Thyself, Unknown
Thyself, Unknown
by MissAnnThropic
Summary: And then they were strangers again and their world was brand new with signs of aging.
Category: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, Missing Scene/Epilogue, Romance
Episode Related: 410 Beneath the Surface
Season: Season 4
Pairing: Jack/Sam
Rating: 13+
Warnings: adult themes, character death, language, minor character death, violence
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. I have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author(s).
Archived on: 2005-04-15
A/N: This here's another fic from the 'crap fanfic file' collection. Since a number of people seemed to enjoy my other CFF piece, 'A Question of Suitability', I decided to put this one up, too, even if I don't think it's all that great. Maybe some of you will disagree with my assessment and actually enjoy it.
Jonah rolled in one swift motion from his bed and stole toward Thera's bunk as others in the community sleeping room started to stir. He reached her bed and touched her shoulder in a hurried jostle. She lifted her head, golden hair adorably tousled, her blue eyes turned to him so full of attentiveness, astute curiosity and intelligence directed wholly at him.
"I think I know what's going on," he whispered lowly, like it was the key to the universe tucked in his brain, and Thera's lips parted and she was about to speak.
"Jonah, Thera, report to Brenna's office."
Thera and Jonah looked over at the foreman addressing them and they stole a wary, ominous glance at one another. It was too late.
When they were taken to Brenna's office to find Carlin and a sick Tor already present they were given only the vague apology, "I'm sorry. I don't know what happened, why it stopped working, but we'll make it right. This time. It took a great deal to convince the administrator to even spare your lives. I'm just sorry we can't salvage your Jaffa friend... he was a strong worker. It's a shame I must do this to all of you again."
Brenna's words sent an edge of panic through those summoned and Jonah and Thera looked at one another. Desperation flickered in the depths of their eyes. Too late.
And then they were three and they were strangers again and their world was brand new with signs of aging.
Brenna looked up from her worker productivity reports when someone entered her small, unpretentious office within the underground tomes of the ice planet. Her eyes immediately fell upon a slim, tall woman in the androgynous tan/orange worker's tunic. What made this woman stand out was her hair. Short-cropped, spiky, and cream-gold yellow. Brenna had seen so few blondes in her time; they were not common to the people on her planet.
"Thera," Brenna greeted her and beckoned the woman inside. Thera was a stab at Brenna's conscience because before, when she'd been Sam Carter, Brenna had liked her. In different circumstances, she believed she and Major Carter might have been friends. But that was not to be. The off-worlders involved themselves in matters not their concern and now Brenna was their overseer and Sam was Thera, the latter a woman that Brenna could respect and like but could never befriend.
Thera stepped into the office and shut the door behind her. Her hands quickly clasped in front of her body and Thera down-turned her face and averted her eyes. It was a built-in front that crumbled so easily. Some personality traits were never completely stamped out, and the propensity for confrontation was one characteristic that never leeched entirely out of Thera. Even when she was acting dutifully subservient there was a quick-to-light energy and fire in her that Brenna privately admired. Thera was more of a handful than she let on, and slowly, after four months with her in the caverns, other workers were starting to understand that about Thera.
Today Thera's outward appearance seemed more an accurate reflection of her inner emotional state. Thera's uncharacteristically meek, unassuming attitude was a sign that something was bothering her.
"I heard you were ill yesterday and had to go to the infirmary," Brenna decided to speak first. She harbored true concern for Thera, and not merely because she was on the look-out for another lapse back into Sam Carter as had happened two months ago. Brenna felt closer to Thera than many of the workers. Even if she wasn't quite Sam Carter anymore she was enough like her that Brenna felt a kinship with her, like she owed this almost-friend some protection and favor. "I hope it wasn't night sickness."
"Oh, no, I'm not night sick," Thera answered, then her hands started to twist upon themselves nervously. She refused to look Brenna in the eye.
Brenna frowned. "Thera, is there something troubling you?"
Thera frowned, chewed on her bottom lip, then released a strained sigh. "Brenna... I wanted to ask you... what steps does one have to take to get a breeding permit?"
Brenna's eyes widened slightly.
Because of the scarcity of resources, reproduction in the work force was strictly monitored and controlled. To ensure there were always enough workers for basic maintenance (what personnel wasn't provided from Above), select instances of controlled breeding were conducted. It was more husbandry of human life than the raising of children. Partners were evaluated and selected based on their genetics strengths, mental qualities, and work histories. Pairs did not always get along, but they would bow to the will of the overseers and 'provide' the requested offspring because they were 'happy to serve'.
Brenna could hardly remember the last time a child was requisitioned by the work force management commission. It was avoided when at all possible because the 'newness' of a pregnancy and a baby disrupted the monotony and complacency of the workers. It shook things up, and keeping everything under strict control was paramount.
Brenna realized she was still staring up at Thera.
"Well," she began, a little debased by the question and grasping for control of the situation, "it's not really something one can request. If work labor forces are projected to drop below minimum efficiency the management staff evaluates the stock available and 'orders' two individuals to copulate to conceive a child to eventually fill out the work crews."
Thera's lips thinned and she looked ashen.
Brenna's brow furrowed. "Thera, why are you asking about breeding permits?"
"... Jonah..." Thera started, but it was the only word she managed.
It was all Brenna needed. She had observed a natural closeness between former Colonel O'Neill and former Major Carter the moment they were introduced into the work force, fresh from their memory 'procedures', the first and the second. The stamp had naturally erased all explicit knowledge of one another, but almost innately they had gravitated toward each other, more so than any of the other members of the late SG-1. By the end of the first week Thera and Jonah were a pair. If not in an intimate sense, then in the sense that in between shifts and at meal times they were always in one another's company. Brenna noticed it, and more than once she wished she'd had time to learn the previous nature of their previous identities' relationship.
Personal relationships among the workers were not forbidden in and of themselves. They were human beings with physiological needs. If it interfered with an individual's work one partner would be transferred after a single courtesy warning (at Brenna's largess, because the management would just as soon there be no warning before transfer), but it had never been necessary with Thera and Jonah. They were expedient, diligent workers and their 'closeness' never impacted on their efficiency ratings.
Brenna had long suspected that after the first month with SG-1 as part of the labor force Thera and Jonah had become intimate. The second stamping procedure appeared to have little to no impact on the couple. They reunited and bonded all over again with even greater speed than in the aftermath of the first stamping.
"You and Jonah want to have a baby," Brenna mused aloud, and she watched Thera grimace. She had to know what was coming, and Brenna wanted to tell her non-friend she was sorry.
"Thera... you know the needs of the planet and its people supersede the desires of the individual workers. Our resources are limited and population growth has to be very carefully controlled or we'd, as a people, outgrow our food stores."
"I know that, Brenna, but I just thought, just once-"
Brenna resolutely shook her head. "I'm sorry. I appreciate that you and Jonah want to have children, but it's just not practical." Brenna watched Thera stand stone-still, face drawn, and she was struck with a pang of sympathy and compassion. "I tell you what I can do, I'll bring it up with the management board and see if they'd be willing to grant a reproduction order."
Thera did not look especially optimistic. "What are the chances they'll agree?"
"Honestly, small. Labor force increases by means of breeding are just not very practical in our situation. We end up investing years of resources before a viable, productive worker is at our disposal."
Thera looked down sadly.
"I really am sorry, Thera. I know you're disappointed, but I will make your case before the management board. You never know, they might agree."
"Why would they if there's no need for breeding at this time?"
Brenna could not help a small smile. "I don't think you need to be told you're an exceptional worker, Thera. You possess an intelligence and work ethic I imagine my superiors would be eager to preserve through genetics. When and if the need arises for breeding assignments you would probably be on the top of the list of candidates. It helps that you'd pick Jonah; he's a natural leader and has really helped us in keeping the others organized and on task. I'd be surprised, honestly, if he wasn't on the short-list of men considered for stud."
Thera's face twisted but she tried to hide it... with minimal success. There was no room for jealousy or possessiveness in the caves. There was no room for monogamy when the management sent down orders. Jonah would have to impregnate any woman the board chose for him, just as Thera would have to submit to fertilization by any man chosen for her. They could only say they were honored to serve.
Thera, instead of excusing herself, stood in place before Brenna's desk. She looked nervous, uneasy.
"Thera?"
Thera met Brenna's eyes and for the first time she held eye contact for longer than a few seconds. Brenna could see the intensity dancing in Thera's light blue gaze.
Thera glanced around the empty office, stepped closer to the desk, then said lowly, "I... I didn't ask about a breeding permit because I was just overcome with the errant desire to have children."
Brenna could not look away from Thera and Thera gave her time to think about it.
"The visit to the infirmary..."
Thera nodded and swallowed. "I convinced the medics not to say anything, to let me come talk to you." There was bright hope and desperation in Thera's eyes.
Brenna sat back to digest the news.
Pregnancies were not uncommon in the barracks. Contraceptives were too costly and it was cheaper to administer abortive agents to terminate unwanted pregnancies after the fact. Frequently the mother did not even know she'd conceived when the medics 'took care' of the problem. Technically, Thera should be expelling her unplanned occupant at that very moment. But Thera had a way of getting others to listen to her and the medics knew Brenna had an affinity for Thera. They held off on the abortion procedures because they thought there might be a chance Thera could coerce Brenna to make it so that Thera could keep her baby.
And Brenna knew at that moment that she would at least try.
Thera was watching Brenna intently.
Brenna sighed. "I'll have to talk to the board. For now I'll give the infirmary orders not to terminate."
Thera's face brightened in relief, tentative though it was.
"I can't authorize the further allotment of food or water to adjust for additional nutritional needs, not until I can authorize this with the board."
Thera nodded. "Jonah's been giving me parts of his meals and water rations."
Brenna suspected as much. "He'll have to keep at it until this goes through the committee and I can secure requisitions for additional portions for you. Just see to it that he doesn't compromise his energy for work."
Thera nodded vigorously.
"I'll go see the administrator immediately," Brenna promised.
Thera almost smiled but something quickly dampened her mood. "I appreciate you doing this for me, for us, but... how likely is it that they'll let me keep my baby?"
Brenna studied Thera. "If it was anyone but you, Thera, I'd already be asking you to report to the infirmary for the standard termination procedure. But as I've said, you and Jonah would make ideal breeding partners for efficient offspring and I think-I hope the board will see that and the potential even if the timing is not exactly good."
Thera looked like she might almost believe it was possible.
"You better get back to work," Brenna said.
Thera immediately moved. With a rushed 'it's an honor to serve' she hurried out of Brenna's office and left the woman with a daunting task.
Jonah was at his work station but constantly looked over his shoulder toward Brenna's elevated office, on the look-out for Thera. He'd checked at least twenty times in the last five minutes but he couldn't stop from looking again. If anyone else noticed his distraction they made no mention and they certainly didn't challenge him on the matter; few in the caves would dare to cross Jonah. He commanded respect, and those few who weren't bright enough to respect him feared him... Jonah proved to have some inexplicably deadly fighting skills. Jonah had no idea where they came from, but when they served him and later when he discovered he could use them to safeguard Thera their origins didn't matter.
Jonah stared at the closed door to Brenna's office and thought to himself, 'what is taking so long?'. The last week had been an exercise in utter tension for both of them. Thera, his companion, his partner, his lover but somehow more than all of that, had confided over evening meal a week ago that she thought she might be pregnant.
Jonah remembered he'd felt odd at the news. He knew it was not a good thing, that it was disallowed in their working and living conditions, but still something deep inside him wanted him to be happy. It was confusing and Thera's expression said she was just as torn.
Without making any outspoken agreement they both took measures to hide the pregnancy. Jonah wasn't sure how long they thought they could keep it a secret. Even if they managed to keep it from the others the natural course of the pregnancy would mean, at some point, Thera would start showing and then they'd be busted and Thera would have to go for termination anyway and it would only be harder because the baby would be bigger and more mature, not to mention the fact he and she would be more attached to it and its loss would be that much more difficult for them both to cope with. There was no logic in even trying to preserve the pregnancy... but they did it anyway.
Then yesterday Thera got sick. It wasn't the first time, and one of them had conjured up the strange phrase 'morning sickness' from their addled brains, but it was the first time a supervisor was there to see it. Worker health was closely monitored and as soon as they'd seen Thera throwing up she was sent to the infirmary. Jonah remembered the dreadful sinking feeling when he'd been kneeling beside the toilet at Thera's side while she vomited and looking up into the face of an unscrupulous foreman. It had almost been enough to make him sick, and the look Thera cast him when she stopped hurling and noticed they'd been seen stuck with Jonah for the rest of the day.
Today Thera, without more than a meaningful, worried look at Jonah in passing, went to Brenna's office. And not a thing since.
Jonah glanced again toward the door just as it opened and finally Thera stepped out. Jonah fought to keep himself from dropping his work and hurrying to her to find out what Brenna said. It would be improper for him to leave his station and considering his and Thera's 'predicament' he didn't think it would be wise to do anything that might try the patience of the supervisors.
Thera reached the bottom of the stairs, looked toward Jonah, then with a promising nod turned and headed toward her own duty station. It would have to wait until later.
Jonah wasn't sure he could stand it, but he had a job to do and he was willing to serve.
The midday meal took forever to arrive but the moment the work shifts were relieved for lunch Jonah was on the hunt. Since his quarry was seeking him, too, it didn't take long to find her. Thera was waiting for him a distance away from the food lines.
Jonah strode up to her, stopping close enough to drop his voice to a private whisper. "So? What did Brenna say?"
"That you can't apply for breeding rights and the management board doesn't need natural replacement of workers..."
Jonah's stomach tightened and his appetite fled.
"... but she's going to talk to them."
Jonah blinked at her. Thera looked cautiously hopeful, her blue eyes upturned to study his face.
"You think that'll help?" Jonah asked carefully.
"I don't know. Brenna seemed to think we're both prime breeding stock so they might consent to offspring between us even if the timing's lousy."
"Really?" Jonah couldn't believe there could be wiggle-room with the rules.
Thera nodded, nervous and scared but a glitter of hope and glee in her eyes that made Jonah's hard edges melt. He even managed a small smile. His eyes, almost of their own volition, traveled down her body, down the rough and tattered orange jacket, to rest on her still-flat abdomen and he whispered, "So there's still a baby in there."
Thera restrained herself from protectively placing a hand on her stomach but she did look down at her own body. "Yeah... it's still there." A tone of wonder and stifled excitement strained at the highest octave of her voice.
Jonah found himself grinning. It was strange and silly but he grinned all the same. Thera looked up at him, a barely-contained grin on her face as well, and Jonah would let himself hope it could happen for the moment.
"We better get in line before all the good stuff is gone." He guided her to the mass of gathered workers with a hand on her shoulder and a disgruntled path opened for them. Kaegan, at the serving bench, glowered at the duo but knew better, from experience, than to start trouble with Jonah (or, by extension, Thera... not in Jonah's presence, anyway).
Jonah and Thera collected their bowls and bread and moved away to a tucked-aside corner where they sat shoulder to shoulder against the wall. Jonah immediately spooned a fourth of his food and deposited half of his bread into her bowl.
"You have to be careful," Thera warned, "if you get weak from hunger on the job they'll end this on principle."
Jonah grunted. "I'll be fine."
Thera looked down at the grisly food, sighed, and instead of immediately digging into her meal she leaned into Jonah and rested her head on his shoulder. Jonah allowed it and somehow it seemed to make him more 'dominant male' to have Thera pressed against him in plain view. He proceeded to eat, secure in his status as an alpha male, while Thera took a moment next to him to defuse.
The other workers were getting their portions and moving off into clusters and groups to eat. There were patterns and groups that were pretty static day to day. She could predict where some people would go, with whom they would sit. Thera watched them from her safe place at Jonah's side, significantly more at ease than that morning.
Jonah suddenly looked over at her. "Are you feeling sick again?"
Thera realized she'd been zoning out and avoiding her food for a good ten minutes. "No," she answered, and reluctantly sat up and started to eat. It was lukewarm but no temperature made the food particularly palatable so cold was just as good as fresh from the kettle.
"Mind if I join you?" Carlin, suddenly standing before them, asked.
Jonah looked up at the younger man. "Go ahead," he said in invitation.
Carlin sat down crossed-legged before the two and arranged his bowl on the floor in front of him. Thera continued to eat and as she did so she considered their relatively new companion.
Carlin had been like a ghost at the periphery of Thera's thoughts for what had seemed weeks. She could never remember talking to him or knowing him personally but still there had been something about him she couldn't shake. His face haunted her and at strange moments in the day she would inexplicably find herself looking for him. It made no sense and she couldn't begin to explain it. It was like she knew him and yet she knew she didn't.
Then one day Jonah and Carlin got into a fight. Jonah, too, had apparently noticed the skulking shadow he and Thera had gained and he was more challenged than curious regarding the younger man's constant presence. It eventually turned into a confrontation. Carlin, while younger and physically stronger, was no match for the things Jonah seemed to innately know how to do. Carlin was doomed... or he should have been. Just when things between the two men were getting ugly and right before Jonah inflicted any serious damage he just stopped. He'd pulled his punch and stared at Carlin like he was a perplexing mythical beast incarnate and freed him unharmed and from that day on Carlin had been their third. It had bled into a natural state of comradeship, and so very little was spoken on the matter.
Thera, more than once, had tried to get Jonah to tell her what had inexplicably changed his attitude about Carlin and what had gone through his head that day when he let Carlin go. Jonah had never given a more satisfactory answer than a scowl and the confusing reply 'I just couldn't hit him'.
Strange occurrences were par for the course in the caves and Thera had given up trying to understand the laws of the underground.
Thera could not deny a certain amount of peace to have Carlin around. She got the feeling she could trust him, in much the same way she trusted Jonah. Somehow it felt right.
Carlin was eating his lunch at a steady pace, not the rushed scarfing of many of the other workers nearby. Being aligned with Jonah allowed Carlin the luxury of eating at his own speed. What at first had started as something akin to Carlin being 'brought into Jonah's good graces' became something far more similar to a male coalition. Carlin earned Jonah's respect and trust and it made Carlin Jonah's 'right-hand man'.
Thera felt the strangest sense of 'correctness' in that arrangement, even if there still seemed to be something missing.
Thera suddenly realized that Carlin was casting repeated strange, speculative glances at her during his meal. He cut his blue eyes in her direction again and again and that pensive, concerned scowl would mar his otherwise handsome features.
"What?" she asked.
Carlin frowned at her but she knew he'd say what was on his mind because Carlin was just forthcoming like that. "Are you okay, Thera?"
Thera had to evoke very strict control over her actions not to look at Jonah. While they trusted Carlin to a fault they had not told him about the baby.
"I'm fine, why?"
Carlin made that face again. "Just... a rumor was going around that you were night sick."
"If she was night sick would she be out here with the rest of us?" Jonah asked curtly.
Carlin shook his head slowly as he mulled over the evidence. He was utterly unruffled by Jonah's tone of voice. Jonah had a way of rattling most people with his tone and forceful speech, but it did not phase Carlin. Half the time he almost seemed utterly oblivious to Jonah's ire.
"No..." Carlin answered Jonah, then directed his next words at Thera, "but you were absent from your shift yesterday and part of today."
Thera shrugged it off as though it was unworthy of mention. "I'm okay, Carlin. Jonah's right, they wouldn't let me come back to work if I wasn't fine." She watched an array of emotions transform Carlin's expressive face and she wanted to tell him, to bring him into the secret... but not yet. Not when Brenna could fail to win the administration over and it would all lead to nothing anyway. If she had to lose the baby she didn't want to live with sympathetic, sad looks from anyone more than Jonah, and with Jonah it would be shared pain instead of plain pity.
Carlin looked less than completely convinced but he didn't press the subject any further.
The trio continued to eat in silence until Thera lowered her bowl to the ground.
Jonah eyed it surreptitiously. "You didn't finish."
"I'm not that hungry; you should finish it."
Jonah cast a pointed look at her and frowned. "You should."
Carlin glanced up at them from his food at the exchange. "Don't you two find it a little ironic that we're down here on slave rations and you're trying to pawn food off on each other?"
Thera, ignoring Carlin's quip, spoke to Jonah. "I spent a lot of yesterday in the infirmary and this morning in Brenna's office; I didn't use as much energy as you did. You take it," Thera picked up the bowl and extended it to him. She tacitly ignored the displeased scowl on his face.
Jonah accepted her bowl, unhappily, and peered inside.
"You know," Jonah said dryly, "we're really fighting over close to nothing here."
Thera chuckled. "Because I ate the rest, so don't get up in arms."
Jonah glanced at her, face subtly gentle and mood mollified, and scraped the bottom of her bowl for the remnants of her meal. It amounted to two spoons-worth.
The horn sounded that marked the end of the lunch break and everyone began to rise and shuffle toward the crate where they were to deposit their dishes before returning to the machines that kept back the ice age that had engulfed the rest of their planet. Thera marched behind Jonah, Carlin following her, and it afforded her an odd sense of security and peace in such an inhospitable environment.
But strange was normal for the caves, if nothing else Thera was certain of that fact.
Administrator Caulder looked over the report only briefly before his eyes came up. He spoke shortly thereafter, sharp and to the point. "Terminate."
Brenna winced internally.
Caulder glared down unhappily at the report on his desk. "Honestly, Brenna, I don't know why you even bothered to bring this up. What question was there that this pregnancy should be terminated?"
That Thera wanted the baby was irrelevant, so Brenna had to think of another argument to present to Caulder.
"Administrator, I know that right now there is no need to supplement the work force with bred workers, but I think in this instance we might be looking at an accident that works in our favor."
Caulder looked dubious but he was at least listening.
"Just think what the offspring of Thera and Jonah might be able to contribute."
Caulder frowned. "Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter were a threat to our people and our way of life and already they've overcome the memory stamp once."
"I don't know why that happened but after we stamped them again there have been no signs of relapse. Now that To-Teal'c, with his resistance to the process, is no longer there to reintroduce them to their old vocations and identities there have been no signs of rejection of the stamp. Without reminders of who they used to be the stamps might hold this time. And I suspect we didn't give them a strong enough treatment the first time they were stamped. Apparently people from their world are stronger willed than those of our planet."
"An indication they might still prove a threat to us, and you want to propagate that insolence?"
"I don't look to breed the bad but the good."
Caulder stopped and considered the report before him again. Brenna let him think. While clinically detached to a fault when it came to his human workers Caulder was not an idiot... he was smart and that could work for Brenna.
Slowly, Caulder began to think aloud. "Our current worker population is genetically limited to a relatively small group of individuals. Colonel O'Neill, Major Carter, and Doctor Jackson offer new genes to introduce into the group." He tapped the desktop idly with his fingers and Brenna could see the calculating wrinkle form on his brow. "That is a tempting promise to improve our stock."
"And Ther-Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill are both exceptional specimens, the trouble with the memory stamps aside."
"That's true."
"And," Brenna pressed cautiously, "we have to consider the fact that the work done in the caves is difficult and sometimes dangerous. Something could happen that caused Jonah's death or Thera's and we would have lost that source of new genes. By allowing this child to be born we would have access to those genes even if one of them should be killed. Technically, we could lose Colonel O'Neill today and still have access to his genetic material. We've been presented the opportunity to take advantage of all that they have to offer our city."
"Our biggest problem with SG-1," Caulder noted aloud, "has been the memory stamp. Other than that, they've been good workers."
"Extremely good."
Caulder nodded. "So an infant born and reared in the system would never need a memory stamp. It could be taught to obey and accept its place and do the work required of it through much more traditional means, means much more permanent. The one troublesome issue we face with SG-1 would be inconsequential when it came to this child."
Brenna only nodded.
Caulder was quiet for a long time and Brenna stood there, nervous. She imagined it was what Thera must have felt like that morning standing at her desk.
Finally Caulder looked up and met Brenna's gaze. "Authorize the breeding privilege and make all the necessary adjustments to maintain the pregnancy."
Brenna nodded. "Yes, of course," and tried not to smile. Thera would be so happy, and Brenna, secretly, was happy for her.
"Do you think they'll let you keep it?"
Jonah's voice was a low rumble against her back as she reclined back against him, body bracketed between his bent legs. It was half an hour past the end of their shift, and they occupied themselves with their customary distraction... each other. They were sitting on the floor near the south passage generator because it emitted a good deal of warmth and it was a low-traffic area. It was the closest they could really get to being alone together.
Jonah's arms were wrapped loosely around her middle, his left hand clasping his right wrist atop her stomach. When he spoke, he fanned his right hand fingers gently against her clothed lower abdomen.
A senseless, thrilling flutter sparked inside her at his touch even as uncertainty gnawed at her. "I hope so," she whispered softly. She dreaded to think of the alternative. She couldn't fathom reporting to the infirmary to have it aborted if Brenna couldn't come through for them with the work force committee. Thera had almost been shocked to discover just how much she wanted this baby, hers and Jonah's. She couldn't imagine being ordered to walk into the infirmary and let it be taken from her.
Distressed at the course of her thoughts, Thera snuggled more tightly against Jonah and he wordlessly obliged by gently hugging her closer. In his arms she felt safe, even if she knew there was only so much even Jonah could do. His stubble scratched at her temple and caught on her hair as he rested his head against hers.
Thera inhaled and a small waver laced her sigh. Even to her own ears she sounded distraught.
"Shhh," Jonah shushed as he pressed his lips to the side of her face, and it was inanely comforting. When he told her he'd make everything okay she believed him. She knew it was stupid but she couldn't help but trust in him no matter the situation.
Thera settled against his body, surrendered herself into his arms, and she let herself believe. She slid her hands over Jonah's where they casually perched atop her stomach and he tugged her gently closer in response.
"Whatever happens...," Thera began to say, but the words caught stubbornly in her throat. What could she say? She might be duty-bound to let them take away their baby, he knew it as well as she did.
"Yeah," Jonah said roughly, and it was all that needed to be said. There was nothing more they could do; it was out of their hands.
"You wanted to see me, Brenna?"
Brenna looked up to find Thera standing timidly in her office doorway. It was bed-down hour for Thera and those on the same shift rotation with her.
"Yes, come in, Thera... I sent someone to find you two hours ago."
Thera moved into the office, closed the door behind her, then cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone was looking for me, I was, um, with Jonah." Thera almost blushed and did avert her gaze.
"Well, no matter. I talked to Administrator Caulder this afternoon." Brenna could practically see Thera fidget and hold her breath in nervous anticipation. "I know you're anxious to hear what the administrator said about your pregnancy, so I won't keep you waiting any longer. You've been granted breeding privileges."
Thera's eyes shot up and they immediately widened at Brenna's words. She stared at the woman overseer and then her mouth formed the shape of a circle as Brenna's statement started to sink in.
"You mean..."
Brenna couldn't help a small smile. "Yes, they've given you permission to carry your baby to term."
Thera, for a second, was absolutely beaming as a brilliant grin split her face, but she brought herself under control quickly. "Wow... that's... I don't know what to say, Brenna... thank you."
A wash of guilt assailed Brenna and she wasn't sure why. "You and Jonah are excellent workers, this was the least I could do to reward you your excellent service.
"I'll speak with the kitchen and foremen before morning to make sure you are given supplementary rations to maintain your health and your baby's. It's been quite a while since we've had an active breeding pair among the workers, so I imagine a lot of people will have to make adjustments."
Thera nodded enthusiastically and barely held herself still. Brenna could tell she was itching to tell Jonah the news.
"You can go back to barracks."
"Thank you." Thera said and turned immediately to leave.
"Thera?"
Thera paused and looked back at Brenna.
"Congratulations."
For the second time in a single day Jonah found himself anxiously awaiting Thera's return. He went through the motions of preparing for sleep but he was on high-alert for Thera's swatch of unkempt blonde hair in the milling crowd. This patience thing was turning out to not be his forte.
"Jonah?"
Jonah turned at Carlin's voice to find the younger man watching him curiously. The skin at the corners of his eyes was tight from squinting a lot of the time; Carlin had said once he didn't see as well as everyone else. Jonah had a nagging feeling there was something that could help Carlin with his eyesight, though he didn't know what. Still, the vision problem didn't stop the observant man from noticing the anxiety and edginess in his companion.
"Carlin," Jonah grunted and hoped the other man would catch the hint and leave him alone.
He did catch the hint, but Carlin didn't leave.
"What's going on?" Carlin asked in that insanely calm, unassuming voice he could invoke at the drop of a hat.
"What do you mean?"
"You and Thera... you've been acting odd these last few days."
"Maybe we're just odd people."
Carlin frowned, not in disapproval but concern. His voice was heavy, worried, and sincere as he asked, "Is Thera night sick?"
Jonah winced and closed his eyes for his recent attitude toward the guy as realization slammed into him. Carlin was just worried about Thera. He couldn't fault him or blame him for that.
"No, Carlin," Jonah turned to Carlin to meet the other squarely and in doing so reinforce the veracity of his words. "Thera's not night sick."
Carlin frowned and there was something anciently familiar about the crinkles it etched in his face and the purse of his lips, matched with the look of a thousand questions in his quick blue eyes. Jonah had noticed some time ago that his two closest companions were blue-eyed; he thought it was a strange coincidence. He wondered why he would unintentionally choose blue-eyed friends.
Odd.
Carlin's eyes shifted off of Jonah to a point beyond him and the scowl didn't relent as he said, "Hey, Thera."
Jonah turned at once and there she was, standing right in front of him. Looking up at him. Smiling.
Smiling. That had to be good.
His eyebrows rose is silent question and Thera's eyes glittered like sunlight reflecting off a glacier. The look on her face was her answer.
"Really?" Jonah asked. He couldn't believe it even if everything he saw in Thera said it was true.
Thera nodded and if her smile got any bigger they'd have to make extra room in the barracks.
Jonah was suddenly grinning, he just barely refrained from scooping her up in a hug, and everyone and everything else other than him and Thera disappeared.
"Um... what's going on?" Carlin's befuddled voice broke the moment.
Jonah stopped smiling like an idiot and looked over at Carlin. The younger man looked lost, dazed and confused, and that was more familiar than it should have been, too.
Thera's hand on Jonah's arm drew his gaze down to her and she looked up at him. Silent question shined in her eyes and Jonah merely nodded. It seemed safe now.
"I'm pregnant, Carlin," Thera said and she and Jonah both watched their friend for his reaction.
He blinked at her a second, then looked between Jonah and Thera, then his eyes narrowed and squinted and his lips tightened. "That's what this has been about?" His face cycled through a strange array of emotions then. First relief that Thera was in fact not night sick, then a building smile of happiness, but quickly (before his smile had due chance to form) a deep concern that dampened his good spirits. He looked worried, wary, and he glanced cautiously between them once again.
"Thera..." Carlin began softly, "you know they're going to make you..."
Thera shook her head. "I've been granted a breeding permit."
Carlin's eyebrows arched toward his hairline. "Really?" He sounded like he could barely believe it. Thera could empathize.
"Yeah, I just came back from talking with Brenna."
Carlin looked stunned, thrown, and Jonah found it strangely amusing to watch the younger man struggle to wrap his brain around something.
"So, you're... you're going to have a baby." Carlin stared at Thera with barely-disguised amazement.
Thera looked down demurely then up at Jonah at her side. Jonah was almost buzzing with energy and poorly-masked happiness.
"Wow," was all Carlin could utter.
"Wow is right," Thera returned playfully.
Carlin finally, belatedly, grinned.
"All right, all right," Jonah said as a hand conveniently snaked around Thera's waist, "enough of this, if we don't bed down the foreman will dock our rations."
It spurred Carlin to head back to his cot, quirky smile in place, and Jonah used his fortuitously placed hand to guide Thera to her own bed.
"Are you going to be able to sleep?" she asked him dubiously as they neared her bunk. She could literally feel Jonah bubbling with energy at the news.
Jonah smirked at her. "Not a chance in Netu," he quipped, then paused and frowned as though he'd bitten into something bitter. Thera, too, felt her brain snag at his comment. She couldn't imagine why.
Jonah shook his head, gave a shrug, and when he saw her looking up at him pensively he offered, "It's an expression."
Thera nodded, still distracted and 'tripped up', as Jonah bid her good night and went back to his own sleeping area. Slowly the mood brought on by Jonah's flippant comment dissipated and she was left with the joy of that day's discovery. She would get to keep her baby, her and Jonah's baby.
She was more than happy to serve if her hard work and effort was the reason she'd been granted something almost no one else in the caves was given. She'd work so hard and Brenna would never have to doubt her decision.
Brenna reviewed the latest work reports. At times it seemed it was all she did, so much so that frequently she felt the numbers and figures never changed and she was condemned to peruse the same information again and again until the end of time. This, however, was not one of those times. The production quotient numbers were different, just slightly, and not in a good way.
Brenna sighed and frowned. They were running dangerously low on the mineral ore that their machines relied on to fuel their cores and the mining shafts were reaching the limits of their yield. Something was going to have to be done, because bit by perilous bit they were falling behind. The machines were already showing strain and signs of stress. Thera had been working on them for three weeks but there was only so much even a brilliant mind like Thera's could do.
Brenna sat back in her chair, though no amount of physical distance would simply make the problem go away. Either problem. Thera had been running herself into the ground trying to come up with an answer. She'd set herself the goal of coming through with a solution to coax the engines to double their workload, an impossible feat but Thera seemed determined to do it. She was coming close to the point of endangering her fetus, and Brenna was determined to step in before that happened.
The answer was simple, really. They needed more ore to fuel the engines. If the mines were running dry then they had to start new ones. Caulder, so far, had not acceded to that recommendation and Brenna understood why. Opening a new mine entailed a long list of hazards and it tied up the manpower of a lot of workers... hours of work that were needed to tend to the machines that kept the metropolis above from succumbing to the ice and snow.
A knock on her door gratefully distracted her from her introspections. "Come in."
Thera popped her head in and Brenna's face fell. Normally she was pleased to see Thera, but lately they had only one topic of conversation.
"Can I talk to you, Brenna? I've run some more numbers on machines seventeen and thirty and I wanted to go over them with you."
"Of course... have a seat."
Thera slipped into the room and made her way toward the single, utilitarian chair free in Brenna's office. Since the clearance of her pregnancy Thera had been placed in a more cerebral work position. Instead of grueling physical and manual labor she was tasked with thinking up improvements to the engines (those Caulder could permit) and overseeing the maintenance of the machines under her care. Thera had a real talent for mechanics. Brenna could name a few pieces of equipment that would be broken by now were it not for Thera's aptitude with machines and patching them together when all they seemed to want to do was fly apart.
As Thera sat down across from Brenna the overseer took a moment to study her. Truth be told, she didn't really look pregnant. The conditions of the caves and the work involved on a daily basis tended to ward off the plumpness of pregnancy that filled out the face and hips of surface women. Brenna couldn't see any indication that Thera's midsection had swollen to accommodate the child within her, either, but then the orange jacket was thick and masking. Brenna thought fleetingly that Jonah would know if she was showing yet.
"I've been going over these projections for two days, and they don't look good," Thera said somberly.
Brenna, reluctant but bound to return to business, nodded. "I know. I've been seeing the same thing in the productivity reports."
Thera frowned bitterly at the floor. "I'm sorry," she said lowly.
"It's not your fault, Thera... these machines are old. Unfortunately, they're vital to our survival."
"I don't know what else to suggest. If the administrator-"
"I know." It was an old argument with Thera. "But as I've explained to you before, we simply cannot turn off the engines for any length of time, even to upgrade them. It's too dangerous."
"I know," Thera said, her expression fixed in a frustrated scowl.
Brenna couldn't think of an answer... not one that Administrator Caulder would like, anyway.
"The infirmary told me your pregnancy illness has abated." A change of topic was more appealing than sunlight at that moment. Thera's medical condition was reported to Brenna with meticulous frequency and as far as clinical details went she probably knew more about Thera's pregnancy and physical state than Thera herself did. Still, it couldn't hurt to ask the source.
Thera, thrown by the jump, looked a little discombobulated before she said, "Yeah, it's better."
"Good." Brenna stared at Thera and found herself caught by that same 'almost' that seemed to surround Thera and made Brenna falter. To Brenna she was 'almost' a comrade, 'almost' an equal, 'almost' a friend, and the sad fact was, thanks to the stamp, Thera believed she wasn't. Brenna had never really noticed the lack of another woman to talk to until Thera showed up. Brenna constantly found herself wanting to bring Thera into her inner circle, to talk with her like she was a colleague and possibly a confidante and friend. She wanted to ask personal questions, to get to know Thera since she was denied getting to really know Major Carter.
But Thera was off-limits. She was a worker and by memory overwrite procedure knew her place. She wouldn't open up to Brenna. She'd reserve that for her own, fellow workers like Jonah and Carlin.
Brenna gave a dejected sigh and Thera seemed to read it as a judgment on her inability to create a miracle for her overseer.
"I'll have to talk this over with the administrator," Brenna finally said. "For now just return to your regular duty."
"It is an honor to serve," Thera muttered dispassionately and stood up and left at a slow, unhappy walk.
Jonah awoke with a gasp and blinked rapidly up into the darkness of the crowded barracks. For not the first time he had to wait for disorientation to dissipate. It was the oddest sensation, because he would recognize his surroundings upon first waking but it would take time for it to make sense to him. He tried once to explain it to Thera but it seemed to defy explanation. Just the same, Thera seemed to understand.
Jonah waited and his eyes skittered over the rock ceiling but he was relentlessly haunted by images... the images he kept seeing in his sleep. He'd started having them weeks ago. They'd been vague at first, disjointed, but the more they coalesced into a coherent scene the more terrifying they became. His and Thera's child kept dying in an accident. It woke him in a panic of sheer, unadulterated fear that he could feel wrap around him in a suffocating shawl. As if that wasn't bad enough, the dreams were evolving with time, and in the latest dreams the child would die and it would somehow be his fault.
Jonah tried to tell himself it was probably a normal soon-to-be-parent response, even though Thera never seemed to have them as far as he could tell. They were just so real to him. No one should ever be that terrified by a dream.
Jonah finally remembered the barracks and his breathing slowly started to even out from its nightmare gasp. He had an impulse to look to the side to find out the time but there was no means of telling time in the caves besides the series of horns and whistles sounded throughout the day to signal work shifts and meals. He never could figure out why he always wanted to look to the side of his cot when he first awoke and some days it was more annoying that others. At that moment it was secondary to the lingering nightmare.
He laid still and listened. There was a din of snoring in surround-sound all around him from the various workers. Usually Jonah slept fine with the ruckus; he was good at tuning out and tuning back in when necessary. Tonight, however, he knew that sleep would not return that simply.
Knowing he'd be in trouble if he got caught but at the moment so shaken and disturbed he didn't care, he silently slipped out of his cot and carefully snuck out of the barracks. Once he was out of the room it was easier to blend in and disappear. The night shift workers were manning the machines and everyone wore the same clothes so Jonah could easily be one of them. Jonah rated only a few glances as he made his way through the thin rotation of workers.
He unerringly found his way to his and Thera's spot. It was a pathetic corner behind a generator, a flimsy, thread-bare blanket on the ground as laughable padding in a dirty, uncomfortable world. Still, it sent a rush of tenderness and calm to Jonah's nerves. He thought of Thera here and that helped.
Jonah sat down, back to the wall, and closed his eyes. He tried to will the dreams away. He doubted they'd listen, but he'd give it a go anyway.
Jonah must have drifted off, because when he felt something brush his arm he jumped and jerked his eyes open.
"Shhhh," Thera whispered as she settled down next to him. She looked sleep-rumpled and mussed.
"You should be sleeping," he said even as he put his arms around her and drew her to him. He wanted to feel her, to touch her, and maybe that would chase away the nightmare.
Thera rested her head on his chest and seemed to luxuriate in him a moment before answering. "So should you. What's wrong?"
Jonah frowned. He didn't want to talk about this with Thera. He didn't want to scare her, and he had a feeling telling her he kept dreaming their baby died would frighten her. It frightened him.
"Jonah?"
"It's nothing."
Thera's arm snaked around his waist as she pulled her head up enough to look up at him. "It's not nothing. Tell me."
Jonah took one hand and traced the outline of her face. Even with the grime and soot of machine-work smudged on her skin her face was still beautiful. He drew strength from it. "Just dreams."
"Of what?"
Jonah involuntarily shuddered and he was surprised that his body had reacted so strongly. Apparently Thera was too, because the alertness in her blue eyes jumped to a new level of heightened awareness and she was riveted on him, concern in her gaze.
"I keep having nightmares. Do you have nightmares?"
"Doesn't everyone?"
"Nightmares about the baby?"
Thera paused and looked closely at him. "Sometimes."
"What are they about?"
Thera pulled her feet up close to her body and sat back slightly out of Jonah's encompassing embrace. "A couple where the baby was born and something was wrong with it, or the administrator comes to take it away. The last one I had was a dream that I couldn't have it... physically, something was wrong with my body and I couldn't deliver and I was in labor forever."
Jonah's eyes turned away from her.
"What are your dreams about?" she asked after a pause.
For only a few seconds did he consider not telling her. "I keep dreaming that it dies."
Thera swallowed, leaned over with her head finding a resting place on his chest, and hugged him. "It's probably normal."
"This isn't normal. I always dream the same thing. There's always an accident of some kind and he dies."
"He?"
Jonah nodded. "It's a son in my dreams."
Thera had gone still in his arms and he wondered what she was thinking and why he was alternately rigid and shaking.
"How long have you been having these dreams?"
Jonah's arms involuntarily tightened around her as he conceded, "A while."
"Always the same?"
Jonah nodded against the top of her head. "Yeah." He felt his body taut and wrung and he clung to Thera, hoping she could keep the world from tilting him right off the edge.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, and Jonah thought it was a weird thing to say and yet right all at once. Something in Jonah's chest contracted and his throat closed and his only recourse was to hold Thera tighter. She had to ground him, she had to.
"It's okay," she whispered, and it caused a fracture in the center of his control. He tucked his head down into her hair and he freed one hand from its death-grip on Thera to work its way into her jacket and shirt until his palm and fingers were splayed against her stomach. With the heavy clothing Thera wore the pregnancy didn't show but there was change in her body underneath, her abdomen reflected the life growing inside her. Where once there had been a flat plain of muscle and soft skin there was now a gentle, solid swell.
Thera sat still and let him feel the baby in the only way he could. She just wished it was to the point of kicking; she thought that interaction with the unborn child would help Jonah, ease his mind.
Her heart ached at the thought of Jonah losing a child. Somehow it screamed at her, even more than her own worrisome dreams concerning the baby had bothered her. With Jonah it was sharper, worse, SO much worse, and she didn't know why. She had the horrible feeling it meant she was already a bad mother that it didn't affect her as strongly.
"We should get back," she said softly in an attempt to take her mind off her inadequacies as a parent.
"Not yet..." he croaked, and the emotion in his voice cut through her. "Not... not yet."
Thera settled in more comfortably at his side and dropped her hand to her stomach, keeping his hand in place against her stomach with her own. Even if she wasn't sure why or how, she knew Jonah needed a little time with the baby, and she'd give it to him. As much as she could give him she would.
Brenna stood before a very unhappy Administrator Caulder in his surface office. She would never tire of the view outside his windows... the domed sky and space and color, all so different from the view outside her own office. "Our only option is to open up a new mine shaft to extract the ore. Our stores are almost depleted and if we don't get more soon our machines will start to break down."
Caulder had listened to her full report of the engines and the productivity results and he knew the inevitable as much as she. He knew as well as she the reallocation of work and supplies that setting up a new mining shaft would entail and it was not a pleasant prospect.
"All right," Caulder finally relented with no small amount of reluctance. "I'll order a group put together to decide the best place to start digging a new mine shaft. I'll expect you to have teams of workers suitably selected and prepared for the task when it's been set."
"Yes, Administrator."
Caulder nodded, still scowling, then turned his eyes back to her. "Any other problems I should know about?"
By that he meant any problems with SG-1. It was his veiled way of asking if it had gone wrong again, if the former Earth team was becoming a hazard to their very way of life. He didn't trust Thera, Jonah, or Carlin any farther than one could survive walking in a straight line outside of the dome. Brenna knew he wasn't completely off-base to be concerned, but he didn't work as closely with them as Brenna did. She took offense on their behalf, but she was not foolish enough to let it show.
"No problems."
Caulder's eyes narrowed and he seemed to ruminate on that a moment before he dismissed her with a wave of his hand. He was in a particularly foul mood after being backed into a corner and forced to order a new mine shaft opened up, but that was hardly to be helped. Not if they wanted their beautiful city above-ground to survive the ice age that had claimed the rest of their planet.
Things were in a state of flux among the workers; Thera could feel it like static electricity sparking through the underground inhabitants. Four days ago Brenna had called her into her office and told Thera that the administrator had finally given in and ordered a new mining operation to hunt for the all-important fuel source that the engines desperately needed. Thera had heaved a sigh of relief. She had known for a long time that the only real solution to the problem of the failing machines, given the resources at their disposal, was the procurement of new mineral ore. Until that moment in Brenna's office, however, it had been suggested that excavating new ore was not an option and some other solution had to be found. It had been an unrelenting concern for Thera.
Finally, though, Caulder and his kind had seen reason and realized the only option to save the engines and the people was more ore. Thera was able to relax for the first time in weeks because she would no longer be expected to make a miracle happen.
Thera had been told first about the mining operation because she'd been so involved with trying to solve the fuel shortage problem; the rest of the workers weren't informed until the next day when Brenna announced she would begin making selections on the mining crew. Everyone wanted the job, if only for the break from their monotonous work day in and day out.
The energy and muted excitement brought a sense of vitality that was usually dormant in the caves and Thera was oddly made to think of a holiday. She thought there should be green. It was peculiar as hell, but with the mood in the air and the prominent red hues already present in the caves Thera just thought 'green'.
Sadly, an underground encampment on a planet overtaken by glaciers was not likely to see much green.
Lunch was a much merrier affair as everyone speculated on who would be chosen for mining duty. There hadn't been any fights among the workers since the new project was announced. Everyone was on good terms and it was a relief.
The relief would have been total were it not for Thera's concern for Jonah. At the thought of him she looked over at him against her right side. He was still having the nightmares, about his son dying. 'Our son,' Thera corrected herself and a twist of shame coiled sharply in her stomach. Only when it came to Jonah's dreams did she find herself mentally distancing and detaching herself from the baby, but even that much made her feel immensely guilty.
Jonah seemed oblivious to the spirits in the caves. His face bore a scowl, part disquiet and the rest plain exhaustion.
Thera glanced over at Carlin across from them and she caught him studying Jonah with a deeply concerned set to his features. She was fairly certain Carlin didn't know what was bothering Jonah. Though he'd asked her what was wrong with Jonah, Thera had neglected to tell Carlin about Jonah's nightmares, and Thera would be willing to bet her rations that Jonah hadn't taken it upon himself to tell Carlin. He'd barely told her.
"Thera?"
Thera was pulled from her private thoughts and she, along with her two companions, looked up at the day shift foreman standing before the trio. "When you're done, Brenna wants to see you."
"Okay."
The foreman left and Carlin, his eyebrows raised, turned to her. "What do you think she wants?"
Thera shrugged and discretely sidled closer to Jonah. He stirred from his dark preoccupations to smirk knowingly and look at her. He was far from fooled by her 'oh so casual' shuffle closer to him. Thera only gave a small smile and counted it well worth the effort when Jonah freed his closest hand to drop it on to her right leg. At least he looked like he was in a better mood. She didn't know how else to reassure him as his dreams seemed to be a now-constant nuisance.
"You wanted to see me, Brenna?"
Brenna looked up at Thera's voice in her office doorway. "Yes, I do. I've compiled my selection of workers for the mining crew and I wanted to get your opinion."
Thera nodded and went over to Brenna's desk. Her assistance was almost second-nature by now, discrepancies in their social standing aside, and Brenna wondered when exactly it had happened. Thera was very intelligent and it had stemmed primarily from that. Thera had good ideas, she had a quick mind, and Brenna had used it to her advantage with the engines. Then, somehow, it had become more generalized. Brenna started doing dry runs of her ideas on Thera, seeing what the blonde woman thought of proposed policy changes or crew shift alterations. Her reasoning was that Thera was in the thick of the workers and knew them personally, but Brenna suspected it was more than that. She didn't discount it might be her only way of trying to have some semblance of a friendship with Thera. In the end it meant Thera had become her unofficial second-in-command, her consultant of sorts. Thera didn't seem to notice her newly elevated position, she merely served as she thought best.
Thera looked over the list of workers Brenna had provided, nodding to herself. Finally she looked up at Brenna. "Have you chosen foremen for the crews?"
"I wanted to ask you what you thought about making Jonah the day shift foreman and Carlin the night shift."
