"Here we go again," General Hammond thought when the radio signal came through. SG-1 was coming in hot. Extra security teams stormed into the Gateroom, and a medical team assembled just outside the door. They all waited at the ready...and waited. Repeated attempts to reach the team through the Gate drew no response and shortly thereafter it shut itself down.
"Get that Gate opened," Hammond ordered, but it would not activate. Of course. He gave the order to continue attempting to open the Gate to P4S-222 every five minutes until contact could be reestablished. A rescue team was to be assembled and ready to embark as soon as the situation could be assessed once it finally opened. There was nothing else he could do...again.
Without argument, his flagship team was the best out there. Unfortunately, not only were they the best at getting things done, they also seemed to be the best at getting into trouble. Colonel O'Neill's irreverent flippancy, Teal'c's reputation as a traitor, and the two scientists' curiosity made for problems. Time to think once again about breaking up the team...not that he would ever actually break up SG-1. When they weren't in trouble, and frequently even when they were, they were too valuable to the StarGate Project. Nevertheless watching one more failed connection attempt, he couldn't help thinking it might be for the best. Put the two scientists in charge of labs here on base, let the Jaffa and O'Neill put their military expertise to work on an all military team not charged with first contact, and they all might actually survive their tour at the SGC.
His thoughts were interrupted when an incoming wormhole was established. "Receiving SG-1's code, Sir," Walter Harriman announced. "No radio contact." The general could hear the weariness and concern in the tech's voice and feel it in his own soul. Together they'd lived through this scenario way too many times.
"Open the iris," he ordered.
"Yes, Sir." The iris grated open. The wait began again. It dragged on until the general expected the Gate to shut down at any second. But finally Colonel O'Neill stepped through dragging Daniel Jackson with him. Three steps behind them came Teal'c and Major Carter supporting one another.
"Close it up, Son," the general told Walter as he ran towards the Gateroom. The medical team was already surrounding Dr. Jackson. Hammond couldn't tell how badly the archeologist might be injured. He hadn't observed any blood from his vantage point up above but that didn't mean anything.
A quick look at the three standing members of the team told him they weren't exactly ready to waltz back through the Gate to complete their interrupted mission either. They were all shaky on their feet and gasping for air. Hammond wasn't surprised when his "Report, Colonel" went unanswered or when O'Neill made a sudden grab for Major Carter as she collapsed beside him and then went down himself. With a sigh, he ordered Teal'c to take a seat before he ended up falling on his face as well and called for backup medical teams.
He followed his team to the infirmary and tried to pump Teal'c for information while the doctors and nurses scurried around poking and prodding the rest of SG-1. It was not a very successful venture. Each question elicited a wrinkled brow on the big man's face and a puzzled shake to his head. Hammond was only too happy to stand aside when a nurse came to take the Jaffa's vitals.
A quick look around showed him a still-unconscious Daniel Jackson being pushed rather quickly out the door...off for one scan or another no doubt. O'Neill lay on an infirmary bed, open-eyed but unseeing. His clenched fists at his side were the only indication he was not peacefully daydreaming. In the bed at his side, Samantha Carter did not look like she was peacefully doing anything. Her large eyes darted around the room in alarm like a frightened, trapped animal. Her breath came in fast gulps, and she flinched as people moved about her. He stepped towards her slowly and carefully.
Softly he said, "Major Carter?" Though she watched him closely, she gave no answer. He took her hand and feeling its coldness asked a passing nurse for a warm blanket. They waited silently and warily until it came. Then he gently covered her with it. He was relieved when she whispered a timid 'thank you.' At least the whole team hadn't lost their ability to communicate.
"What can you tell me about what happened out there?" he questioned.
"Nothing," she answered so quietly he wasn't sure if he'd heard her or only read her lips. Tears glistened in her eyes as she continued, "I can't tell you anything...I don't know anything." Something in the hollowness of her words set off warning bells in his mind.
"As in you don't know anything about what happened? Or...?"
"Anything. I don't know anything," she repeated.
"Are you telling me you don't know where you are, who you are, or what you're doing here?"
"Do you?" she asked him hesitantly as if afraid of his answer.
He gave her hand a gentle pat and shook his head in a reassuring 'yes'. "It's ok," he told her, "We know you. You're safe here." She moved her hand to clasp his as he went on, "Your name is Samantha Carter." No glimmer of recognition sparked in her eyes. "You work here...you're a scientist and a soldier." No light bulb. "You work with these men." He motioned towards Teal'c and O'Neill, neither of whom seemed anymore coherent now than they had before. Her eyes swept over them and came back to his.
Then she said haltingly, "We were together on the other...side. There was someone else with us?" She looked at him hopefully as though he held all the answers. He shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. Usually, when he needed answers, she was more likely than anyone to provide them-and that was the way he liked it.
"Yes, Daniel Jackson. The doctors are taking care of him."
"There was something...or maybe someone after us?" He shrugged his inability to fill her in on that and she went on. "He..." she motioned towards O'Neill.
"Colonel O'Neill."
"...said we had to go through that...blue circle thing?"
"The StarGate."
"He said we'd be safe on the other side. But then...we were in a room surrounded by soldiers."
Not quite, but almost he could hear an accusation in her statement. He chose to answer it, "We had gotten word your team would be coming through the Gate under enemy fire. The soldiers were there to provide protection." Her eyes slid away from his. She didn't know if she could trust him. He supposed that was to be expected. Yet, seconds later she met his gaze and nodded her head as though acknowledging his reliability.
"What do you remember before the colonel ordered you all through the StarGate?" he prodded.
She shook her head. "I remember lying in the hot sand. I couldn't think...didn't know how I'd got there, didn't know who I was...he..." this time her nod was towards Teal'c.
"Teal'c"
"Teal'c. He helped me up." She paused and then continued, "He is...rather formidable looking." There was a question behind the look she gave him though it took him a minute to guess what it was.
"You're wondering why he didn't frighten you?" A nod of her still too-pale head confirmed his guess.
"And I believed the other one when he said we should come through the... StarGate..."
Understanding her confusion, he tried to reassure her. "You're a team. You've been in some pretty desperate circumstances together in the past and earned each other's respect and trust. Whatever has happened to you, that much must have stuck with you." He gave her a small smile. "I'd say it's a good thing. And a good sign your memory will come back to you." She tried to answer his smile with one of her own but didn't quite pull it off.
Before he could add anything more, the med team appeared at her bedside to begin more testing. He squeezed her hand reassuringly. She nodded in acknowledgement, and he moved away to give them room to work.
Dr. Frasier entered the room and crossed to speak to him. "Daniel's vitals and tests seem normal, Sir. He's awake now, though extremely confused and disoriented."
Hammond nodded. "The major seems to have had a pretty big memory loss herself."
She narrowed her eyes. "How big is 'pretty big', Sir?"
"You name it, she doesn't know it."
The doctor flinched. "I assumed Daniel's disorientation would clear quickly. But, if the others..." she trailed off.
Hammond looked once again at Teal'c. Confusion clearly remained on his face while he watched the activity going on around him. If the Jaffa had also lost his memory, Hammond guessed the SGC infirmary would be a very strange and potentially threatening place to find himself. A confused and cornered Jaffa was not what he wanted loose in his infirmary. He motioned a guard over and gave a quiet order for a watch to be placed on the big man, just in case.
Seconds later a sudden outcry and the resounding crash of equipment hitting the floor drew his attention. The colonel had apparently come out of his stupor and now held a terrified nurse in a tight grip while taking in his surroundings with a hard, suspicious look. Too late, Hammond realized it was O'Neill with his black ops training and experience as a POW that should have concerned him.
"Colonel?" Dr. Frasier approached him cautiously, stopping without getting too close. O'Neill did not respond except to tighten his hold on the nurse.
Hammond tried, "Jack? You're among friends here...no one is trying to hurt you." O'Neill's grip didn't loosen, though his eyes swiveled to look at him.
"You said we'd be safe here," Major Carter spoke up from her bed whether to reassure the colonel or accuse him Hammond couldn't quite tell.
"That was before the guys with guns," O'Neill answered her pointedly. That again. Finding themselves in a room full of armed men aiming in their general direction when they had expected to find safety and help had obviously done a lot of damage. He sighed and applying what salve he could to the wound once again explained they had been there not to threaten SG-1 but to protect them and the base from an enemy incursion. His speech didn't seem to pacify the colonel.
"Our weapons are gone," O'Neill flatly stated.
Hammond recognized where this was going and headed it off at the pass. "You are confused and disoriented. For the safety of this base, we will not be returning your weapons to you. If you notice, you are holding one of my people hostage."
O'Neill looked down at the woman and then back up at the general. His look registered his understanding of the general's position. "You're in charge here?" he asked.
"This is my command."
"You give me your word, you aren't going to harm me or..." he flung his arm out in the general direction of Teal'c and Carter.
"I give you my word we won't harm any of you. We are your friends, Jack. You're safe with us." With a moan, O'Neill released the nurse and let her scramble away from him. "Thank you," Hammond told him. "These people are trying to find out what happened to you and your teammates...I need your word, you'll let them do their jobs."
O'Neill nodded his assent and then lurched himself over to Teal'c's side. He motioned with his head to Carter. She warily made her way over to his side while he asked, "So, who are we?" Hammond made introductions all around.
"And the other guy?" O'Neill asked. "The one out cold in the dirt? The one we brought with us?"
"Daniel Jackson, another member of your team," Hammond answered.
"He has been having a test done but should be returning here any minute," Dr. Frasier answered. "He's ok."
"You said we'd be safe here, and you were right," Carter interjected. O'Neill gave her a look clearly showing that as far as he was concerned the jury was still out on that one.
"Major Carter can remember nothing until right before you came through the Gate...do either of you remember anything before that?" Hammond asked.
O'Neill shrugged. Teal'c finally shook off his puzzlement to say, "I do not. I was on the ground, so were these others. I did not know them or myself. I did know we needed to get away quickly. This one," he nodded towards O'Neill, "said we would find safety through the blue circle."
"That's right, Teal'c. You are safe here," the general assured him.
Janet nodded her agreement and asked, "Do you remember kelnorim?"
He tilted his head at her. "Kelnorim. I believe I do. It is a state of rest."
"Yes, and I think if you feel safe enough here, it would be wise for you to put yourself in kelnorim. It can be healing for your kind. Perhaps, things will become clearer to you if you do."
Hammond was surprised when instead of making his own decision, the Jaffa turned to O'Neill. "Do you believe we are safe here amongst these people?" The general flinched imagining O'Neill's sure-to-be sarcastic and less than trusting response, but it didn't come.
"I guess I do," he answered quietly. "You go ahead and do that--thing...I'll keep watch."
Trusting the instincts of this man he could not remember, Teal'c told the doctor, "Very well." The doctor directed him to the end of the room where there would be less disturbances to keep him from achieving the level of meditation he would need.
"Where's the other guy?" O'Neill asked Hammond. "I thought she said he'd be coming."
"Here he is now, Colonel," Dr. Frasier said indicating with her hand Daniel Jackson's return to the infirmary in a wheelchair. "He's fine, though just as confused as the rest of you."
"You are looking for me?" Daniel asked the colonel. "You know me?"
O'Neill shrugged. "No. I don't know you, but don't feel bad, I don't know me either or--come to think of it, I don't know a soul here. How about you?"
Daniel scowled at him. "No, I don't. And that bothers me, although it apparently doesn't you."
O'Neill scowled back. "Oh, it bothers me," he muttered in answer.
Nurses tried to help Daniel into a bed, but he pushed them away. "I'm fine," he said, climbing in without their help.
"Actually, except for the memory loss, you're all fine," Dr. Frasier stated. "I think you should try to rest. Sleep has amazing restorative powers and it's possible things will seem clearer when you wake up."
O'Neill snorted at the suggestion but stalked back to his own bed and sprawled on top of it. The others followed his example. The doctor motioned everyone else out of the room.
"We'll talk more in the morning," Hammond told them. We'll figure this out." O'Neill's answering scowl following him out of the room, he joined Frasier in the observation room. On the monitor, they watched the colonel get back up and begin to pace the infirmary's narrow confines. The others watched him until he spoke something to them. Then they both settled down while he continued to pace.
Hammond wondered aloud, "If they've lost their memories, isn't it odd they all still follow the colonel...and he takes if for granted they will?"
"I don't know, Sir. It's apparent that at a deeper level, they all have some memory of each other and of the SGC...the way they assumed they belong together and the fact the colonel knew to come through the Gate have to be more than coincidence."
"You think they'll get back the rest of their memories then?" the general asked.
"I hope so, Sir."
"Whatever hit them had to do it in the very short window of time between when they input their GDO code to when they stepped through the Gate. I'm willing to bet their attackers were expecting the blast or whatever to leave them easy pickings. They didn't know what a stubborn cuss O'Neil is, so they never expected him to retain the thought safety was on the other side of the Gate.
They wanted them for something. And if that something was information, either the effects are short-term, or they have a means of counteracting it."
He blew out a frustrated breath of air. "I don't dare send anyone through to find out until we know we don't have an alternative. I have teams reviewing everything SG-1 brought back with them to see what we can learn. Between your tests and that, maybe we'll find an answer. In the meantime, this is going to generate a mountain of paperwork, and I'd better get to it. Let me know if there is any change."
Hammond gave one last look at the monitor showing the colonel aimlessly pacing. "What do you think will happen to them if they don't get their memories back?" he asked and with a shake of his head he was gone.
It was just after two hours later when he was given the news Teal'c had awakened from his meditation and relieved O'Neill who was now resting quietly. From reading reports over the years, he knew SG-1's typical watch rotation and had a feeling they'd be following it through the night. For people who didn't even know their own names, SG-1 certainly knew plenty about the way their team worked.
In the morning report, he was able to see that SG-1 had indeed followed their normal watch rotation. They were now awake and, each in their own way, giving the infirmary a hard time. O'Neill was harassing the staff and demanding their release. Teal'c had apparently decided his vitals had been checked more than enough and was refusing to allow the staff to do any follow-up tests on him. Dr. Jackson was peppering the staff with questions. And to pass the time, Major Carter had taken apart and repaired several pieces of equipment which had been marked 'out of order' and set aside in a corner waiting for Siler to find time to tinker with them. This would have been more appreciated if in the process she hadn't torn them apart and left them scattered around the room so no one could walk through without knocking in to a piece or two along the way.
Hammond tried not to laugh out loud as he read the report. He began to have a lot more compassion towards anyone who had taken SG-1 prisoner for any length of time. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the report to give him any hope rest had returned his people to their right minds. They were interacting with each other in a manner consistent with their normal behavior except for an unusual physical closeness between O'Neill and Carter. The colonel ended up finishing out the night curled up with her in her bed after comforting her after she'd awakened from an apparent nightmare. Too close for military regulations, he thought sourly, especially knowing the size of the infirmary beds.
He sighed. His job involved knowing everything there was to know about the people under him; his command, his nation, and his world depended on him to do that job well. That these two were taking comfort in the physical presence of each other did not surprise him. However, it did concern him. Honestly, they had to be about scared out of whatever was left of their minds, and he felt they should be able to draw whatever comfort they could from wherever they could. But. He didn't get this job by putting his ideas above those of the Air Force. He'd have to do something to rectify this situation and soon.
In the meantime, an emergency meeting with everyone's not so favorite psych and Dr. Frasier came up with nothing helpful. The hope was that over time SG-1 would return to normal, but hope was all it was.
It was decided to reorient the team as much as possible. Initially, the general ordered Feretti to take O'Neill and Teal'c and a scientist from each of the appropriate labs to take the others. But, O'Neill refused to allow his people to be separated. It was hard to tell if the others had the same problem with being isolated from each other or simply would not go against O'Neill; but in the end, Hammond stepped in and began the orientation himself.
After a brief tour of the facility, he brought them to the conference room and handed them each their file. He supposed if they never regained their memories letting them in on the classified nature of the SGC might be a mistake, but the hope the information he was feeding them would trigger a return of their memories overrode any possible, future security concerns.
Teal'c raised his eyebrows as he skimmed methodically through his file. His arm unconsciously went to his abdomen and a look of distaste crossed his features. Apparently, his knowledge of the larval Goa'uld he carried had not been one of those things he'd subconsciously held onto.
O'Neill muttered sarcastic comments as he rapidly leafed through his file. None of it seemed to impress him.
Dr. Jackson was immediately swept up in his as though he'd just been handed a very fascinating and compelling book. Every once in awhile, he'd glance up at the general as though to ask if the book hadn't been accidentally shelved in nonfiction when it should have been on the Sci-Fi/Fantasy shelves.
Major Carter read hers quickly and thoroughly without comment. When she finished, she straightened the folder's contents and left it sitting on the table while she wandered over to the window overlooking the Gate and stood with her back to the room.
O'Neill left his folder haphazardly thrown together and went over to join her. "Carter?" he asked hesitantly.
She glanced at him, rolled her eyes, and gave him a half shrug and small smile. "I don't remember any of that. We live in Colorado. I don't even know what that is--a country? a city? a planet? I'm an astrophysicist. Sounds important anyway," she said with a snort. "I'm a major in the Air Force--whatever that is. I don't recognize my birthday, my address, or even my dad's name. My mom has been dead for years. I know how to take those machines apart back there were we were, but I don't even know how she died!"
