(note: You know that part of The Enemy Within where the immature symbiote was able to transfer its consciousness to the host before being surgically removed under anaesthesia? Yeah the writers of the show spent the next 10 seasons pretending that didn't happen and isn't possible, so I do too. For all intents and purposes, Kawalsky died on the operating table because the symbiote killed him because the SCG didn't know how to remove a symbiote without it killing the host.)

Still three chapters left, I think. No more than that. Uncertain time frame before the next one goes up. Please leave a review!

Netty stumbled from the rings, held by two Jaffa. Ba'al was with them. He'd left the majority of his contingent on the surface of the planet, in order to make sure the political situation was under control.

The mothership was of standard Goa'uld design; orange halls, outward-leaning bracers with panel lighting. She'd always felt the color scheme was a little monotonous. If she had one of these she'd go with blue, maybe, or even green.

"This way," said Ba'al curtly, and gestured, she could sense the tension in his voice now, he was impatient for something. He walked ahead of them rapidly. No, she knew that controlled tone. He wasn't just impatient. He was angry.

A set of doors rolled open. The Jaffa didn't even enter, they just threw her inside. Inside with Ba'al.

Alone with Ba'al.

She staggered away and barely kept her feet, collapsing against something in the center of the room. It was a slightly curved, vaguely T-shaped metal post.

Oh, mercy, thought Kianna, and Ophrenet recoiled.

Ophrenet knew what it was. In Ba'al's domain this was referred to as "the bullhorns", named both for their shape, and for Ba'al's signature animal motif. Animal motifs were all the rage back in the Mesopotamian era, everybody just had to have one. It had been a couple thousand years since Ba'al's bull icon was anything more than an artistic abstraction. However, his preferred method of restraining prisoners for torture was still very much the same.

By the time she looked at Ba'al again, his affable façade had totally collapsed.

His face contorted to an ugly mask of rage, and his eyes screwed up into black, empty wells. "You… try… to make ME look WEAK!"

Without even waiting to chain her to the bullhorns, he kicked her legs out from under her and knocked her to the floor. She was barely able to keep her head from hitting the tile, and as she raised herself up on her palms, he kicked her hard in the shoulder with the sharp toe of his boot. She cried out and slid across the floor a short distance, ending up curled into the fetal position. She did not try to rise.

"You don't know what you're dealing with," he snarled as he advanced on her. "I'll make a circuit from here to the Delta Quadrant. I'll publicly execute you on every planet I own."

He kicked her again while she was down, in the stomach, causing her to gag before she could even cry out. She panted, concentrating on getting her breath back. When she saw him standing in front of her again, she threw her palms up to block him, and tucked her head down, but this time he just grabbed her by the forearms and hauled her up to his level, though she wasn't nearly ready to stand. She hunched down and he hauled his fist back and hit her in the face.

She stumbled back and slumped against the bullhorns, clutching them weakly. Her head was scrambled and nausea rippled through her body.

"That's for killing my favorite queen."

After this he seemed to have gotten something out of his system, and he flicked his wrists a little bit and then massaged them while brooding slightly.

The doors slid open, he turned around and walked out of the room, and they closed rapidly behind him.

Netty sat up against the wall and cried. Her small gasps of pain turned to sobs. Kianna was there too, of course, crying with her. Out of fear, yes, and a little from the pain that she was still experiencing from the beating; but also from loss. She had just lost everything that she'd ever gained. Not the queenship, of course. That was a nothing, an illusion set up to trick her into complacency and make her Nike's pawn. It had never existed. But even if it had, it would pale in comparison to her life with Jonas.

She thought of the nights they'd spent in the lab by lamplight, studying, silent but together. The friendship they'd shared, and more than that, their feelings for each other. Stolen kisses in the halls of the capitol complex. The relationship that had grown up between them. Their possible future.

And even further, her life—Kianna's life— in Kelowna; a life with no special prestige, (despite her work on the drill project which had saved the planet, most of that had been classified) but a definite place among equals that had felt real and meaningful, people who would be honest with her because they liked her and maybe even loved her, because they wanted her to be happy and be a better person and keep improving. People who had gone out on a limb to trust her and make room for her in their lives. And she'd been happy there, at least, happier than any other time in her young life of fifty-seven years that she'd spent trying to scrape up a name for herself on an empty, meaningless ladder of success. In Kelowna, she'd been given everything that she hadn't known she'd always wanted.

