My Name is Sha're
Her name was Sha'uri...or my name was Sha'uri. There are days I am sure that it must have been, and others, well, let's just say I have had my share of therapy trying to sort it all out. Sha'uri is the way Daniel spelled it when he taught me to write his language. Later, he sometimes wrote "Sha're", and I admit, that way looks more like it sounded when he said it.
I very much liked hearing the way my name, and pretty much words in general, sounded when Daniel said them. Watching his lips was a bit of a fascination of mine, but these days I really try not to dwell on it.
In any event, my name was Sha're, and I was born a slave to the false god Ra. For the most part, life was not so terrible. We worked hard - very hard. Conditions were harsh, and sometimes Ra's capricious temper would flare into rage, bringing sorrow and suffering with it, but we had our loved ones, and we had our ways to be happy in spite of the evil of our god.
Skaara made me happy, for instance, so beautiful from the moment of his birth, and growing first into a precocious child, and finally into a fine young man. My brother. A natural leader with a ready smile, and the center of our existence. All of us - my father who adored him, I, who was mother and sister and friend, and of course, his loyal band of young followers.
It also made me happy to care for Skaara and for my father, Kasuf, an elder, known throughout Abydos as a man of great wisdom. I did all the womanly chores, most of which baffle me now, quite honestly, and found a certain contentment in those familiar necessary tasks that left my mind free to roam as it would. I did these things alone, though once I shared the tasks with my mother. Skaara was too young, when she died, to remember, but he would ask me to tell him of her, and I would describe the sweet scent of her hair when she leaned to kiss us, and I would sing him the songs she used to sing.
Never mind that Margaret Henley can't carry a tune, and I can see her whenever I like.
And, I'm an only child.
I can recall the oddest things. I know how to prepare a delicacy made from the stomach of an animal I can barely describe and have never seen the like of here on Earth. If I wanted to, I could tie you a rug of great durability made from a plant that grows along the river's bank during the brief rains of spring. The plant too, is not familiar to Lorin Henley (the me I am as I am writing this today), and yet I can recall the feel of it in my hands as I wove needful items from it's fleshy stalk. And I recall gathering it, wary of certain deadly swimming things that hid among those stalks along the marshy shallows.
I was a slave for a long time, a difficult life, but not unhappy, then Daniel came and showed us the truth of our history. He showed us that Ra was false and he killed him with a great ball of fire. As Sha're, I had a little difficulty knowing what to make of that, but of course, as Lorin, I can guess at the level of ordinance the Air Force might feel was necessary to destroy potential alien threats. Enough so that Ra is very thoroughly dead, at any rate.
I died, too, then, for the first time, but Daniel brought me back with a magic he called technology - and I admit, that part was still magic to me, until I eventually learned much more than I ever wanted to know about Goa'uld sarcophagi...but I'll get to that later. I was dead, and then I lived again - as a free woman, and Daniel's wife. The happiest time of my life.
Either of them.
It's fantastic irony, because if this is all a story contrived by my own mind and not a true thing, then I have managed to conjure exactly the lover whose remembered touch keeps me from the arms of any other man. I know the topography of his body, the scent of his skin, the way he tastes...how he loved me. My whole body remembers how he filled me, and that memory alone has woken me time and again with tremors of pleasure.
Immediately followed, more often than I have cared to admit, by a good long cry, curled around myself in a futile attempt to keep from bleeding out. That is what it feels like. It's as if there was once an invisible rope of energy tied between Daniel and me, and it has been severed forever, but never heals, never stops bleeding.
What man could possibly make me feel that I am not Daniel's wife, that I don't belong to him body and soul, and that I am free to love again? I grieve constantly for this lover and friend who probably never existed.
Hence the therapy.
And more troubling still, if that is possible - if this is all a construct of my subconscious, then my mind has proven to be twisted indeed. No normal woman, no sane woman, could possibly be responsible for designing what came next for Sha're...for me.
Dr. Desala has suggested I write this story of my other self, this alien woman from an alien country whose life I lived alongside my own, every day since I can remember, until she no longer lived at all. But there are things I haven't told Dr. Desala. Things that nobody knows. You see, I learned many secrets of the demons of Ra's race, the Goa'uld. I learned these things because there is a third name by which I have been known - not Lorin, not Sha're, but Amaunet, a cruel and terrible being capable of things I wish I could un-see, so many things I desperately wish I could undo. How could anyone's mind create a creature like that...a life like that?
Sha're was born a slave, she died and lived again, she was Daniel's wife, and then, well...then, she went to hell.