"I know," he said quietly, brushing a hand down her back and pulling her close to him. "I don't much care for what I was reading myself. I'm not so sure I want to meet this Colonel O'Neill of theirs, and I sure don't want to have lived his life."
"But, we've done fantastic things, guys!" Jackson burst in. "We've seen some incredible things. I mean come on! We go through that Gate to other worlds! Think about it! We've saved the world! Who wouldn't want to remember that?"
"Indeed, if this material is correct, we have lived worthy lives," Teal'c said. "We have stood against slavery and tyranny. We have faced a formidable enemy and emerged victorious many times."
"Have we?" Carter quietly asked. "We only know what they tell us..."
"You trusted them before," Daniel asserted. "Why would they lie to us about who we were?"
She shook her head, "I don't know...there's just so much I don't know."
"So much we don't know," O'Neill corrected. "Come back to the table and let's see what we can learn," he said, and she reluctantly followed him back.
"So, that's who we supposedly are...what happened to us?" he asked Hammond.
"I wish I knew, Colonel. You were on an apparently uninhabited planet performing a routine survey when we received a radio transmission from Major Carter that you were under enemy fire and were attempting to reach the Gate. She didn't give us any more intel, and the Gate shut down before any of you came through. We weren't able to reestablish a connection from this side, but you apparently were about 20 minutes later.
"We've examined all your logs and the data you collected on the planet. Everything seemed perfectly normal until we got the message you were coming in under fire."
"So we were caught by surprise?" O'Neill asked.
Carter responded, "We don't know that. If it wasn't for the radio transmission, there'd be no reason to suspect what happened to us was an enemy attack at all."
"What else could it have been?" Daniel asked, and for a brief time the two of them examined various theories ranging from toxic gases to radiation exposure.
"For crying out loud!" O'Neill burst into their conversation. "None of that matters! Because there was a radio transmission, and it clearly stated we were under attack, remember?" Identical twin looks of contrition passed over the two scientists' faces. O'Neill must have decided he was being too harsh. He gave one of his trademark, apologetic shrugs and went on.
"I think this is all a waste of time. We've got nothing here. We need to go back to p-whatever, find out who did this, and make them fix it."
"I thought you said you didn't want to know your previous self, O'Neill?" Teal'c questioned him.
"Well, I sure don't want to live in limbo land either! This is no life! We're as good as prisoners!" O'Neill said, scowling pointedly at the SF's flanking the back of the room. "What do you say, General...can we go back?"
"I'm afraid not, Colonel. We can't risk anyone else being exposed to whatever happened to you, and, in your present states, I don't believe you would be able to function in the field."
O'Neill flinched at the general's pronouncement. "So we take up knitting?" he said in a quiet, almost defeated voice. The others glanced at him curiously, Teal'c raising his eyebrow. O'Neill shrugged in response, "I don't know what it is either, but I bet it's boring and not nearly as satisfying as saving the world!"
Carter narrowed her eyes at him and then turned back to Hammond. "What if our memories don't return, Sir? What will happen to us?"
Teal'c said, "I do not wish to be forced to take up...knitting." He gave the others a self-satisfied smirk when they laughed. O'Neill had always told him the Jaffa had a sense of humor, but it had been hidden so far behind the man's reticent personality Hammond had only rarely seen evidence of it.
"If your memories don't return, I believe it would be highly unlikely we'd force you to take up knitting, Teal'c," Hammond answered. "You are all intelligent and adaptable, I am sure we can use you here."
Only O'Neill gave him a look that said all to clearly he wasn't fooled. If their memories didn't return, they'd be given no choice but to make a life at the SGC or offworld. The security risk if they remembered sometime in the future or if certain parties would decide to try to access their buried memories would be far too great for them to be allowed to wander freely in society. Hammond chose to meet O'Neill's look head on. He wasn't happy about the necessity, but he'd make no apologies for it either.
"General, I'd really like to take a look at the work I was doing before this happened," Daniel Jackson said excitedly. "It said in my file that when SG-1 is not out in the field, I study various alien artifacts and language." He shrugged a 'who'd believe it' look to the others and went on, "Maybe seeing the work will trigger some memories...at the very least, I'd be interested in knowing if I can read any of the languages. I mean, you know, we all seemed to be able to read these files in whatever language they're in, so maybe I can continue the work...instead of knitting." He gave the general his patented hopeful and humble smile.
The general refrained from pointing out that had been his intent from the beginning. Instead, he led them all to Daniel Jackson's cluttered little office.
Jackson was thrilled with the room. He wondered from one thing to another in obvious delight, questioning each item in unbounded curiosity and interest, but, unfortunately, with no flicker of recognition. They left him in the competent care of the archeology department and headed towards Major Carter's lab.
Hammond was surprised to see she didn't seem as enamored with her room. She dutifully inspected the insides of a Calgoli transit reactor torn apart over her work bench, made a correction to the physics equation scrawled over her chalkboard, and listlessly sat down at her computer seemingly randomly pulling up files. It was O'Neill's questioning look watching her do so that made Hammond question what he was seeing.
"Everything on that computer should be classified, Major. How are you accessing those files?" he asked. She looked up at him with a shrug.
"They do each have a password, Sir, and they're also individually coded, but it is a simple enough system based on..." and she began a detailed explanation of some mathematical principle Hammond knew hadn't been covered in his high school algebra class. Not understanding a word of it, he assumed what she was telling him was she hadn't had to consciously remember anything about her previous life to access her files but simply do the math.
The other members of her team were listening to her much closer than Hammond. Teal'c's expressionless face gave the impression he was actually following the discussion, and O'Neill hadn't put on his glazed "Ack! No techno babble" look. He was pursing his lips and shaking his head. For a moment, Hammond thought he really might have a clue what the Major was talking about. But then, he shook himself out of it and said, "Huh??? You're giving me a headache!"
Carter turned to him apologetically, saying, "Sorry, Sir."
"Where'd all that come from anyway?" he asked her. "You carry that kind of stuff around in your head all the time?"
"I guess, so. My file indicated I do-did."
"Well, stop it!" Hammond laughed to himself, stopping Major Carter from thinking like the genius she was would take more than one hard-nosed Colonel. And apparently more than one alien, memory-blocking device of unknown origin. The major didn't laugh though. O'Neill bit his bottom lip and apologized with a look, but it was too late.
"Why? So I can have absolutely nothing up there? I can't remember my own name, and you want me to forget what little I do remember? Well, you can just forget that!" She shut her computer with much more force than was necessary and stared angrily up at the colonel. O'Neill contritely whispered an apology and drew her into a gentle embrace. They stood quietly for a minute before Hammond felt duty bound to break the moment.
"This is something we are going to have to discuss, Colonel, Major," he said reluctantly.
They both turned to him questioningly. "The Air Force operates under certain rules. Rules like no fraternization between a commanding officer, say a colonel, and a subordinate officer, like say a major." Understanding hit both their faces seconds before they awkwardly pulled apart.
"Ok, this stinks. How come I don't know what to call that blue, slimy stuff they fed us last night, but I have a very clear idea of what you're talking about?" O'Neill grumbled.
"I don't know, Son. It seems what you do remember compared to what you don't raises more questions than it answers. I'm willing to bet, Dr. Jackson is able to read everything from Ancient Egyptian to Russian, and if I took you down to the weapons locker, you could take apart every weapon down there without taxing yourself in the least."
"You are saying that O'Neill and Carter are not free to pursue a relationship together?" Teal'c brought the conversation around again.
"I'm afraid so," the general agreed.
"This is not right," the Jaffa stated. "If we can not remember who we once were, we must be free to become who we will be. We should not be limited by our past."
"I can understand what you are saying," the general answered, "but I'm not ready to give up on who you were just yet. If your memories don't return, then will be the time for this discussion. Right now, I want you to take a look at the reports and film you brought with you from the planet. Maybe there is something there one of you will recognize."
As always it was Daniel who had done most of the filming for the group. There was a combined total of 47 minutes of tape and over 35 minutes was of ruins that to Hammond's eye looked amazingly similar to those on hundreds of other tapes he had viewed from hundreds of other planets. If there was a clue in these ones, he couldn't see it. And O'Neill wasn't likely to spot it either considering his eyes had glazed over after the first few minutes of watching. He'd spent the rest of the time distracting the others by flicking bits of paper at them while they dutifully studied the screen. Major Carter and Teal'c had studiously ignored him, but as far as the general could see, neither of them had learned anything from the ruins either.
On most missions, any other film would have been one of the men filming some alien technology while Major Carter discussed its possible uses, dangers, benefits, and peculiarities. But, this time there had apparently not been any technological discoveries worthy of preserving on film. Instead, the remaining twelve minutes were taken up with two minutes of O'Neill horsing around with the camera making faces into the lens and trying to annoy Daniel and 10 minutes of mainly ground mixed here and there with a few, wildly tilting shots of clear, blue sky.
"Ugh, that's gonna make me sick!" O'Neill complained watching the jerky, uncoordinated movements. "Turn it off."
"No," the general said, "I want to keep it running. The picture's no good, but listen to the audio." The voices they could hear were muffled with only portions of the conversation distinguishable. Even the colonel leaned forward to make out what he could.
O'Neill's voice, light and amused, saying, "Oh, you say that now, Daniel, but that's not what you were saying (garble)."
Daniel's answer, annoyed and more distant, was too muffled to catch.
Then Carter's voice came, close and low, "What is it, Sir?"
And O'Neill's again, this time much quieter, "Just (garble) walking and (garble) normal, Car-(garble)." Hammond paused the tape.
"That's the only hint, we've been able to pick up," he said. He looked hopefully at the colonel who shrugged.
It was Teal'c who seemed to think there really might be something to be gained by listening again. "Play it back again. I believe I can make out what O'Neill said there at the end." But after listening three more times, he had to say, "I am sorry. I can tell nothing for certain. I think it is safe to say we were being observed, and O'Neill did not want the watchers to know we were aware of them."
"I agree," Hammond told him, and the major nodded in agreement as well. Hammond started the tape again.
O'Neill's voice called out once again teasingly, "How about (garble) Teal'c?" Whatever the Jaffa's answer it was swallowed up by distance and the much nearer low voice of the colonel. "Take (garble) get to Gate (garble) distract (garble). And here, take this thing too!" The last part came out much clearer than anything else as apparently the colonel passed the camera off to the major.
"You forgot to switch it off, Sir," Carter's words came through seconds before the picture faded away.
"Well, that was helpful," O'Neill muttered. "We don't seem to be making any progress here, folks."
"Let's take a break then," Hammond suggested. "I'm willing to allow you free access to unrestricted areas on base for the time being."
Optimistic ideas of the team slowly regaining their memory faded as days passed without any progress. Hammond sent a reluctant message to the last known Tok'ra address. Not surprisingly, it went unanswered. The 'don't call us, we'll call you' business didn't sit well with him. For allies, they never seemed to be around when they were needed, though they had a knack for calling when the shoe was on the other foot.
After the team he'd sent to K'Tau to try to contact the Asgard through the Hall of Wisdom came up empty, he'd hopefully handed Jack the Asgard communication device Thor had given him. Tuned exclusively to O'Neill, it was virtually useless without him capable of activating it. Jack had looked at it curiously, turned it around a couple of times, and tapped his long finger on its side before saying a half-hearted, "Testing, testing." Then he'd lost interest and wondered down to the commissary for more cake. He may have forgotten how to use the devise, but he had no trouble remembering his favorite dessert.
Hammond sighed. That had been about the whole of it. Their memories were disconcertingly random. One day, he'd found Major Carter wondering lost through the halls. After he'd directed her to her lab, she had casually spent less than an hour putting the torn-down Calgoli transit reactor back together and drawing up a schematic the engineers in Area 51 had followed to build their own reactor. With her modifications, it worked even better than the original. Once that is, they'd questioned her to find out what sort of unit she'd used for her scale. She'd failed to recognize the numerous, mechanical drawing devices lying around her lab and had made up her own using a paper clip.
Daniel Jackson was constantly chasing him down to share new discoveries he had made. Discoveries like how to use the vending machine and the culinary delight of candy bars. He didn't seem to realize a two star general perhaps had more important things to do. Hammond really didn't mind though. When he could keep himself from thinking about the waste of it all, he enjoyed Jackson's boyish delight. It contrasted sharply with the attitudes of the rest of SG-1.
Teal'c and O'Neill were men of action, and the enforced inactivity and frustration at not remembering the simplest things was understandably wearing on them. He would have expected Major Carter with her many and varied talents and interests and her normally undying optimism to have dealt at least as well as Daniel, but even the engineers' delight with her schematics hadn't given her a smile. She'd tinker at projects brought to her but seemed to have lost her joy in her job and in discovery itself.
The psychs were divided on whether her listlessness and depression and the men's growing frustration and anger were a natural reaction to their loss or abnormal and associated with whatever had caused the loss in the first place. Hypnosis and the use of mind alternating drugs had proven fruitless to the point that even Carter and Jackson, who generally were of a more cooperative sort than the colonel and Jaffa, were refusing to try anything else.
Hammond was just as frustrated himself and well aware he needed to come up with a plan to either get the team back to normal or utilize them elsewhere. Even without their memories, they were too valuable to leave sitting around fiddling their thumbs. A klaxon sound interrupted his thoughts, and he raced to the control room only to find himself and other base personnel locked out.
"It's SG-1, Sir. They've locked us out and have control of the Gate!" Siler reported. Hammond winced. He had restricted Major Carter's access to the base computer system as a safeguard, but he hadn't been foolish enough to think that even with her memory impaired that would keep her out if she gave it half a try. He could pretty well guess what the team was up to, and he certainly couldn't blame them. As he gave orders to get the control room opened up and the blast doors unsealed, he silently wished the team Godspeed and prepared himself for yet another long round of waiting and hoping his people would return to him alive and whole.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Listen, if you want to stay that's your choice," Jack had told Daniel only moments before. "But, she," he nodded towards Carter, "found out how to work that Gate and we're going back to p-whatever with or without you." They'd been arguing for several minutes already, and Jack had had enough. "You like having mush between your ears that's fine, but we're off to find the wizard and get some brains." He scowled at the puzzled expressions all turned to him. "Don't ask!" he snarled before stalking out of the door without looking to see who was following him.
"We would prefer you come with us, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said. "We came together, and we should leave together." Then he, too, walked away.
"Come with us?" Carter asked quietly. He looked into her eyes and wondered if this was how it always was between them. Had O'Neill always issued short, abrupt orders and expected them to follow? Had Teal'c always spoken so formally, so confidently? Had Sam always been the one to quietly cajole him into following even when he wasn't sure of the wisdom in it? He shrugged and stood up from his desk. He didn't want to go. He hated to feel vulnerable and the loss of his memory had left him feeling very vulnerable indeed. He'd come to feel safe here in this base full of strangers who considered themselves his friends, and he didn't want to leave it. But Teal'c was right. They belonged together.
He watched with wonder as Carter worked her way into the system and opened the Gate to a world light-years away. Did they really do this on a regular basis? Were they really going to go through that fluctuating circle and step out onto another world? He shook his head in sheer disbelief.
"Come on, Jackson!" O'Neill's voice cut in, and he ran with the others down the stairs, through the already closing doors, up the ramp, and through the Gate into the unknown.
The alienness of the air on the other side struck him first. It left a burn in his throat and a bitter taste in his mouth, but it didn't leave him reeling and crashing to the ground gasping for oxygen. He looked with interest at the world around him. The sky was clearer than on Earth, and two suns hung low in it casting long, eerie shadows through the pine forest surrounding the Gate. The path they'd seen on the videotape wound its way past the Gate and into the forest. The others were already following it, and he ran to catch up before Jack had to call to him again.
A brisk hike brought them to the filmed ruins. But for them, there would have been no sign sentient life had ever visited the planet. The team spoke very little. They'd been sure this would bring them the answers they each so desperately needed, but as the day wore on their doubts grew fast while their hopes slowly died away.
"Well, isn't this just great?" O'Neill grumbled. He threw himself down on the half-broken down wall of what once had been a great city.
"The answers are here, O'Neill," Teal'c encouraged him. "We must persevere until we find them."
"Agreed," O'Neill said, "but we won't find them today...we'll make camp here and start looking again in the morning." Teal'c nodded his agreement and began setting up a rudimentary camp. The others joined him. Although none of them could remember performing the task before, they worked quickly and efficiently and were soon done.
Lying on his sleeping bag later, Daniel squinted through the moonlight at his companions. Teal'c lay absolutely still near him, and Daniel felt that summed up the man...steadfast and steady, calmness personified. Jack and Sam sat on the wall talking. Their low voices were comfortingly familiar, and he guessed he'd lain in a sleeping bag and fallen asleep to their quiet murmurs many times before. Sam was talking using her hands to aid her. Her eyes gleamed in the light, and Daniel knew she was smiling. She had thrown off her depression at the same time she'd dialed the Gate, and though the fruitless day had dampened her enthusiasm for a time, the evening's rest seemed to have revitalized her. He knew this was how she should be. The Sam sitting on the wall, laughing with Jack, was the Major Carter he had glimpsed between the lines of the mission reports he'd pored over back on Earth. He liked her a lot better than the shadow of the woman he'd known these last days at the SGC.
