I stared down at my dinner plate and sighed. His words were drifting over me like a fog. It didn't matter what he was saying. I just couldn't let him stop. I'd missed this. I'd call it a drone like Jack does, but that sounds like something I would have said a couple of weeks ago.
He's asked me questions, and I try to answer them. I want to keep a few secrets after all. I confessed what happened in Nevada and why. He did exactly what Jack said he would. His story was horrific. I had seen one of those things before. Nirrti has moved hers through the village once. Dozens of Jaffa surrounded it.
I once thought that machine was pretty. It was made of gold and had beautiful characters carved all over it. They were pictures of animals and people. If I had known what it could do to people like me… Like him. I could somehow imagine him dazed by the effects. Lost to Jack, Sam and Teal'c. His eyes bloodshot and cold. His voice cruel and taunting.
I felt the pain still in my heart from Nevada begin to melt away. His hand reached for mine as he continued. He had abandoned his own dinner to try and help me understand. Even after the weeks she spent with me, Sam never truly understood. She could only tell I was full of hate and pain. Sam knew most of it revolved around my mother. But she couldn't see how much of it was dedicated to him.
I considered everything I knew about that final day of my mother's life. How she tried to save that man. In the end she did. He lived to see his daughter born. A beautiful girl named after my mother. How he had recorded what that father had thought would be his last message. His tears as he begged Daniel to turn off the camera.
And then came the memory of the moment the camera fell to the side as Daniel screamed my mother's name. I closed my eyes, and he stopped speaking. He could tell I was lost to him. Buried in my memories. His blue eyes just stared me down as I began to speak. I told him how his voice broke. How it hurt me to know that he had to watch it all. How I knew he had felt when his medical training was too little to help my mother.
He squeezed my hand as I kept going. When I finally ran out of steam, I looked up and saw his tears. He'd never hidden them before. Not from me or Sam. I'm not sure why. That's when I told him that I had figured out that my pain had hurt him. I should have tried to work it out. To explain it then. Instead I ignored it and buried it. That's when he smiled at me and told me he knew. He understood. And I believed him.