar," Clark went on, speaking to Hannity and Colmes now in a effervescent and factual tone. "This caused her to be extremely sympathetic to the Tok'ra."
Stiffening, I interrupted Hannity's reply. "She was affected by it, and she did gain insight into the Tok'ra, but it didn't change her."
But DID IT? I could almost hear Jack's voice, as though he were perched up on my shoulder this very moment, complete with pointy horns and a red, forked tail. 'It wasn't as though Sam could be objective about what she learned, Danny-boy,' he pointed out, twirling the tail casually. 'Basically, she was brainwashed. She saw the Tok'ra through Jolinar's eyes, and from what we've heard, Jolinar was as loyal as they came, right? She wanted to trust them, to like them, because Jolinar did, and Sam saw Jolinar as a good... person. Or... whatever.'
I ignored him, wondering if a winged Teal'c would pop up on the other shoulder, and concentrated on Clark's response. "What I'm trying to get across to you boys is that maybe there was a reason we didn't receive telemetry on that twenty-first ship. Maybe the Tok'ra didn't send it... on purpose."
Wonderful. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and inform the woman how much she sounded like Jack. "They went to an awful lot of trouble to stab us in the back like that."
On my right, Hannity blinked hard, disbelieving. "Ms. Clark, are you saying that Colonel Carter had something to do with that ship?"
"I'm SAYING that maybe she was more than just sympathetic to the Tok'ra. Maybe some part of it still remained in her, or the fight she had with General O'Neill just made her... snap. It's even possible that her arguments with him were deliberate, meant to make her leaving seem more plausible."
For all his frightening features and grating voice, Colmes seemed equally put out. "To what end?"
Clark cocked her head at him impertinently. "I don't have all the answers here, Mr. Colmes. I'm just trying to give your viewers and Mr. Jackson here a different perspective, another theory. We also have to keep in mind the Tok'ra Jolinar was mated with, and the strong feelings Carter must have had for him. There's many possible scenarios. Let's not feel tied down by the official story that she left because of personal differences, the Tok'ra told a couple of fibs, and now she's dead. Seems too simple to me."
It seemed too simple to me, too, but I'd only realize that later, in my hotel room, after I stopped seeing red. "You know, Ms. Clark," I began in a low, dangerous voice that earned a startled glance from both hosts. "I don't know who you think you are, coming in here like this and speaking about my friend in front of me and who knows how many other people. You never knew her. You don't know anything about her other than what's been put on paper. I knew this woman for years. We all did: me, General O'Neill, Teal'c, General Hammond... and we all loved her. You have no business slandering her like this, and I don't need another perspective, thank you very much."
Clark looked annoyed, an expression I hoped the audience picked up on. Colmes' face was slightly blotchy, and Hannity's facial cast, as he apologized for an upcoming commercial break, was distinctly impressed.
"Sorry about that, Doctor Jackson," he sighed, straightening his tie as flurries of makeup people stormed the stage. "I think sometimes people forget how personal an issue this is for all of you."
I nodded tersely, finally getting in my glare at Clark.
It WAS personal.
* * * * *
|| Jack O'Neill ||
I'd been sick before. Broken, bleeding, bruised; physically, mentally and emotionally thrashed. Literally lying on Death's doorstep before some brave soul snatched me up at the last moment, pausing only to gleefully ring the doorbell before running away. I knew what fever felt like, and knew it well. This was a fever; even in my decidedly un-lucid state I could see THAT. But it was also something else. Something very weird.
Like a watercolor left out in the rain, the world blurred and ran, pooling into fragmented puddles of consciousness. Now and then I would catch snatches of Janet's voice, and Teal'c's, but most of the time I wasn't with them. I was somewhere else.
I was in the woods.
It took me a few minutes to place them; I'd seen more trees in the past years than Tarzan and Yogi Bear put together. According to Sam, there was a very logical reason that so many worlds we gated to were forested: the Gou'ald had probably terra-formed most of the planets they transported humans to, and that would require oxygen, and foliage CREATED oxygen.
Sam... I raised my head from my contemplation and looked around, hope burning hot in my chest. She was here.
Three steps deeper into the woods and I knew exactly where I was. Deault's planet. My scalp prickled as I picked up the faint, distant sounds of dozens of feet trampling bracken and saplings. Every emotion in me demanded that I stay where I was, away from the inevitably horrible memory, but apparently my heart wasn't in control of this little foray. Gritting my teeth, I broke into a run, heading towards the racket.