Jack was more likeable here, too. Not so hard or angry. His restlessness at the base was turned to vigilance here on this strange world: his overbearing manner there replaced by the quiet determination of a leader who would see his people through to the end. Daniel found he felt just as safe here with these people on this alien world as he had back in the SGC. Breathing in the air of an alien planet, bathed in its strangely cast moonlight, he relaxed into the night and drifted into sleep feeling as though he'd finally come home after a long journey.
He woke suddenly, going from deep sleep to wary wakefulness in a fraction of a minute. The night was still, but he could feel the tension in the air. Something in the way his companions held themselves tight and on guard warned him they were not alone seconds before a group of armed men rushed them. They'd brought their own weapons from the SGC armory, but, in the dark, the few shots they got off didn't hit their marks. The battle was over almost as quickly as it had begun.
Forced to their knees, hands behind their heads, disarmed, and thoroughly defeated. Not the objective he'd had in mind when he'd set off from the SGC the afternoon before. "What do you want from us?" Jack demanded, but no one bothered to answer. He shot assessing looks at his team. Teal'c had definitely taken a hit. Blood dripped down his upper arm and dropped to the ground next to Jack's achingly protesting, left knee. At least, if he understood Jaffa physiology, if one of them had to take a hit, Teal'c was their best candidate. On the other side of him, Jackson looked to be all right and Carter beyond him. They met his eyes with looks of their own. He knew they were expecting him to get them out of this mess.
He'd read the reports and knew with their help he'd done it before. He wanted to believe he'd do it again, but honestly, he didn't have any idea how to escape or better yet take the upper hand and force their captors into undoing whatever had been done to them. What had he been thinking when he'd led them here? Did he really think he was the sort of man who could defy the odds and come out on top every time? The man in those reports might have had what it took, but apparently he'd lost whatever that was when he'd lost his memory. He licked his lips and tried to meet the eyes of his teammates without flinching. He owed them that much.
Carter gave him a half-hearted smile. He thought of her like she'd been earlier in the night, full of life and optimism and breathtakingly beautiful in the soft moonlight. He'd felt perfectly content as though he could have happily watched and listened to her the rest of his life. Instead, he'd sent her off to bed and taken first watch because that was his job. And now he returned her smile with a cocky grin of his own and hoped she couldn't see the fear tying his guts in knots beneath it. Because that was his job, too.
They were roughly hauled to their feet and prodded along the path. The faces of their enemy were hard in the dawn's light and not one of them would meet his eyes. They herded them along an overgrown path that wound its way down the wooded hillside and eventually ended in a village of wood and brick houses sprawled along the valley floor. The two suns were high in the sky and sweltering hot as they were marched grimly into the town. The streets were deserted, but hard, scowling faces watched them make their dejected way through the town. They were led to what proved to be the city jail and pushed into one, large cell together.
Water in a chipped, earthenware jug, a few misshapen loaves of dry brown bread, and a handful of dried meat thrown down on a roughhewn table were the only provisions they were given. Not knowing how long these simple rations were to last them, O'Neill doled them out carefully to his dejected team. He gave a half-hearted kick to the table leg and plopped himself down against the wall. A fine layer of dust rose from the dirt floor around him and temporarily floated in the stifling air.
"What now?" Daniel asked quietly. O'Neill shrugged in return and neither of the other two voiced an answer. The silence ended suddenly with the sound of a key in the heavy wooden door. O'Neill struggled to his feet as the door pushed open, and a small woman entered the room with an armed escort of three large men.
The newcomers stared at O'Neill and his teammates for a few seconds without speaking, then the woman said, "You should not have returned."
"Oh?" O'Neill said, "and that would be because?"
"It can serve no purpose and has only brought harm to the one you call Teal'c," the woman said. Though she spoke harshly, her voice carried with it the smallest hint of regret or remorse.
"Well, see, the wisdom of returning was a bit hard for us to evaluate seeing-"
"Enough!" the woman interrupted him, "It is folly to continue this discussion. Your minds will be wiped once more, and you will be sent through the Circle to your world. Should you be so foolish as to return again, you will die!"
Daniel stepped forward slowly, his hands slightly out as though he were approaching an unfamiliar dog. "Listen. We mean you no harm...we've no desire to cause trouble. We'll be glad to go...but, we'd really, really like our memories back-"
The woman shook her head dismissively at his request and said, "That is impossible...if you were to remember what you learned here--we would be forced to kill you!"
"We haven't learned anything," Sam joined in the conversation. "What is it you're hiding? If you're afraid we'll tell others of your existence..." she shrugged her shoulders, "that doesn't have to be an issue. If you're afraid we'll continue to return--we'll gladly erase your Gate address from our dialing computers."
"But," O'Neill cut back in, "if you send us home like this...we'll be back." He stared intently at the woman, holding her gaze without wavering. "You'll leave us no choice."
"Then you leave us none. If you will not be gone and stay so, we will be forced to keep you among us, or..." she left her words hanging in the air between them. "It is most unfortunate you stumbled upon us...we thought the mind wipe...but obviously we underestimated your resilience and your persistence. In returning, you've shown only too well our wisdom in trying to eliminate the threat you bring to us." She turned and moved purposely to the door. Over her shoulder, she told them, "We will not keep you like this long. I will speak to the others...what we will do with you will be decided soon." Then she was gone.
"Helpful," O'Neill said behind her.
Carter turned away from the door and stared vacantly out the small, barred window. "They'll wipe our minds again...we'll be back to knowing nothing," she said desolately, her feelings about that clear in her words, her voice, and the slump of her shoulders. O'Neill moved to stand beside her. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder but failed to come up with anything useful to say. She shook his hand off and moved away.
For a moment, he stood like an ineffectual fool and then turned to assess Teal'c's injury. Their captives had ignored the wound, but whatever that thing was swimming around in the big man's gut, it had already stopped the bleeding and begun to close the wound. He fussed at it a few minutes anyway not wanting to face the others.
Was Carter right and they'd be mindwiped again? Though the major might not think so, he was inclined to believe that would be the least of the evils facing them. Mindwiped they might be allowed the freedom to live among their captors. Without it...it seemed likely their days would either be cut short, far too short, or stifled in this not-so pleasant cell. He'd read his file; he knew he'd spent time in a prison cell before. He couldn't remember it, but he knew from the clenching in his gut every time that door shut that he didn't want to spend a moment longer under lock and key than he had to. Better to be disoriented and permanently befuddled than locked up.
"Why did you have to give her the ultimatum, Jack?" Daniel demanded. "You know if you'd dropped the death glare and tried to reason with her..."
O'Neill had no answer. It has seemed the thing to do at the time, but Daniel was right. He should have kept his mouth shut and seen where that got them. Doubtlessly, if they hadn't played around with his head he would have known better then to throw down the gauntlet. He couldn't afford to keep bumbling along without a clue what he was doing. He shook his head mutely in Daniel's direction and was relieved that seemed to be all the explanation or apology Daniel needed or expected.
The woman hadn't lied. She was back soon enough for O'Neill. As she brought with her the mindwiping instrument, that was much too soon for Carter. Somewhere between arriving terrified and confused in the GateRoom and standing in this prison cell, she had learned a lot of things she'd forgotten and a thing or two she wasn't sure she'd ever known before. One of which was how important knowledge and understanding was to her. She desperately needed the feeling of security she'd slowly regained as she'd begun to learn things again, and she desperately wanted to hold onto it. Knowing it was all about to be ripped from her again was more than she thought she could stand.
The instrument was a hand device: a rounded, brown jewel woven into a golden webbing which encased the woman's hand like a shimmering glove. The jewel pulsed and gave off a golden light as the woman held it up to Teal'c's forehead. A soft hum filled the room. Emotionlessly, Teal'c looked into the woman's face and made no attempt to escape or fight her actions. Whatever the instrument did, it was all over in less than 30 seconds. The large man crumpled to the ground, and the woman turned towards the colonel.
O'Neill shook his head at her but made no protest. He quickly joined Teal'c on the ground. Daniel, who'd up until then kept silent, spoke up, "You don't have to do this...Sam and I will take them back with us. We'll convince our people there is no reason for us to return here before they can wake up...we can get all the information abou--" The woman raised her hand to him and his words faded away.
Carter backed herself into the far corner of the room. She bit back the pleas and cries which threatened to burst from her mouth and faced the pulsing, brown jewel as quietly as Teal'c. Her reaction was the only thing she had any control over, and she refused to give into the terror she felt.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Traiyana of Kylanar disliked what she'd been forced to do to the strangers. They were not the enemy, only explorers who for one reason or another had wandered onto her world and by their very presence threatened the safety and well-being of the Kylanarians. If it were within her power, she would once again have returned them to their world, but they'd shown even with their minds wiped they could find their way back again. The one called O'Neill had made it plain they would never be content to stay this way. They would always return looking for their past and for answers she could not allow them to find. Sooner or later their comings and goings would attract the gods, and her people would be lost. That could not be permitted.
She slipped the device off of her hand and surveyed her handiwork. Others slipped into the room. She turned to Darail. He gave her an understanding nod and a small smile. He had disagreed with the decision to use the device, but he would stand by her nonetheless. She nodded her thanks and then frowned down at the bodies.
"He can not remain," Darail said motioning to the Jaffa. "We will never be able to convince him what he carries within him is natural to our people...we must kill him or send him away."
Traiyana nodded. She had held her voice and eyes steady when she'd threatened the prisoners, but murder was not something she or her people would find acceptable. "The Circle, then." She turned to some of the men awaiting her orders and said, "Send him with a week's provision of water and food through the Circle. Not to the place they came from. Find some other combination that will open and send him there. If he cannot find his way back to where he came from, he cannot bring others back with him." It was the best she could do.
She motioned a young, pregnant woman forward. "Talyn, pick one of them," she told her. "It will be hard to keep it from him, but he must always believe this is where he belongs. That he is your husband and the father of your children. You must let go of the memories of Rutar and accept him into your lives as though he has always been the man with whom you share your life. Otherwise..." she let the words hang between. Things had not been easy for Talyn since the death of Rutar. Everyone did what they could to keep her and her child fed and clothed, but it was a hardship for the whole village. This would be, Traiyana hoped, a good solution for all of them. Provide Talyn and her children with a husband and father and their village with more able workers. If only the strangers would accept their place among them.
"I...must I do this?" the young woman asked. She didn't hide her despair at the prospect of replacing her husband with one of these strangers, but Traiyana did not yield to her plea.
"Choose, Talyn, quickly. Before I must put them under again. Choose, take one of them home, and burn his clothing. When he awakens, send for me. I will have an answer for him as to why he remembers nothing." Reluctantly, Talyn nodded toward the younger of the two men. Men took hold of him and carried him off to what he must come to believe was his home. Talyn turned to her.
"What shall I call him? I won't call him after Rutar. I won't."
"No. No, of course not," Traiyana agreed. They wear their names on their clothing. His is Jackson. Let's at least leave them that much." Talyn bowed her head in acknowledgement and somberly followed the men to her home.
"These two then, Traiyana?" her husband asked.
"We'll join them together."
"Are you sure that is wise, Healer?" one of the others asked. "Surely, it would be better to separate them."
"Wise? Perhaps not. But they should not wake to their emptiness alone. There is no one else to take them. I believe it is safer to do it this way than to send them through the Circle. Here we determine what they relearn. We tell them who they are, what their lives mean. I have decided. This is how it will be." She watched the men carry the pair out, knowing all that needed to be done would be done. She sighed.
Darail stepped to her side and stood beside her. She was grateful for his support and his presence. Deceit and violence were not part of the job description of the village healer, but they had fallen to her anyway. There was no one else willing to make the decisions to protect their lives against the danger they all feared would follow the intruders through the Circle. To every generation there was given one leader to step up and stand in the gap between the light and the darkness. She'd discovered to her dismay that she was the one. It did not sit lightly on her shoulders.
"What will you tell them then? When they awakened confused and robbed of all they were?"
She threw him a beseeching glance but did not reprimand him. If the position she found herself in was not one she felt comfortable in, how much worse for Darail who had bound himself to a healer and found himself instead the husband of the village leader; who had sought a wife to warm his bed, share his heart, and mother his children and instead found himself having to be the conscience of the king.
She shrugged. "Food poisoning, perhaps? Or a toxic pocket of gas they were exposed to in the caves? Does it matter? They will have only our word to go on. If we all assure them the explanation is reasonable, how will they know otherwise?"
"So you really believe that others they left behind will not follow them here?"
"It doesn't matter. Let them come. They will find nothing to alert them we are here. We've eliminated the problem," she assured him with far more confidence than she felt. She would have sworn this first group of travelers would have found nothing as well.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
He awoke to the rain splashing onto his head and running down into his face. He was alone and exposed to the elements. A rough-textured, cloth bag lay near him. Upon examination, he found it full of small loaves of dense, dark bread, a small packet of dried meats, another of dried fruit, and two bladders of water. He tore into one of the loaves and found it good. He left the water; instead he let the rain drip into his mouth. He did not know where he was or where he was going...he might need the water later, it would not be wise to use it until he was forced to.
The land around him was empty and barren. No trees or bushes softened the horizon or gave him cover from the rain. He glanced curiously at the stone steps leading up to a great stone ring looming over him. He couldn't begin to guess its purpose. A smaller...device...structure...statue...thing stood near where he had slept. Its top was engraved with strange symbols in a circle around a rounded, red center. He only spent a second looking it over. It held no interest to him. He must find shelter and someone to tell him how he had come to be left out in the rain. He moved off towards the distant horizon.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
She woke up in a bed with a pounding headache and a nagging feeling she had lost something important. Beside her, a man lay snoring softly on his back. She didn't know him. Worse, she realized only a second later, she didn't know herself. She gave a frightened cry as the enormity of all the things she didn't know crashed upon her awareness. She threw a trembling hand up over her mouth to try to stifle the sound, but she'd already awakened the man.
She clambered desperately over him, became tangled in the blankets, and ended up in a heap on the floor beside the bed. Frantically, she pulled the blankets around her, scrambled to her feet, and backed away from him as far as the small room allowed. Then she stood, wide-eyed and trembling, staring into his sleep-dazed face.
He blinked the sleep from his eyes and watched the woman stumble away from him. He didn't know her. He didn't have a clue what she'd been doing in his bed. He was pretty sure, he'd been asleep and hadn't done anything to put such a look of terror in her eyes. But, then, he couldn't really know because he couldn't remember just what sort of person he was. Maybe he was the kind of man whom women had reason to fear? His instinct was go to her and try to comfort her, but under the circumstances he thought that was just about the worst thing he could do.
"Hey," he said keeping his voice quiet and gentle, "it's ok. I'm not going to hurt you." She didn't answer him, so he continued, "I'm not really sure what's going on here, but I'm not going to hurt you. It's ok."
"Is it?" there was a tremor in her voice as she answered, but he thought she didn't seem quite as frightened as before.
"Yeah," he assured her, "It's ok." He wasn't sure what he meant by that because he wasn't sure of anything. He was repeating it as much to reassure himself as her.
He glanced around. Moonlight shone through a small bare window and lit the room well enough to see. The room was spartan to say the least. A shelf on one wall held two neatly folded stacks of clothes; his and hers he presumed. Under it hooks held a jacket, a cloak, and a battered, misshapen hat. Below that shoes were kicked along the wooden plank wall. A small table holding an unlit lamp stood along the wall his roommate or guest or whoever she was pressed against and that pretty much summed up the room.
He shivered and wished she'd left a blanket behind. Even though she was obviously too terrified to notice, he found it embarrassing to be sitting in his underwear in front of a strange woman. She saw his chill and realized she'd left him exposed and cold. Forcing down her reluctance, she undraped the top blanket from her shoulders and shuffled forward the few steps to hold it out to him.
"Thanks," he told her pulling it around him. "What now?" he asked not so much to her but to the room around them. He'd already come to the conclusion she was at as great a loss as he was himself. That was the real source of her fear, not his presence. The sound of his voice and his movements didn't make her flinch. It was the painful emptiness of her own thoughts and mind that was causing her breath to come in labored gasps and her body to shake. The silence that met his question seemed to crush her, and he grimaced as he saw she was fighting tears. Slowly he stood up, held out his arms, and said, "Come here." She slipped into the comfort of his arms as though she belonged there.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
A small child's hand patting his face woke him. He blinked into wide, brown eyes staring into his own.
"Hello?" he said. The child laughed and patted his nose in answer.
"Ylyn, let your father sleep," a woman's voice softly chided. He turned to look at her: long, blond hair only half caught up in a bun, gentle, blue eyes, and a face he knew no more than he knew the child now climbing onto his chest. She leaned over him and lifted the child, and he realized she was quite pregnant.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I meant to let you sleep in this morning. Traiyana thought it would be best to let you rest after yesterday."
He ran a hand through his hair. A thousand questions were attempting to beat their way through his skull. 'Yesterday?' was the one that made its way passed his lips. His voice sounded as unfamiliar and as confused as he felt.
