Mother-In-Law
Chapter 6
Captive
She's scared, but she won't admit to it.
Won't let the emotion overtake her like she wants to. To huddle in the corner of the opulent room.
A bed wider than she and Cameron have ever shared—a bed so wide that if they had one, they would panic in not being able to find each other during the night. A bed wide enough, that it's supposed to fit more than just two people.
There are heavy curtains draped around the bedpost in jarring scarlets and golds, flowing from the high ceiling and puddling on the floor—the dark marble floor with golden streaks, and she never remembers there being this much gold when she was a Goa'uld, but her mother always liked the finer things in life.
The walls are made of thick, dark wood that has a reddish hue, with intricate etches swirling around the panels. Etches she knows artists died while making.
Everything in the room is so unnecessary, and she hates that part of her—the part that remembers being a Goa'uld, like muscle memories, like how she hasn't swum for years, but if the need called for it, she'd be able to swim just fine—hates how she likes how dark it is, how rich it looks.
She hates how she cultivated this as her own taste for years after being freed, because she didn't know who she was, and she sought comfort in familiar things. People worshipping her was familiar, the ornamental jewelry hanging off her wrists, neck, braided into her hair, was familiar. Hurting others to survive, being a living parasite, was overly familiar, and people resented her.
"My Lord," a solder addresses her from the doorway.
There are guards posted at each side of the doublewide entrance, and she mostly just submits to keeping the door open, because it's not a fight worth having, when she knows the fight that's coming.
"I'm not your Lord." Rolling her eyes, she turns away from the guard, her hand falling to her stomach, hidden beneath a white silken dress and the edge of a breastplate.
She fought against changing her attire from Cameron's shirt she'd stretched out from wearing to bed. It carried his scent and calmed her, but apparently it's inappropriate attire for a regent. The golden breast plate, and silk that makes her feel like a golden goose is more appropriate.
The soldier ignores her and keeps his barely clothed body still bowed in respect, speaking his words to the ground. "Our Great Lord Anat summons you for a feast."
"I'm not hungry."
"Our Great Lord Anat is concerned about your eating habits since arriving—"
"I didn't arrive, I was kidnapped—"
"Wishing to observe that you are nourishing—"
"And I'm afraid that my appreciation for bonfire spitted sow left my body many years ago when—"
"She simply wishes to make sure that the child is properly—"
With a speed she doesn't remember, her hand lashes out, snatching the soldier's ornate collar and yanking him so close that she can feel his stable breathes huff out against her skin, so close because she wants him to feel the anger palpable within her.
"Do not speak of my child."
Tries not to think about thrashing him, about throttling him unconscious and taking his weapon to storm the hallway, shooting anyone that gets in her way, knowing they won't harm her, but knowing that if she undertakes any kind of uprising, Anat will find cruel ways to punish her, which is enough to snuff any attempt at rebelling.
If it were just her, escape would be easily accomplished.
But whenever she's held captive by Anat, she's never alone.
"Our Great Lord—"
"She is not my Lord." Shoves the guard back, knowing that he only serves from fear, because her mother has done something so unspeakable before him, he has been scared into submitting.
Knows firsthand because that's how she was kept all the years, that's how she succumbed to Qetesh near willingly.
But the guard simply picks up where he left off "—Anat has demanded your presence for a feast."
Crossing her arms, she steps away from him, ignoring the pain of hunger as she's been only eating scraps, in fear that something is poisoned, in fear that despite how much Anat covets her unborn child, that the malicious streak running deep within the Goa'uld will get the better of her, and the idea of harming her or the baby would be near unavoidable.
"And I'm refusing to go."
"My Lord—"
"Do not address me as that—Do not address me at all."
"If you are not present when Our Great Lord Anat sits to feast—"
"Then she'll take it out on someone, and if I'm not there, it won't be me." It's one of the most selfish things she's ever said, the words holding such lack of compassion that it reminds her of tricking those poor villagers into mining naquadah for her.
"You would purposefully put others' lives in danger?"
For the life of her child, she most definitely would.
Instead of answering to his face, she turns, retreating to sit on the edge of the bed. The child within her now too big to allow her much respite in comfort by creating a constant pressure against all of her organs, making her muscles ache, her back seize in pain, and impairing her movement.
Anat didn't imprison her in this compound because she's already imprisoned in her own body.
Hates this part of pregnancy, where she becomes too big and oafish to be any use, and though she lets her mind wander with elaborate schemes in breaking out and burning down the compound, she knows that she will never be able to with her lumbering form.