It had been unspoken consensus from the beginning that Jonah would be one of those selected for the mining crew. He had the memory-experience of doing it before. To have excluded him from the crew would have been questionable and there was a slim chance it could spark suspicion in the former SG-1. Carlin was added to the list because of his physical strength... that and, when Jonah was selected, Carlin came almost as an aside. It was difficult not to think of the entire ex-SG-1 when made to think of one of them. Especially when the trio, as their worker selves, banded together. Brenna still constantly thought of them as a triple set.
Thera frowned. "Well, Jonah would make a great foreman, he has that natural leader quality about him, and those who don't already respect him wouldn't think to disobey him..." Thera trailed.
"You don't think Carlin has the same ability to lead?"
"The same? No. Not to say he couldn't do it-"
"But?"
Thera sighed. "But... I just think Carlin should be kept on Jonah's team. I can't really tell you why, it's just my gut feeling."
Brenna tried not to smile. Not so much gut as suppressed knowledge about the two men in question. "You know these two best, Thera, your 'gut' is good enough for me. Whom, then, would you suggest I place in command of the night crew?"
Thera thought a moment. "Actually, I'd suggest Kaegan."
"Kaegan?"
"Yeah. I know she's not as physically imposing as a man, but she makes up for that in attitude. Most of the workers avoid angering her and she's quite competent. I think she'd be good at heading a team."
Brenna nodded. "I'll take that into consideration." And then the stutter again where Brenna felt like she wanted to ask personal questions; how was Thera feeling, how were things with her and Jonah, how did she feel about the baby on its way. When she was requisitely restrained from inquiring after Thera in a personal capacity it ruffled Brenna. She never really disliked the stamping procedure as much as she did when it came to Thera.
Thera was sitting obediently on the other side of the desk, waiting.
"That will be all, Thera, thank you."
"It is an honor to serve," Thera replied and stood and left. Brenna retrieved her list of workers and wrote in Kaegan's name.
Jonah had to confess, he felt like he'd found his niche. He was supervising his team of miners opening up a new shaft in the west wall of the caves. He'd been told three days ago of his new assignment and yesterday they'd started the actual work on digging a new tunnel into the solid rock. His crew, all men he knew, were finding their pace and their slots as a separate team with a singular task. It felt natural giving them orders; so natural that without any posturing or bluster he just expected them to do as he said. And they did.
He knew Thera had been integral in bringing about the final decision that led to the mining of a new shaft for the much-needed ore. There was a correctness to her doing the brain stuff and him taking over for the grunt work. He supposed some people were just suited to certain things.
They were making decent progress. It looked paltry at first glance, but one had to remember they were trying to dig into solid rock.
Jonah was with the group of miners shifting chunks of freed stone into crates to be removed. He wasn't sure where the debris went, maybe to be dumped on the surface in the ice and snow.
The reverberating sound of the pick-axes and sledgehammers pounding mercilessly at the cratered depression in the wall was beginning to stagger, lose its rhythm, and Jonah straightened stiffly to survey his team. Everyone was dirty and sweaty. His men were starting to look fatigued and Jonah decided they had to stop to rest.
"Hold!" he called, and everyone paused and looked over at him.
"Take five."
Everyone looked at him strangely then looked around for what they might possibly take 'five' of. Only Carlin dropped his hammer to the ground before noticing everyone around him perplexed.
Jonah resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Take a break, get some water, and be back in five minutes."
Finally understanding, and relieved, the workers lowered their tools to the floor and made for the large basin of water.
Jonah would wait until his men had drunk before making for the water bowl so instead he found a sizable rock and sat down. He pulled his hat from his head and wiped at the sweat on his face. Doing something different was a relief and even the grueling nature of the work was a welcome change. The only down-side to his new assignment was that he didn't get to see Thera on occasion; she was back in the caves proper tending to her regular duties and they no longer happened to 'bump into each other' during the course of the workday.
Someone sat down next to him and Jonah knew whom it was without even having to open his eyes. "Carlin."
Carlin rolled his neck and shoulders to try and work out the kinks. The younger man had, as many of the workers had, removed his jacket and shirt. Normally one had to be very careful where they left their precious clothing, certainly never left unattended, but there had been a somewhat unspoken agreement reached among the miners that no one's clothing would be stolen. It allowed them all the liberty of shedding their stifling attire, and Jonah would be apt to uphold the nonverbal pact and few would want to incur Jonah's wrath by appropriating a jacket not their own.
Jonah looked over at his friend a moment. Carlin was resting with his elbows on his knees and head drooping with his chin nearly touching his chest. He would go for water when Jonah did. Carlin was well-muscled if pale. Then again, they were all sun-starved pale. And yet, Jonah would glance down at his forearm and find it odd how pallid it was. He'd never seen the sun so he shouldn't really know what his skin under its influence looked like, and yet he really thought there should have been a 'tan line' on his upper arms.
Carlin had smooth, largely unmarred skin. Jonah had scars. Not that Carlin didn't, but his scars were fewer than those that stitched Jonah's body. He didn't remember how he got them but they were his, he knew them enough to unhesitatingly claim them, and he felt strange familiarity spark at some of the signs of tear on Carlin.
Carlin was suddenly speaking, and even if Jonah hadn't registered the words the careful, diplomatic tone of his voice would have been enough. "Are you sleeping all right?"
Jonah grunted. "In this swanky place? Who wouldn't sleep like a b-" then his jaw clamped closed as he found he'd walked into a minefield of his own making. Damnit... Carlin would pick up on that.
Carlin turned his observant blue eyes on Jonah and the intellect in them was damnable. Jonah bit back a sigh and refused to let himself get up and walk off.
"Is everything okay with the baby?"
Jonah's lips were a tight line, his eyes unflinching. "Far as I know."
"Thera?"
"Far as I know."
Carlin nodded deliberately. "Then what's going on with you?"
Jonah's left eyelid twitched. "Just drop it." He knew it would be as good as an admission there was something up, but he could think of no lie good enough to fool Carlin. The man was too damn good at ferreting out the truth... at least from Jonah.
Carlin was watching him, friendly concern and compassion on his face, and Jonah could have hit him... except that he couldn't. Carlin was too damn innocent for his own good.
"Thera's worried about you," Carlin ventured carefully.
Jonah sighed wearily and dropped his gaze. "Yeah... I know she is."
"So what's wrong? Maybe if you talked about it..."
Jonah was already shaking his head with a derisive curl to his lip. Carlin seemed to think talking would solve a lot of problems. As far as Jonah was concerned, it caused them more than remedied them.
"Jonah?"
Jonah, in a fit of frustration, gave up. He looked over at his companion and said, "I'm just having dreams."
"Dreams?"
"Yeah, no big deal."
"What are they about?"
Jonah shrugged.
Carlin, no more appeased than he'd been a minute ago, shifted closer. "What are the dreams about?"
"What are your dreams about?" Jonah countered testily.
Carlin, to Jonah's surprise, stopped at that. He looked away uneasily and said, "A woman, mostly. I almost know who she is, like she's someone important to me. Dark eyes, dark hair... she dies."
Jonah was stilled by Carlin's confession, more than he suspected he would have been.
Carlin, now troubled, started to withdraw without physically moving an inch.
"I do something wrong and my kid dies," Jonah said lowly in conciliation.
Carlin's eyes jumped to Jonah and the older man looked away.
"That won't happen again," Carlin blurted.
Jonah's eyes jerked back to Carlin. "Again?"
"I mean... it won't happen. You and Thera won't let it."
"Accidents happen, Carlin."
"What exactly happens in the dream?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I think you need to."
"Damnit, Carlin..."
"Jonah." How one word could have so much impact and connotation behind it baffled Jonah. He suspected it was a verbal talent only Carlin and Thera possessed.
"Break time's almost up," Jonah said, rising to his feet as he did so. "We better get our drinks then get back to work."
Carlin, displeased at the evasion, knew when Jonah was immovable on a subject and unhappily got up and walked after Jonah to the water basin amid the opposite flow of returning miners.
Without any explicit intention, Thera managed to turn her and Jonah's corner into a figurative office. She was sitting on the floor with a 'clipboard' on her lap and pen in hand. She chewed unknowingly on her bottom lip, brow crinkled, as she stared at the figures before her.
That was how Jonah found her when he finally got off his work shift, sparing time only for a rushed dinner and pathetic shower before searching her out.
"Hey."
Thera looked up at his voice and the consternated expression remained stubbornly in place. "Hey."
Jonah went to her side, slipped partially behind her, and looped one arm around her body, hand at rest on her stomach, as he perched his chin on her shoulder and asked, "What's got you stumped?"
Thera huffed and set her pen down. "It doesn't make any sense."
Jonah chuckled deeply. "You can't figure it out? Are you sure that it's even possible?"
Thera snorted but privately his mood was a relief. The mining crew had been hard at work for more than two weeks and Jonah had been sleeping better since. She suspected the work literally tired him out so completely that he could do nothing but sleep through the night, but as long as he was sleeping she didn't really care. He was in a better mood during the day when he wasn't jerked awake at night by the same nightmare over and over.
Thera, content for the moment to dismiss the puzzle in her lap, leaned back into him and Jonah responded by wrapping his second arm around her in a gentle hug.
"What doesn't make sense?" he asked, his mouth so close to her ear it was a whisper that made Thera's mind spin.
"Um... energy output figures on the engines."
Jonah kissed her neck, once, as though for the sole purpose of derailing her train of thought. "I thought you knew those inside and out by now."
"I do, but I never really looked at them before."
Thera could almost hear his frown. "You lost me."
Thera smiled to herself. Her smile grew more lascivious as Jonah's hands started to go into action, unbuttoning her jacket and slipping into the warmth between the inner lining and her clothes.
"I'd studied the efficiency of each individual machine before, in great detail, but I never looked at the big picture."
Jonah, not so subtly, tugged her jacket off her shoulders and Thera sat up so he could take her orange coat off. He laid it aside, positioned himself directly behind her with a leg on either side of her, then pulled her back against him. Thera reclined against him readily and his hands unerringly found their way to her stomach. Free of her jacket her pregnancy was quite apparent. With her head resting on Jonah's shoulder she down-turned her eyes and watched him trace tender circles over the bulge in her body. She could linger in such moments forever if given the choice.
"Engines," he reminded her, a playful taunt in his tone, and Thera knew he was entirely too pleased with how easily he could turn her brain to jelly.
"Yes, the engines... there's too much output."
Jonah's hand slowed. "Too much? I thought we were mining because there's too little?"
Thera nodded. "Each machine has a required amount of energy output and they are all falling behind, but I only just stepped back to look at the big picture and there's too much energy overall. There is more than enough power to sustain the caves, more than twice as much needed to keep us alive. It doesn't make sense. Where is all the extra power going?"
"Have you asked Brenna?"
Thera, strangely, stiffened.
"Thera?" Jonah asked with a hint of concern for her reaction.
"No, I haven't mentioned it to Brenna... and I'm not going to."
"Why?"
"I... I don't know, but I get this bad feeling when I think about bringing it up with her. I just don't think it's a good idea."
Jonah sighed and his breath was a hot puff on her neck. "Okay, then we don't mention it to her."
Thera felt a senseless wash of relief. It also touched her how much Jonah explicitly trusted her judgment, even on only the strength of a 'feeling'.
They sat in silence a moment, enjoying the stolen moment alone, when Thera felt the baby inside her move. It kicked. Thera smiled stupidly. It had only recently begun kicking, truly, noticeably kicking, and they were spared so little time together that Jonah had yet to feel it.
She reached down and slid one of his resting hands to the place where she'd felt the baby take offense to her abdominal wall. Jonah, oblivious to her intent, merely repositioned his hand as she bade and snuggled against her.
Then the baby kicked again.
Jonah jolted and Thera felt his entire body start against her back.
"Whoa! Did you feel that?"
Thera giggled and nodded.
"Wow."
Thera turned her head toward him, his jaw at her forehead, and quipped, "Less amazing in the middle of the night when he doesn't want to sleep." Perhaps as a byproduct of Jonah's nightmares, Thera had come to think of the baby as male.
Jonah, enthralled, asked, "Can you see it?"
"When the baby kicks?"
Jonah nodded against her shoulder.
"I don't know, I never tried."
Jonah silently pulled Thera's shirt up to expose the protruding swell of her abdomen. Even Thera didn't see her pregnant belly much. Their showers were sparse and short, they didn't encourage idling, and as their living and work arrangements were so communal she was always well-clothed. Staring down at her own body, though, she marveled at the thought that her and Jonah's baby was inside that stretch of skin.
Jonah trailed his fingertips over her pale stomach, sending a shudder of goose bumps through Thera and, as though in response to its mother's reaction, the baby kicked. A spot on Thera's stomach poked ever-so-faintly outward and Thera blinked down at it in surprise, despite herself.
Jonah's hand moved and his fingers concentrated on the now indistinguishable place where the baby had kicked.
"Do you still have the nightmare?" Thera asked gently.
Jonah's fingers stilled and he flattened his hand against her stomach, a protective cover. "Yeah."
Thera felt that familiar surge of sorrow for Jonah. She wished there was a way she could make his dreams stop. Instead she did the only thing she could; she burrowed further into his warmth and his arms closed tighter around her, hand still in place over her womb.
The tunnel was already a good hundred feet into the rock wall when they hit the first pocket of the ore they needed and true excavation work began. The crews, long past the 'new' of their job, were merely quiet and dedicated as they removed the dark gray rock from the reddish brown stone and began to turn it over for refinement. Jonah and his team were well-established in their routines and patterns and they were able to work constantly, in staggered shifts, until the night crew came to relieve them.
The clang and ping of rock and iron struck together was a now-familiar sound and it faded into the background as the workers ceased to attend to it. Jonah was working with a group shuffling unusable red stone away from the workers removing the ore from the depths of the mine. After the work duties were sorted Jonah had actually very little supervisory tasks to perform. Everyone by now knew their jobs and did them without having to be told. These were, after all, men who were used to working together. Jonah became just another miner with occasional decision-making power.
An urgent shout echoed through the stone tunnel, quickly followed by a deafening roar of falling rock as the sound folded in on itself and amplified in the small confines.
Jonah was instantly on the move toward the commotion as the other workers began to react to the sound.
Jonah made his way through a cloud of dust and dirt as he neared the site of the incident. Cave-ins were not unheard of in the mine, and while so far none had been serious that could easily change.
"Carlin!" Jonah called out as the dust got too thick for him to see. Carlin had been in the general vicinity of where Jonah estimated the collapse occurred.
Workers were backing away from the source of the accident as Jonah fought their retreat. His hands made contact with bodies as he passed and he strained to recognize each face with which he crossed paths, doing a mental inventory.
"Carlin!"
"Jonah!"
Jonah jerked to a stop and looked into the dust to his left. Carlin, coughing and wiping at his eyes, emerged and was suddenly right beside Jonah. The older man reached out and grabbed his friend's arm. "What happened?"
Carlin coughed to try and clear his lungs. "We hit... hollow."
"You what? Is everyone all right?"
Carlin looked around. "I think so."
"Good... and what do you mean you 'hit hollow'?"
Carlin gestured over his shoulder. "There's a chamber of some kind and we broke into it, it brought part of the ceiling down."
Jonah, confused, nodded into the settling cloud. "Show me."
Carlin nodded and headed back into the fray. Everyone else had cleared out so Jonah and Carlin were alone as they neared what was, undeniably, a gaping black hole in the wall at the termination of the second offshoot of the main tunnel. Thera had been the one to suggest branching out to cover more area in which to hunt for the ore.
The hole was little more than three feet wide and surrounded on the ground by chunks of stone, some, Jonah noticed, with the ore embedded inside.
Carlin grabbed a lantern and was ducking into the hole before Jonah could process what he was doing.
"Carlin! Damnit, Carlin, get out of there, it might not be stable."
Carlin didn't listen, instead stood up on the other side and after a moment said in an echoing voice, "Wow. Jonah, you have to see this."
Jonah, grumbling, slipped through the hole and reached the other side. He had to agree. "Wow."
The room was just that, a room. Instead of rough, ragged stone-chiseled barriers there were actual walls, smooth and straight, sloping inward as they rose upward. At opposite ends were what looked like bracing beams and to the right a pentagonal block inset in the wall. The dimensions of the entire space were a little larger than Brenna's office although the ceiling was beyond the range of the light cast by the lantern.
Carlin started to wander toward one of the walls and Jonah stood, dumbstruck, at the sight. "What the hell is it?"
Carlin mumbled, "I don't know, but I think I've seen something like it before." The younger man was standing next to one of the light brown walls, which proved to actually be golden when the light was closer to them. And they were not unmarred gold. There were unrecognizable symbols and marks standing in relief upon the wall's surface. Carlin was squinting at the marks.
Jonah made his way to Carlin's side and frowned at the senseless designs. They were pointless to him, but the look on Carlin's face gave Jonah pause.
"Carlin?"
"It's a language."
"What? These squiggles and drawings?"
"Yeah."
Jonah scoffed, stopped and considered Carlin more seriously, then asked, "How do you know that?"
Carlin shook his head. "I don't know, but I... I know it is."
"Jonah?" another worker's voice called from outside.
Jonah turned. "We're all right but we need to clear the rocks that fell, there's some ore we can use."
"All right," the disembodied voice returned and Jonah turned back to Carlin. The young man was still riveted on the wall marks so Jonah ambled over to the five-sided shape on the side wall. He was inclined to call it a door, it was taller than a man, but a search failed to turn up any sign of a handle or knob.
"Carlin, you have any idea what this is?"
Carlin didn't answer and Jonah sighed. "Carlin?"
Carlin looked over his shoulder at Jonah. "Huh? Oh, sorry."
"What is this?"
Carlin let one hand reach out and trail over the runes with infinite care. "Does this seem familiar to you?"
Jonah scowled but had to admit, "A little bit. Why?"
Carlin shook his head, equally bewildered.
"We better report this."
"No!" Carlin yelped.
Jonah, taken by surprise, turned sharply to Carlin. "Excuse me?"
Carlin looked around at the strange cavern almost desperately. "Just, give me some time to look at it."
"Why?"
"I don't know, but it seems important. Please, just give me some time."
Jonah, against his better judgment, nodded, "You can have until the end of the shift but after that we have to report this."
Carlin nodded and set upon the walls like a man possessed while Jonah, for lack of anything else to do, began to wander the confines of the strange room and rummage through a number of crates he discovered in the back corners.
Brenna stared at the two men standing before her desk. She hardly knew where to begin. Mostly, she was watching closely for signs of regression. She was searching for Colonel O'Neill and Doctor Jackson in Jonah and Carlin. They seemed perfectly normal but Brenna was scrutinizing them all the same.
"You should have reported this immediately," she finally reprimanded. "Why did you wait until now to tell me about this?"
Carlin glanced surreptitiously at Jonah, the latter of which who said, "I didn't think it was a good enough reason to stop mining. We'd found a pocket of ore that needed our attention and for all intents and purposes it looked like it was just a room. I made the decision it could wait."
Brenna frowned and looked closely at him but there was no hint in his expression or his manner that Jonah was trying to deceive her. Sadly, she didn't know how good Jonah/Colonel O'Neill might be at lying. Thera and Carlin probably knew, but neither was likely to side with her against Jonah.
Brenna looked down at her desk and wondered how she could present this to the administrator. If he found out that it was Jonah and Carlin who'd discovered the chamber he would probably order another memory stamp just to err on the side of caution. He was particularly paranoid when it came to SG-1. Of course, as the three were so closely entwined, that would mean Thera would have to be treated again, as well, and Brenna didn't want to see that happen. In a matter of a few months Thera would give birth and if she and Jonah were stamped it would be to a child that meant next to nothing. Even if Jonah and Thera went to one another after the stamping, as they had both times before, it would mean all the memories of the early pregnancy and the relationship that spawned the baby would be lost.
"I want that tunnel sealed; no one is to go in there on my order, understood?"
Jonah and Carlin nodded.
"And you two were the only ones that went inside?"
Carlin nodded while Jonah silently seemed to pierce Brenna with a look. She could understand how the other workers, even the ones that didn't like Jonah, could cow to his will. He was a dominating presence and, in truth, he could unsettle even Brenna. The memory stamp erased memories well enough, but personalities were harder to alter and sooner or later the true nature 'bled back' into the individual.
"Very well, then. I don't want you two discussing this with the others. Not even Thera," she looked pointedly at Jonah. Jonah, for his part, was unreadable, and it stirred a bud of concern in Brenna.
"You two can go."
Carlin, before completely turning to leave, stopped and asked, "Do you have any idea what it is?"
Jonah looked like he wanted to cuff Carlin but instead he remained otherwise impassive and the only sign he was displeased was the dance of his jaw muscles as he clenched his teeth.
"No, I don't, but even if I did it's not your concern. I'll let the administrator know about it and he'll deal with it accordingly."
Carlin seemed to question her a moment before he turned and preceded Jonah out of the office. Neither had remembered to spout off the catch-phrase branded into every worker, whether by training or stamping.
Brenna sat down heavily in her chair and worried the edge of a sheet of paper on her desk with anxious fingers. She would have to handle this carefully or the three of them would lose so much. She had to make sure she presented this discovery to Caulder with enough vagueness that the identity of the discoverers was never mentioned.
Thera paced anxiously in the small space, her and Jonah's spot, waiting for her two friends to show up. Jonah had pulled her aside five days ago and told her they needed to show her something, but it was too risky to do it right away. Thera had been consumed with curiosity but the dark sincerity in Jonah's eyes left no doubt in her mind this was a sensitive subject and they dare not jump into it without caution. She had dutifully said not a word more on the matter, taking her lead from Jonah and Carlin who obviously were hiding something.
Then, finally, last night Jonah had told her to meet them after bed-down. Thera, owing to her advancing pregnancy, was now known to frequent the lavatories in the night so she was able to slip out and steal away to the nook behind the south passage generator with some ease without arousing any suspicion. Getting out of the barracks was not as tricky as getting through the engine room, because now Thera was a unique sight to everyone in the caves with her condition visible even under the thick clothing.
Thera knew it might take Jonah and Carlin a while to make their escape but still she was getting a little nervous. And if they didn't show up soon she really would have to go pee. She absently rubbed her stomach, adopting a rhythm she reasoned would calm the baby but was in fact to settle her own nerves. In truth, with her constant pacing the baby was quite calm and possibly even asleep, perhaps lulled by her movement.
Thera heard a noise and startled, looking at once into the shadows. She let out a sigh of relief when Jonah emerged from the red-tinted darkness, slinking into the small recess that had become their private place. He set eyes upon her and offered a smile, small but relaxing all the same.
"I was starting to wonder," she whispered.
"Sorry," Jonah said and he strode over to her and kissed her briefly. "I was hanging back to make sure Carlin got clear."
As though on cue Carlin slipped into the secluded area and looked a little abashed to have 'walked in' on them with Jonah standing intimately close to Thera, one hand almost mindlessly on her stomach.
They pulled into a tight circle and Carlin beckoned for them to sit. Jonah helped Thera to the floor then sat down next to her.
"So what's this big secret you guys are keeping?" she asked, itching to know what had made Jonah and Carlin go tight-lipped.
Carlin glanced at Jonah, got a nod, then said, "When we were mining we came across a room."
"A room? In the middle of the rock?"
"Yeah. We didn't know what it was but Jonah and I searched it and we found these," Carlin reached into his shirt and pulled out two slate-gray tablets and what appeared to be a stone of matching composition.
"What are they?" Thera asked as she was handed one. It had markings on it, ones that tickled the back of Thera's mind, but it was otherwise utterly foreign to her.
"A diary of sorts."
Thera looked up at Carlin then at Jonah. His expression told her this was the first time he was hearing this, too.
Carlin took the tablet back. "When Jonah and I first found the room I thought the markings on the wall looked familiar but I couldn't place it."
"Now you can?"
Carlin frowned. "No... but I 'remembered' how to read this, anyway."
Jonah and Thera exchanged a look but listened to Carlin.
"According to these texts there was a great battle before the ice age claimed the planet. The people, our ancestors, I guess, were visited by a god of great power but they refused to bow to the divinity of the god and they were punished. The god, in these named as His Greatness Babi, Lord of the night sky, railed at the temerity of our forefathers to defy his power and as punishment made the sun to vanish and the waters to freeze."
"You got all of that from those two little things?" Jonah asked dubiously.
Carlin picked one up and, angling it so Thera and Jonah could watch, waved the stone over the top. The marks, like magic, shifted and became new scripts.
"Holy hannah," Thera remarked as she snatched the tablet back and stared at the new marks.
Carlin continued. "From what I can tell the room Jonah and I explored was actually the cargo hold of a small scout vessel that was caught in a storm caused by Babi's actions and it crashed into the ground."
"Just wait a second," Thera interjected. "You do realize you're talking about gods, right?"
"Yes, so? What's your point?"
"Carlin... gods are well and good for religion but they don't show up and visit people."
"Well... maybe they're not really gods."
"So they're... what?" Jonah asked.
Carlin shrugged. "I don't know, impostors, aliens, my point is-"
"Aliens? Carlin, I think you're night sick if you believe that aliens came from some galaxy far, far away and-"
"Besides," Thera interrupted, "this could be some religious text with no more truth to it than... well, it could just be spiritual fiction."
"If it's merely religion then why don't we still have some semblance of faith? Times of great struggle are ripe fields for the growth of religion but we have none. Don't you find that odd? If this text was truly just a relic from a religious movement why has none of it survived into us, even this story of Babi eating the sun?"
"Eating, oh now he's eating it."
Carlin frowned at Jonah. "It's the literal translation of the text, but why couldn't it be an exaggeration of true events?"
"Oh, because it's nuts?"
Thera held up her hand. "What else does it say?"
Carlin relented. "It says that Lord Babi caused an eruption of great power in the land and the people would suffer for all time for their blasphemy. The interesting thing, this is told from the point of view of the two followers trapped in the ship that crashed."
"We didn't see any corpses," Jonah pointed out.
Carlin frowned. "Um... the more I think about it the more I think that that door led to the control room... I'll bet if we'd been able to get inside we'd have found the bodies.
"Anyway, this tells the account of the two acolytes, something called 'Jaffa' who served Babi when the planet was attacked. They knew they were entombed in a dying world but they continued to chronicle their devotion and unwavering belief in their all-powerful god."
"Carlin, this is the most ridiculous, out-there..."
"Jonah... it makes some sense."
"What?!"
Thera winced and ventured tentatively. "I mean, the explanation given by these texts for our planet's condition tracks."
Jonah blinked. "Whatever Carlin's got, it's contagious."
"Think about it. Gods aside, if something with enough destructive force impacted the planet it could have created a cloud of dust and debris so massive that it would block out the sun, what could plausibly look like 'eating it'. In a matter of days all plant life would die, not long afterward animal life, and without the heat of the sun the planet's temperature would drop and you'd get-"
"An ice age," Carlin finished the thought.
Thera nodded as she handed the tablet back to Carlin.
Jonah sighed and rubbed his face. "Okay, suspending reality and soundness of mind for a second, what does that have to do with us now?"
Carlin frowned at that and returned, "It's fascinating."
Jonah groaned and threw up his hands. "Great, we risk getting busted because he thinks this fairy tale crap is fascinating."
Carlin looked offended and narrowed his eyes petulantly at Jonah.
"You have to admit, Carlin," Thera said gently, "the idea that there is something out there that could do that much damage on a planetary scale is really far-fetched.
"What if this is metaphorical for an asteroid collision?"
"If that's true why would there be written record of it? If what you said about the series of events after an asteroid hit of that size is true then wouldn't any intelligent life be a little too worried about impending death to write it down? Why bother if they were smart enough to know all life would be wiped out on their planet? And what about these tablets or the ship? There's nothing nearly that advanced down here, even Jonah has to admit that."
Thera looked at Jonah and he nodded reluctantly.
"The question we should really ask," Thera said after a pause as she looked directly at Carlin, "is how can you read this?" she gestured toward the tablets.
Carlin looked down at the stone tablets. "I don't have an answer for that. I just looked at them and it came to me. I could understand the writing, but I don't know how and that kind of scares me. Either way you look at it, if you believe this is from a god-like race or if it's from our ancient history, I shouldn't know it."
All three fell silent until finally Jonah said, "We've been away too long; we better go back before we're caught."
Carlin assented and tucked the tablets back under his clothing then stood. Jonah got to his feet then helped Thera up. Carlin stole away first and for a brief time Thera and Jonah were alone. His arm came around her waist and she looked up at him.
They didn't say anything but their eyes spoke the same message. They were both more affected by the tablets and the discovery of the ship than anyone would be to average archaeological debris or baseless mythology.
Administrator Caulder sat at his grand place facing the magnificent windows that sang to Brenna's soul as she stood waiting for his reaction to the latest numbers from the mining endeavor. She was sorely tempted to turn around and stare out at the cityscape instead of watch Caulder's dour face as he read. It was night on the surface and the dimmed lights reflected like ghosts on the glass of the dome. The closest Brenna got to the dance of shadows was the flicker of fires to heat food and warm bodies. It wasn't the same.
"These look promising," Caulder said and snapped Brenna back to the man before her.
"Yes, I think so."
"The work seems to be progressing well. Is there any estimation when the first of the recently excavated mineral ore will be suitably prepared for use in the machines?"
Brenna nodded as she answered, "We're expecting the first batch to be ready for use in two days."
"Good. You're doing well, Brenna."
"It is an honor to serve, Administrator."
"Yes. Now, one matter I must broach with you... the Earthers have contacted the government head and asked permission to return within two days, which has been granted."
Brenna nodded and took due note of the news. The Earth world had remained in contact with their world even after the disappearance of SG-1 and the eventual conclusion that all had been lost outside the dome. Brenna usually got a fair warning when possible that more soldiers from the planet Earth were coming if only to keep a closer eye on Jonah, Carlin, and Thera. So far it had never escalated into a problem, but Caulder was very careful with his newly acquired workers. It had a lot to do with the fact that the government wanted to maintain diplomatic relations with the planet Earth. Their meddlesome tendencies aside, the Earthers were resource-rich and technologically on close to equal ground with the natives of Brenna's world. There was much to offer and much to be gained as long as the Earthers' curiosity was curtailed. Caulder and his kind had learned their lesson with SG-1.
"I'll take the necessary precautions," Brenna assured. Necessary precautions which simply meant keeping the team occupied. She'd order a thorough medical examination of Thera and she'd have Carlin and Jonah working over-time in the mines until their Earth-kin were gone.
Caulder nodded then asked, "Has there been any further 'discoveries' in the mines?"
"No, Administrator. I begin to think that will be an isolated incident."
"We can only hope so, Brenna. Even still, I expect to be informed immediately of any further discoveries and the nature of them."
"Of course."
"Return to your duties."
Brenna dipped her head. "It is an honor to serve," she recited and left the room of the sprawling vista to return to her station underground.
Carlin turned circles in the tel'tac scout vessel. He was himself and apart at once. He could see through his own eyes and see himself. He was wearing an outfit at once unknown and fitting to him. Green pants and jacket with a black vest and a boonie hat stuffed in his pant leg pocket. He was wearing glasses and the world was brought into sharp focus.
Carlin looked once more around the tel'tac. It was brightly lit, the walls almost glowing golden. The cargo hold was empty and Carlin was drawn to the pentagonal door. He stood before the smooth dark panel and at first he was stymied. Then he knew where to look and turned his head to locate the control panel of six rectangles in three rows of two. Suddenly it made sense and he knew what to do.
Carlin reached out and pressed one square. It glowed green under his touch, maintaining its luminous hue until Carlin stopped exerting pressure. Carlin's hand moved as though by muscle memory and it input a pattern. On the final contact and green glow the door hissed and pulled up and Carlin jumped back when he found himself face to face with a large man. Taller than him by a head, dark-skinned, bald, with a golden symbol branded on his forehead.
Carlin blinked at the man who must surely be an enemy but there was no reaction of fear from him and the tall stranger was looking at Carlin like he knew him. Carlin felt the man's name crawl up his throat, on the tip of his tongue.
Carlin flinched and opened his eyes. The barracks were alive with the sounds of sleeping bodies wall to wall. The red-tones and shadows of the room quickly reoriented Carlin and distanced him from the world of his dreams. Determined to go back to sleep, Carlin turned on his side, pulled his thin blanket up tighter around him, and closed his eyes.
Enough remained of his dream, however, for him to recall he'd been on a ship like the one in the mines. It had been well-lit instead of cloaked in shadow. There had also been a means to open the door...
Carlin's eyes shot open once again as the sequence on the panel burned into his memory. He desperately tried to remember the layout of the ship in the mines, trying to remember if such a panel had been present on that ship. The task was not exceedingly difficult.
Despite Brenna's order that the room be forbidden to all the workers, Carlin had been captivated by it. There was something in its walls that spoke to him, waited for him to figure it out. He'd taken to sneaking into the room to study the walls and the details of the cargo hold whenever possible. It was more frequently than Jonah or Thera would ever suspect and Brenna would be furious if she knew just how much time Carlin had spent in the off-limits room.
For two weeks he'd been returning to the small room, and slowly things started to coalesce in his mind. The language on the walls came loose in his brain like a rusty hinge finally oiled and he found he actually read the language well. He was able to skim over the raised markings almost as easily and swiftly as he did writing in his own language. The walls of the room, however, told him very little. It was mostly passages hailing praise to Lord Babi.
Even if the script on the walls had been less than elucidating Carlin could not stay away. There was something there he had to find, to uncover, and he went back again and again searching for that elusive truth which continued to stubbornly evade him.
Because he knew the room from one corner to the other from so many clandestine visits was the reason that when Carlin tried to recall a detail, such as the wall panel near the door, he remembered quickly that there was indeed a panel that matched the one in his dream.
He only had to wonder if the code that unlocked the one in his dream would do the same for the door on the ship in the mines.
Carlin, deciding his actions in the moment, sat up in bed as quietly as possible and looked around for signs of anyone else awake. There were only the still forms of his barrack-mates and the snores of more than a few individuals.
Carlin carefully slipped out of bed and began to pad toward the entrance/exit to the barracks. No one noticed him abscond and Carlin's luck similarly held all the way to the west wall of the caves. The night shift mining crew was there and Carlin's efforts at stealth grew tenfold. The night shift foreman, Kaegan, knew Carlin well and knew very well that he wasn't on her crew. More than once he'd come close to being caught by her in his nighttime excursions to the ship but so far she'd never actually seen him steal away into the mining tunnel. Hopefully his good fortune need only hold out one more time before he discovered the secret to the ship.
Carlin crept and wove his way between equipment, carts, rocks, and other workers until he'd reached the mouth of the tunnel and slipped into the shadows, broken only by the regularly placed lanterns. Carlin snatched up a lantern on his way inside and went directly toward his target. As soon as he reached the first branch leading to the ship he knew he was safe because Brenna had closed down that entire offshoot in the interest of deterring anyone from looking into the mystery at the end.
Carlin's feet almost knew the walk without him and he quickly reached the hole in the stone and the ship's side and ducked inside. The walls of the ship tantalized him as it had from the start. He felt the most comfortable here as opposed to any other place in the caves. It seemed to call to him, his for only he knew the language on the walls and the tale in the glyphs.
The marks, however, were not why he had come tonight.
Carlin went to the door and his lantern's light barely touched the panel next to the sealed entrance. Carlin allowed one small smile then tried to recall the sequence from his dream. It was remarkably intact and vivid for a dream but he wasn't about to question his lucidity.
Carlin reached up and depressed the first rectangle and was rewarded by a green glow and a rush in his veins.
Carlin input the rest of the series then held his breath, waiting.
For a second nothing, then a groan and creak as the door (obviously damaged) ground upward and in doing so exposed an entirely new dimension of the mystery to Carlin.
He was almost giddy with anticipation and excitement.
Carlin inched into the dark room beyond and waved his lantern about to get a lay of his surroundings. The control room, and he knew that's what it was, looked exactly as part of him had expected it to look. A dead console in the center and beyond that two seats, a pilot and copilot of sorts. The windows were a wall of red rock.
Carlin moved around the room and soon noticed the two shapes slumped in the seats at the front of the ship. Carlin suppressed a sense of dread as he crept forward until finally he was at the side of the pilot's chair.
The figure was an armored body, long since dead. The skull and agape jaw of white teeth were proof enough that the ship had crashed long ago. Carlin looked to the floor where, among the metacarpal bones of the Jaffa's hands, he saw a staff of unusually balanced and contrived design. He knew it was a weapon and more than simply a method of hitting someone, but how he knew that he could not say.
Carlin stepped back and surveyed the room for anything else. He couldn't wait to tell Jonah and Thera about this. First, however, he wanted to know if there was any more information about the fate of the ship and of the planet before he pried himself from the vessel.
Carlin moved to the console at the pilot's location, wincing at the petrified corpse he had to stand beside, and surveyed the controls. They were in the language he could read with frightening ease and when he found a promising toggle he pressed down on it.
The ship sputtered to life, at least partially, and literally 'sputtered'. The lights flickered sickly and a coughing wheeze of overtaxed, long-dead engines spat at him.
Then a broken voice that nearly sent Carlin into a dead run before he realized it had to be a recording. By the time he calmed himself the glitch in the system had jarred loose enough for him to make out the words uttered by the disembodied voice. It was deep-pitched and speaking a tongue that, until that moment, Carlin had only heard in his head.
Carlin listened, fascinated and elated by his find, until the words being conveyed over the speakers actually began to sink in. Then he frowned and began to back away from the bodies.
"Oops."
Thera picked at her breakfast with a grimace on her face. Jonah at her side noticed and asked, "Not hungry?"
"Starving," she answered grumpily and let her spoon splat against the gray gruel. She and Jonah were sitting together before their separate duty shifts began, the last time until right before bed-down that they'd be able to spend any time together (the miners had their lunch brought to them instead of having the entire crew return to the food service area). Usually they made the most of their limited time together but that morning Thera was in a rather disagreeable mood and Jonah, unoffended, let her be. Instead of perched against a wall shoulder to shoulder they were almost facing one another, Thera's legs crossed while Jonah's were more widely sprawled and bent. He tended to have trouble with his knees, meaning his range of motion was not as free and easy as Thera's.
Jonah quirked an eyebrow at her curiously as Thera scowled at her food.
Thera huffed in annoyance and dropped her spoon into her bowl. She looked up at Jonah and noticed the careful but gentle smile tugging at his lips. It was enough for her to realize she'd been acting quite childish. "Sorry," she said sheepishly, though still pissed at her bowl.
"What's wrong?"
"I'd kill for something other than this slop, that's all."
"Who wouldn't," Jonah quipped and lifted his spoon to let a glob of gray sludge fall back to his bowl for emphasis.
Thera scowled again. "You don't have cravings," she rubbed her belly errantly. "Before I was pregnant I wasn't happy with our rations but I never had a real problem with them... your baby's a picky eater, Jonah."
"My baby? Why is it mine when it's being a pain in the ass?" Jonah stopped at Thera's look and amended, "All right, don't answer that."
Thera's dark expression finally transformed to lift with a smile. She set about eating her unappetizing breakfast without the slightest enthusiasm or gusto as she mused, "I wonder where Carlin is."
Jonah shrugged. He had to confess that Carlin's absence all morning was strange, but Jonah was placated by the fact that there wasn't much chance in the limited caves that Carlin could find trouble.
"Excuse me, sorry, 'scuse me, Jonah, Thera!"
Jonah and Thera both looked up as Carlin came rushing up to them through the throng of morning diners. He was dancing his way between other workers until he was finally at his destination and dropped down on to his knees before his friends.
"Probably not much left, Spacemonkey," Jonah quipped to Carlin's tardiness to breakfast.
Carlin, who had been in a rush to say something, suddenly stopped and looked quickly at Jonah. Thera, too, turned her eyes to Jonah with a quizzical expression.
Jonah seemed to only then comprehend what he'd said and with an unconvincing shrug said defensively to the looks he was receiving, "It's an expression."
Carlin looked askance at Jonah a moment then seemed to shake it off in favor of more important matters. "I need to talk to you two."
Jonah looked around and noticed almost everyone was close to finished eating. The duty shift horn would be sounding soon. "Can it wait until tonight?"
"No! No, I don't think it can."
"Carlin, what are you talking about?" Thera asked.
Carlin looked nervous. "I think I did something bad. Very, very bad. We all might be in trouble."
Thera and Jonah stilled and looked apprehensively at one another. Unintentionally, Thera's hand went to her stomach and Jonah saw her do it, and he saw the spark of intense worry that flashed in her blue eyes.
Jonah turned flinty, dark eyes on Carlin. "What did you do?" His voice was ominous and deliberate and would have made anyone else recoil.
Carlin swallowed and dropped his voice lower. "I dreamed about the tel'tac-"
"The what?" Thera asked suddenly, her posture straightening abruptly.
"The, uh, the ship we found in the mines," Carlin corrected softly.
"No, what did you call it before?"
"Tel'tac?"
"What is it, Thera?" Jonah asked to her ashen expression.
"I know that word... I think," she answered, tone distracted.
Jonah seemed a little debased, as though he too had reacted to the word, but he looked sharply at Carlin. "Let's get to the part where Carlin gets us in trouble."
Carlin shrank back an inch and grimaced. "I... uh... I had a dream that I knew how to open the door."
"So...?" Jonah prodded angrily.
"So... I went back to the ship to try it."
Thera's eyes widened but Jonah only looked furious. Were they not in the middle of all the other workers Carlin would probably be getting the full brunt of Jonah's wrath.
"Damnit, Carlin, what the hell were you thinking? If Brenna found out we'd all get..."
Carlin looked briefly at Thera then back at Jonah. "Get what?"
Jonah frowned and quickly supplied, "Punished. We'd be punished."
"Did it work? Did you get the door open?" Thera asked.
"Yes."
Jonah and Thera went quiet but Carlin had more to say. "Look, long story short, I found the cockpit and I think I may have, inadvertently, activated a homing beacon."
"What?"
"Well, I think the controls were booby-trapped, probably programmed in by the Jaffa before they died. When I touched one of the controls the ship powered up and a voice over the speaker system said Lord Babi would know disbelievers had survived his purge of the planet and we should prepare to meet our doom."
"For crying out loud, Carlin," Jonah hissed.
Thera said carefully, "Let's just think about this a minute. We're talking about supposed gods, right?"
"Yeah."
"So. Maybe there's nothing to worry about. They probably don't exist, Carlin."
"But-"
"And even if there were some life forms impersonating deities, it was probably hundreds of years ago so there's little chance that this being that was posing as this Lord Babi is still alive."
Carlin frowned. "Yeah, I guess."
"So we should stop talking about this before we get caught," Jonah growled, "and you," he pointed at Carlin, "stay the hell out of that ship before you get us all in deep shit."
"Yeah, well, I may have already done that."
"Carlin!"
Carlin held up his hands. "Okay, okay!" He looked around at the others nearby, almost furtive, but before Carlin could even consider getting his own breakfast the horn bellowed and everyone (Thera with Jonah's help) got up and started to head to their duty stations.
Brenna was in her office, the room that seemed so often to define her entire universe, when there was a rap on her door.
"Yes?"
Brenna was surprised to see Kaegan stick her head into the office. The dark-complexioned woman was the sort who did her job but didn't do a lot of extraneous socializing, certainly not with her superiors. Brenna tried to remember if she'd ever actually spoken with Kaegan outside of arranged circumstances.
"A moment, Brenna?"
"Of course, Kaegan. There's not a problem, is there?"'
Kaegan stepped into Brenna's office and frowned dourly. "There might be."
Brenna came to attention and gestured for Kaegan to continue.
"It's about Carlin."
Brenna was instantly queasy with ill portent. Before the second stamping, what Kaegan and the others had been told was a severe case of night sickness, Kaegan and Carlin had been comrades. They may have even become friends but when Carlin came back from his second stamp procedure with no memory of Kaegan and shortly thereafter took up with Jonah and Thera the fledging friendship died on the vine. Kaegan's feelings about Thera were well-known and she had not been willing to lower to befriending someone who also ran in Thera's circle. Brenna never understood the animosity between the two women, but luckily the second stamping procedure seemed to end the overt bad blood. Thera didn't remember Kaegan didn't like her and Kaegan seemed perfectly content to be forgotten by the blonde woman. Whatever had precipitated the original ill-will between the two had not recurred and when Thera became occupied with her pregnancy not long after the second stamping Kaegan had never entered into Thera's concerns.
It did not mean the original opinion of Thera was not still there. Kaegan, while no longer openly butting heads with Thera, still didn't like her. Jonah, either. Similarly, she also maintained some manner of fondness for Carlin. If Kaegan was here reporting a problem with Carlin it was not some idle quibble. She wouldn't want to get Carlin in trouble, which was what worried Brenna. If Kaegan had come to report Thera or Jonah Brenna would have been less on-edge, but this was about Carlin. That was a different matter entirely.
"What seems to be the problem?" Brenna asked reluctantly.
Kaegan looked down at the floor uneasily. "A number of the workers on my mining crew have noticed him during our shift sneaking into the caves."
"Why?" Brenna asked, afraid she already knew the answer.
Kaegan frowned, genuinely stumped, and shrugged. "I don't know. I'd never actually seen him myself until last night, but apparently it's been going on for some time now."
"Have you talked to him about his activities?"
"Yes, because I thought maybe he couldn't sleep and thought he'd come to help out my team. You know, Carlin could just do random generous things like that, even if I thought it was strange he never cleared it with me first.
"He said he didn't know what I was talking about, completely denied being out of barracks on his off-shift."
Brenna frowned. "I see."
"He hasn't done anything to hamper out progress in the mines; I wasn't even sure I should report him, because he wasn't doing any harm..."
"You did the right thing, Kaegan," Brenna said. 'Though I wish you hadn't,' she thought sadly. She'd have to tell the administrator. There was only one thing Carlin could be doing, without permission, in the mining tunnels.
Brenna sighed. "I'll take care of it, Kaegan. Thank you."
Kaegan nodded. "It is an honor to serve," she recited, then she paused before leaving and studied Brenna with intent dark eyes. "Is he night sick?"
Brenna sat back slowly in her chair. "Yes, Kaegan, he might be, but don't worry... we'll take care of him."
Thera lived for moments like this. True, the floor was hard against her right side and doubly uncomfortable now that she had a heavier body to press down against it. The air was tinged with the thick taste and smell of burning ore and engine grease and she could feel the grim of the day's work, and some from the two days before that since showers were so strictly rationed, gritty and slick on her sweat-sheened skin. It also didn't escape her notice that she was, for all intents and purposes, naked in what could easily be a public area. Those were the negatives aspects, however, and Thera had learned to look for the good side of every situation. Without that ability one quickly went night sick in the caves.
The positives were myriad and they were all bundled into one package. Jonah. He laid behind her with an arm around her middle to encompass mother and unborn child in a loose hold. She could still feel the places on her body where he'd kissed her, his bare front warm against her back. The manual labor in the mines had done wonders for his physique and he was solid muscle, harder and bigger than he used to be, all of that plastered firmly against Thera. His fingers were brushing idly over the tightness of her rounded stomach as though without thought and it captivated Thera... as well as tickled a little bit. His face was dipped into the crook of her neck, his mouth just barely touching her throat and his breath even and comforting against her carotid pulse point.
They had so few moments like this. Intimacy was a tricky business in the caves and to have any form of physical relationship with another person each worker had to make certain concessions and sacrifices. Shyness was the first to go. There were no designated areas for carnal encounters, no privacy as such. To be sexually active meant accepting others might happen to see.
It was why Jonah lay where he did, propped forward against her as he was. When they lay together and held each other after making love he always placed himself between Thera and the open end of their personal alcove. He used his own naked body to shield Thera from wandering eyes as best he could. She loved him for that, though she had reconciled the fact long ago that to be with Jonah she would have to chance her other work mates seeing more of her than she would have liked. It was an acceptable surrender of her modesty for his touch. Still, Jonah tried to keep her 'honor' intact at the expense of his own and Thera thought it was sweet.
There was also an unspoken code among the workers, and an understanding on the matter of couples, working in their favor. Yes, accidental 'sighting' of a pair engaged in certain 'activities' might be inadvertently witnessed, but it was policy, like a social contract agreed upon by all, to not watch. Thera had once 'stumbled upon' two of her coworkers together and discretely looked away, backed off, and tended to work elsewhere until enough time had elapsed for them to finish. It was a communal courtesy everyone upheld without needing to be asked so each might be extended the same courtesy in return.
Even if it wasn't, she seriously doubted there were many workers who would risk angering Jonah just for a peek of her now distorted body.