"Yes...you know," the woman answered easily as though unaware he knew nothing. "The accident in the caves? You and O'Neill?" His puzzlement must have shown in his face. "You don't remember then? Traiyana thought it might have interfered with your memories, but I..." she gave him a worried look and then asked, "You feel all right though, don't you?"
"Oh, I feel fine actually...just...um...who is this Traiyana? I think maybe I should talk to her?"
"You don't remember Traiyana?" the woman said, her voice rising in concern.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't seem to be remembering much of anything."
"But, me. You remember me, of course, and Ylyn...our son?" I'm sorry didn't seem enough to say in answer to her question. He sadly shook his head and turned his face to the wall so he didn't have to see the sorrow in her eyes.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The lies, she found, were easier to say the second time or perhaps, being together, these two took the news easier than the one man alone.
"So let me get this straight," O'Neill said, "this other guy and I were exposed to some gas and that's why we can't remember squat?"
Traiyana wrinkled her face trying to follow his odd way of phrasing things but nodded in agreement.
"And Carter was exposed when you two came to our rescue?"
"That's right," Traiyana answered easily as though every word of it wasn't a lie.
"But, that's it? No one else ended up with their brains wiped down to the bare bones?"
Traiyana frowned at his choice of words. Was the usage that common where he came from or had the device not worked as effectively as she'd desired? "Yes," she answered again. "Those who gave the warning didn't enter far enough into the cave apparently to be affected. I was not far behind Carter, but, of course, she was that much farther ahead of me because she was worried about you. The gas must have dispersed before I arrived. I'm sorry," she said to Carter, "I should have realized and advised caution...but this has never happened before."
"No. Of course not," Carter said. Her easy forgiveness added coals to the shame already burning in Traiyana's heart. "Will we...do you think...we'll get our memories back?" Carter asked hesitantly.
"Surely," Traiyana said as though there was no question.
Carter placed a wavering hand over her mouth, and the healer knew she was not fooled by the easy assurance. "What now?" she asked. "What do we do until then?"
"We'll give it a few days. Then, you'll simply have to pick up where you belong. You'll come on rounds with me; O'Neill will return to his work with Folpy. Physically you're as strong as ever. The activity will do you good."
"Right," Carter said with resignation in her voice. O'Neill shrugged his agreement before adding, "So just what am I doing with Flopsy?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"What are we doing about them, General?" Janet Frasier demanded of Hammond, not for the first time.
"Nothing. The word has come down from the top. We can't send anyone after them unless we're certain the same thing won't happen again. We don't even know what happened let alone a way to prevent it. They're on their own." He watched her swallow down her disappointment and anger at his answer. "You saw them, Doctor. We can't put anyone else through that. They made it back once. Let's give them a chance to do it again."
She mutely nodded and fled from the room without waiting for a dismissal. Knowing she was racing hot, angry tears he let her go. Weariness settled over him like a heavy blanket. He was getting too old for this job. Much too old.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
There was a creature writhing within him. He could feel it worming its way around the pouch he'd exposed when he'd looked under his shirt.
The thought sickened him, and he vomited into the dry dust at his feet. He had a strong desire to rip the creature from him and throw it as far away as he could, but something kept him from doing so. He stood torn between the two choices until the passage of time forced him to move along. He had not yet met anyone to answer his burning questions of who and what he was. He had survived so far with the creature where it was; he must presume it would not kill him before he found the answers he sought.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The first days in their newfound lives were difficult. Their neighbors brought casseroles and cookies and sat about their rooms in uncomfortable, forced cheer. The air was full of their concern and their unspoken expectations. Everyone was waiting for them to remember their past or say or do something that would indicate they were still the people they'd lived among all of their lives.
Her mother and his own bustled about their small, crowded house dusting and scrubbing and making it quite clear they didn't think Carter was capable of running a house, though he guessed that wasn't what they intended to be saying at all. Their fathers sat on the porch and argued over the best time to harvest crops or what year the winter snows had reached the top of the porch rails and drove him to distraction. All of them tsk'd when Carter fled their midst to visit a sick boy with the healer. He took the opportunity to send them all off with assurances that they were ready to return to their lives and they'd be fine on their own. He thought his visitors were as happy to escape the oppressiveness of his house as he was to see them go.
He paced around the confines of the rooms. There was nothing any more familiar in its sparse furnishings than there had been in the people he'd just sent away. The sound of his steps echoed in the empty rooms as the unremembered parts of his life echoed in the emptiness of his mind. The unknown burrowed into him and made his gut clench. He was a stranger in his own life.
The only thing that had seemed familiar was the feel of Carter in his arms. If he didn't have her to hang onto...he'd lose not only the already forgotten past but the yet-to-be lived future. When Traiyana had begun to explain to them what had happened and who they were, the only thing he'd really cared about was learning she really did belong with him.
And even now, after he'd had time to understand all he'd lost, he knew he'd been spared the one thing he couldn't live without. The way she clung to him when she returned convinced him she felt the same. Together, he had to believe they'd be strong enough to make a way in this life they couldn't remember, to survive the emptiness of their past, and to face the uncertainty of their future.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
In the end he was forced to turn back towards his starting point. This world had nothing to offer him: no people, no sustenance, and no answers. He combed over the ring and the smaller thing at its base but could find nothing to aid him in his search for answers.
The creature inside of him grew more and more agitated. It wanted something from him. But, even if he had been willing to aid it, and he was not yet convinced of the wisdom of that, he couldn't. He couldn't even help himself. Exhaustion, hunger, and thirst filled his hours, but the food and water were gone and, though he tried, he found rest to be beyond his ability to reach.
When the ring clanged into life and the violent, blue wave broke out of its center, he was too weak to understand his danger. The armored warriors who appeared through it moments later had no difficulty in apprehending him.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The woman who was his wife was as uncomfortable being in the same room with him as he was to be there with her. Yet, the boy playing at his feet and the unborn child swelling her stomach assured him it hadn't always been so.
He could tell she'd worked hard to make their small house a comfortable home. Bright, cheerful curtains hung in the windows. A vase of faded flowers still sat in the middle of the table as a testimony to the happiness she'd found there before. Before he'd forgotten her and all the times they had laughed and talked and dreamed of the future together. Now, if it wasn't for the child's cheerful babbling, they had only silence to share.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
O'Neill fought a nagging restlessness. He had nothing against hard work. Working the fields, digging irrigation ditches, and building houses were all necessary and useful occupations, but...they left him feeling only a vague sense of dissatisfaction and stiff knees. He thought the problem wasn't so much with the work as it was with himself. He was too old to be learning everything over again. Too old to have delusions of grandeur that placed him somewhere far away from the mundaneness of village life. Too old to itch for adventure and excitement. But, he did.
He jokingly told Carter he needed a dragon to slay. She didn't laugh as he'd expected, only nodded her head in agreement and went back to kneading the bread for their supper. He kissed the back of her neck and knew that they shared this too along with the hole their lost past left in their lives.
He'd been unable to shake the feeling that their past was just one step ahead of him. He chased it through his dreams, always just that brief second too late rounding the corner after it to snatch it back. He thought she felt its loss more than he did. She went about her day as though it wasn't a problem, but in the nights it ate at her like a cancer. She'd lie awake through the long hours of the night and struggle to dredge up ever-elusive memories until one night he told her, "Let it go."
"Just like that?" she said, anger or sorrow hardening her voice.
"Just like that," he affirmed. "Trying so hard to make yourself remember isn't helping. And what for? We may not know how you got to be you, but we know you're ok."
"Am I?" she asked.
He turned to his side to see her in the moonlight and smiled. "You're more than all right, Carter. You're good and brilliant and don't have a mean bone in your body, not to mention you're the prettiest woman in the whole village. Do you want me to go on?" She gave him an embarrassed smile and shook her head no. "I can, you know? Because I know you. Whatever happened to make you who you are--it's nothing you have to worry about, nothing you have to be ashamed of." He meant it. Somehow, he knew there were things in his past that would always pursue him, but Carter...her past had to be as pure and innocent as she was herself. "Let it go," he repeated.
She heard him, but she didn't believe their lost lives were things they could safely let go. Not just like that or any other way. Sure the past Traiyana, her parents, and the other villagers helpfully spoke of was just a normal, everyday existence. It was unlikely there were skeletons or secret sins any worse than those of her neighbors hidden in her closet. Nothing more dramatic than falling in love and being chosen to assist the healer had ever happened to her. But still, the past determined the present and the future. And she couldn't shake the feeling there was more to life than this room and this village. She shared her life with her unknown past and the unfulfilled future as much as she did with O'Neill. But, for his sake she pushed them both against the far wall of her mind and tried to avoid the shadow they cast over them.
At night, she forced herself to turn her thoughts from the black hole in her head and sleep. She busied her days learning all she could about the world around her. It was all so utterly alien. The moon that shone through their window, always full and so close in the evenings she felt like she could reach out and touch it. Surely, it had been a constant in her life all of her days, and yet she never grew used to it. She'd taken the time to learn how to sew lopsided curtains to shut out its nightly light. And it hadn't hurt to shut out the few stars that managed to show themselves through its brightness. She couldn't help searching for them every time she looked out the window, but they never appeared where she expected them.
And the suns. She'd had to learn to be careful when she glanced up in the sky or she'd become disoriented enough to end up losing her food. It wasn't just that there were two suns when for some reason she always expected to only see one, but the crazy things rose in the west and set in the east. Why that disturbed her so much was a mystery, but it felt wrong, very wrong.
As wrong as the sweetness of the water when she knew it shouldn't taste at all. As wrong as the sharp, bitter bite in the air; the green of the vegetable roots she cut up for their salad which looked as though they had been colored in by a child not yet old enough to know his colors; and the summer that drug on and on and seemed to never come to an end. And that was only the beginning. If this was the only world she had ever known, why was it so unknown? Shouldn't her mind at least recognize the everyday sights and tastes of her childhood? Shouldn't something besides her own husband seem familiar?
Nothing did. Except for Jackson. And she supposed that wasn't so much familiarity as shared understanding. The three of them were trapped in the same twilight zone of forgetfulness. That more than anything doubtlessly explained their shared bond. They'd hardly known each other before the accident. Other than occasionally running into each other on work details, he and O'Neill had quite possibly never spoken. He was several years younger than O'Neill, lived across the village, and had his own set of family and friends. And from what she'd gathered, she'd attended one of the village schools while Jackson had the other; so even though they were of much the same age they'd probably not ran into each other either.
But despite that, of all those who'd come forward to claim them as friends and family, Jackson was the only one with whom they felt comfortable. They could be themselves with him without worrying that they were failing to meet the expectations of anyone. None of them had the least idea what the others had been like before the accident. There could be no pretensions between them. The villagers, even their own parents and siblings, were kind enough but distant and formal. It was like living among strangers. Strangers she wasn't even sure she liked. Jackson was their one saving grace.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jackson found it difficult to fall into the rhythm of this life he did not remember. It was a simple life of waking, sleeping, eating, working, playing with the small child who was his son, and trying to love the woman who was his wife. Yet, it did not seem simple.
Sleeping in a bed with a woman he did not remember was awkward and uncomfortable. Talyn was pleasant enough, kind and gentle with the boy and much the same with himself. Yet, he felt no connection to her. The stories she told of their life together before the cave incident seemed no more than that--stories. He'd politely listen as she'd tell him how her brother had introduced them, how he'd been too shy to speak to her the first time they'd walked together, how he'd asked her to join with him on a warm, spring day when the birds were nesting in the batac trees and the frai were blooming, or how they'd fought over naming their son until, in the end, she'd thrown up her hands in despair and allowed him to have his way.
He enjoyed listening to the sound of her voice as she talked. He could picture her young and blushing waiting for someone to find the courage to talk to her, picture her lovely in the spring sunshine flushed with joy when someone offered to share his life with her, picture her big and hot and full of a baby throwing up her hands and shaking her head in frustration over the name her child would be called. But he could never quite put himself in the picture. And sometimes, it seemed to him, she couldn't either. She told her stories to the wall behind him or the ceiling over their bed, and sometimes she told them with tears in her voice as though they were the bittersweet memories of a lost, loved one and not the man beside her.
He rarely felt the urge to touch her, and she seemed no more inclined to touch him. He had to wonder if that wasn't a reaction to her swollen stomach--he wasn't exactly sure how to touch her. He certainly didn't feel like he'd lived with a hugely pregnant woman before.
It was easier with the child who was little more than a baby himself. He found life hilarious, laughing easily. He ate whatever was set before him and rarely fussed. Keeping him still long enough to change his diaper was the most challenging aspect of his care. Jackson enjoyed the child's laugh and his wide-eyed view of the world, but he didn't feel the love and pride he thought should be a natural part of fatherhood. He welcomed waking up to the boy's wide-mouthed, drooling, morning kisses only because it made it unnecessary to find an excuse to keep a comfortable distance between Talyn and himself.
His work was as disturbingly unfamiliar. It was not difficult, but it left him feeling as though there were other more important things he should be doing with his time. And the men he worked beside seemed distant and unreachable. Actually, the only people he felt comfortable around besides Ylyn were O'Neill and Carter. It was only natural, he assumed. Only they understood the emptiness that dogged his days and nights, the black shadow of nothingness that shrouded his footsteps and haunted his dreams.
His dreams...at first he'd dreamt almost exclusively of loss or gaping holes. He'd look in the looking glass and find he had no face. Or he'd spend his sleeping hours desperately chasing after something that always hovered just a step out of his reach until he took one step too many and plunged into a black hole of nothingness. He would jerk awake and lay trembling beside Talyn. From her breathing, he'd know she was awake, but she never acknowledged his terror with a word or a touch, only lay beside him as though asleep.
Those early dreams were understandable; the later ones were incomprehensible visions of things he had never seen and could never guess their purpose or meaning. Yet, in the dreams they were much more familiar to him than the instruments and furnishings that filled his house and life. Those later dreams left him even more disquieted than the earlier, frightening ones had.
The boy would occasionally wander into his dreams, O'Neill and Carter were both frequent visitors, but Talyn never followed him into his sleep. From that he understood they were strangers sharing a bed, a table, a house, a child, and little else. He wondered if there had truly ever been more between them. If the emptiness in their hearts had always been there or was a side effect of the accident as much as the memory loss.
He tried to make up for it by being extra solicitous of her needs, taking over as much of the daily chores and childcare as he could to lighten her load. If his work was such that he could, he took Ylyn with him in the afternoons so she could rest. She would smile her thanks, but it never seemed to reach her eyes. Sometimes, he had to swallow his resentment of her and his inability to make her happy. There were many times he wanted to yell at her that he was doing the best he could; that she wanted from him what he could not give; and that he was sick of trying.
To keep the angry, bitter words down he'd bundle up Ylyn and plop the two of them down on O'Neill and Carter's front porch until he knew she'd be sleeping--or at least pretending to sleep--before he returned.
O'Neill always welcomed their uninvited presence with pleasure. He'd grab up Ylyn and play until the child was too exhausted to keep his head up. Then he'd gently hold him sleeping in his lap until Jackson would reluctantly gather him up and trudge back to his silent house and bed.
Carter would smile indulgently at her husband and Jackson's son, but she seemed content to leave the baby to O'Neill. Instead, she would sit beside Jackson on the rough-hewn steps and visit quietly. Discussing the stars overhead, the cave formations, her work with the healer, or his with the men, he felt more at peace than he did anywhere else. One night, gazing into her laughing face, he realized he felt more at home sitting there with another man's wife than he did with his own. He'd collected his son from O'Neill's arms, stammered a confused goodnight, and fled into the evening.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
He forced himself to stay on his own porch the next two nights and meant to keep it that way forever. But, O'Neill fell into step with him on their way to the fields the next morning. "We've been missing you," he said.
He didn't quite manage to mumble a coherent answer, "Um...yeah. Ylyn's been asking for you, too...but...um..."
"What's up, Jackson? Did something happen the last time you were over?"
"Um...no. Nothing, nothing at all...just getting late and--"
"Listen...if I seemed...I don't know...a bit possessive of your son...or whatever-I, uh..."O'Neill floundered along until he ended his almost statement with a frustrated huff of air while Jackson stared at him in amazement. It hadn't occurred to him to be jealous of O'Neill's relationship with Ylyn, and it took a moment for him to understand that maybe he had reason to be. Just as O'Neill had reason to be towards his feelings for Carter.
"It's not that, Jack-"
"I'm sorry?" O'Neill cut in, "Who'd you say?"
"Huh? What?"
"You called me Jack."
"Did not."
"Did too."
Inexplicably, Jackson felt his anxiety over the last few days lift. He grinned into his friend's face as he said, "Not."
"Did," O'Neill said, getting the last word in as he headed off towards the far field with his work crew leaving Jackson behind with his.
Later though he was back at Jackson's side for the walk back to the village. "As I was trying to say this morning, we miss you. Don't be a stranger." O'Neill and Jackson both flinched at his choice of words, and then he squared his shoulders and continued. "That's it, I guess. We're living in a world of strangers. We need all the friends we can drum up. Carter needs you to hang around and talk about the things you two talk about. I don't understand half of what she says, and she needs someone to babble on to--I'll go crazy if it has to be me all the time!" His laugh told Jackson he didn't really find it a hardship to listen to her talk.
