Tempest
It takes a week for him to wake up from the crash.
The crack of his head inside the helmet against the dash, the lick of freezing wind at the back of his neck in the frosted glass of the cockpit, the dip in his stomach while plummeting from the air in the backdrop of Anubis's ship doing the same thing.
He's lonely most of the time, the military springing for a private room in their special hospital just for him so he can undergo his intense physical therapy in peace. People visit him, sit with him, maybe have a coffee and share small talk about their kids, and their wives, and their jobs. His mother holds a vigil at the side of his bed crying until he wakes and then excuses herself because he'll be the third man in the family to be lost to the military.
At first he has no dreams, just falls into a synthetic unconsciousness caused by the combination of trauma and drugs.
About two weeks into his hospitalization, the nightmares start, re-enacting crashing the jet, losing his friend, his legs, his independence for something outside of the four walls and the bright ass window on his left. The pity visits and promises that if he becomes healthy—not when—he can do anything he pleases.
A basic carte blanche.
Three weeks in he remembers her.
Thinks at first it's a side effect from the drug they gave him to settle his nerves when he sleeps, that she's an apparition in his horrible plane crash dream where he sustained a broken back and broken hips that she's something his own mind created to calm him in the ravenous winds and snow clods flying in his cockpit like a snowdome.
But the sensation of her touch is too real, that's what gets him.
The feel of her hand holding his to comfort as she tilted his head forward and stared into his eyes with a skewed grimace pulling on her lips. Told him to lean back, relax, as she checked over her shoulder, and then a glow washed over him. Not like the bright window that burns his eyes, more like a soft sun on a spring day.
When he talks to Jackson or Lorne, or any visitor about her, they deny anyone being at the site of the crash but himself and he refuses to give up because each night she becomes more concrete in his mind. Her hands warmed him, rubbed down his arms and took the ache away. She dressed like something from the middle ages but composed herself as something royal.
She smelled like honey.
Finally, at six weeks into his ten week mandatory hospital stay, during a conversation with Jackson about O'Neill's funeral service and how the solemn silence throughout it was almost inappropriate, his anger peaks and he slaps his own coffee from the tray situated over his bed, across the room.
Jackson blinks at the sudden interruption of his beautiful rendition of a funeral he couldn't attend because his legs are still shit, and sets his own Styrofoam cup on the far side of the bedside table out of his reach in case he feels like flinging something again. "I take it your done with that."
"I want to know what happened."
"I told you, it was really quiet and honestly, I don't think—"
"Everyone is always telling me how much of a hero I am." Stares out the bright window with a clear view to the other wing of the building. Snow is just starting to fall in a gentle drift.
"Okay?" Jackson holds onto the word because he's lost in the conversation.
"Everyone keeps telling me that I can have anything I want from the military, any position, any clearance."
"So why is that bugging you?"
"Because I'm being given it as a reward for destroying Anubis's ship."
Has to look at Jackson for an answer. The doctor squints his eyes and holds onto his coffee with a tight grip. "Okay?"
"It wasn't me."
Jackson blows on his coffee and straightens from where he was hunched into the conversation. Scratching at the back of his head and sighs. "I know it's hard to cope with the guilt of—"
"I know it wasn't me. I know that woman was real—"
"Mitchell, you smashed your head so hard the doctors were surprised you didn't have permanent brain damage."
"I know she's real." Shakes his head and turns his attention back to the window, the snow is so thick that it whites out the other half of the building. There's a whistle of wind and when he closes his eyes, he's back in a plane stuck in the ice. "Everyone asks me what I want. I want to see her"
They wheel him down a bright white hallway. No windows, no paintings or even maps in case of an emergency. Ten storeys underground. A white hall and white doorways with varying symbols on them.
When visits began boiling down to Jackson or Lorne speaking for an hour and him not moving, not even adding a grunt, Lorne got clearance from new president elect Landry to let him into the loop.
She's a Goa'uld. Lorne told him point blank and his reply was to call bullshit. Saw her take the finals hot on Anubis's ship but Lorne reiterated that it was a powerplay, wanted control of the ship and the planet.
"She's on her way to Area 51."
"I want to see her."
"She healed you with a Goa'uld device. We still don't know if there are any side effects to it, and putting you two face to face even through the protection of—"
"I want to see her."
"The president is never going to allow—"
"You asked me what I wanted, and I want to see her." Wheeled around in his chair, staring at the window where another blizzard swelled snowflakes against the pane of glass. "She can't be that dangerous if you're still holding her at Cheyenne Mountain after nearly two months."
"She's injured." Watches as Lorne's dark reflection in the window breaks out of straight-backed character, as he throws his head to the side with a scoff. "She can't do shit."
He expects her to be on the other side of thick plexiglass like a serial killer in a scary movie, but when Lorne inputs the code to the room, she's sitting on the other side of a thick metal table. She's wearing a bright orange jumper, and her long black hair looks worse than it did in the middle of Antarctica.
She shifts uncomfortable with his prescience, the long chain of her single handcuff clanking against the table. Her free arm is done up in a cast and slung against her chest. Lorne wheels him in to sit across from her, and he feels so pathetic with a blanket over his legs while she sits across from him, her eyes trailing Lorne from the room, flinching when the door slams closed.
