Mother-In-Law
Chapter 3
Metronymic
The symbols turn out to be a form of hieroglyphs.
It takes the Jacksons less than half an hour to cross-reference it with their extensive system of notes—he's surprised they can't just look at it and decipher it—but it is enough time for him to dig a grave for Josie, the cat that wanted to maul his ass every time she saw him. Keeps his jacket wrapped around her while lowering her into the hole and in the dim light of the setting orange sun, something glitters on her paw.
Gently, he pushes her claws out and slips off a small gold link. It looks like Goa'uld armor he's seen in old reports, the kind he would read after midnight while waiting for her to get back from off-world.
Josie went out protecting his wife better than he ever did.
"Mitchell," Two greets him just as he finished pushing the dirt back into the grave, ignoring the guilt because he didn't even want the damn cat, and the cat might have been what saved her life. "We found a match."
"Great." He rubs his filthy arm sleeve against his forehead, which is also filthy, and it does nothing my smudge around more dirt. "What'd she leave us? A location? A hint?"
Both Jacksons stop and stare at each other briefly, before glancing back down to their data pads.
"Well—" Jackson starts, and he hates it when they do this shit because it makes him more nervous. They can't just give him the good news. Can't just tell him where he needs to go. "She gave us more than that."
"What did she give us?"
"A name."
"Anat."
The Jacksons stand on each side of the projector, the original keeps the clicker in his hand as Two turns out the lights for the slideshow—he has no idea how any Jackson manages to whip up a PowerPoint presentation in such little time but has never been more grateful for it.
It took them a little bit longer to get back to the gate because he used his last burst of energy running to the farmhouse. Two kept trying to calm him—this was after he screamed a chain of curse words into the noon sun and the empty fields that would've made his grandma take to his hide with a rolling pin.
While Dr. Lam looked him over and only recommended a shower and a couple glasses of water—the Jacksons whipped up an in-depth catalogue of all the info they could scrounge up on the single set of symbols she left behind.
"Anat?" Landry questions beside him, not sure what exactly is going on, but volunteering to help—it almost feels like he's trying to make up for what the IOA did before.
The Jacksons wouldn't let him get a sneak peek of the files since as soon as he knew the gate address, he would've left. Like it was that easy—if only it wasn't that easy.
It never is.
"Said in some cultures to be the wife of Ba'al—" Jackson clicks and images of carvings, of hieroglyphs, of bronze statues "—she's a Goa'uld system lord."
"Great," Landry sighs, shifting in his chair, glancing over at him, but his eyes never stray from the screen.
He wants to know everything about it.
He wants to know how to kill it.
"There's a lot of dispute religiously, of what or who Anat is—"
"Time is of the essence, Dr. Jackson."
"Basically," Jackson sighs, clicking again through the slides that show areas of worship on a map of Asia, then lands on a passage from a thirty-page report—one he's already halfway through, because the quicker he knows his shit, the quicker he can get her back. "She's the God of War."
"And how does Ms. Mal Doran factor in to all this?"
The Jacksons keep silent, even at Landry's questioning brows, and instead stare at him, waiting for him to give the answer.
"She's Vala's mom."
"What—"
Landry squints his eyes, as the slide clicks into place showing grainy footage of Vala hosting Qetesh, of her body—weakened from malnutrition, from overexertion, from fighting—is donned out in golden armor and a thin gauze dress billows between her legs while she sits on a throne, her body bony and angled regally, like the face on the back of a coin.
Her expression is empty.
Her eyes are dead.
"I'm sorry doctors, but I'm afraid I'm not following you here—"
But he interrupts before the Jacksons have a chance to answer, because right now, the last thing they need is the spread of more misinformation.
"Anat is hosted by Adria, Vala's mother."
That bit of info gets everyone in the room to stop and stare at him. He sits ramrod straight, watching the repeated grainy reel of Qetesh stepping to and sitting in her throne, while he waits for the eventual question.
"I thought Adria was Vala's stepmother?" Two questions from where he's positioned by the light switch, his back to the screen—the way he's been standing since they introduced the footage of Qetesh.
"And I thought Adria was her daughter," Landry huffs.
"When I met Vala on the Ori ship, she told me she named Adria after a stepmother than she despised," Jackson clicks to the next slide which is thankfully blank. He's got reports to read, they've got numbers to crunch, and they need to get back at it because they don't have a lot of time.
She's due in six weeks.
But they all keep staring at him, waiting for a revelation, the one she shared with him while she stood in their kitchen, worried that he was going to get pissed with her for lying the last six years when she was only trying to protect herself, only trying to protect them.
How she told him exactly two sentences about her mother: her name, Adria, and that she sold herself to be the host to a Goa'uld.