It wasn't like any memory I'd ever had before. For one, I was alone, unarmed, and dressed in BDUs. I'd never been in this position in real life. And it wasn't half as vivid as my stomach-turning recollections of the Iraq POW camp, or the dreary reminiscence of gritty Saudi dunes. It was blurred, as though the watercolor paint from real life had bled into my fantasy. The trees blowing by me seemed slightly unreal, somehow broken, like a Xerox copy of a copy of a copy. Still I ran, feeling perfectly healthy even as, back in real life, I thrashed and moaned and gagged on blood-tinged mucus.
I reached the infamous clearing, and looked on in horror.
It was like I remembered, only it wasn't. Men and women and Tok'ra gear on one side, armed with Zats, and in the other corner, a massive squad of staff-wielding Jaffa. But I realized after a long moment that this wasn't right. I couldn't see MYSELF anywhere, or Warren, or any other SGC members that had participated in the strike. I recognized a couple faces here and there - including Marty and Jadae - but they were ALL Tok'ra.
The memory was obviously flawed.
But it was no less compelling. My eyes remained riveted as a young man dashed for the DHD, striking only the first symbol for being struck down himself. I nodded. Okay, I remembered that. According to the script, Sam would next lunge for the dial-home device, and enter the glyphs for Earth.
And indeed I saw the lithe, swathed figure that had to her rise from a firing stance and take a step in that direction. But a hand - Martouf's hand - clamped onto her shoulder and pulled her back down.
I took a step into a clearing, hardly worried that the remembered Jaffa would see me. What the...
MARTOUF, not Sam, ran bravely for the DHD as the others laid down cover fire. I watched with contempt as the Tok'ra entered symbols I could not see but knew to be Earth's, then, as the Gate engaged, raise his arm in its direction. A GDO was strapped to his wrist, and he sent the iris code before waving the others through.
Another step...
I kept one eye on Sam - working her way towards the Gate - and another on Martouf, who paused at the body of the Tok'ra boy, perhaps to check for life signs. Reflexively, forgetting this wasn't real, I opened my mouth to warn that one of the closer Jaffa had taken aim at him, but Carter saw and yelled first. She ran towards him, as though to push him out of harm's way, but it was a foolish action. The Jaffa evidently decided that a standing, running enemy was more dangerous than a stooping, stationary one, and re-aimed.
Martouf appeared to see the danger before she did, and as Sam reached him he frantically pushed her down, hard and at a bad angle. She hit the DHD with an audible crack that made me wince, and fell back to the ground, limbs flailing.
That was when every person in the clearing, Tok'ra, human, and Jaffa, vanished.
All but one.
Sam.
She wasn't lying prone on the ground any longer, however, but stood only a hundred meters or so around the curving circumference of the clearing, at the edge of the woods, as I was, watching with a disturbed expression, as I had. Petrified that she would vanish as soon as I took my eyes off her or made my presence known, I crept closer along the tree-line until I felt reasonably confident that she was as real as anything around here. Then I cleared my throat and called out, "Sam?"
She turned on me immediately, eyes as huge and round as saucers, as blue as the sky. Seeming to freeze where she stood, she mumbled something unintelligible.
"What the hell was that?" I demanded, glancing over at the clearing as I approached. "It didn't happen like that... don't you remember?" My boots crunched the ferns and brush, but the sound was off, slightly mechanical, like a sound effect that didn't exactly match the onscreen action.
"I know what I remember," she said shakily, still looking at me peculiarly. "I know what Martouf told me."
Steadily, I advanced on her. "No. I know what happened. YOU were the one to dial out, and you did, but you got shot doing it. You died, Sam." I shuddered. "You didn't have a pulse."
She looked shaken. Being told you're dead will do that to you. "How do you know?" she shot back.
"Because I was THERE. So was Warren and Parker and a couple others. We were dressed like Tok'ra but we were there. Martouf never told you?"
She was stunned, but I didn't give her a chance to answer, because I'd closed the gap between us. Wordlessly, I pulled her to me, body to body, mouth to mouth. This moment was a hundred times more vivid and REAL than anything I had seen so far: the rise and fall of her chest, the gleaming gold of her hair, and the taste of her, the memory perfectly preserved. Little prodding was needed; she parted her lips at once, giving me free range, kissing me back ardently, but with a touch of sadness. Keeping my hands on her slim waist, I pulled back to let her explain, and she seemed to understand what I meant, that I wasn't rejecting her. "This isn't real... you're dead."