Jonah, propped on one elbow to lean against her, pulled his head up from her neck and Thera glanced over her shoulder to see him looking at her belly. Jonah was enchanted by the child in her womb and at such unguarded moment she saw the raw tenderness and awe in his brown eyes. He put up a good front at all other times, but when they were alone he relaxed his defenses and Thera saw just how much Jonah cared for her and their baby. It always managed to turn her insides one-eighty and make her love him all the more.
She glanced down at her own body and watched Jonah tracing his fingers over the brown stripes on her stomach, unsightly stretch marks in Thera's eyes but Jonah had responded only by kissing each one and she didn't mind them so much anymore.
The baby kicked and Thera, taken by surprise at the suddenness and strength of the action, flinched faintly.
Jonah smiled. "Did it hurt?"
"No, just startled me."
Jonah, a soft smirk still fixed on his lips, dropped his chin to Thera's shoulder and continued to rub her abdomen. Thera felt like she'd gained an unseemly amount of weight in just the past two and half weeks. Her belly suddenly expanded almost daily to the naked eye and everything became ungainly and horribly awkward for her to do. Before, Jonah had just been chivalrous helping her up and down from the floor but now she couldn't do either without his help, not without relying heavily on walls, available supports like crates and boxes, and the adoption of strange hands-and-knees starting points.
Jonah was getting a kick out of the advancement of her pregnancy. But then, he didn't have to carry the baby. Thera was just getting annoyed and, she was sad to confess, increasingly peevish. It was small wonder pregnancies were discouraged in the caves. It was a terrible place to go through pregnancy, as Thera was learning in vivid detail.
As though in illustration of her point a spot on Thera's hip began to ache sharply from lying on the unforgiving rock ground. Thera shifted, failed to relieve the pain, and Jonah observantly asked, "What?"
Thera sighed roughly. Jonah was getting good at uncovering her ever-increasing list of discomforts and complaints and she hated that.
"My hip, the floor's starting to hurt."
Jonah, without a word, reached over their heads to where their clothes were piled. He snagged his jacket first and folded it a couple of times then said, "Up."
Thera, irritated, awkwardly lifted her hips off the ground and Jonah slipped the jacket under her. When she settled again, Jonah's hand on her waist to guide her down, she came to rest on the padding of the heavy coat.
"Better?"
Thera nodded. Her shoulder still hurt and her back was plagued by the constant low-grade ache now her unending cross and her legs were starting to complain about the floor too, but her hip was no longer a flash-point of pain. What she really needed was to get up off the floor but she wasn't ready to give up Jonah's bare embrace yet. She'd have to get just a little bit more uncomfortable, and cranky, before that happened.
The baby shifted inside her and Thera's bad mood tempered just a little.
Jonah was stroking her arm, from shoulder to fingers, in slow, lazy passes. She closed her eyes and felt drowsy under the caress.
"I like your new jacket," he said in a playful voice.
Thera snorted. Her regular jacket had ceased to close around her girth and the materials' attendant had traded her too-small coat for one much larger. It was made for a man easily twice Carlin's size and while the sides covered her stomach well enough the article of clothing in its entirety hung almost to her knees and she had to fold the sleeves back several times just to expose her hands. She looked ridiculous in it but no one had had the audacity to tease her about it... until just now with Jonah's low voice still roughened from sex.
It was hard to be mad at him, however, when his remark was immediately followed by a kiss on her shoulder. She decided he'd broke even and didn't say anything scathing.
"You've been quiet lately," he noted after a little while.
Thera's lips pursed. "Something's up with Carlin."
Jonah's hand stopped, maybe unconsciously, and he murmured, "I noticed that too. He sure is acting flaky."
'Flaky' was a good enough word for it. Nearly three weeks after his 'confession' of opening up the ship cockpit against Brenna's express orders he'd become elusive. He wasn't around much, an almost darting figure during meals and often strangely absent at bed-down. He was almost what Thera would call furtive, certainly distracted, and undeniably distant to his two closest friends.
"Maybe we should talk to him," she suggested.
Jonah grunted but it was a noncommittal sound and Thera knew just from knowing Jonah what it really meant. Jonah was still unhappy that Carlin had ventured back into the ship after Brenna had forbade it and in doing so put them all in danger. And though it had only been Carlin's transgression it felt like his actions would inflict consequences on Jonah and Thera as well. Somehow they three were indelibly united, they shared a common fate. Jonah had chosen his side and, if necessary, he would cut ties to Carlin if it would help protect Thera and the baby. Already Jonah was pulling back, fortifying his walls, setting up a perimeter to keep Carlin at bay. He was establishing 'not caring' about Carlin and whatever he might do. Thera was disquieted by the development in the men's friendship but, for the sake of her child, she couldn't condemn it.
Thera's shoulder was escalating from uncomfortable to painful and the weight of the baby suddenly seemed to settle strangely with her lying on her side. "I need to get up, Jonah," she said regretfully, and without complaint he pulled away and helped her sit up. He handed her her clothes, the first of which she donned was her shirt and jacket. The jacket covered so much of her body that she could, without being horribly exposed, wait to struggle into her pants until she was on her feet and Jonah could help her.
Not hindered by the same handicap as a bowling ball for a stomach, Jonah slipped into his clothes (sans jacket, which Thera was using as a seat cushion) and asked, "You ready to head back?"
Thera's immediate impulse was to say no, but that was a purely emotional answer. She never felt like she got to spend enough time alone with him. "Yes," she replied and she sourly held out her hands to him for assistance.
Jonah, gently amused, stood and then hauled Thera to her feet. She had to swallow her pride and let him help her into her pants and shoes then he retrieved his jacket from the ground and tended to the rest of his dressing.
They were finally ready to head back to barracks with only a handful of minutes to spare before bed-down.
"What do you want to do about Carlin?" Thera asked.
Jonah, close at Thera's side as they emerged from their hiding place, scowled and finally had something to say on the matter. "I'm not going to do anything about Carlin. He can take care of himself."
Thera's eyes dropped and her mouth down-turned. So that was it. She understood it, and she in many ways agreed with it, but she still felt the potential loss of Carlin's companionship like a steam burn in her chest. Carlin had been the only other person in the caves she had trusted, almost as much as she trusted Jonah, and those one could truly trust in the caves were precious few.
It was a meeting Brenna had long dreaded and secretly hoped to never face again. It had been unpleasant the first time to report the 'lapse' in the former SG-1 but now... now it was so much harder. They had all been doing so well, working so diligently with no signs of rejecting the stamps. She was silently cursing Carlin for his disobedience. If he had just done as he was told she wouldn't be standing in front of Caulder waiting for judgment to be passed on three of the most unique workers Brenna had ever supervised.
Caulder's face said it all, even before he said an actual word. He was mightily disgruntled to find out that Carlin had been engaging in suspiciously questionable activities. He looked unhappy but far from surprised. Brenna understood then that the entire time, since the trouble with the initial stamp, Caulder had been waiting for them to step out of line. He'd always expected their eventual relapse. He'd been waiting for their fall. For him it was vindication that his original decree, to banish the team to the surface and to certain death, had been correct and Brenna's overly sentimental appeal on their behalf had been misguided.
Brenna had never particularly liked Caulder, but at that moment it came closer to something resembling loathing.
"It's quite clear that the stamp is once again losing its hold on SG-1."
Still, Brenna had to try. "All respect intended, Administrator, but I don't think that's necessarily the case."
"Oh, you don't?"
"No. It may be a case of Car-Doctor Jackson's innate curiosity asserting itself. We've seen that the stamping process has minimal effect on personality traits; this might simply be an expression of an inherent characteristic of his nature."
"Why, then, Brenna, did he see fit to be so secretive? Why not request permission to study the room?"
Brenna winced at the excellent question. "He may have known he wouldn't be granted access if he asked."
"A flagrant disregard for rules and premeditated disobedience that would not be found in a genuinely dutiful worker."
Brenna had no rejoinder to that.
"Unfortunately," Caulder said, "termination is no longer a suitable course of action. At least, not in the case of Major Carter."
Brenna looked up at Caulder and waited for him to explain.
"How long until she delivers?"
Brenna shook her head. Since workers were expendable the medical facilities available to tend to them were far from technologically savvy; to say the least it made pinning down a due date difficult. "I can't be certain but not long."
Caulder nodded. "We've invested considerable resources to maintain this pregnancy and I won't sacrifice the mother before we can reap the benefits of the child." He thought to himself a moment then observed aloud, "The stamp's effects on the Earth team lasted longer this time than it did the first."
"Yes."
Caulder looked pensive. "Stamp Major Carter again. It should hold long enough for her to give birth, and once we have the baby then we can deal with her."
Brenna swallowed past a dry throat. "What of Jonah and Car-uh, Colonel O'Neill and Doctor Jackson?"
Caulder looked at her pointedly. "Exile to the surface, of course."
Brenna' stomach hardened. "Administrator... if I may."
Caulder sighed in irritation.
"We're in the middle of a massive excavation for mineral ore we desperately need to maintain our machines and keep them going. Jonah is leader of the premiere crew of miners and the men work well for him. Carlin is a very strong, capable worker in his own right. We cannot afford to discard men that capable right now."
Caulder was peering hotly at her. "Why was I not informed that you'd given Colonel O'Neill command of a group of workers?"
Brenna blinked, thrown by the administrator's fixation on that one detail. "I..."
"Brenna, Colonel O'Neill was a leader among his people, a people notoriously meddlesome and noncomplacent to our culture. Did it never occur to you that giving him power over any contingent of our population, giving him any opportunity to lead them against us, might not be wise?"
"I didn't think of that."
Caulder shook his head at her, like she was little more than a dangerously inattentive child. "You allow yourself only to see Jonah, Brenna, but beneath that mask we have given him is Colonel O'Neill, a dangerous man to our people's very way of life. That was very foolish."
"I'm sorry, Administrator."
"But I interrupted you. I believe you were about to tell me why we mustn't exterminate this threat to our very existence?" His tone dripped with condescension.
"I'm merely saying that with our new mining operation the loss of two good workers would be sorely felt."
Caulder was silent a long time, long enough for Brenna to feel the seconds slow, then he said, "You make a good point, though I detest the truth to your logic. You are the authority on productivity and the activity of the workers; no one knows the state of affairs beneath the surface better than you. Of course, we cannot spare the manpower... a greater cause demands it.
"Stamp them all again. We'll get our due work out of Colonel O'Neill and Doctor Jackson and we'll have the child borne of Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill's union, then they will be purged from our underground and with them any lingering threat to our society."
Brenna could do nothing more. To have literally saved their lives twice was more than she could have realistically expected. Even if, it seemed, she would only postpone certain death for Jonah, Carlin, and Thera this second time.
"See to it."
Brenna nodded faintly. "It is an honor," she said then quickly left the room. She couldn't get away from the administrator's office fast enough.
She was tormented by what she must do. She had to, in effect, take them away from each other. She had to order the procedure that would make Thera forget Jonah all over again, make Jonah forget Thera, each to forget Carlin, Carlin to forget them both. The baby would lose its parents before ever truly meeting them. It would soon have an incubator more than a mother. It would have practically no ties to its father.
On a more personal level, Brenna herself would lose the small camaraderie she had established with Thera.
But there was nothing she could do. She'd fought for them as much as her limited powers would allow but the former SG-1 had proven, in the administrator's eyes, too dangerous to be chanced.
So Brenna would have to kill them twice, once the people they had become and then their bodies with whatever remained of who they were after their memory stamp.
Sometimes she really hated her job, honor to serve or not.
Thera slowly walked around a huge, chugging engine with a critical eye on the look-out for any flaw. The pressure valves were barely doing their job and the structural integrity of the machine was questionable at best but Thera made note of every small detail and continued her inspection. She scribbled on the 'clipboard' in her hand, under the title 'M - 24', all the defects she found and the list was becoming quite unmanageable. The more Thera looked over the machine the more her frustration mounted. There was not nearly enough material or capability in the caves to take care of half of the issues on the list. It galled Thera that they couldn't fix the machines, upgrade them even, but Brenna vetoed her every effort to move their operations in that direction. When her pregnancy had been authorized Thera didn't bring the matter up with Brenna as frequently for fear of dirtying the favor she'd remarkably attained. For the sake of her baby she'd keep her mouth shut concerning subjects about which Brenna didn't want to hear. Still, it irked her.
Thera sighed and rubbed her back, to no appreciable avail but she gave it a try, anyway. She had to admit, even if only to herself, that her displeasure at the mired state of the engine technology was more intense (and escalating) with her late stage of pregnancy. She was objective enough to recognize her mood was clouding her judgment.
It was still stupid not to jump at the chance to better their way of life, hormones and backaches or no.
Thera's hand left her lower back and she trailed her fingertips slowly, lightly, and attentively over the rusted metal of the machine's outer husk. With all the dirt and grim built up on the machines sometimes touch was the only way to distinguish cracks from smears of dirt. The working engines were almost too hot to touch at some points but Thera preferred a little scorched and desensitized fingertips as opposed to missing something.
Thera's hand stopped when her skin barely caught on a small lip marring the smooth outer surface of the metal machine's belly. She stepped closer and rubbed harder to clear away the grease and soot. A crack. It was relatively small but Thera made note of it in meticulous detail.
It was no wider than the length of her index finger at its greatest side-to-side edges. The greatest dimension was height, two nearly-equal slivers running upward, drawn inward, until they met at the tip.
Thera made note of the triangle and was about to move on when something stopped her. She stood, head slightly cocked and brow furrowed, as she stared at the two-sided shape. Something about it struck her in that unguarded moment and she wasn't sure what. It was significant somehow.
Thera, baffled, ran her fingers over the triangular shape, traced its sides, then her hand flitted to the empty space above the shape. She got the distinct feeling something was missing. Thera stuttered to complete stillness again and her eyes narrowed.
As though moving on autopilot, Thera picked up the pen she held clasped against the clipboard and ventured toward the mark again. Her hand hovered, almost uncertain, then she touched pen to metal and scratched the tip over the pitted metal.
Thera stepped back and studied the faint, squiggly circle now sitting atop the crack in the machine's side. It was right there, chanting her name in such a way that 'Thera' was unrecognizable.
"Thera."
Thera, startled, turned quickly (as quickly as her body as of late allowed) and her eyes widened when she saw Brenna facing her.
"Brenna... what is it?" Brenna rarely descended into the work area herself, rather sent for people or had a runner speak to a worker on her behalf. To have Brenna come personally was abnormal.
Smoothly, Thera shifted her position so she conveniently blocked Brenna's view of the symbol on machine 24.
Brenna, giving no indication she saw anything flighty or unusual in Thera's behavior, merely frowned long and sad and said, "I need you to come with me."
"Of course," Thera answered on reflex, at first only too eager to leave behind the strange addition she'd made to the crack in the metal, but shortly thereafter overcome with foreboding. Brenna was acting odd. Thera couldn't help but think it couldn't be a good sign.
Brenna, without another glance in Thera's direction, crossed the main work room then ascended the stairs to her aloft office of silver metal and chrome that always made Thera think 'Indian Chief' (whatever that meant). Thera dutifully followed, despite the rising sense of dread.
When they were both in Brenna's office, the overseer stepping around her desk, Thera took the initiative to talk first. "I'm a little over half-done with the inspections of machines twelve through forty." She held out her clipboard of jotted notes.
"Yes, that's fine," Brenna said and didn't take the papers.
Thera, uneasy, lowered her work and deposited it on the table. "Is something wrong?"
Brenna looked up at Thera and the sheer regret in her eyes made Thera swallow heavily.
"I'm afraid there is. I assume you've noticed Carlin acting a little... peculiar lately."
Thera lowered her gaze but didn't answer. She couldn't. If she confessed to noticing Carlin's behavior she'd have to answer for why she hadn't reported it. To outright say 'no', however, would insult Brenna's intelligence and Thera did not think it would be a misstep taken lightly.
"It's all right, Thera, I know he's your friend."
Thera, shocked that Brenna would just 'overlook' negligence such as that of not reporting strange behavior to the overseer, looked up at the other woman and stared at her.
Brenna sat down in her seat, folded her hands atop the desk slowly, then continued to speak. "I'm sorry, Thera, but Carlin's night sick. He'll have to be treated."
Thera's heart skipped a beat. "No!" She'd spoken without thought and Brenna grimaced slightly and looked up at Thera. Her eyes were full of apology and it frightened Thera.
"It can't be helped. We found out he's been sneaking into the room they found in the mines and that he was trying to conceal his actions. He's not well, but he... he'll be well again soon."
"Brenna, no, wait, please. There has to be another way. He won't go into the mines anymore. I'll talk to him, Jonah will talk to him. He won't do it anymore, I promise."
Brenna only looked to one side, then her desktop, and shook her head. "I'm sorry, but the orders come down from the administrator." Then Brenna looked up again at Thera the intensity in her expression made Thera hold her breath as her pulse quickened. "Thera... the treatment process changes people. You might want to... say goodbye."
Thera wanted to scream. She wanted to fight. She did neither, could do neither. She only gaped silently at Brenna and knew, in her bones, this wasn't just about Carlin. The same way Jonah knew it, the same way she'd always known it. She, Jonah, and Carlin were not and had never been separate entities.
"Brenna..." she whispered but there was nothing she could say.
Brenna looked away, as though it was suddenly too painful to look at Thera. "Carlin will be treated tomorrow; I've allowed a day's grace. It's... it was all I could do."
Thera backed away toward the door, numb, and without a word in parting she turned and hurriedly left the overseer's office. She had to find Jonah, and it couldn't wait for the end of their shifts this time.
The last thing Carlin had expected on his way to the lunch line was for the woman Kaegan to fall into step beside him. As the night shift mining crew foreman she should be asleep with the rest of her team. Perhaps even more startling than her presence at his side, however, was what she immediately said.
"I know you've been going into the mines when you weren't supposed to."
Carlin whipped his head around to look at her, Kaegan's dark eyes so intent upon him it was almost entrapping like a well-laid snare, and he had to gather his thoughts a moment. "What? Um... I-I have no idea what you mean."
Kaegan frowned. "Don't even try, Carlin, you're a terrible liar. You were before and you still are."
"Before?" he was genuinely confused now, but at least confused was a better topic than the mines.
Kaegan opened her mouth to say something else but she didn't have time. Carlin was whisked away, swept from his feet, as a blur of a man barreled into him. The human blur didn't slow and as one they didn't stop until Carlin felt the uneven front of a machine slam into his back.
Carlin yelped as dials and levers and pipe bolts spiked mercilessly into his back and the wind rushed from his lungs in a soundless gasp. His eyes widened (he couldn't even remember the last time he'd been attacked by another worker) and he blinked to focus his less-than-perfect eyes on his assailant.
"Jo-" Carlin croaked before a forearm pressed against his throat and while pushing his head back into the engine managed to cut off his voice.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?!" Jonah raged as he pinned Carlin to the machine, his arm pressing continuously harder into his neck.
Carlin's sight spotted and crackled at the periphery of his vision but he was able to make out the vague figures of Thera and Kaegan standing in the background, watching. They both looked surprised, Kaegan more so than Thera, but neither dared try to intercede. Carlin knew neither would take the chance Jonah would do the same to them. He couldn't blame them, really, but it did seem unfair that Jonah was going to kill him right there and neither would step up to try and prevent it.
Wait, why kill him?
"What..." Carlin tried to ask but Jonah didn't let him finish his thought. Jonah pressed closer, the skin of Carlin's back tore as his flesh gave before rough engine edges did, and Jonah's voice dropped. Somehow, the low hissing whisper was more frightening than full-out bellows. "I oughta kill you, you fucking low-life."
"Jonah! Please... what did I do?" Carlin rasped out.
Jonah's eyes were pure fire and Carlin was not reticent to admit he was petrified. People were afraid of Jonah for good reason. Not only was his dark side scary as hell but the things Jonah's body knew how to do... that and the fact murder in the caves was apparently lightly punished. They were largely left to police themselves, and as far as the majority of the workers were concerned Jonah was the law.
"Jonah, please..." Carlin was getting light-headed, his temples throbbed as his brain cried for air and his eyes felt two sizes too large for their sockets.
Jonah's furious face became the only thing Carlin saw, and he bemoaned the fact it would be the last thing he saw before he died and tried, before the end, to remember the woman from his dreams.
"Jonah." It was Thera's voice.
Jonah's eyes narrowed on Carlin, just when Carlin (on the edge of consciousness) thought the man couldn't look more intimidating, and fractionally the pressure on Carlin's neck eased. It wasn't much but enough for a half-decent gulp of air and the blackness receded.
"Jonah," Thera said again, in a small voice, but Jonah would be mollified no further.
"I should kill you," he hissed again and Carlin thought better than to struggle. He'd hate to tempt Jonah's lethal skills.
"What... did I do?" Carlin squeaked.
Jonah was rigid and on the edge of shaking with rage and Carlin knew he was on very, very dangerous ground.
"Brenna knows, Carlin," Thera answered, still in that meek voice that Carlin could hardly call Thera's. His eyes dared to leave the looming threat of Jonah to seek out Thera. She was standing still as stone, a hand on her stomach, her face down-turned but enough of it visible for Carlin to see the pallor to her skin.
"Knows what?"
Jonah pressed into him again and breathing once again turned into a luxury. "You and that god damn ship," Jonah hissed.
Carlin's eyes widened.
"She found out," Thera repeated.
"And now we have to pay for what you've done. Thera has to pay," Jonah snapped, and Carlin's eyes darted again to Thera and the concerned hand she held against her stomach.
"I didn't-"
"Think! You didn't think! You selfish prick!" Jonah ground out between clenched teeth.
"I'm... I'm sorry."
"Sorry? Sorry won't spare her, will it?"
"What is going on?"
Carlin looked toward Kaegan, who was alternately looking toward him, Jonah, and Thera. She was getting testy and it was a death-defying thing to do with Jonah in the mood he was. Then again, Kaegan never did back down from a confrontation, even in the face of common sense.
"This is not your concern," Jonah said in a barely-civil voice.
Kaegan's face twisted. "Does this have anything to do with Carlin sneaking into the mines?"
Thera looked at Kaegan. "You know?"
"I reported it this morning."
Thera winced and Carlin was given a small reprieve when Jonah stiffened and eased away only a little... more as though considering turning on Kaegan than relenting on his assault on Carlin.
Carlin took the opportunity to get a word in edge-wise. "Jonah, please... let me... let me explain."
Jonah's eyes were infernos of fury, aimed directly at Carlin, but before Carlin could say a word in his defense the ground shook violently and a loud booming thundered through the rock walls.
Jonah staggered and Carlin slipped to one side then to one knee. His freedom from Jonah's grip was hardly freedom as Jonah tangled one unforgiving hand into Carlin's coat as though, as an afterthought, keeping his prey from scurrying away.
Everything went deathly still, all conversation stopped, and only the working of the engines cut through the stillness as every single person, surprised, stopped and fought for a notion about what had just happened.
The deathly silence and immobility shattered with a second thunder crack and shake and finally Jonah released Carlin to stumble to Thera's side and brace her from falling.
The second shake seemed to jar loose the motionless workers and confusion and panic started to take hold.
"What's happening?" Kaegan asked, her voice betraying her trace of fear, as another rumble and shudder shook the very cave itself. A secondary sound, an echoing crack like a giant egg breaking, and small rocks and dust began to fall from the ceiling.
Carlin struggled to his feet and looked around, agape. Workers were starting to cry out in anger and fear. Jonah was standing, stance wide, his arm around Thera and hers around him. Kaegan was wobbling on her feet, her hands spread open to catch herself should she fall.
Carlin's mind spun then flew apart when it hit one thought.
Carlin rushed to Jonah and Thera and they pulled their gazes away from the overhead rain of dust and rock to look at him.
"We have to get to the ship!" Carlin said urgently.
Jonah's expression hardened, his gaze ice-cold, but Thera's eyes only sought answers.
Another tremble and Carlin was nearly tossed backward. He heard Kaegan squeak and fall behind him.
"He came back! It's him, he's here. PLEASE! The ship's the safest place there is!" Carlin begged.
Jonah stared darkly at Carlin as another exploding sound beat at their ears. He was deciding. Jonah didn't confer with Thera, didn't look to anyone but himself for a judgment call, then he gave a short resolute nod and turned to Thera. "Come on," he said in a normal tone of voice but for the commotion it may as well have been a whisper. Thera didn't argue, only gripped Jonah's hand with hers and steadied herself desperately from falling when another strike hit and the ground lurched. A great cascade of rock and debris fell from above and the entire cave seemed to groan and bow.
Carlin turned to lead the way to the mines but he stopped to grab Kaegan's arm and haul her to her feet. She tried to fight, merely on principle, but Carlin was too strong and she was too shaken. "Come with us!" Carlin yelled, and Kaegan grew complacent and did as told.
The four stumbled and staggered their way toward the mines. Behind them, near the barracks, they could hear the crash of a large section of the ceiling and the workers haplessly caught underneath.
"Hurry!" Carlin said even as they reached the entrance to the west mine shaft. They were the only people trying to get into an even more confined space when, in truth, the mines provided just as much safety as the main cave. It was all the same, only on different scales.
The ground titled and bucked and Thera lost her footing and started to go down. Jonah leapt to catch her and nearly went down face-first but he pulled her back to her feet and she clung to him.
Kaegan was starting to pull back, leery of entering the mines when the roofs all seemed to be collapsing. "You can't be serious..."
"We have to, just trust me!" Carlin insisted, and it was far from reassuring to Kaegan but Jonah and Thera seemed to be going on faith, faith in the man whom only moments ago Jonah was prepared to tear limb for limb.
"GO!" Jonah barked, to them all, and Kaegan startled and mindlessly obeyed. The shaking ground and imploding cave were incentive enough to pass on all higher-level thinking tasks to another.
Thera staggered as the ground shuddered once more and her knees almost buckled as her weight jostled, seemed to lift them plummet, and Jonah's arms clutched around her to keep her upright. She heard another part of the cave, even larger than those before it, echo with death as it crashed to the floor. The sound of breaking glass and renewed screams drew Thera's eyes up, past Jonah's shoulder, and she saw the skylight. She gasped as she saw it shatter and shards of fire-illuminated glass sparkled red and orange toward the ground. She waited in horror for the snow and ice to pour in. Instead there was a shaft of light and the barest glimpse of blue beyond.
It was all she saw before Jonah grabbed her hand and dragged her into the mines.
The lighting inside flickered and made the journey alternately ill-lit and pitch black, made more treacherous by the shaking ground underfoot, but Jonah, Carlin, and Kaegan knew the mine with great familiarity and Thera trusted them (i.e., trusted Jonah) to know their way.
A hollowly echoing crash bespoke of a collapse within the tunnel system and Thera closed her hand tighter around Jonah's.
Suddenly they turned right and Thera followed blindly. Jonah reached a point then stopped and said loudly, "Through there!"
Thera looked into the darkness, through where?, then she saw Carlin's hand reached out from a black hole in the wall. Thera tossed one fleeting look at Jonah then took Carlin's hand and maneuvered her bulk through the entirely smaller-than-necessary hole in the rock wall. Carlin and Kaegan, on the other side, were waiting for them.
Thera's eyes went immediately to the room around them. She could only make out rough dimensions and the smoothness to the surfaces, the likes of it were only found in Brenna's office. Even her terror, for a second, got pushed to the side in favor of curiosity about this place.
Jonah slipped through the hole and his hand came to her shoulder. "Sight-see later, now, MOVE!" and with a gentle shove he propelled her inward.
Carlin led the way and Thera, helpless, followed.
The four of them crammed into a small, dark room and Carlin went to the doorway through which they'd just passed and hit some kind of command control. The door groaned and creaked its way down until it was shut and the room cast into utter blackness without the faint light from the shaft lanterns reaching them.
It also cut out a great deal of the sound and the ensuing silence was deafening.
"No one move," Carlin said, his voice still raised from the melee outside and seeming needlessly loud. "I'll turn on some lights."
Thera and Jonah stood, hands clasping one another's, until Carlin stumbled his way across the room and did something that made light stutter on in the small room. For a second each merely took note of the other occupants. Carlin by the panels opposite the door, Kaegan on one side the room and Jonah and Thera on the other.
Kaegan gasped and cried, "What is that?!"
Thera looked and saw two lumpy figures piled in one corner. It was armor, she knew it at a glance, and the bones weren't hard to figure out, either.
"Oh, um, they were here when I found the room, I just moved them over."
Then utter stillness descended, like an uncomfortable cocktail party. The ground still shook but it was muffled. Somehow the ship was dampening the concussions. The explosions were still echoing dully but it was muted. The sounds poorly penetrated the hull.
It was a moment of near-peace and no one, considering the recent eruption of chaos, knew what to do with it.
Thera looked around the room,curious despite herself. It was alien and known to her at once, which dumbfounded her. The room was small, definitely a cockpit from the front-oriented chairs and consoles where, presumably, the bodies of the Jaffa had been found. Against the far wall... she had to look again. It was provisions. Bowls of food with clothes secured over them, bags of water, blankets... Carlin stole them, he must have.
"Carlin," Jonah's low-pitched (but less enraged) voice, and from it Thera knew he'd noticed the supplies when she did. "I think you better start explaining."
Carlin looked around the small space, at his supplies, then he rubbed at the bridge of his nose and sighed. "All right." He looked up, met Jonah's gaze, and said, "At first I only came back to try to turn off the homing beacon. Despite Thera's theory that the being for which it was originally intended was dead I still felt it was a danger so I... it took me three days to figure out how to turn it off. After that... I just, there was something about this place and I had to know. I had to figure this out, learn more about it. I'm sorry, Jonah, I didn't think about the consequences if-"
"I think it's the farthest thing from the administrator's mind right now. What's with the food and water?"
Carlin looked a bit sheepishly at the piles. "Bad feeling? I don't know why but I was sure that the god I read about on the tablets was real and that he was alive. I know you both thought it was... foolish, but I couldn't get rid of the feeling that he was a very real threat. I thought it would be prudent to take precautions."
"You stole," Kaegan accused sharply.
Carlin looked at her, only then seeming to consider the fact he'd grabbed her and taken her with them. "Considering the circumstances don't you think it's a good thing I did?"
"NO! What's going on? What is this thing?"
"Carlin," Jonah said and jerked his head once in Kaegan's direction.
Carlin nodded in understanding. "Kaegan, I know this is going to sound strange at first, but I need you to listen to me..."
It took Carlin an hour to explain it all to Kaegan, and then another ten minutes to answer her questions or, more often than not, make excuses for how much he didn't know despite all the things he just inexplicably knew. The storm of thunder and earthquakes continued, at a toned-down volume, the entire time he talked, like background interference. Thera had sat down in one of the pilots' seats and Jonah was perusing their supplies, taking stock of what they had. At the pile of Jaffa he'd pulled out two staffs and thereafter kept them close at hand. Thera had an impression of them as weapons, powerful ones, and at the moment it was the only defense they had against whatever was ripping their planet apart.
Kaegan was taking it pretty well, considering she was trapped with two people she disliked and one she thought was night sick while her world was hammered.
"So this god is up there right now destroying everything?" Kaegan asked in the end.
Carlin shrugged. "I think so. We should be safe here, at least from the cave-ins... this ship is stronger than the stone, it would have to be or it would have crumpled on impact all those centuries ago."
Jonah, brandishing both staffs like walking sticks, said finally, "I'd say we have enough to survive six days."
"How did you manage to get so much food and water?" Thera asked in amazement. Rations were watched closely at all times.
Carlin ducked his head. "Some of it I honestly filched from the kitchen, some I took from the bottoms of other workers' bowls before the dishes were washed, the rest of it is mine."
Thera's eyes widened. "You must have gone without eating or drinking sufficient amounts for weeks to accumulate this much."
Carlin shrugged. "Like I said, I thought it was necessary."
"I can't believe you, Carlin." Kaegan seethed. "I never thought you would steal from your own people."
Carlin opened his mouth to say something in reply, stopped, then settled on a strange frown.
Thera listened to the thundering beyond the ship and Jonah asked, almost to himself, "How long do you think they'll keep this up?"
"Until there's nothing left alive," Carlin answered somberly.
Into the night the bombardment continued and the four workers hiding out in the tel'tac began to settle into a tense silence. Kaegan lay down and succumbed to exhaustion first, as she had been awake a day longer than the other three. Carlin was sitting at the pilot's seat, studying the commands and controls but he had dared not touch anything for fear of setting off another alarm. With the enemy so close it would be pinpointed immediately. He was distracting himself with work so he wouldn't have to interact with Jonah or Thera.
Thera was getting drowsy but despite how tired she was she couldn't imagine sleeping. She was terrified to think of what she might wake up to find. She paced the small confines and massaged her belly. It seemed even the baby was agitated.
"You should sleep," Jonah's voice intoned lowly and Thera sighed at it. She knew Jonah's vocal subtleties well enough to hear concern, affection, and demand in his tone. Why, at times, he was able to order her around and she thought nothing of blindly obeying was beyond her.
She turned to look at Jonah and he took it as acquiescence. He took off his jacket and laid it on the floor. Then he retrieved a handful of blankets Carlin had taken and began to arrange them. Thera had to credit him effort, he was trying to make someplace comfortable for her to rest.
"Here." Carlin was suddenly at Jonah's side, sans jacket, offering the orange coat in meager appeasement to Jonah. The jackets were by far better as insulation and padding than the pathetic blankets they were provided.
Jonah looked up at Carlin, met his gaze, then with a silent nod took the jacket and laid it down. Then he turned and held out his hand for Thera.
Thera thought better than to make an issue of her restless mind (and the defeatist effect it would have on her ability to actually get any sleep) and went to Jonah and let him help her on to the ground atop the piles of coats and blankets. It was softer than she'd expected but that wasn't saying a great deal. She'd expected just shy of rock-hard.
"Comfy?" Jonah asked, the barest humor in his voice, and it made Thera feel a little better. She wouldn't burst his bubble. She reached out for his hand and said softly, "Stay with me."
Jonah didn't have to be asked twice. She wondered if he could have been pried from her side. He settled down next her, spooned up to her back the way they lay back in their little corner of the south passage. It was probably buried by now. His arm slid over her waist and came to rest on her abdomen. When the baby kicked he rubbed her stomach and seemed to unknowingly hush a baby that could not possibly hear him. Even still, it calmed Thera a little more so she wouldn't mention its futility to settle the baby.
Thera closed her eyes and listened to the roars beyond the ship. She'd never get any sleep attending to that. She shifted her attention and instead listened to the sound of Jonah breathing, let it pace her with the steady beat of inhale and exhale, and it finally lulled her into sleep.
Some time later, no one knew exactly how many hours, three of the ship's occupants were awake. Carlin, the last to go down while the others were asleep, was still sleeping. He was curled up on the floor near the control console, notably apart from either Kaegan to one side or Jonah and Thera on the other. He was lying atop a pathetically thin blanket, arms crossed over his chest to ward off the chill air, with his jacket draped over him. Jonah had done that. When Thera was sitting up and the full 'bed' no longer needed Jonah had picked up Carlin's jacket and laid it over the sleeping younger man. No one said anything about it, and Jonah didn't look like he wanted anyone to say anything, either.
Kaegan had awakened up first, a little before Jonah, and that fact had sent a racing thread of disquiet through Jonah. She'd been awake and unsupervised while they all had their guard down, but the woman seemed to have done nothing to compromise them. Even the food stores looked untouched. Appetite, no doubt, would be a while in coming given the circumstances. Still, Jonah was prone to be suspicious and Kaegan was his most proximal suspect for 'enemy', unproven as her loyalty was as it pertained to the group, the trio that had always been Jonah, Thera, and Carlin.
Thera had been the first to necessitate a 'bathroom' and the solution had been less than elegant. Carlin, among his store of stolen goods, had recovered a large pot with a chunk missing from the top. Obviously it had been discarded and it became their toilet, set near the back corner for lack of a better place. It wasn't pretty, and six days would make it escalate rapidly to unpleasant, but it was inescapably necessary.
Jonah was sitting on the floor, back propped against the wall, with Thera (sitting atop his jacket) between his legs. His hands were in her coat, rubbing and kneading her lower back in an attempt to ease the ever-increasing backaches Thera experienced. Little seemed to make them go away but Thera told him his ministrations helped and Jonah had little reason to doubt her. He was just glad there was something he could do.
Kaegan was still and quiet at the other side of the room and her taciturn presence troubled Jonah. She was an unknown, a wild card, and he didn't like it. Even with the blunder Carlin had made Jonah knew he could trust the younger man to work for the good of the group. He knew Carlin's intentions were good, if not their outcomes. Kaegan, however, was another story. She was an enigma and he was on edge for it. He couldn't fathom why Carlin had grabbed her and taken her with them.
Thera gave a sigh, tight and pained, and Jonah's hands stilled and he whispered, "You okay?"
Thera gave a grunt and Jonah cant his head in silent question. Thera couldn't see him behind her but seemed to sense the query all the same. "It's nothing." Which was Thera-code for 'it hurts but there's nothing you can do so you don't need to be bothered by that now'. Jonah frowned. It seemed the closer Thera got to giving birth the less he was able to do to help her with the multitude of discomforts that accompanied pregnancy. He couldn't help but feel a little guilty for what she had to endure.
Carlin, until then an unmoving figure, suddenly began to fidget in his sleep. He grumbled under his breath, "No... fight it..."
Thera and Jonah looked toward their friend just as Carlin jolted and cried, "Sha're!"
Thera blinked in shock and Jonah's hands left their station under her shirt to grab one of the staffs he'd laid nearby. What foe he thought he might confront, when the demon had been in Carlin's dreams, Thera did not know but she didn't begrudge him taking up a weapon.
Carlin opened his eyes and looked around. Recognition came back to him and one hand reached out to pat on the empty floor. After a second he frowned then sat up and squinted at his companions. His jacket fell down to his legs and Carlin looked down at it and then up at Jonah.
"You all right?" Jonah asked neutrally.
Carlin nodded and rubbed at his neck. "Yeah, fine... what time is it?" then he seemed to realize how stupid a question that was and gave a dismissive wave.
Silence fell again.
"We should eat," Jonah decreed as he laid the staff down on the floor again, and with a meaningful look at Carlin the younger man set about divvying up portions for everyone. The four bowls passed out were barely a quarter full but the food would have to last them as long as possible so no one complained. Thera, still braced between Jonah's legs, leaned back to shamelessly use him as a support (he was much more comfortable than the unforgiving wall) as she ate her small meal. Jonah, the entire time, merely perched his chin on her shoulder and stroked her belly. When Thera was done she put her bowl aside... only to find Jonah's appear before her. He had not eaten a bite.
"Jonah..." she began to argue.
"Take it, we're not doing anything but cooling our heels in here so I can stand to miss a few; you have to look after our baby."
Thera wanted to refuse but her remaining hunger and the thought of the baby's well-being (and the heart-wrenching way Jonah had said 'our baby') won over and she reluctantly took his food and ate that, too. Even with his portion she was far from sated but she knew she would have to get used to it... they might have a long wait in store for them.
Another day of tense silence stretched and the whole time the explosions outside continued. It did not let up. A few sounded close but their alien sanctuary held.
It was Kaegan, oddly enough, who first broached the question on all their minds. "Assuming we survive this, what was the plan after they left?"
Three consternated expressions were her immediate answer.
"We'll have to try digging our way out," Carlin stated the obvious.
Kaegan glowered at him. "To what? From the sounds there'll be nothing left."
"Would you rather die of thirst and starvation in here?" Jonah retorted and Kaegan, seething but chastised, had no answer.
Thera shook her head. "We have to get to the surface."
"We'll die out there even faster!" Kaegan shot back and pinned Thera with a loathing glare.
"No, I... I don't think so." At the looks she received Thera said, "Look, we can't stay in here and making our way to the surface is our only hope of finding a way off this... out of here, maybe to safety."
"What do you expect to find up there that could help us? There's nothing but ice and snow. We'd trade freezing to death for starving to death." Kaegan clipped sharply.
Thera frowned. "There has to be something up there."
"And we'll find it," Jonah said forcefully as he gently touched Thera's shoulder from where she stood a pace in front of him. She'd stood (with Jonah's help) ten minutes ago to relieve the ache in her hips from sitting on the floor so long and Jonah was on his feet as well, leaning against the wall with hands behind his back before he reached out to her. Thera turned to look at him for his unwavering support of her and Jonah managed a lop-sided smirk of a smile.
Kaegan gave a disgusted scoff and mumbled something about 'would have been a quick death, at least', but no one was paying attention.
"Until then we just wait," Jonah finished and the oppressive silence, punctuated by distant thunderclaps of destruction, started to slide into place again. Jonah quipped, "Anyone up for a game of 'I Spy'?"
Kaegan frowned as if Jonah might be night sick as well but Carlin and Thera smirked faintly in reply.
Thera made her way closer to Jonah's side and his hand, like a magnetic attraction, went to her stomach. Thera suspected Jonah would be a little bereft once the baby was born and he couldn't do that anymore.
Kaegan slid down against the opposite wall and crossed her arms petulantly, apparently finished talking to any of them for the foreseeable near future.
Carlin sat perched atop the center auxiliary control console like an unshaven forest sprite out for mischief, his chin in his hand and one leg folded nearly to his chest.
Jonah dropped his face toward Thera and said softly, "You know what occurred to me?"
"What?"
"We haven't come up with any names for the baby. It's probably getting about the time we should have one ready."
Thera repressed a fearful swallow at the thought and nodded. "You're right, we should start thinking about it... any ideas?"
Jonah was pensive all of two seconds. "I got nothing. You?"
Thera thought a moment then said, "I like 'Daniel' for a boy."
Carlin snorted. "That's a crap name."
"And I suppose you have a suggestion?" Jonah asked, his tone just biting enough to show that Jonah was not over being mad at Carlin.
Carlin went quiet then shook his head. "No, you're right, it's up to you and Thera. Sorry."
"It's all right, Carlin," Thera assured and to reinforce her point she shot a pointed look at Jonah. 'Play nice' had never had a more befitting expression as its champion.
Jonah rolled his eyes but he didn't pull away from Thera and she knew, with Jonah, that was significant.
Two days later, after the unending attack on the planet outside had become familiar ambiance, the explosions stopped. It was abrupt and the sudden silence and abrupt stillness of the ground jarred them all from sleep. They looked upward and each privately speculated. The quiet seemed almost more ominous than the sound of a people and land being ripped apart. Kaegan had brushed the chip off her shoulder to step closer to Carlin and Thera and Jonah had looked into each others' eyes and a depth of meaning beyond their lives as workers flashed between them.
It took them a long time to stop waiting, breaths held, for the next wave of the attack. When the ground continued to stay stationary and the air was not shattered by bone-rattling bass booms they slowly began to adapt to it. After a while Thera left Jonah's side and continued her work with Carlin.
Perhaps as much as an attempt to stave off cabin fever and boredom as to aide them in any manner, Thera had begun to study the ship with Carlin's translating assistance. She was stunned to discover the workings of the ship, the engines and propulsion and function, just came to her. It was like an old contraption from childhood she found in an old chest and the embedded memory of how to use it was still there in her mind. It made intuitive sense to her. Carlin, excited by the new information in an area he had not been able to master beyond knowing the language under which it was created, seemed to forget some of their woes in the thrill of discovery. Thera, too, was enthusiastic about her findings and she was aglow for the first time since their worries had begun when Carlin's misdeeds were uncovered. Jonah stood back and let them lose themselves. Mechanics was her forte and he left her to it, glad that she could let go of the sense of danger for a few minutes and enjoy herself. Carlin, too, seemed to have found his natural place as a translator, deciphering the intricacies of the unknown language surrounding them. Jonah was content to stand back, staff in hand, and keep watch over them. It felt natural.
Kaegan, the odd-man out as it were, slowly made her way over to where Jonah stood, watching his two friends try to discern why the bombardment had stopped. Thera had figured out where the sensors on the ship were, and she speculated (with a frightening degree of detail) how they worked, but as yet she had not hazarded to try them for fear of alerting the enemy to their presence. Even now she was debating whether she should try them in light of the renewed silence.
Jonah glanced over at Kaegan, suddenly right beside him, and for once she didn't look like she was spoiling for a fight. Jonah let her be for that and returned to his watch over Carlin and Thera, who were bickering. That was so normal, even though he'd rarely seen them in a snit such that it made a smile pull at his lips despite it all.
"If what Carlin said is true, this is all his fault," Kaegan finally said.
Jonah wasn't surprised. He'd thought the same thing more than once since this all started. He wasn't about to let Kaegan divide the three of them with mistrust, though. "'Suppose so."
Kaegan looked at him, agape at his nonchalant reply. "How can you forgive him so easily? How can you trust him when he may have gotten all of our people killed?"
Jonah's jaw tightened. "He didn't mean to do it."
"So?!" Kaegan hissed. "Jonah, he is responsible for the death of all our friends, the end our existence, destruction of everything we've worked so hard for!"
Carlin turned at Kaegan's rising voice and his expression was so desolate and sad. He dropped his eyes, resigned, and slowly looked back at the console in front of him.
"Kaegan," Jonah said darkly, his voice so low even Kaegan hardly heard him. "If you knew Carlin you'd know he's thinking everything you are and worse. He knows what he did, but there's nothing we can do to change what happened. Now we have to worry about staying alive and getting out of here."
"And you still trust him?" she asked incredulously.
Jonah gave an infinitesimal nod. "Yes, I still trust him."
Kaegan shook her head in disbelief but Jonah looked over at her and said, "He could have left you to die with the others but he didn't, Kaegan. Remember that."
Kaegan blinked, taken by surprise, and was left standing there when Jonah walked away and headed toward his two companions.
"What's the word, Campers?" Jonah asked.
Thera and Carlin, engrossed, only spared him a glance each before Thera said, "We think they've started ground assaults with troops on foot."
Jonah looked toward the dimmed controls and saw no indication they'd been used. "How you do you know that?"
Carlin shrugged. "Hunch?"
Jonah realized it was his own 'hunch', too. Had it not been he would have ordered the cockpit door opened as soon as the explosions stopped. "Good enough for me. So we keep waiting."
"I think it's the best option available to us at the moment. At least we still can hide here. Once the food and water is exhausted we'll have to risk it." Thera looked at their ever-dwindling stack of supplies and chewed on her bottom lip anxiously.
Jonah was taken with the desire to reach out and touch her face, smooth his thumb over her worried lower lip, but he restrained himself and leaned against the staff in his right hand. More waiting. His usual inclination was to detest so much lying-low, but he found himself unusually amendable to hiding with Thera so close to delivering their child. Within the last few days he'd found himself looking at her and wondering how she could possibly get any bigger, how the baby could grow any more and still safely pass through the birth canal.
Nope, hiding was fine, no shame in keeping out of sight.
A day and a half later, with still no indication the enemy that had attacked them without warning was still present, they were forced to risk showing their hand. The food supplies were down to almost nothing, their tempers from such close-quarters were frayed, and their need to know what had become of the world they knew was irrepressible. They had to leave the safety of the tel'tac cockpit and take their chances outside.
They set about preparing to leave with great care, in no hurry to face what could conceivably be their deaths. Kaegan packaged what little remained of their food supplies, pouring the small allotment of gray gruel left into empty water bags and dividing up crusty bits of bread and cold vegetables. Two packs were evenly stocked while of the other two one was given more of each remaining food item and the second less. Kaegan set these aside for Thera and Jonah, respectively, and Jonah gave her a nod of approval. Kaegan, while not stead-fast friend to any of them, had learned to coexist with them. If nothing else the close confinement with the three of them had been good for that.
Jonah was dividing up the blankets. There was an odd number and he heaped the extra on to Thera's pile and the blankets, individually, were so pathetic that Kaegan didn't think it was worth raising a ruckus and Carlin conceded willingly to Jonah's decision. Thera, luckily, was too busy to notice the favoritism over all the rest of them or she might have complained herself. As it was she was sitting at the pilot's seat, Carlin alternately over her shoulder helping her read the commands on the panel and parsing out water rations into four bags.
"Thera?" Jonah asked. He had only a vague idea what Thera was doing, she'd tried to explain it to him and she'd lost him with due haste, but he trusted her to a fault so he let her continue what she was doing. Now he was wondering what that effort had yielded.
Thera, still watching her hands move, nodded and said as she worked, "I've been able to bring the sensors back online to see if we could get any idea of the condition of the surface."
"And...?"
Thera shook her head. "Sorry, sir, but I think the sensors were damaged in the crash, I'm only getting echoes from the rock around the ship."
Jonah was too focused on the content of the message to notice what Thera had called him.
"Well, I didn't think it would be that easy." Thera started to move her fingers purposefully over the controls again and he cocked his head. "What are you doing now?"