And she'd thrown it all away for three days sitting on the throne of a Goa'uld.

Jonas was gone from her, and she'd never see him again. Ever. Not for the rest of her life, which was now defined by the walls of this mothership, as long as Ba'al decided to keep her alive. She was alone.

I'm still here.

…

You still have me.

It was your life too.

It was, Kianna thought sadly.

I feel no anger. I feel your sadness, but no anger. Why are you not angry with me for stealing your life in this manner?

We are one. This was my decision when I agreed to be your host. I chose you. This cannot be undone and I cannot and will not take it back.

I don't deserve you.

What difference does that make? Stand up, Netty. We have to protect Jonas and his planet—our planet—no matter what Ba'al does to us.

I'm afraid.

Me too. Get up.

Help me.

Kianna struggled to stand. And as she did, Netty was filled with a curious sense of courage and fortitude. She could feel the love that Kianna felt in her veins and in her own small brain and it made her heart grow. She stood up.

The doors slid open and shut as Ba'al re-entered with a single Jaffa.

He was back to his usual self after his outburst; his sleeve cuffs on straight and hair smooth again. As a matter of fact, he was smiling again, which was probably a bad sign. The nature of their interaction had changed.

He wants something, she thought.

"So." He stepped slowly back and forth. "You kill my Queen and set yourself up in her place. I thought at first you might wish to offer me something to offset her loss—perhaps progeny?"

He gave a tiny hand gesture to the Jaffa, lowered his chin and laughed again slightly. "Hm. But you are not a queen. You used her title, but I know that you can never breed."

While he kept speaking, the Jaffa chained Ophrenet's arms behind her, twisted around the bullhorns. She felt herself panicking again, heart rising in her throat.

"Ashtoreth was a thousand times more valuable to me than you could ever be. You will never be a queen. Only a userper." He smiled, looking down at his hands, where he was turning over a large syringe. "And a thief. Your kind exists for no reason but to serve queens, like her, and the kings such as myself that rise to rule over them."

Then he walked up and hooked his arm around her, stabbing the syringe into her neck.

"Augh!" she gave a weak cry with no intonation behind it; Netty's mind had suddenly gone blank.

Ba'al stood back and watched. A cold sensation crept down the back of Kianna's neck; that was the limit of what she knew. However, she sensed a great distress from the symbiote.

What was that? What did he inject us with? Netty?

"It's a kind of paralytic," said Ba'al, as if answering her question.

Kianna wiggled her fingers testingly, spread out as they were on either side of her body behind the bar.

Ba'al laughed more heartily. "No, for symbiotes. You will not be capable of leaving your host for some time. It is interesting, I am told this is the same substance the Tok'ra use to surgically extract a Goa'uld from its host without killing either of them. However, that is not my purpose."

Netty was back, though she'd been momentarily in shock. The cold feeling was already gone.

He's right. I didn't know about this stuff because the Tok'ra don't reveal their secrets, but I recognize it. I've been under its influence before, when they operated on you at the SGC.

You can't move? You can't leave me?

I wouldn't do it anyways, said Netty with conviction. He could and would still torture us both separately.

But he thinks you might want to.

"No," Ba'al mused. "You have no offer to make me that could have persuaded me to grant you the planet. However… we may be able to reach a different sort of bargain."

He reached down to his black leather boot a out a long knife. It had double notches up the blade, with a shape like a row of triangles.

"I do want to be clear that I'm not doing this for information. This is revenge for assassinating my queen. However… if one were to provide very good information, I might be willing to make it quick."

He turned the knife over in his hands, giving her plenty of time to consider this proposal before speaking again.

That ringing in Kianna's ears was back.

"Come on," he chided playfully. "You've got nothing to say? That's hard to believe. No witty retorts? Clever quips? I'm a man who likes to have fun. Go on, then, sass me a little."

When this failed to elicit a response, he said, "Very well, then, have it your way." He tossed the knife at her.

"Ugh," said Ba'al, turning on one foot like a high school boy who'd just missed a basketball hoop.

The Goa'uld who had murdered his queen was slumped at the bullhorns, dead with his knife through her throat.

"It's those gravity field generators. I swear my aim has been off ever since I…" he shook his head and went to retrieve the knife. "Jaffa! Find out where Ashtoreth kept her sarcophagus."