Hi guys back again for another chapter; sorry it's taken so long.
Thanks again for those reviews – WOW.
Thanks to CT xx
As normal don't own, ain't mine.
Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight
Lead me out on the moonlit floor
Lift up your open hand
Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance
Silver moon's sparkling
So kiss me
Sixpence Non The Richer
Also lyrics from: WHITE RABBIT -- Jefferson Airplane
===========
General Hammond's explosive voice echoed throughout the base, like a divine herald, as the warning lights flashed in time with the pounding of the klaxon.
Lieutenant Wright replaced the receiver back into its cradle ending the curt call from Colonel O'Neill who had ordered her to make sure Quinn 'stayed put'.
She got to her feet and then hesitated, toying with the point of her collar as she so often did when in thought. Years of military service had taught her to read between the lines and this told her that the lockdown had something to do with the alien and therefore, could, endanger the Doctor.
She reached for a set of keys that was inside a clumsy, lopsided, clay pot that her nephew had made and opened the bottom drawer of her desk. She pulled out a small handgun that her father had given her when she'd hit thirteen and held it in her hand, reflecting on the girl she had been, back then, the idealistic and unattractive teenager who had, had her heart and virginity broken by faithless sex. She sighed heavily and ran her fingertips around her ears, pushing the bristles of her hair back to compose herself.
She slipped the loaded gun into her pocket and tapped it before walking the few steps toward Booard's office, the squeak of her shoes sounding her arrival long before she knocked on the door and entered.
This was her green mile.
=======
Colonel O'Neill stood impatiently in the lift watching the levels light up as he passed them. He tapped the side of his leg in frustration as the elevator stopped two floors short of his objective. An airman, hurriedly returning to his post, stepped in and saluted rigidly with his lips pursed. O'Neill quickly returned the gesture and stepped back further into the metal box. The airman pressed the button for the first level and the lift resumed its course.
Jack scrutinised the man's neck for signs of a symbiote entry wound. He stepped closer, his hand resting on the side arm he had requisitioned from the armoury, making the unfortunate airman feel even more uncomfortable.
"Sir?" The Private swallowed, giving Jack a nervous smile over his shoulder; O'Neill gave him an oppressive stare.
The lift reached level two and the doors opened with an obliging hiss. The airman saluted again, relief apparent on his face as he awkwardly moved out of the way so the Colonel could exit.
"Jack," Daniel called, as both he and Sam entered the corridor from a second elevator. They quickened their stride to join O'Neill; fastening the radios they had picked up, topside, to their equipment vests.
"You sure about this, Daniel, that, that this snakehead's, here, at the SGC?" The Colonel enquired, his mind racing passed polite greetings.
"Or on his way," the Egyptologist corrected, nodding, "yeah, Jack I'm certain."
The Colonel looked over at Sam, who was checking her side arm; the Major gave him a quick nod. "Well that's just great, this place is getting like Goa'uld central," he shook his head, "I've left Teal'c stationed by the Gate room to see if he can sniff our guy out..."
Daniel went to say something but O'Neill cut him short, holding up his hand, "just in case, Daniel, you're wrong about him being able to conceal himself."
Jackson gave him an ambiguous look, "well at least we've got Jonas," the Colonel continued with a half-hearted smile.
"Not if this guy gets to him first," Daniel replied, halting at the empty nurse's station.
"Oh, this could be bad," O'Neill concluded, intuition furring his back.
He opened his radio with a click, "T, you got anything?"
The Jaffa's voice hissed with static, "negative, O'Neill, do you wish me to join you?"
"No, stay put, we could do with your expertise down there. We'll keep you posted."
"Very well, O'Neill, Teal'c out."
Jack looked towards Sam and gestured for her and Daniel to get behind him as he cautiously tried Booard's door.
The door opened but not fully, something was blocking it. The Colonel scanned what he could see of the office and entered, slowly, pushing against obstruction; Sam and Daniel followed.
Lieutenant Wright's motionless body barricaded the door from the wall, impeding its full movement.
Sam crouched down, placing two fingers to the woman's neck; she shook her head.
"Shit," O'Neill responded, his mind and body vigilantly checking the room for any movement.
Carter examined the bruising that spanned Wright's throat, "looks like she was strangled."
She picked up the handgun that was protruding from under the body and checked the chamber, "it's full, she didn't get a chance to use it."
Sam looked down into the older woman's shocked expression, which had masked her face in death. With the palm of her hand she closed Lieutenant Wright's sad and mirror-less eyes adding some dignity to the sprawled body.
Jack went towards the, carved, oak desk that sat resplendent in the large office, "nice," he commented, dusting his fingertip over its surface.
He stopped to examine the patisserie box and half eaten doughnut that seemed to soil its magnificence. He frowned, his mind focusing on the partial consumed cake; he picked it up and touched the side of the plastic cup containing the fruit tea, "still warm," he stated, looking towards Daniel and then Sam.
Carter got to her feet and gestured towards the closed door of the Doctor's adjoining office, the one he used for his sessions, the one with the couch.
O'Neill nodded and whispered, "Daniel, you stay here."
"Jack..."
The Colonel gave the younger man a 'no-nonsense' stare and Daniel withdrew his protest, staying close to the body of the fallen Lieutenant.