"I'm accessing environmental controls and increasing the atmosphere regulation three-fold."
"Ah... why?"
Thera smiled to herself. "I'm assuming the tunnels between us and the main cavern collapsed and that we'll have to dig our way out."
"Yeah," Jonah replied. He'd even presumed that much but he had no idea what that had to do with the ship's air conditioning.
"Which means once we're in the tunnels we'll be trapped with the only oxygen we have, but if we keep the tunnels between us and the ship clear as we go the ship's power system should keep feeding us enough breathable air that we don't asphyxiate."
"Oh, good." Jonah looked down at the pile of blankets on the floor and asked Thera after a moment, "You done yet?"
"Almost."
As though in answer the hum from the ship increased and a breeze wafted over the occupants, a breath of sweetly clean air.
"Good work, Thera, now get over here."
Thera grumbled something softly to herself but levered herself out of the seat and waddled (yes, Jonah noted, Thera was to the point of 'waddling') over to where he stood. Jonah bent to pick up the first flimsy blanket in her pile and said, "Take your jacket off."
Thera, gaze questioning, did as he asked and Jonah began to line the inside with blankets as he said aloud, "I want everyone to line their outer clothing with as many blankets as possible. It's going to be cold once we hit the top so we need everything we can get."
Kaegan and Carlin watched Jonah a second then started to shed their own clothing and line it with blankets. The pants were trickier, the blankets stuffed inside inclined to ball up when limbs presumed to join the party, but eventually they all struggled their way back into their clothes with the new layers. Edges of the blankets they had crammed in their clothes stuck out unevenly at the sleeves, bottoms of the jackets, waistbands, and pant cuffs, but it was a few degrees warmer and it made full use of their supplies. Jonah had to practically undress and redress Thera, to her unamused chagrin, and with the new lining her pants (previously tightly fastened) refused to close at all. Thera was perturbed but Jonah only danced his fingers along the underside of her hanging belly and tore one dangling end of his own impromptu jacket stuffing off in a jagged strip that he used to bind the open ends of her pants closed as snugly as possible. Finally, as a last touch, he took off his orange cap and tugged it down on Thera's head. It was too big and came to her eyebrows and she looked up at him and scowled. "Okay, this crosses the line into ridiculous."
"Oh, I don't know, I think it works for you," he teased back, kissed her on the nose playfully, then helped Thera to shoulder her food and water bags while Carlin and Kaegan did the same with their own supplies. Jonah, after hefting (though 'hefting' might erroneously imply great mass) his food and water he picked up the two staffs and nodded at Carlin. "Open it up."
Carlin, padded in his new outdoor-wear, moved to the door and input the sequence. Obediently, though not without grinds and creaks of protest, the door slid up and open.
The room beyond, the cargo space, was clear of debris as the cockpit had been. The moment the four of them went to the hole blasted in the side where they had entered the ship, however, there was a stone wall.
"It's all right," Jonah said confidently before anyone could be discouraged with how quickly they hit a cave-in. "When Brenna told us to abandon this sector we hadn't had a chance to shore up the braces yet. Once we clear this section the tunnels should have held up better. Carlin, come on, let's get started."
The two men started to shift rocks and stones aside while Kaegan and Thera moved the dislodged pieces to the back end of the cargo hold to keep the work area clear. When the boys tired the girls took over, though Jonah had railed ardently against Thera doing any heavy lifting. In a fit of temper (in no small part due to the discomfort of her advanced condition) she told him she would contribute to their own survival or she'd endanger his and Jonah grudgingly backed down. After her outburst, Thera's face still flushed with anger, Kaegan had given her a strange smile and Thera felt, for a moment, like she had a woman-ally. It lightened her spirit, placated her mood, and Jonah slunk around in the periphery and duly out of her way enough for her to settle down.
The women, physically not as strong (and one considerably handicapped), were worn out sooner by digging than the men and they shifted jobs again. Fortunately the short break seemed to be enough to rejuvenate Carlin and Jonah enough for them to set back into their work with energy. It helped that, after months assigned the duty, Carlin and Jonah were conditioned for the work. They limited their breaks for water, knowing their little remaining might be all they had until they could reach the surface where they could replenish their supply (the one good thing about an ice age was the guarantee they would find plenty of ice to be had).
True to Jonah's assurances, the team soon broke through the wall of rock into a largely unblocked passage of the mines. Jonah signaled the others to stay behind, took up one of the staffs, then shimmied through and walked a good distance ahead, on the alert. He stopped at one point to salvage a lantern (the light from the tel'tac did not reach so far into the mines and, underground, it was ink-black. He waved the lantern one-handed in one direction, then the other, then turned back and motioned for the others to follow. Kaegan, with the second staff, squeezed through next and Thera and Carlin worked to clear enough rocks for him to help her through then follow right behind.
The trio joined Jonah in the mine shaft.
"Anything?" Thera whispered as she drew up beside Jonah, mindful to keep enough distance that he still had full range of motion for quick moves with his staff.
"Not a peep, still as death.
"Kaegan," Jonah looked at Kaegan and the woman met his gaze. Jonah mulled over his idea a moment then took a chance. "Find another lantern then we'll scout ahead together."
Kaegan, seeing she was being trusted to watch out for them all, nodded and picked her way through the darkness hunting for a relatively undamaged lantern.
When she returned, a light source of her own in hand, she looked to Jonah for direction and waited.
Jonah turned to Thera and Carlin. "We'll take point, you two stay back and we'll signal you when it's clear."
"Jonah," Thera began to protest, but Jonah would have none of it.
"You're not fit to fight if someone or something pops up and you know it."
Thera frowned but couldn't deny the truth in his statement. She could barely manage her own body as of late.
"What about me?" Carlin asked.
"Watch after her," Jonah nodded toward Thera and Carlin didn't argue his position again.
Kaegan and Jonah, each with a lantern and staff in hand, started to creep down the tunnel ahead while Carlin and Thera brought up the rear.
They didn't find enemy troops but instead their next obstacle was another wall of rocks from a ceiling collapse.
Jonah set aside his things, as did Carlin, and wordlessly they set about clearing the debris again. Thera and Kaegan looked around for salvageable support beams and wedged them against the roof of the mine shaft, hoping it would be enough to forestall another collapse.
At last they broke through to the other side and Carlin, on his stomach pushing aside rocks, said breathily, "I can see light."
A man-sized hole was dug and Kaegan and Carlin climbed through. Jonah and Thera had to toss aside more of the stones before Thera could clear then the four of them were at the mouth of the main entrance to the west mine shaft.
The sight was numbing. The main cave was almost unrecognizable. The entire left portion was buried under rubble, the wall that had always seemed to solid a frozen landslide that covered so much of their old home. A few engines were still running but it was far from the din that used to accompany the main room. And the skylight was gone. In its place was shaft of sunlight, piercing the darkness and showing gray skies and billows of smoke beyond.
On the ground, scattered like bothersome rag dolls, were bodies. Orange-clad figures were sprawled seemingly everywhere. Small fires burned, filling the air with the acrid stench of smoke, burned skin, and rotting bodies.
Thera felt like she was going to be sick when the smell of death hit her.
"Oh no..." Kaegan whispered and covered her mouth.
Jonah's free hand moved to Thera's waist like an aside and Carlin looked down at the floor.
"Who could do this?" Kaegan uttered, aghast.
"Come on," Jonah said gruffly, "we have to see what's left, if there's any survivors." Jonah looked upward toward the bared sky beyond the hole in their once ceiling them propelled his team forward.
Three hours later, picking through the wreckage of their old home, it was clear that no one had survived but them. Bodies crushed under stone, others shot, some burned... it was horrifying and Thera more than once had to close her eyes and give her stomach time to settle. The four met up under the hole to the sky and each shook their head to report their failure to find any other survivors of the catastrophe.
Jonah nodded heavily then said, "We need to make our way to the kitchen and see if there's anything we can salvage."
Kaegan looked sharply at him. "How can you think of food at a time like this?"
Jonah turned serious, steady eyes on her. "Because without it we won't last much longer than they did. We can find water once we reach the surface but just 'happening upon' food is a different matter."
Kaegan was fighting to keep her composure and Carlin stepped up and touched her arm. "Kaegan... you worked in the kitchen before you were the mining foreman... can you show us where the extra would be stored?"
Kaegan slowly nodded, gripped her staff, then led them over the uneven piles of rock in their path. Their progress was slowed as the terrain was especially difficult for Thera to navigate and Jonah hung back and stayed with her, at her side to help her struggle over the rocky hills.
When they reached the food storage bins they were in luck. Most of the food lay there untouched, the attack so violent and sudden that there had been no time for anyone to raid and horde. Vegetables, bread, cured meat... it was still awaiting its turn to be served to the hungry workers.
Wordlessly, everyone subdued by the carnage they had tunneled out to find, they stuffed their food sacks with food. When those were full they filled their pockets, then they made sacks of curtains. They found one water basin intact and filled their water bags then turned to deciding their next course of action. As though in unspoken agreement, everyone's eyes went to Jonah.
Jonah was deep in thought, considering their options, then looked back the way they'd come. "We need to get to Brenna's office."
Kaegan asked, "Why?" Her fire and spirit were noticeably dampened by seeing her colleagues, her friends, sprawled dead.
"Brenna spoke frequently with Administrator Caulder but we never saw her leave her office to go see him. There must be a passage in her office leading to his. It should take us to the surface."
Kaegan's brow crinkled. "What makes you think Administrator Caulder's office was situated on the surface?"
Jonah's lips pursed and his eyes narrowed even as his gaze seemed to cast over a thousand yards. "Just a feeling."
In silent consent the four started back from the kitchen toward the overseer's office. What before would have been a fifteen minute walk had become a two and a half hour trek and by the time they were able to see the location of Brenna's old office Thera was panting for breath and clutching one arm around her distended abdomen as though she could literally carry it farther.
Jonah looked in concern at her. "You okay?"
Thera nodded but couldn't speak in a voice trained enough to assuage him.
Jonah touched her stomach, as though it might give him insight into Thera's true physical state, and he turned to Carlin and Kaegan. "We need to stop and rest."
"Don't stop on account of me," Thera protested, out of breath, but Jonah looked sharply at her.
"I won't lose you now, Thera, you or the baby. We stop and rest."
Thera went quiet and Carlin and Kaegan tried to look as though they hadn't heard the emotional remark from the tough-as-nails Jonah.
They all found a relatively level surface, dropped their bags, then sagged down to recuperate. Jonah eased Thera down to the ground and, despite her earlier claim she could keep going, she sagged back against a large rock and closed her eyes, arms draped around her stomach.
Jonah knelt beside her and touched her knee. Thera opened her eyes and looked at him.
"You're not feeling any pain, are you?" he asked quietly.
Thera knew what he was thinking and shook her head. "No, it's not that." She gave a wane smile and said flippantly, "You try climbing up and down these piles of rock with fifteen, twenty pounds dropped into your gut."
Jonah smirked wryly. "Guess it would wear me out."
Thera nodded and closed her eyes again. It did feel good to take a breather, she had to admit, even if only to herself.
"Well, the good news," Jonah said, now addressing everyone, "we have enough food to have a decent meal and rebuild our strength. Eat up, everyone... within reason."
Understanding their respite would be longer than a simple twenty-minute reprieve they opened their food packs and ate straight from the sacks until they were no longer being gnawed by hunger. Thera, too, partook of enough to actually appease the hungry baby inside her for the first time in nearly a week.
The temperature was starting to drop, signaling the approach of night. The light coming in through the skylight dimmed and Jonah sidled closer to Thera.
"Sorry I can't build a nest for you," he said in a teasing voice though underneath his sarcasm his regret was sincere.
Thera touched his arm that looped around her. "It's okay. I'm so tired I don't think falling asleep will be a problem."
"You should rest," he said and kissed her temple. They were sufficiently hidden by the darkness that Carlin and Kaegan wouldn't clearly see the gesture.
"We can't all sleep," Thera said, but Jonah stopped her.
"I won't. I'll stay up, then when I get sleepy I'll wake Carlin to take over, and I'll tell him to pass off to Kaegan when he gets loopy."
"I can-"
"Don't argue with me on this, Thera.... please."
It was the 'please' more than anything else that silenced her. Jonah was not disposed to pleading and she knew it. "Okay."
Jonah hugged her closer, "Thank you. Now get some sleep."
Thera leaned into him, rested her head on his chest, and her eyes closed almost immediately.
When Thera woke up the first thing she noted was the cold. Second was the hard, cold stone under her. Third, Jonah wasn't with her.
Thera sat up as quickly as her unwieldy body would permit and sought her companions in the dawning light. She could just barely make out Carlin and Kaegan, both still sleeping, cuddled up together, probably for warmth. There was no sign of Jonah.
Thera started to struggle to her feet to search for him when a hand dropped on to her shoulder from behind and she gasped and swung.
"Whoa!" Jonah whispered harshly, just barely ducking away from her elbow.
"Jonah! Where were you?" Thera hissed in mixed anger and relief.
Jonah hefted the four food bags he had in one hand. "Refilling what we ate last night. Might as well start off on the surface with as many supplies as we can." His eyes cut to the two sleeping figures and he frowned unhappily. "Damnit, I would have thought Carlin would tell Kaegan the point of waking her up was so she could keep watch."
"Was she awake when you left?"
"Yeah."
Thera shifted on the uncomfortable rock. "Then she probably just fell asleep and technically you were awake so she probably thought it was safe to doze off. Um... Jonah?"
"Yeah?"
Thera swallowed her pride. "It kills me to say this," his eyebrows climbed in curiosity. "I think I'm going to need your help to go to the bathroom."
Jonah smiled cheekily. "I won't tell if you won't."
Thera scowled. "Sure, laugh, I'm sure a man would find this just so amusing."
Jonah set down the food bags and moved around to stand in front of Thera and help her to her feet. When she was upright he held her close and whispered, "Not when he's the father of said baby he wouldn't."
"I still think you're enjoying this too much," Thera griped.
Jonah chuckled and started to help her over the rubble.
"I don't suppose we could make it back to the lavatories? I don't think I'd need your help if I could actually use a toilet."
Jonah shrugged. "It'd take us about half an hour to clamber our way over there. Can you hold it that long?"
Thera huffed. "No."
"Don't worry about it, Thera, at least you needing to go is a good sign you're not dehydrated. Besides, it's nothing I haven't seen before."
"You're not helping."
Jonah squeezed her hand and helped her pick her way over the debris until finally she proclaimed where they were was where they'd been heading and she choked down the last of her dignity and let Jonah help her remove her pants and hunker down to relieve herself.
When they'd all answered the call of nature, had a light breakfast, and repacked their sparse supplies, the light outside coming through the broken skylight had increased enough for them to see where they were placing their feet and to make out the distant shapes of Brenna's office. The office itself was a crush of silver metal on the ground, collapsed from its aloft place by the attack.
The four companions picked their way over the debris and fallen stones until they were standing before the twisted cubicle.
Jonah tilted his head back and looked at the place the office used to be. There it was, a perfectly rectangular opening, a hallway, that would have led off the back end of Brenna's office.
"Oiy," Jonah muttered at the overhead distance between them and the hallway.
Kaegan eyed the climb. They could scramble over the piled debris halfway but then it was a steep, almost completely vertical face up to the hallway's opening.
"We need rope," Carlin said idly.
Jonah looked around, searching his mind for something they could use, then he winced. "Carlin, Kaegan." Both looked at him. "Start seeing how many coats you can salvage."
Carlin's expression fell sadly but Kaegan was aghast. "You would steal from the dead?!"
"They don't need them, we do. Unless you can think of something else we can fashion into a rope, in which case I'm all ears."
Kaegan turned away, bitter, but eventually she shot a murderous glare at Jonah then marched off. Carlin followed suit and Jonah turned to Thera.
Thera was scrutinizing the incline. "I can't make that, Jonah. No way."
"We'll haul you up, you won't have to climb."
Thera touched her stomach uncertainly.
"Let's go help Carlin and Kaegan."
An hour later they had collected twenty-three jackets. They had happened across many more, but some were too horribly pinned beneath rocks (along with their owners), others were ripped beyond usefulness, some were just too gory to be touched. Jonah and Thera set about tying the coats, sleeve to sleeve, and after linking only fifteen jackets they had a sizable length of material they felt certain would reach the hallway with coat to spare.
Jonah stood, helped Thera to do so, then looked at the climb again. "Okay, now one of us has to get up there."
"I'll go," Carlin offered.
Jonah had been about to volunteer himself but he stopped and considered Carlin's proposal. The man was younger, more limber (with damnably compliant knees) and his sheer upper-body strength surpassed Jonah's. He was the best choice.
"All right. After Carlin makes it to the top you go next, Kaegan, then I'll set something up for you both to pull Thera up. After that you can lower the rope again for me."
With three nods they climbed up over the remains of Brenna's office until they were as high as they could climb as a group. Jonah dropped the rope of coats and the spare jackets on the craggy floor and handed one end of the jacket chain to Carlin.
Carlin took the sleeve, seemed to consider his options for securing it to him for the climb, then he knelt down and tied it around his left ankle.
"Good luck," Kaegan said quickly before stepping back to better watch his ascent.
Carlin took a drink from his water bag then lowered food and water bags to the ground. He then took a deep breath, stepped to the wall, found a few handholds, and started to climb.
Jonah, Kaegan, and Thera could only stand below and watch as Carlin slowly crept his way up the wall toward the hallway. Small pebbles and dust rained down on them and as Carlin got higher and a longer and longer link of jackets spanned between Carlin and his friends, the three on the ground had to step back to better watch him.
With a sigh of relief from everyone Carlin finally reached the hallway and heaved himself inside. He disappeared from view and there was nothing. No sound from him, no sight of Carlin at all.
"Carlin?" Thera called.
No response.
"Carlin!" Jonah barked.
"What?! Geez, you'd think a guy could catch his breath after that!" Carlin bitched back.
Jonah and Thera smiled at each other and even Kaegan looked relieved.
"Just checking for life-signs, Carlin. You take your breather. Actually, hold on a sec," Jonah moved to the hanging rope of jackets and secured Carlin's water bag to it. "Yo, Carlin!"
"What?!" Carlin snapped, from his voice only beginning to regain its wind.
Jonah smiled. "Just reel in."
Carlin grumbled, too far to be heard intelligibly, but the jacket chain began to crawl upward and once the water bag cleared the edge there was a pleasantly surprised, "Hey! Thanks."
A minute or so later Carlin poked his head over the edge and looked down at them. "Oh... umm..." he uttered and started to look uneasy.
"What, what is it?" Thera asked, worried.
"Oh," Carlin answered, "I just, um... I think I'm finding out I don't like heights so much."
Jonah rolled his eyes. "Feed that rope back down here and we'll get Kaegan up there to hold your hand."
Carlin scowled down at Jonah but dutifully lowered the linked jackets. Kaegan went to it, gave it a couple of tugs, then called up. "I'm coming up!"
"I've got it, go ahead," Carlin, out of visual range, called again.
Kaegan worked her way up the rope, climbing with her feet and pulling with her arms. Much faster than Carlin she reached the hallway's entrance and Kaegan clambered over the edge then there was another silence.
Jonah opened his mouth to call out to them.
"Before you start bitching again," Carlin said testily, "we're just catching our breaths."
Jonah snapped his jaw closed and glowered upward. Thera tried, and mostly failed, to hide a giggle.
Jonah looked at her when he heard her snickering. "No giggling," he said, and his voice was stern but his eyes were anything but. Thera took her cue from his eyes.
"Whenever you guys are ready send the rope back down and get ready to pull up Thera!" Jonah called up to them.
A few minutes later the rope came back to the ground and Jonah picked up the end.
Thera was shaking her head. "I don't know how you expect me to do this, Jonah."
Jonah looked at her. "Well, what's the alternative, you and I stay down here the rest of our lives? Raise our kid here?"
Thera blanched at the mere thought of the bodies everywhere. She gave a weak shake of her head.
Jonah picked up another jacket, the largest in the remaining pile. "Besides," he said, "I have a plan."
Thera watched and in a few seconds understood what he was doing. She eagerly pressed closer to help. They tied the bottom corners of the jacket where it would usually close down someone's front to the free sleeve at the end of the jacket chain. They then folded the sleeves up and secured it to the tangled knot already formed. "Brace it!" Jonah yelled then started to tug and pull for all he was worth to tighten the knots and make sure it would hold.
He gave a particularly strong yank and Carlin yelped. "Look, if you want us to pull Thera up we're going to have trouble doing it from down there!"
Jonah gave another tug and motioned Thera forward. He slid the jerry-rigged sling over her head and settled it underneath her butt. She settled back partially into a half-way decent hammock-type seat.
Jonah stood back and asked, "Well?"
Thera bounced lightly in it, not fully weighting it, and said, "If it doesn't fall apart half-way to the top this might actually be fun." She flashed him a surprisingly cocky smile and Jonah smirked.
"Hold it tight, you guys," he said loudly, then he nodded at her. "Weight it a few times."
Thera gave Carlin and Kaegan a second to grip the rope of jackets then settled down heavily in the seat. Finally her feet were dangling over the rock floor and it still held. Jonah was satisfied with their creation.
"Take her up!" Jonah said with a small shake of the rope over Thera's head and with a jerking start Thera started to rise into the air.
Jonah stood back and watched, his heart rising higher in his throat the higher Thera went, until finally Carlin's hand reached out and pulled her in and out of sight.
Jonah at last sighed.
"I'm secure," she called back, the only one considerate enough to keep him apprised when out of view.
"Send it back down," Jonah said, burden lightened considerably to know Thera had made it safely.
Before scaling the wall himself he started to send up their food bags and water bags, the staffs, and then, just in case, the other spare jackets they'd recovered. Finally he was out of supplies to feed up to them and he grasped the rope as it descended once more. "Heads up, it'll be me this time," he called overhead.
"Right, lots of dead-weight," Carlin commented back sarcastically.
"Very funny," Jonah retorted and, with a wicked grin, he slipped into the seat he'd built for Thera and ordered them to bring him up.
He was hauled up the wall, legs idly swinging like a bored child, and then his head cleared the floor of the hallway. He could see Carlin bearing the brunt of the task of pulling Jonah up, behind him Kaegan and beyond her Thera both pulling back on the rope to help. The recovered supplies were, for the moment, heaped in a pile to one side.
Jonah climbed up into the hallway and Carlin sagged back when the rope went slack. He looked down at Jonah and the 'seat' he'd used and gaped indignantly. "You just sat there?! You might have put forth some effort!"
Jonah smirked. "If I remember correctly, I was dead-weight."
Carlin scowled and Thera and Kaegan snorted.
Jonah moved over to the supplies and the others followed him. Jonah glanced surreptitiously over at Carlin and decided the younger man could use a break. He'd scaled the wall solo then pulled all three of them up. He needed a rest.
"Take five," Jonah declared, and Thera and Carlin moved to relax while Kaegan frowned at him. She soon noted the behavior of her companions, however, and guessed the meaning of Jonah's bizarre statement.
Thera used the wall for support and lowered herself laboriously to the ground across from their stash of supplies. Once there she let out a breath and placed one hand atop her protruding stomach. Jonah fetched a water bag and was soon taking his usual place at her right side as he held the canteen out to her.
"Hungry?" he asked.
Thera shook her head but accepted the water and took a drink. There was a very chilly draft coming from the hallway and Jonah's eyes cast toward the bend in the passage that kept them from seeing farther down the corridor. He tried to speculate what they might find.
Thera shifted uncomfortably and Jonah settled down next to her, shoulder to shoulder as they always sat. Thera leaned against him, head on his shoulder, and Jonah felt like they were back in their spot, before the attack, before the ship, before...
"Funny," Thera said under her breath and Jonah was shaken from his ruminations and glanced down at her.
"What's funny?"
Thera nodded and it translated as friction on his shoulder through his layers of clothing. She was indicating the two across the hall from them. "Carlin and Kaegan."
Jonah looked and had to say he didn't see anything particularly interesting about the two. They were sitting side by side (though not nearly as close as Thera and Jonah) talking about something while Carlin slumped lazily against the wall and occasionally took pulls from his water bag.
Thera nestled her head further against Jonah's shoulder and he decided he didn't really care what was so 'funny' about Carlin and Kaegan.
Jonah had decided he would let Carlin decide when they were ready to push on (within reason, of course... if Carlin wanted to pitch camp Jonah would have a few choice words to say). The younger man had done all the work of the last hour and he deserved the right to regain his strength. It wasn't like they were in a hurry; it seemed that all they were slated to find was the bodies of the dead and the evidence of genocidal-caliber destruction.
There had to be something they could use to keep themselves alive. On the surface there would be something. Jonah intended to will it to be true so strongly that it had no alternative but to be so. It seemed reasonable enough to him.
"How are you doing?" Jonah asked Thera softly.
Thera shrugged. "Bloated, cranky, useless... the usual."
Jonah reached out and used his hand on her chin to tip her head back until she was looking up at him. He smiled faintly, ever so faintly so Carlin and Kaegan wouldn't know it for a smile from where they sat, and his eyes moved once from her eyes to her lips then back to her eyes to meet her gaze with meaningful intensity. It was the extent of his communication with her but Thera knew Jonah and she knew his body language. She smiled, just as faintly, and he knew she understood what he refused to say in the company of others (and might not manage to say in private). He lowered his hand, looked down at Thera's swollen abdomen and the hand she had stationed there, then tilted his head back to rest it against the wall. It was better than the rough, craggy walls of the caves; this was smooth and by comparison almost soft. If Jonah wasn't careful he'd be tempted to fall asleep.
Ten minutes later Jonah looked across the hall and Carlin caught his eye. The exchange was short, wordless, but clear all the same. Jonah nodded and Carlin began to put away his water.
Jonah glanced over at Thera and smiled to find she'd dozed off on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed and she looked downright angelic. Jonah almost hated to wake her.
"Thera," he shook her gently and she opened her eyes.
"Time to go?" she asked sleepily.
Jonah nodded.
Thera frowned strangely. "No, time to go," she stated and shifted restlessly where she sat.
Jonah tried not to smile too much. "You just went."
"A couple of hours ago," she retorted plaintively then frowned sourly at him. "Baby, remember?"
Jonah held up his hands to ward off the beast of pregnancy, "All right, all right, we'll find you a head. Come on." Jonah got to his feet then pulled Thera to hers.
They all recollected their supplies, they divided up the jackets for each person to carry, and they rolled up the coat-rope and Jonah tied it to Carlin's back (as the non-weapon wielding individual in their party he was deemed the rope-barer... Thera's unborn passenger counted as her extra baggage). Then, lastly, Jonah and Kaegan took up their staffs.
Thera was staring quite pointedly at Jonah.
Jonah cleared his throat. "Kaegan, you and Carlin scout ahead, we'll bring up the rear."
Kaegan and Carlin nodded and started off down the hallway together.
Jonah turned to Thera, partly triumphant, and Thera's eyes widened. "Here?!"
Jonah shrugged. "How badly do you have to go?"
Thera grumbled and scowled but she checked the direction Kaegan and Carlin had disappeared once then her hands moved to unbind her pants. Jonah stepped forward to help and he could see the seething fire in Thera's eyes. She would certainly not miss this aspect of pregnancy when the baby came... although Jonah thought it was entertaining if only for the faces Thera made (not that he'd ever tell her; he might still want more children someday in the future).
Jonah and Thera caught up to Carlin and Kaegan as they were exploring a staircase that went, where else... up.
Carlin turned when he heard Jonah and Thera approach and asked, "You think it heads to the surface?"
Kaegan looked reluctant, raised with the stories of imminent death found above ground and with them a healthy fear of the topside landscape, but Carlin, Jonah, and Thera were remarkably undeterred by the stories. They wanted to get up top and Kaegan could not fathom why they were so eager to freeze to death.
"Let's see," Jonah said and clutched his staff tighter. "Kaegan, you're with me."
"Jonah," Kaegan protested on reflex. When he looked at her she found herself shaking her head.
Jonah seemed sympathetic but not necessarily empathetic. "No choice, Kaegan, remember?"
Kaegan thought back to the devastated caves and the bodies and she nodded once and steeled herself.
Jonah and Kaegan left Carlin and Thera behind to creep up the stairs. In places they had to step over chunks of the ceiling that had come crashing down. They passed one body, dressed in clothing that was not the familiar worker-orange, splayed face-down on the steps. The stairs ascended a long time before they reached the top... and another closed door.
Jonah flattened himself against the wall and gestured toward Kaegan. She stared a moment then looked at Jonah and figured out what he meant. She tip-toed to the other side of the door and likewise plastered herself to the wall.
Jonah pointed at himself, at the door, then at Kaegan and her staff. Kaegan, after a moment, nodded and stood at the ready.
Jonah reached for the handle and carefully eased the door open. He left it ajar an inch and peered through the crack. He saw a large, grand hallway, motionless, darkened, two bodies littering the ground before the passageway arched in a gradual curve.
Jonah opened the door farther and revealed only more of the deserted hallway.
He slipped out of the stairwell, staff at the ready and eyes and ears alert, but there was no stir of motion for his intrusion. There was only the now-familiar stench of the dead and the cold wind that had touched them in the hallway below.
Jonah looked back and motioned for Kaegan, situated in the open doorway, and the woman joined him. They examined the scope of the hallway from their safety of the stairwell but there was nothing to challenge them.
Jonah slowly eased his grip on his weapon and nodded to Kaegan. She lifted her staff and returned to the stairs to signal Carlin and Thera.
When Carlin and Thera joined Jonah in the hallway, Kaegan bringing up the rear, Jonah had already scouted a short distance in both directions and, aside from the two corpses and an additional body out of initial visual range, there was not a sign of other beings.
Kaegan was gaping at the expansive hallway. "I never suspected something like this..." she murmured in awe.
"I imagine the good administrator was full of surprises," Jonah said tersely and looked down both ends of the hallway. He was trying to decide which direction to explore, wishing he had a coin to toss, when something flared in his mind and demanded attention. It had been fleeting but it grabbed him and Jonah frowned.
"Jonah?" Thera asked to his look.
"This way," Jonah pointed to the left and the four began to walk in that direction down the arcing corridor.
They didn't meet another soul, not living, human, alien, god or otherwise. There were a few more bodies and obvious signs of a battle. There were scorch-marks on the walls and floors, a smoky smell of recent fires, and the way the bodies they discovered were arrayed. Legs and arms spread wide, holes and gashes torn into their skin, pools of blood dried rust-brown and cracking like sun-scorched lake beds in a desert. The lights were still functioning, but barely and it constantly threatened to plunge the four into darkness. Jonah wished they'd thought to bring the lanterns from the mines.
They were past one of many doors when Thera reached out and grabbed his arm. He stopped and turned to look at Thera, who gestured soundlessly toward the closed door.
Jonah nodded, signaled Carlin and Kaegan to get clear, and with the foursome pressed to the wall next to the door in question, two on each side, Jonah pressed the electronic command and the door split down the middle and slid open with an easy hush.
Jonah darted a glance into the room then jerked back but he'd seen nothing in that quick look, no threat.
He ordered the others to stay put and slipped into the room, staff at the ready. He crept forward, eyes on the alert, but quickly it became obvious there was no danger from enemy forces. Jonah allowed himself to then really see the room and his staff lowered and deja vu gripped him.
At the right side of the room was a large, pretentious bench like a judge's station. It faced a smooth, ornate floor... then there was the window on the left. Its glass was missing, of course, glittering with sunlight and crunching underfoot on the floor, and the floor was missing pieces, too. Jonah, however, was staring out the window.
At the city burning.
The curving cap to the dome that covered the metropolis was trapping smoke and creating a dark gray fog. There was a hole in the dome, easily the size of a house, as well as a number of smaller ones speckling the surface of the canopy, and smoke was escaping even as sunlight and flakes of snow were coming in. The sprawling cityscape was a scene of utter devastation. The streets were littered with debris; buildings were lying collapsed on each other, the horizon, back dropped against the white-washed glass of the dome, a jagged line.
"Jonah!" a harsh whisper came from the doorway.
Jonah looked over to see Carlin peeking in.
"It's clear," Jonah said lowly, staggered by what he was looking at, and the others stepped inside.
As one they jerked to a halt and stared, wide-eyed, at the vista.
Kaegan dropped her staff and her hands went to her mouth in shock. Her eyes widened and she started to tremble. "What... how...?"
Jonah felt a hand on his arm and looked down to see Thera holding on to him, her eyes transfixed on the scene outside the administrator's office window.
Jonah looked toward the other two and saw Carlin with his hand on Kaegan's shoulder as her complexion paled and her breathing hitched wildly.
"It's a bio-dome," Thera whispered in amazement and Jonah looked out again.
"This explains so much," Thera said, her hands unconsciously clutching Jonah's arm tighter. "The engine output readings, Brenna refusing to let me upgrade our equipment. They were hiding this. We were supporting this!"
Jonah turned to look at the administrator's desk. Something about it seemed important.
"How can this be?" Kaegan squeaked.
"They lied to us, all of us," Jonah answered, even though Kaegan's tone had been rhetorical, and Jonah extricated himself from Thera's grasp to step toward the bench. He went to the side, rounded the side of the structure, then walked up to the backside of the raised area. The backside was full of shelves. He bent down and started to examine the contents of each. When he found something black he pulled it out to study it in the light.
"What did you find?" Thera asked. Carlin, his arm now completely around Kaegan's shoulders, looked up at Jonah in curiosity.
Jonah frowned. "Not sure." He pawed over his find. It was black mesh and heavy fabric, ripe with pockets. He reached inside those pockets and found a wealth of items. A lighter, a pocketknife, a hand-sized mirror, a compass, quinine tablets, aspirin, medical gauze, butterfly stitches.
"Now this is what you need for an expedition," Jonah muttered to himself, pleased at his find.
Encouraged, Jonah pulled out the rest of the items in the same shelf with the black article of clothing. It amounted to a small mountain of gear. In all there were four vests with almost identical supplies in the pockets (one did not have the quinine and the aspirin but instead contained sweet tidbits of food), and four strappy items with three items each hanging off them. Jonah pulled one up to look closer at it. He knew it was a belt. Attached to it was a small jug that sloshed when he shook it, so it was obviously a container for water (much sturdier than the bags they were totting around). Jonah trailed his fingers to the next attached item and his hand closed with dark familiarity around the handle of a knife. He unclipped the securing strap and pulled free the blade.
"Weapons," Thera uttered appreciatively when she saw Jonah hold up the knife. She started toward the far end of the bench to join Jonah behind the furniture piece as he studied his treasure.
"Sweet," Jonah said aloud, then re-sheathed the knife and his hand closed, like muscle memory, over the last attached item. His thumb released the snap-button over the hammer-guard and the pistol slid easily out of the holster.
"This is more like it," Jonah said as he sighted the weapon out the window as Thera arrived at his side. The weapon's weight and balance were like a figure arisen from his dream, intimately familiar and one with his touch.
"Enough for everyone," Thera noted, almost ecstatic, while Jonah's hands smoothed over the gun. He paused then his hands moved for him. He released the clip and checked the magazine... fully loaded. He reloaded the magazine, pulled back the barrel to chamber a round, then thumbed on the weapon's safety.
Jonah hefted the belt and thigh attachment and frowned at the latter. There was an odd-shaped holster on the thigh-strap, empty on each of the sets, and he couldn't begin to imagine what manner of equipment or weapon had belonged there. Since it was missing he deemed it irrelevant and unfastened the thigh clasp and dropped the pointless attachment to the floor.
"Carlin, Kaegan, come up here," Jonah beckoned and Carlin (stooping to first recover the staff) gently guided a still-stunned Kaegan toward where Jonah and Thera stood. Jonah was already shrugging on one of the black vests, one fit him just right, and fastening the front clasps over his clothes. He hooked the belt around his waist and it all settled on his body so perfectly.
Carlin and Kaegan reached his other side and Carlin eyed the black mass questioningly as he propped the staff against the desk.
Jonah handed one vest to Carlin, one that looked his size. "Here, put this on."
Carlin let go of Kaegan and, after a moment looking at the vest, did so. Thera had already claimed one of the vests, the largest that had lacked most medical supplies, so Jonah riffled through the remaining belt and vest set. He took off the thigh strap, removed the gun (while he was comfortable with the idea of Carlin and Thera with a gun it seemed unwise to give one to Kaegan, and it was not even a matter of trust since he was not reluctant to give her the knife), then turned to Kaegan. "Kaegan, here you are, you put this one on."
Carlin was already adorned with both belt and vest and he was patting at it as though testing the feel of it on him. It fit him better than Jonah had thought it would.
Kaegan looked up at Jonah and her eyes were glistening, disillusioned and shaken like a child.
Jonah frowned sadly and he stepped toward the woman. "It's all right, here," and he eased first one of her arms into the vest then gently wrestled her second into it. The whole thing hung a little loose on her but fastened up it would do. Carlin, with a shy smile and apology, had put the belt on for her.
Kaegan looked down at herself, only then seeming to notice the black article she wore.
Jonah turned to find Thera had wormed her way into the fourth vest. Even as the largest of the batch it failed to come even close to covering her stomach and the belt was an obstacle of epic proportions so she'd removed sheath and holster and attached it to the vest itself (a little awkward-looking but functional all the same). She looked more in control just for having the weapons at hand.
"This is much better," Jonah said with a glint in his eye and Thera, equally energized, nodded emphatically in return.
"Let's see what else there is in this building," Jonah said and, taking up his staff, he waited for his group to collect themselves. Kaegan, though still rattled, had presence of mind to pick up her staff and follow, unguided, as the four of them, geared up in the black vests found in the administrator's office, trooped out to search the building.
Thera awoke to the animated kicking of her unborn baby and she mumbled under her breath in irritation. Jonah's arm, wrapped around her from behind, tightened slightly and she laid still a moment to remember where she was.
They were still in the huge building perched above their recent cave workplace and home. Their search yesterday, from one end of the facility to the other, turned up only more of the same. More bodies, more signs of a fire-fight, more offices. They had found bathroom facilities and Thera could have kissed the toilet to finally be once again able to pee without Jonah's help. They had found a cafeteria and stored food that was simply divine. After their day-long search and their relatively secure assurances that they were alone in the place they had returned to the cafeteria near the end of the day and indulged in a meal fit for kings. Thera could still remember the exquisite taste of every dish, much better than crusty bread and gray gruel they'd lived on by far. She'd eaten herself nearly to the point of feeling ill but it had been just what her body had been craving for months, something new and delicious, and it felt good to at last be satisfied and full.
Thera opened her eyes and the indirect lighting from a nearby window allowed her to make out the shapes across from her. Carlin was lying on his side facing her, his eyes gently closed. Kaegan was sitting up near his head and when Thera looked in her direction Kaegan gave a slight nod.
They were all on the floor. They had found an office sparse of furniture, void of bodies, and appropriated it for the night. Jonah had divided up the spare coats from the caves for everyone to build a bed and they had done the same rotation of watches that they had the night before.
Kaegan had recovered from the shock of seeing the domed city. It had taken time but slowly and surely she'd adjusted to the new knowledge. After she came to grips with it she'd become measured and cold. She felt betrayed and it was readily apparent to Jonah, Thera, and Carlin as they watched her accept the truth that all she knew had been a lie. In response to the discovery of the city Kaegan, in an unexpected turn of events, placed almost explicit trust in Jonah. Apparently the leader of the mutinous group of workers had proven himself, against all of Kaegan's beliefs, and she was latching on to her new certainty. Thera could understand the sentiment.
The baby shifted again and Thera felt it in her bladder.
With a sigh she moved to sit up and it alerted Jonah.
"What is it?" he asked groggily, though the man came to full alertness from deep sleep far more quickly than anyone should.
"Bathroom," she whispered back, and she tried not to grin that she actually could use a bathroom again. The plumbing didn't seem to work but after days squatting over a bowl in front of everyone then hunkering over the ground with Jonah's help Thera wasn't going to complain about not having the luxury of flushing.
Their office, fortunately, had an attached bathroom and Thera was allowed to go alone.
When Thera finished relieving herself she refastened her pants (her vest lay beside her and Jonah's sleeping pallet out in the office) and stepped up to the mirror on the opposite wall. She'd not seen her reflection in so long. When she actually tried to think about it, she couldn't clearly say when she had ever seen herself. Still, the image reflected back was familiar and she knew it was her. She studied herself in the cracked glass.
She was dirty. Her skin was mottled by grease, dust, and no telling what else. She didn't realize her eyes were quite so blue, but perhaps the dirt on her face made them look lighter. Her hair was unevenly cut and fell down to her shoulders. She remembered when it used to stick up, short, spiky, and free of her collar, but she'd never gotten around to having Jonah cut it again. Once she got pregnant and taken off intensive machinist duty it wasn't as hazardous for her to let her hair grow. It was easier to ignore it than tend it. It was unclean as well, greasy, limp blonde strands, and she suddenly wished she could take a shower.
Thera's eyes traveled down her reflected body and she stopped and studied the bulge of her pregnant belly wrapped by her oversized orange jacket. She was mesmerized. "So this is how Jonah sees me," she mused to herself and, struck by a sudden impulse, she glanced toward the door of the bathroom then stepped a pace back from the mirror. She shed her jacket then her shirt and she saw herself in the mirror naked from the hips up.
She looked almost grotesque. Everything was out of proportion, thrown off-center. Her stomach was an unsightly protrusion, brown-striped and stretched tight. Her breasts were heavy and enlarged and they too had fallen prey to the scarring brown stripes of over-extended skin. She turned slightly to one side and she could see why she had backaches, her spine was curved it looked to the point of snapping in two trying to hold the weight of her own belly. Her belly button, what used to be a normal little dip in her stomach, was popped out into a hard nub.
Thera, in a rush of emotion, felt tears well up in her eyes. She was hideous.
Thera startled when she heard the door start to open and her hands flew up to cover her freakish breasts.
Jonah poked his head in, calling gently, "Thera?" then he stopped and blinked when he saw her half-naked and close to crying.
"What is it?" he asked in genuine concern as he slipped inside and closed the door behind him.
Thera didn't lower her hands from her breasts; they were disgusting and he didn't need to look at that. She didn't want him seeing them. She looked away as she fought the tears that seemed intent upon spilling over.
"Thera?" Jonah stepped toward her, his hand outstretched, but Thera flinched away.
"Don't."
Jonah stopped, confused, and his eyes traveled her body for any signs of injury.
"What happened?"
Thera sucked in a breath, trying to toughen up, and she looked over Jonah's shoulder at herself in the mirror. The puffy, red eyes and ruddy nose did nothing for her ghastly appearance.
"Look at me," she choked angrily.
Jonah, perplexed, glanced over at her reflection then back at her. "I am."
Thera tugged her arms tighter over her distorted chest. "I'm repulsive!"
Jonah looked completely blind-sided. He stared at her, flabbergasted, then he took a tentative step forward. "Why would you think that?"
"Look at me!" she cried and her voice cracked.
Jonah did as asked. His eyes, in no rush, raked up and down her body. That heated look used to make Thera shudder but now it was sickening... what kind of person would find her attractive in her current state? No one in their right mind, and she knew Jonah wasn't night sick, so he had to be a good liar. Her mind spun to think of how many times he'd lied to her.
Jonah's eyes came back to hers and the passion melted into gentle concern. He considered her closely, affectionately. "You actually think you're ugly, don't you?"
Thera felt a tear fall and it was hopeless. She bit her lip and dropped her chin. "God, Jonah, I had no idea I looked like this. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought I did."
"You said I was beautiful!"
"Exactly."
Thera trembled with pent-up sobs and anger. "Don't lie to me! I can see for myself and that," she freed one hand to gesture hotly at the mirror, "is not beautiful!"
Jonah held out a hand as though trying to placate a wounded wild animal and Thera recoiled at first but Jonah had a way of stilling her. She shook and cried in fury and despair but she didn't retreat when Jonah took a careful step toward her.
"Thera... c'mere," he whispered, a step closer, close enough for her to feel him, and she dropped her head to his chest and wept. Jonah held her gently as she cried. He rubbed her back with strong, comforting hands and Thera wrapped her arms around him and pressed her revolting body against him.
Her outburst was short but intense. After a minute of breath-stealing sobs she started to calm (Jonah's touch helped a great deal in that) and she started to heave for air. When she started to go quiet and her breathing was under control Jonah's hands slowed their caress and he finally cant his head back and asked, "Can you tell me what you see?"
Thera gulped but she nodded. She would do it for Jonah... after all, he'd been the one forced to pretend for so long that he desired her malformed figure. She lifted her face from his jacket and Jonah stepped around behind her. His hands clasped loosely on her arms as he looked over her shoulder at her reflection with her.
Thera swallowed and forced herself to look at her own reflected body. Ghoulish. She was unfit to be seen, even by herself.
"I'm... I'm disgusting."
"Why?" he asked gently.
Thera snorted. "What do you mean 'why'? Don't you see? Look at me." Her own reflection was judging her. "My stomach, my breasts... it's like someone's pulled me out of shape. I looked deformed."
Jonah listened to her, his hands constant on her arms, then when Thera stopped talking he brushed a faint kiss against her shoulder. "Can I tell you what I see?"
Thera sighed in resignation but nodded.
Jonah looked up at their shared reflection, met her eyes in the mirror, and he said. "Thera. I see Thera."
Thera frowned at his reversed image.
His hands slid over her abdomen, what used to send races of tenderness and excitement through Thera's every nerve-ending, but now only turned her stomach because it was all a lie.
"I see the mother of my child. I see this," he circled her swollen midsection lovingly, "and I'm happy."
Thera lowered her eyes.
Jonah's lips were moving against her ear. "I look at you, Thera, and I see the best of me. Here," he hugged her belly. "Here I see where you and I, together, created a new life." His hands trailed softly up her body, over her rounded stomach, and gently touched her milk-heavy breasts. "I see these and I can't wait to watch you nursing our baby. I see you and I see everything I could ever want or need."
Thera ducked her head. She didn't want to believe him and yet she wanted to give in and trust him all at once. The things he was saying warred with what she saw with her own eyes.
He nuzzled her neck tenderly. "I see you now, in tears, and it makes me sad. I hate that I've done this to you."
"You?" Thera's eyes opened in stunned concern. "No, Jonah, you didn't..."
Jonah wrapped her in his arms. "I got you pregnant and I wanted this baby with you so much and now you're crying. Forgive me?"
Thera turned to look him in the eye. He looked genuinely sorrowful.
"Jonah..."
"Thera, I never told you this but maybe I should have. I know pregnancy's been a pain in the ass for you... literally. I know your back hurts and your feet ache and you have to pee every twenty minutes but I am so grateful you would endure all of that for me."
"For us," she corrected softly.
Jonah smiled faintly. "Thank you."
Thera reached up and pulled him down for a kiss. She forgot for a moment how unattractive she was supposed to be feeling.
When they pulled apart Jonah's eyes dropped to her body, half-bared, and he let his fingers dance down her throat, through the valley between her engorged breasts, and over the prime meridian of her swollen stomach. The baby kicked and it was a sudden small hillock in her skin before returning to normal.
Jonah smiled and looked back up at her eyes. "How can I see all this and not think you're beautiful?"
Thera looked down and watched his hands smooth over her belly (next to his large hands her stomach didn't look quite so gargantuan) and at the same time she felt the baby inside her stir. His baby. Their baby.
"I think I might believe you," she said lowly.
"Good, you should, because you're obviously not thinking straight. I'll attribute it to hormones and you won't be held accountable," Jonah teased gently.
Thera laughed nervously and looked up at him. She didn't doubt him. No matter what she saw when she looked in the mirror Jonah saw what he said he did. She berated herself for ever thinking Jonah would bald-face lie to her like that.
"Now," Jonah said in firmer tone, "let's get your clothes back on before Carlin comes in, and not because you're too gross to look at but because I'm too selfish to share you with anyone."
Thera smiled and didn't protest as Jonah helped her get back into her shirt and blanket-lined jacket. She cleaned up as best she could without running water and Jonah was waiting patiently for her when she was ready to go.
Before leaving she cast one more look at herself in the mirror and she didn't see a monstrosity. She saw the vessel, herself, that would bring forth her and Jonah's child. Even if it contorted her body there was beauty in that.
When everyone was awake and ready to depart they made their way down to the cafeteria for something to eat before they headed out of the building. Last night they had agreed they had to venture outside, explore the ruined city since there had been nothing that could help them inside the facility. As they had done in the caves, they filled their food bags with all the durable foods they could from the cafeteria stores after they'd eaten in case they did not get so lucky finding food once they left the administrative office building.