"What is it then?" O'Neill said heavily when Jackson didn't join in his laughter. "I'll back off of your boy if that's what you want...I really-"
"Jack!" Jackson cut in, and the two men faltered to a stop at the sound of the unfamiliar name he'd spoken. "Don't say it...I heard it too. I don't have a clue why I'm calling you Jack, but please let me say what I have to say. I'm not jealous of your time with Ylyn--I'm delighted you enjoy spending time with him. You're welcome to him!"
"Ok. Then what is the problem?"
Jackson looked at his feet and kicked at the dusty path while the rest of the men funneled around them on the way to their cold drinks and evening sandwiches. When they were alone, he mumbled his confession to the ground, "I'm more concerned about the time I'm spending with your wife."
"OoH," O'Neill said in surprise. After an uncomfortable moment, he added, "Is that all?"
"Is that all?" Jackson shouted at him. "Isn't that enough?"
"Hey, I'm just trying to get a handle on this before I fly off the handle...if you know what I mean," O'Neill answered him. Strangely, Jackson did. O'Neill often spoke in such riddles, but Jackson almost always managed to find his way through the maze of his speech. He waited for what he'd admitted to penetrate into his friend's mind and destroy their friendship. "Ok," O'Neill began, "you're uh...saying you got...something for Carter? Ack! Don't answer that! I don't want to know! For crying out loud, Daniel, what are you talking about?"
Jackson, grabbing at the chance to drop the whole conversation, opened his mouth to question the unfamiliar name O'Neill had just uttered, but O'Neill threw up a hand to stop him. "Arghh!" he growled, "now you've got me doing it! But, don't think you're getting out of this that easily! Answer the question! Just what are you telling me here?"
"I don't know...I don't. I realized the other night I'd rather spend an hour with your wife than a whole night with mine." Jackson raised his eyes to the clenched, white face of O'Neill in time to take his oncoming punch. The blow threw him to the ground. He stayed there blinking up at the slowly moving clouds until O'Neill reached down and pulled him back up.
"Ok," the older man said, "let's start over at the beginning, shall we? Tell me you're not really saying what you're saying. You're like her brother, Jackson! Tell me you're not lusting after Carter." Put that way, Jackson suddenly saw clearly that was exactly what he was not doing.
"No," he burst out in astonishment, "it's not like that at all!"
"Well, then?"
"I don't know, but it's not like that. I've never once thought of her like that."
"Ok. Then why in the world are you going on like a fool? You've bloodied my knuckles and messed up your face and what for? Just because your own wife won't give you the time of day and you enjoy sitting on our porch and letting Carter prattle on? I don't have a problem with that, Jackson!"
"You don't?"
"No."
"Then why'd you knock me into next week?"
"You had me going there for a minute...you deserved it talking like that."
"I guess maybe I did," he admitted.
"Well, let it be a warning to you. You want to talk stars and rocks, you can sit on the porch with my wife; you want anything else, you figure out how to get it from your own."
"Right." The men nodded to each other and once again began walking toward the village.
"So, I've orders to invite you folks over for a little celebration this evening. Talyn too, if she'll come."
"A celebration?"
"Yep. Carter's trying her hand at a cake, believe it or not."
"Cake? Wow, what's the occasion?"
"Well, I guess it isn't all that exciting news at your house with your two, but I'm pleased as punch..."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Nope. I think she might wish I was. She's puking her guts out morning, noon, and night," O'Neill told him proudly.
Jackson never did get to try a piece of Carter's cake. By the time the neighbors were through bringing meals, he didn't miss it though. Besides, O'Neill sadly told him it was no great loss anyway. Whatever possibilities it had held were lost when Carter had been called out in the middle of her baking to help deliver Jackson's daughter. The cake was ruined and the baby safely born by the time he had arrived home that day. A slightly green Carter had been sitting on his porch waiting for him with the new baby in her arms. He'd awkwardly accepted the blanket-wrapped bundle and stared into the face of yet another stranger.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Carter lay late into the night thinking of Jackson's blue-eyed wife and brown-eyed son. It was only the second birth she could remember attending, so she had little with which to compare it, but instead of the joyous occasion she'd expected, it had been dismal and sad. She understood things between her friend and his wife were awkward, but surely even so, a husband's place was at his wife's side when she delivered his child. Yet, Talyn had begged them not to send for Jackson. Worse, at one point she had turned to Traiyana and cried, "I wish Rutar were here--he should be here! I shouldn't have to be doing this alone."
And all through the labor, Ylyn had been underfoot, laughing up at her with large, brown eyes or sitting by his mother's head sweetly patting her hair, his eyes solemn, dark pools. There was nothing of her friend in them. She had the uncomfortable feeling whoever Rutar was, his eyes were brown unlike Jackson's clear blue. It was too soon to call the color of the newborn's eyes, but she could make an educated guess. And where did it leave Jackson?
O'Neill turned over and glared at her through the dim light in the room, "What are you doing awake?"
"Just thinking," she answered.
"Uh huh, I bet," he muttered. "The doc shouldn't have dragged you along to the birth. No place for you right now."
"It isn't that," she assured him, though she'd happily never attend another birth given a choice--well, besides the one or ones that would take place in her own bed. Ones that O'Neill would not be spending in the fields working blithefully unawares.
"Then?"
"Do you think things are right between Jackson and Talyn?"
He lay so close to her she could feel his shrug. "I think she's afraid of something. Got to wonder if there wasn't trouble there before he lost his marbles, and she's afraid he'll wake up one day and make her answer for it."
"It has to be hard, don't you think, loving a man who doesn't remember you?"
"I don't know. Is it?" he asked her though they both knew the circumstances were not the same.
She raised up on an elbow to look at him in the dark. She pressed a hand over his heart and felt its sure, steady beating. "No," she said softly, "it's not hard at all."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The iris opened and Bray'tac, Former First Prime to Apophis, stepped through the event horizon. The look in his eyes as he grasped Hammond's forearm in greeting was hard.
"We've received news. Teal'c is in the hand of Lord Yu," he said without preamble.
"Yu," Hammond responded in surprise, "How?"
"Apparently, he was found wondering alone on one of Yu's planets by forces loyal to the Goa'uld. I have heard no more. Even now I am preparing a rescue."
"And the rest of SG-1?"
"There has been no news," Bray'tac answered shortly.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"No, we will do what must be done. I thought it was best to inform you. Teal'c will not be safe among us. We will have to bring him here."
"Of course, we'll be grateful to have him back," Hammond assured the Jaffa.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The more Traiyana worked alongside of Carter the worse she felt for the deception and the more certain she was of its necessity. The woman's mind was a sieve. If it hadn't been such a fearful thing, it would have been a joy to watch how easily, quickly, and eagerly Carter soaked up all she had to teach her. She was constantly thinking, constantly learning. But, Traiyana couldn't afford to revel in her student's abilities. Therein lay great danger.
Traiyana had begun to fear discovery was inevitable even before Jackson had parked himself on his former colleagues' doorstep every night. Carter was too quick, and she suspected the others were as well. One day, the truth would come out. She knew nothing of their lives before they had chanced upon her world. Was it too much to hope that in Kylanar there might be things worthy of their loyalty and their forgiveness?
Traiyana provided them all with as rich and varied a past as she could conjure up, but she knew it did not satisfy any of them. They felt their loss just as much today as they had in the beginning. Their work was no more satisfying to them. Carter was an able assistant, but her interest did not lie in the healing arts. Still it had been a wise choice to keep her close; if the art and lore of medicine wasn't enough to fill the emptiness in Carter's mind, it was certain the work in the village and fields would have fallen far shorter.
She hoped the woman's pregnancy would buy her more time, occupy her mind and keep her from looking too closely at things better left unobserved. Perhaps by the time the child was born a true Kylanarian, her work and the happiness in her home would tie Carter to this world. Talyn, it was clear, was too uncomfortable with living a lie to be able to bind Jackson to her like was needed. But, her children might succeed where their mother failed. That left O'Neill.
Of them all, he appeared to have adjusted the best. He seemed content with his wife and his work. Almost Traiyana believed it. Almost. But, she could not forget the intensity and sincerity she'd seen when he'd looked into her eyes and swore they'd never be content robbed of their past. For all she had needed to not believe him, he had convinced her of the truth of his words. She was afraid that beneath his deceptively calm and peaceful stillness there was a raging restlessness that would destroy the fine web of lies and pretensions she had carefully laid for them all.
She didn't believe there was anything on Kylanar strong enough to temper it. His work meant nothing to him. He and Carter had fallen into married life so easily, she almost believed such had been their bond before they'd arrived on her world. Regardless, he'd take it with him wherever he went. And Jackson's friendship as well. They wouldn't hold him to her world. She feared nothing would.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Talyn had thought she would never be able to love the man with whom she shared her life, her home, and her children. But, one day, she lifted her eyes from the sweet face of her nursing daughter and watched him walk through her door with her son perched on his shoulders laughing and drooling into his hair and found she did love him. Not with the breathtaking, all consuming love she'd loved her first husband. She didn't think she'd ever be able to love like that again. But with a sure, steady love built on his trustworthiness, kindness, gentleness, and understanding. He asked nothing of her and gave everything in return. She hadn't meant to love him, but she did. He had made it impossible for her to do anything else.
If deceiving him when she resented his presence in her life had been difficult, deceiving him when she loved him was a thousand times worse. How did you smile and laugh and make love to a man you were lying to with every breath you took? Each day it became harder and harder to carry out the charade of their life together, and every day if became harder and harder to think of endangering her happiness with the truth.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
When Bray'tac brought Teal'c home, General Hammond had been hopeful things were about to improve. But, they weren't. Teal'c seemed to remember less now than he had when he'd left the SGC months before. Hammond hoped and waited as long as he could for signs the Jaffa might improve, but it slowly became apparent that the man he had been was as lost to them as the rest of SG-1. There was nothing for it but to retrain him and reassign him to a new team. He had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do.
But, Hammond did. He trudged through six inches of cold, wet snow to get to work the day he signed off on the long-overdue paperwork. It felt appropriate. He signed his name in triplicate on the black lines running across the bottom of each of the pages. Missing in Action, Presumed Dead. He hated this job, hated this desk, this place, this war. He sealed the envelopes and placed them into his outbox where they lay as silent witnesses to his failure to bring his people home.
Somehow the base knew. They met him when he left his office: Ferreti, Dixon, and all the other SG teammembers not offworld; Frasier and the rest of the medical staff; Dr. Lee and the other geeks as O'Neill would have called them; Walter, Siler, and the other techs and support crews; and the kitchen staff, the cleaning crews, and all the rest of the base personnel. They lined the hallway and saluted when he walked past them. He blinked tears from his eyes and accepted their salutes not for himself but for those who weren't coming home.
He took it upon himself to close out their personal effects from the base. The colonel's office and desk were so empty he had to wonder if the man had even known he had an office. O'Neill had left his quarters inspection-ready as though he hadn't expected to return. The things that mattered were in his locker: pictures of his son, a copy of his marriage license, his wedding ring, the deed to his house, a copy of his will, a brightly-colored picture with Cassy's name scrawled across the bottom corner, a yo-yo with a broken string, and pictures of his team. Hammond shut the metal door on them all and left them there. They would keep for another day.
Daniel Jackson's quarters had long since been reassigned. They'd already yielded up their load of books, magazines, scraps of paper, crumpled clothes tossed in the bottom of the closet, and other miscellaneous debris of life. Others had slowly pushed his things to the side and encroached into his office/lab, so there was nothing the general needed to do there. The things which had made it uniquely Daniel's were packed and safely stored away already. The general solemnly considered boxing up the contents of his locker but, in the end, left the books, magazines, stray scraps of paper, clothes, and stash of snack food where they sat. He pushed the door shut with a hollow clang that echoed in the empty room.
He didn't bother to glance into Major Carter's locker. Whatever she had kept in there could stay until her father showed up. There had been surprising little of a personal nature in her quarters as though she too hadn't expected to be coming back. But, then she'd had no knowledge of whom and what she was the last few weeks she'd lived in those spare, closed rooms. The things Samantha Carter had treasured could easily have been tossed away without a thought during that time. Her lab was also devoid of anything he could recognize as hers. The work had had to go on without her. He turned away from it with a heavy heart and walked back to his office where directions left in their files asked that their homes not be cleared until they'd been missing a full year. They'd learned their lesson after Daniel had been 'dead' the first time.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was the hunters who brought the report. Jard, his eyes wide and his breath coming in painful gasps, burst into the sick room where they were working and changed everything.
"They're coming, Traiyana," he blurted out. "They're coming!" Traiyana paled, and her hands shook as she straightened from her patient.
"From the Circle, then?"
"Yes, from the Circle.
"You're certain it's the gods and not..." Traiyana asked, inclining her head slightly towards Carter whose face was one big question mark.
"No! It's them. An army ready for battle!"
"What are you talking about?" Carter broke in. Traiyana shook her head in answer, briefly patted the worried man at the bedside, and pulled Carter and Jard with her out of the room.
"It's a long story," she told Carter wearily. "A hundred years ago, we were the slaves of evil and powerful gods. Somehow, our great-grandparents destroyed those gods, but they knew others would one day follow them through the Circle--"
"The Circle?" Carter asked.
"There's no time to explain everything," Traiyana said. "It is to the west. A fair distance. Our ancestors hoped it would be a safe distance from the village...they moved us here after they'd killed the gods."
"Gods can't be killed," Carter protested, "that's the whole point, isn't it?"
"These can...or could," Jard insisted. "And if we are to survive, they must be."
Carter heard the fear in his voice and the weary resignation in Traiyana's and swallowed down the rest of her questions. "You need to tell O'Neill," she said instead.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"And you're telling us this now?" O'Neill bellowed in response to the news. "An armed group of trained warriors and their 'gods' are advancing on the village bent on revenge and destruction, and you never thought maybe it might be something worth mentioning before? All those stories you've been feeding us, and you don't tell us this? Ugh! Ahr! Whatever! I don't suppose you also failed to mention anything helpful like we've got some big, honking guns to send them packing?"
Jard shook his head. "Just the hunting guns, and they won't do much against the weapons of the gods."
"And the caves," Traiyana said. "We've supplies there ready for this day. We can't hope to defeat them, but we might be able to hide from them."
"Hide!" O'Neill snorted with scorn. "You can't hide from God!" He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and scowled at them. Traiyana watched the calculation going on behind his eyes and made a decision.
"We do have a few other weapons--I'm not sure how effective or powerful they are, but..."
"Get them," O'Neill snapped, and Traiyana nodded to Jard who turned to obey. O'Neill grabbed his arm before he could leave. "First, get everyone that can shoot to the square and get a reconnaissance group together. We need to know what we're up against," O'Neill declared. He turned then to Traiyana, "You've got an evacuation plan in order, I assume?"
"I don't understand," she answered faintly. She did understand she'd lost control. She'd never wanted the responsibility of leadership, and she was only too willing to let it go. But, was it safe to entrust the care of her people to this man who knew so little about her world and even less about himself?
Carter, standing in the background, watched him silently. Somehow she'd known it would be this way when she'd insisted he be informed of the situation. Assuming command had been as natural to him as breathing. He turned to her, and before he could speak she answered him, "I'll get Jackson."
He nodded his thanks and with an aggrieved sigh said to Traiyana, "A plan to get everyone to the caves? Surely, if you knew this was coming, you've got something in place!"
"Oh! Yes. Of course, we do."
"Then, get the ball rolling. Let's not wait until we know if they can find us...it'll be too late by then."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jackson helped Talyn gather up the things they'd need in the cave while Carter impatiently waited.
"Can't you come with us?" she begged him, but he shook his head.
"I need to be out here. You'll be fine," he assured her.
"We need you with us," she insisted.
"Just stay with the others. Jack will get us out of this...I know he will."
"Who?"
"O'Neill! I meant O'Neill."
"How?"
"How what?"
"How can you know he will get us out of here? He's only a man, Jackson! I don't think you understand. They're gods!"
"They're not gods!" he said with a conviction he shouldn't have had. "They just think they are. We've faced worse."
"You've faced worse..." her faltered question reached into the certainty he'd been operating under and left him floundering in confusion. He'd never faced anything worse than O'Neill's jealous blow. It had sent him staggering, but what in Kylanar made him think it would be effective against 'gods'?
"Yes, we have," Carter asserted behind him. He wondered if she knew something he didn't. She marched to the door with an armload of supplies and ordered over her departing back, "Get the kids. Let's go!"
He kissed his wife and the soft, round faces of the children when they left them with the other evacuees and joined O'Neill in the village square. A scouting party had already been sent off to see just how far the enemy had advanced on their position. O'Neill had divided the rest of the villagers into squadrons. They milled about collecting weapons, ammunition, and hastily prepared field rations.
As soon as he saw Carter, O'Neill motioned her over to a bench and asked, "Whattaya make of this? Enough to take out a god or two?"
"Oh, yeah," she said with satisfaction surveying the weapons before her. "Maybe even a dragon," she added with a smile. He handed her a heavy vest. She ran an appraising finger over the label bearing her name on it before she slipped it on. He held out two weapons for her to choose from. She took the larger. Its weight felt solid in her hands, and she only took a second to familiarize herself with its finer points...like riding a bike she thought and didn't take the time to wonder what a bike was.
