A Goa'uld Legacy
A Goa'uld Legacy
by
Elaine Stouse
Title: A Goa'uld Legacy
Author: Elaine Stouse
Email: Elaine.Stouse@Virgin.Net
Summary: Just a little epilogue to the season three episode "Legacy"
Spoilers: Into The Fire, Seth, Fair Game, Legacy
Season: Set in Season 3, after "Legacy"
Rating: PG
Category: Jack and Janet. Epilogue
Status: Completed
Disclaimer: Stargate Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.
Author's Comments: This is simply something I wrote to answer a few nagging thoughts that I couldn't ignore any longer when I recently re-watched these early Season Three episodes. My thanks go to Kd for "bitching"! LOL And to Carol for her great input. Feedback gratefully accepted as always.
A Goa'uld Legacy:
Jack hadn't quite worn a trough in the floor with his mindless pacing when he was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. It sounded loud in the silent surrounds of his quiet home, at least to his own startled ears.
Stopping in his tracks, the Colonel paused to listen intently for any giveaway sounds outside the front door. For a long moment he heard nothing and instead turned to resume his tired pacing.
He had barely taken two steps across the room when the door-knocker crashed loudly against solid wood.
"Colonel O'Neill? Are you in there?"
Jack pulled up short at the sound of the SGC's petite doctor calling his name. He thought he should be more surprised than he was to discover that Dr Fraiser was making an uninvited house-call, but somehow, after what the two of them had just been through, she seemed like the logical person if any one was going to turn up on his doorstep. He could only pray that she wasn't there in an attempt to talk about what had happened.
One thing he did know, she would be a hard person to ignore. The doctor was nothing if not persistent, doggedly determined even! If she had any inkling that he was somewhere inside his own home, she would not simply give up and go away. And since his car was sitting on the driveway, the engine probably still warm, there was really no escaping her.
The bell rang again, several times in quick succession, rapidly followed by an even louder rapping on the door-knocker.
Jack emitted a heavy sigh and scrubbed a hand through his tousled greying hair. For a fleeting moment he almost considered trying to hide, or run, but cowardice was not in his nature, even when faced with such a formidable foe.
He turned and moved towards the door, gingerly cracking it ajar a few inches just as the doctor shouted his name once more.
With an audible snap, Janet's jaw shut, mid-word, when the door suddenly opened to reveal the Colonel. He was casually dressed in faded jeans and a baggy black T-shirt hanging loosely past his waist. His grubby fatigues, shed rapidly the second he got home, now resided in the laundry basket where they could not remind him of an extremely bad day, in a seemingly endless series of bad days.
"Doctor Fraiser," Jack nodded as pleasantly as he could manage. "What can I do for you?"
"Colonel O'Neill." Janet regarded him for a moment. "You left the base so fast I didn't have time to get a follow-up blood sample from you."
"Couldn't it wait? I mean, since when did you make house-calls!" Jack tried to smile but it felt more like a grimace.
"I didn't want to risk waiting. We need to check whether the vaccination has left the Goa'uld protein marker permanently in your bloodstream, or whether it's dissolving naturally," Janet explained feebly, the words sounding even more like an excuse than they actually were. She raised her gaze to look him in the eye. "Can I come in?" she implored him.
Jack stared at her for several long seconds, then, reluctantly, he shrugged and moved back a couple of paces, opening the door wide enough to allow entry into his home. With a casual wave of the hand, he indicated for Janet to go down into the living room and make herself comfortable.
"Coffee? Beer?" he asked, watching from the top step.
Janet considered him carefully. "Got anything stronger?" she asked tentatively.
Jack raised an eyebrow, but made no further comment. Somehow her question was entirely understandable, albeit unexpected. He nodded and walked into the kitchen, opening a top cupboard to withdraw a barely touched bottle of single malt whiskey. Retrieving a couple of glasses from the drainer, he turned back towards the light airy living room, appreciating the warmth from the shafts of bright sunlight shining through the large picture windows.
The early evening orange glow was always welcome after the dark confines of the mountain base, and especially so now after the dreadful day they had both endured.