He's at a loss for words, because he's never had to introduce himself to someone who saved his life, it's usually the opposite way around. He's never had to introduce himself to the woman who saved his planet and is now being buried beneath it like dirty laundry.
"They said you healed me when I was in the plane." It's the weakest opening he's ever had, but he doesn't know a damn thing about her. Maybe by looking like he's trying to cover his ass, ensure he's not going to die of second hand Goa'uld poisoning, she'll start to talk.
But the chain keeps clanging as she fidgets in her seat, gaze still on the door, wide lips rolls tight, and her blinks are slow and purposeful, almost distracting. "You, uh, didn't do that great of a job," chuckles so she knows he's trying to make a joke, "I'm still not going to be tackling stairs anytime soon."
She doesn't laugh, or speak, and he can't even see her breathing. He feels like shit because he didn't take into account how she would view this whole thing. How being stuck in here probably isn't as much of a joke to her, as going down in a jet is to him.
Time passes.
A lot of time.
There's more resonant clanging, and she tucks her legs up beneath her body, with a shiver.
But it's him who sighs. It's him who grow impatient despite playing the silent game earlier this week. He crosses his arms and with a huff blurts out, "They told me you're a Goa'uld. You wanna talk about that?"
Doesn't expect a response, but her eyes scroll up from her cuffed hand. "Are you a therapist?
He stares because he doesn't remember her voice, the cadence of it, the accent, and she stares back with raised brows. "No."
Her eyes drop from him and again the only sound in the room is the fan humming high somewhere up in the wall. Lorne never told him that he'd be watched, but he knows them, knows enough that there's a camera hidden somewhere, probably miked her, hell probably miked him when he wasn't looking.
"I'm a former host to a Goa'uld." Her eyes flit back from the door and burn into his.
"Former Host?"
"To Qetesh, the God of sex."
"Oh."
Arcs an eyebrow at him and he swears her lips almost twitch into a grin. "Is there a problem?"
"No. No." Has never met a Goa'uld or a former one before. Heard through other soldiers what happened whenever there was one that got through the SGC, the stories of Ba'al, the massive leaves of absences after Hathor. "I was just wondering how you got—"
"The Tok'ra removed the symbiote from my body a few years ago."
"I guess you can celebrate your own Independence Day, huh?"
"Hardly. The Tok'ra were also more than insistent that I pay for the removal by infiltrating myself with Anubis and bringing him down."
"By acting as Qetesh?"
Nods, and her hand starts to unwind, reappears picking at the edge of the table. Her nails are cut short. "For three more years."
"I guess the best things in life aren't free."
"Nothing is ever free."
"I'm Lieutenant Colonel Cameron—"
"I know who you are." Her voice adopts a different tone, deeper, less civil, and it almost sounds like a threat.
A short silence resumes while he waits for an explanation, like how much they told her about him or what happened after he passed out, but she doesn't say a word, just staples her gaze to him, never losing sight of him.
He clears his throat, staring at the weak reflection of the low hanging light in the table top, and then to her arm, still wrapped snuggly against her chest. "What happened to your arm?"
"It's not my arm." Tugs on the collar of her loose jumpsuit edging her shoulder out of the stiff fabric revealing a white tank top and a piece of basic gauze taped near to her collarbone.
Her skin is so pale it almost glows in the interrogation low light, almost illuminates against the concrete walls. "Is that where they removed the Goa'uld?"
Shrugs her shoulder back beneath the starchy orange material. With a flat face and a nonchalant tone, she answers, "No it's where your military shot me while I was healing you."
"What?"
"I healed your arms by the way. They were quiet a mess and I couldn't reach your legs or your back—"
"Why did they shoot you?"
"I don't know, I really did get the chance to ask."
"But that was months ago—" Doesn't want to insinuate that she should be fully healed by now, she is an alien after all and her physiology could be completely different from his. Then he gets a sinking feeling in his stomach, like when his plane took a nose dive because he can sense the danger even though he's just stumbled on it.
"I suppose I wasn't exposed to the same high-end medical treatment as you." Like his stomach there's a drop in her voice that reinforces the darkness where his mind travels.
The door clunks open, and Major Lorne marches in, his boots snapping across the ground and she sits up in her chair. No. She presses back into her chair and doesn't let Lorne stray from her sight as the Major grips the handles on his chair to wheel him from the room. "Time to go, Buddy."
Slaps his hands down on the table trying to keep himself in place. "Just give us a few more minutes."
"Sorry but President Landry says—"
As Lorne spins him away from the table, he cranks up on the brake and the wheels squeal to a stop. The back of his chair hits Lorne in the gut. His friend groans and smacks at the back of his chair which stays glue in place. "Mitchell this is—"
Her eyes are wide, and she recoils herself in the chair. He reaches his hand forward, blanketing hers pinned against the tabletop. She flinches at the contact and as she tries to recline her fingers as he collects them. She's freezing, and shaking, watching Lorne regain his footing, and start swearing while slamming the brake down.
"I'm going to get you out of here."