Chapter 25.
It was a perfect summer's day. The sky above was a perfect wedgewood blue; the brown river meandering lazily through a meadow of verdant grass, lush with wildflowers. A magnificent grey horse was munching the grass contentedly. Birds sang and danced through the air, and a sense of mellow calm spread through her.
Eleanor sat up slowly, sleepy and slightly confused. She glanced around her. In the distance spires could be seen, but she did not recognise them. She didn't recognise anything. She only remembered Atropos, and a never-ending nightmare that was suddenly –
"Eleanor," said a gentle voice. She turned around, startled. A young man with chestnut hair and dark blue eyes was sitting cross-legged in the grass beside her. He wore a strange brown uniform. She was sure he hadn't been there before.
"Is that my name?" she asked at last, "I wasn't sure." He smiled.
"Yes. Do you remember mine?" She struggled.
"You are not me," she stated, calm and unafraid, "I have not met you. I have not…dreamt you. But you're not her either."
"You said that to me once before."
"I – I'm sure I've seen you before," she temporised, "I remember – " she brought her hands to her head. "This can't be real. Only Atropos is real."
"It's not real," the man agreed, "It's a construction. A fantasy." He pressed something into her hand. It was a small fossil. She stared at it.
"I do remember," she said, wonderingly, "You were there. In the courtyard. I know your face, but I don't remember your name." She struggled to control a sudden flood of emotions, turning the worn stone over and over in her hands.
"I remember…facts," she said at last, "The names of things." A strained laugh. "An awful lot about some nasty parasitic wasp for some reason. Science. Rhymes. Words. But the only other person I remember is Atropos. The only memories I have, are of Atropos." She stared despairingly at the young man.
"I remember that I said I would love you forever for coming back for me, and I think I do, but there's nothing left of me, is there? It's gone. It's all gone. What good is knowledge? It's not love. There's only Atropos and I don't…I don't think I can carry on like this. I don't think I can start again. I have nothing. I am nothing, and nothing is left of me." But the man hushed her, taking her hands in his own, and stood, obliging her to rise with him.
"Eleanor," he said, kissing her on the forehead, then both cheeks, "Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten. You gave it to me, and now I can give it all back to you." She stared desperately at him, willing herself to understand. He was alien; the same as Atropos. And yet he wasn't. "Will you trust me?" he asked, solemnly.
"You haven't even told me your name yet." He smiled again.
"I have no name; I am but two days old…" Recognition flooded her, and she smiled back,
"What shall I call thee?"
"I happy am, Joy is my name." Still holding her hands, he danced her about, drawing closer, as they sang the poem to each other.
"Sweet joy befall thee! Pretty joy! Sweet joy but two days old. Sweet Joy I call thee."
"Thou dost smile, I sing the while; Sweet joy befall thee!" His eyes shone with light and delight, and at last they met in an embrace. And suddenly her mind was opened.
/
Eleanor had braced herself for a sudden overwhelming flood of memory and shared emotion; in fact, it started with only one recalled image, that of her own: Delek, in Kyen, sitting dying against the rock. "What about you?" "You cannot be serious." That face she remembered so well, the face she had first known him in. "Take care of my Delek, and he will protect you." Then it began trickling in; disjointed recollections of her life as herself and her life with Delek, the line oft blurred between them. The joy and dumb wonder of first blending, the great outpouring of memory and shared emotion, a whole new way of being, a whole new world….she remembered laughing with her brothers, splashing in the sea, before the dark time, when the goa'uld came…the train of thought was abruptly terminated, and then she was in a lab; just sitting at a computer running tests, late at night, with no one else around, waiting, just waiting. She didn't know what she was waiting for or what it meant, before it was snatched away. She felt her delight and awe as she ringed into the crystal tunnels for the first time. She felt Delek's despair and anger over the escalating Tok'ra deaths; the overwhelming desire for caution and protective secrecy, for isolation. "Secrecy is our only weapon. It's the only way we've ever known.'" The fear beneath the face he presented: a late-born Tok'ra, their war had already been waging for centuries and their early great successes were no more. Then the Tau'ri came and all the long slow planning seemed for naught, even as their numbers were pitilessly reduced. She saw Malek, not as Malek, but within Darin, saw a love held fast for only the briefest of chances and through the worst of times. She saw the Council, arguing, and herself stepping forward. Strangest indeed, she saw herself, alone, without a body, in the holding tank of her mind; a blind and silenced creature in a watery world of thought and muted memory. A half-life; waiting, waiting, crying with loneliness with no one to hear; bereft, tortured. Then she'd escaped, and everything had changed.
Delek waited then, checking to see if she was still with him, which she was, her earlier trepidation forgotten and curiosity in the ascendant again, hand in hand with hope. She desired memory, and it flooded in, a blizzard of memories like snowflakes, innumerable and individual, unique.
…A first, impassioned kiss under the tree in the starlight; she had thought it so romantic. Her heart was pounding so loudly against her ribcage she thought the whole street must hear, or that it might burst.
"Ellie…" a whispered breath, and she reached to brush the falling leaves from his hair… Memory to memory, fragment to fragment; now back, now forth. Parents, brothers, friends, lovers…moments of joy, moments of triumph, even moments of grief, she lost herself in them all…fleeing from herself and what had become of herself, for as long as she could….
…Her mother, years ago, she couldn't have been more than four, teaching her to count. An early, early memory. Her mother sang, taking her fingers and wiggling them one by one, as she laughed and giggled.
"One two, three four five,
Once I caught a fish alive!
…"This little finger on my right!"…she shot the Jaffa and the horse reared and threw her off.
A perfect summer's day, in the Grantchester meadows, the clink of glasses. "To returning, and never getting a real job!'" Baal, laughing in the corridors of the palace, her knuckles throbbing where she had hit him. "You're about to become part of something much greater."