Doesn't blame the child or Cameron—only herself.
She's the only one that has been in this position before. She was the one stupid enough to stumble back into it.
Had so many outs.
Could've stayed peacefully on Thea without entering into free agent work again, but it may have left them short on funds, and when her mother was short on funds—to not be able to support herself with food, drink and a safe shelter drove her mother to the ultimate sacrifice, and in trying to circumvent her own poverty, she allowed the worst person in the universe to find her again.
The guard leaves her for only a minute or two before entering through the opened double doors again. She hasn't even had a chase to pose herself close to laying down, still trying to find a stance where this child doesn't rest directly on her bladder, making it necessary for her to relieve herself every dozen minutes or so.
He stands in the doorway, his body now covered in a thin sheen of sweat which glistens around the elaborate collar he still wears, though now it's slightly misaligned, and he jabs his golden staff into the gold veined floors. "Our Great Lord Anat—"
"I don't care." Tries to wave him off, and away from the open double doors that she watched like television all day, doesn't know who she expects to be waltzing in. Part of her wants it to be Cameron, to tell her that he has managed to slay the beast within her mother, and he's arrived to bring her home—hopefully to his mother, because she's had a craving for peach cobbler since she arrived at the compound.
But the soldier stands unwavering.
"Anat declares that if you do not come to the feast, that she will be forced to leave in order to retrieve you, making her very—"
"Yes, yes—" she waves him off again, but there's a cold feeling cycling through her, knows this isn't really a trap as she's already been ensnared, but hates conversing with the Goa'uld that runs her mother, the one that wears her like fancy dinner attire, the one that put it's own offspring into her.
The one that's waiting for a girl to be born in order to switch hosts.
She pushes herself up from the bed, clumsily stumbling with her form, larger than she remembers being with any of her previous pregnancies, but a compassionate part of her mind has blurred out the memories of birthing tiny little beings, none of which she ever got to hold or see again.
The guard marches before her as she waddles down the hallway, knowing that if her math is right, if the sequence of notches she's carved into the wood panel walls behind her bed are true is that she is due in three weeks. It's not a long time, nor is it quite accurate, because she can feel her body preparing for the birth, feel how the child changes position. Feel how little hands and feet aren't where they used to be.
If she says it's twenty-one days, the time feels elongated, like there is more of a chance that someone will come to her aid even though she's not sure she wants them too—there's really no use, and she doesn't want to needlessly endanger Cameron, or the Daniels, or any SGC employee.
More importantly, she doesn't want to leave a crumb trail back to Earth for Anat to follow, giving her another planet to seize control over.
Her body is as awkward as it's ever been, and despite doing this several times before, she is still clumsy when it comes to navigating. Her steps are languid, yet each stride moves her whole body. The closer they get to the elaborate room, also draped in fine silks, heavy curtains, and constructed with marble floors, the more the baby stirs inside of her, as if warning to retreat.
As if they know what Anat wants from them.
Two guards stand before double doors that are at least two storeys tall. They eye her, questioning, what the hell she's doing here. Her best answer is trying to survive. Trying to keep her child alive long enough for them to be saved.
She swore she would not birth this child in captivity.
The doors creak under the weight of their movement, leading way to more uselessly extravagant furniture and decorations. A massive table follows the outline of the room, yet only Anat sits, dozens of dishes strewn out before her, some with whole animals roasted, others built up, constructed like a tower, others look more like a work of art than a course in a meal.
"Qetesh." Although Anat is sitting on a throne at the raised head of the table, her deep voice flows over the massive room, seizing everyone's presence. "How nice of you to finally join your mother."
"You're not my mother." She singsongs, attempting to pass off her fear for mild annoyance. Her eyes trailing over the empty banquet table set up for more visitors.
"Oh, we're not going to go through the semantics of our familial relations, are we Dear?"
The guard stops her with a rough yank on her arm, and they stand before Anat, who, while up on a pedestal, appears several feet taller, looming over her. When she stands, sleeves stream from her wrists, some hooking against her back, others billowing beside as her body as she moves.
As always, Anat is dressed in her battle armor a set of intricately crafted metallic swirls that course over her body like exterior veins. Fabricated so closely together that she can never exit the cage around her body, but also making her near impenetrable, as no weapon is small enough to break through the hard and slim exterior.
"Now then, come have a seat with your mother." She theatrically drags out a chair, one with a whole roasted boar before it, and the sight makes her stomach churn—it must be that and not the words she loathes to hear.