The insidious effect of Ma'chello's Goa'uld destroyers may only have lasted minutes, but to Jack it had felt like an eternity. An eternity trapped in suffocating uncontrollable darkness, interspersed with colours so vivid he could have sworn he could hear them. It was an experience reminiscent of a time in the Seventies he had hoped to forget, only this instance had been a thousand times worse than any mind-expanding drug he had ever experimented with.
The effect of knowing he was rapidly and powerlessly losing his mind, of believing he was surrounded by Goa'uld intent on taking him as a host, had been way too close to that horrendous, still fresh, encounter with Hathor. A terrifying experience which he had been fighting on a daily basis ever since, struggling to come to terms with an event he feared a million times more than death itself. Trying to cope with the aftermath, the nightmares, the fear of 'what if' that threatened to undermine every command decision and action he had taken since.
Janet took a single gulp of the generous measure of nerve-steadying whiskey Jack placed in her hands. "Colonel, why did you leave the base so quickly after Teal'c revived? Dr Mackenzie was looking for you......." She trailed off, noticing a look of discomfort cross Jack's deliberately blank features. She recalled his similar reaction in the mission briefing room a couple of days earlier, when his feelings at finding Dr Mackenzie present had been openly displayed for all to see.
"Oh!.......It was Dr Mackenzie you were trying to avoid," she said simply.
"Come on, Doc, don't get all amateur psychologist on me, please!" Jack almost pleaded. "It's bad enough trying to avoid Mackenzie's post Goa'uld host trauma theories, without you starting in on me too! Besides," he regarded her thoughtfully, "Somehow I don't think you came here to talk about that."
Janet took another long swallow of the rich honey-coloured liquid, savouring the warm feeling as it hit her throat. Her hand shook slightly as she placed the glass on the coffee table in front of the couch. "No, I guess I didn't." She paused, studying him until he finally took a seat in the armchair opposite her. "Colonel, I wanted to explain why I told Dr Mackenzie about your headaches."
"Because it's your JOB?" Jack sputtered irritably.
"No, that's not what I mean," Janet replied defensively. "Your name simply came up, along with several dozen others, from a computer program run regularly on the medical databases to detect possible patterns in symptoms. The percentages were too high to ignore. And your name being among them was too coincidental, given what Dr Jackson was experiencing. But I wanted to assure you that neither Dr Mackenzie nor General Hammond have been privy to the specifics in your case."
Janet sighed. "Colonel O'Neill, what I'm trying to say is that you and I are still the only people who know when your headaches first began occurring and the probable cause of them - that Hathor is the reason, not gate travel."
"I guess I should be thankful for small mercies," Jack said caustically, staring at some point in the far corner of the room.
"I still think that you need to talk to Dr Mackenzie again."
Jack finally met her gaze for a moment. "Janet, we've already been through all this. The man's not only a shrink, he's an idiot!"
"He's just trying to do his job, Colonel," she replied reasonably.
"Exactly!" O'Neill countered angrily, turning away to stare out the window.
Doctor Fraiser studied him for a while, the fine lines etched on his face, the spreading grey in his hair and the dark circles under his eyes. All were more pronounced than they had been before the sudden disappearance of the human members of SG-1 over two months before.
God knows it had been a trying enough time since their rescue. What with the dangerous hunt for Seth, a Goa'uld lying low on Earth for thousands of years, who Colonel O'Neill's team was tasked to flush out of hiding - talk about walking barefoot into a viper's nest!
And they had barely paused for breath when they found themselves faced with the threat of global annihilation at the hands of the System Lords. A threat that had hung by a tangible thread on the terms of a treaty solely negotiable by SG-1's leader himself. A hefty responsibility placed on the Colonel at the insistence of an alien race that nobody either understood or really knew anything about.
The stress from those events alone would be enough to cause a breakdown in any normal person, let alone when taken into account with the events that occurred while under Hathor's imprisonment. But Jack O'Neill had proven countless times that he was no normal person.......
"Have you been sleeping any better lately, Colonel?" Janet asked eventually, pretty certain she already knew the answer, and it wasn't good.
Jack turned back to face her. "I thought you weren't going to turn amateur psychologist on me?"
"I'm not. I'm just concerned about you, even more so after what happened today."
Jack saw her shudder slightly at the memory and finally understood the real reason for her visit. "Bad day, huh?" He snorted ironically. "Just when we didn't think the days could get any worse!"