Then finally, she died. I died gazing at Daniel's dear face, "I love you" my final words. I died free.
xxxxx
I died free, and yet I am alive.
The last months of Sha're's life were not something I was particularly enthusiastic about holding onto, let's be honest, but I really would rather we had beaten Amaunet in order to be free of her, than die. I suppose that the way things played out was always the more likely path to freedom, but we were getting smarter about asserting ourselves all the time, and I think we almost had our demon, there, at the end.
I say "we", because Sha're's devastating circumstances pretty much flat-lined Lorin's life, too, and in the process, my two "I"s became a "we" . Never mind trying to understand it. I don't.
Being taken by Amaunet was terror and agony that I can never describe. I, Sha're, was the emotional equivalent of beaten and left for dead. Amaunet had my body and mind, but I was an instinctive fighter, (and I was really pissed off) so I managed to retain a piece of it; retreating to a small corner and hiding away there to keep myself safe while I adjusted to Amaunet's invasion.
That sounds practically clinical. What I was really doing was silently, endlessly, screaming.
There is no adjusting to an alien symbiote embedded in your spine. There is no adjusting to being a passenger in your own mind, unable to control what your body is doing...or what is done to it. A human mind can't contain all the evil a Goa'uld pours into it. There is only enduring, surviving, occasionally fighting, but never adjusting.
Meanwhile, I, Lorin, went to bed one night and dreamed of my life as Sha're, the same as every other night of my life, but this time I did not wake. My research assistant found me sometime later when I was missing longer than his concern could tolerate. I never even heard him break down my door. I don't remember very much, just lurching from consciousness to coma and back again - so lost. Just lost, and, yes, silently screaming.
I don't know how long we went on like that, in pain and confusion, suffering the intrusion of thoughts so alien and chilling I couldn't believe they were inside my own mind. I don't know when we started pulling it together, Sha're and I. All I know is, when we finally did, as much as was possible, everything had changed.
Again, the understatement is colossal.
One thing that changed, as I said, was that although I was always both Sha're and Lorin, I was, for the first time, both Sha're and Lorin at the same time. I was Lorin in Sha're's experience, that is. Sha're was never a witness to Lorin's life. I was strong, very strong if I may be so bold as to say - I had to find that strength inside me to survive, but it was all I could do, as Sha're, to get through each individual agonizing moment of my hell, at the beginning. Had things been different, maybe I might have visited Lorin's world as Sha're, too. I don't know.
We can add that to the epic list of things I don't know. I've stopped even trying to keep up. It's a simple matter of self-preservation, I can't over-think these things and still look sane and normal from the outside. Successful, respected, engaging Dr. Henley - lecturing the undergrads, glad-handing the donors, mentoring the TA's, publishing and presenting papers - always with the brisk and cheerful confidence of someone who truly has it all together. Yep. that's me.
Sure, it is.
Remembering I was Lorin while living Sha're's experience kept me sane...ish. Maybe I had to be that much more broken than ever - not just one and then the other, but both at once, in order to get any sort of detachment from what was happening to me. Because of this change, once, I even managed to protect Daniel by blocking Amaunet from revealing his hiding place to Apophis. I did, as Lorin, not I did as Sha're. Sha're had nothing to do with it. I/Sha're was doing the screaming thing, again. Not that I blame myself. Things were looking pretty bleak. Amaunet wasn't quite at her best in that moment, either, as I recall - her claws hadn't yet sunk all the way back in.
It was more luck than anything that I was able to manage it, and I am grateful for that. Oddly enough, I cherish it for more than the preservation of Daniel's safety, alone. It was the only moment I have ever shared with him that belonged just to Lorin.
Is your head spinning, dear imaginary reader? I write this, at Dr. Desala's urging, as if I am explaining it to a stranger...not that anyone could possibly understand it, even if they could keep up. And even if I allowed another person access to this journal (never going to happen), I couldn't expect them to believe it, particularly when I tend not to myself.
You can see why I had to take a rather abrupt and lengthy leave of absence. I'm fortunate I have tenure. I'm also fortunate my parents didn't see fit to have me committed to a psychiatric hospital. They never knew anything about Sha're's life, but they can diagnose a psychotic break when they see one.
It seems I always knew, even when I was a small child, that wandering around in public singing songs nobody ever taught me in a dialect of ancient Egyptian (I figured that fascinating little fact out, later), discussing an imaginary brother, and sharing my fear that Ra would come and kill me while I slept, might be bad ways to be considered normal. Especially when one's parents are both clinical psychologists. Maybe it would have been better to be honest. Maybe if I'd started talking to Dr. Desala when I was three or four, I wouldn't be questioning my sanity, now.