She also grabbed up several, rectangular boxes from the benches. "These will do, Sir," she said. "We can set charges around the village..."
He pursed his lips at her. The guns were old hat, but until she'd mentioned them he hadn't recognized the boxes as being of much use. He couldn't guess how she'd figured out they were explosives, but ok...he'd use whatever he could get. "Know how to work those things, do you?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Then, take who you need and set up our perimeter," he ordered her. He didn't watch to see if she would obey him but turned instead to Jackson. "The evacuation moving along all right?"
"Looks like they're about ready to move out," Jackson told him.
"Good. Make sure everyone's accounted for and get them out of here. Then hustle back. We've worked to do."
"Right," Jackson said. As he hurried out, he could hear O'Neill's raised voice behind him, "Ok. Listen up, folks, this is what we're going to do..."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It had been too much to expect the village wouldn't be discovered. The enemy bore down on them in a flanking maneuver, and O'Neill could only hope his ragtag band of farmers wouldn't break under their advance. The scouts had reported a larger number than he'd hoped for, and he second-guessed himself about the wisdom of facing them with untested men. But, hiding in a cave...not only did it not sit well with him, it was foolhardy. A few dark tunnels wouldn't stop these soldiers. They'd be hunted down like rats. They'd never be able to keep the kids quiet and moving quickly enough to stay out of their reach. No, he'd made the right call.
He'd divided the troops between himself, Carter, Jackson, and Jard. Carter and Jackson he trusted; Jard would have to do. He fingered the thingie Carter had clipped to his vest and pressed the button as she'd showed him. "We ready?" he whispered into it feeling like a fool.
"Sure," Jackson's voice came back to him through it. Nice.
"Ready," Jard responded.
"Ready here, Sir...we're up for it," Carter reported.
"Good. Stand by." He gave a thumbs-up to the men scattered around him. A few of them returned the gesture, and a few more grinned back at him nervously. His father-in-law stared at him as though wondering where he'd come from. He frowned back at the man. Something was off with him, O'Neill decided. He hadn't blinked when he'd learned his pregnant daughter was going to be on the frontlines of a battle, never even offered a half-hearted protest. That just wasn't right. O'Neill didn't trust him.
He wasn't that pleased himself to have her out there, but he wasn't dumb enough to tell her...maybe her dad wasn't quite the self-centered idiot he'd taken him for after all. Regardless, he could sort that all out later. The first wave of oncoming warriors hit Carter's charges. The unnatural quiet of the day was broken with the concussive blasts of the explosives and the cries of their victims.
"Steady, men," he said down his line. They looked back at him with white faces. A couple of them were still only children. Unshed tears gleamed in more than a few eyes. They held their weapons so tightly their knuckles were white. They weren't warriors, but they'd have to do. He threw them a cocky grin because it wouldn't do to let them know he was just as frightened as they were.
The sound of the explosives faded into the distance towards Jackson's group. In its absence, they could hear the clanking of metal and moments later catch glimpses of it through the brush. The men clutched their guns even harder, but he held up a restraining hand. The village weapons didn't look to be very effective against the enemy's armor; he didn't want to waste ammo they didn't have. "Let them come to us," he hissed down the line. The defenders waited in tightlipped silence until he 'could see the whites of their eyes'. At his signal, their weapons fire leapt out at the advancing soldiers, and the battle was on.
Like Carter, he'd procured one of the dark, heavy guns for himself. It made a significant dent in the enemy line. But, their other weapons proved to be almost as useless as he'd feared. They wouldn't be able to hold their position. He'd have to order the men to fall back or they would break ranks and run. Through the smoke of the battle, he caught a glimpse of something in the enemy line. He shook his head at the apparition, but he wasn't seeing things. Some fool was out in the middle of the battlefield in a gold skirt and a fancy hat.
O'Neill fired his weapon straight at him. The villagers cried out in alarm when his bullet's were somehow deflected away. "A god!" one of them shouted, and panic spread through the men like wildfire.
"That's no god," O'Neill said. Among the weapons Jard had brought to him had been a small, deadly knife. He handed his gun to his father-in-law lying next to him and slipped the knife from its sheaf. Its smooth handle fit perfectly in his hand. "Cover me," he said as he stood up and let the knife fly. Fire from one of the enemy's weapons tore into his shoulder. He staggered at its blast, but it didn't matter. His knife had already been released; it cut through the air and struck the 'god' with a satisfying thunk and sent him reeling to the ground where he stayed. An anguished roar from the enemy soldiers rocked the battlefield and was answered by the triumphant shout of the villagers. The enemy fell back before them, and there was no question the battle here was over.
His father-in-law smiled and passed him back his weapon. "Well done," he said. "Well done." O'Neill swayed on his feet beside him and decided the man wasn't so bad after all. He was welcome to sit on his porch now and again and discuss the finer details of sowing and reaping if that was what he really wanted to do.
There was still heavy weapon fire from the other three positions, and he knew he couldn't give the men time to savor their victory. He opened his mouth to order them to reinforce the other troops, but a low, mournful horn signaled the enemy's retreat. The sounds of the battle died away with it.
Carter's voice came over the thingie, "They're retreating, Sir. Should we pursue?"
"Yeah," he answered weakly, "do that. Make sure they won't be coming back."
"Yes, Sir."
"Should we join the pursuit?" one of his men asked. He meant to give the order, he did. Instead, he looked at the men grouped around him weeping or laughing or both; shaking with shock; bleeding; crying from their wounds or their fear; or lying on the ground writhing in pain or unmoving in death, and the words that came out of his mouth weren't commands but praise. They'd been warriors after all, and he wanted them to know it. "You did good," he told them. Darkness overtook him then, and the men standing nearby caught him as he collapsed.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jackson's group began the difficult task of gathering the dead and those too wounded to make it back on their own or on the arms of their comrades. It was a disheartening and overwhelming tasks for men not accustomed to war. They left the enemy where they had fallen in the fields and the brush beyond. Those on the village streets they dragged out and dumped with the rest. There'd be time for what needed to be done for them after they cared for their own.
Jard's men went to the caves and brought out the evacuees. They'd spent less than an afternoon in the cool, darkness of the caves. The children were hardly aware they hadn't just been on an outing. They climbed the worn, dirt path out of the caves and blinked in the bright sunlight. They were greeted with the smell of smoke, but it wasn't until they'd passed the inner fields that they began to see the devastation of the battle. The women covered the faces of the children so they wouldn't see the bodies of the dead, but they couldn't block out the moans and cries of the dying.
Numbly, they walked into the village and stood in the streets, staring incomprehensively at what had once been their homes. The enemy had penetrated deep into the village on the west side. Many of the houses had gaping holes where the enemy weapons had torn through the walls and others were gone completely, burned to the ground. Jard's men gently herded them on to the town square where the floor of the great hall was already covered with the wounded bodies of their defenders. The evacuees collected their courage, rolled up their sleeves, and went to work cleaning wounds, doling out water, and making soup. Jard and his men left them there, dug through the rubble to find their shovels, and joined others who'd already begun to turn the far west field into a graveyard.
Carter and those with her chased the enemy to the Circle and watched the last straggler run into the swirling blue in its center and disappear. Gaping after him, she knew that somehow, someway he'd left Kylanar for somewhere else. She felt an urgent desire to follow him through. But then the blue itself disappeared, and there left in its place was only empty space echoing that in her mind.
She knew what she had to do. Ignoring Traiyana's ranting through Jackson's radio that she was needed to help with the injured, she took the next two days to lower the great ring to the ground and bury it as deep as they could in the rich, brown dirt. She felt as though she were burying a part of herself alive, but she had no choice. They'd been discovered; more warriors would follow these through. There would be no end to it unless the Circle was closed for good.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Staggering back after burying the Circle and the left behind bodies of the enemy along the way, they marched past the new graves in the west field and the battle-scarred section of the village. Carter paused a moment to look over the charred remains of her house, but its loss was nothing compared to that she felt over burying the Circle with whatever lay beyond it.
She found O'Neill and several other of the wounded lying on makeshift pallet's on the floor of the meeting hall. His face was as gray and drawn as she felt. Carefully avoiding jarring his bandaged chest, she stretched out beside him.
He gingerly shifted to let her share a corner of his pillow. "I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to come home," he said.
"You know the house is gone, don't you?" she asked him.
"Ahh, you know what they say."
"No, what?"
"Home is where the heart is."
"Oh," she said raising her face to look into his eyes, "it's good to be home then, Sir."
"Good to have you home," he answered her. For a moment they both lay silent, enjoying the other's presence. There were so many things to say, but in the end he let it all lay unspoken and said instead, "Not that I have anything against a wife showing due reverence and obeisance to her lord and master, but what's up with the 'sir'?"
Another day she might have given him a playful sock but not today. Any other time, even through her exhaustion and not knowing what lay beneath the bandages might have stopped her from hitting him, she would at least have rewarded him with a scornful laugh. But not today. There was no laughter in her today.
"What?" he asked her when he didn't get the response he expected.
She shook her head against him. "I think...I think whoever we were before, you were my commanding officer."
"Whoever we were before," he echoed her hollowly.
"Yes."
"We know who we were."
"I don't think so, Sir. We know what we've been told. I don't know why they've lied, but...that Circle--it leads...somewhere else. I don't think we belong here...I think we came through it. They must have found us, brought us here, and made up a life for us. It's all a lie. Even our names. They just took them off the labels of the things we brought with us. Or maybe things they'd already found."
"I doubt that, Carter," he said remembering the feel of the combat knife in his hand. He'd mangled half a row of grain trying to get the hang of using a sickle, but from the moment he'd felt the knife's handle in his hand, he'd known his throw would be sure and straight to the mark. "Whatever else, that stuff's ours."
"All right," she said licking her dry lips, "maybe it is, but this life isn't. It's just a fairytale they concocted for us."
"None of it's true then?" he asked her, but he already knew the answer. He remembered the distance they'd always felt from their neighbors. He thought of her 'dad' who'd let her go into battle as though he didn't really care what happened to her, and he believed her.
"None of it, Sir. We can't believe anything."
"There's one thing you can believe, Carter."
"What's that?"
"I love you."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jacob Carter stared at the memorabilia taped to the inside door of his daughter's locker. The smiling, pudgy baby faces of his grandkids, her niece and nephew. A picture from Cassy. An old, yellowed memo from O'Neill reminding members of SG-1 to leave all unnecessary equipment-'as in books, DANIEL!'-earthside when going on to 'p-wherever we're going tomorrow' because senior officers would not be coerced into carrying more than their share of the load on the fifteen mile hike the mission would entail. A long-outdated duty roster and a calendar to match with his birthday circled in red.
He'd celebrated that day savoring the cup of coffee Selmak graciously acceded to in honor of the occasion and opening the card Sam had handed him during his last visit home. He'd laughed at its funny punchline, set it aside, and hadn't given his birthday or his daughter another thought. By then, she'd forgotten his birthday as well. His birthday, his name, and his face. There probably wouldn't have been a thing he could have done about it if he'd been informed of the situation. But, he'd never know. George's message, like too many in the past, hadn't been passed along. She'd been gone for months, and he was only finding it out now.
"She's really gone, isn't she?" he asked his friend.
"If you could just get the Tok'ra to-" George started wearily.
"I can't...we can't. There are players out there you know nothing about. That planet couldn't be in a worse location. We've got a very touchy relationship with the folks who control that area of space. We can't jeopardize it."
"Not even for Sam?"
"Not even for Sam. I'd give anything to be able to change that, but I can't."
"So these folks...they're responsible for this?"
"Very unlikely. They aren't planetdwellers, George. I imagine the worlds in their territory are of no more significance to them than the rocks in your backyard are to you. And the folks on them even less."
"Then you could Gate in? My hands are tied, Jacob, but you could-"
"No, I can't. The Gate's gone. Buried or out of commission-we've been trying since I got your message."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jackson stopped by to check on O'Neill before heading home. He was relieved to find Carter curled up next to him. Looking down at his friends, he smiled his first smile in days and left them sleeping. They'd finished burying the dead that morning and begun the backbreaking labor of tearing down the ruined houses. He was ready for a bath and his own bed.
He sidestepped Ylyn's welcome home hug and kissed Talyn's cheek with his hands held carefully away to keep from smearing her flowered apron with his dirty hands before climbing into the bathtub and soaking away the filth of battle. When he climbed out, he could still make out the cloying, lingering odors of death and smoke over the clean smell of the soap he'd scrubbed with. He thought they'd follow him all the rest of his days and certainly into his dreams that night.
But, he was wrong. Waiting in the cave wondering if any of them would survive, Talyn had known she couldn't lie to him any longer. She'd determined then she'd tell him the truth--as much of it as she could--as soon as possible. She could see he was bone-weary, but it was time. While she served him his supper, she revealed things to him that made sleep impossible and pushed the memories of the last few days to the back of his mind.
He smiled at her when she sat down opposite him at the table. She reached out a trembling hand and grasped his. "I've something to tell you," she began, looking directly into his eyes and steeling herself to say the words that would destroy their life together. He stared into his bowl of stew while she talked. Bits of grease coalesced on its surface as it slowly cooled. His hunger had faded away with her words.
He knew he should be angry. But, if he felt anything, it was relief. He wasn't the horrible man he'd feared he was. A man who could forget his own wife and children. A husband who'd only after months of living with her begun to feel the remotest feeling for his wife. A father who could gaze into his newborn child's face and not feel anything at all. A man whose love for the child playing at his feet was nothing more than fond affection. He'd thought something was horribly wrong with him, but it hadn't been him at all.
When her words ran out, he didn't know what to say. She'd lied to him, deceived him, and somewhere between all the falsehoods of her life with him learned to love him. She'd believed she was doing what she had to in order to care for her children. It had never been malicious. She'd never intended to hurt him. It would though. Once the shock had worn off. Once he had time to realize the extent of her betrayal. He gently freed his hand from hers and rose from the table. Ylyn held out his arms to him, but he shook his head and said, "Not this time, Buddy." He walked out into the evening dusk and turned toward the town hall.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The rows of wounded had thinned down considerably this evening. Many of those who had a home to return to had been carried to their own beds. It was only the homeless and the severely wounded here now. Traiyana moved among them checking bandages and offering murmured encouragements. When she glanced up at him, Jackson turned his face away from hers and moved down the row to his friends. She'd been in on the deception--the whole village had, in truth. But Traiyana was the one who'd fed him the cover story. She'd murmured comforting lies and explanations and made him believe that regardless of what he felt he belonged in a dead man's home.
O'Neill and Carter were both asleep when he reached them. "Hey," he said quietly not sure if he should wake them. Not sure if he was really ready to share what he had learned. Or what he expected them to do about it. O'Neill jerked awake at the sound of his voice, and Carter followed him a few seconds later. He lowered himself to sit cross-legged beside them.
"What's up?" O'Neill asked him. Carter sat up and rested her head on her folded knees like a little girl waiting to hear a bedtime story. He took a deep breath and began the tale, but it wasn't a story to put them to sleep.
When he was finished, Carter said, "She's still lying to you, Jackson. There wasn't an accident in the caves...maybe she did have a husband who died, maybe she really did need you to replace him so she and the kids had someone--but you didn't conveniently lose your memory breathing in cave gas. None of us did. We don't belong here. They just made it up."
"What do you mean?" he asked her.
"Their Circle--it goes somewhere else. I think we came through it. Maybe it's what wiped our memories or maybe that happened before we came through. Maybe we were exiles and the people on the other side wiped our memories and dumped us through like so much trash. I don't know. Maybe the villagers did this to us."
"I can't believe that," Jackson said. "They're good people."
"Are they?" O'Neill asked.
"I thought they were," Jackson answered him. "But let's say they aren't. What could they gain by lying to us?"
"Well, Talyn got a husband, Traiyana got an assistant, and the village got us to slave away for them," O'Neill pointed out.
"Come on, O'Neill, you're not that hard of a worker. Sure things would have been harder for Talyn, but she and the kids wouldn't have been put out on the streets to starve. If they did this, they had a better reason than that."
"Maybe we should just ask them?" O'Neill snarled back.
"I don't think so, Sir," Carter said. "If they did this, they could just do it again if we give them reason to."
"Good point," O'Neill conceded. "So what do we do? Just play along with this little charade?"
"I don't know," she answered. "But, we can't expect Jackson to go back to her after all she's done."
"No," Jackson agreed with her. "I can't go back there."
"Are you sure?" O'Neill asked surprising them both.
"You think he should just pretend she hasn't betrayed him, Sir?"
"No, I just think he should think about it a bit. He walks away; he loses a lot more than her. That kid loves him. That's worth a lot. He shouldn't just throw it away without some thought."
Jackson gave it some thought. "She may not have meant to, but she loves me. I'm not sure I'm ready to throw that away either."
"You're worth more than that," Sam told him, her voice hard.
He rubbed a tired hand over his eyes and shrugged. "Am I? You said maybe we were banished from the other side. Maybe we deserved to be treated like this?"
