Faith

Sara's diary

It has been a while since I wrote an entry beginning with dear diary, but today has taking me back to the beginning of all of this. I suppose its because we're taking Teal'c back to his beginnings to undo the brainwashing Apophis did to him. I am also a bit overwhelmed too. I didn't expect my suggestion to be taken seriously, even if it was Jack who tossed it out as an alternative for what Master Bra'tac.

I am really glad Jack shared it after hearing about some rite where he takes Teal'c to the brink of death. Jack and I particularly didn't like the no Jaffa has ever survived the rite before part. I'm glad Jack sought me out after he heard, while Janet was going crazy about Teal'c's medical state without junior.

In Jack's arms, it just came very idly, I was thinking more about how to sooth Jack's worries, wondering if I'll ever see Teal'c alive again and how Drey'auc and Rya'c are dealing with this.

"It seems to me," I think that's what I had said, "That if its important to go down memory lane for Teal'c to get over this, why not use that pod thingie you and the team encountered on P7J-989."

When Jack let go of me and leaned up from behind me, my first guess was he was surprised I remembered the designation, but one, "That's it," and I knew some idea sparked. He was up out of seat we shared with a peck on my cheek later, out of the door with the words, "Time to talk to Toto."

How K-9 was part of this wasn't evident until later. Apparently Jack asked K-9 who would be needed, at least that is what Jenny told me later. Then Jack was off to talk to Hammond and surprisingly, Bra'tac.

I found the SGC bustling soon and I have to admit, I was more than a little embarrassed they took the idea so far. They were calling in -everyone- it seemed. I had greeted, as SGC hostess as I call myself, Harlan, and Teal'c's android self, as well as a contingent of Tok'ra, Ma'chello, and the biggest surprise, the Keeper.

I don't know who said what to get the Keeper here, but he was vital to the part of the plan Jack said came from me. I just said it was a shame that we couldn't walk down Teal'c's memories with those pods that Jack and the team were trapped in three years ago.

I honesty didn't really consider it a serious suggestion as Jack had told me Teal'c was put in his memory because the pods couldn't handle Jaffa physiology to tap Teal'c's memories.

Which is where the techies were coming in. Marueen and Janet of course advised Linea about the whole physiology thing, while Ma'chello and Harlan worked with the Keeper to adjust the pod.

Mater Bra'tac didn't want to go along with this plan at first, but Shaun'auc convinced him. I still don't approve of what I think is going on with her, Drey'auc and Teal'c, this who polygamy thing with Jaffa, so I was surprised to find out she had heard this was my idea and that was enough for her to talk to Bra'tac.

Anyway, its not like there has been any marriage ceremony yet, so maybe Teal'c is Taur'i -enized enough to stick with one wife, Dray'auc. Android Teal'c is sticking with Android Drey'auc after all.

I would have liked to see her, and the android me as well as the android Sha're, but its crowded enough here with all the visitors, a point Anrise made more than once as she put her two cents in with the pod for Teal'c.

Our Teal'c that is, the android is here to suggest what memories the Keeper should guide the team to. Which is the one part of this plan Jack didn't like, going back into one of those pods again.

However, its for Teal'c and its better than letting him die in that Jaffa rite of Bra'tac's.

Drey'auc's day

I had been unsure of Master Bra'tac's plan to use the Rite of M'al Sharran, but I had stayed by my husband's side as he suffered without his symbiote. When I heard Sara's suggestion I was torn. Master Bra'tac had spoken and it was with the wisdom of a Jaffa long lived.

I thought maybe I was not Jaffa enough when I questioned it, and I found it even harder when Rya'c questioned it as well. Do I support our ways and traditions or have I been too long among the Tau'ri to choose their ways over ours?

However, O'Neill supported his wife's suggestion and somehow that made it one I could trust. I believe in O'Neill, and by extension Sara. They have known what to do from living on Earth to our fight with the false gods. I will follow them now and try this pod, not thinking of the others who will see my husband's memories, but of his life and how this must save his mind and spirit or we might just have to risk his body.

"Remember this is simulation of a memory, you can alter what you did back then," the android Keeper tells me as we wait outside the row of four pods brought to the SGC from P7J-989, one of which hold Teal'c, "It will not affect the actual past." I do not understand why he tell me this until the android Teal'c speaks.

"Drey'auc," and I hear the same love my Teal'c has for me from his lips, "The memories I have selected you will experience are for the purposes of convincing your Teal'c of false gods. You do not have to say what you did then."

"Although to not cause your Teal'c to doubt you shouldn't deviate too far from what had been said," the Tok'ra Anise advises, "He must believe and that means he must think what he is recalling is what happened."

"Whoa," O'Neill's exclamation draws me from the conversation as he, Daniel Jackson and Master Bra'tac emerge from their pods, "That really happened?" I want to say of course it did O'Neill, but it is my turn now.

It is only on the edge of my awareness as I approach the pod I am to lay within. O'Neill talks of how Apophis punished Teal'c for defending his father's honor when Apophis called my husband's father a coward for living after an unwinnable battle as the First Prime of Cronus.