You see, I've had a lifetime of living alongside Sha're. I was quite used to spending my dream time catching up on all the goings-on in Abydos. In the dream, BA (Before Amaunet), there was no Lorin, I was just Sha're living Sha're's life. It was only when I awoke into Lorin's life that I would think of Sha're and Lorin as two separate people. Or not separate, I guess, it was me, just living two lives.
I can see, looking back, that my life as Lorin was equally influenced by my Lorin experiences as my Sha're experiences. Would I have been so interested in the study of different cultures, I wonder, if I wasn't constantly comparing the two worlds I was living in? When you already know, as a kid, that human behavior can only be understood in context, you start paying very close attention to context. I was studying anthropology long before I understood what it was, and long before it became necessary to declare a major.
In some ways, Sha're's life has taken on even more meaning for me than Lorin's, because all I have of Sha're is retrospect. Sha're is dead.
I can't mourn her, I am her, but I mourn the life that was stolen by the Goa'uld, the life I should still be living as Sha're with Daniel, and perhaps a child one day that would be his and mine together. But that is the life that has ended, the life that I grieve.
On the day that Jack O'Neill returned through the Chappa'ai, that life still existed, though not for long. At the time, I thought that the worst thing that could happen was Daniel leaving Abydos, to return to his former home...without me.
I was very wrong about that.
Now that I have some perspective...kinda, I can see that Sha're was always a glorious mess of contradictions. I was raised a slave, obedient to Ra, obedient to Kasuf, just plain obedient - but I was also a woman who, by anyone's standards, could stand in her own power and assert herself very effectively (I was stubborn as hell, in other words).
Daniel had no interest in obedience, and although it might be an understatement to say that I wasn't entirely without self-direction, I still found myself at a bit of a loss. I never knew what to expect from him, or what was expected of me. I guess that is why Sha're never quite believed Daniel would stay forever. It's not that I didn't trust him, it was more that I didn't trust myself to be enough.
That is how I felt when I was Sha're. When I woke, and Lorin remembered those feelings, I really wanted to shake some sense into her...me...us. But Lorin understands where Daniel came from; Sha're never really did.
With the return of O'Neill, Sha're was immediately stricken with an itchy dissatisfaction and sporadic flashes of panic. I watched Daniel's every expression, listening to every nuance of every word spoken. Fortunately, Daniel had practiced English with me. If he hadn't, I would have gone out of my mind worrying that I was missing the one clue that would tell me that he loved me above his life on Earth, or the dreaded opposite, that he would leave with these people and never return.
I made my opposition to any such plan as plain as I could, the only way I, as Sha're, felt I could, with a very long, very passionate, very public, (and not just a little bit territorial) kiss. Had I known it would be the last moment, uncomplicated by Goa'uld, that I would have with him, I might have said something, or done something, different. But considering what came next, I may have inadvertently found the best way, the only way, to say what needed saying in the time we had left to us.
I suppose I should take some time to introduce my demon. Devious, ego-maniacal, cruel...these words pale when I try to apply them to Amaunet, the parasite that stole Sha're's body and life.
Can you guess why she chose me for her host? If you understood her as I unfortunately came to, you could. She immediately ascertained that Apophis's desire to possess me was already verging on obsessive. The Jaffa had brought any number of human women to Apophis for his approval, and I have no doubt he only presented to Amaunet those he was attracted to, but she was not satisfied with lust - she wanted to control him utterly. She intuitively sensed that she could use me, and push him over the edge from obsession into near-worship of her.
Oh, how deeply she despised him!
She eventually lured him into the trap of a powerful rival Goa'uld, who repeatedly tortured him to death, reviving him with a sarcophagus, only to begin the torture again. I did not pity him, heaven knows he deserved it, but I took no joy in it, either. Amaunet did - she was only disappointed that she couldn't be there to see it.
As much as I saw Apophis as a hated Goa'uld whenever I was forced to look at him, I knew very well that the remnants of an innocent life could be looking out at me from his eyes, unable to make himself known, hating what his body was doing to me, and to the countless others harmed by his demon, without his consent.
I am thankful we didn't live much longer, after that. Amaunet had other system lords in her sights, and I dread to think how she planned to win them over.
As I was saying, however, I was chosen as an instrument of control over Apophis. He killed the potential hosts Amaunet rejected, I learned later, and by that time, it came as no surprise. There were times I wished that had been my fate. I don't give up easily, and I am not, as a rule, afraid of false gods, not anymore, but there were moments I wished I could, and I very much was.