She saw Atropos. God, she saw and felt and was Atropos; a part of her that would never go away, the awful memories that would always be there. "You know why I'm different. Why I'm hok'taur. I'll get the answer, you'll see if I don't." Do you think you can read my memories as I can yours? How laughable. You cannot touch the mind of a god. "I don't have to. I'll figure it out! I'll work out the answer myself." And she had. She had. In the long dark hours, in the slow subconscious processing of her dreams, in the patience and perseverance of tests and experiments and theory, she had chased the answer down.
Watching her favourite film with Beth again; mellowed with beer and good company, but unable to shake the nagging intuition, unable to deny completely the awful dread at the back of her mind. "It's only message is terror, and more terror." "The message you take isn't necessarily the one you're being given." She figured it out. She figured it out and didn't even want to acknowledge it to herself. Where the answer lies Atropos lies also. No, she rejected it automatically, shying away from that awful truth, No no no!
The most mundane of memories, the moment everything had irrevocably changed, only one of many moments. Standing in the hallway in her dressing gown on the phone, in the middle of the night. "I've come up with an idea about how I was able to resist the Goa'uld, and I think it might prove useful if it's correct." And everything changed, because she had decided to make it change.
Everything changed, and she was standing in her lab coat by the computer with an alien, the most mundane and profound of moments. "It is clear that from the moment that you began to suspect what you were, it has only been your thought to help." Your kindness will kill you. Still, she persisted.
The slow-dawning light of hope in Malek and Anise's faces, late that night, amidst the reassuring familiarity of the laboratory. "I'm saying that the Goa'uld that infected me wasn't a queen. It was our great mistake to assume that she was." The Tok'ra Council, arguing around the table. "You didn't ask. I'm offering." Arguing with Malek in the lab again. "The moment this knowledge was mine, I had to take the responsibility for it." Malek, again, and Darin, and that first, impassioned kiss, defying the odds already so stacked against them. "When you guessed what you were you came here, with your offer to the Tok'ra already in mind – you led with your heart. Will you not listen to it now?" She listened; to her poor, eternally frighted heart.
Rokarrin. Catching her breath as they hid amongst the rocks, staring at the fossils in the stone as the battle raged around her and knowing she'd remember it forever, but forever was not even an eyeblink in the space of the universe. "Protect the hok'taur at all costs." Delek, running; running away with the guard whose name she did not know, to save her. "I will not abandon my host!" Malek, clasping her hands against the dunes. "If I fall, do not stop. Do not stop for anything." Staff fire erupting all around them as he pushed her to the ground, and she knew, then, that this was the moment, and it wasn't long enough. Not for both of them. Her father, trying to understand what he couldn't possibly understand, what she never wanted him to understand. "You wait til you're old. You don't know how fast the time goes." And how slow, sometimes, she thought, but did not say. A hazed figure in the drifting sand: Malek, against all the odds still standing. Again Delek, propped against the rocks as Kyen's blood stained the sand and the uniform she had worn for less than a day. "This – all of this – is about survival. It's nothing more noble or profound than that. And we must make the best we can of it." But survival wasn't living. It wasn't enough. And she knew it. She knew it, and she knew the Tok'ra felt it. She pitied them, and she had to help them.
Arguing again, with her mother, this time, before all that had happened. "What could possibly be so important to them?" "A future." Again Delek, but within her, this time, easing her nameless distress, that only he understood. "I need more time and there's never enough of it." And she had agreed. In spite of all that had gone before, she had agreed to the blending. "I will guide you. Trust me." She trusted Delek, like she trusted her own soul, like Delek was the better part of her own soul.
Slowly, she came back to herself, really back to herself, her whole restored self, and found Delek there also. She was reeling with it all. It was like a story….but nobody was a hero. Certainly not her.
Did I really do all that?
All I have shown is true.
I can't believe it. That person isn't me! I'm not that brave. I'm not any of those things.
But you are kind. Kindness: the quiet virtue. The overlooked virtue. The virtue that begets all the others.
Am I really like that?
Yes.
I didn't realise, she said, wonderingly. She felt a warm glow fill her.
Eleanor, Delek said, gently, I know you're still very tired, and I know it's overwhelming, but there are a great many people here who are very anxious to see you. Will you not speak to them?
I – yes, of course. I will. I want to. But how on earth do I get back to the real world? I've been trapped in here so long. Delek's rich, warm laughter filled her mind.
My dear, if you wish to wake, you have only to think to open your eyes.
/
Blinking slowly as she opened her lights to the bright light of the infirmary, feeling the warm sheets against her skin, Eleanor became aware of the rush of voices all around her; happy, emotional voices. Hands were helping her to sit up against the pillows, and she fended them off, muzzily, glancing at their owner: Malek/Darin, sitting beside her, unwilling to let go. She knew them; she loved them. She managed only a weak smile, but it was enough, for his own face broke into a relieved, joyous one.
"Eleanor," he murmured, choked, and pressed a kiss to her face.
"I'm all right," she said, throat dry and closing up with emotion. She looked all about her: the bed was crowded around with her friends; Jacob/Selmak, Anise/Freya, the members of SG1, and – god – Beth standing at the end of the bed with tears streaming down her face. The door opened and General Hammond waved in more people; her family, looking haggard but hopeful.
Delek, help, I'm going to embarrass myself, she pleaded desperately, feeling her eyes threatening to spill over.
Then embarrass yourself. It will do you good.
You are such a sanctimonious – ! she began, but it was no good.
"I – " she began, and trailed off. Her mother rushed to embrace her; Malek already had his arms about her, and suddenly, everyone was there and they weren't letting her go. Helplessly, she burst into floods of tears.