They didn't have to go in search of a door, not when there were a number of enormous holes blasted into the ground-level's walls. The previous evening they had passed by many such jagged openings to the outside, which they had given a wide berth at the time, but in the light they were better prepared to face what might lie beyond. The four of them, each heavily loaded with supplies, Kaegan and Jonah still wielding their staffs, made their way to one of the gaping wounds in the building. The light outside had brightened to mid-morning. The fires in the distance they'd seen from Caulder's office had finally begun to burn out and the smoke that caught and swirled at the underside of the glass covering of the city before slipping out into the eternal-winter sky beyond was thinner, less choking. More sunlight was penetrating through the glass and smoke and it cast the outside world in a deceptively pleasant and peaceful light.
Jonah climbed over the broken wall first and into the outdoors. His first inclination was to take a deep breath but even shallow breathing was laced with the smell of fire and decay. He resisted any urge to take in a lung-full. Thera followed Jonah and immediately tilted her head up to feel the sun on her face. A bright spot of the burning star was peeking through an open area of broken dome and Thera could almost feel it shoot straight into her blood.
"Come on, it's okay," Thera heard Carlin saying and turned back to look at him and Kaegan.
Carlin was standing just outside the building and holding his hand out for Kaegan, who was standing at the threshold of the outside and indoors, just inside the building. She was still in shadow, spared from the touch of the sun's rays, and she looked hesitant to step out into the elements. They weren't the ice and snow and death she had been brought up fearing but still it was so far outside the caves she'd known her entire life that she was tentative.
"Come on, it's all right," Carlin said again and Kaegan noticeably took a breath then extended her left hand. The line of shadow crept over her fingers, up the back of the hand, and over her wrist and she turned her hand over and back again in the sun. She studied her hand in the natural lighting as though she'd never seen it before.
Kaegan slowly stepped outside and quickly closed her eyes to sun-sensitive slits as she looked upward into the sky. Tears in response to the intense light formed in her eyes and when Kaegan closed them completely a tear ran down her face. A smile, despite it all, crept over her face as the sun, for the first time, caressed her cheeks.
Jonah gave them all a moment before he said, "Let's start searching around, see if we find anything we can use or maybe even other survivors."
Kaegan brought her face back down and hurriedly wiped at her tear-streaked cheeks. Carlin smiled at her, kind and gentle, and Thera stepped closer to Jonah's side as they started to pick their way through the shattered and damaged streets of a broken city.
They searched, with little to show for their efforts, for six hours after leaving the administrative building. The sight everywhere was disturbingly unchanged and it began to dishearten the travelers. There were bodies in the streets, sprawled in open doorways, curled in corners where they must have cowered before their deaths. There were charred ash piles of burned-out fires to match the blackened marks from weapons' discharge on houses and storefronts. What was most disturbing, perhaps even more than the stench and the sight of so much death, was the utter lack of any noise. Their own footfalls were the only sound of movement, the only sign of living beings. There were no animals, no birds... nothing. Every once in a while the wind outside the bio-dome would shift just enough to catch one of the holes just right and it would moan and whistle eerily but beyond that it was quiet as a tomb.
Which was perhaps fitting.
Entire blocks had been burned to the ground and the four survivors bypassed those without a second glance. There was plenty more of the city to explore without subjecting themselves needlessly to the smell of cooked human flesh. If they searched everywhere and came up empty they could always return to shift through burned regions.
At the moment, however, they were resting. They had stopped for a break in what might have been a park once. There were benches and trees, some burned into gnarled trunks and some uprooted by massive explosives, but the vague outline, like a retinal image, of a park lingered over the place. Apparently when the attacks came people tried not to be caught in the open so the park was mostly free of corpses, the main reason they'd decided to stop where they did.
Carlin and Kaegan were walking around one of the few surviving trees. Its overhanging branches whispered of hints of normal, of life and comfort before the attack. Kaegan looked captivated by the greenery and she plucked a leaf from a low-hanging limb to smell it and touch it. Thera was on the bench next to Jonah a moderate distance away from the two sudden botanists and she glanced over at him. He was staring up at the dome, his expression thoughtful.
"What?" she asked.
Jonah pulled his jacket closer. "Just thinking... it's pretty warm for an ice age."
Thera tugged the billowing sleeves of her coat over her hands for warmth. She knew exactly of what Jonah spoke; she'd noticed it, too. It was bitterly cold but not terribly so... they weren't in danger of freezing to death. It was confusing because they knew the dome was far from intact, they could see the huge holes punched in the superstructure.
Thera nodded up at the glass and said, "The transparent dome surface probably acts sort of like a magnifying glass, directing the heat of the sun into the city. We must be in this planet's summer or else we probably would have frozen already." She'd already thought of that very detail when they had survived the night above the surface.
Jonah mulled this over and looked down at Kaegan and Carlin brushing their hands over a small patch of unburned grass. "Then we have a timetable, we have to be gone before winter."
Thera nodded to herself and held her covered hands against her stomach.
"Where do we go next?" Jonah asked her idly as he toed the ground underfoot.
Since one direction seemed to be as good as another they had taken turns picking the next area they would search. As yet they had not dared to separate to cover more ground. They were sacrificing efficiency for safety in numbers.
Thera looked around the park, beyond at the residential areas (so many of them blackened and crumbled) then her eyes fixed on one direction. For some reason it caught her attention and would not let go.
"That way," she said and pointed.
Jonah nodded absently, accepting her decision without inquiry.
Then the atmosphere, the mood between them, shifted and Thera knew it was time to go.
Jonah stood from the bench and brushed his pants off. His torso dangled with items, as did everyone's. The black vests proved handy in more ways than one. The pockets all contained snaps to secure them in place so held by each button were the strings to food and water bags. The belts, too, had become a means for attaching supplies. Thera, since she had not been able to wear the belt that came with her vest, had her spare bags tied to the shoulder straps of her vest.
Thera held out her hands and Jonah pulled her up (the graceless waltz they danced so frequently as of late) and he turned to Carlin and Kaegan. Probably without realizing it they had wandered a good distance from the rest of their team.
Jonah whistled shrilly and Carlin and Kaegan looked up at once. Jonah waved them over and picked up the staff he'd propped against the bench.
Kaegan and Carlin looked at each other then started walking back toward Thera and Jonah.
"Sorry," Carlin said when he and Kaegan had rejoined their companions. "We didn't realize we'd gone so far."
"Just keep an eye out," Jonah said, and frowned at the utter stillness around them, "though I'm beginning to think we're the only ones who survived."
Kaegan, a tree leaf conspicuously stuffed into her curly hair, looked out at the same scene of horror Jonah did. The dark woman was adapting and adjusting well. Already the sight of the sun and sky and the open spaces that had at first made her skittish didn't startle her anymore. Seeing people, her own though she'd never known of them before two days ago, dead in the streets was no longer a shock. She was marching on, refusing to let it faze her. Jonah approved of her ability to 'buck up' because they didn't need to baby-sit a basket-case and look out for hostiles.
"Where now?" Kaegan asked. Thera decided the incongruous leaf burrowed into her hair gave the other woman an oddly exotic appearance.
Jonah motioned in the direction Thera had indicated earlier and answered, "That way."
Without a reason to complain Kaegan shrugged and Carlin was game. Jonah, as usual, took lead with Thera a few steps behind him. Carlin followed Thera and Kaegan brought up the rear. It was the pattern they'd fallen into while traipsing through the city without ever discussing it. It was almost disturbing how the order had just 'fallen into place'.
Jonah, Thera, and Carlin walking in single file, in that particular order, seemed almost practiced though Kaegan was less 'right' in the role as the last person in the procession. Thera reasoned it was probably because she wasn't one of the original group. That had to be it.
"Oh, wow."
Kaegan frowned at Carlin's back as he walked in front of her. She'd heard him muttering and murmuring to himself for at least ten minutes and it was either about to pique her curiosity beyond tolerance or irritate the piss out of her.
They were working their way down some manner of thoroughfare, or at least what had been one before the attack. Their single-file line contracted and stretched, sometimes went crooked as Thera would head up to Jonah's side to converse with him before falling back into step or Carlin would lag and wander off to one side to look at something. Always, however, their formation would return to its original shape and they would move along.
These three were strange ones. Even in the caves they'd been the oddities, the aberrations. Them, and the massive man Tor who had never returned from his last bout with night sickness. It claimed workers sometimes if it was not caught and treated soon enough.
But Kaegan found herself even beginning to question that part of her old existence. Everything she thought she'd known was blasted into the sky, the pale blue, nonfatal sky, when Jonah had led them from the caverns and to the surface.
It made Kaegan reevaluate a lot of her preconceptions, and first to come under fire were those concerning her new companions.
Jonah and Thera had always seemed like elitists to Kaegan. They had bonded to each other and spurned everyone else as though they were better than them all. Jonah was the only person fit for Thera's company and Thera the only one fit for Jonah's. Thera had been the worst... she thought she was so much smarter than everyone, thought she knew how everything should be done better than anyone. And Jonah was only marginally better; he had his flaws. He strolled around the underground while everyone else bent to their work and kept in line as if he owned some right to respect, to their respect. He refused to be frenzied or rushed by the important, life-saving work they did. His attitude was cavalier and thoroughly grating.
Before they got sick Carlin had been different. He'd been a little naive, a little too trusting and open for the caves, but Kaegan had found it endearing. She got to know him and understood there was definitely an edge to Carlin, he was just hard to stir to aggression. Carlin just wasn't that way and Kaegan had found a soft place in the hard, cold world of their existence as workers a comfort.
Then they all got night sick and went for treatment. Night sickness medication could make people forget some things. When Carlin came back he didn't remember Kaegan.
Kaegan had not intended to let that end her friendship with Carlin but before she could reintroduce herself Carlin had taken to associating with Jonah and Thera. They seemed to have retained their memories of one another just fine since they were always seen together even after the sickness.
Kaegan had surrendered Carlin to his new 'friends'. She wasn't interested in fighting Jonah and Thera over a guy like Carlin. She'd put them out of her mind and ignored them all as best she could.
And then Carlin's strange behavior at the mines that had precipitated this misadventure she could never before have dreamed.
The staggering implications of all they'd found aside, Kaegan was discovering things about her former coworkers she'd never before noticed. She hadn't let herself see them before, nor would she have spared the time to look. Now, however, she found herself allotted unique opportunities for observation.
What she saw made her rethink a lot of things.
Thera's exalted disposition was not empty hype but justly earned. Reluctant though Kaegan was to admit it, Thera was very smart... smarter than anyone Kaegan had ever met. It was more than the ideas Thera had concocted in the caves to improve the machines. It was in the silent way she watched, the calculation and measurement in her blue eyes, the flicker across her face when her mind started to spin like a well-greased engine. For all the buried intellect Thera's eyes reflected Kaegan began to think Thera was actually rather demur and self-effacing. To see so much thinking going on Thera was markedly quiet for all that went on in her head. She could easily flout her intelligence so much more than she did but Thera was content to keep to herself, to battle first with her thoughts before she challenged anyone else with them. And she was pretty nice, once Kaegan gave her half a chance. Kaegan could not fault Thera's loyalties or her priorities. Thera's primary concern, above all else, was for her child, and Kaegan had to credit Thera her commitment to her baby.
Jonah, Kaegan had slowly come to understand, was actually everything he'd appeared to be, everything she had detested and taken as pompous show. He was self-assured as only a tried and experienced person could be. His every move was trained. Jonah had tight command over his body and it obeyed him unerringly. His gray hair and lean frame would suggest weakness in comparison to someone built like Carlin but Jonah had skill gained only through a thousand fights. Jonah was a predator in the guise of a man and Kaegan could not fathom how such a person could come into being in the mines and caves. It seemed, for all the hardships their lives had entailed underground, there was nothing powerful enough to shape a man as strong and indomitable as Jonah. Kaegan also picked up on the fact Jonah, for his dumb-brute first impression, was nearly as smart as Thera but in a different way. He took in things and processed everything... and then he acted. His air of command was undeniable, even Kaegan with her own unyielding spirit had taken to following him without fail, but there was more to it than just that. Jonah put his comrades before himself. More important than anything was Thera, his lover and mother of his unborn child, but even Carlin's well-being was considered before his own. Jonah took into account Kaegan before he thought of himself, and Kaegan could never again ask how anyone might follow the man through this ordeal and far worse.
Kaegan was left to consider Carlin as he continued to walk ahead of her. He had struck her as a gentle person at first, before the night sickness incident, but the more she lived and traveled in close quarters with him through forging times the more she understood she had greatly underestimated Carlin's true personality. Carlin had depths and layers Kaegan had never imagined he harbored. He was outwardly friendly, talkative, conciliatory... the few fights she'd seen him in he never looked at ease with swinging his fists. He was a peace-maker and that was still true, but he was not just that in Kaegan's eyes anymore. He was a man with the curiosity of a child, a spark of innocence she couldn't recall ever really seeing in her life until she saw it in Carlin. He was intelligent, his blue eyes so nearly mirrors of Thera's when he was thinking. He had darkness and pain but at first glance one would never suspect because Carlin acted two-dimensional so well. Kaegan learned she had to watch Carlin closely because he folded his reactions inward. While Thera would speak her mind and Jonah would act Carlin would pull back and hold in any overt signs of his true responses to a situation. Kaegan suspected a good general rule with Carlin would be to assume his emotional reaction to something was ten-fold what it appeared... and three times as complex.
Kaegan walked, swinging the staff in her hand forward then let it drag back with the ground before swinging it forward again. Carlin didn't remember they'd once been friends when he saved her. To him she was no one special when he dragged her to the safety of the strange underground ship. Kaegan was intrigued by that fact and it teased her with the mystery that Carlin's true nature was to her.
And then Kaegan had to consider them all as a unit. There was a natural balance to the way Jonah, Carlin, and Thera moved and worked together. She tried to fit into their inner world, to do her part in repayment for her inclusion in their group (for Carlin saving her life and Jonah and Thera letting him), but it was as though there was an unspoken dialect between them she didn't understand. Things were intuitive between them. Jonah could give Thera or Carlin a look and it would initiate a complex series of actions, almost choreographed in their correctness. They worked like interconnected parts of one engine. She'd never seen them display that kind of cohesion in the caves, but then there they had been made to suffer the ineptitude of many who didn't speak the language. Kaegan tried to stay out of the way and wondered where they might have learned to move and communicate and know one another the way they did.
Carlin had slowed and Kaegan was soon nearly abreast with him. She stopped beside him and looked up at his face. His eyes were in constant motion and behind them that intellect Kaegan had underestimated previously.
"What is it you find so fascinating?" she asked, finally at her breaking point of silently listening to him 'ooh' and 'ahh' to himself.
Carlin, as though having forgotten Kaegan was there, jumped a little and looked down at her. She stood, braced on her staff, weight shifted on to one foot, tree leaf still tangled in her hair.
He seemed to stare at her a second before he gestured with a hand at the corridor there were traveling. Already Jonah and Thera were ahead of them. "Just...this."
Kaegan frowned and looked around. They had traveled many streets, most of them gruesome enough that she'd rather not remember them, in their exploration of the city. They had found roads and corridors between buildings far more impressive than this one they now walked. It was narrow compared to the streets they'd already seen, obviously meant for nothing but pedestrian traffic. There were stone pillars, just taller than waist-high, lining either side. Kaegan thought it looked silly and pointless. It seemed that the stone posts didn't serve any purpose but to mark off where the walkway's boundaries lay.
Kaegan turned a dubious eye on Carlin and he was watching her, as though waiting for her to declare it indeed intriguing. Kaegan wondered if perhaps a person could be incredibly smart but a little crazy at the same time.
Carlin, as if he could read her thoughts, smiled fleetingly and said, "It looks almost ceremonial. See the placement of the pillars, the way it ascends up this small hill, like travelers are rising to a sacred truth or divine judgment?"
Kaegan made a face and continued walking after Jonah and Thera. Carlin fell into step beside her but his attention was split.
"So the surface-dwellers were strange," Kaegan offered.
Carlin shrugged. "Maybe, but doesn't this just seem horribly out of place to you?"
Kaegan looked at him quickly. "I'm walking in a city where I always believed there was nothing but ice and you're asking me if this in particular seems out of place?"
Carlin gave a half-smile and shook his head. "I mean, we haven't run across anything like this before. Everything we've found in this city has been almost rigidly modern, utilitarian."
Kaegan nodded. The no-frills basics of the city's layout and pragmatic amenities appealed to her.
"But this," Carlin gestured down at the path at their feet. His brow furrowed. "It's just...older somehow. It doesn't seem antiquated to you?"
Kaegan looked askance at him. "It's a walking trail, Carlin. Maybe all this is starting to get to you."
Carlin gave an indecipherable grumble then fell quiet. Kaegan dropped back behind him to retake her place at the back of the line. Jonah and Thera were making their way around a bend in the path up ahead that curved to the left. For a second Kaegan felt a race of uneasiness to know the two others would be out of sight soon and would remain so for at least a minute or two but it was short-lived. The more they saw the more Kaegan was convinced there was nothing alive, dangerous or harmless, but them.
Carlin and Kaegan reached the arch in the pathway and when they cleared the single-story home that obscured the rest of the path from view Kaegan saw Jonah and Thera first. They were only a few feet ahead, both stopped dead in their tracks.
Carlin, at her side, jerked to a stop.
Kaegan's hand closed around her staff tighter until she saw beyond her companions and saw the thing beyond. Despite everything unimaginable Kaegan had seen in the last couple of days that certainly did seem out of place to her.
The path they were on abruptly ended, came to a stop at the foot of a dais of shallow stone steps and upon that platform of rock a monstrous gray circle. It stood like a sentry, gaping and still, and it had certainly frozen Jonah, Thera, and Carlin on the spot.
Kaegan trusted her companions enough to feel nervous at what the gray ring might mean.
Thera felt like she had no motor control, unable to command her body to move. She and Jonah had rounded the bend in the path and as soon as they saw the stone structure they both stopped cold. Something about it grabbed at them, reached through the cold air to latch on to them with breath-stealing force. Thera felt her mind buzz and rattle in reaction to the thing before them but she couldn't grasp why. It was for what they had been looking. Thera knew that. The moment she set eyes on it she knew it was their only hope but why or how she knew that she didn't know.
Jonah's hand blindly found hers and she clung to him as though, without anchor, the ring might swallow her.
"I know this," she said in an awe-struck voice, at first not even aware she'd spoken aloud.
"Me too," Jonah said faintly and Thera tore her gaze from the maw of the rock circle to look over at him. His eyes were trapped by the beast of a structure and there was desperate need just behind his eyes. He knew it, too, but like her it evaded capture. It was in the mind, darting through her thoughts, but she couldn't wrestle it down and make sense of it.
Thera looked back the way they'd come and saw, a few paces behind her and Jonah, Carlin and Kaegan similarly hypnotized by the stone circle. Carlin looked like he'd seen a ghost. Kaegan just looked dumbstruck and confused.
Carlin, eyes still locked on the ring, walked slowly forward until he was alongside Thera.
"Do you recognize it?" Thera asked softly. Why they had all resorted to whispers she couldn't fathom.
Carlin nodded. His eyes narrowed, his forehead wrinkled and his lips puckered, and he shook his head. "It's... I don't know how I know it."
"We don't either," Thera said. But she did. She didn't know how she could but she knew that thing.
Jonah parted his lips thoughtfully before uttering, "It's... a... it's..." the word caught in his throat, in his brain, and it wouldn't dislodge.
Carlin's eyes shot open. "Chappa-ai!"
Thera looked over at Carlin and even Jonah pulled his eyes from the ring to look at his friend.
Carlin nodded. "Chappa-ai."
The way the word rolled off Carlin's tongue, the way it was accented and undulated, sinusoidal, through the air tugged with ancient memory. From Carlin's mouth, caressed by his voice and colored with his suddenly exotic inflections for that one word, was right. Thera had heard the word before, somewhere, and it wanted to attach to the stone circle. The word hungered for it, begged to claim the ring.
"Right," Jonah said in acceptance, although he looked a little unconvinced.
Kaegan slowly joined them, cautiously coming to stand on the other side of Carlin so the four of them stood, shoulder to shoulder, staring up at the circle.
"What is it?" Kaegan asked.
"It's called a Chappa-ai," Carlin said in a voice almost reverent.
Kaegan looked at Carlin, stunned. "You've seen this before?"
Carlin nodded slowly as his eyes traced the curves of the ring. "I think we all have."
Thera felt something else exploding in her mind, a plume of clarity, and she clutched Jonah's hand tighter when the smoke cleared. "It's a transportation device!"
Jonah looked down at her, into her eyes, and she knew he knew it too in that moment.
"This is how we can get away from here," Thera said excitedly, "how we can go someplace safe."
Carlin's face darkened. "And it's how enemies can come here."
Thera fell silent and took a half-step closer to Jonah. She knew Carlin was right, too.
"How can this take us anywhere?" Kaegan asked skeptically.
Thera looked over at the woman. Nowhere in her face was the staggering latent recognition or certitude this was their one chance at salvation. Kaegan didn't have the same unprecedented knowledge of the ring. The stone circle was significant only to her, Jonah, and Carlin.
"I just... know it can."
Kaegan's eyes narrowed but she didn't say anything to discredit Thera's statement. If anything, she appeared to reserve judgment.
"How do we use it?" Jonah asked.
Thera looked again at the stone, hoping that answer would just 'appear' in her mind, as well. There was no epiphany but her eyes did seek out, and find, a round pedestal nearby.
"That," Thera pointed and everyone else looked at the stump of a secondary device. "That's important; you need that to make it work."
Jonah looked down at her, eyes sincere, and he asked, "Can you figure it out?"
Thera wanted to laugh in his face at first. She couldn't even begin to speculate what this ring was or how it could magically save them (as she knew it could) but instead she found herself nodding. "I'll... I'll try."
Jonah squeezed her hand, looked her directly in the eyes a moment longer, then looked up at the others. "Let's set up camp here."
It was not yet close to dusk but Thera and Carlin were immediately in agreement and Kaegan, lost but for the time being putting faith in her comrades, went along with their choice.
As the hours wore on Jonah began to suspect he could not blast Thera away from the odd pedestal device. He had watched her stand before the bulky eyesore, then walk around it, bend over (as best she could) to examine the underside of the top console, then circle back around to the front again. When she got tired of standing she used the device for support and sat down on the ground at stared up at it. Then, when she was antsy or cramping, she pulled herself back up with the thing as an aide and resumed her vigil.
After an hour watching Thera stare and think Jonah had gotten restless and had him and Kaegan (Jonah preferred Carlin to stay with Thera and keep an eye out as opposed to leaving a still relatively unknown Kaegan with Thera) start searching the nearby homes for anything they might be able to use. It had long since ceased to seem ghoulish to take from the dead...they had little choice if they wanted to survive in a bubble that afforded only fragile protection from a full-blown ice age. It was a little easier here, on the surface, when they were assured they were not pilfering from a former coworker.
Food was becoming a more difficult item to find. What remained of the former inhabitants' consumables was beginning to spoil. Food gone over began to predominate in their forages and the quest for nonperishable (or at least longer shelf-life) things to eat grew harder for it. Water, too, was becoming scarcer. Without running water they were limited to what was already set out and untainted by bodies or rotting food.
In the residential sector, however, their foray into the buildings turned up a fortuitous byproduct they hadn't previously considered. Personal items, useful things not found in the administration building or the caves. There were dishes and cups, clothing and towels. Jonah and Kaegan had riffled through a number of closets and appropriated shirts and pants for everyone but they realized quickly they would only be using them to replace the painfully-thin blankets they'd substituted as inner lining for their orange jacket and pants. The clothes provided in the caves still proved to be much heavier, warmer, and durable than anything the 'toppers' possessed. Apparently environmental conditions for those lucky enough to be above-ground had been too pleasant to ever necessitate proper winter attire.
They had also realized, when they entered their first bedroom, that they wouldn't have to sleep on the ground that night. No one, when the attack began, had stayed in bed so the beds in all the houses were mercifully vacant. Jonah knew Thera would be grateful for that; he knew how uncomfortable it was for her, in her condition, to sleep on the floor night after night.
Kaegan was a quiet but diligent worker. She only 'chatted' in any real sense with Carlin, so she had been a taciturn helping hand during their searches. Jonah found he didn't mind her company, quiet and brooding though it was. It seemed to go some lengths toward filling a niche in their group, rounding them out as it were.
Laden with their restocked food and water bags, arms loaded with clothes, Jonah and Kaegan made their way back toward the Chappa-ai. From a distance they could see things largely unchanged from the last time they saw the other two. They were both standing before the pedestal, heads bent together as they tried to figure out the mystery.
Jonah smirked to himself at the sight.
So engrossed were they that neither noticed Jonah and Kaegan until they were a couple dozen feet from them. Jonah was not pleased about that.
"Any luck?" he asked when he was upon them and he and Kaegan dropped their armfuls of clothing to the ground.
"No, sir, I've been racking my brain but I can't..." Thera gritted her teeth in frustration. "It's right there! I can almost see it."
Jonah passed Carlin and Thera's food bags and spare water bags (Carlin and Thera had both kept their canteens to drink from while the 'scouting party' was gone) to Carlin as he smiled at Thera. "I think you need to take a break, Thera... you just called me 'sir'."
Thera blinked and looked up at Jonah. "I did?"
Jonah nodded and Thera ducked her head in embarrassment.
"Carlin," Kaegan spoke up and the younger man turned to the dark-skinned woman. "We found some books in a few of the homes; Jonah said you might want to look at them."
Carlin's eyes lit up. "Books?"
Kaegan nodded and motioned him to follow. "I'll show you."
Carlin glanced at Jonah for permission and the older man said, "Go on." He'd refused to let them tote the books around when they had important things to do but while they were all idling around the Chappa-ai Carlin might as well take an hour or so to explore. He might just learn something from the books and if it could help them then all the better.
Carlin and Kaegan went off together and Jonah slid closer to Thera's side once they were alone. He looked down at the pedestal that had so captured Thera's attention and really got a good look at it for the first time. It was full of senseless symbols arranged in three circles around a dull orange bubble in the center. It was both baffling and vaguely familiar.
Thera sighed in aggravation and Jonah slipped his arm around her.
"You sure this thing controls the Chap-eye?"
Thera smiled at the way Jonah pronounced 'Chappa-ai' and leaned her head against his shoulder. "I can't explain how I know but yes, I'm sure." She reached out a hand and traced her fingers over one of the glyphs. Certain ones were stronger to her than others, even though they were all of equal size and elevation. "Why do we know this?" she thought aloud.
Jonah shook his head. He didn't have an answer but it was undeniable he, Thera, and Carlin knew this thing. Somehow, some way, it was linked to them.
Jonah knew beyond a doubt that if they were going to survive it would be this thing, this Chappa-ai, that would save them.
Jonah stood in a hallway. The sides were smooth concrete, as was the ceiling and the floor. He was underground, he knew that, but in a place very different than the caves.
Jonah turned and looked down one end of the hall, then the other. There was no one else in sight and no sound of another living creature reached him. The passageway was completely empty. Jonah turned back around then looked down at himself. His jacket was blue instead of orange.
"Hello?" he called out, only to hear his own voice fold on itself and echo back to him in the spartan hallway. He started forward, his boots a deafening staccato on the gray floor. His feet carried him and he stopped at a door. It, too, was smooth and gray. This world pressed in gray around him, sterile and hollow.
Jonah slowly opened the door and stepped into a room, spacious, with a long table in the middle. Empty chairs surrounded the table.
Jonah moved closer and saw that the table top was bare... except for one item. Lying on its side, like a sleeping viper, was a handgun. Black metal against the wood-colored surface.
Jonah almost reached for the semiautomatic when his eyes were drawn to the large window comprising the majority of the back wall.
Jonah abandoned the weapon and took a few steps closer to the glass, then stopped and whirled around when he sensed a presence.
Thera. She was standing in the doorway, watching him. She looked different. She was wearing all blue and her hair was shorter and tidier. She looked so clean. Her expression was guarded and questioning as she stood in place and watched him.
"Thera."
Thera frowned at him. "Sir?"
Jonah's brow furrowed and whirled to look back at the window. It was pulling at him, calling him away.
Jonah turned to look back at Thera, to fight the force trying to carry him farther away from her, but she was no longer alone. Jonah's eyes fell immediately on to the boy standing next to the table. Brown eyes, light brown hair, no older than twelve. His son. He'd seen the child so many times. The boy was looking up at Jonah, an eerie calm and stillness in his gaze, something dreadfully final in his expression.
Jonah's eyes darted to the gun on the table top only inches from where his son was standing.
"No," Jonah said and started to move to take the gun out of the boy's reach.
Light blue light flooded the room and Jonah spun around and saw the window awash with shimmering blue illumination. It was almost blinding.
Jonah turned back to Thera and his son. She was still at the door, her eyes now locked on the boy. The boy was standing, arms at his sides, the pistol held in his right hand. A spot on his chest began to bleed.
"No!"
The blood bloomed and spread and the boy's shirt became saturated. The wavering blue light from the other room, pouring in through the window, cast the boy's face in a ghastly, corpse-like hue. Skin made pale and blue-tinged, brown eyes darkened. The son stood, coated in blood, gun in hand, eyes locked on his father.
Thera looked up from the boy to Jonah and her eyes were accusing, appalled.
Jonah started to fall backward, grabbed and dragged away, and he struggled and held out his arms to Thera and his son.
"NO!"
They fell farther away no matter what he did. Thera, so distant an image as the blue engulfed him, stepped forward and took the boy in her arms. At the touch his son went limp and Thera cradled him, sank to the floor with his lifeless, blood-soaked body in her desolate embrace.
Jonah jerked awake and for a couple of seconds could do nothing but listen to the sound of his own heart drumming loudly in his ears. He forced himself to breathe and think straight as he looked around to orient himself. It was dark but not pitch-black; somewhere a faint light-source was giving things edges and outlines.
Jonah tried to remember where he was and the softness of the mattress beneath him caught his attention first. He was in a bed, burrowed under a comforter. It was almost a foreign thing to be so comfortable and coddled. Its singular occurrence swiftly brought back the memories of how he'd ended up in such a cozy place.
Last night, when the night closed in, Jonah had ordered them to retire for the night. Despite protests from Thera, he insisted they distance themselves from the stone ring while they slept. They'd left the Chappa-ai and retreated to one of the small houses near the stone ring. He and Thera...
Jonah sat up suddenly. Thera wasn't in bed with him.
Jonah craned his head and strained to try and make out her shape in the dawn-lit room but he saw no sign of her.
Close to panic, plagued by his vivid nightmare, Jonah jumped out of bed, still fully-clothed (because of the threat the Chappa-ai might represent he'd insisted they all sleep 'boots on', which made sense to Thera and Carlin but had to be explained to Kaegan). He hurriedly put on his vest and belt that he'd set within easy reach of the bed the night before then went in frantic search of Thera.
Jonah left the bedroom and it was only a handful of strides before he was in the modest living room of the small house. His eyes went at once to the two figures crammed together on the couch. Carlin and Kaegan, sound asleep, arms entangled to keep either from falling off the cushions.
Carlin and Kaegan, but no Thera.
Jonah was at the front door and rushing outside in the next breath.
The world outside was a little brighter, exposed to the full brunt of the rising sun (via the glass of the dome) and Jonah turned his eyes toward the Chappa-ai some distance away.
He breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he saw Thera's orange-clad figure sitting on the ground in front of the pedestal.
Jonah stood there a moment just outside the house, regaining his composure, then he started across the grounds toward her.
Thera heard him coming and looked sharply over her shoulder at him, her hand moving to the gun clipped on to her vest. When she saw it was Jonah she relaxed and lowered her hand.
Jonah reached her side and did not mince words. "What are you doing out here alone?"
Thera looked up at him in the morning light. "Trying to figure this out," she answered, more than a little curtly. The blatantly obvious nature of her remark sizzled with insubordination.
He found it irksome.
Jonah frowned. "What part about sticking together confused you?"
Thera narrowed her eyes testily. "We've seen no signs of life, much less hostile life, since the attack. Besides, I am armed."
Jonah was not appeased, his heart was still in his throat from the hellish dream and he was taking it out on real-life Thera.
Thera looked down at her playthings. She'd pried open a panel in the side of the pedestal and assorted crystals of various shapes and colors were laid out before her. It was a mess to Jonah but he had no doubt Thera knew where each piece went inside the pedestal; she would have been attentive to those kind of details when she was removing each crystal.
Thera's expression changed and she looked up at him, her gaze shifted from angry to something Jonah couldn't quite name. "I'm sorry, Jonah, I didn't mean to worry you."
Jonah sighed and rubbed the back of his neck briskly. Instead of offering a similar apology he gave a loose wave of his hand and Thera smirked in understanding of the unspoken meaning.
"Since you're here," Thera said, "would you mind going back to the house and getting me some more water? I'm out."
Jonah, deciding to use the errand as a show of reconciliation, his peace offering, nodded without question and headed back to the house to do Thera's bidding. Kaegan and Carlin were still together on the couch when he reentered the house but they were not in the same exact position as when Jonah had first seen them. One or both were probably stirring.
In fact, by the time Jonah came out of the bedroom with one of Thera's water bags Carlin was sitting up and blinking owlishly in the early hour. Kaegan was curled in the warm spot he'd vacated, one leg folded over his lap.
"Morning, Carlin," Jonah greeted.
Carlin blinked up at him and rubbed his eyes. "Jonah?" Carlin looked around, noted Kaegan, then asked lowly, "Where's Thera?"
Jonah nodded toward the front door. "Out by the Chap-eye."
"Chappa-ai," Carlin corrected him absently as he ruffled a hand through his couch-head hair. Were it not for the grizzle of five-o'clock-yesterday shadow Carlin would look decidedly childish as he tried to wake up. And yet he still managed to be an irritation with so little concerted effort, anal adherence to the correct pronunciation of 'Chappa-ai' as prime example.
"Whatever."
Carlin's eyes turned frighteningly astute and he squinted at Jonah. "You okay?"
"For crying out loud, Carlin, how do you do that?"
Carlin frowned in concern, undeterred.
Jonah sighed. "Just a damn dream again. I'm fine."
Carlin eventually nodded and eased Kaegan's leg off his thighs and stood from the couch. He stepped gingerly away from the sleeping woman then looked back at Jonah and asked, "Thera any closer to figuring out how to make the Chappa-ai... um... do whatever it is it's supposed to do?"
"Well, now it's in pieces so that must be a step closer in the right direction. I was just coming in to get her some water," Jonah said and sloshed the bag in emphasis of his words. Having had enough of idle conversation, Jonah slung the water bag over his shoulder by the strings, sent Carlin a half-ass wave in parting, and left the small house.
As Jonah drew near to Thera he frowned when he saw her holding completely still, leaning forward, one arm braced on the ground. When he came up alongside her and knelt down next to her he saw her lips pressed into a thin line.
"Backache?" he asked sympathetically as he held out the water bag to her.
"Mmm," Thera's voice rumbled in the back of her throat and, after a second or two, she reached for the water and took a drink.
Jonah reached out a hand and rubbed slow circles over Thera's lower back, even though he knew the relief he could offer was at this point pathetically little. "Any progress with this?" he asked as he gestured at the mess on the ground.
Thera resealed the water bag and frowned down at the crystals. "Not really. I think this," she grabbed the pedestal above her and started to pull herself up. Jonah moved to help her and Thera, once upright, winced and let her weight resettle before she continued, "I think this requires a sequence of these symbols to activate the Chappa-ai, but I don't know how many or in what order."
Jonah stepped up behind her, hand on her back, and looked down at the device from over Thera's shoulder. It was just as senselessly familiar to him as it had been yesterday.
"Maybe-" he started to say but a jarring sound cut him off mid-sentence.
Thera and Jonah's gazes flew to the Chappa-ai and they stood, wide-eyed for a half-second, as they inner ring began to spin.
Then Jonah went into action. "Shit!" he hissed and grabbed Thera's hand. "Come on, we can't be here when that turns on," he said hurriedly and he started to pull her toward the house. Thera, ungainly and unfit to run, did anyway, one arm wrapped around her belly, as they heard the Chappa-ai lock into place and a belching sound of energy and sheer force overtake them like a concussion wave spreading outward.
Jonah urged Thera to run faster and threw a look over his shoulder. A shimmering blue surface, like water in a pond, filled the center of the ring. Thera dared not try to manage a look over her shoulder and running at the same time and instead took her cue to run faster from the look on Jonah's face.
They both burst into the house and Jonah slammed the door shut behind them. Kaegan, who'd been sitting on the couch when the two flew inside, jumped to her feet. "What?! What is it?"
"The bad guys are back. Gear up, we have to get out of here," Jonah ordered as he looked once at Thera. She was winded and holding her stomach but she waved off his concern and he had to take that answer for now.
Jonah rushed to the bedroom to get the last of his gear (as well as Thera's) and his staff. When he returned barely two minutes later everyone was in the living room waiting and ready. Carlin was fully geared up and Kaegan was standing, staff in hand. Thera was pacing and looked up when Jonah returned.
"Stay away from the windows," Jonah commanded them all. "We'll have to go out the back."
Kaegan and Carlin wordlessly moved past him into the hallway, toward the back exit of the house, and Jonah went to Thera's side. "You all right?"
Thera gave him a tight look and asked, "Where are we going to go?"
Jonah frowned. "Keep ahead of them, lie low, hope they leave after they've done whatever they came to do."
"And what if they're here to smoke out any survivors?"
Jonah touched her shoulder. "Then we'll find us a hiding place and wait them out. It'll be okay, Thera. Come on."
The four slipped out the back door and crept their way along the wall outside. They could hear the sound of footfalls and the distant murmur of voices.
Kaegan was at the front of their wall-hugging line, Carlin and Thera in the middle, Jonah in the rear. Kaegan looked past the two in between the staff-bearing members of the group and met eyes with Jonah.
Jonah brought his finger to his lips to keep Kaegan quiet then gestured toward a nearby house. Kaegan looked in the indicated direction then back and nodded.
Thera, right in front of Jonah, took in a short breath and Jonah hated having to ask her do this. She didn't need to be running around and hiding from enemy soldiers but there was nothing he could do. He touched her back, seeking her assent, and after a few seconds she gave a tight nod. She knew as well as he did.
Jonah looked back up at Kaegan and motioned for her to go.
Kaegan peeked around the corner of the house, waited, then hurried behind the cover of the next house.
Carlin inched toward the edge and repeated Kaegan's moves right down to the furtive quick glance around the corner before his quick dash.
Jonah took Thera's shoulders and came up alongside her to make the run for cover together. Thera looked tense and Jonah spared her a reassuring squeeze on her shoulders before he peeked around the corner. He jerked back when his eyes caught fleeting sight of movement on the other side of the clearing that surrounded the Chappa-ai. He waited, took a breath, then peeked again. Clear.
Jonah grabbed Thera by the arm and trotted across the short distance between homes toward the house that hid Carlin and Kaegan. When they slipped behind their new cover Thera pulled free of Jonah and leaned against the wall.
Jonah listened for any signs they'd been seen then motioned Kaegan forward. Again, they slipped over the back of the house to the next edge in a four-person chain. Another run between houses in the same order, first Kaegan, then Carlin, then Jonah and Thera and still their stealth (and luck) held.
At the next house it was practiced and Kaegan and Carlin moved without having to be told. They slunk, unnoticed, across the space separating the next pair of homes, ducked behind the new house a few feet away from their previous cover, then stopped and waited for Jonah and Thera to catch up.
Jonah slid toward the corner with Thera and was preparing to make their run when she went rigid and resistant under his hands.
Jonah fell back with her and looked down at her in question.
Thera had one arm braced against the house, her eyes closed and expression pained.
"What?" Jonah barely whispered, leaning in close to her.
Thera tried to regulate her breathing and whispered back, "Contraction."
Jonah stared at her a moment as her statement waited to sink in. Three seconds later it did and he stood there, mouth agape. "What?!" he hissed, barely audible.
Thera was relaxing again and she took a deep breath and lowered her hand from the wall. "I've been having them since the middle of the night."
Jonah blinked at her in shock. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? "You're in labor?"
Thera nodded grimly.
Jonah was flabbergasted and for another second or two all he could do was look at her.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked in her ear, his lips so close they were touching her earlobe to keep their exchange so very private.
"I wasn't sure it was labor at first."
"Are you sure now?"
Thera nodded gravely. "Oh yeah, definite." She looked up and met his eyes and he saw thick fear in her gaze.
Jonah, not knowing what else to do, reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her right ear in a brief, affectionate gesture... it was all he could offer her at the time.
Jonah looked down at her huge stomach then up into her eyes. "You good to go now?"
Thera nodded and Jonah moved them both to the corner. After a check and a waddle-dash they joined Kaegan and Carlin.
Jonah checked on Thera once they had regrouped with their friends then he looked up at Carlin and Kaegan. "We have a problem," he whispered hoarsely, "Thera's in labor."
Four eyes turned at once to Thera in Jonah's arms. She gripped Jonah's forearm more tightly and he shot a look down at her. "Another one?"
Thera shook her head and answered, "Not yet." She looked toward Carlin and Kaegan and said lowly, "You two go ahead, get out of here."
Jonah's face hardened but he didn't argue or contest Thera's suggestion.
Carlin, however, did. "Not a chance."
Thera grimaced. "Carlin, I can't keep going much farther, you two shouldn't be endangered because of me."
Carlin's jaw tightened. "No," he flatly proclaimed. The young man turned to Kaegan and his hard-lined expression softened. "Kaegan... you can go if you want."
Kaegan looked between the three of them. Carlin, dead-set adamant, Jonah holding Thera, and Thera leaning on Jonah as she stood in obvious pain.
Kaegan made her decision right then and shook her head. They'd done more for her, without good reason, than she could ever repay. She wouldn't run away as gratitude.
Thera suddenly hissed and clenched her eyes shut. Jonah held her tighter and Thera buried her head in his chest and her fingers tightened on his arm. Jonah's expression transformed into a profoundly worried face as Thera breathed raggedly into his coat.
Everyone else waited, breaths held, until Thera started to relax again and pulled away from being burrowing against Jonah as tightly as humanly possible.
Jonah looked up once the contraction had passed and gauged the certainty on both Carlin and Kaegan's faces. Their gazes never wavered. He nodded, unspeakably honored, and whispered, "We have to get away from the Chap-eye."
This time no one bothered to correct him.
They continued to slink in stop-and-go fashion through the residential area. Every few minutes, with gradually increasing frequency, they had to stop when Thera felt another labor pain hit. It became a pattern. When she could feel a contraction coming Thera would slow down, Jonah would bring them all to a stop, and Thera would fold into his embrace as the painful spasm claimed her body. Jonah would hold her, Carlin and Kaegan would keep watch, then when it was over Thera would pull back and give Jonah a nod and they'd press on.
At the last long stop Thera had sagged against the wall, Jonah in front of her and holding on to her, and at the peak of the contraction she made a muffled, pitiful sound and Jonah looked down to see her pants darken as they soaked. After that things had gotten worse. The contractions were coming faster, closer together, and Thera didn't have to tell him for Jonah to know they were getting much more painful.
They could all see Thera's labor was starting to progress quickly and it galvanized them to escape their would-be attackers.
Finally they were at the edge of the residential section and Jonah passed Thera to Carlin and crept up to confer with Kaegan.
"I don't see any signs of the enemy," she whispered.
Jonah nodded to himself and said, "We could take a chance and go straight up the middle of the street, try to take cover in one of the businesses."
"As far from here as we can get, right?" Kaegan asked.
Jonah nodded and shifted as he surveyed their options.
"Jonah!" Carlin whispered roughly.
Jonah looked back and his grip on his staff tightened convulsively. Thera was almost to the point of collapsing and might have were it not for Carlin's protective hold on her. She was clutching her stomach, her knees bent and ready to buckle, her face contorted with biting back sound as the pain raked over her.
Carlin looked hotly at Jonah and said in the same coarse whisper that he'd used to call Jonah's attention, "She can't do this anymore!"
Jonah had only to look at Thera and know Carlin was right. His mind spun and he ran through options. Fleeing any farther was not an option, not for Thera.
Jonah looked at the last line of houses they'd skirted, still within easy range of access, and gestured to Kaegan. Together they pulled back to where Carlin and Thera were and he said, "All right, we dig in here. Carlin, Kaegan, you two slip into some of these houses and find one we can use."
Carlin handed the sagging Thera, for the moment freed from the clutching grip of labor, over to Jonah then he and Kaegan snuck off to break and enter.
Thera leaned her head on to Jonah's chest and he brushed his hand over her sweaty forehead. "Want to sit down?" he asked.
Thera shook her head against him, her voice when she spoke fragile and terrifyingly honest, "I don't think I could get up again if I did."
Jonah gathered her close, as close as he could with her massive girth, and he dropped one hand to rub her back. "Don't want to have the baby in the alley?"
Thera snorted against him then went quiet. "I'm sorry."
Jonah pressed his lips to her hair. "Shhh... don't be."
"Tell Carlin and Kaegan to get to safety."
Jonah looked up for signs of either person in question then said, "They won't leave you. I can't fault them for refusing to do what I refuse to do."
"They don't have to risk themselves," she argued.
"Thera... none of us will cut and run on you."
Thera looked like she was about to argue more when her breathing started to speed up and her body tensed. "Jonah," she whimpered.
"Hang on to me," he instructed and she hugged him tightly. Her grip turned almost bruising as she rode out another contraction and to keep from crying out she bit into his jacket sleeve.
Carlin came scurrying back, keeping an eye out so he wasn't seen by the enemy, and when he reached them just as Thera was recovering he whispered, "We found a house, come on."
Jonah looped his arm around Thera's shoulders to support and guide her and he followed Carlin until the younger man turned into a modest house's ajar back door. Carlin led them inside and straight to a bedroom where Kaegan was pulling extra blankets and pillows from the closets and tossing them on to the large bed with hurried disregard for organization or neatness.
"Better than an alley," Jonah quipped gently and Thera swallowed and closed her hands over his arm, not because of a contraction but because of fear.
Jonah looked between Carlin and Kaegan. "Can you two keep watch out in the living room?"
Carlin nodded. "We won't let anyone get by," he promised with conviction and he and Kaegan left with their weapons in hand.
Jonah walked Thera over to the bed then asked, "You okay for a second?"
Thera nodded haggardly and Jonah left her side to arrange the blankets and pillows strewn haphazard atop the bed. He was creating quite the little nest when Thera choked on a cry and he looked quickly at her. She was practically doubled over, arms braced on the bed, her face a contortion of pain.
"Right, enough fluffing," Jonah muttered and went to Thera. He loosely wrapped his arms around her and rubbed her back and the sides of her stomach until the contraction passed and Thera was able to regain her control. She stiffly stood up and turned to face him.
"Let me help," he said gently and took off her jacket and layers of shirts. He left one thin shirt on her for modesty and looked her in the eye. "Put your arms around my neck."
Thera reached up and did as he said and Jonah undid her pants and pulled all her layers of clothing down past her buttocks. "Nice and slow," he said and eased her back until she was sitting perched on the edge of the bed. When she was settled and relatively secure Jonah went to work removing the rest of her clothes. He knelt on the floor and removed her shoes then pulled off her many pairs of pants. When he finished he looked up at her and she didn't even try to muster a brave face for him. She already looked worn out and scared half out of her mind.
Jonah stood and patted the pillows he'd shored up near the head of the bed. "Lay back."
Thera tensed and Jonah cocked his head at her. Panic flashed through her eyes.
"I'm here," he reassured her in his softest voice and urged her back on the bed. Thera shifted into the middle reluctantly, her eyes locked on Jonah's face, then her eyes closed as another contraction gripped her body.
Jonah sat next to her, held her as she gasped for breath, and when it passed she sagged back on the bed without further need for urging. Thera grabbed his hand and Jonah brushed back her hair from her face. "Everything's going to be okay," he said gently.
Thera wrapped her free arm around her stomach and rolled partially on her side facing Jonah.
"Do you...well, can you tell how close you are?" Jonah asked.
Thera whimpered a pathetic sound, her face part buried in a pillow and the rest pressed into his thigh. "Should I base that on how much it hurts?"
Jonah winced.
Thera suddenly gripped his hand savagely and curled on her side against him.
"Shhh," Jonah tried to soothe and he draped his free arm around her and rubbed her back. He hated knowing for a fact it was doing absolutely nothing to make it easier on Thera.
Thera endured close to fifteen unending seconds of agony then gasped and released some of the tension on his hand and began to shift uncomfortably on the bed.
"What?" Jonah asked, hoping there was something he could do to help.