The Harcesis was Amaunet's idea, planted in small, clever little ways over time, until Apophis thought it was his own original plan to father a human child that would one day be his own new host. I won't go into all of the lurid, horrible things Amaunet would plot and daydream. Between the tortures she imagined Apophis's enemies would inflict upon him for his audacity in fathering this forbidden child, to the child himself being her own future lover, there was an entire spectrum of things nobody wants to know. Really. I wish I knew how to scour them from my mind.
With all her scheming and planning, however, Amaunet never suspected that the child himself would be the instrument of her demise. I believe she must have assumed that as "mother" she could exert her control over the boy. She didn't know what motherhood would do to me, and how my love for my child, and my desire to protect him, would eclipse her own feelings so completely that she would sometimes mistake my will for her own.
I don't think she could have foreseen that such a thing was possible. I was nothing but a body to her. The child was nothing but another body to be used in her quest for the two things she desired more than anything: power, and the unending torment of Apophis.
xxxxx
Pete Shanahan laid the journal face down on his kitchen table. He still didn't know what had possessed him to start reading it in the first place, but now that he had, a call to Colorado Springs seemed in order...or probably a visit. Or maybe...no, this wasn't exactly a drop-it-in-the-mail sort of a thing.
He scrubbed his hands over his face.
Sam. He hadn't seen her since she had broken the engagement, but she would need to be told about this...discovery.
Pete was proud of how well he had taken her decision. He had managed to get into his car without begging, and all the way to Denver before he did anything unmanly. Since then, it had just been a matter of resisting the urge to call her every 47 seconds...or so. She helped matters by spending a large amount of her time completely inaccessible by phone, what with being on other planets and all. But his plan to maintain the fantasy that his exit from her life had been downright stoic, was about to be sorely tested.
Pete didn't know how much of this - whatever-it-was - could possibly have any reality to it, but he knew two things for sure:
1. there were a whole lot of not-to-be-ignored key words in this odd document, and
2. Daniel Jackson was dear to Sam in ways that defied every-day description.
To Sam, both of those things would take precedence over Pete's pride.
He dialed the precinct and left the message that he was taking a couple of personal days. First, he would do a little off-the-books investigating, then on to good old Sci-Fi Central, and Samantha.
xxxxx
I won't say that I imagined the child was Daniel's as the little one grew in me. You'd think that I might have, that such a fantasy would comfort me. It's hard for me to explain the place that Daniel had in my hell. In many ways, he ceased to be real, if he ever was real to begin with. If any of this was.
Amaunet didn't make a habit of paying attention to what her host was thinking, she couldn't have cared less most days, so it wasn't because I was protecting him. It was the idea of him I was protecting. There just wasn't anyplace in my existence left that was clean enough to hold my thoughts of him.
On the occasions Amaunet deigned to interact with my little part of my mind directly, it was like a cruel child who tortures insects in the backyard. It only happens if the child is bored enough to bother noticing them to begin with. When bored, Amaunet would torment me with her graphic and creative ideas of what she would do with my body for Apophis's pleasure, ideas that she all too often put into practice.
I am not sure if there is supposed to be any sort of therapeutic value in writing about the multitude of ways Amaunet and Apophis found to rape my mind and body every day, but it's not going to happen. Not now. Not ever.
But I was speaking of Amaunet and my thoughts of Daniel. Only once, when I finally put two and two together and came up with four, (as in, the exact makeup of this 'SG-1' that was regularly rendering the Goa'uld apoplectic), did Amaunet care about my thoughts of Daniel. I must have been thinking too loud - so relieved to know for certain that he still lived, proud of his ongoing and obviously successful fight against the demons, hopeful that he hadn't given up on me, ashamed of what he would see if he succeeded in finding me, terrified for his safety, etc., etc. She couldn't pass up an opportunity like that.
And here again is something I can't write, that I will never write. There is nobody and nothing, on or off this Earth, that could possibly compel me to recount any of the creative ideas Amaunet had for Daniel.
When the demon slept inside me so that my child would live, Amaunet's thoughts were blissfully silent, coming only in tidbits of memory. It was disturbing, certainly, but hardly a whisper compared to when she was awake. I felt that I was free, at long last, to think my own thoughts, but still, I could not bring myself to think too much of Daniel. I was too thoroughly, irrevocably, defiled.
The thought of confronting him, my belly round with unmistakable evidence of what had been happening to me, was more than I could bear to consider. I dreaded what I would see in his eyes. It almost didn't matter what it was. Disdain? Forgiveness? Pity? Anger? I couldn't imagine enduring any one of them.