I remember that night well as I tended to Teal'c recovering from Apophis' use of the Kara Kesh upon him. Re-living this in the pod convinces Master Bra'tac that this plan might work after all.

"So whatever happened to Va'lar?" I hear Daniel Jackson ask, and also hear that what had been originally a talk only between my husband and Va'lar, O'Neill and Daniel Jackson were also there as part of that confidential talk. Somehow they convinced my husband they were his fellow Jaffa.

"You got that whole Zen master thing down Bra'tac," O'Neill comments as I enter the pod, and try to slow my breathing and racing heart, and listen to more comments from O'Neill,"The whole blindfolded fighting in the snow thing. Very Zen." I lean back into the pod and briefly feel the connections touch me, then I am years ago. Not fighting by my husband's side as I am today, but as the keeper of our home.

It is the day, the night of the blindfolded training and he is upset since Mster Bra'tac spoke of heresy, or what I thought of it as such back then. At the time I thought Teal'c needed to just do what Bra'tac said because he is First Prime and would lead to Teal'c becoming First Prime. I was thinking of our survival not of false gods.

But I change from testing my husband to temper to supporting Master Bra'tac's suggestions. "You have seen the power of Apophis," I say now as I did then, "You have seen his chariots rise from the ground into the air, you have seen how light can leave his palm and throw a warrior across a square, so we say he is a god."

They were not precisely the words I spoke then, but I believe differently now. The original words would come hard to my lips, unlike what I say now, "Perhaps it is as Master Bra'tac says. If not and Apophis is a god, then Bra'tac should be dead for his words. Maybe husband, just as you use Ma'Tok staff, Apophis-"

"Do not speak so woman!" the temper I remember then is back in those words, yet instead of supporting the idea that Apophis is a god as I had that time, my words add to Bra'tac's and doubt continues to be fed.

"What am I to do Drey'auc?" he asks me again, and again I have different words than I spoke before.

"Follow Bra'tac," I advise as I should have then, before I bid my husband to come to bed with me.

My eyes open to the SGC and I exit the pod to let Bra'tac, Daniel Jackson and O'Neill enter, the latter into the very one I had been in. "How is he?" O'Neill asks in that strange tenderness that is as deep as his warrior's fierceness and I tell him, "Doubting."

"They go to the loss of Va'lar," the android Teal'c informs me as we watch the pods tentacles attach to them, "They go to where he lost to Ra's forces and I was told to execute him, but instead I let him go."

I now realize where I will go next and look at the android. He lifts that eyebrow that tells me without words as my own husband would have not spoken them, and then he slowly inclines his head.

"That was ... intense," Daniel Jackson says as he rises from the pod, along with O'Neill and Bra'tac, "Why did Teal'c trust us to go with him to let Va'lar go? Didn't you say originally he went alone Bra'tac?"

"He did go alone," Master Bra'tac confirmed, but it is Sara who puts to words what I believe is the reason.

"He trust you two. Deep down inside, both of you mean a lot to him. He can't pin down why I suspect, but that trust is translates to faith in you two," and I know she means especially O'Neill, "So he probably wants to believe you two and not question that you weren't there before. You've stood with him for so long, he needs you two as he goes through these doubts we're feeding him."

When Sara looks at me, I know she is saying, the doubts that I have helped fed. We understand that our husband's strengths come from us where they can be weak. Where they can rest and let us support them.

It is another reason why I know where I will wake up after I enter the pod. It will be after my husband had let Va'lar go instead of executing him. I wake heavy with child, our unborn son Rya'c.

Teal'c rises quickly and crosses the room to where a basin of water waits for his hands to splash upon his face. I know this is not the last time I will see this. It is a scene I need no pod to have watched repeatedly, especially after my husband became First Prime to our false god, committing atrocities in his name.

He tells me of burning a village to the ground, as an example to the people of Ra, but this time I do not bid him sleep to comfort him in the service of Apophis. I do not remind him he has to live and be a father to the son I carry. I do draw him to me as I did then though, "If Apophis was a god, he would know of your deeds, your secret of saving Va'lar. You did not choose that village to kill because Va'lar was there."

This time instead of then, Teal'c's head lifted slightly, though the haunted look remained. It tears into me now as it did then, "You did not kill Va'lar to keep your secret. You gave Va'lar more time to live. For if not by your hand, he would have died with this village anyway. Blame the one who ordered you and not yourself. If not you, someone else would have acted. Someone who would have made them suffer."

Again he lifts his head from me from his seated position as I stand before him and looks up into my eyes. He wants to believe me. "How did you know I did not make them suffer?" He does not argue that someone else would have. That someone wishing to promote theirself in the sight of 'our god' would have made the screams of such victims to be music to Apophis' ears.

I draw him back to me, his head against my womb, where our child sleeps, "You would not my husband. You know the truth. You only do what you have to in order to survive, nothing more. You can do no more as you are now. But one day you will be in the position to do great things for our people, for our son who will grow up to see a father make a better world for him and his children's children."

I wake to see O'Neill ready to go back to the pods, but not Daniel Jackson. Instead it will be Sha're of whom he is talking with some heat while Samantha Carter also prepares to enter a pod.