Thera shook her head and grimaced. "It's getting bad...ow, really bad," she said with a grimace. She rolled on to her back and curled up around her stomach then lay down again. Her face was sweaty and her palm in his slick. She drew up then lay down again as though hunting for some forever-elusive comfortable position.
"What can I do?" he asked helplessly as he continued to stroke her hair back.
Thera heaved for breath and writhed uneasily on the bed. "Jonah..."
"Yeah?"
"Jonah!" Thera yelped.
Jonah had never felt so helpless or useless. "What? Please, what?"
Thera arched back then half-way sat up, curling forward. "I think... I think I need to push."
Jonah slipped behind her raised shoulders to support her. "Then do it."
Thera clutched at his hand and fought for breath, then she brought her knees up and bore down... hard.
Jonah whispered mindlessly in her ear to try and coax her along, then, of all things, heard himself counting out loud.
Thera released her breath and sagged back against him when it passed. "Aaa, damn, hurts..." she croaked thinly and Jonah ached horribly for her but the best he could do was kiss her on the cheek and use his free hand to try and rub her back. She dropped her head down on to his shoulder and squeezed his hand.
Thera began to gulp for air again and with a strangled groan she started to push once more.
"You're doing good, you're doing so good, Thera," Jonah repeated again and again in her ear until Thera deflated against his chest again.
"Carlin..." she said in a tired voice.
"Carlin?" Jonah repeated, perplexed.
"Get Carlin."
Jonah frowned. "What do you think Carlin can do?"
Thera gritted her teeth around a new contraction and as she pushed for all she was worth she ground out, "Get Carlin!"
Jonah startled at her insistence then slipped out from under her and went to the bedroom door. Rushing out into the hall he found his way to the living room and discovered Kaegan and Carlin both standing sentry with weapons at the ready.
"How's she doing?" Kaegan asked.
Jonah looked directly at Carlin. "She wants you."
Carlin blinked, surprised, but holstered his gun and followed Jonah down the hall.
In the bedroom Thera was scooting back on the bed toward the headboard in some futile effort to escape the pain. She looked over at them and she looked terrified. "Jonah..."
Jonah was at her side again in an instant and Thera clung to him shamelessly as her body clutched around her baby. Thera pushed and did everything she could not to cry out at the same time.
Carlin stood there next to the bed, confused. "Um... what did you want me to..."
Jonah gestured toward the end of the bed gruffly. "Just... catch."
Carlin's eyes widened but he looked down at Thera then cleared his throat and moved hesitantly to the foot of the bed.
Thera was released from her latest contraction and opened her eyes to see Carlin standing before her, framed between her knees.
"Thera, you sure you want me to..." Carlin asked uncertainly.
Thera nodded.
Carlin hesitated only a moment then he pulled his gun from his belt and handed it over to Jonah. While Jonah set it on the nightstand Carlin took off his jacket and vest and laid them aside.
Thera was pushing again, teeth bared and eyes tightly shut.
Carlin got up on the bed and knelt on his knees between Thera's legs. He blushed once and in any other instance Jonah probably would have laughed.
The contraction passed and Thera melted back on the bed.
"See anything?" Jonah asked.
Carlin tried to look without looking first then he gave up and muttered, "Aside from a lot more of Thera than I should ever see..."
"Carlin!" Jonah and Thera snapped in unison.
Carlin held up his hands. "Okay, sorry... um, no, I don't see anything... well, I mean, uh, I don't see the baby yet, I don't think..."
"You don't think?" Jonah parroted.
Carlin shot a defensive look at Jonah. "Well, what makes you think I've done this before?" he retorted then he asked more softly, "How long has she been pushing?"
"Pretty much since we got her in here."
"And I'm about to do it again!" Thera warned in a rising voice and Jonah turned all attention to her. Thera bore down and Carlin cleared his throat and made himself look.
Just as the contraction was ending Carlin exclaimed, "I can see it! Just barely."
Jonah's mouth went dry and his pulse started to hammer.
"Head?" Thera asked, out of breath.
Carlin nodded and Thera closed her eyes once in relief. Jonah hadn't even thought of what they would have done if it had been breech. Only after that crisis was averted did it send his heart into his stomach.
"Help... up," Thera said, tugging on Jonah's hand, and he lifted her shoulders up and slid his body behind her. Thera reclined against him gratefully but it was short-lived as she whimpered and curled around another contraction.
"That's good, Thera, keep pushing. I can see it coming," Carlin encouraged.
"Jonah!" Kaegan called from the hallway and Jonah's blood went cold. Kaegan wouldn't call out the reason she'd asked for Jonah, not when Thera was with him and had other worries, but it would be obvious to everyone. The enemy was getting close; they were in danger of being discovered.
Thera stopped pushing and Carlin was speaking at once, "No, don't stop, Thera. The baby's crowning, it's almost here."
Thera silently sobbed and visibly trembled with the effort to not give in and push on the next contraction. Her legs pushed feebly against the bed in her best effort to not push.
Jonah slipped out from underneath her and came around to sit beside her so she could see him. She looked at him, tears tracking her weary face, and Jonah touched her cheek. "Give birth, Thera."
Thera shook her head and pleaded in a small, spent voice, "No... please." Her body rebelled and she coughed out a quiet cry and breathed unevenly to forestall the force telling her to expel the infant.
Jonah laid a hand on her stomach and looked her in the eye. "Push."
Thera tried to shake her head but he could see her tensing and tightening. Her body was going to do it even if she was fighting it with all she had left.
"Push," Jonah repeated in a voice part command, part affection, and Thera did. She curled up and pushed as hard as she could and she felt burning and stretching and more pain than she ever knew existed. Her body kept pushing and the fire spiked and the pain hit a peak and a scream tore from her throat.
Jonah turned to look at the closed bedroom door and he slipped his gun out of its holster and thumbed off the safety.
"The head's out, Thera," Carlin urged excitedly, even as his own eyes cut nervously to the doorway. In one quick movement he pulled his knife from his belt and laid it on the bed beside Thera's left foot.
Beyond the small bedroom Jonah heard a door open and footsteps enter the house.
"Jonah!" Thera whispered hoarsely and Jonah looked down at her. She was crying and her eyes were pleading for something from him.
"Oh, god," Thera whimpered and she sobbed as the need to push rose like a tidal wave.
"You're so close, Thera," Carlin urged but Thera was fighting it again.
Jonah loved her despite how frustrating she was being.
"Thera, deliver this baby," he said sternly and she was overtaken by nature. She attacked the contraction and pushed with all her might. She felt herself stretch as if to rip in two right down the middle, she felt the pain and fire build and race to consume her entire body and she could do nothing but push through it.
"Here it comes!" Carlin's voice was somewhere in the distance, muffled.
Sounds of a scuffle in the living room even farther away than that.
Thera pushed, it was all she knew and all she was. Her muscles were pulling and she felt herself stretch and burn and she'd never hurt so much in all her life and she felt herself tear.
Thera couldn't help the horrendous scream that escaped her mouth.
Jonah was right there with her, so close, and she looked at him through tear-filled eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she croaked.
Jonah brushed the damp blonde hair back from her face and ducked in to kiss her. "Don't be sorry," he said in a tense but tender voice, "not your fault." Then Jonah turned away from the bed to face the bedroom door.
Footsteps were coming closer.
Thera's scream-ravaged voice was cracking around the word 'sorry' and there was the wet sound of a baby fighting to clear its airways for its first breath.
The door opened and Jonah needed only a split-second to know it wasn't Kaegan.
Jonah's finger tightened around the trigger when a metallic noise sounded and blue flashed and Jonah's world went black.
As the universe settled back around Jonah from the black abyss that had previously enshrouded him he was assailed with the sense of alien. An alien surface under his body, an alien fabric for clothes, alien sounds in his ears, alien smells in his nose. He hovered in the oblivion between darkness and consciousness. He fought up from the dark peace just to fight again.
He remembered Thera and the baby, he remembered intruders.
Jonah heard a high-pitched beep and his eyes flew open. Bright white lights overhead blinded him and he turned his head to the side and focused his gaze on something else. He was isolated, alone, cordoned off with a white sheet falling all around his flimsy bed.
Thera. The baby.
Jonah surged from the narrow bed to land barefoot on a smooth, cold floor. He staggered once on his feet, steadied himself on the alien bed, then moved toward the curtain to search for his lover and his child.
"He's awake," he heard an unfamiliar voice say, and he rallied his senses, his reflexes, to fight. He'd kill them if they so much as touched Thera.
Jonah strode to the sheet blocking his view of his prison and he flung it aside angrily.
Jonah blinked at the room within which they'd trapped him. Cavernous and shades of gray with white and glass and equipment more sophisticated than Jonah had ever seen. It was a monotone affront to his senses, so many details and so many machines. It looked like a science laboratory for experimenting on subjects.
There were people present, humans, and they were staring at him. They were in white but not dreadfully thin white pants and shirt as his were. Theirs were sturdy white robes or coats, cloaks for their experimenting cult.
A woman moved toward him.
Jonah, eyes blazing, advanced a step and she wisely stopped. Large, hulking men in green near the back corners stepped forward, no doubt to beat him into submission, but Jonah didn't care.
Jonah's eyes scanned the room for signs of Thera and the others, the baby, but they weren't in sight. There were more curtained cubicles but he couldn't know who lay beyond.
"You're awake..." the woman said in a non-threatening voice but Jonah would not be tricked.
"Where's Thera?" he demanded. "What did you do with her?"
The woman seemed baffled and Jonah's temper frayed and sparked out of control.
"Where's Thera ?! Where is she? If you've hurt her I'll kill you!"
Jonah started to move against the small-stature woman, the goons in the green be damned, when another curtained area rustled with abrupt movement. The sheet slid urgently aside and Carlin jumped out.
"Jonah!" Carlin called out and Jonah stopped his advance and looked over at his friend. The man was dressed as he was, white shirt and pants, obviously a fellow prisoner of the same captors. Carlin didn't look like he'd been hurt, so that was a good sign.
"Where's Thera?" Jonah growled.
Carlin hurried out to intercede in the confrontation and he turned to indicate one of the curtained areas. "She's in there."
Jonah pushed past everyone, shook off questing hands, unstoppable, and flung aside the sheet...
... and he breathed at last. It was Thera.
She was lying quietly, almost frighteningly still, on one of the alien beds. Test equipment was attached to her, feeding into machines, and Jonah felt angry bile rise in his throat.
"Jonah..." Carlin's voice at his shoulder but Jonah didn't listen. He moved over to Thera's bed and his furiously spurred energy stilled as he at first merely watched Thera. He felt a tremendous relief to see her chest moving up and down as she breathed, reassuring him that she really was alive.
Jonah reached out his hand and touched her cheek. It was blissfully warm. Every new detail calmed the rage in him to much more manageable levels.
Jonah bent down over his prone lover and brushed back her hair with one hand. "Thera?" he said softly to her, hoping to see her open her eyes.
Instead she stayed unmoving, sleeping like the dead, so unnaturally still it made Jonah afraid.
Jonah's eyes moved of their own accord to Thera's midsection. Where last he'd seen a taut, rounded, pregnant belly there was now a deflated mass of a stomach, like a baked loaf of bread that had failed to rise. The skin was still stretched to hold the baby, but the baby was gone.
Jonah's hand gently touched her empty womb then he looked down at her arms. The alien scientists' wires were in her, violating her soft skin with their alien obscenities.
Jonah began to pull them out and the machines at the bedside screeched.
"Sir," the small woman's voice protested but Jonah shook her off and with a warning glare to melt the glaciers of the surface directed at her he turned back to his work and tugged and pulled until Thera was free of all their alien audacities. There were pinpricks of blood where he'd taken out the sharp needles and red patches where he'd pulled off sticky pads but she was Thera, all Thera, and not some lab experiment.
The small woman was trying to elbow her way in again. "Sir, you can't do that, we need to monitor her..." she was saying rather explicitly, heedless of Jonah's right to say what happened to Thera while she was unable to decide for herself. The woman moved to reattach one of the devices and Jonah exploded. He whirled on her, grabbed her by the arms, and in no uncertain terms shoved her away from Thera. "Stay away from her!"
The woman stumbled backward and blinked in open surprise at Jonah.
Jonah glanced back at Thera and then skewered the small woman, obviously the leader, with a glare. "Where's the baby?"
This time the woman did not pretend ignorance but she did hesitate in telling him.
Jonah felt fury building. How dare this woman presume to keep him from his child?
"Jonah, just wait," Carlin tried to placate him and the young man was suddenly there at Jonah's side. He touched Jonah's shoulder, braved more than he could imagine by daring to try and intercede when Jonah's child could be in danger, and he said to Jonah, "It's all right, the baby's safe. She's okay."
Jonah's death-glare on the woman in white faltered slightly and he looked over at Carlin. "She?"
Carlin nodded and offered a small smile. "It's a girl."
Jonah, aggression tempered, looked back at the woman. She was standing her ground, watching him, but healthy caution was in her eyes and stance. Now that he really studied her outside the fog of hatred she seemed, actually, rather unimposing. Short, light brown hair, soft face and brown eyes. There was nothing inherently sinister about her bearing or appearance. She hardly looked like an evil alien scientist.
"Where's the baby?" he asked, this time more calmly.
The woman responded positively to his control and she nodded her chin toward the other side of the room. "I set up a basket in my office so the noises out here wouldn't wake her."
"Kaegan's with her," Carlin added hastily, and Jonah felt a little knot of tension start to unwind.
Jonah wanted to go see his child, his daughter, but he glanced back at Thera so motionless and vulnerable on the bed. He couldn't leave her to the scientists.
"I'll stay with her," Carlin said, as though reading Jonah's mind.
Jonah nodded his thanks and with a last glance in the woman's direction said unequivocally, "Don't let her near Thera."
The small woman seemed put upon by the order but Carlin promised to keep her at bay and Jonah moved over to the closed door that had to be the woman's office. The nameplate read 'J. Fraiser' and there was nothing decidedly evil in the name, either.
Jonah opened the office door and instant movement inside caught his attention. Kaegan, who'd been sitting in a chair at a paper-strewn desk, had jumped to her feet when the door opened. She, too, had been dressed in the whites of this strange place and it made her skin look that much darker in contrast. When Kaegan saw it was Jonah entering the office she relaxed and quickly thereafter looked pleased to see him.
Jonah's eyes went at once to the plastic tub on the back desk and held there.
Kaegan saw Jonah's intent and stepped aside with a knowing little smile.
Jonah moved across the room to the bin and looked inside. His breath caught and he stared. A tiny baby swaddled in blankets rested inside. A small perfect face burrowed into white blankets and atop its own balled little fists that propped under its cherubic jaw like she was thinking (and being Thera's daughter, she might be, Jonah conceded). Puffy newborn eyes, resolutely closed, and round cheeks punctuated by a tiny little nose and puckered mouth. Her skin, what little was exposed, a hearty pink. There was some manner of cap on her head but it looked safe, like it was cocooning his daughter, keeping her warm. She was making little wet, rasping baby sounds as she breathed, a pint-size symphony all by herself.
Jonah was mesmerized by the tiny little girl, completely spellbound by her presence. There were no ominous wires and tubes attached to the infant and for that Jonah was grateful. He could not have allowed such an abuse to his lover and his baby. To his lover alone was enough to make him see red.
Jonah brought up a hand and lowered it into the basket. His touch lightly caressed the baby's curled little fingers and in response to the touch her tiny hand splayed open. Jonah felt his heart swell and tug and he slipped his fingertip underneath her extended fingers and the baby's hand curled around his and held on weakly. Jonah's thumb gently touched the fingers limply grasping his index finger and he counted. Five perfect miniature digits.
The baby stirred and gave a high-pitched mewl and kicked deep within the folded coverings.
Jonah reached in with both hands, gathered the infant up tenderly, and lifted her out of the bin in which they'd put her. The baby's arms waved and she struggled to open her brand new eyes to seek out the person holding her. She seemed so frail and yet at the same time remarkable. She was part of him and part of Thera.
Jonah drew her near and tucked his daughter close to him. He cradled her and stared down at her as she opened her mouth wide and a tiny pink tongue poked out.
He was completely in love with her at that very moment.
The baby waved one arm and gave a small unenthusiastic kick but quickly settled against her father. She cuddled up to his warmth and began to doze.
Jonah's free hand cupped her head and he looked up at Kaegan. She was standing back watching, smiling.
"Thank you for staying with her," Jonah said and Kaegan gave him a smile Jonah had come to know. 'Don't mention it, no big deal'. But it was and he had to mention it but he got the message all the same.
Jonah rocked gently to and fro with the child in the crook of his arm, and he frowned. The baby belonged with Thera, not stuffed in some dark alien office.
Jonah turned and carried his daughter out of the oppressive cubicle without a second thought. The small woman, J. Fraiser, was the only white-coat left; apparently in his absence she had dismissed her lackeys. The green goons were still present but they were back to their posts by the walls. Carlin was where he'd promised he would be, standing guard over Thera's bed and watching Jonah emerge with the baby.
Jonah went straight to Thera's bedside and Carlin backed off so Jonah could gently perch on the edge and look between her sleeping face and the baby's.
"Thera..." Jonah said softly and with his free hand reached out and touched the back of hers. "Thera."
She was utterly unresponsive.
Jonah looked down at their daughter and in a flash of loneliness cradled her closer to him.
"What did you do to her?" Jonah asked without turning, his tone deliberate.
To her credit, J. Fraiser knew Jonah was addressing her. She approached the bed, this time with due caution, and said, "She's been sedated."
Jonah looked up sharply at J. Fraiser. "Why?"
Fraiser looked to Carlin and then back at Jonah and said, "It's a long story but before I tell you I need your assurance you won't attack me or my staff again."
"If I find out you've hurt Thera or this baby nothing will stop me from it."
Fraiser didn't so much as blink. "I can assure you we only want to help Sa-Thera and her baby."
Carlin stepped forward and said, "Why don't I tell you what happened on the planet? Maybe that will start to clear things up a little."
Jonah gave a recalcitrant nod.
Carlin began to tell his account. "The baby had just been born when you tried to shoot the men coming into the bedroom. They shot you with some kind of energy weapon; it knocked you out cold. Thera saw you go down and she took the gun off the nightstand and was going to shoot them, too.
"I didn't know what else to do but try and keep the baby safe so I took my knife, cut the cord, and got clear of the bed."
Jonah looked down at the sleeping infant then at Thera. "What happened to her?"
"She was hit with the same energy weapon you were and it had the same effect on her as it did on you."
Fraiser added at that point, "They had no choice, you were both ready and willing to use deadly force. At least our weapons would only stun you but you could have killed someone."
Jonah looked at Carlin and asked, "You were hit with the same weapon?"
Carlin looked embarrassed. "No, actually, I surrendered."
Jonah's eyebrows rose.
Carlin shrugged and said, "I was standing there holding the baby and I'd seen the intruders take you both out and I knew I couldn't try anything while I had the baby in my arms so I gave up."
Jonah nodded solemnly and brushed his thumb against the baby's incredibly soft cheek. "You did the right thing."
Fraiser pipped in, "He certainly did. I couldn't begin to guess what a zat hit to a newborn would do. If it can render full-grown adults unconscious it could have done serious permanent damage to an infant."
"Is she okay?" Jonah looked pointedly at Thera's still form.
Carlin nodded then, realizing Jonah had eyes only for Thera and didn't see his head bob, said, "She's going to be fine."
Fraiser was talking again. "When she was brought in she was still out from the zat but I went ahead and sedated her so I could do a postpartum exam. Considering the, ahh... altered state 'Carlin' was in I thought it would be less stressful for her if she wasn't awake while there was some... stranger examining her."
Jonah looked sharply and suspiciously at Fraiser. "You 'examined' her?"
Fraiser looked confused then she remembered something and said in clarification, "It's all right, I'm a doctor."
Jonah felt a little better and his hackles went down a small degree.
"You'll be glad to know," Fraiser continued, "that she seems to have had an easy birth."
Jonah smirked. "Not if you'd heard her screaming."
Fraiser smiled wanly. "I mean in the sense there were no complications. No bleeding, no afterbirth retention, normal blood pressure and glucose levels. There was a little tearing but that's normal and I've already put in a couple of stitches. She should recover quickly.
"I also understand her labor was short?"
Carlin said to that, "Ah... yeah, the doctor asked me about that but I could only say for certain that she was in labor a couple of hours."
Jonah looked down at the face of his daughter, tucked between the blankets and his body. "Thera started contracting in the middle of the night."
Carlin's eyes widened but Fraiser was thinking to herself. "That's a little more normal but still she got off easy. Some women, especially first-time mothers, can be in labor for days before they deliver.
"Though I'm sure she wouldn't think so, she got lucky."
Jonah snorted faintly. "No, she'd say you were night sick." Jonah frowned at Thera's too-still form and asked, "When will she wake up?"
"An hour, maybe less. If for some reason she doesn't start to come around about that time I'll give her something to wake her up. I've already given the baby a bottle of formula but it's important she nurse from her mother within the first twenty-four hours to absorb the antibodies her cholostrum contains."
"Is she healthy? I mean the baby?" Jonah asked and finally looked up with a non-hostile expression at the small woman doctor.
Fraiser smiled gently and nodded. "She's a perfect little baby girl."
Jonah sighed in relief. Thera was okay. The baby was okay. As far as he was concerned it was all that mattered.
It didn't mean he wasn't a little curious, though, and he looked directly at the doctor again and asked, "Why were we brought here? For that matter, where is 'here'?"
Fraiser froze and she looked pallid. Jonah frowned at her for such a strange reaction to a valid question.
Fraiser cleared her throat. "Umm... we'll get around to that explanation a little later. For now I want all of you to rest, eat a hot meal, and get cleaned up, not necessarily in that order. I don't want to go into any more details until S-uh, Thera's awake."
Jonah nodded and looked down at Thera's face. He wouldn't be completely at ease until she opened her eyes and looked at him.
Thera slowly started to reestablish a link to her senses like dawn slowly chasing away the night. She laid quiet at first and just listened. She could hear Carlin and Kaegan's subdued voices, too far for her to know what they were saying, but their familiar tones were a comfort and beat back the panic and fear that would have otherwise been on the heels of her returning awareness.
She was sore as all hell and the hollow stillness of her abdomen was a raw wound like no other. Then Thera was panicking anyway. Where was her baby?
Thera pried open her eyes and whites and grays rushed at her. She blinked and licked her lips as she tried to figure out where she'd been taken. Not the caves, not the administrative building, nowhere she'd seen before. Then again, there was something kind of familiar about the concrete ceiling high above her but she couldn't begin to place it. Faced with locating her child it wasn't important what snippet of unformed memory had been sparked.
Thera saw a movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head. She sighed out a breath she didn't know she was holding and smiled in relief. Jonah. He was in a chair beside her, face down-turned as he stared at his lap.
"Jonah..." Thera said faintly.
Jonah's eyes jerked up at his name, his gaze shot to her, and he grinned. "Hey, you're awake."
Thera nodded. "Where are we?"
Jonah looked around and gave a shrug. "I'm not really sure, but the people have been nice enough so far, a few details not withstanding."
"The baby?" she croaked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Jonah's expression grew infinitely gentle and he reached down and collected something out of his lap. He shifted in his seat, lifted up a balled white blanket, and gently laid it down next to Thera within the security of her arm.
Thera looked down and her lips parted in awe. Their baby. A tiny face, all scrunched up, was tucked within the white linens.
Thera stared down at it a long time then brought up her other hand to gently touch the angelic little face. The baby made a soft sound and cracked open its eyes. Slits of colored irises, too dark to say if they were dark blue or brown, tracked without focus over Thera's distant face.
Thera could hardly believe her eyes.
"Amazing, isn't she?" Jonah asked as he slid his chair closer and propped his head on one hand which he anchored on the bed to lean in and also admire their child. For all their strife in the past few days he looked almost boundless with barely-contained glee, his energy almost palpable and buoying Thera's own flagging reserves.
Thera looked over at him when his words registered. "She?"
Jonah smiled and said, "Yep, a little girl," and reached up to brush the back of his fingers against the baby's cheek. The infant, once again peeling open her stubbornly shut eyes, tried to turn her face into his hand, her mouth open and searching.
Thera basked in the moment. Her daughter in her arms, Jonah at her side. There was little else for which she could ask.
"Where are Carlin and Kaegan?"
Jonah glanced over his shoulder then ticked his head in the general direction of his recent gaze as he answered, "Back there. We've been granted pretty much free rein in this room by the people who captured us but we haven't been allowed to leave.
"How are you feeling?"
Thera gazed down at her daughter. "Great. Well actually, a little sore, but that's nothing." Thera could suffer a little bit of discomfort for the baby she now held, especially in comparison to the pain she remembered from before. Her current aching soreness was nothing compared to the agony of giving birth.
Jonah touched Thera's arm and only then did Thera realize she'd been fixated on her child to the exclusion of all else. She looked up at Jonah and he smiled crookedly as he said, "The doctor lady here said you and the baby are both fine."
The baby made a sound again, borderline impatient and demanding, and it drew the attention of both parents.
"You think you're up for breast-feeding?" Jonah asked.
Thera felt a strange tingle course through her at the thought and she gave a bashful nod.
Jonah stood up and proceeded to pull the curtain around the bed along its runner until they were secluded behind the sheet, mercifully afforded privacy. When they were alone he turned back to Thera and the baby. By body language alone, without asking, he intended to stay, and Thera was relieved; she didn't want to be left to possibly be expected to defend the baby alone in an unknown, possibly hostile territory. She'd seen no signs of danger to them or their daughter yet, but Thera had only been awake a short time and she wasn't feeling generous enough to give their 'captors' the benefit of the doubt. Maybe with her own life she would have been more adventurous, but not with her daughter's.
Jonah gently and carefully took the baby from Thera so she could gingerly sit up and prop the pillows behind her back to give her a brace upon which to lean. The baby, safe in Jonah's arms, let out a vocal huff and he smirked down at her.
Thera recognized the food-greedy baby she'd carried for nine months in a voice she'd not heard until today. She got comfortable (as comfortable as she could get considering) and held out her arms for the baby.
Jonah handed the infant back Thera looked up at him and asked almost shyly, "Um... sit with me?"
Jonah smiled, a warm and calming smile that made Thera feel at ease despite their largely unknown circumstances, and he climbed on to the narrow bed beside Thera. He helped her unbutton her shirt (the woman doctor, with obvious foresight for this occasion, had not given Thera a pull-over shirt like everyone else but rather one that opened down the front) and once bared Thera rearranged the baby in her hold until the tiny girl was positioned directly in front of a breast. At the offer of a nipple the baby first opened her eyes and stared forward blearily and then latched on and began to suckle.
Thera gasped and Jonah looked quickly at her. "What? Does it hurt?"
Thera, eyes fixed on her nursing daughter, shook her head and said, "No, it's... well, I don't know how to explain what it feels like but it's not painful."
Jonah, relieved, looped his arm around Thera's shoulders and watched, fascinated, while his daughter fed. It was more captivating than he'd thought it would be. He watched the flicker of a small darting tongue pulse rhythmically with the suckling action and white lactate form a filmy frame and bubbles around tiny puckered lips.
Thera dropped her head against Jonah's shoulder, in such a way that she could still watch the baby, eyes still locked on her infant, and she said in a small voice that was half statement, half query, "We're going to be okay, Jonah?"
Jonah squeezed her shoulders and reached up to trace his fingers along one of the baby's exposed arms. Such soft, delicate skin. "Yeah."
And Thera believed him. "Then I feel better."
Janet Fraiser reentered the infirmary and glanced around in a preliminary check of her patients. After so long learning to accept they were gone the habit reemerged with disquieting speed and accuracy.
Dan-no, Carlin and Kaegan were sitting side by side atop one of the gurneys near the back of the room. Carlin was saying something in a low-pitched voice. Janet couldn't hear what he said but she knew that face and his expressions were unchanged even if his memory could not boast the same. There was deep concentration and consternated confusion on his face. Kaegan was facing him, her body turned on the bed and one leg folded atop the gurney while the other dangled over the edge. Both looked up when Janet came into the room but she rated noting more than a momentary silence, speculative stares, then disregard as they turned back to one another.
Janet took her eyes off them and hunted for the remainder of her quorum of patients. The curtain around Sa-around Thera's bed was drawn, Jonah suspiciously absent else wise, and Janet had two guesses where she would find all of her unaccounted for wards. She headed in the direction of the curtained off bed to see how her other three patients were faring.
Janet slowly pulled aside the sheet to peek in and Jonah and Thera both looked up at her. They were crowded on to the gurney together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, while the baby was held in its mother's arms, sleeping.
Janet's attention fixed on... on Thera first and foremost.
"Good, you're awake," Janet said and stepped into the private area.
Thera looked a long time at Janet then asked, "Are you the doctor?"
Janet swallowed uncomfortably and tried not to visibly show it. "Yes, I am. My name's Janet Fraiser, I've been taking care of all of you since you were brought in.
"How long have you been up?"
Thera gave a shrug and Jonah answered, "Long enough to nurse the baby."
Janet glanced down at the contentedly dozing infant and said, "Oh, good, you needed to do that. How are you feeling? Are you in any discomfort?"
Thera shook her head.
"Are you hungry?"
Thera, instead of giving a response, looked over at Jonah then back at Janet. "If you don't mind, Doctor Fraiser," she said evenly, "what I really want is to know what happened and where exactly it is we've been brought."
Janet sagged in exhaustion at the mere thought but tried to mask her displeasure and hesitance with a nod. "I know, and now that you're awake we can start to try and figure out all the details but first I want you to let me do a few things, just to check you out." Janet glanced fleetingly at Jonah then stolidly back at Thera as she continued to say, "we had some monitoring devices hooked to you before but, um... those were..." Janet searched for a tactful word.
Jonah touched one of the bruised spots on Thera's arm and he said, "I took them off."
Thera looked up into his face then at Janet. Janet had seen that sizing-up glitter in those blue eyes before. She seemed to be assessing Janet and how much she could trust her. Janet had not been on the receiving end of that cold, analytical look in a very long time.
"All right," Thera finally relented and it felt like a step in the right direction to Janet.
Thera looked down at her baby, reluctant to part with it, then she gave in and handed it over to Jonah. Jonah got off the gurney and backed away a pace with the sleeping infant cradled against him, never out of sight and watching Janet's every move. Janet understood his watchful presence was non-negotiable. In another time Janet might have pressed her authority but it had lost hold here and she let Jonah have his way. It would probably help Thera relax to have him and the baby in her sight, anyway.
Janet pulled out her stethoscope, crossed to the bed, and went about her customary checks. She was in no great rush to finish; she had a feeling the discussion that would follow would be a very, very long one and anything but easy. It was never easy when it came to these individuals, it never had been, and Janet doubted that had changed even when so much else was turned on its head.
General Hammond had been having one of those days. Their search and rescue mission for any survivors of P3R-118 had turned up a very unexpected group of refugees. Hammond had believed, as had everyone at the SGC, that Jack O'Neill, Daniel Jackson, and Samantha Carter had died more than a year ago in an unfortunate accident, one from which the fourth team-member, Teal'c, still sported an unknown fate. When the three individuals currently residing in the infirmary were brought back through the stargate, however, there was no doubt who the three of them were.
Except there was doubt, at least in their minds. Daniel Jackson had been their only clue concerning the possible shared state of the three-fourth remaining team since he was the only former member of SG-1 conscious at the time of their return but it was enough that there was no outburst of recognition for Doctor Fraiser or Hammond himself from the young man upon setting foot in the old, unchanged embarkation room. Daniel Jackson clearly didn't know them or the SGC.
After that miraculous, anticlimactic return word from the infirmary had gotten quiet. Janet had all but locked down her corner of the SGC and information coming out was sketchy and usually third-party from an off-duty nurse. When it became suspected that it was a likely case that none of SG-1 remembered their old friends or old lives Janet had ordered the number of people crowding them kept to a minimum for their own well-being. She didn't want to unduly stress them. Janet was proceeding with insanely meticulous care. The whole ordeal had obviously rattled the young doctor and Hammond had done his best not to heckle Fraiser. He knew she would report to him when she had enough information to warrant a briefing. Still, Hammond had been anxious and impatient to find out what was going on with their people who had, until a few hours ago, been believed killed in action.
Finally, Janet had called his office and told him everyone was awake and alert and he could come down to assess the situation. 'Assess the situation' seemed like a very cautious approach to the entire mess and Hammond decided he would take his lead from Janet in this matter.
And a situation it was, because the moment Hammond saw his old team come through the gate he was overcome with overwhelming relief and bone-deep, crushing shame. If they were alive then it meant they at the SGC had all abandoned SG-1 a long time ago, given up and believed them dead.
They'd left them behind.
It was an injustice and those people in the infirmary, whomever they thought they were, deserved better.
Doctor Fraiser was waiting for Hammond outside the infirmary door and when she saw him she straightened from her weary slouch and he recognized an encroaching quick run-down when he saw one.
Hammond stopped in front of the doctor and asked without preamble, "How are they?"
Janet was just as content to get straight to business. "Physically, nothing more serious than being a little underweight and a little tired. They could all use some time in the sun, but otherwise their bodies are fine. Mentally..." Janet frowned then sighed and it pulled at her entire frame. "Daniel's not a unique case. None of them remember who they are and you should be prepared for that, sir."
Hammond had feared as much when Daniel had stared blankly at him from the stargate ramp. He nodded grimly and asked, "What of the baby Doctor Jackson was carrying when they were brought back?"
"It's Sam's," Janet answered. Although in light of the scouting team's report there wasn't much chance it was else-wise, Hammond had to ask. Janet simply confirmed what he'd suspected from the start. "She's obviously given birth within the last six hours."
Hammond stood in the hallway with Janet a minute as he took the new facts into consideration. There was no precedent for this kind of event and Hammond had to create the operating procedure as they went along. "What is your recommendation, Doctor?" Hammond asked. "How should we proceed with this? Do we treat them like SG-1 or any other off-world refugee? Without their memories are they even really the same people we knew?"
"That's a difficult question to answer, sir. Intellectually, no, they're not Colonel O'Neill, Major Carter, or Doctor Jackson, not as we knew them. That's not to say they're completely unknown people, however. Their personalities seem to be intact. Daniel's acting like Daniel even if he doesn't answer to the name."
"Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter?"
Janet frowned thoughtfully before she said, "I haven't had as much interaction with them so I'm not as certain, but from what I've been able to see the 'core' of what made them both the people we use to know is still there. It's a little tricky because the individuals who used to be Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter are coping with factors we never witnessed Colonel O'Neill or Major Carter experience." Janet looked almost aggrieved to admit that fact. She said reluctantly, "We never saw Major Carter as a mother so I'm not sure how our Sam would have acted and how that might differ from how she's acting now."
"Is it in their best interests or ours to tell them who they really are?" Hammond asked. Considering the amnesiatic state of the former members of SG-1 they were rendered, effectively, strangers and as commander of the facility Hammond had to think of the security of the base and the stargate program.
"I'm not sure what's caused them to lose their personal identities but I think their memories are still there, buried or suppressed, and I think they might reemerge once exposed to enough environmental catalysts."
"What makes you say that?"
Janet frowned. "It's a... feeling. I haven't had a chance to run any tests because I wasn't sure how you wanted me to handle telling them about their true identities, but I've been talking to Daniel and at times he seems a little more like Daniel, our old Daniel, than others. I know it's not a very scientific answer, sir, but it's the sense I get from him. He seems to almost recognize some things, sometimes I think he almost recognizes me and not just as 'the doctor' but from before."
"And the colonel and major? Are they appearing to experience these near-lapses into their old lives like Doctor Jackson?"
"Like I said, I haven't been in contact with them enough to really say," Janet paused and winced, "but then they do have a very real distraction that is wholly apart from everything they used to be here. They might not let themselves see the things Daniel seems to.
"Bottom line, sir, I think we should do everything we can to help them recover their memories. We have some technology I think we can successfully apply and if exposure to things in the SGC starts a chain-reaction of naturally recovering their memories then we stand a good chance of getting our people back."
It was enough for Hammond. "Very well, Doctor," he said, "let's go inside and talk to them."
Janet turned and led Hammond into the infirmary. It seemed almost vacant with the distinct lack of nursing staff and the only human life inside occupied the space allotted by two gurneys, a concentrated pocket of motion in stillness. Hammond's eyes fell at once on them. The first detail that jumped at him was to note that they were all clad in white rather than the orange they'd worn the last time he saw them. They looked marginally clean, wash-basin clean so it was clear Janet had obviously not seen fit yet to release them to go to the showers. Hair was still grimy and the men were unshaven, sporting rough stubble.
Eyes locked on Hammond as he drew near them and he felt the chill of being regarded by friends as a stranger. In every rare occasion it had happened at the SGC it was hauntingly unsettling.
Hammond looked over 'his people'.
On one of the gurneys, the one closer to the door, Sam Carter was reclining against the wall at the head of the medical bed. She was holding a white bundle to her chest and pulling it ever-so-faintly closer as Hammond and Janet got closer. Her hair was longer, unstyled, and it was the most readily apparent anomaly in an otherwise painfully 'Sam' face.
Perched on the foot of Sam's bed was Jack O'Neill. He was watching Hammond with that astutely tactical mind Hammond had known well in his second-in-command. Tainting what might have otherwise been an utterly familiar expression was an undisguised edge of distrust. As Hammond neared Jack bristled and his presence barbed. Hammond had seen Jack go on guard before, but always to off-world adversaries and the occasional Russian or NID lackey. It was a foreign (and profoundly disturbing) experience to be the target of that glare. Hammond would make it a point, for the sake of keeping this first crucial meeting from disintegrating into a confrontation, to let Jack stay between him and Sam and the infant.
Sitting side by side on the next gurney were Daniel Jackson and the slim, dark woman who had accompanied his erstwhile team from P3R-118. Daniel was studying Hammond but not as warily as Jack or Sam and right then Hammond understood how Janet could 'just have feeling' that Daniel was almost with them. The familiar, pensive purse to his lips and crease in his brow screamed that he was on the verge of knowing something.
Hammond and Janet stopped between the two beds and Janet ridiculously introduced SG-1 to the general. "This is the leader of our facility, General Hammond."
Hammond nodded and cut a glance at all of his old colleagues. Jack's eyes flickered and an unreadable look of confusion momentarily overtook the hostile wariness in his face as he lowered his gaze fractionally.
It was almost a relief that Daniel was the one to decide to act as greeter and spokesperson. It was exactly what the old Daniel would have done if he thought they were meeting an alien official. The young man slid off the bed and faced Hammond. "Um... hi, my name is Carlin. This is Kaegan, and that's Jonah and Thera."
Hammond's mood dampened just a little. He would try to remember the false names but it was hard to be introduced to people he knew very well. It was even harder for the pseudonyms to be offered so unerringly.
"Are you going to finally tell us what's going on?" Jonah asked bitterly in the short ensuing silence and Hammond couldn't help but at least smirk slightly. Their names were different but their personalities were indeed intact. That terse, annoyed, and commanding attitude was pure Jack O'Neill.
"As best I can," Hammond answered, "but first I'd like to ask you a few questions."
Jonah grew even more guarded and wary but he didn't outright protest and Hammond knew Jack well enough to know he'd play along for now... but only to a point. Normally Hammond would have that working in his favor, Jack on his side, but now he would have to pit himself against his former comrade. It was a prospect he did not relish.
"Do any of you know where you are?" Hammond asked.
The four conferred silently with one another, sharing perplexed looks at the strange question, then Carlin answered, "We think we're probably on another planet."
"You think?" Hammond prodded.
Carlin sighed and frowned. It was a classic Daniel-consternated face and it was so hard to remember that it wasn't exactly Daniel. "We didn't actually know what the Chappa-ai did or how it worked but we all just knew that it was some kind of transportation device. This place looks a lot different from any of the buildings we explored in the city so it must be on another planet."
"What about the planet where you come from?"
Carlin shrugged awkwardly and shifted on his feet.
"What were you doing there?" Jonah interjected, effectively freeing Carlin from the center of attention, though why inquiry into the planet would upset Carlin was beyond Hammond's comprehension.
Hammond turned his eyes to Jonah and answered, "We've had diplomatic relations with the inhabitants of the city on P3R-118 for more than a year. We'd been in fairly regular contact with the government for a number of months. When they failed to contact us for a trade negotiation we've been discussing we tried to reach them and discovered they'd been attacked. The city was devastated. We sent a few aerial probes through to scout for any signs of remaining enemy forces then we organized a search party to look for survivors. That's how and when you were all found."
"Were we the only ones?" Kaegan asked.
Hammond nodded sadly. "It looks that way, yes. We still have a team scouring the remainder of the city but it looks as though everyone else was lost. How did the four of you manage to escape the enemy?"
The four in question stilled and Carlin looked toward Jonah. Jonah was regarding Hammond, something deeply pensive and almost relenting in his gaze, then he looked at Carlin and gave a small nod.
Then Hammond got the full story on these people, Carlin, Thera, Jonah, and Kaegan. Carlin told them about their work underground, their lives as little more than slave labor, the machines and the mining and eventually the discovery of a tel'tac embedded in the rock. The pieces started to fall into place as Carlin recounted his accidental activation of some kind of broadcasting device and the description of the attack that would follow. Hammond and Janet listened, attentive, as they were told about the foursome hiding out in the tel'tac for almost six days then their excursion out of the mines, to the surface, then prowling the city for signs of life. The part of the story about their discovery of the stargate heralded a strange shift of pace and Carlin cast a number of glances at Thera. His account began to gloss and rush to the end until their capture was barely mentioned along with Thera giving birth.
When the tale was told there was a moment of silence as everyone digested the story. Even those who'd lived it seemed to only then think about what they had endured.
When someone dared to speak it was Thera. She looked between Janet and Hammond and asked, "What are you going to do with us?"
Hammond wanted to go to her bedside and reassure her everything would be all right with a small touch and a smile, but this wasn't Sam, the woman he'd known when she was but a small child, it was Thera. She would not be comforted the way Sam would have been by Hammond's gesture, and Jonah would not have appreciated the effort.
"You're safe here," Hammond promised them. He glanced once at Janet, who looked a little tense, and he knew the doctor was aware of the next order of business as much as he.
Hammond looked back at the group and said, "What I have to tell you all will no doubt sound unusual, perhaps even unbelievable, but before I get into that I want to know what if anything any of you remember about your lives before the underground work camp."
Carlin, Jonah, and Thera frowned. Kaegan shook her head and said, "I grew up in the caves; I've worked there all my life."
Hammond gently considered the dark woman. In his focus to deal with his former team he'd almost dismissed the quiet woman who had returned with them. "Yes, ma'am, I'm sure for you that may be true, but right now I'm really asking Jonah, Thera, and Carlin."
Kaegan looked to Carlin but he had only a peculiar frown to offer.
Jonah was the first to answer, rather tersely, "I worked in the mines."
"Doing what exactly?"
Jonah's eyes narrowed as he gave the smart reply, "I mined."
"What did you do before that? Do you remember? Do any of you remember anything clearly from before just over a year ago?"
Jonah, Thera, and Carlin exchanged glances with one another, looks that grew increasingly uneasy as the seconds passed. Hammond could see he'd struck a cord and it gave him hope. Apparently the memory gap, whatever had stolen their lives as Jack, Sam, and Daniel, had not created elaborate pasts for them as well. It was one less obstacle to combat. Without fallacious long-term memories in place maybe convincing them they were really and truly home would be made easier.
Hammond checked once more with Janet then (when he got a very small nod from her) turned to the three non-strangers said, "I know what I'm going to say will be difficult to accept but please, hear me out and try to keep an open mind.
"You are on a planet called Earth in a top secret military facility known as the SGC, or Stargate Command. We use a device, the stargate or, as you called it," Hammond spared a glance at Carlin, "the 'Chappai', to travel to other planets. We have a number of four-man teams that explore other worlds with the primary mission mandate to create alliances with people all over the galaxy and attempt to obtain technology we can use to help us defend ourselves against and fight our common enemy, the Gould."
Carlin's eyes widened and he blurted, "That's what Babi was!" At everyone's look Carlin simmered but said determinedly, "Sorry. The god I read about in those texts from the tel'tac; he was one of them, a... a Goa'uld."
Hammond nodded. "That's very likely, everything you've described fits the typical behavior of a Gould.
"As I was saying, we have teams of individuals who go through the stargate on a regular basis on missions off-world. More than a year ago the SGC's flagship team, SG-1, went through the gate to a planet we know by the designation P3R-118. Our team disappeared. Search efforts turned up nothing and after a few months all members of SG-1 were declared missing in action and eventually presumed dead." Hammond looked at Jonah, Thera, and Carlin, each listening closely and seeming almost primed for a physical reaction, tensed and on-edge. Hammond would dance around the topic no longer. With a meaningful look at each former member of his premiere team Hammond said, "You three are part of that missing team."
Stunned silence descended over the infirmary. Hammond and Janet stood there waiting, scarcely daring to breathe while they watched for the others' reactions. Kaegan's eyes widened and she looked instantly at Carlin then at Jonah and Thera as though seeking some indication of the veracity or falsehood of Hammond's proclamation. The three friends were all motionless. They looked shell-shocked.
Finally movement.
Jonah looked slowly at Thera then stood deliberately from the bed.
Thera watched him, as though in a stupor, then she turned her eyes to Hammond. He'd never seen such uncertain trepidation in her face. "Are you saying," she began in a weak voice, "that we're... we're home? That Jonah, Carlin, and I are all one of you?"
Hammond nodded. "Your name is Samantha Carter and you're a major in the United States Air Force."
The name and title seemed to resonate and Thera swallowed and turned her eyes almost furtively to Jonah. She, perhaps unknowingly, held her baby closer.
Hammond directed his gaze at Jonah to find the man standing squarely facing him. There was unquestionably a fire of resistance and confrontation in his bearing. "Colonel Jack O'Neill, Air Force," Hammond stated simply, part greeting and part imparting information. There was no outward reaction, Jonah's face was schooled, but the steely set to his jaw and the tight skin around his eyes spoke volumes.
Next Hammond turned to name properly Carlin. "Doctor Daniel Jackson."
Carlin blinked with mouth agape.
Jonah turned his back on the group and Carlin sat down slowly next to Kaegan. Thera's eyes fell and her fingers spread to encompass more of the swaddled infant she held.
"I know how shocking and overwhelming this must seem," Janet said after taking in all three pale faces (Jonah's only partially as he half-turned his head toward her, allotting only a profile view). "None of you have to worry, we'll do all we can to help you."
"Help us what?" Jonah asked in an even, overly-controlled voice.
"To help you remember," Janet answered and the blank, unenthusiastic faces with which she was met made her mentally stagger to realize she had never once asked herself if they would even want to regain their memories. Surely they would, who would chose an empty past over identity, but right then she wasn't so certain. Jonah, Thera, and Carlin were quiet and contemplative, not overjoyed.
Maybe it was just the shock of hearing the news.
"General," Janet said as she turned to face the SGC commander standing at her side. "I think we should give them some space and some time to acclimate to the idea."
Hammond considered the stony expressions, guarded to a fault, and he had to agree. "Very well, Doctor." Hammond looked one last time at the former SG-1 and said, "When any of you have any questions feel free to have Doctor Fraiser contact me." With a nod Hammond left the infirmary and three very stunned former SGC employees.
Janet did her best to abide by her own recommendation, difficult though it was when her friends looked so broad-sided. It took all her will-power to go against her instincts as a healer and walk away from their confusion and pain. But she did it. Janet went into her office and tasked herself with paperwork. She wasn't willing to be out of easy access if she was needed but she could close her office door and give them a semblance of privacy.
A soft knock brought her attention up and Janet's hopes and fears churned in a single cauldron as she saw Carlin/Daniel poke his head inside. He looked hesitant and cautious. "Um... hi."
Janet opened her mouth and just stopped herself from calling him 'Daniel'. "Hello. Do you need something?"
Carlin/Daniel frowned and Janet wanted to grab him and shake him and make him remember being Daniel. He looked so much like him, his expressions and mannerisms bang-on, but he didn't know it.
"I just... I wondered if I could talk to you."
Janet closed the file on the desk and gestured him inside the office. "Of course. What's on your mind?"
Daniel/Carlin made a strange face as he stepped tentatively into Janet's office and he said, "That's... an interesting choice of words, all things considered."
Janet smiled a little and cant her head as she looked at him. He looked a little more weathered and soul-battered and somehow that made him look more like Daniel than Carlin. "You sound like you're confused."
Daniel/Carlin's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline as he shook his head at the observation. "You can't imagine."
"Sit down," she offered as she gestured toward a chair. "If you don't mind me asking, is all this," she motioned at Daniel/Carlin's uneasily tense body and continued," because you think it might be true?"