And if it was unconditional love that I saw there, what then? A gift like Daniel's heart should be kept for a woman whose mind and body are her own to share, not for the whore of a misbegotten demon parasite posing as a god. I couldn't have remained standing upright under the weight of such a look, not in the state I was in.
I was hidden away from the system lords in the last place they would search for me, the home of Amaunet's insignificant host, my home. I never had the heart or the words to tell my father the truth, but I think perhaps he must have guessed that something was very wrong, and that I was not at home to stay.
Perhaps he thought he was protecting me from the possibility that my husband might not come on the appointed day. In any case, I didn't understand why Kasuf was so carefully counting the days. I was given no time to prepare for when he uncovered the Chappa'ai for Daniel.
He was just...suddenly there, and I was left with no place to hide from those eyes.
I was so desperate to run to him! To throw myself into his arms where I could pretend for a little while that everything would be alright, or maybe even manage a blissful moment of believing none of this had happened at all, but I was held in place by the invisible shackles of my own shame. It was excruciating.
For his part, Daniel digested what he was seeing and hearing, and then he turned away from me, as I knew he must. As I believed he should.
I had no expectation that he would return. That he did return may have been the second cruelest thing he has ever done, and the second greatest gift he ever gave me. He took me in his arms and said he loved me. He said he would take me to his world where he would lock Amaunet in a cage until some way could be found to rid me of her. He said he would protect my child. He gave me hope.
I was too broken, at first, to really accept it could happen that way. Too certain Amaunet would win, in the end. Of course she did, at least that day, but not until Daniel had done the cruelest thing he has ever done. He made me believe him. He held me while I gave birth to another man's child and made me believe he loved me, anyway - that the Goa'uld had no power to take that away from us.
It was cruel, yes, but it was everything. It became the most important thing - the only thing that ever mattered after that. Daniel, and my child, would shine like the suns of Earth and Abydos in all the secret places of my world where I was still me. Daniel's love, and my trust in it (finally), made it possible for me to save my son, and to die at peace and truly free.
xxxxx
Mr. Baker rolled up the gate at the front of his patisserie and started getting ready for the day. Most people weren't up and around, yet. He liked watching Fort Collins slowly wake up, which, along with his name, a bit of an artistic bent, and a penchant for sweets, pretty much nailed his career choice for him.
He raised a hand to wave at Susie Finnerty as she slowly worked her way up the street with the newspapers. It was usually just the two of them at this time of day, but not this morning. Slouching up to the corner smoking a cigarette was that kid, again. He'd been haunting the neighborhood for several days, installing himself like one of those people impersonating statues. The slow spiral of blue smoke, and the occasional flick of an ash, often the only indication he was real.
To be honest, despite looking at first glance like he might be twenty different kinds of trouble, the kid had been a pretty good neighbor. He wasn't dealing, panhandling or in any other way making a nuisance of himself. He even scuffed out his spent cigarettes and discarded them appropriately. Nobody does that. And yesterday he had silently scooped up Mrs. Yadkin's dropped wallet and just as silently handed it back to her before she even knew it was gone.
Nevertheless, his purposeful looking lack-of-purpose was a bit nerve-wracking.
The pastry chef made a project out of shining his front window while he sized up the young man once again. He might be as old as nearly thirty or as young as fourteen or fifteen. Worn jeans, black combat boots, a black t-shirt and leather wrist cuffs appeared to be his uniform. Short black hair with longer spikes, heavy black eyeliner, a pair of eyebrow piercings over one eye, and a couple of black painted fingernails finished the look. On anyone else, Mr. Baker might have interpreted his appearance as, 'stay away, I don't particularly like humans,' but honestly, the kid was too darn good looking to intimidate - or alienate. When he'd smiled gently at Mrs. Yadkin yesterday, he might have been an angel who just happened to be out slumming it.
The shopkeeper, the paper carrier, and the odd phantom angel on the corner were eventually joined on the street by sleepy parents, seeing their kids off to school, then shuffling into the shop to buy a pastry for breakfast - or a box of them if they were looking to make points at work. Dr. Henley came by during a lull in the morning rush, selecting her favorite, pan au chocolat, and a cheese danish for her research assistant.
Mr. Baker walked the young woman out the door, chatting pleasantly about the weather, and what was new at the university. The girl couldn't be much older than his daughter - reminded him of her, in fact. Not that his daughter was all that young anymore with half-grown kids of her own, but as a result of the resemblance, he'd settled into a fatherly sort of role with the pretty scholar in the couple of years since she'd moved into the apartment above the deli next door. This made him particularly aware of her comings and goings. He couldn't help but worry about a woman living alone, even though Lorin didn't seem to think anything of it. Maybe he was too old-fashioned.