Sha're's story

"You aren't going in there!" I know my Dan'yel is only yelling because he cares, I might think less of him if he wasn't yelling now, but I have to do this, "Sha're, you can't face that again! I won't let you." His words soften and I how deeply he cares, how much he would and has, moved the heavens for me.

"Dan'yel, Teal'c is worth it. You do not object to Saman'tha going in," it was perhaps unfair to bring her up.

"I do object to her going in, but Jack overruled me. Hammond overruled. Sam overruled me," the tirade, I know better than to interrupt as he is more open to talk if I let him speak his words born of passion. To keep them in his heart is not healthy for him, "Sam taking the part of Weterings is crazy! She doesn't have to!"

"Daniel," Saman'tha says from the pod in that tone Sara describes as enough is enough, or how Jack would say it, "Its okay. I can deal with the Kara Kesh and the Keeper is going to tone down the pain."

"But not eliminate," Daniel began, but Saman'tha cuts him off, "Hey, I'm not a actress. I'll need it to be convincing. Teal'c has to believe me. That's why I'm going to be Weterings." Sara explained it to me. Where before Teal'c was merely disturbed by the death of this person, but like how his mind accepted Jack and my Dan'yel in his memory as the two people he has known and trusted, so too he might Saman'tha.

So instead of seeing Apophis kill this Ca'rol Weterings, Teal'c will feel Apophis is killing Saman'tha. He will not be able to put the same name to her, but just as he hadn't Jack or Dan'yel as fellow Jaffa, Teal'c will fill that place in his mind that Saman'tha has with the woman Apophis will be seen killing.

"Daniel," Jack says in a firm tone I know means more than the enough is enough. Without another word my Dan'yel kisses me, holding me as if we wouldn't see each other again. "I will be fine my husband," I whisper to him, "This is for Teal'c. For Drey'auc, Rya'c and everyone who has come to love him. I must do this."

I wake in that large room I will never forget. The room where others were kept, where Ca'rol was kept although I did not know her at that time. Saman'tha is there as Ca'rol had been. Unlike then, I cross the room from the divan I was on to the column she had been sitting up against. Both us dressed in a diaphanous gowns, perfumed and bathed. I hate that scent. Even today I hate the smell of that particular perfume.

It is a scent that always carries me to this room and the place I would lose so many years to my demon.

"Ready?" I ask Saman'tha who I should think of as Ca'rol to make this work for Teal'c. She nods, and before I could move back to where I had laid, Teal'c walks to the entrance of the room as he had back then. I am surprised to see Jack by his side as one of the guards, but he remains out in the hall at first.

Teal'c looks around the room, with the same expression I had seen those many years ago, and just like before the room is silent. Not one of the women here wants to draw attention to herself, but cannot help looking to see if she is the one selected. "You," Teal'c says as my memory agrees as he points to Ca'rol.

"Are you sure Teal'c?" Saman'tha says as Ca'rol had not, "Are you sure its worth it to sacrifice yet one more person to what you know is a false god?" The two servants come and grab her just as they did Ca'rol before.

"I am Senior Airman Carol Weterings," Saman'tha says when Ca'rol had only said her rank before, "Remember me Teal'c. Remember my face. Remember you killed me for false gods."

"Enough," Teal'c says back handing Saman'tha, and I found I got up in protest. I like to think I would have done so if this had happened too. I faced Ra's guards with my Dan'yel, even when I didn't know how to fire a gun. I see that the guards come in to either side of Teal'c, their Ma'Tok staves at the ready. I hear O'Neill.

"Are you sure you want to give another one to him?" O'Neill says. I think the other guard would have been my Dan'yel had there been enough pods. Dan'yel had told me that in these memories he and Jack were friends with Teal'c, just as Sara said, he trusted them. "You know I must do this Jac'neel," Teal'c says.

But when I see them leave, dragging Saman'tha away, I see doubt in Teal'c's eyes. I can only hope it is not too painful for Saman'tha when Apophis uses the Kara Kesh on her when my demon rejects Ca'rol.

Teal'c returns for me and I couldn't help it, I panic, I fight, I scream, but thankfully I do not forget to tell him to stop serving false gods. My part in this is small, and yet Dan'yel had balked even at this. When Apophis uses his Kara Kesh to put my mind to sleep, my time in the pod stops.

Dan'yel is there to pull me out of it and into his arms and I gratefully melt into them.

Sara's Summary

I was there when Teal'c woke up from the pod, sleepy and asking what he had done with so much remorse it broke my heart. But then he answered Jack's question, "Apophis was a false god, a dead false god." Brat'tac looked into Teal'c's eyes and knew. His smile announced more than his words that Teal'c had returned to us.

I heard Teal'c pledge his service once again to General Hammand and to return to SG-1, and General Hammond's granting of that permission. After that I lost track of what was happening around us.

Jack's arms were around my waist and hoisting me upwards before he spun me and as I slowly spiraled down, we kissed. While we didn't kiss like that V day picture in the Times, we were just as happy.

Teal'c was back.