All he offers them is a coy grin.
"She lied."
He doesn't remember how many days it's been, just that he hates being confined inside this stupid mountain doing research.
Doing anything.
Anytime she's not with him.
Refuses offers of dinner, of hitting up a barbeque joint, or the great taco place downtown, because she's not here, and he keeps having flashbacks to the time that they had that massive fight. The one where he told her how much she meant to him, and she got awkward and cold because back then he didn't know how badly she accepts true compliments, true expressions of love.
He took it personally.
While she tried to talk calmly to him about their relationship, about how she felt the same, but couldn't tell him she loved him until more trust was earned, he got more and more upset because he felt like he couldn't live without her—still can't—and the fact that she couldn't reciprocate the feeling translated that he meant less to her than she did to him.
That she didn't love him.
So, he got upset because he was hurt, and he said things to make her upset and hurt too, because if she couldn't feel the same love that he had, he would make her feel the same pain he did.
And then he left.
Drove away from the mountain, leaving her underneath, knowing full well that they'd had a great weekend planned, knowing that he was her get-out-of-jail-free card in the most basic sense of the word.
When she called him at home, tried to apologize, pleaded with him to go back to her—he refused to listen and stayed at home, because no matter what she said, it still wasn't "I love you too."
So, he took away her freedom, and then didn't understand when she wouldn't listen to him—when she refused to let him comfort her.
Now he stays under the mountain for her because he's not leaving until he can leave with her.
"You need to get some fresh air, Son." Landry remarks half in a huff of disbelief, and half in a gruff chuckle.
He'll get some fresh air with her.
The backlight from the computer screen is the only light that's been shining on his skin recently. He stays in the Jacksons' office until they kick him out, which he thinks they stopped doing a day or two ago—all of them are blending together now.
The hours into days, the days into weeks, and all he can think about is how she only has six of them left.
Had.
Landry calls them together once a day, usually late morning—he knows because everyone is more alert then—and asks what they've found, which is usually nothing, just a few dozen gate addresses that they need to sift through, that they need to send MALPs out to, or teams out to, and they don't have time.
They didn't have time to begin with, and it's already been too long.
"All right," Landry nods this morning when no one has really anything to add, when he can't focus on anything but her last words to him, cutting out, garbled by static, by a distance that shouldn't have been there. "Anyone think of any new plans?"
He stands silent, like he's at a funeral for a fallen comrade, like he's at his first de-hosting of a Goa'uld—his first and last—how she didn't want to talk when she came back, how he took her out for what was supposed to be beers, but she decided on the fly that she wanted a milkshake instead. How it was the first time he sat across from her in the early morning at a McDonalds and watched her play with her food.
No one says a thing of course.
It's just him and two Jacksons—the people who love Vala the most—but they can't spare more than that, and if the three of them, who know her as best as she'll let them, can't figure out where the hell she got taken to, then no one else will.
"Actually," Two clears his throat, causing Landry to pause as he stands. "I had one—well, it's more of an idea."
"We'll work with whatever we have, Dr. Jackson."
There's a bit of a smirk on Two's face because most of the SGC just assumed having the two Jacksons would blow over. When One died in the ruins and the original Jackson came back, there were some behind the door discussions of what to do with the remaining copy—even what rights Two has—but since there are no variations in their DNA, just slightly in personality, with Jackson's blessing, they started treating Two like him.
He should have told Vala about it when he had the chance, maybe it would have made her more open to coming with him—but he didn't want to make her more uncomfortable—he didn't want to put her back underground again.
"I was thinking that someone has to know their way through that part of the gate system. That maybe we could hire a guide to—"
"Vala was supposed to be our guide," Jackson reminds, still a little old school, but he did miss almost five years of his life.
"She stopped us from contacting a planet with a Goa'uld system lord who has destroyed dozens of planets—" they're his first words in the meeting and the gruffness of his own voice surprises him. They don't carry peppermint tea in the mess anymore.
"She should have told us—"
"She doesn't have to tell us everything—"
"When it deals with galactic security, she should—"
"Gentlemen," Landry fully stands now, pushing away from the table, his hair growing a little whiter each day. "While the idea has merit, I think Dr. Jackson is right, there's simply no one we can trust to use as a guide."
Two clears his throat, his eyes a bit downtrodden. In one of the three conversations he's managed to have with Sam since she left, she says he's a lot like Jackson was when he first started at the SGC. "Actually, Sir, there is."
Landry stops and the room falls quiet, the presentation screen still black against the wall. "You have someone who has a concrete reason for telling us the truth?"
"Better." Two shares a slight grin. "I have someone who will want to get Vala back."