As he waved her on her way. Mr. Baker's eyes fell on his curious corner-lurker who, for his part, had just become very interested in something off in the exact opposite direction of the shopkeeper, and the retreating figure of Dr. Lorin Henley.
Mr. Baker never saw the dark SUV parked further up the street, or the light reflecting off the camera lens held by the man slouching in the front seat, but then, he wasn't supposed to see that. And anyway, just then a handsome and polished stranger in a perfectly tailored suit and overcoat came to the shop, and he had business to attend to.
xxxxx
Although I was both Sha're and Lorin from the moment Amaunet took us, to the moment Sha're died, when it came to Daniel, and my son, our feelings were, and are, inextricable. I've accepted that to a certain degree, but since I don't fully believe the man is real, or Sha're for that matter,it's some kind of shaky ground I live on every day, and that's a fact.
If I'm talking about something real, though, then out there in the universe I once lived as Sha're, the man that I love is living his life here on Earth, and my child is somewhere being kept safe from the Goa'uld. The possibility of Daniel and the boy existing in my reality is what makes it possible for me to get up in the morning, function all day long, and live a relatively happy life.
But it also keeps me from truly moving forward as Lorin - Lorin without Sha're, something I have never been. The possibility that I could discover once and for all that everything I have recounted here is a construct of my own imagination, or the possibility I could discover that it is not, freezes the breath in my lungs. I mean that literally. There are days I am sure I have barely taken a single full breath from morning until night.
On the rare occasion I feel it may be worth the risk to find out for sure, I am inevitably blocked by the sheer dread of being right. Can I actually survive learning that Amaunet and Apophis and Ra were real? Can I find Daniel and discover that he has mourned Sha're and moved on, as I have been unable to do? Do I even have the right to make him aware that I exist? Can I allow myself to find my son and by my very finding of him, place him in peril?
And I am equally blocked by the far worse dread of being wrong. Can I breath at all in a world in which Daniel is not real? That my child is not? That Skaara and Kasuf are not? That Teal'c is not?
Teal'c.
He doesn't know me, not as Sha're and certainly not as Lorin, but he is a key player in my life story, both lives, and well worthy of special mention. Some might say, well worthy of condemnation.
The part of me who was observing as Lorin saw Teal'c, and knew him immediately for the one who had stolen Skaara from Abydos. The man who dragged me away from Skaara on Chulak and gave me to Apophis. The man who stood so silent and solemn while we screamed and screamed and lost everything to Amaunet.
The Sha're part of me didn't seem to take much notice of his humble apology when he made it. As Sha're, I was more focused on Amaunet's memories of the Shol'va.
You see, Amaunet was very interested in Teal'c, and the fury the traitor unleashed in her pharaoh. Her conniving mind was always interested in people she might use against Apophis. She never had the chance to use Teal'c, but she certainly pondered her options to do so, if given the opportunity, with scrupulous diligence.
Everything about the man was confusing to me/Lorin. I wanted to hate him, but he had arrived with Daniel. Surely Daniel knew what he had done, but it was obvious that he trusted Teal'c. They were friends - a team.
I sensed the depth of sincerity of Teal'c's apology, but how do you apologize for condemning a person to a living death...an inescapable hell?
I watched the big man with care, and I tried to understand. I tried to see what it was in him that earned Daniel's friendship, and by the end of that very day, miraculously, I did understand. By the end of that day, I counted Teal'c among the people I most love in either of my lives.
It was Teal'c who stoically accepted that Daniel would rather put his life at risk than leave me to give birth to my child alone. It was Teal'c who kept the horus guard of Heru'ur from us. It was Teal'c who contrived a way to save my son (though only Lorin, of the three in Share's body, seemed to recognize this was so). And, come to think of it, on Chulak, he went out of his way not to hurt Skaara when my brother defied the Jaffa and tried to save me.
Later, it was Teal'c who did what Daniel could not, firing upon Sha're to take the life of Amaunet. The fact that Sha're went with her didn't matter to us, not then. What mattered was, Teal'c would not let Daniel die. Daniel would live, he would protect my child, and SG-1 - Teal'c, with O'Neill, and Dr. Carter, would make sure he didn't have to do it alone.
xxxxx
"Daniel Jackson would not thank you for keeping this from him."
"I know, I wouldn't do that to him. I'd really like to, though. Damn it, Teal'c, he's been through enough! I just wish we could wait, at least until we can find this woman. Talk to her...find out...something..."
Major Samantha Carter paused in her pacing. "Damn it!"