"Aagh! Don't start that nonsense," O'Neill muttered at him. "No one deserves to be robbed of who they were and lied to."
Carter spoke to her knees. "I don't know. Maybe we do."
"Not you, too!" he snapped at her. When she wouldn't meet his eye, he added, "We've already gone over this. You're not some evil monster, Carter and you never were!"
"I blew those men up, Sir! And then I walked right over their pieces chasing the rest of them to the Gate--Circle! The ones that weren't dead, I just left there to die in the dirt...do you really think I can be a good person and do that? Do you know how many of them were out there?"
"Enough."
"Sir?"
"Enough. You left enough of them lying out there that they aren't clanking all through the streets putting snakes in people's heads." All three of them shuddered at the sudden images of writhing tails and glowing eyes. "You did what you had to do, Carter. That's all any of us can do."
Jackson wondered if that summed up his problem as well. Had Talyn only done what she had to do? He didn't know. He thought of O'Neill's words. Regardless of what he decided about Talyn was he prepared to lose Ylyn and the baby? O'Neill and Carter didn't have a home to go to, but they had each other. Was he prepared to be both homeless and alone?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Darail came to see she ate and to try to talk her into coming home for a few hours of rest. She gratefully sat and ate what food he had brought, but they both knew she wouldn't be going home yet. There were fifteen injured men and women still under her care. She thought two of them would die before the sun rose in the morning. She belonged here.
"It won't do them any good if you end up on the floor beside them," Darail stated.
"I'm fine," she told him.
"You are not fine, Traiyana. You can't lie to me."
"Why not? I've grown quite good at it."
"Traiyana." He knelt beside her and took her in his arms.
"This is a judgment on us, Darail."
"For slaying the god?" he asked her.
"No, for our deceit. For my deceit. I brought this on us. The wounded, the dead. All my fault."
"No," he assured her. "There'd be far more if you hadn't kept them with us. We couldn't have stood against the god without them. You were right to keep them here."
"I don't think so," she told him. "And I think it is time to tell them the truth."
"And let them go? Do you really think only the one god will come?"
"Carter had the Circle torn down and buried. There will be no other gods coming after us."
"Buried the Circle...is that all it took?"
She gave him a sick smile and said, "One hundred years of waiting and being afraid, and all we had to do was bury the Circle."
"Then we can't tell them the truth. He killed the god, Traiyana...what will he do to us when he knows what we've done?"
"I don't think we have any choice. I had to give them their weapons. When they have time to think, they'll be able to guess the half of it. We have to hope they will understand why we did what we did. We have to hope they can forgive us."
After Darail had returned home, she reluctantly moved down the rows of the wounded to make her confession to O'Neill, Carter, and Jackson. She would have liked his support, but it had been her decision. She was the one who must do this.
Jackson shook his head as though he could deny the whole sorry mess; Carter stared passed her as though her previous lies had forfeited any right she had to exist; and O'Neill stared into her with his stern, unwavering gaze.
"You didn't think maybe you should approach us and try to talk to us before you jumped to the conclusion we'd lead these gods to you?" he bellowed at her once she was finished.
"No," she answered, "the other with you had the brand of the gods on his forehead and their seed in his body."
"The other?" he demanded and frowned as she told them of the one she'd sent away through the Circle. "Why didn't you send us, too?" he asked.
She shrugged and shook her head. "You told me if I sent you away, you'd only return again looking for your past. I couldn't afford that. I made the decision...the others only did what was required."
"Sure," he started, but she was called away before he could finish.
For a moment, the three of them sat silenced by all they had learned then O'Neill let out a long string of curses, and Carter reluctantly dragged herself up to follow Traiyana. Jackson watched her move wearily away. He shrugged his shoulders at O'Neill and said, "Now what?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Talyn, her face streaked with tears, was still sitting at the table when he went home. He took the sleeping baby from her arms and settled her into the cradle before sitting down across from her and taking her hand.
"So tell me about your husband," he said. She raised her head to look at him, and he gave her a gentle smile.
"You don't hate me?" she asked.
"No. I don't hate you," he said. "I think maybe...maybe we can start over. Be friends. See where things go."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Now what?" Jackson had asked the evening before and though he'd lain awake through the night, O'Neill was no closer to an answer. He climbed out of his bed right before Carter collapsed into it coming back after helping with the dying. He sidestepped those coming to offer him hot mush for his breakfast and walked out the door.
His shoulder wound pulled as he moved, and he was thankful for the bandages holding it in place. His legs were unsteady under him and he was shaky, but it could have been worse. He'd had worse he was sure, though that was one memory maybe he should be glad to be rid of.
The smoky haze following the battle had long since faded away. The day was clear though there was a chill in it now that hadn't been there before. The leaves had begun to turn. After months and months of summer, fall was coming.
It was not the only change in the air. The people he met smiled genuine smiles at him, they nodded greetings, and some actually took the time to shake his good hand. He wasn't sure what to make of it. Did they think because he hadn't walked out of the village the night before, he was just fine and dandy with their lies and deceptions? But then, there was no shame in their faces, none. They were still unaware that he knew the truth. As far as they were concerned, the game was still on. So what had transformed his cold and formal neighbors into warm and friendly folk?
He turned down his street. The black and charred ruins he'd expected to see weren't there. They had already been cleared away and villagers swarmed over the site preparing to begin rebuilding. Carter's dad was one of them. He nodded a friendly hello and called O'Neill over.
"Ah. It's good to see you up and about. We're about to start framing things in. Any changes you want to see made while we're at it?"
"What's going on?" he asked. "Why are you doing this? There're plenty of others who need houses, too."
"True enough, and we'll get there. But we thought it was only right we saw to yours first."
"Why? Traiyana told us the truth. You don't have to pretend anymore."
"Oh," the man said. His face turned red, and his shoulders slumped in defeat. "You know then we never wanted to lie to you. We were frightened...afraid."
"That's what I keep hearing."
"And we were wrong, of course. No one could doubt that the minute you took command. Then when you killed the god--well, that's why we're here. You saved us. A place to come home to is the least we can do."
"You expect us to stay then?"
"Where else would you go? They say they've buried the Circle. There's nowhere else for you to go. You're welcome here. And you need people--we all do."
O'Neill thought about that. They were stuck on this side of the Circle for the rest of their lives. There were no other villages. He and Carter could head off on their own. Find a nice, quiet place far away from these people who had earned nothing but their contempt and distrust. They could, but he didn't want to do that to her. He wasn't that good of company to start with, and if something happened to him or when old age caught up with him she'd be on her own. For her sake, he'd have to swallow his injured pride and learn to forgive these people and encourage her to do the same. They'd have to accept the hand they'd been dealt and get over it.
They wouldn't like it, and it wouldn't be easy for either of them. The least he could do was surround them with friends. "A bigger porch," he said. To the man's puzzled look, he explained, "We'll need a bigger porch".
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The planet wasn't that different than all the others he'd visited during his time with SG-13. He guessed it wasn't all that different to all those he'd visited before that with the then SG-1. However, this one had a vital difference. The people were strongly telepathic. The two that met them near the Gate had taken only a moment to know they were peaceful explorers seeking allies and help in their fight against the Goa'uld. The natives were happy enough to welcome them into their city and discuss ways they might be of assistance. It was a nice change.
SG-13 rapidly concluded their part in the deliberations and were preparing to turn the rest over to the diplomatic corps, but before they could leave one of the natives approached Teal'c. "We are troubled with the hole in your mind," it told Teal'c. "This, we feel, is a difficult thing to live with. We believe we could reach beyond it and find for you the answers you seek." It was an offer he would not refuse and one General Hammond was only too happy to allow him to accept as well. The answers he had sought for almost a year were finally exposed.
He shut his eyes against the onslaught of memories and emotions washing into his mind and lay trembling in their wake for a few moments. Then slowly his mind began to see the pattern and weave of his life. His childhood, his prim'ta, the death of his father, his training with Bray-tac, his service to Apophis, his wife's love, and the feel of his son in his arms. And through them all the niggling doubts and growing suspicions which had undermined his faith until one day his disbelief had caused him to turn his back on all he loved and follow a stranger through the chaapa'ai. O'Neill. He'd lived not one lifetime but two in the past he now remembered as though it had never been wiped from his mind.
He gathered himself together and rose to his feet. He inclined his head to the native in recognition of all it had restored to him. Words would have been redundant. Then he returned through the Gate to bring the general news he had long awaited.
It raised as many questions as it answered. SG-1 had been alive and uninjured when the memory device had been used against Teal'c. Though their lives had been threatened, Teal'c had been spared. Could they therefore assume the others had as well? If they were, had they, too, been sent through the Gate to unknown destinations or were they still being held on the planet? Now that a means to counteract their memory wiping was available weren't they duty bound to try to reach the team and bring them home?
Hammond made a strong case before those over him to get the go-ahead for which he'd waiting an eternity. He'd already given the nod to all the base thinkers to be developing means to open a buried StarGate. The proposals had been passing his desk every since Jacob had told them the Gate was down. The first attempt was a failure, the second even more so, but the third was the proverbial charm. Whoever had buried the Gate had left nothing to chance, but they eventually were able to break through and open the wormhole. Jacob arrived to join the rescue team before the work crew had managed to dig out the Gate and raise it back in place. For once the message had been delivered in time.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
(Note to Readers: I'm aware last we knew it was fall. Apparently, fall, winter, and spring just sail by on Kylanar, while summer hangs on forever!)
She was sitting on the wooden porch snapping beans into a bowl when they first saw her. Her hair had grown long enough she'd pulled it back into a soft bun though stray wisps framed her face. It wasn't the only change they were able to note, but, even so, they recognized her at once.
She watched them as Traiyana led them up the dusty street to the house. She didn't need to ask who they were. It was clear from their clothing and weapons. They were from the other side of the Circle, from wherever they themselves had once come from. She shook her head against the hopes and fears that rose up in her. Since the battle, she'd dreamed infrequently of the enemy coming back--surging out of the brown soil they'd shoveled in over the Circle, but, more often, coming from the skies. She'd told herself it was only the stuff of nightmares, but perhaps it had been her unconscious mind warning her that burying it wasn't enough. Because, here they were, and if they could come than surely the enemy could as well.
In time, that danger would have to be dealt with, but Traiyana had obviously determined that these strangers were not a threat to Kylanar. But to O'Neill, Jackson, and herself? They held the answers she'd longed for, ached for, and given up hope for when she'd been forced to bury the Circle. She'd struggled for so long to not allow the shadow of their unknown past to darken their present, and she desperately wanted whatever answers these newcomers brought. She did. But. O'Neill had never fully persuaded her that there was nothing to fear in the life they'd lived and forgotten. That there weren't things lurking in the murky waters of their past that would be painfully, shamefully, and, maybe even impossibly hard to face.
Yet still, she'd thought it would be better to know them than not. Until now, when she wondered if it wouldn't be better just to let them lie. Torn between her hope and her fear, she watched their approach silently. Excitement warred with caution, and, in the cross-fire, she was left oddly numb and bone-weary. When they drew to a stop at the bottom of the steps, she said, "You've come for us then?"
"Yes. Were you expecting us?" Colonel Dixon asked curiously. The others milled around unsure of what they should be doing as she studied them without any sign of eagerness or recognition.
"Expecting you? No. We buried the Circle. We thought that was the end of it," she answered. It was unclear from her expression or her words if she wished it had been left that way or if she was pleased they'd persevered in finding them.
"By all rights it should have been," Jacob said. "But, George and the others back home weren't prepared to lose you." With an effort, he refrained himself from gathering her into his arms and assuring himself she was really here alive and well. It would be the wrong thing to do, because it was apparent they were, as far as she was concerned, strangers. There was nothing welcoming in her stiff, wary posture and closed face. He had to content himself with just seeing her and hearing her voice and knowing that they really had found her after all this time.
The colonel said, "We figured out how to--"
"It doesn't matter," she cut him off, "not right now." The last thing she wanted was to face what they had to say on her own. "Wait for the others to come," she said, "then you can just explain it once." To those who'd traveled the galaxy to find her, her apparent lack of curiosity was more disturbing than all the other changes they'd noted in her. This woman, calm in her resignation, was not the one they'd come expecting to find.
She looked from one to another of them as though they weren't living up to her expectations either. She turned to Traiyana and asked, "You've sent for them, haven't you?" At the affirmative nod, she gave the group one more uneasy look and sighed. "Come on up then. There's room to sit." She stood and what had only been hinted at before was unmistaken. She was several months pregnant. "I'll just put this away. Please sit down," she said gathering her bowl and snapped beans and going into the house. The group from Earth cautiously trooped up the steps and planted themselves on the porch benches and steps. She came to the door and asked, "Do you--are you thirsty? Hungry? I can get something."
"No. No," the colonel answered for them all. "We're fine."
"Ok," she said. She wanted to stay in the safety of the house, and she wanted to be in their midst, learning all she could from them. In the end, her need for knowledge won out, and she came out to join them on the porch though she still couldn't seem to push past her own caution and anxiety to begin to find her answers.
The group stirred restlessly as Major Carter found a place to sit with them but was no more able to break through her barriers than she was. She'd hardly sat down before a young woman carrying a baby and dragging a toddler behind her hurried up.
"It's true then?" she gasped. "They've come for you? You'll be going then?"
"They've come all right," the major answered, "I imagine we will be going. You too, if that's what you want?"
"What I want?" the woman echoed hollowly.
"He won't force you to go if you don't want to," she answered.
"But, he won't stay?"
Carter shrugged noncommittally. "You'll have to ask him that yourself," she said. The young woman stood in her uncertainty, gasping for air and answers to her fears. Her obvious fear and dismay reached through Carter's numbness and spurred her finally to decisiveness. She stood and reached over the railing, "Here leave them here...they'll be fine. Take the time to decide what you want. If you decide you'll come with us--pack up the things you'll miss the most. Pack lightly though, it's a long walk to the Circle." She handed the baby over to Traiyana and then took the little boy. The young woman looked helplessly at Traiyana, who nodded her head, and at the strangers staring curiously at her and then rushed off as suddenly as she had came.
Major Carter turned to Colonel Dixon. "Will it be a problem to bring her and the children?"
"I'm sorry," he answered. "Who is she?"
"Jackson's wife," she said.
"Oh. No. I'm sure that won't be a problem. Will--are there others who will be coming as well?" he asked.
She shook her head but didn't elaborate.
"Shouldn't you be packing too?" he asked her.
"I'm guessing there's really nothing we'll need...where we're going? So there are only the few things we'll bother to take--the things we came with I suppose, and a few things people have made for the baby. They'll be easy enough to grab when it's time."
Jacob frowned. They'd been missing for well over a year. He'd have liked to believe she'd made a home and life for herself during that time, but it hardly sounded like she had. They all sat in uneasy silence for another few minutes and then the men arrived.
Physically they'd changed as well. The twin suns of the system had bleached Daniel's hair until it was almost blond and given them both a dark tan. The colonel had lost a few pounds, and Daniel had apparently found them. He'd also, at some point, broken his nose. It had healed slightly crooked.
But, personality-wise, they hadn't changed at all. The colonel came up the stairs and stood in the center of the porch looking them over with narrowed eyes. He glowered suspiciously at them, his face closed and hard.
Daniel more than made up for his lack of welcome. "We never thought anyone would come...we're glad to see you! I'm Jackson--at least that's who we think I am. But, I suppose you know that?" he asked, going from one to another of them with an outstretched hand.
"Yes, actually we do," Jacob Carter told him with a grin. Daniel's obvious happiness at meeting them was a relief after Sam's indifference and Jack's bristling suspicion.
Daniel cocked his head curiously at him. "So it is Jackson then? Good. Good. Much simpler that way, don't you think? Carter? O'Neill?" he asked motioning towards the others and nodding with satisfaction to know they'd gotten that right as well. He didn't seem to notice the others' silence. "So who is everyone?" he asked.
"I am Teal'c," the Jaffa said with a nod of his head.
"Oh," Daniel said. "You came here with us then?"
"I did."
"But, you--they wiped you too, right?"
"They did. However, I have regained my memories."
"Really? That's great! You can do that for us too?"
"Indeed. That is why we have come. This is Colonel Dixon, Major Andrel, Captain Fratred...and Jacob Carter."
"Carter?" O'Neill said, speaking for the first time.
"Yes," Jacob said, "Sam's father."
"Sam?"
"Major Carter," he answered with a nod towards his daughter.
O'Neill snorted and said under his breath, "We've heard that one before." He stalked through the crowded porch and into the house. For a brief moment Carter sat frozen looking at the man who'd claimed to be her father. Then she followed O'Neill into the house.
Daniel shrugged apologetically. "They...uh...have some trust issues. The people here...they lied to us. Gave us lives that weren't ours. Told us we'd lost our memories in an accident. It left us a bit...suspicious, I guess you could say."
"Of course," Jacob said.
"If you could, you know, restore our memories--that would go a long way toward alleviating those suspicions."
Colonel Dixon spoke up, "That's a bit of a problem. We don't have the ability to do it ourselves. We'll need to bring you home first. Make sure you're ok, then visit a planet where the natives have the ability to help you."
"I see," Daniel said disappointed.