I remembered with a grimace my painful collapse in the control room of the SGC. "Yeah, maybe," I admitted. "But then again, so are you, right?"
Her eyebrows knitted. "Maybe," she repeated.
I found myself looking away from her, towards the Stargate. Not only was it still present in the clearing, it was still activated, glistening, humming. "You have to go through," I told her.
"I want to stay with you," she disagreed fiercely.
Reluctantly, I let my hands drop from her sides. "Hey, look, if we're both dead we'll find each other again, right? But you have to remember. You have to figure out what's going on, because I sure don't have a clue." I jerked my head towards the Gate. "You have to go through there to do it."
Her narrowed eyes searched my face. "Why?"
In response, I shrugged, planted a quick, chaste kiss on her cheek and pushed her gently away from me, my heart tearing. Too short... too brief. "Why not?"
* * * * *
|| Samantha Carter ||
This time, there was no topsy-turvy spinning slide through the cosmos. My first step took me into the wormhole. My second step brought me out of it.
The surrounding Gate room was oddly grainy, like I was getting bad reception.
But that didn't prevent me from seeing all too well what was happening. Three Jaffa stood in front of me on the ramp, firing indiscriminately, and I could hear the moans and cries of the wounded and dying all around me. I saw Jadae dive for cover, and I followed her.
I had memories of the strike of Deault's planet, reinforced by what Martouf had told me. But I'd never been here, now.
From my position on the floor I watched Jack retrieve an HK off the body of a dead comrade and go after the Jaffa fearlessly. A suicide mission. When the last guard took him down with a shot to the upper chest, seconds before being dropped himself by a hail of bullets from another angle, I had to close my eyes and look away.
Lightening flashed.
I raised my head from a pillow of wet, compacted sand, seeing Martouf, backlit by a raging storm, kneeling at my side. I looked to my right and saw a pond, a LAKE, a figure paddling furiously to shore - Jadae - and the Stargate, still activated, still glowing, as it toppled into the water and sank along with the Jaffa who had followed.
Water swirled in the drain of Jack's shower.
I was sitting with Jadae, listening to her sneeze with such force that we laughed over it.
I was lying awkwardly on a cold floor, a towel wrapped loosely around my body.
Another burst of illumination, not unlike lightening, but not like it, either.
I was dimly aware of being lifted and relocated in a pair of strong arms, and of my sweat-soaked clothes being peeled off my body. Cool water teased my parched lips, but I still didn't care. It still didn't matter.
I had another body to turn to.
That body stood in a large cave of gently twinkling rock, standing tall, nodding in satisfaction as her... as MY subordinates scurried to and fro, mindful of the golden beams of light and engraved precious metal that crisscrossed the entire cavern floor.
* * * * *
Coming soon... The Answers...
The more feedback I get, the sooner YOU get those answers... is it a deal?
* Shawn Hannity and Alan Colmes are actual people, and their names and personalities were used out of respect and veneration, not because I'm trying to make money off them, their show (Hannity & Colmes) or their network (Fox News)...big surprise there, right? *
Story Notes: Title: The Affliction
Author: Alli (alli@ecis.com)
Rating: PG
Category: Future story, SJR, angst
Archive: SJA and Heliopolis
The Andromeda Series
1. The Assignment
2. The Aide
3. The Afterglow
4. The Arising
5. The Allusion
6. The Attack
7. The Accident
8. The Anger
9. The Alien
10. The Archeologist
11. The Absence
12. The Advance
13. The Adversary
14. The Ability
15. The Allies
16. The Aberration
17. The Ardor
18. The Act
19. The Affliction
Author: Alli (alli@ecis.com)
Rating: PG
Category: Future story, SJR, angst
Archive: SJA and Heliopolis
The Andromeda Series
1. The Assignment
2. The Aide
3. The Afterglow
4. The Arising
5. The Allusion
6. The Attack
7. The Accident
8. The Anger
9. The Alien
10. The Archeologist
11. The Absence
12. The Advance
13. The Adversary
14. The Ability
15. The Allies
16. The Aberration
17. The Ardor
18. The Act
19. The Affliction
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 ]