"You said that already."
How did he do that? Sam figured she should be used to it, but Teal'c never seemed to have to actually say much of anything to make himself understood. Within, 'you said that already' was more layers of meaning than most people could express in a hundred page treatise. Sam swept him with a look from boots to golden serpent, sighed and began pacing again.
He was just standing there beside her lab table, as though he'd been chiseled out of the mountain and left there to hold it up with nothing but his significant eyebrows. Comforting, but not very helpful.
"Damn it."
"What's going on?" Daniel's voice was curious, but untroubled. Sam really wanted to keep it that way.
No chance of that.
"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said, unnecessarily.
Daniel shot him a suspicious sideways glance, "ummm, Teal'c". Daniel squinted up at him, probably in an attempt to translate the 100 page treatise Teal'c had just packed into his name.
Sam was so not ready for this, but there was no choice. She took a decisive breath and just plunged straight into the event horizon, "Daniel, there is something important we need to talk about. Now."
Daniel turned his squint in her direction, "o...k."
Crap, now what? She started pacing again.
"You know...Pete?"
"ummm, Pete your ex? Yes, I know Pete." He was humoring her.
A brisk nod, "Right, well..." Sam's voice abruptly stopped working.
The pause dragged on while she attempted to find a place to start, trying and discarding her choices as rapidly as she could think of them.
The matter wouldn't reintegrate.
"Sam, whatever is going on, just tell me. Did something happen to Pete?"
Great, now he was worried about her. "No, no, nothing like that." Alright then, awkward and unintelligible would have to do.
"You see, Pete has this favorite coffee shop." pause. "In Denver?"
"He's a cop. Cops drink coffee. Isn't that a rule? Even in Denver?" Dry, with a hint of twinkle.
Damn it. She flashed a brief tight smile that faded immediately. "Right. So, day-before-yesterday he was in this coffee shop, at his usual table, you know, and in his usual seat he found somebody's journal. That they left there. Or, you know, dropped. In his seat."
"I'm waiting for some key plot points, here, Sam."
"Right. So. This journal, you know, Pete's a cop, well-of-course-you-know-he's-a-cop, and, anyway, he thought he should maybe look and see if the person had a name, or contact information or something, so he could be all you know, officer friendly...or detective friendly I guess, and give it, you know, back. To the person. Who dropped it."
Sam had gone into some kind of hyperdrive, but she still wasn't getting anywhere. Daniel crossed his arms and leaned back against the lab table. This was going to take a while. Untucking one hand, he gestured mutely for her to continue (preferably with coherency, was implied), and then resumed his waiting stance.
"So there wasn't anything like a name or phone or address or anything like that, but I guess a couple of words caught his attention and he started reading, and the thing is, Daniel, this journal is, just...really...not explainable."
"That much I figured out on my own."
She winced. "So, anyway, Pete saw that there were all these references to stuff nobody should know about, that isn't, you know, us."
"Us as in Stargate Command, us?"
"Yes, that, and not just that, Daniel, but you know..."
"SG-1 us, then." Not a question.
"Right, well, one more so than..."
"You?" A deep frown and an abbreviated head shake was his response. He glanced at Teal'c. Nothing.
"Jack?" Almost hopefully.
Silence.
"Ok," Daniel had a distinctly uneasy feeling about where this was going. He tried to brush it off, "So I made it into somebody's diary in Denver? I had no idea my fame had spread so far. That's over an hour's drive."
"Daniel, please," Sam silently cursed her voice, which had decided to take that moment to betray exactly how big a deal this was. He had heard the telltale quaver, she could see it in the tightness around his eyes - the sudden lack of all readable expression.
"Sam." Soft, with zero inflection. Damn it.
There was a very good reason the words weren't coming easily. The fact was, there was no way to tell him. No possible way to spare him, or even soften the gut punches he was about to take, even if she tried. If she did try, she could only make it worse, she realized.
"It's here," reaching around Teal'c to her work area, she picked up the journal and hefted the weight of it in her hand a couple of times, delaying the inevitable. Then, with a worried frown, she abruptly thrust it toward him, "here."
Daniel stared down at the book for a good count of three before reaching out and taking it from her warily, then he ran a forefinger along the cover, preparatory of opening it so he could find out, finally, what the hell was going on.
Sam laid a hand over his. "No! No, Daniel, take it to your office, you should...this is...alone, might be..." She trailed off as she watched all color leach slowly from his face.
She wouldn't meet his eyes. Daniel flashed his gaze back to Teal'c's normally inscrutable face, and what he saw there made the hair stand up on his arms.