Obediently, she rounds the banquet table, now a guard on either side of her, leading to the ornate stone steps decorated in a majesty of gems. One offers his hand out to help steady her, and it takes all her resolution not to spit into his open palm.
Carefully, she gathers the material at the bottom of her dress—a dress it took three maidens to help her into this morning—and climbs the few stairs so she's level with Anat.
Her mother's face is withered a bit, there are several more wrinkles dotting the soft lines of her face, and the makeup adorned there makes her appear gaudy, not royal. The elaborate chain mail she wears, ebbs and flows in different directions running against her skin in multiple designs reminiscent of drawings she's seen in the Daniels's books on Egyptology.
Sometimes Anat chooses to wear a garb over the swirls and knots of golden arms, and sometimes she doesn't.
In times of threat and violence, she usually choses not to because, as with Qetesh, Anat's greatest weapon is her body.
Slowly, she tugs out a chair, four seats down, only to have Anat tut her, "really now. Qetesh," through the baritone voice, her mother's accent holds strong, and it's a shame that she cannot remember her mother's true voice. "Are you so wary of your mother?"
"You're not my mother." Confident in her words, she holds loose fists at her side remaining four chairs down until a guard touches her unwantedly, pushing her in the direction of the beast dressed as her mother.
"Again, with the teenage rebellion." Anat flippantly waves her off, leaning forward and tearing a chunk of flesh off a brazed animal. "Come. Eat."
"As I told your guards, I am not hungry."
Anat's eyes dart to her, and in a split second the Goa'uld's mood changes, witnessing a flicker for fire snap over her face. "You will sit, or you will forfeit something very dear."
"You've already taken so much—"
"Yes, and I was willing to let you go—" Sipping from a golden chalice, similar to the one she recovered from a swamp not much long ago, Anat's actions take on a more feminine approach. Afterwards, she even daintily taps a cloth napkin to her lips. "Despite your less than courteous disappearance, and your inability to produce a suitable—"
"Then why am I here?"
"Because someone happened to relay to me that your last child was female."
"My last child was created unbeknownst to me by the Ori who sought to have a female—"
"And this child?" Anat leans back in her throne, her long legs crossed, stemming down to heavy armored boots with deadly sharp heels. She holds a hand to her chin and raises an eyebrow at her round stomach.
Her own hand comes up to her stomach, sticking out, silk material billowing down around it, accenting like a comet in the sky. "I will not speak of this child to you."
"You will," Anat disagrees with a smug, evil grin spread out over her lips, as she stands from the throne. "Or you won't be with child for much longer."
It is impossible for her to find any peace.
Despite the bed's monumental status, she tosses and turns, the child within her growing more discontent by the minute, employing the same method of passive-aggressive torture as when Cameron spends time away from their home and on base, like the child can sense the lack of warmth beside them, the other slumbering form that offers them the extra layer of protection, a kind which she cannot.
But they no longer have a home, a nice quaint farmstead which she spent a countless amount of currency to not only purchase, but to fix up.
There are no crops growing in the field, because as Anat dragged her from the pillaged ruins of the house, she and her guards trampled everything down that they could.
Poor Josie.
Poor, poor Josie.
The little skinny cat only wanted to protect her—doesn't know why, perhaps the same reason she started feeding her the second night they spent in that house, because she could sense a link between them—of conning, cunning, scavenging, cheating others to stay alive, and trying to depend on no one until someone really and truly proved themselves.
She won Cameron, gave him her trust and has never been let down by him.
Josie won her, and Anat destroyed her bony little body.
Maybe their baby misses Josie's purring in her sleep as she would curl up beside her stomach, rub against it, and happily doze, she would reach down and scratch the cat's head and hear her sigh in contentment.
That cat died trying to protect her.
Refused to run into the bathroom where she hid, crouched beside the counter, contemplating if she wanted to write the Goa'uld controlling her mother's name, if she wanted to expose Cameron, and the Daniels, and everyone else back on Earth to her wrath for the simple want of being rescued.
For the want of being selfish.
"I miss her too, Darling."
On her side, she rubs her stomach softly, watching the curtains around the bed waver in the low wind from the extravagant windows. The baby ceases or a moment, but when detecting that it's her fingers and voice, not Cameron's goes right back to spinning within her, bouncing around, as if to warn her what a bad situation they're in when she's already well aware.
Still has hopes, but that's all they are.
She was never the optimistic one, she was never the one who saw a baby for the love they represented, or the soft clothes, or tiny shoes. Just saw them as a siren alerting Anat that she may be carrying her heir, that her body was up for grabs to misuse and destroy.
All those little lives destroyed.