Daniel/Carlin, at that point sitting in a chair at a ninety-degree angle to Janet's, crossed his arms tightly over his chest and he nearly whispered, "I... I think I remember things, but I'm not sure."
"What do you remember? Maybe I can help you clarify some of your memories."
Daniel/Carlin tucked his arms closer about himself and his blue eyes slid away from her before he said, "Actually... I'd like to know about the woman."
"Woman?"
Daniel/Carlin nodded. "I dream about a woman a lot. I used to think it was just a recurring dream, and nightmare, but now... it seems more substantial, more real. Something about being here at the..." Daniel/Carlin searched for the word, "the 'SGC' makes it stronger. I can remember more details about her than ever."
"Tell me."
Daniel/Carlin nodded tensely. "She's someone important to me. She's very beautiful, brown eyes, curly black hair, and such soft lips. She's from the desert, another world far from here, I'm sure of that much about her. We're together and I love her very much and I am happy with her then something terrible happens. She's taken away and I try to find her but she... she dies."
Janet ached for him and not for the first time. She nodded and gave him a moment to regather his composure before she said softly. "Your wife."
Daniel/Carlin flinched but his face was unmoved, as though he'd in some sense known the answer all along. His expression was fixedly sickened.
Janet looked down at her hands. "I'm so sorry you remember that. I mean, about what happened to her." If anything had come out of this memory loss it should have been forgetting the bad times.
Daniel/Carlin went very still, didn't make a sound, then he said lowly, deliberately, "In the dreams... memories... I'm with her when she dies and as she's dying she... she says my name."
"... Carlin?" Janet ventured.
Daniel/Carlin gave an infinitesimal shake of his head and looked up at her, his gaze intense. "Daniel."
An unseen but certainly felt explosion in the confines of Janet's office rent the air between them. Janet wanted to cry and cheer at once, hug him equally for joy and sadness. She watched him closely, hunted for signs of 'Daniel', and they were there. They were mixed-up and confused as all hell, tangled in 'Carlin', but there was definitely 'Daniel' in his eyes.
"Daniel," Janet said, dually address and confirmation of his previous statement.
Daniel nodded then cocked his head in absent thought and said, "Well... she didn't say my name that way. She... sh...Sha're... Sha're called me 'Dan-yel'."
Janet smiled sadly but sweetly. He was back. If he remembered his wife he was half-way to everything Daniel Jackson was.
Daniel's eyes distanced and Janet watched him immerse in memories. It was a titillating sight. She watched him rediscover the sands of Abydos and his arid beauty, the love of his life, just by the shift of his face muscles and the gleam in his eyes. His face changed, gentled and softened, with the unfolding memories and Janet felt the first enormous relief she had in hours.
Daniel blinked heavily, as though pulling away from a private heaven, and he looked down at the floor. His voice, when he spoke, was emotionally laden and heavy with affection. "I loved her very much."
"Yes, you did," Janet said.
Daniel, in the following silence, brought up a hand and scratched at the growth of hair on his jaw.
"Daniel," Janet said, thrilled that he looked up at her when she said his name as if he was that man. "Do you remember who you are?"
Daniel frowned oddly and glanced toward the office door. "I... I know I'm not me... I mean, not exactly who I thought I was. I know I'm not really Carlin, I think." Daniel sighed in frustration. "It's really confusing. It's like the man I thought I was is falling apart, disintegrating, and there are these patches of someone else filling in the holes."
"It's all right, it might take time to recover everything."
Daniel looked at her then, penetrating, and he asked bluntly, "Am I Daniel Jackson?"
Janet blinked at the forth-right question. "Yes, you are."
Daniel continued to stare at her before he said, "Because I don't know him, this 'Daniel', well enough to be sure, but I have to trust that this other 'identity' that's overtaking me is this 'Daniel' you all say I'm supposed to be. I don't know what else to call what... who I am becoming."
"Daniel... I know it must be very disorienting but you have to believe that you're with friends here and we only want what's best for you. We would never do anything to harm you... any of you."
Daniel closed his eyes. "I think I know... I think Daniel knows... whoever it is I was before Carlin knows." Daniel opened his eyes again and looked at Janet. His gaze was still guarded and wary but less spurious and defensive. "I don't have all the pieces but I have impressions and I get the feeling... I get the feeling I can trust you... that you're a friend."
Janet smiled and Daniel, after a moment, smiled faintly back. It was a start well in the right direction.
"What about the others?" she asked. "Are they starting to remember who they really are, too?" Janet was beginning to question her decision to leave the former SG-1 alone to acclimate to the shocking news in private. It went against her better angels to deliberately leave herself so unaware of her patients' states.
Daniel seemed to physically retreat from the topic of the others. "I... I don't know. We kind of stopped talking after you and, uh, the general told us. Thera's gotten really quiet and Jonah... he's troubled."
"Troubled how?"
Daniel gave a half-shrug and it was disquietingly unDaniel-like. "He's acting... distant. He should at least be talking to Thera, at the very least interacting with the..." Daniel trailed and Janet let him.
"Do you remember the fourth member of your team?" Janet finally asked, and to Daniel's look she quickly amended, "General Hammond said SG teams are comprised of four people and I assume you caught on to the fact that the other SG-1 member isn't Kaegan."
"No... I know she's not... like us. As to the other one of us... I don't... Tor." He frowned then said, "I'm... I'm not sure if that's his name, his real one, but he was big, dark guy with a gold birthmark on his forehead..."
"That's him. His name is Teal'c."
"Teal'c," Daniel said, as though trying it out with his mouth and committing it to memory.
"Do you know what happened to him?"
Daniel frowned and said, "I think he's dead. I think he died before I was... before I became Carlin, because Carlin doesn't have any memory of him at all. There are just these vague images in the back of my mind of him."
Janet looked down sadly. She'd suspected Teal'c was gone when he didn't come back with his team. Despite it all, that renewed sense of loss bit at Janet. It seemed to be almost asking too much for all four of them back when they had been blessed to see three thought-dead SG-1 members return. Now the return of their memories would be bittersweet, because they would remember Teal'c had been a dear friend and they would know to grieve his loss.
"Doctor Fraiser?" Daniel asked in a small, meek voice.
"Yes?"
"Could you... could you tell me who I am? I just... I feel like there's a lot missing, a lot of connections I can't make, but maybe... maybe if someone else helped..."
Janet didn't fight the urge to reach over and touch his knee. "I'll tell you all I know about you... and maybe some things you don't." She smiled almost wickedly (though with due care) at him and Daniel's eyes widened then he offered up a very careful smile in return.
Jonah felt besieged by forces he could not control. When the doctor lady and the bald man had come to them and told them they were a missing team of alien world explorers... something in him had broken loose. He'd been overcome, like the deluge of a tidal wave, with a sense of grandeur, a sense of something so much bigger than anything Jonah had ever been. Until that moment his life had been simple, the attack on the planet not withstanding. He was Jonah, the miner, the worker, the regular guy. Slave labor aside, he had an easy life. He did his work, he kept his people alive, and in every spare moment he could get he spent time with Thera. In a breath's span that was snatched away and something was ripping at him, tearing apart his world.
He did not like it.
He was being compromised, infiltrated by a stranger, a stranger with his face, someone with a past and he tried to use that to lay claim to Jonah's very existence. And Jonah couldn't fight it. This was not an enemy he could raise a weapon against, this was himself. That was the hardest part, to know the intruder stealing everything from him was himself. How could he fight that?
Jonah willed the seeping memories to stop, to keep at bay this 'Jack O'Neill' everyone here seemed to think was he. He wanted nothing to do with the man, he had a life to live. He had a daughter. He didn't need O'Neill and he certainly didn't want him.
But it seemed inevitable with every passing minute that he would become someone else.
Jonah would look at something and it would go from foreign to familiar without warning and he could not escape it. Everywhere he looked the alien world became not so alien and with every new-found discovery of recognition Jonah weakened.
Jonah would not concede defeat to some person presuming to take his life. Whoever this 'O'Neill' guy was could get his own life and leave Jonah the hell alone.
Jonah had been sitting by himself on a gurney near the corner. He'd retreated, withdrew, and sat alone away from the others to wage his private war. He'd been sitting and succumbing. It seemed there was no way to stop the transformation and Jonah was enraged and overcome with grief. If he disappeared would it mean he would never see his daughter again? Would he never touch Thera, never hold her or kiss her? Jonah had a life, he had happiness, and this bastard O'Neill would steal it all.
Already one of the most precious things in Jonah's life was tainted. Somehow Thera had changed. It was nothing she had done, rather it was something that had engulfed him. On the heels of General Homer's words Jonah had felt a gaping chasm open between him and Thera... and he had to move away. It was wrong to be so close to her, to look at her the way he did, to think of her the way he did.
Jonah missed his lover. He needed her. He was losing himself and the only person who could ever hold him better than he was her. Jonah was dying in a way, and he couldn't die in her arms. He'd never thought life could be so cruel.
And then he remembered Charlie.
The boy in his dreams, the nightmares so long haunting him, rushed into vivid clarity and he was floored. Agony swallowed him whole and it was more than he could take.
Jonah had made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up, then he sank, as though boneless, down to the floor and remembered. Charlie, jesus. He remembered the gunshot that cracked in the mid-morning air, the moment his heart stopped and the world slowed to a crawl, he remembered the fragile body on the floor and the gun near his hand, and the blood. How a small body had bled so much.
Jonah had stayed in the bathroom what felt like an eternity, too unsteady to stand. Jonah expected Thera to come and comfort him, Jonah wanted her to, but O'Neill knew another woman with the same face wouldn't and it seemed O'Neill knew his blonde better than Jonah knew his. Thera never came and Jonah sat on the tile and broke into a cold sweat.
Jonah cursed this O'Neill and his pain, hated him for trying to usurp Jonah's very being, but he would also surrender because Jonah could not renounce Charlie. Charlie was his son and he would be O'Neill to have him, even if it was only to inherit broken memories of a lost child.
Jonah sat in the bathroom and slowly died. The life that replaced his was new of old. The man that slid into Jonah's skin was like a kindred soul, so much the same but still so very different. Experience of a thousand heartaches hardened him. The training of a soldier and a killer overtook the mild, unconcerned mine worker he once was. He became a different kind of father, parent to a slain child.
Thera never came because Sam never would.
Jack finally pulled himself off the floor and staggered to the sink. He splashed cold water in his face, rinsed out his mouth, then looked up in the mirror. He knew the man he saw in the reflection, he knew that soul-deep pain in those brown eyes. He knew who he was. The remnants of Jonah inside him grieved for Jack, and Jack grieved for Jonah. As Jonah Jack had known happiness again, he'd been free, but as Jonah Jonah forgot Charlie. It was a sacrifice neither could accept.
Jack emerged from the bathroom, shaky and devastated, but Jack was a master at putting up a good front... Jack remembered how to do that as Jonah never had. Jack put on his game-face and met the world head-on.
The infirmary was burgeoning around him, assailing him with memories. He knew this place, it cried at him in blood-curdling screeches. He remembered pain and death and recovery in this room. It wasn't an alien laboratory, it was the SGC. Those three letters made sense to him now, they meant something more than nonsensical alphabet soup.
Jack glanced around the room and like a magnetic pull his eyes went to Thera's bed. She was lying on her side, sheet dropped down to drape at her hips, and Jack could see the baby lying on the bed next to her. Her hand was gently resting on the small creature's stomach and her eyes were locked on the small face. Jonah flared in him and he wanted nothing more than to go over to her and touch her, touch the baby.
Jack fought and turned away. He had to get out of there.
Deep inside him Jonah was in pain... he'd lost Thera.
Jack went to the infirmary door and an SF, one of two on duty, stopped him. "I'm sorry, sir, you can't leave the infirmary."
Jack looked the airman straight in the eye and said, "Get General Hammond, I want to speak with him."
Jack was back and with his aura of authority intact because the airman only paused a few seconds before leaving to fetch the commander of the base while the other eyed Jack uncertainly.
Jack hung around in the doorway as he waited. It was easier to hover there than risk going back inside and having to turn away from Thera. What remained of Jonah inside him made Jack uncertain he could be strong enough to walk away a second time.
General Hammond kept stealing glances at the taciturn man at his side. One of the airmen on sentry duty outside the infirmary had come to his office to report that Jack-Jonah-the body formerly known as Colonel O'Neill wanted to see him. Hammond had gone down to the infirmary not knowing what to expect. Now, after having walked in five minutes of silence with the man, he still didn't know what to expect. There was an intense rigidity to the other man's posture, his facial features, and Hammond kept waiting for the fall-out from this person.
It drove Hammond nuts, but he wasn't sure who was at his side. Jack/Jonah had said nothing when Hammond arrived but instead gave a small nod and they'd fallen into step. Hammond knew Jack would have needed a little space, some distance, time to clear his head, and he would only be able to do that with some form of escort. He just wished he knew if it really was Jack who needed a little time to think away from the others or if it was something Jonah 'adopted' from what used to be Jack O'Neill.
Hammond suspected, from the look on Jack/Jonah's face, that the man had issues and it was partly the reason he'd asked for Hammond. As yet, however, Jack/Jonah had said nothing about why he'd summoned the general.
They had to look quite the sight, walking down the corridors, Hammond in his office clothes and Jack in white hospital scrubs, but the gray-haired man seemed far from occupied with his incongruous attire.
Finally Hammond couldn't stand the utter silence any longer. He couldn't stand not knowing if he was walking beside a friend or total stranger with the same body.
Hammond hunted for a word he could use, something that wasn't a flash grenade, then settled on one he usually reserved for Doctor Jackson. "Son..."
"Sir?" Jack returned lowly, and Hammond turned his head and looked at the colonel.
Hammond came to a stop and Jack followed suit. Brown eyes, tired and worn but full of understanding and recognition, turned to Hammond and the general dared to hope. "Jack?"
Jack didn't look too happy as he answered, "Yes, sir. I'm... me."
"Well, I don't mind saying it's a damn sight good to see you again. Doctor Fraiser couldn't guarantee any of you would ever remember who you really were."
Jack's hands slid over his outer thighs in an absent-minded search for pockets that didn't exist and failing in that he twitched his fingers to an internal rhythm. His dark gaze moved away from Hammond and it set off warning bells in the general. If this was Jack then Hammond knew that look and he knew it meant bad things for the colonel.
"Jack?"
Jack glanced back at him, but only briefly before his eyes turned once again to the empty hallway. That barest contact, however, had been loaded, Hammond knew his Jack O'Neill well enough to see it.
"How much do you remember?"
Jack shrugged. "It's all starting to come back. It's a little foggy in places, but more or less it's all come back. It started to 'click' the moment you said our names."
Hammond remembered the looks on his team's faces and could well believe that was true. The general narrowed his eyes at Jack, troubled by the disquiet he found in his face, and then he started to get an inkling what this concerned.
"What about the others? Do they remember?"
Jack froze, only fractionally, but it was enough and Hammond was sorry for him... and for her.
"I don't know, I didn't ask them. Daniel wasn't around when I left and I saw her but didn't talk to Thera-" Jack flinched and went painfully quiet before he said in a low-pitched, sad voice like a word he loathed to utter aloud. "Carter."
Hammond had never heard Jack's voice break with anguish around his second-in-command's name before as it did then. It was infinitely telling. It made more sense than Hammond wanted it to, and he could only begin to imagine just how hard coming home had been for at least two of SG-1. What had Jack lost in rediscovering himself? What damage had been wrought in the time they were lost to the SGC and to themselves?
The two men, in unspoken consensus, began walking again, at a slower pace than before. There was a heavy tension in the air between them, both overwhelmed with questions no one wanted to ask, questions to which they didn't really want the answers.
Hammond never thought getting his people back would be so hard on everyone. Hardest of all on them, and Hammond was sorry they had been left in a position for it to happen in the first place.
"I'm sorry," Hammond suddenly said, taking himself by surprise with his apology.
"For what?" Jack asked, and his tone was so flat and empty that Hammond wanted to stop and take a good look at the younger man.
Instead, he answered, "We left your team behind on that planet."
Jack didn't say anything and the silence was unsettling to Hammond. Jack, the Jack he'd known before, had always been quick with a dry remark or lame joke, but this speechless drone was unlike Jack O'Neill. Hollow, silent Jack O'Neill was wrong beyond all comprehension.
"We thought you were gone," Hammond added.
"In a way, we were."
"And would you prefer if you still were?"
Jack pulled to an abrupt halt and Hammond turned to look at the colonel. He'd taken the bull by the horns with his presumptuous question and he'd stick it out to see what it got him. At the moment it was an intense look from Jack. There was something in those dark eyes that told Hammond he was, at least in part, right.
And that made Hammond heartsick.
"It's... complicated," Jack finally said cagily.
Hammond sighed wearily. No one was going to explicitly say what everyone already knew, they were back to strict military procedure. "We'll worry about that later," Hammond said after a moment, then asked, "what happened to your team, Colonel?"
Jack seemed to scrounge in his brain for the memory. "We were meeting with the city officials and exploring the area when Th... when Carter noticed some ventilation grates in the ground and we investigated. Turns out the people of P3R-118 enslaved their own people to tend the machines that provide energy to the entire city.
"I went to confront Administrator Caulder about their practices and told them Earth wouldn't ally themselves with people who endorse slavery and... that's the last thing I remember before I start remembering things as 'Jonah'." Jack didn't say a word beyond that, nothing to detail what might have happened to SG-1, between the members of SG-1, while they were those alternate personas. Hammond would let that stand for now and instead focused on the recount of their 'capture'.
Hammond mulled over Jack's words and mused aloud, "They probably used some type of synaptic manipulation technology to make you forget who you were. When we entered into trade negotiations with the government one of the technological items they offered was a medical technique that Doctor Fraiser thinks could one day help Alzheimer's and amnesia patients, something about stimulating atrophied or dormant synapses... I imagine if they could recover memories they could suppress them, too."
Jack gave a shrug and started walking again, Hammond left with no choice but to take up beside him. Jack had returned to weighty silence.
"Am I to assume that you and the rest of SG-1 were inducted into this slave labor?"
"That's right. We... we never, well, we barely questioned it. They did a number on us and we made everything... almost everything, about serving 'our people'."
"What happened to Teal'c?"
Jack jaw clamped tightly. "I'm not sure, that part's fuzzy, but I know he's dead."
Hammond frowned but didn't ask Jack for more... not right then, anyway. There was a tight instability to him, like Jack was on a hair-trigger, ready to slip at any small shift in his footing. Hammond wasn't sure what he'd fall into if he did lose his balance. Jack O'Neill was usually a solid, unambiguous entity. At that moment, however, Jack looked on the verge of lost in both directions. If he regressed to Jonah he'd be lost, but if he became wholly Jack he'd be lost, too.
Hammond didn't know what to do to help him.
Hammond cast a side-long glance at Jack and studied the man. He was thinner than Hammond remembered him, his skin pale. Hammond had never before seen Jack without at least a light tan; the man spent too much of his free time and his time at work out in the elements, under the sun (be that Earth's or another planet's). Jack was also dirty. The wash-basin and cloth scrubs the infirmary could provide had not done the job and there were still patches of grimy skin. Jack needed to shave as well, his jaw and chin were grizzled with thick stubble. All in all, he looked on the shady side of terrible.
"Why don't you head to the showers and get cleaned up?" Hammond offered.
Jack did little more in reaction than blink, squint, and compress his lips.
Hammond would have to handle this hybrid human as he would have normally handled Jack O'Neill. Since he didn't know Jonah it was the best he could do. He knew that Jack would want to be alone. As long as his team was secure and he knew they didn't need him for protection he'd want to hole up and pick at the problem at his own pace. True Jack would prefer to head up to his cabin and sequester himself away from everyone, but Hammond couldn't go that far.
He could, however, give Jack a little space and solitude.
"When you're finished you can bunk in temps for the night if you like. I imagine you don't relish the thought of spending the night on one of those infirmary gurneys."
Jack gave a grunt and Hammond took it as an assent when Jack changed direction and headed toward the locker room. Hammond let him go and was at a loss. He had no idea how to handle the remaining former members of SG-1 in their current state. He didn't know how to deal with an SG-1 barely SG-1.
Janet Fraiser heard the baby start crying and had at first not reacted to the wails. She knew Thera/Sam was with the child so she trusted her to tend her daughter. Janet had returned her attention to her paperwork and expected the baby to be quieted shortly.
Except two minutes later and the baby was still crying. Janet looked up from her desk and toward her shut office door and frowned in thought. It was possible Thera/Sam had left to go to the bathroom but she should have been well back by now, especially since everyone in the infirmary and then some would be able to hear the baby.
The crying continued and finally Janet got up to see what was wrong.
The infirmary was practically vacant at that time. Yesterday Hammond had informed Janet that he'd granted Jack permission to sleep in temporary quarters instead of the infirmary. Janet had given her consent as well as there was medically nothing wrong with Jack and he couldn't get into any trouble on such a heavy guarded base as Cheyenne Mountain. She thought the time alone might do him some good, help him get his head on straight and his memories in order. She'd been encouraged when Hammond told her that when he talked to Jack it seemed, from all indications, that he had more or less completely regained his memories. It was the same as it was with Daniel. Like watching an avalanche Janet had witnessed the 'rebirth' of Daniel Jackson right there in her office. He recovered more and more details about his real self and by the time he left the room she was confident he, at least, would be all right. Daniel could safely be called 'Daniel' again and Janet was elated and hopeful.
Thera/Sam was a little more difficult to assess. The few times Janet had approached her old friend the woman would clam up and shut down and Janet backed off and gave her some room. Without a treatment option it was the best she could offer. She had considered trying to apply the memory technology they had gained in trade from the late inhabitants of P3R-118, but she was not nearly confident enough in its function to use it on human subjects. Janet had to place faith that what had happened with Jack and Daniel would happen with Thera/Sam, too, and left Thera/Sam alone. She could hardly blame Thera/Sam for reacting unusually. She couldn't imagine how confusing it would be to discover all you thought you knew was a lie, so she let Thera/Sam have her time.
As Janet listened to the baby wail, unattended, she began to question her own decision.
The infirmary, at that moment, was otherwise empty. Daniel had gone with Kaegan first to get something to eat in the commissary then to hit the showers (something they had all desperately needed from the moment they were brought in). Janet had seen not hide nor hair of Jack since yesterday and while that mildly concerned her she wasn't ready yet to make an issue of it.
Janet stepped toward the curtained area wherein resided Thera/Sam and the baby. Thera/Sam, after Hammond's revelation about their true identities, had staunchly refused to let the baby out of her sight. The few times Janet had braved asking to take the baby so Thera/Sam could rest Thera/Sam had held the child tighter and pulled away from Janet. Janet backed off at once, a little cautious of the mood to which Thera/Sam had succumbed. She hadn't spoken a word to anyone, as far as Janet knew, not even to her teammates.
Janet reached the curtained area and pulled the cloth barrier aside to look in at her patients. The plastic bin that had become an impromptu bassinet was on an instrument tray next to Thera/Sam's bed. The tiny girl was inside, lying on her back, red-faced screaming.
Janet's eyes moved to the figure in the bed and she felt her medical instincts flare. Thera/Sam was on her side facing the bassinet, body curled up and her eyes tightly shut to the crying child. Tear marks laid wet paths over her cheeks and her complexion was ashen. The baby gulped air for another cry and Thera/Sam clenched eyes tighter and tucked her arms over her chest.
Janet moved toward the two and first addressed the more immediate concern. She went to the bassinet and reached inside to try and soothe the baby. At once the child eased off crying and turned her head into Janet's hand, searching hungrily for a breast amid the flesh in contact with her face.
Janet turned to look at Thera/Sam, still rigidly curled, and said tentatively, "Thera..."
Thera/Sam flinched faintly.
"Thera... the baby needs to be nursed."
Thera/Sam didn't respond immediately then gave a small but quick shake of her head. She still refused to open her eyes.
Janet looked down at the infant then said, "I can give her formula if you want."
Thera/Sam nodded and buried her face in the pillow.
Janet desperately wanted to talk to Thera/Sam, to help her, but the baby needed her first. Gathering up the infant, Janet went to the supply cabinet and withdrew one of only two remaining mixtures of baby formula they had (the second Janet had seen a newborn brought through the gate she'd had to send one of her nurses rushing to the nearest store off-base for infant supplies and, if Thera/Sam didn't get better from whatever had suddenly overtaken her, Janet would have to send another nurse for more).
Janet prepared the formula and was finally able to offer the milk to the baby.
The baby eagerly latched on to the rubber nipple and drank greedily. Janet kept throwing looks toward Thera/Sam, but the woman was practically unmoved from when Janet had found her.
Finally the baby seemed sated and began to refuse the bottle.
Janet set the remainder of formula aside and placed the baby over her shoulder. Once it had been burped Janet almost uncertainly carried it back to Thera/Sam's bedside. Thera/Sam's body was no longer taut and her eyes were open. Thera/Sam lay motionless on her side and watched with an unreadable expression as Janet returned the baby to the bassinet.
Janet looked down at Thera/Sam. "Thera..." she began carefully.
Thera/Sam winced and her eyes shut again but her lips parted and her voice, strained and fragile, whispered, "Janet."
"Sam?"
Sam nodded weakly and Janet felt a rush of relief... quickly chased by overwhelming concern.
"Sam... what's wrong?" Janet moved to the bed and sat down next to Sam. She didn't recoil as Thera had but she did momentarily stiffen. Sam stared at the baby's bin and didn't answer.
Janet felt more worried now than she had when Sam was Thera. At least Thera had been attentive to her baby; a neglectful mother was a label she could never imagine fitting Samantha Carter. That Sam had let her child cry hungrily and done nothing sent a race of fear through Janet.
"Sam, honey... why wouldn't you feed your baby?"
Sam pulled away but as the bed was so narrow she could only manage rolling on to her back and turning her head to the other side, away from Janet. Sam's face twisted, as though she was about to cry again, and she wiped at her cheeks angrily and said, "It's not my baby."
Janet frowned. "What are you talking about? Of course she's yours."
Sam shook her head and a tear did fall then, against her best efforts. "She's Thera and Jonah's baby, not mine."
Janet looked over at the baby, now full and content, and then back at Sam. Sam was holding her arms across her body, underneath her engorged breasts, and Janet didn't understand. "Sam... you gave birth to her, didn't you?"
"Thera gave birth to her!"
"How are you and Thera not the same?"
Sam's face set angrily but it melted into despair and she held back a sob.
Janet's heart broke for her friend, and it really was her friend.
"Please, Sam, let me try to help you," Janet coaxed, and the blonde gave in like Sam Carter used to give in to Janet Fraiser, and she turned her head back to look at Janet. The pain and sadness in her blue gaze staggered Janet.
"I'm so confused, Janet."
"That's understandable. You've had something done to you that would upset anybody. It might take time to acclimate to being back, to being yourself again."
Sam trembled and her brow furrowed. "It's so hard."
"What is?"
Sam turned her gaze toward the bassinet then she closed her eyes and ducked her chin toward her chest. "I miss Jonah," she croaked thinly.
Janet felt a light bulb go on and she suddenly 'got it'. She resisted making a drawn-out 'oh' sound and instead waited a beat and asked, "Do you miss him or does Thera?"
Sam coughed on a pathetic, sarcastic laugh and she answered, "I miss being Thera because she could miss Jonah."
Janet reached out and touched her friend tenderly, aware it might still be more mistake than comfort to the distraught woman. "Colonel O'Neill is here."
Sam grimaced and hugged her arms tighter around herself. "It's not the same."
Janet glanced at the sleeping baby and finally had to address it, the topic they had all avoided pointedly since the team's return because of the minefield it would be. "Sam... is Col-is Jonah the father?"
Sam only gave a weak nod.
Janet felt her heart go out to her friend. It all made a newfound sense and Janet felt pity for Sam and what she must be going through. It had to make things so much more difficult and Sam's tears were far from condemnable.
"I'm so sorry, Sam."
Sam turned on her side again and curled around her stomach like she was nursing a deep ache. Her hand closed in a fist on the bed sheet and she fought to control her breathing. Sam Carter rarely cried.
"God, I miss him," she whimpered and Janet rubbed her friend's back. She didn't know what other comfort to offer.
"Jonah," Janet began, and Sam squeaked at the name but Janet had to try. Sam needed to let go, to release, and Janet had always been good at giving Sam a shoulder to cry on. "Jonah," she tried again, "he wanted the baby?"
Sam smiled sadly. "He was so happy.
"We weren't supposed to procreate in the caves but Brenna got us special dispensation; when I got pregnant I was issued a breeding permit and given permission to carry to term."
"And Jonah was happy," Janet reiterated. The issue was Colonel O'Neill and Janet was determined Sam address that topic no matter how much redirection she wanted to try. She would even forgo, for the moment, pointing out that Sam had been discussing Thera in the first person.
Sam's hand on the bed linen fisted tighter but she nodded. "Yeah, he was. He... he was always touching me every chance he got, rubbing my stomach, making me feel so..." Sam broke into a watery smile. "I couldn't remember ever being so happy." Sam's face fell and she took in a breath. "I still can't." Sam was quiet a minute before she continued. "Jonah... Jonah made me feel safe, he made everything okay."
"And now?" Janet asked gently.
Sam winced. "Now... I've lost Jonah, I've lost Thera... and I've lost the baby."
"You haven't, Sam, she's right here, your daughter is right here."
"My daughter?" Sam parroted bitterly. "Colonel O'Neill's daughter?"
Janet went quiet as she understood the problem.
Sam bit her lip before she said, "She deserves better, Janet. She had two loving parents and now... now what does she have? Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill? Who are they to her? They're not her mother and father, Thera and Jonah are and they're gone, they don't exist. She's been orphaned!"
"Sam," Janet said firmly and Sam went still and quiet.
"Listen to me, Sam, you remember everything Thera did, right?"
"Yes."
"So in some way you still are Thera, you always will be."
"No."
"Yes, Sam."
"No!" Sam snapped and Janet sat back. Sam glared at Janet hotly then said, "No, I'm not, because if I'm still in some way Thera that would mean Colonel O'Neill is Jonah. I can't let myself believe that."
"Why not?"
Sam snorted. "How can you ask me that? For crying out loud, Janet, do you have any idea what it's like remembering Sam Carter and remembering Thera? Thera did things and felt things Sam could never do or feel, and she's not sorry about it! I'm not sorry about it, so I can't be Thera and Jack can't be Jonah! Don't you understand?"
Janet took stock of Sam's livid, desperate expression, then glanced once more at the sleeping infant. Time to try something a little less volatile.
"Sam... just answer me one question. Do you love that baby?"
Sam's fury shattered and grief overtook her features. "I want to... I want to so badly, but she's not mine to love."
"She has to be yours," Janet pressed, "because if you won't love her then she's lost more than just Thera. You have to be her mother because she needs one, if you don't someone else, someone who doesn't know what a special child she is, will. Would Thera want that for her daughter?"
Sam almost cried again. "No."
"You can love her as much as Thera would, can't you?"
"Yeah."
"Then you owe it to Thera to be that girl's mother. She doesn't know Sam from Thera, as far as that baby is concerned you are her mother, Sam. Could you take her mother from her?"
Sam's face flashed pain, contorted with the sagacious agony of a daughter deprived a mother, and she shivered again. "No..."
"Then believe that she's your daughter. She is. You remember everything, does it really matter if you weren't entirely yourself at the time as long as you still love her in the end?"
Sam was quiet for a long while and Janet merely sat with her to keep her company. The crying was a distant foe and Sam's body no longer shook, instead a resolve had come over her face. She looked shaken but braced and willing to face the challenges ahead of her. That was pure Sam Carter and Janet felt a little less terror for the woman on the bed.
Sam finally looked up at Janet, eyes sincere, and asked softly, "What am I supposed to do when I look at her and I love her more than anything and I see Jack in her?"
Janet didn't have an answer but to say, "You'll handle it."
Sam looked grim but turned her eyes back to the bassinet and they held there. Sam looked introspective, immersed in her own world, and then she moved. Slowly she sat up, hung her legs off the edge of the gurney, then slid to the floor. She had only to take a step to bring her right up to the bassinet and she wordlessly reached down and picked up the baby. Janet watched in relief as Sam cradled the infant to her, brushing her fingers over fine baby hair and letting her eyes memorize the tiny face with adoration.
Janet said nothing for a while, gave mother and daughter a little time together, then she critically looked at Sam. She looked awful and she was obviously emotionally distraught. She needed perspective, a little breathing room to think.
"Sam, why don't you go take a shower and get a bite to eat?"
Sam's eyes widened and she looked quickly between Janet and the baby. The meaning was clear; Sam didn't want to leave the baby.
"I'm okay," she insisted, unconvincingly.
Janet frowned. "It's all right, Sam, I'll stay with her."
Sam hugged the baby closer and took an unconscious half-step away. It was not like Sam to distrust Janet, so just enough of Thera must remain to make her leery of Janet alone and out of sight with her child.
Taking that into consideration, Janet ventured carefully, "How about if I get Colonel O'Neill to watch her?"
Sam froze and her eyes locked on the child but eventually she gave a stilted nod. Him she would trust with the baby... apparently only him.
Janet stood and went to call an airman to send for Colonel O'Neill. She wouldn't mind the chance to get a read on his emotional state, as well, after seeing the condition Sam was in.
Jack's stomach had done strange, strange things when the airman told him Doctor Fraiser wanted him to report to the infirmary. He knew she would be there and it made his insides flutter in anticipation and clench with dread at the same time. It was an unappealing combination but he wouldn't let any of that conflict show on his face.
When Jack arrived he was approached instantly by Janet; she'd obviously been waiting for him.
"Colonel O'Neill?" she asked, as though he was someone she'd never before met in person.
"Yeah... why did you want to see me?"
Janet seemed to study him a moment then her voice dropped and she said, "I need your help."
Jack's head ticked slightly in question. He really didn't want to be there... really, really.
"Sam," Janet began, and she noticed him go stony-faced and even paler at the name. Janet refused to let it deter her, because Sam looked like she was in a bigger mess than he was. "She really needs to get out of the infirmary, get cleaned up and eat something, but she won't leave the baby alone with anyone but you."
Jack felt his heart racing and he stared at Janet as though to ask her 'how could you do this to me?' but in her eyes was the answer and it made him worry. Sam was in bad shape and she was top priority, Jack's discomfort be damned.
Janet's expression was serious and understanding. "I just need you to be here, I can actually tend to the baby, but Sam won't leave unless you're physically with the baby."
Jack swallowed and tried to drown out the thundering of blood in his ears. "Yeah, okay."
Janet nodded and motioned him further into the infirmary. As they neared the curtained bed Janet called out, "Sam? The colonel's here."
The curtain pulled aside and Jack saw her and it... hurt. It was the best word for the crush that assailed him. He knew it was Carter, he knew Sam on sight, but part of him saw Thera against all his best efforts. He remembered the nights in their little corner, he remembered holding her, he remembered what it was like to kiss her, he remembered what it was like when there had been nothing to stop them. He remembered what they'd been like when it wasn't against the rules, and that it had been incredible. It all rushed at him as he looked at her, hair longer than Carter ever kept it, decked in white infirmary clothes while he'd changed into fatigues, her body different than Carter's had ever been because it was still molded to pregnancy.
Jack took a breath and hoped it would keep him sane.
Sam glanced at him, flushed, then looked nervously away and cleared her throat. "Sir."
And Jack felt his world crashing. 'Sir,' that single wretched word. It was the death toll of the people they had been, the couple who had loved freely, not knowing they were not allowed each other. It was the dying breaths of the man and woman who'd had a child together.
Jack's hands went into his pockets and it was a very Jack gesture and somehow it made him ache. "Carter."
She looked as crest-fallen at her proper surname as he'd felt at the 'sir'.
But he would not fall apart, he would not. "Fraiser says you need to take care of some things; you go ahead, I'll stay... I'll stay with the baby."
Sam gave a feeble nod, still would not look at him, then moved to leave. She had to walk by absurdly close to him and almost involuntarily her eyes moved up to his face as she passed. Thera and Sam met in a strange amalgamation and he felt Jack and Jonah both respond to her.
It was confusing and frustrating and frightening and he looked away before it could devour him.
Janet was escorting Sam to the door and Jack wandered closer to the bassinet set up near the gurney. It was like a black hole pulling him in. He'd tried so hard not to think about the tiny creature inside that plastic bin more times than he could count. It was a part entirely Jonah's and Jack felt he had no right to her. But Jonah was in him, the memories were technicolor real beyond denial, and he couldn't stop his feet from carrying him to the infant girl's side.
Jack looked down at the baby, fidgeting softly in her sleep, and everything got so god damn hard. Him being Jack, Sam being Sam, it was acid in his veins, eating through his core, torturing him from the inside out. He didn't know what he was supposed to do. He couldn't embrace Jonah for Charlie, and he couldn't embrace Jack for this little girl. Where did that leave him?
How was a father supposed to choose between his children?
"You can sit in my office if you want," Janet's voice suddenly said at his side and he startled and looked down at the doctor. He remembered her all right, and that compassionate look she had in her eyes was an old acquaintance.
"How is she?" Jack asked and nodded toward the closed door after Sam.
Janet frowned and seemed to consider how much she should tell him. She weighed doctor/patient confidentiality and the fact that the man asking was the father of said woman's child. She finally sided with the latter.
"She's really confused and upset. She might be dealing with some postpartum depression on top of everything else and I think she's just... overwhelmed."
Jack would not care more than he was supposed to, he would not care more than he was supposed to.
"Will she be okay?" he found himself traitorously asking.
Janet sighed and looked down at the baby. "I think so but I really can't say. I've never seen her like this. The only time that comes close is after Jolinar died." Janet smiled sadly at the infant and offered gently, "She doesn't think the baby's really hers."
Jack looked down at the little girl, remembered so many Jonah memories, so many memories of Thera, and he muttered under his breath, "Is she?"
Janet looked up sharply at him and Jack didn't take his sad, torn eyes from the baby.
"Despite how confused Sam is I can tell she loves her daughter. That makes her a mother." Janet, mother to an adopted daughter, was adamant in that belief.
Jack wanted to believe her and didn't all at once.
"Sir, if you'd rather not literally watch her..."
"I want to," he said before he could stop himself but Janet didn't smite him for the need. She only nodded and quietly disappeared from his side.
And Jack was alone with Jonah's daughter.
Jack stared down at her as she twitched and vocalized restlessly in her sleep. She was a beautiful baby. Barely more than a day old but she'd grow up to be a looker like her mother, Jack knew that much. She'd probably have light brown hair and brown eyes, he'd seen it before. O'Neill brown eyes and brown hair were just dominant over blue eyes and blonde hair. He imagined she'd have Sam's brains but his devil-may-care exterior to cover her Carter-wit and intellect. He pitied the person who would underestimate her, because on top of her genius she'd have some of his dark streak, too, but she'd harness it and make it work for her. She'd never be hurtful or spiteful like he could be. No, she'd be better than him. She'd be loving and gentle, never cruel. She'd love fishing but would never actually want to catch a fish. She'd look at the world with the excitement and wonder that would still glow in Sam's eyes even after all the horrors they'd seen, and she'd make him remember how to be amazed at life, too.
The baby stirred, pulled open her eyelids, and looked up at him through bleary eyes.
Jack's breath caught ever so slightly. He realized she looked a lot like Charlie had as a baby once he let himself see it. And why not? She was his half-sister.
"Hey, shh, shh, shh," Jack whispered before the baby could make a sound of protest. She just laid there and stared up at him but he could almost hear her silently ask to be touched, to be validated and claimed, to be held, to be his daughter.
He couldn't believe he'd ever thought, even for a second, he could turn away from her any more than he could turn his back on the memory of Charlie.
Jack, unable to fight the need to do so, reached in and picked up the baby. She waved her arms at him and stared up into his face as he brought her closer.
Jack felt something he'd thought long-dead stir within him and he knew Janet was a very smart woman. He should have learned by now to trust sight-unseen that she was right.
"It's all right," he cooed and the baby made a sound at his voice and her wet tongue poked out of her perfect, pursed lips.
Jack smirked and brought the baby to his chest, holding her against him and staring down at her. The baby cuddled into his side, folded with trust, a daughter's trust in a father, and Jack knew then he could never leave her. Whatever happened with him and Sam, however their impossible situation fell into shape at the end, he would be there for his daughter. She was more important than his little identity crisis or his confusion about him and Sam.
And she was his daughter. Even not knowing himself at the time he was responsible for Jonah's actions. He was accountable. It was made both easier and harder that he remembered everything about being Jonah, including the feelings that had created the little girl in his arms. They were honorable and right, in spite of everything, and so the child he held could never be wrong.
The baby was a tiny patch of solid heat against his side and it made him remember walking Charlie to sleep in the middle of the night. Those sleepless, mindless good days. Fatherhood, which he had buried so deep to save himself, was hurtling back to him and he found a pure glee in its return. He'd missed being a dad, more than he could have bared to let himself admit before that moment. Holding his child secure in his arms he could feel that paternal rush again and it wouldn't leave only a gaping sore and as such he dared to let it engulf him once again.
Jack slowly paced the infirmary, half an eye on where he placed his feet but the rest of his attention riveted on the baby. She was a little smaller than Charlie, he noted, but Charlie had been born to a woman with all the modern conveniences available to her. This child had been conceived and born to a mother living as a slave with the harsh and sparse conditions that way of life entailed. It was probably a miracle she was as healthy as she was considering her prenatal environment.
She seemed more delicate than Charlie, too, though back then Jack would have been aghast to think anything could be more fragile than newborn Charlie O'Neill. He thought it must be the fact she was female... or maybe it was something purely Sam in her.
He knew one similarity for certain, she was just as precious and captivating as her half-brother and Jack could barely take his eyes off her.
After Sam was on her way to the showers and Janet had made sure Jack was willing to watch the baby, Janet left Jack alone with the baby to call General Hammond. She felt safe leaving him unsupervised. Whether he was just as flustered and confused by the baby as Sam or not, one thing that was universally constant about Jack O'Neill was his love of children. She could have left any child in his care, regardless of his mental state, and know with absolute certainty no harm would come to the youngster. For all the things untouchable, battle-hardened Jack O'Neill could do in the line of duty, he could not hurt a kid.
Janet dialed the base commander's extension and within one ring Hammond answered.
"Hammond."
"Sir, it's Doctor Fraiser."
"Yes, Doctor, how is everything with our people?"
Janet winced to herself. "Well, sir, good and bad."
"Explain."
"I can report, with confidence, that Major Carter had regained memory of her true identity. That covers all surviving members of the former SG-1."
"That's certainly good to hear. And the bad?"
"Major Carter's having some trouble adjusting."
"How so?"
Janet sometimes hated the fact she had to report to Hammond in such detail when her physician inclinations told her to keep it private. "Well, sir... I think it's requisite to be informed first that Major Carter has verified that Colonel O'Neill is the father of her child."
There was a pause on the other end and Hammond sighed. "I think we'd all concluded as much but still... I take it this is the reason Major Carter's 'having some trouble'?"
"Yes, sir. She's recovered her own memories but she still possesses the memories of Thera, too, and well... as you might imagine those contain some rather... confusing content for Major Carter."
"Undoubtedly. How's she doing right now?"
"I just sent her to the showers and the mess hall. Frankly, sir, I thought she needed some time alone to think. She had a... an 'episode' for want of a better word a little while ago and I think she needs some space to clear her head.
"I have to confess I'm worried about her, General."
"What do you recommend we do?"
Janet was glad the general wasn't there to see her hopeless shrug and expression. "I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. In a sense she's lost a husband of sorts but does she need grief counseling when the actual, physical person is still alive and close by? I don't know."
"Have you had a chance to speak with Colonel O'Neill yet?"
Janet glanced toward her office door. "He's here right now, actually. When I insisted Sam get out of the infirmary she wouldn't leave unless he was with the baby."
"What is your assessment of his condition?"
"Far better than Major Carter's at the moment, but I wouldn't put it past Colonel O'Neill to buffalo me."
Hammond gave a humorless chuckle, "That's probably a wise move, Doctor, he can put on a convincing front when need be. Is there anything we can do to help them?"
"I can't think of anything more right now than to give them time and support. Actually, Daniel seems to be coping quite well, it's just Sam and Colonel O'Neill..."
"I understand, Doctor. Keep me informed."
"Yes, sir."
Janet hung up the phone and looked toward her office door again, considering what lay beyond. She didn't want to meddle. Talking with Sam was one thing but Jack was another matter entirely. She had never been 'chummy' with Jack, they'd always been professional, respectful, friendly, but not friends the way she was with Sam. Jack was a tough customer and to the medical staff down-right ornery. Janet had never made it into Jack's inner circle. When he flipped out and caved in he didn't show that to her unless medically unable to hide it. He let down his shielding for Daniel and Sam but not Janet.
It made Janet less inclined to try and get him to open up to her, to try and dislodge with a pry bar what he didn't want to volunteer, knowing it was highly unlikely to work, but Sam was in sorry condition and Janet would tempt Apophis himself if it would help her help Sam.
Still, she hated to confront Jack, because she knew he wasn't going to like it. They had only just got the former SG-1 back and she wasn't in a hurry to alienate any of them by pushing. But for Sam, she'd push.
Janet left her office and stopped when she was greeted with the sight of Jack walking slowly down the middle of the infirmary with the baby cradled in his arms. It took him a second to notice her then looked up. Janet wasn't sure what to make of the look on his face. There was tension and wearied confusion but it was accompanied by something warmer and softer and all of that trumped by something much more neutral and mysterious. Jack could school his face well and Janet was finding that out anew.
"How's she doing?" she asked and looked down at the baby. Jack's large hand cupped the infant's tiny head, his thumb brushing her cheek, as he said, "Quiet." He said nothing more.
Janet nodded and chewed on the inside of her cheek in annoyance. Jack wasn't going to make it easy.
"How are you?" she asked.
Jack gave a half-shrug and carried the baby over to a gurney. "How am I supposed to be?"
"A little confused?"
"Then I'm on course."
Janet watched Jack perch on the end of the hospital bed and shift the baby fractionally in his arms. The girl stirred at the movement and he rocked her and whispered low, mumbled words. The baby settled again and seemed to zero in on his voice. The entire scene slammed into Janet at that second and she was stilled at the sight. She'd seen Colonel O'Neill with kids before, but never a baby. She didn't expect it to alter him so drastically. There was a calm to him that she'd never seen before, his unbridled energy and constant fidgeting were vanquished when his arms were filled with a newborn, and his rough outer layer was softened and almost fuzzy and cuddly as though to give the child a comfortable place to burrow. Knowing he could have killer's hands it was a surprise to see them become so infinitely gentle as he caressed the baby's skin. She'd never suspected he would become so placid and docile with a baby in his arms but looking at him right then he was undeniably that and more. Above all that there was a look in his eyes, like the gentle twinkle he got with most children but ten-fold.
Janet was moved and she felt pain for him for the loss of his son so long ago more sharply than ever before.
Jack tucked the single thin linen more snugly around the baby and glanced back up at Janet.
Janet looked down at the baby and asked boldly, "Do you think she's not yours, too?"
Jack didn't flinch so much as go very still at the point-blank statement that he had fathered the child. He had to figure everyone knew the baby's parentage, anyway. Jack didn't take his eyes from Janet as he said unequivocally, "She's mine."
A rush of relief swept through Janet. Even if circumstances robbed the baby of its mother her father was not about to let it happen with him. The little girl was now guaranteed a home and family by Jack's unwavering acceptance. She should have known the little girl would always have Jack because he was a man who took children very seriously.
"It makes me feel a lot better to hear you say that."
Jack frowned, held the baby closer as though to protect her from the direction of the conversation, and asked, "Is Carter that bad?"
"It's hard for her." Janet studied Jack a moment then plunged ahead in a daring move. "She told me she misses Jonah."
Jack winced and looked away. Janet saw a flicker of something and she had to wonder.
Wonder might be all she was able to do, because she could literally see 'O'Neill walls' erect into place. He closed down and shut off and Janet marveled at and cursed his ability to turn off his connection to the outside world so instantaneously.
Janet felt helpless in the face of that kind of shut-out.
It was the very last thing Sam needed from him.
"Sir," she began in resignation, "I know it's asking a lot because I can understand you must be uncomfortable with all of this, but I really have to ask you to help Sam through this. I think you're the only one who can really get through to her right now and help her heal and move forward. She's recently given birth and that wreaks havoc on a woman's body, physically, mentally, and emotionally. To add to the hormonal shifts she's having to accept she's not who she thought she was and that the man... the man she had a child with is gone."