"Jackson," Traiyana spoke up, "Talyn was here..."
For the first time, Daniel noticed the baby napping in her lap and the little boy climbing about under their feet. "Oh," he said.
"Carter sent her home to decide what she will do if you decide to go--"
"Do?" he said faintly.
"Yes, do. Carter seems to think you would be willing to take her and the children if you go."
"Oh...of course," he said questioningly, and then again with more certainty, "Of course. I suppose she'll come. Won't she?" he seemed to flounder. "I couldn't just leave them if she wants to go?"
O'Neill banged through the door. "So that's the plan?" he asked. "We're going to do this? Just waltz off through that Circle with these folks?
"Well," Jackson said, "it's what we've wanted, isn't it? To know who we were, where we came from."
"We'd like you to come back with us, Sir," Colonel Dixon answered. "I was just telling Daniel-"
"Daniel? I thought you said his name was Jackson?" O'Neill interrupted.
"It is, Daniel Jackson...Dr. Daniel Jackson."
O'Neill only half listened to his answer. He'd turned back and looked through the screen at Carter. She hadn't said anything in answer to his question. She didn't have to. He gave a resigned sigh. "Yeah," he said, "guess we're going." The group would have liked a bit more enthusiastic response, but they'd settle for what they could get.
O'Neill turned to them. "Can't expect the kids and Carter to make the trip in half a day. We'll leave in the morning. I'm sure the folks here will be happy to put you up at the town hall for the night and provide you a meal," he told the group dismissively, nodded at Traiyana, and stalked back to the door.
"Of course," Traiyana said, "and we'll have a dance...for your last night with us."
O'Neill paused in the open doorway then shrugged, "Whatever," he said and brushed past Carter to get into the house.
"That would be great," Daniel said. "A chance to say good by." He grinned at Traiyana and the Earthers and nodded his head in satisfaction. The Earth group looked at one another with reservations. But the idea proved to be a good one. The villagers turned out in mass with enough food to feed a town of twice their size, laughter, music, and genuine admiration and affection for SG-1. The newcomers couldn't help but be pulled into the celebration. And even O'Neill wore a smile and a civil attitude. Up to a point.
He lost the smile when the speeches started. It didn't take the Earthers long to realize their erstwhile teammates had been instrumental in holding off a Goa'uld incursion. They were the heroes of the year apparently, and none of them were comfortable in the role. They winced at the toasts and speeches made in their honor. When pushed for a speech in return, the colonel graciously declined saying, "I'd rather dance with my wife," and took Carter off to the dance floor confirming what the group had already guessed. The musicians obligingly took up the music, and the villagers laughed as though they'd known all along there would be no speech.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Talyn sat against the wall watching O'Neill laughingly dancing about with her giggling son. Beside her, her mother gently held the baby and forced down tears. The laughing, happy voices and music filling the building did not reach them. She'd went home as Carter had told her and packed up a few of her favorite things. The bundles were stacked now by her front door, waiting for tomorrow. Tomorrow when she'd walk away from the life and people she knew and loved and follow Jackson through the Circle to a new life she couldn't imagine.
There hadn't been time to talk with him about the changes ahead of them. He was so excited meeting the strangers, she'd hardly seen him since they'd arrived. He'd been home a minute to rummage through his own few belongings before deciding there was nothing there worth packing, but then he'd rushed off again to speak more with the newcomers. She'd waited for him to come back to collect them for the dance, and eventually he had. But his thoughts had not been on her or the children but on the excitement of the trip tomorrow and all it would mean. To him. Not to her.
He'd be going home, discovering who and what he was, and returning to the people who loved him. While she'd be leaving all she knew. She'd be taking her children away from the world she knew, the life she understood, and her family who loved them. And there'd be no turning back. The Circle was to be buried again as soon as they passed through it. She'd be trapped on his world just as he'd been trapped on hers. The later the night grew, the closer the time came, the more she knew she couldn't do it.
She still loved him but not enough for this...not knowing that his feelings toward her and her children were not those of a husband and father but those of a concerned friend. He'd tried. She knew he had. But, her months of deceit had been impossible to wipe out. It had been too personal, too intimate a betrayal for that. His willingness to try had been enough for her here surrounded with her family's support and the village. But, she knew now, it wouldn't be enough on the other side of the Circle.
She belonged here and her children, too. She couldn't see them raised on a strange world, learning things she'd never even imagined, and growing into people she could never understand. And Jackson. Would he be the man she knew when his memories were returned? She looked at the group that had come for them. Not simple townsmen but soldiers all. No, he'd be a different man there. One who wouldn't need the burden of a wife he didn't love and the responsibility of children that he still didn't see as his own.
She stood, patted her mom on her shoulder, and went to find Jackson. The dance was a chance for the villagers to say good by, and she had good bys to say.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Carter brushed a tendril of hair back from her face and chanced a glance at the man walking beside her. He caught her looking and gave her a small, nervous smile. She looked away uncertainly. When she'd buried the Circle, she'd buried with it the hope she'd ever be able to feel in the blanks of her life. Now the answers were assessable, and she was afraid to know them. She bit her lip and sought out O'Neill's lanky form behind her. He scowled back at her, and she knew he was no more eager to face the unknown than she was.
He'd refused to discuss it when they'd returned alone to their home the night before. "Don't go there, Carter," he snarled at her when she'd tried again over breakfast. And so she hadn't. But, now she turned away from his scowl and stepped closer to the man who claimed to be her father.
"Are you really my father?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, I am," he answered cautiously. It was the first time she'd approached him and he was frightened of moving too quickly.
"What about my mother?" she asked.
"I'm sorry, Sam," he answered, "she died a long time ago." When she didn't immediately answer, he added, "You are a lot like her...beautiful and smart."
She blushed at the compliment. Or maybe she was just flushed from the hot walk. "When's the baby due?" he asked.
"A while yet," she answered. "Do...did I leave other children behind?"
"No, no," he assured her. "This is your first."
"O'Neill?" she asked so quietly he'd never have heard her without Selmak's enhanced hearing.
"A long time ago he had a son...and a wife. The boy died, the woman didn't stay...he'd been alone for quite sometime."
"So," she said and paused before continuing so softly he had to strain even more to hear her, "we don't belong together, after all?"
"Well, you didn't. Not like that, but...you do now. It doesn't have to end, you know?"
"Really?" she asked, but he could tell she didn't believe him.
"Listen," he said earnestly, "you may not have been together but it wasn't because you both didn't want to be...it was the job. Being soldiers--officers together, it wasn't an option. But, I've known for a long time, if the circumstances were different, you would have been together. Well, now they are different. This doesn't have to end." She closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to fall from them, and he pulled her into a gentle embrace. For a second she resisted but then melted into his arms. "It will be all right, Baby," he assured her.
"We planning to make it to that Gate of yours today?" O'Neill said behind them. They took the hint and pulled apart to walk on. As they did so, she gave him a small smile that almost reached her eyes and a quiet 'thank you'.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
She gazed at the swirling blue of the open circle as though mesmerized. "Are we sure we want to do this?" O'Neill asked at her side. "It doesn't look too safe."
Jackson threw off the pensive somberness he'd carried with him for the trip and grinned with forced excitement. "We're sure."
O'Neill tried to catch Carter's eye, but her gaze was locked on the Gate. He'd avoided talking to her about them--the them that they'd find on the other side of that thing. She'd tried more than once to get him to, but he'd avoided it as though his life depended on it. And he was afraid it did. The life he knew here with Carter. He hadn't been close enough to hear her discussion with Jacob Carter, but he'd watched her as they'd spoken. He'd seen the drop of her shoulders as though she'd suffered a great loss, and he was afraid he knew what that meant.
"Carter," he said low and urgently.
She tore her eyes from the Gate and turned to him. "Sir?"
"I...I..." he floundered painfully about, not even sure what it was he wanted to say.
She dropped her eyes to his shoes. He'd rebuffed her too many times for her to take the chance she knew what he was trying to say. They were about to step into another world, another life, and she didn't want to leave this one with one of his angry, sarcastic statements echoing in her ears. She reached out her hand and took his. "Let's go, O'Neill," she said.
"Right," he agreed, and they walked through the Gate together.
The sights and people greeting them when they emerged on the other side were as unfamiliar to them as Kylanar had been when they'd first woken up without their memories. Their companions made introductions. General Hammond, Doctor Frasier, and several others. They nodded their heads in wary acknowledgement but without recognition. As soon as the introductions were over, they were led off to the infirmary.
O'Neill bristled at the medical staff hovering around them with strange instruments and unknown plans. Doctor Frasier calmly and firmly assured him the tests were necessary before they'd be allowed to travel onto the planet where hopefully their memories would be returned. With an aggrieved sigh, he allowed her and her staff to do their jobs. They passed the physicals with flying colors. Strong and healthy with no ill effects from their time offworld. Dr. Frasier beamed happily at them as she gave the good report.
"Fine then," O'Neill said, "let's get this over with."
"Actually, Jack," the general said, "we'd thought it best to wait until tomorrow. Give you time to rest up."
O'Neill scowled at the suggestion. The last thing he wanted to do was go through another night of anxious waiting. "I think we'd all like to just get it over with, if you don't mind," he said. The others nodded their assent.
The general did mind. His people weren't completely back but closer than they had been in far too long. He wanted to keep them safely within his view. Nevertheless, he reluctantly agreed, "Very well, then. SG-13 and Jacob will accompany you on through. I'll look forward to seeing you when you return."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The memories and feelings rushing through his mind swept him along. Sarah and Charlie, lost almost as fast as they were found. He swallowed down a despairing cry in their wake. But they were only the beginning. Missions gone bad, fellow officers left dead on foreign soil, blood on his hands. A prison of war camp in Iraq where whatever shreds of humanity he'd managed to hold on to had been stripped away from him with his dignity and hope. Hitting the ground too hard and too fast and the sound of cracking bones. A pond as devoid of fish as much as his soul was devoid of innocence. The swirling blue of an event horizon. The frozen gut-wrenching trip through a StarGate. The open, curious face of Daniel Jackson. Teal'c's stony visage. Staring into the wrong end of a staff weapon knowing the game was up only to find it was just beginning.
And images of Carter: staring with wonder into the blue of the StarGate, laughing at his side as they walked on an alien world, biting her lip in frustration when she couldn't pull a solution out of thin air, pushing Cassy on the swings, eagerly tearing an alien doohickey apart, staring at him helplessly on the wrong side of a force field, and strapped to a chair unsuccessfully trying to evade questions that had to be answered.
"And what were you feeling at the time?" Anise asked.
"I was sad," she said with a shrug, "and angry."
"About?" the Tok'ra asked.
"That he was throwing his life away for me," she said with a strained voice, "That he would waste it like that."
"Did you tell him that?"
"No, of course not. There wasn't time...and it would have been too embarrassing for both of us."
He winced at her words. But then he'd always known, hadn't he, that his feelings for her were an unwelcome embarrassment.
"You didn't share his feelings then?" Anise probed. He knew the answer to that. No. She didn't share his feelings, and he'd never expected her to. He was old and hardened while she was still young and open to all the possibilities and wonders of the worlds they explored. Where he saw danger and subterfuge behind every new encounter, she saw excitement and discovery. There were too many times he'd issued orders that didn't set right with her ideals and hopes, too many times he had been forced to discount her and Daniel's opinions and desires trying to keep them safe, and far too many times he'd said the wrong thing at the wrong time or failed to say the right thing at the right time. She could no more love him than he could hate her.
"I've told you what I was feeling," Carter answered, sidestepping the question. He was grateful she'd spared him that at least. "You have what you need to know. I'm not a za'tarc." And when she'd made it plain she was only too happy to leave the whole mess behind them in that room, he'd been more then willing to agree. Leave it and forget it.
But, he hadn't. He'd swallowed down his feelings for her as best as he could before the incident, and he'd endeavored to do so even more in the time since. But he'd never let them go, and she knew it. He couldn't deny he would have wished a life with her if it had been within his power. If he hadn't felt as he did beforehand, if he hadn't desperately wanted the lies they fed them to be true...maybe they wouldn't have been taken in by their words, maybe they wouldn't have accepted the lie of their life together, and now she wouldn't be tied to him by all that had passed on Kylanar and by the child she carried.
But, he had, and they had, and there wasn't any going back from here. He'd give her what freedom he could, but he couldn't give her back the life she'd had before. It was far too late for that. SG-1, as they knew it, was history, they could never walk into a mission together again. Even without the baby too much had passed between them for that.
He drew in a long, wavering breath and opened his eyes. The alien hovering nearby nodded its head and moved out of his way so he could see Jacob anxiously watching another alien bent over Carter. The Tok'ra glanced up at him and then back to Carter. He couldn't read his expression. But he doubted the man or the symbiote were any happier with the situation than his daughter would be when she woke up. That would be soon, he thought. He could see the memories wash over her face. They came so fast that the good ones softening her face and making her lips turn up in a small smile blended into the bad ones that caused tears to run down her cheeks and small gasps and cries to work their way out of her mouth. Uncomfortable watching her innermost feelings, he looked around for Daniel.
He was on the other side of Carter. Already awake, he was sitting looking more than slightly dazed on the edge of his cot.
"Daniel?" he asked quietly.
Daniel glanced up and gave him a resigned nod and half a smile. "Jack," he answered.
"You ok?" Jack asked and then could have kicked himself. Of course, Daniel wasn't ok. His childhood memories were full of first the loss of his parents and then the rejection of his grandfather. And things had only gotten worse from there: his disgrace in his chosen field and the loss and then death of Sha're. And now Talyn and the kids.
Daniel read the apology in Jack's face before he had to say it. "I'm fine, Jack...I am," he said trying to assure his friend and himself both with his words. "She made the right choice, you know. She'd never have been happy here. Can you imagine her hemmed in under the mountain? Even if we'd gotten the clearance for her to leave the base, life on Earth would never have been what she wanted. She's better off on Kylanar."
"What about you?" Jack asked.
Daniel shrugged. "She was a nice girl, Jack, but..." he shrugged again, "well, we didn't have much in common. I'll miss her...I'll miss the kids, but I'll be ok. I am ok."
Jack nodded as though he wasn't quite convinced and Daniel continued, "Come on, Jack, the only real thing we had between us were her lies. Sam was right when she thought I shouldn't have gone back...I tried, but we never got past that and I doubt we ever would have. I never felt like her husband or those kids' father...you were a lot more a dad to Ylyn than I ever managed to be! If you're ok leaving him behind than you can be sure so am I."
Jack sighed, "I'd have brought him through in a heartbeat--already miss the little guy. But, I suppose you're right--he's better off back there." He sighed again and turned back to Carter just as she came awake with a cry. He thought it must have been like the one she'd given that had first woken him in their small room on Kylanar. Now, like then, she startled up from the bed. But this time her father was there to keep her from falling. He caught her up in a tight embrace.
"Dad," she said, her voice quivering.
"Sammie," he answered. He pushed loose hair from her face and kissed her bent head gently. "It's ok, honey. It's ok," he told her.
"Is it?" she asked into his shoulder.
"Yes," he assured her. "It's all behind you now...the good and the bad."
"And the colonel?" she asked so quietly no one else could hear. Her dad pulled away from her to see her face and smiled.
"He's right here. Waiting to make sure you're all right--just like always," he turned her to see Jack standing behind them looking as frightened and confused as she felt.
"Carter," he said, low and uncertain. Her dad nudged her toward him, and she came into his arms. He sighed deeply against her.
For a moment, she simply clung to him. "You all right, Sir?" she finally managed to work out.
"Just peachy," he answered. "You?"
She drew away from him and smiled. "I'm good," she said, "I'm good." Then she put her head back against his chest and let him encircle her in his arms as though she belonged there.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
(Author's Note: Kelly2 felt a small epilogue was in order here and couldn't talk me into putting the effort into it...so she wrote her own which I offer here for those who want just a little bit more.)
Three-quarters of the facility was in the commissary--seems the kitchen had decided that the return of the remainder of SG1 was a good excuse for a very large cake. Hammond smiled wryly--not that he'd authorized the party, but he was tired of waiting for the fax he was expecting and, besides, he wanted some cake. He pushed the chair back, sent one last stern glance at the fax machine, and headed for the butter cream frosting. As the elevator doors slid shut, the fax machine spewed its strident stream of static onto paper...
'Taking under advisement the extreme nature of the situation and the testimony of BG George Hammond, the United States Air Force Chief of Staff hereby authorizes a waiver of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for the individuals named below:
O'Neill, J.
Carter, S.
A copy of this notice shall be placed into the personnel files of the affected officers and the Office of the Chief of Staff shall be advised immediately should any situation arise which warrants re-examination of the command structure for the affected officers.'
The fax machine returned to silence. Its part in the saga completed.
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Finding the Wizard
by OffworlderStory Bemerkung:
This was supposed to be just a fun little story--I'd borrow the characters for a bit and return them right back into the show with no harm done and no one the wiser. Unfortunately, after lulling me into complacency by sitting on my computer only partially done for months and months, it suddenly turned into a runaway. By the time I ran it to a standstill the damage was irreversible. Much to my sorrow, there was no way to get the characters back to where they left the show...my apologies.Site Navigation
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