"Yeah!" Janet agreed softly, holding his gaze, "I know what you mean."
For several long minutes they shared a common silence, each occasionally sipping at their drinks as they tried to bury such fresh and harrowing memories deep enough to not cause further disturbance.
Janet tried to concentrate on her feelings of utter relief when she'd heard Ma'chello's voice, announcing success at freeing her from the Goa'uld. But, with it, returned her revulsion at seeing those three slimy 'things' exiting her ear canal.
When the combined effects of relief and revulsion had first worn off, Janet had found herself pondering questions still plaguing her mind regarding one of her patients - a very close friend - and an earlier traumatic incident he had endured. And the doctor had begun to wonder if she was perhaps finally in a position to understand some of what he had been through. Maybe even begin to help him get past it.
In order to do that, she first had to find the courage to ask such a question of a man who protected his privacy almost as much as he protected his team.
To risk overstepping the boundaries between their doctor-patient relationship and their personal friendship was a dangerous notion as far as Jack O'Neill was concerned. He was as likely to clam up as he was to flare-up, and Janet didn't want to risk losing his friendship in either way.
But, at the same time, she could finally see a way that she might be able to help him get the monkey off his back that was clouding his judgment and dragging him down of late. And if she could help Jack return to the wisecracking, supremely confident Colonel of old then maybe it was worth risking their friendship to do so.
With an inward sigh, Janet took a deep breath, staring into the bottom of her nearly empty glass before she looked up to face him, levelling her gaze as she spoke.
"This afternoon, when we were infected with Ma'chello's Goa'uld killers........was that anything like what happened with Hathor?" she asked carefully, watching the Colonel closely for any reaction.
Jack took several long gulps of the whiskey, draining the glass and reaching for the bottle to top it back up.
He was silent for so long that Janet was surprised when he finally met her gaze, eyeing her as though struggling with an important decision. Then he sighed heavily and began to speak. His voice, slow and measured at first, rising rapidly to vent the anger and helplessness brought to the fore by the memories.
"If you're asking whether having three of Ma'chello's slimy little buggers running around inside your body intent on destroying something you don't even have is anything like a mature Goa'uld larva forcibly entering the back of your neck and attacking your mind? Then YES!" Jack almost shouted, the effects of the alcohol removing his tight control, "That is WAY too close for comfort!"
"Thought so," Janet said shakily. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" he asked, his anger rapidly turning to confusion.
"For even asking." Janet looked at him, for once feeling like she knew exactly what was going on behind those dark hooded eyes. "And for what you went through."
Jack passed a hand across his face as if brushing away some ethereal image persistently haunting his vision. "You went through it too," he said dully.
"No." She shook her head. "I meant the first time.......with Hathor."
Jack winced, lowering his eyes to stare at the glass resting on the arm of the chair in his right hand. "I know what you meant," he admitted hoarsely.
Trying to focus away from his own inner tremors, he studied the doctor's taut body language, the tension in her shoulders, the tiredness in her dark brown eyes. "So," he said gently, "How are you coping?"
"I'm fine," Janet shrugged unconvincingly.
"Thought so." Jack smiled thinly. "Well, since we're both so 'fine', I guess there's no need to discuss it further."
"How will that help anything?"
"I don't know. You're the doctor!" Jack responded sarcastically.
"Well, if I'm the doctor, that must make you my patient," Janet said with some amount of irritation, "And, as such, I would have to recommend that you talk further to Dr Mackenzie. Especially after what happened today," she added insistently, determined to get her thoughts back on track.
"I told you, I'm not talking to Dr Mackenzie again, not after the last time!" Jack exclaimed. "The man's an imbecile! The only life threatening situation he's ever faced was probably when he ran out of padded cells!"
"Then if you won't talk to him, how about talking to me?"
"I thought that's what we were doing!"
"You know what I mean, Jack," Janet sighed exasperatedly.
"Okay, Janet! You want to talk," he smiled obsequiously, "What shall we talk about?"
Janet took a deep breath, trying to remain calm, "Well, for a start, let's talk about how you really feel!"
"Why? So you can lock me up too!"