Jack's eyes snapped to her and Janet stopped cold.
"I know, Doctor, you don't have to tell me."
"It's the same for you?"
Jack scowled and looked down again at the baby just to not be looking at the doctor.
Janet wanted to throw her hands up in irritation. Jack O'Neill could be so difficult; she couldn't imagine why Sam was so enamored of him.
Then she watched him with the baby and understood.
"I won't presume to know what you're going through, so all I'll say is this. However difficult, Sam is willing to accept that she is, in some manner, still Thera. She told me she misses Jonah."
Jack's muscles bunched tensely and he didn't look up, just stared down at the baby as if it was his touchstone, his only anchor in a chaotic world. It probably felt that way to him... to Sam, too.
Janet turned around and went back into her office. She'd let him think on that a while, because of all Jack's acts she'd seen through one a long time ago... he was not stupid.
Sam hadn't remembered how much she missed a decent shower until she was 'her old self' again and stepped underneath the hot spray of water in the SGC locker room. It was almost euphoric and for a split second she was able to forget everything else. But only a second. Then the echo of her solitary shower head's hiss and the sharp resounding of water hitting the tile floor below was almost a desolate moan in her ears. It made her remember the caves and the cramped, communal showers and how she'd been forced to keep her cleansing rituals short, to conserve her water jealously. She remembered having no choice but to hurriedly and without protracted thought swipe her hands over her belly, the swell of a growing child within her given no opportunity to properly enthrall her.
Sam's eyes dropped down her bare front and aching emptiness swallowed her when she saw the deflated span of her stomach between the rise of her enlarged bosom. Finally in a place where she could savor some time alone, to reflect and learn her body's new curves and shape, and the baby was gone... gone with Thera and with Jonah.
Sam blinked away the droplets of water clinging to her eyelashes and licked her soaked lips. At least she no longer felt the damning trails of tears on her cheeks and that made it a little easier to try and fortify herself. It was far too hard to be strong when she could still feel the evidence of tears where she'd been weak.
The gaping room of white linoleum and chrome taps and shower heads were somehow jarring and sinister, a white nothingness with metal teeth, and she was alone in it all.
Sam reached for the shampoo bottle Janet had said she'd find in a spare locker and poured a small dollop into her palm. She ended up having to go back for more when she realized she'd habitually allotted enough for her 'old' hairstyle and that it was now insufficient for her longer hair. She tried not to think, to be a void, as she lathered her hair and finally got rid of the grease and dirt and soot of so long as a slave. For a while it worked but then she was rinsing out the suds and her fingers were threading foreignly through her long locks and she stopped and her heart constricted and her lungs seized... because she remembered Jonah's hands in her hair. Jack would never play with Sam's hair but Jonah would with Thera's... and had. Thera's memories flared and it was Jonah's fingers against her scalp, trailing through blonde sections, his voice an affectionate lilt in her ear.
Sam dropped her hands at once from her hair and stood there, letting the water finish what she couldn't. She felt the world tilt for one nauseating second and then it stabilized and she was just alone again.
Sam took a deep breath and closed her eyes. How was she supposed to cope with this? How could she ask Thera to forget Jonah? Thera loved him, more than Sam had ever loved in all her life. Sam couldn't get on with her life until Thera let Jonah go, but how could she ask that simple woman to ever give up her reason for smiling like the sun in the middle of an ice age? Thera had so much more to lose than Sam ever had. Thera had had love, she'd had happiness... she'd had more than Sam ever could. Who was Sam to expect Thera to give up all of that just so she, Major Carter, could have back the pathetic little that made up her life, the life everyone seemed to think she had to reclaim?
She had to because there wasn't a choice. Jonah didn't exist, he was gone, as good as dead, and Sam couldn't handle grieving for him as Thera would. Thera's grief would destroy her and Sam had a baby to think of. Thera and Jonah's baby, but it was left to her to care for the child. It was all she had, someone else's baby even though she had all the memories and the body that had birthed it.
Sam would not think of Jonah. She willed herself to purge him from her thoughts.
Sam took up a washcloth and began to wash her body.
At once it betrayed her, because her skin remembered his hands. Her neck remembered his lips, her cheeks remembered his breath, her hands remembered his body.
Sam held her breath, counted to ten, and waited to implode. Surely something had to give, because the distress that tore at her with every reborn memory could not ravage her like this and leave her intact. She would certainly shatter and fall apart, leak into the drain and wash away with the dirty water.
Sam resumed her washing but it was an exercise in agony. Her body wasn't hers any more. It was Thera's, and after that it was Jonah's, and only then did what little that was left over belong to Sam Carter. She'd inherited a broken human being.
Sam finished with the cloth and soap and stood under the downpour a minute and let the water cascade over her. The hot water failed to clean away the sickness in her heart but she gave it time, anyway, just in case.
Sam shut off the water and went to the chest-high wall atop which she'd placed her blue towel. Before she could wrap herself, however, she caught a glimpse of herself in a distant mirror.
Sam stopped and turned to look at her reflection. Warnings resided and blared in her deepest thoughts but she didn't listen and, with towel in hand, stepped toward the mirror. She stood before its full-length and studied the woman staring back at her.
Long, wet blonde hair fell just behind her shoulders. Her blue eyes were almost a different kind of blue against creamy, clean skin. Her face was fleshier than she was used to it being from the 'before' days, before Thera. She looked out of proportion... nothing she saw fit with what she knew of Sam Carter, the fit, lean, athletic military officer. Her hips were wider, they practically screamed maternity, and her thighs had put on mass to match. She looked like gravity had shifted her entire center down a couple of inches. Her stomach, her hollow, childless womb, was flabby skin, not yet used to being freed the burden of containing a child. The skin was marred by brown streaks, like acorn-colored claw marks from some beast trying to rip the baby from her. Her breasts were heavy, the nipples dark and brown stretch marks like tiny stress tears framing the sides.
She looked abused by nature, unwanted and unattended, used and discarded. Sam remembered thinking those thoughts before... or rather, Thera remembered them.
The memory besieged her and Sam was helpless, defenseless and hopeless, to stop it. Jonah's hands on her stomach, his face beside hers, his eyes boring into her own in their shared reflection in a broken mirror. "I look at you, Thera, and I see the best of me."
Sam dropped the towel and slid her own hands over her empty stomach but she remembered Jonah's hands and the tightness of her skin swollen around a child a mere day away from being born. The baby had no doubt been, at that moment, in position, dropped into her pelvis awaiting its time, a time so near, and Jonah didn't know he was so close to true fatherhood when he caressed her.
"Here I see where you and I, together, created a new life."
Sam closed her eyes against the pain but the memory was so vivid, his touch so visceral even in remembering. Her hands drifted up to her breasts, tender and initiated now. They knew the lips of a newborn, the suction of a hungry child.
"I see these and I can't wait to watch you nursing our baby."
Sam allowed a moment to be grateful Jonah had been given that much. Before Jonah and Thera were stolen from them they'd had a little time together as a family, and Jonah got to see his daughter at Thera's breast. She was glad for that.
Sam slowly opened her eyes and saw a stranger in the mirror staring back at her. She wasn't Sam but she wasn't Thera. She was lost somewhere in the middle-ground and she didn't know how to choose between the two women on either side of her.
"I see you and I see everything I could ever want or need."
She missed Jonah. Thera missed him so, so much, but Sam was lost, cast adrift in a bucking sea, when she realized that she missed him, too. She missed that contentment, that joy that he'd brought into her life.
As Thera she had been important to someone, and not just anyone but him. Jonah's world had been Thera. Sam could remember the peace in his arms, the security in his smile, the comfort in his warmth. She remembered the way he looked at her like she was the only reason to get up every morning...that look had so often been her only driving force for getting out of bed to face the cold, grueling world of the caves. She remembered craving his touch and the feeling, like a hit on the sweetest drug, when he at last wrapped his arms around her. She remembered going to him was like coming home. She remembered how they made love and that it had seemed so perfect, like they were meant to fit together. Jonah loved Thera. Even if he'd never said it Thera had always known. Thera was content, a happy woman in a slave labor camp, for his affection. In its purest, truest form Thera was happier than Sam had ever been. Thera, Sam knew, loved Jonah.
And Sam... Sam was left with the broken pieces of a happy life, expected to salvage 'okay' from bliss blasted apart at the seams. It was asking too much, but Sam Carter was a fighter and she'd do her best.
For the baby she had to.
Sam picked up the towel off the floor and covered herself. The mangled remains of her physical self were a last living testament to Thera and for that reason her body, handed back to her in such a battered condition, didn't affect her. It was auxiliary now, apart from everything else she had to do.
Sam started to get dressed in the blue fatigues an airman had given her and the familiar material seemed like a last step in leaving Thera behind. They were the clothes of Samantha Carter, Air Force blue and so very far removed from worker orange.
It made her remember seeing Jack in them an hour before.
She didn't know what she, Sam, was going to do about Jack. She knew part of her would always look at him and see Jonah. She'd set eyes on him when Janet called her out and it had been an instant heartache because he was Jonah. But he wasn't. He'd called her 'Carter'. That was Jack O'Neill through and through.
Sam's stomach turned at the thought of facing Jack. What she didn't see of Jonah she'd see Jack. To Sam Jack was important. Not in the same way Jonah was important to Thera, but he was vital to her just the same. Sam couldn't imagine her life without Jack.
She just didn't know how she could integrate him into her life anymore. Would she always see a little of Jonah when she looked at him, and if so, how could she endure that kind of torment the rest of her life? She was beginning to understand that a little of Thera would always be in her, and that part of her would always search for Jonah in Jack's face.
And the baby...if Sam was going to accept she was the child's mother then it followed that Jack was the father. Jack the father of her daughter. It was almost too much to bear thinking.
But she'd have to figure it out because Thera's memories were part of her and Jack wasn't going away...for Thera's sake Sam didn't want that last vestige of Jonah going away. If that little bit remained of him then Jonah wouldn't completely die and Jonah's death was a prospect Thera could not bear.
Counting Jolinar, Sam's psyche was getting very crowded.
Sam slowly finished dressing and longed privately for the care-free, simple life on P3R-118.
Kaegan's life and been turned on its head for the second time in as many weeks. It seemed a lifetime ago that she was night-shift foreman for the mining crew in the caves, merrily excavating ore for the machines that would help keep her people alive. She was honored to serve and her life had been uncomplicated.
Now she was in another underground facility but that was where the similarities ended. This place was clean where the caves had been dirty, well-lit where the caves were in shadows and the flickers of firelight. The people here were clean and well-fed, friendly and only too eager to give her clothing and food instead of squander their own covetously. There was no pressing sensation of cold just at the edges of the walls. It was all so much the opposite of everything Kaegan had been reared to know.
Even the people she knew from the caves were not the same here.
Kaegan glanced at Carlin at her side. No, not Carlin, 'Daniel' she corrected herself. She had been putting forth a concerted effort but she knew it would take time for her to get used to calling him 'Daniel'... probably as much time as it would take her to assimilate everything that had happened in the last few days. She had never suspected the strange trio of the caves were actually visitors from another planet, this planet, and had been unwillfully conscripted into serving Kaegan's people.
At least Car-Daniel didn't seem bitter about the deceit.
Daniel looked different than Carlin, if that made any sense. He'd showered and shaved and put on clean clothes, a blue outfit with a black undershirt, all of a vastly different thickness and material than the worker clothes they each used to wear. Kaegan had been similarly provided with new clothing but she felt certain it was not nearly as flattering a color on her as it was on Daniel. Blue suited him, even if it was strange seeing him in something other than orange-tan. The blue made his eyes even brighter... although she couldn't say the spectacles did much for their luster. The doctor woman, 'Janet', had given Daniel eyeglasses and Kaegan was still not used to him wearing them. She did note, however, that he wasn't performing a perpetual squint with the glasses.
There was no doubt in Kaegan's mind that the man next to her was not Carlin... not anymore, and that intangible alteration was still giving Kaegan a headache. There were so many little things that were not right for Carlin but were apparently 'bang-on' for Daniel, because so many of the people in this place responded enthusiastically to him when he started acting oddly from Kaegan's point of view.
Daniel had been very kind to her, and she had to count herself lucky because she really felt she couldn't count much on 'Carlin' once the physical body remembered his true identity. Kaegan could almost see a shift in him, a transformation. It was not just the fact he started to answer to a different name. In the span of a few hours he became wiser, gentler, more self-possessed, a little sadder, and it was distinctly not Carlin.
Carlin was still in there, Kaegan knew that much. His memories were still intact, he could recall everything that had happened while he was Carlin. The way he treated her had mostly remained unchanged. He still treated Kaegan like an equal, but there were differences amid those consistencies and Kaegan felt alone in this new world when her one friend vanished right in front of her.
But Daniel was just as nice as, if not nicer than, Carlin and he'd taken it upon himself to help her adjust. He'd taken her out of the under-stimulating infirmary when the tension was starting to wear at them all, he let her get cleaned up (cleaner than she'd ever been) and eat a hearty meal (more delicious, plentiful food than she'd ever had), then he started wandering the corridors with her, showing her around. The corridors all looked the same to her and she was horribly turned around, but Daniel strolled along with confidence and they unerringly ended up where they intended to go. Kaegan had to believe the twists of unchanging halls really did make sense to him, and it made sense that they would if it was true that he had been another person who practically lived in these gray caves for years. Kaegan was amazed at the things she saw but she was more interested in the familiar stranger accompanying her.
Daniel was quiet, a lot quieter than Carlin ever was, and he looked more troubled than Carlin had ever been. Kaegan wondered at that and thought that maybe regaining this 'Daniel's' memories wasn't such a great thing for him after all.
Now that she thought about it, Jonah and Thera hadn't looked so great after hearing the news, either. No, 'Jack' and 'Sam' hadn't looked so good. Perhaps that was the difference... Jack, Sam, and Daniel looked unwell or least troubled while Jonah, Thera, and Carlin had always seemed fine. Kaegan hoped it wasn't telling of the lives to which her companions had returned.
Were it still Carlin at her side she would have asked, but this was Daniel and she didn't know him. For all the same person the two were Daniel and Carlin were not the same as well. Even still, she found herself staying close to Daniel, because what little of Carlin was still alive in him was all she knew and all she trusted in this strange place.
They had been walking side by side in silence for a good while but Kaegan was content without words. Daniel, it seemed, would oblige her. He seemed preoccupied, anyway.
Kaegan looked up and saw yet another strange woman of this strange world coming down the opposite end of the corridor. Kaegan started when she finally recognized the woman as Thera-Sam. She looked so different that Kaegan hadn't even placed her at first glance.
Like Daniel and herself, Sam had been given new clothes, the blue pants, black shirt, and blue jacket that seemed one of two standard outfits in the gray caves of the Earthers (the other being very similar but green instead of blue). Th-Sam had bathed and Kaegan realized just how white Sam's skin was underneath the grime... fairer, even, than Daniel's. Like Daniel, the blue of the clothes accented the blue in her eyes and Kaegan hadn't truly noticed before then just how blue Sam's eyes were. Sam's blonde hair had been pulled back into a ponytail and without the hanging straw-colored locks to frame her face Sam was almost unrecognizable as the woman who had once been Thera.
Besides the new nuances of her physical appearance Kaegan noted a change in demeanor and bearing that made this woman, for all the physical similarities, clearly not Thera. There, too, as with Daniel, was the stride of self-knowledge. Whoever Kaegan's former comrades truly were in this world they were people with far more personal tragedy to strengthen them than they had had as Jonah, Thera, and Carlin. Sam walked with the confidence of knowing just how far she could be taken, how far she could be pushed before she broke because maybe she'd crossed the line a time or two.
Kaegan was almost glad these people weren't the ones she knew, because had they been she might have felt their pain acutely.
Daniel's step faltered and Kaegan looked over and saw that he'd spotted Sam. Daniel slowly came to a stop and Kaegan did likewise and watched, curious, as Sam approached. The blonde woman had seen her companions from the planet and she looked like she meant to stop.
Kaegan didn't know what to expect. Were this Thera and Carlin she'd have a good idea but with Sam and Daniel she couldn't hazard to guess.
Sam reached them, came to a halt a pace away, and Daniel ventured tentatively, "Ah... Sam?"
Sam gave a thin, forced smile. "Hey, Daniel." It was acknowledgement of him and herself, their true selves free of the caves and the people they'd erroneously thought themselves to be.
Daniel smiled faintly in return then his face sobered as he sincerely inquired, "How are you doing?"
Sam stone-walled a moment, reticent and guarded, but she quickly covered with, "Okay." She was far from convincing but no one said so. Sam, in the next moment, looked closely at Daniel and commented, "You found your glasses."
Daniel reached up to the rims and answered, "Yeah... um, Janet had my prescription still on record; she had a pair ordered for me."
Sam nodded and in the lag that followed she looked desperately alone. Kaegan thought it was just that she had been so used to seeing Thera with Jonah at her side that Sam, without accompaniment, seemed incongruous to her.
Or maybe not just to her.
"How's... Jack?" Daniel asked so very gently.
Sam stiffened and her lips thinned but she swallowed and said with as much courage as she could muster, "He's in the infirmary watching the baby."
"Oh... and, um... he's... him? I mean, he's Jack?"
Sam's face pulled toward forlorn as she nodded. "Yeah."
Daniel looked down at the floor and Kaegan looked between them in confusion. She was missing something, that much was obvious.
"It'll be okay, Sam," Daniel said ever so softly, and Sam winced and looked away from him.
Sam gave another wane smile, even less convincing than the first, and she gestured down the hallway. "I should get back."
Daniel nodded and then Sam was gone, walking down the corridor with the same confidence in the maze of gray that Daniel possessed.
Daniel watched after Sam, expression drawn, and Kaegan reached out and touched his arm. Daniel looked over at her and Kaegan, with a quick glance after Sam, asked, "Is she okay?"
Daniel seemed to mull over the prospect of telling her and Kaegan dropped her hand. Carlin would not have assessed her worthiness or right to know, at least not after they had survived the attack together. She used to be one of them, one of the group, and now she was regarded as an outsider again, evident in the way he considered deigning to tell her. This was all Daniel and it stung.
In the end Daniel lowered his gaze and crossed his arms over his chest. "It's... complicated."
Of that Kaegan had no doubt.
"What's wrong?"
Daniel shuffled on his feet anxiously a moment, arms still tightly tucked, then he glanced down both ends of the hallway. Finally he turned his obscenely blue eyes to her and answered in a low voice, "Jack and Sam..." He went quiet after that, lost for adequate words, but Kaegan had a fair guess where he was going.
"I take it they weren't together before the caves?"
Daniel shook his head and the dour expression on his face made Kaegan ask, "Do they have others? Does Jo-Jack have a mate? Or is it Sam who's already bound to someone else?"
"No, it's nothing like that... I mean, neither had a significant other before P3R-118... it's just..." Daniel trailed, heaved a sigh, and Kaegan's brow furrowed. She could not begin to understand these lives her former friends had led.
Daniel looked closely at her, scrutinizing, seemed to come to a decision, and he slid a half-step closer to her. Kaegan held her ground and looked up at him. She could not help but notice that, for the most part, Daniel smelled the same as Carlin did. Soap and the copious amounts of water available at this 'SGC' didn't change the natural, personal scent of him, and she'd spent enough nights inexplicably in his arms to know it, diluted though it now was. His dimensions were the same, too. Daniel was just as tall, just as broad, and just as strong as Carlin, and that familiarity made it hard for Kaegan to keep telling herself it wasn't Carlin anymore.
"It's... a little hard to explain," Daniel said, "but here Jack and Sam are both military officers. Jack is Sam's commanding officer and there are rules that say they can't be romantically involved."
Kaegan's face twisted. "Surely your overseers must realize they didn't know they were breaking the law when they were Jonah and Thera."
"Oh, I'm sure they do... honestly, weird stuff like this happens to us all the time. No, it's not the generals or the Pentagon that are the big problem... it's Jack and Sam."
"I don't understand."
Daniel pursed his lips thoughtfully and then said, "Before the caves, before Jonah and Thera, Jack and Sam... well, I don't know how to describe what they were. They never did anything wrong, nothing against the rules of the Air Force, um, the military branch they serve, but..."
Kaegan was starting to get the picture. "But they wanted to."
"You could put it that way," Daniel said with a faint frown, "I wouldn't, but maybe that's just me. Let's just say they were... attracted to each other."
"But not as much as Jonah and Thera were attracted to each other?"
Daniel frowned deeply. "No, as much as Jonah and Thera, and that's the problem. It's just... hard for them. They've had to pretend they don't care about each other that way for so long, and before they could, but now..."
"The baby."
Daniel nodded.
"So your overseers won't confiscate the baby for what Jonah and Thera did?"
Daniel's eyes widened at the very notion. "No. No, of course not. Not that Jack or Sam would let them if they tried. Here there are laws to protect children from being taken from capable parents without a very good reason. No, it's not that. I just don't know what will happen now... now that they can't ignore their feelings or go back to pretending they don't exist. That's what Jack and Sam have always done, it was their pattern, their way... but now... now I don't think it can be half so easy. That's not to say it was easy before."
Kaegan could see clear concern and sympathy for his friends on Daniel's face. He looked troubled and distraught for their sake, worried about them, and it made Kaegan concerned for Jack and Sam, too. If what she had witnessed in Daniel was correct, then it stood to reason a little bit of Jonah and Thera still existed in Jack and Sam, too, and Kaegan cared about them.
"But they'll... they'll be all right, won't they?" Kaegan finally asked. Were they discussing Jonah and Thera she would not doubt, there would have been nothing that could have kept those two apart. With Jack and Sam, however, Kaegan couldn't know anything for certain.
Daniel looked doubly worried and answered, "I hope so, Kaegan... I really hope so."
Sam didn't realize she'd been slowing down the closer she got to the infirmary until she was at the door and nearly unable to move forward. She knew he would be there and she wasn't sure she could keep the remaining vespers of Thera within her under control when she saw him. Part of Sam didn't want to, and that terrified her.
Sam felt the pull of her daughter, just beyond the door, like a physical tether tugging on her body. She had been gone only long enough to shower (she had ignored Janet's insistence she eat for the time being) but already there was a frenzied stirring in her deepest emotions that she had to see her baby, had to know she was still safe. Sam felt she'd been separated from her child too long and instinctive, maternal parts of her psyche cried for reassurance. Her hands itched to touch baby-soft skin and her breasts were growing tight and sore with the need to express milk.
She just needed her baby. She would tell herself that enough and maybe Jack wouldn't effect her when she saw him. If she could make it all about the baby and not about her commanding officer maybe she could keep it under control. Her control as of late, sadly, felt sorely lacking.
She felt more than a little out of her head and that was not typical Sam Carter.
Sam stood in the hallway, waiting for her self-control to slide back into place. In the end it became a battle within herself. Her need to avoid the turmoil that seeing Jack O'Neill wrought and the need to see her daughter locked horns.
Finally, her baby won out and Sam took a deep breath and opened the infirmary door.
At first the utter silence struck Sam and she felt as though she'd walked into a crypt or deserted facility. There was no sign of Janet and none of her nurses were around, and that was somewhat abnormal. Apparently Janet's 'stay out of the infirmary unless absolutely necessary' order was still in effect. Sam felt the silence and stillness like a held breath and her heart ached for the pain sure to come.
Sam looked toward the left, where the beds were lined against the wall, and her throat closed up when she saw him.
Jack was lying flat on his back on one of the gurneys, both legs bent but one folded such that his foot was planted on the bed and his knee crooked in the air. The other leg folded and crossed through the bent arch provided by the first leg. He was wearing the blue BDU pants and still had his boots on (Janet would not appreciate his 'shoes on the furniture' if she saw him thus). Jack's blue jacket, however, was tossed haphazardly on a nearby stool and it left his torso clad only in the black T-shirt.
Sam took in the rest of him and her heart beat wildly, painfully, in her chest and Thera battered at her ghostly restraints to be again.
The baby was with Jack, lying on her stomach atop Jack's chest. Her little face was turned toward the door so Sam could see the girl's tiny features and could tell she was sound asleep. Her arms were spread wide, as though in a gigantic hug. Jack was breathing deeply and the tiny body was riding up and down with his respirations. His hands covered most of her body as he cradled her on her perch on top of him. His left hand rested on and covered her back, his right spanning from her behind to her calves, leaving only bare little pink feet exposed.
Jack's head was propped up on a couple of pillows such that his face was right at the baby's head. From where Sam stood she could see his lips just barely grazing the top of the infant's head, as though he'd kissed her wispy locks then never bothered to fully pull back. His nose was touching her and he had to be inhaling her scent with every breath. His eyes were closed and Sam might have suspected he was sleeping but she knew Jack too well. She knew what her commanding officer looked like when he was sleeping and when he wasn't, and even if she had not known such an intimate detail the small movement of his thumbs brushing gently against the baby was proof enough of his state of consciousness.
Sam thought it might kill her, just the mere sight of Jack and the baby and what it represented, and she wanted to cry all over again. Her one hope for preserving her sanity had been the idea that maybe she could take her daughter, raise her on her own, and see as little as possible of Jack. It wasn't what she wanted to do, but she thought it would be the only chance she had at not losing her mind in the process.
Watching Jack at that moment, however, Sam knew it was a dead idea before even getting voiced. There was no way Jack would let her keep the baby from him. If she was thinking straight (which she apparently was not) she would have known from the notion's very inception that he would never have consented to being cut out of the little girl's life. Jack had just as much right to that child as Sam, and she knew Jack and children. Jack wouldn't leave behind the child of a stranger, and he certainly would not let his own be taken from him.
Sam swallowed and felt slightly faint. His child. Jack O'Neill's child.
Despite the torturous quality to the sight, Sam stood and watched Jack and the baby. She felt she could have watched them forever, a self-imposed purgatory to tease her with the false hint of happiness and tranquility in a cycle of never-ending denial.
Sam ached all over and she just wanted to curl up next to him on the bed and wait for it all to disappear.
But she was Sam Carter, and she couldn't curl up next to Jack O'Neill.
Jack slowly opened his eyes and looked over at her. Sam tried not to fly apart but she knew her face paled and her eyes screamed sorrow. She forced herself to meet his gaze and couldn't help but steal glances down at the baby.
"Hey," he offered softly.
Sam fought past a dry throat to return, "Hello, sir."
Jack's face flickered in a frown and he turned his eyes down to the baby lying on top of him. His attention thereafter became thoroughly diverted. A very small smile, despite his efforts, tugged at one corner of his mouth and Sam wanted to yell 'what are you doing to me?'.
"I..." Sam began to speak lamely, "I hope she wasn't any trouble."
Jack looked back at her and the familiar hue of his brown eyes finally forced Sam to look away. It was that or crumble on the spot.
"No," he answered and Sam felt a heavy awkwardness bloom. Her arms needed to be filled, she wanted so desperately to take the baby from him, but she didn't dare to disturb the scene before her. Jack looked peaceful, content, with his daughter sprawled on him, and she couldn't bear to snatch her away from him. Instead, to try and appease her arms' need to hold, Sam crossed her arms over her front and hugged at her own flesh. It was not nearly as satisfying but at least it restrained her from all but stealing the baby from him.
Jack looked over at her and a flash of concern ignited beneath the wary, guarded mask of professionalism he always sported. He asked softly, "You okay?"
Sam gave a watery smile. "Fine."
"Sam."
He used her first name. Her first name, and that reprimanding 'I know you're lying' tone, did her in and she winced and turned partially away, her arms still holding her ribcage. "No, I'm not okay," she confessed. What did he expect?
Silence again and Sam could have screamed. 'Thera' in her kept chanting 'go to him', but Sam knew it wasn't right anymore and yet Thera's presence would not be vanquished for simply being, all of a sudden, damn inappropriate.
"Doc said you were having a rough time," Jack's voice came again, and Sam flinched. She glanced over at him and his eyes were entirely on her.
Sam looked down at the baby, still held so tenderly to him, and it was an ache she couldn't fight any longer. The only sense of stability or security she had left was her daughter who lay an impossible and tormenting three feet away, made impossible and tormenting merely by the one who cradled her.
"Can I have the baby?" Sam asked in a small voice, not braving to look up into Jack's face as she made her request.
Jack's hands momentarily closed tighter around the baby but after a second he said, "Sure," and gingerly sat up with the baby held against him. He lowered his hands, baby included, and the child woke and whimpered in complaint at the disappearance of his body heat. Jack barely held the baby out to Sam for her to take.
Sam practically swooped in and gathered the baby up, almost desperately even to Sam's own estimations. She brought the baby to her and for a moment the wildfire of insanity in her cooled and she was fine again because she was skin to skin with her child.
Sam glanced up and saw Jack watching her intently, his own arms now painfully empty. As though to ward off the sense of deprivation, he rubbed his palms over his thighs and cleared his throat uncomfortably.
Sam withdrew a step and turned her eyes wholly upon the baby. She knew, intellectually, the child was half of Jack, but at the moment she could see only her baby, a product of her flesh, and it was easier to look at that than Jack.
"We... probably need to, you know, talk," Jack finally said, voice and words hesitant. Classic Jack O'Neill discomfort at talking about dreaded 'feelings' sang in his tense tone and though she didn't look at him Sam could imagine his acutely discomfited expression, like he needed an antacid.
For once, Sam would just as soon he stayed uncommunicative on the matter.
Sam closed her eyes in defeat and sighed. "Sir... please, can we not do this right now?"
"I don't think putting it off will help."
"Please... I can't." Sam felt her control slipping, sliding dangerously on thin ice, and she fought to compose herself. She felt like a time-bomb, an unpredictable chemical reaction, and she hated being so unstable.
"Doc Fraiser said your hormones are running rampant... it's normal."
Sam snapped, "Why is Janet telling you anything?!"
Thick silence descended after her outburst, and Sam Carter in her waited for a reprimand for her insubordination, then Jack said deliberately, "I guess she thinks I have some right to know. You are the mother of my daughter, after all."
Sam clenched her teeth and willed back tears. "Thera is the mother of Jonah's daughter."
"You are the mother of my daughter, Sam, and we have to face that."
"Why?" Sam countered and at last looked up at him. It was a mistake. She saw Jonah in the concerned expression, the deep brown eyes, the intense stare, the body braced for unwanted confrontation with her. At first he looked taut and provoked but as she watched him she saw a change overtake his body. He eased up, backed off, and the boldness in his body language ebbed and his expression gentled. It was a little too much like Jonah for Sam to take but she couldn't take her eyes off him. He'd become a quantum singularity to everything she was and looking at him had been the step over the event horizon.
Jack cant his head faintly and asked after a long moment, his voice calm and wounded, "Why are you fighting this?"
Sam bit her bottom lip and finally managed to tear her eyes from him to look down at the baby. The tiny girl was half-awake, groggy and close to cranky, and Sam suddenly didn't want this fight to happen when one of them was holding the baby. The infant might not understand a word but Sam couldn't put the baby, literally, in the middle. She wouldn't use her daughter as a shield in her own battles. Especially not as a shield against the child's own father.
Sam moved toward the gurney's side and gently returned the baby to the bin next to her bed. The whole time Jack watched and waited silently. Sam took what he would give and was in no rush as she nestled the girl snugly in the bin, the child's dark eyes watching her the entire time like an accusing party, the most innocent of victims.
Sam sighed to herself and reluctantly withdrew her hands from the plastic bin.
When at last the baby was securely tucked away Jack broke the silence that had engulfed the infirmary. "Sam?"
Sam grimaced and stepped away from the baby... and Jack.
"Sir...please... I'm really not feeling up to this. I can't do this right now."
"Do what?"
"Fight over her," Sam said in a cracking voice and gestured toward the quiet baby.
Jack looked taken by surprise at the turn of conversation. "You think I'm going to try to take her from you?"
"No," she whispered, but 'yes!' her mind actually screamed. It had crossed her mind to do just that to him, so why shouldn't it cross his to do the same to her?
Jack looked between Sam and the baby a couple of times before his gaze came to firm rest on Sam. "Sam...listen to me, I'm not going to do that. I would never do that."
Sam clasped her hands together to quell the compulsion to tremble and she turned away from him completely. His words were a blow. Now she would have to know the rest of her life that he'd been a better parent from the start for never thinking of taking the baby by himself as she had. Still, to know he wouldn't do it... "Thank you, sir, that eases my mind. Are we done now?"
Jack sighed and she could hear him getting irritated. Years in the field together she'd gotten good and knowing his moods and what each sounded like. At that moment, she would prefer to not have that kind of knowledge about him.
"No, we're not done. You're not okay and I'm not okay and we have to do something to make us okay."
Sam stilled at his second admission...he said he wasn't okay. That sent up warning flags and made Sam take notice. Jack O'Neill was always okay. He could be broken and bloodied and drugged and he'd still be okay because the leader could never be anything but. He had to be okay because only okay could take care of the rest of the team.
She turned back to look at him and saw him on his feet facing her, watching her closely and his eyes so intense. It ensnared her, he ensnared her, and Sam knew it could only lead to heartache. He wasn't Jonah and it was something she would have to learn to accept.
Sam frowned. "Sir..."
"Not 'sir', don't talk to me like your commanding officer, talk to me as Jack."
The request in itself sent Sam's mind reeling. She shook her head. "I can't do that."
Jack looked down-trodden but determinedly said, "Then talk to me as Jonah."
Sam's eyes widened and she physically took a step back. Blasphemy, heresy, mine-field. "No!"
Jack crossed to her in four steps and took her shoulders in his hands gently but firmly. Sam, stunned motionless at the touch, could only stare up at him. He looked her straight in the eye, so close she could almost kiss him, and he said insistently, "Come on, Thera, talk to me."
Sam's immobilized body reacted and once again she could move. She pushed at him but he held her just tight enough to prevent sweet escape. Sam continued to try and tug loose and her eyes watered and her voice rose as she returned, "No! You're not him."
"I am...sorta."
Sam, emotionally wrung, ceased fighting and stood there, defeated and broken in his grasp. "You're not. Jonah's gone."
"So you're saying Thera's not still inside you? You're saying that you don't feel what she felt, or think what she thought, or remember what she did? You're saying it's just me?"
Sam felt tears fall but she tried feebly to pull out of his hold once more and shook her head. "Stop, please."
"I'm here," Jack said...but it wasn't Jack, it was Jonah. The same tone of affection and adoration that he used only with Thera. It was the voice Thera had treasured as much as his touch, as much as his smile, and it broke Sam Carter in two.
Sam choked on a sob and Jack was gently tugging her close and Sam went into his arms and cried. She wrapped her arms around him and it was all so familiar and right. He felt the same, he smelled the same, his arms wrapped around her the same way. Like this, if she shut down her higher intellect, it could be Jonah. Sam closed her eyes and clung to him and tried to let herself believe it could be that easy.
"It's okay," Jack murmured to her again and again as she wept. One of his hands traced circles over her back and it was a gesture so characteristic of Jonah that Sam trembled against him.
"I miss him," Sam said amid her crying, and Jack hugged her tighter.
"I'm here."
Sam buried her face in his shoulder and his hand left her back and began to pet her tied-back blonde hair. Jonah's hands in her hair, a haunting memory, but this wasn't memory, it was real and it wasn't Jonah, it was Jack.
That thought galvanized her to move.
Sam sniffled and pulled away... but not enough to pull free of his arms. He was Jonah enough and she Thera enough that she couldn't muster the strength to do that much.
"Sam?"
Sam took a few deep breaths then said lowly, "I've never been as happy as Thera was." She only looked up into his face after the fact and Jack was painfully, emotionally raw just on sight. There was an openness to his face and eyes Thera had only ever seen from Jonah, complete trust in her with his feelings. His walls were down and he was exposed to her, emotionally at her mercy, and she could see how much the very effort terrified him. A wounded heart surrendered again stood before her, so near to being hers. If Jack would stop looking so much like Jonah it might be easier for Sam to let him go.
Jack gave an uncomfortable smile, his eyes soft, and he said, "I know what you mean. You made me feel things I haven't felt in a long time...Sam."
"You can do that? Just take everything Jonah had and was and make it yours?"
"Isn't it mine? Doesn't Thera belong to you? Aren't you her?"
"Thera had what I never could, and that's the difference...Jack."
Jack's mood darkened slightly but he didn't step back and Sam still couldn't quite pull away.
"Do you want Jonah to disappear?" Sam's breath caught at his sudden query and Jack pressed on. "Is that what you want me to do? Pretend he was never real, just push him out of existence and treat you like Major Carter again, as if nothing on the planet happened? Do you want me to act like there never was a Jonah?"
Sam slowly shook her head. Jonah wholly and truly gone? The thought made her hurt and it made what remained of Thera inside of her grieve terribly.
"Then what, Sam? Tell me what you want me to do."
Sam abruptly upturned her eyes and stared at him. She was thunderstruck by his forth-right request. He was practically begging her to let him fix it, fix them. Fixing things was usually her job, not his. She'd never seen Jack so conciliatory before. He gave the orders, he made the decisions, and Sam followed his direction, not vice versa. It was as though he'd forgotten the nature of Jack O'Neill, but Sam had not.
"There's nothing to be done, you know that. There never is."
Jack frowned but she could tell that he understood her, all too clearly. He looked briefly away and she could practically see him mulling over the options in his head, that tactical mind running full-throttle. She waited, dreading the outcome that would be unavoidable (for it was always the same with them), and knowing the destined fate of their conversation she treasured one last chance to stand in his embrace, as Jack, or Jonah, whichever he was.
Jack finally looked back at her and asked, "All right, let's try it this way then. What do you want?"
Sam looked away that time. The answer was easy, but Sam Carter telling him, Jack O'Neill, the full truth was the hard part. Still, he deserved to know, for what lived of Jonah inside him she owed him that much.
"I want to be Thera and I want Jonah. I want this entire 'rescue' to have never happened."
Jack's hand was suddenly on her face, guiding her to look at him, and Sam did so reluctantly. His eyes were so warm and tempting, so hypnotizing and compelling, and she found Sam and Thera aching for Jack and Jonah, and that was more dangerous than she could risk scrutinizing closely.
"You can't be Thera, Sam, and I can't be Jonah, but you have me. Jack. I know it's not what you want, but it's all I have."
Sam could have retreated and curled up in a corner. If only it was as simple as that.
"Jack...look, I know how you are, and I know you feel responsible for what Jonah and I did, but I don't expect you to do the 'honorable thing' or anything. You don't have to do this. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I'll be fine on my own and I don't need your chivalric gesture."
Jack did not react the way Sam expected him to. She thought he'd be genuinely relieved, in the end, to know he wouldn't pay for Jonah's actions when he'd had no control over the alter-ego's behavior. The instant fire in his eyes and the furious set of his jaw at her words took her off guard. "Is that what you think I'm doing? You think I'm just covering for Jonah for screwing you? And do you even notice you keep talking as Thera? What you and Jonah did? You know what, that was me as much as it was you. I can remember every night with you, Thera."
Sam swallowed and her eyes darted to the corner only to flick back up at him as he pressed, "I remember it all, I remember every kiss and every time together. That was me, make no mistake about that."
"But it wasn't. It wasn't you and it wasn't me, it was Jonah and Thera."
Jack groaned in frustration and from her bin nearby the baby gave one short, malcontent cry as if sensing the volatile mood.
"Sam, will you listen to what I'm saying?"
Sam went dutifully quiet, she was so accustomed to obeying Jack that it was second nature.
Jack paused a moment, clearly torn, then he said more calmly, "Everything Jonah said and did and felt was real. The only difference, Jonah didn't have regulations stopping him from saying all the things I've wanted to say to you."
Sam, shocked and blind-sided, blinked at him. Of the all the things she'd thought he would say those confessions had not been among them. "W-what?"
Jack looked like he had to fight the urge to roll his eyes. "For crying out loud, you're going to make me say it, aren't you?"
Sam was utterly baffled and could only stand there stupidly and stare.
Jack's voice did a one-eighty and suddenly it was gentle and soft and tender as he said, "I love you, Sam."
Sam gaped up at him. This was Jack, no doubt, and he'd spoken to Sam.
And she knew, just from his expression and his voice, that he was dead serious.
In the wake of his proclamation Jack waited, a little nervously, and after few seconds Sam finally got her voice to work. She looked up into his eyes and said in muted wondered, "Jonah never said that to Thera." It was true. Jonah had said plenty of other things that Thera knew meant 'I love you', but he never outright said it. He'd do things that let Thera know, but never the words.
Jack gave her a small, lop-sided smile and said, "Then I guess I'm one up on him."
Sam felt disconnected from reality, as if her consciousness had decided to detach from her physical body. The entire moment was surreal.
Jack took her disorientation for discomfort and he started to fidget. "Um...look, maybe I misread this whole thing, I mean...you know. I mean, I mean what I said, but if you don't...well, I'm...just...saying." Jack made a sour face at his own fumbling words and averted his gaze.
"What exactly are you saying, Jack?"
Jack, made uneasy by Sam's sudden stillness and turn of tactics, took a step away and rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. "Well, I just thought..."
"Jack," Sam interrupted very calmly, and he looked up at her. "I told you what I want, and that was hard for me."
Jack scowled and looked like he was on the verge of cut and running but his eyes fell on the plastic bin holding the baby and he went still. He seemed to get lost in himself, deep in thought, then he looked back at her. Colonel O'Neill resolve had bled into his presence. "I want...I hoped, that you would feel the same about Jack as Thera did about Jonah. I hoped we could...you know...try to make this work. I thought we could give our daughter one last name."
Sam didn't know what to say.
Jack, in the next second, amended, "But I'm obviously wrong and forgive my presumptuousness and I'll understand if you want to file an official complaint with the general for my behavior."
Sam stared at him, flustered and let-down and insecure, and Thera and Sam got lost in one another and suddenly there was only one mass of woman and one love for Jack and Jonah, for they too had combined into a single man, a solitary entity. The lines Sam had been scrambling to paste together, the fences of toothpicks and dental floss between who they were and who they'd been, shattered and just the act of surrender was a relief. She could love him, Jack, because he had been the brave one to accept Jonah as himself and deal with the consequences while Sam had tried to separate Thera from Sam, what she now knew was a supreme act of cowardice and ultimately an exercise in futility. She would always, in some way, be Thera, just as Jack would always be, in some part, Jonah.
Jack looked dejected, nearly heartbroken by her assumed rejection, and Sam felt tenderness and affection for him, Jack O'Neill.
"Why would I want to report the father of my daughter, Jack?" she asked, and Jack's eyes jerked up to her.
Sam offered a tentative but brilliant smile.
Jack's face started to lift in hope but he quickly changed tacks and said, "Ahh...not that I don't trust a hormonal new mother's smile or anything, but does this mean that you might want to..." he gestured between himself and her questioningly, index finger and middle finger of both hands moving animatedly to bridge the space between him and her.
Sam gave a truncated nod and took the leap over doubt. "I'm sorry, but I can't pretend the things we did on P3R-118 didn't happen. I can't ignore the feelings that were brought to the surface when we didn't know it wasn't allowed. Believe me, I tried, I tried so hard, but it didn't work."
Jack's lips twitched in a quirky pseudo-smile and it made Sam bold even as it melted her ability to resist the things he did, things he'd always done that had always, from day one, captivated her.
"I can't deny loving you," Sam at last said, "not when you tell me it's still there for you, too. Now that I know you feel the same way I do, I can't walk away from it...and I won't."
For a second one could have heard a hypodermic needle tip drop on to a bed sheet.
Then the second broke and Jack moved first.
Jack instantly stepped over to Sam and with a rushed, low-pitched, "C'mere," wrapped his arms around her in a hug. Sam, positively elated, snaked her arms around Jack and buried herself in his embrace.
"I missed you so much," she whispered to him.
Jack hugged her tighter and dipped his face into the crook of her neck. "I missed you, too," he whispered against her throat. Neither said 'Jonah' or 'Thera' because the names were auxiliary to the person. Each had missed the other, regardless of name. And they were okay.
Janet walked back into the infirmary, files in hand, and the same utter silence that had rushed at Sam earlier assaulted the doctor. The perceived emptiness of the room was oddly a relief for a place like the infirmary, it meant there were no life-threatening injuries to mend or lethal illnesses to combat. Janet liked the infirmary when it was ghost-town quiet, it meant her friends and colleagues were okay. Janet was the kind of person, given her profession, that would much prefer to never be needed.
Janet scanned the medical room and strained for sounds from the single area where the curtain was drawn to conceal the gurney inside. Since Janet could see the rest of the infirmary and noted it empty it was the only possibility of human life in the room besides herself. When she heard nothing she set her files down and moved quietly toward the concealed bed.
The sight that greeted Janet when she drew back the curtain made her smile.
She would never have believed three bodies could cram on to a single infirmary bed.
Jack and Sam were both lying together on the single narrow bed, Jack on his back and Sam on her side snuggled against him, half lying on top of him with her head on his shoulder and one of her legs tangled in his and her right arm looped around his waist. His right arm was snaked around and under her and holding her at the shoulders while his other arm held his hand in place over the baby that was sleeping on his chest. The baby girl's head was turned toward Sam, Sam with her own face tucked in such a way that mother and daughter were practically forehead to forehead, breaths mingling, both sound asleep. Jack's head was cant sideways to rest his cheek on the top of Sam's head, and at first Janet assumed he was asleep too, but when she stood there a moment longer than strictly necessary he opened his eyes and looked at her.
Janet had never seen Jack O'Neill so happy. It glowed in his eyes and shone in the smile he threw her way. He didn't move to wave or anything of that nature, he didn't take his hands from his daughter or his lover, but the tick of the left side of his mouth and the twinkle in his brown irises were gestures enough.
Janet knew, at that moment, everything would be all right with the recovered SG-1.
The doctor shared a smile with Jack, took one more moment to merrily study the family picture presented to her, then she pulled the curtain back into place and left them alone.
Jack, in the wake of Janet restoring their privacy, rested his head more comfortably atop Sam's blonde head and hugged her closer as he cradled their daughter more securely with his other hand. He basked in the moment and, with a small smile on his lips, closed his eyes.
Sam began to stir and Jack rubbed her shoulder softly with his hand. "Hey."
Sam opened her eyes and lifted her head just enough to look at Jack. Her eyes moved from him to the baby and back again and she smiled serenely. It was a look beyond Thera, more than Sam, utterly the woman she became with Jack. Sam lowered her head back to his chest and let her eyes lock on the sleeping infant. She moved the hand casually draped over Jack's waist and brought it up to gently trace the baby's arm and face.
Jack watched her movements with rapt fascination and almost unimaginable content. There was a minute of bliss when neither spoke, both merely laid pressed together and touched their slumbering child. For a minute since their return from the ice planet everything was perfect.
"What happens now?" Sam asked against his shoulder in a subdued voice, loath to break the peace of the moment and content to stay in his arms forever if that was his plan.
Jack thought on that a moment, his hand tracing idle circles on her shoulder, and he answered with their bodies still tangled together, "Well, a lot of that's up to you, but I have a few ideas."
Sam moved her head to almost look at him but she continued to watch the baby instead. The intent was clear enough and Jack took his cue to continue.
After a breath's pause he plunged onward.
"Moving in together, that's high on the list. Then, of course, making you an 'O'Neill' instead of 'Carter', that'd be top priority once things settle down a little. We'll have to straighten out our work situation since SG-1's someone else now and I can't be your commanding officer anymore, which works out well because I'd hate to blatantly and unrepentantly break regulations, repeatedly, while trying for baby number two. And naturally, you'd be duty-bound and obligated to finally come up to my cabin with me. Oh! and our daughter still needs a name."
Sam giggled and countered, "Why don't we start with the baby's name?"
"Then...?" he pulled back and looked down at her hopefully, clearly wary of the possibility that he might have already scared her off with all of his 'big change stuff' talk and his Jack O'Neill fashion of dropping it all at once like a bomb but delivered with an overtone of flippancy so that, if she balked, he could pass it all off as a joke. It was his safety net and from there, after a chuckle and shrug off, they could try another route, something slower and more cautious. Nothing he'd said had been on whim; he'd been turning all of it over in his head the entire time she'd been sleeping next to him, almost panic-stricken at the prospect of telling her all he wanted for them.
Sam lifted her head again to look at him and smiled as she said, "Then we'll see about getting to the rest of your list."
Jack's face lit up and he gazed at her hopefully, almost unable to comprehend she might be amenable to his suggestions. "Really?"
Sam's only answer was to slide her hand over the side of his face and shift upward on the gurney to lean down and pull him into a kiss that would have made Thera downright jealous...if she hadn't already been Sam, that is.
Jack returned the kiss, their child on his chest, and he thought it was ironic, really, that becoming a slave had been one of the best things that ever happened to him.
THE END
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