"When you're ready, Pete did a little bit of, well, he's a detective, and he, of course you know that he's a detective, and he was trying to help, so, anyway, he has some information. Not much, but I'll tell you. When you're ready..."
When he was ready? That wasn't a comment about scheduling conflicts, that was a warning that he'd need time to be...ready. God, what is this?
He nodded tightly, once, and left without another word. Sam closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself.
"Daniel Jackson will be alright."
She sighed, "Eventually, Teal'c, but not today."
"Perhaps not today," Teal'c acknowledged.
xxxxx
'When he was ready' took a while. Detonating this particular bomb in his office wasn't quite private enough, it turned out, so he left the base and went home, counting on Sam and Teal'c to cover for him if he was missed, or to call him if a Goa'uld invaded, or if the Asgard beamed Jack off-world, or whatever.
Sam would fret until he surfaced, but she would understand. He thought it might be a good idea to have some kind of handle on this before interacting with any actual people. His company was looking to be a thing not easy for anyone to be in for the foreseeable future.
He found himself obsessively reading and re-reading these impossible things, feeling every feeling it is possible to feel, mostly all at once. Guilt, primarily. He had failed Sha're in a million different ways. His gut clenched with a physical pain that eventually had him crawling onto his bed to lay there unmoving, unthinking, wide awake until his emotions simply shut down. He was still lying there, numb, until long after the sun set on Colorado Springs.
Eventually bodily needs intruded. He was thirsty and he had to pee, in other words. But once he was up and around he felt detached enough to face some sort of next step - or so he thought.
An internet search brought him to the Colorado State University Faculty page. The photo was...like having his lungs ripped out. He laid his fingers against the monitor, partly to be touching that face, and partly to block it for a moment so he could start breathing normally again.
Are you my wife, Lorin Henley?
xxxxx
He found Samantha back in her lab. "How much of this did you read?" he asked without preamble.
She flushed, "More than I should have. Less than I wanted to."
Daniel nodded, and they settled into a long awkward silence that they both eventually tried to break at once.
"So, you said, Pete..." "Daniel, I can't imagine.."
Sam smiled ruefully. "Pete, yes, I guess you'd like to know what Pete found out."
"I don't know if I want to know or not, but lets talk about it, anyway."
By the time Sam got through telling him the basics: Dr. Lorin Henley, 32, professor of anthropology at Colorado State...blah, blah, blah, Daniel was feeling a little lightheaded, but not enlightened.
Then she added,"Oh, and, as far as Pete could tell, no Dr. Desala exists in the Fort Collins area, in Denver, or near any of Dr. Henley's former addresses.
Sam and Daniel regarded one another, contemplating the possible implications of that, and then Sam ventured, "Do you think it could be...do you think she might have done something...brought her back, like she did with you?"
"If Oma is involved, I don't know what she did. This is nothing like ascending and then re-taking human form - not in the way I experienced it, anyway. Sha're died, she didn't ascend, I was there."
"so was I."
"If it was Oma, don't you think she might have, I don't know, let me know she was going to intervene? Maybe a postcard? 'Dear Daniel, All is well on the ascended plains. Wish you were here. Oh, by the way, Lorin Henley isn't bat-shit crazy, she's your wife,' or something?"
There was nothing to say to that, but Sam's expression indicated what they both knew: Oma would do whatever Oma wanted to do, and communicating it was hardly her first priority.
Shaking her head, Sam got back to the matter at hand and produced a large envelope from which she retrieved a number of surveillance photos Pete had left with her. She handed them over to Daniel without a word, leaning into his shoulder so she could see as he flipped through them, but mostly she was watching his expression.
From his face you could hardly tell he was being stabbed in the gut with every image, but Sam had been reading that face for a long time, and she wasn't fooled.
Jab. Sha're walking down a Fort Collins street.
Jab, Sha're chatting with an older gentleman in front of a shop.
Jab. Sha're smiling, walking away with a wave.
This was his wife, except she was dressed in a skirt, blouse and heels, hair styled neatly - not flashy by Earth standards at all, but sophisticated in ways that were incongruous to life on Abydos. He rubbed at his eyes setting the photos aside.
Sam picked them up and flipped through them again while he tried to keep from flying apart.
"What the hell is going on?" he said, not expecting an answer.
"Umm, I don't know, Daniel, but look at this?" Sam pointed to a figure in the foreground of a photo. That part was slightly out of focus, but the young man was facing directly at the camera, as if he knew the photo was being taken, and there was no mistaking that enigmatic grin, "Is it me, or does that look like..."
"Skaara"
xxxxx
To Be Continued...