Janet glared at him. "You know he was just doing his job, Colonel. Dr Mackenzie had no choice but to have Dr Jackson confined."
"And I couldn't do a thing to stop him," Jack muttered, suddenly deflated.
Janet looked at him in surprise. "It's not your fault what happened to Daniel," she said, the light slowly dawning on her face. "Colonel, I know how your mind works.......You think that, because you found the page turning device in the Linvris Chamber and let Daniel use it on the tablet, that it must be your fault, right? You think it's your fault that Daniel got infected with Ma'chello's Goa'uld killing invention!"
She watched Jack turn away again to focus on that distant point only he could see. "I'm right, aren't I?" she persisted.
In the ensuing silence, Janet continued her train of thought, expanding on her theory aloud. "You're afraid that could have been you locked up in that padded cell?"
"Still could be if Mackenzie has any say in it," Jack murmured bleakly to himself.
"You think you're going to end up like Daniel was? That you're going......."
"Nuts?" Jack offered with a wince.
"Well it's not quite the medical term I would have chosen, but yes I suppose that could be one word for it."
She regarded him curiously. "But Daniel has recovered completely. He appears to be absolutely fine......." Janet faded into awkward silence, seeing something else on Jack's face, a mixture of fear and revulsion, the source of which she could not yet place.
"What, Jack? What is it?" she asked softly.
"Daniel thought I had a Goa'uld in me," Jack said huskily, almost inaudibly. "Sometimes I wonder......." his voice choked off as he fought against the words. Standing up abruptly, Jack moved to stare out the window at the lengthening shadows of sunset across the yard. He wiped a palm over his face and shook his head in frustration, coughing to clear his throat, "I mean, how do I know he's not right?"
"You're afraid that the Goa'uld, or some part of it, is still inside you, waiting to take control of you?" Janet swallowed, understanding all too well how he felt. She could almost feel Ma'chello's little buggers still moving around inside her body. The feeling revolted her, churning her stomach and raising her pulse rate every time she didn't quite manage to suppress the frightening memories in time. To feel the same way about a Goa'uld would be terrifying beyond imagination.
Jack nodded, "We thought we'd got it out of Charlie Kawalsky, but it was just hiding in him waiting for the right moment."
His hands clenched in helpless frustration as they pressed against the windowpane. "Half the time, I'm afraid to go to sleep.......in case being saved by immersion in that cryogenic freezer thing was just a dream, and my nightmares are the reality," Jack admitted painfully, his voice a raw whisper.
He finally turned to look at her, the depth of emotion in his eyes so profound that the doctor felt like she was staring through the window to his soul.
"I can't forget the feeling of that THING piercing a hole in the back of my neck and trying to take over my mind. It was trying to gain access to every thought I'd ever had, trying to find a way in to my head." He visibly shuddered, adding bitterly, "How can I forget? I've still got the scar of a Goa'uld host to prove it! Christ, it feels like I've been branded!"
"Jack, I......." Janet swallowed, realising she didn't have anything to say that could help. How could she claim to know how he felt? She'd merely been attacked by Ma'chello's Goa'uld killers, not a Goa'uld larva itself. It put her problems truly into perspective.
"Have you tried talking to Daniel about it?" she eventually suggested, knowing that the younger man seemed like the only person Jack ever really confided in. She often wished he would trust her to that extent, but Janet knew that, without the tongue loosening effects of the whiskey, the Colonel still normally saw her as being a part of a military system that would take his confessions and use them against him without thinking twice about it.
Daniel was not only a civilian, he was the only person in the SGC who had seen Jack at his lowest, probably most suicidal, point of his life. Jack in turn had trusted Daniel to help fight against Ra and get them home from Abydos, when Daniel wasn't even sure he could do it himself. In a short time, they had developed a bond that would never be broken.
"Daniel's obviously worried about you. So much that it manifested itself into a full-blown hallucination of you being taken over by a Goa'uld larva again. I'd say you're not the only one with some unresolved issues left over from Hathor's final assault."
Jack threw Janet a withering 'You can't be serious' glance, but the doctor set her jaw determinedly.
"Why not talk to Daniel?"
"Oh sure!" Jack snorted contemptuously, "I'm really going to tell him all about how being implanted with a Goa'uld is the most excruciatingly painful and terrifying thing I've ever felt in my life! How it even tops having pieces of jagged bone and raw nerve ground together in your leg, while dying on some godforsaken glacier! I'm sure he'll appreciate hearing all about what Sha're must have gone through......."
Jack's jaw snapped shut with such force that Janet winced, barely registering her own guilt for not even thinking of Sha're. She watched emotions cross Jack's face like a brisk breeze blowing ripples across a lake. Revelation, shock, sadness, anger and confusion.
"God!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Here I am bitching and whining because I almost became a Goa'uld, when all this time Sha're and Skaara are still out there somewhere suffering every excruciating moment of their lives!"
"At least I'm still alive," he said bleakly.
"You survived, Jack. You mustn't lose sight of that," Janet said firmly.
"Through sheer LUCK!" Jack's voice rose bitterly, still angry with himself at the lack of control he'd had over the situation.
Janet shook her head frustratedly, "Maybe it was more through luck than judgment, but you DID survive. You ARE still YOU. You have to remember that! You were caught up in a situation that you couldn't have any control over. It happen sometimes, even to you!"
"So, I survived," Jack said flatly. "Just one more scar to add to the collection. Another superficial wound." He turned back to gaze out the window. "You're right, I guess it doesn't go any deeper than that."
"It does go deeper, Jack," Janet said gently, rising from the chair to approach him. She placed her hand on his arm. "You can't pretend it doesn't. What you went through is something no human being should have to suffer. But you DID survive. If anything you're even stronger because of the experience. You just haven't figured that out yet." She paused, beginning to realise something of her own.
When Janet eventually spoke again it was softly, almost to herself, "Today, I survived too. We both did." She faltered, searching for the right words, her voice becoming insistent, "Maybe we're stronger than we thought. Not in spite of the Goa'uld, but BECAUSE of the Goa'uld. We've proved we are stronger than they are." She tugged his arm gently, needing Jack to look at her. "YOU'VE proved that you're stronger than they are."
Jack finally responded, turning away from the window to meet her compassionate gaze. "How?" he whispered curiously.
"Jack!" Janet shook her head in exasperation, "You've beaten them more times than you'll give yourself credit for!"
"I had help," he shrugged evasively.
"Exactly!" she exclaimed. "We're stronger than the Goa'uld because we're not alone like they are!"
"How can you be sure?" Jack asked softly, his voice full of uncertainty.
Janet's gesture encompassed them and the room, "We're here, aren't we?" She held his brown eyed gaze for a timeless moment, adding emphatically, "You're never alone, Colonel."
Jack studied her for a moment, mulling over her words. Then, as if to prove her point, he leaned down and wrapped his arms around the petite doctor in a gentle hug. Breathing a soft relieved sigh, he dipped his head to bury it in her neck as Janet responded in kind. For a long time, they simply held each other, a comforting embrace between two friends in need.
"Thanks," Jack eventually murmured against her hair, feeling her nod slightly against his shoulder. "You know you make a pretty good amateur psychologist after all!" he laughed softly.
Janet pulled away and smiled up at him. "Just remember that next time you don't want to talk about it, Colonel!" She held his gaze for another long beat and then stepped away, picking up her whiskey glass off the coffee table.
"Yeah," Jack agreed ironically, shaking his head, "But next time you catch me hanging around in the lab just because it's got more cool gadgets to play with than the observation booth, do me a favour, Doc? Kick me out of there!"
Janet laughed. "It will be my pleasure, Colonel!" She glanced at her watch, "I should go. I'm supposed to be collecting Cassie from her friend's house," she indicated the empty glass in her hand with a wry grin, "And now I'll have to walk!"
Jack smiled guilelessly, "Sorry!"
"Don't apologise, Jack. Believe me, I needed it! ALL of it," she added meaningfully, fixing him with her gaze once more.
Jack nodded understanding, watching her move up the steps towards the kitchen to drop off the dirty glass. A thought crossed his mind, "What about that blood sample you came for?"
"Oh, that?" Janet flashed a winning smile, her final words drifting back to him over her shoulder as she headed quickly out the door.
"I'm sure it can wait!"
~~Fin~~
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Elaine Stouse
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