Again O'Neill and Sam entered the smaller room with caution, straining their eyes in the ambient light to make out the sparsely furnished room.
"Jeez!" Jack exclaimed, stopping in his tracks and placing his hand instinctively to his radio.
"We need a medical team to Booard's office now!" He exclaimed, watching Sam rush to the couch, to tend the injured Kelownan.
"Colonel?" General Hammond's voice boomed above the interference.
"It's Jonas, Sir, he's, he's...., Carter?"
Jack joined his 2IC who was trying to plug a wound to the alien's chest with a hand towel from a small porcelain sink in the corner.
"General, he has a deep wound to his chest and has lost a lot of blood," she looked at the pool shadowing the floor, "I think Huitzilopochtli tried to remove his heart, for real this time, but was interrupted, probably by Lieutenant Wright."
"Lieutenant Wright?" Hammond asked.
"I'm afraid she's dead, General," Jack replied, "strangled," he glanced back toward the body in the other room.
"Colonel, any sign of Doctor Booard?" There was anger in Hammond's voice.
"Negative, Sir." Jack replied, quickly glancing around the room again.
There was a pause, "could he be the host?" Hammond asked.
Jack looked towards Daniel, who was stood in the doorway, "I found this in the desk drawer," the Egyptologist stated, handing the Colonel a used vial and syringe of Goa'uld design.
"My guess is, whatever substance was in the vial cloaks the symbiote."
Jack looked down at the blue glass and nodded, "General, there's a good chance that Booard is the host."
"Okay Colonel, I'll get Siler to check the surveillance video for the Doctor's movements. Meanwhile I'm sending a team up to your position to secure the rest of that floor, I want you and Doctor Jackson to co-ordinate with them. Hammond out."
Jack released the button on his radio and looked at Sam who was struggling to stop the surge of blood, "how the hell did this happen, didn't he sense the attack? I mean, what's the use of having this all Seeing Eye thing if it doesn't protect you!"
Sam lifted Jonas' eyelid back, "he's been drugged, Sir," she concluded, " it was probably in the doughnuts".
Jack looked at the sugar that still coated his fingers and wiped them down his shirt; he narrowed his eyes, "what you got there Daniel?"
The Egyptologist lifted something from the floor between his thumb and forefinger, "Huitzilopochtli's Obsidian blade, the one he used back on the planet," he replied, absentmindedly watching the Kelownan's blood drip from its edge.
Jack shook his head and rubbed his temples, "Carter how's he doing?"
Sam looked up without saying a word, O'Neill shook his head again, "damn it!" he cried walking back into the other office, "where the hell's that medical team?"
==============
The sky was the summerset of blues and the day was fat and lazy. Jonas stood at the edge of a field of honey grass watching its erect, smooth, stalks swaying against the seduction of the breeze. The head of orange flowers had long been sacrificed to the turn of the season and were, now, replaced by dense, slender spikes, heavy with the rasp of dry seeds.
He reached his hand out and caressed one of the long stems all the way up to its plump crown, which broke apart at his touch, giving up a cache of silver kernels into his palm.
=======
Sam watched Jonas' eyes quiver in his in-between state. She pressed hard on the wound keeping one eye impatiently on the door for the medical team to arrive. Jack and Daniel had left, momentarily, to direct the search of this level, as the CCTV had drawn a blank as to Booard's whereabouts.
She touched the Kelownan's forehead, leaving a bloody imprint and forced her lips to smile, "you've got to fight this Jonas, don't give up on us now."
She picked up his gloved hand, which was limp in her grasp and held it on his chest, "come on hero, we need you," she paused and gripped his fingers tighter, "I need you," she whispered, "I can't loose another friend."
The alien trembled, "yes," he said, softly, on tired lips.
================
Jonas felt the woman's arms encircle him in a soothing embrace and her head fall gently against the back of his neck, "we've been here before," she said tenderly.
"Yes," Jonas replied, without turning round, letting her embrace warm him.
She lifted her head, to look over the tall grass, her abundant curls tickling his skin, "and yet, you still blame yourself for my death."
"He brought the pain back again," Jonas responded, touching his chest with a spread hand.
"Which he meant to do, so when he took your heart it would be full of grief," she placed her palm on top of his.
He looked down to the ground, "Jonas, my death 'was' my destiny, there was nothing you could of done to prevent it from happening," Mia said quietly against his body.
He sighed and looked up again, "I know, it's just that, that I miss you," he replied.
She moved beside him, her blue robes imitating the breeze like waves curling on an ocean, "You know I can put an end to your suffering, Jonas. Come with me, leave this place, end this journey's circle."
She took his hand again and squeezed it, looking into his face with affectionate eyes.
A small girl made a path through lofty stalks her white, blonde, curls bobbing as she ran. She was dressed in cut off dungarees that frayed around the knees and were patched with leftover, patterned, curtain material. She tumbled over her young feet with a yelp and was quickly joined by her brother. He picked her up and steadied her back on her feet, brushing the earth from her clothes and placing the denim straps back on her shoulders. She saluted him, in a clumsy movement, sticking out her belly as she did. He returned the gesture and picked up the stick she had been carrying as a rifle. She took it from him and disappeared into the grass, giggling.
The boy turned his head to where Mia and Jonas stood watching their past unfold. His curious, green, eyes searched for them, sensing their presence in the dust of the sunlight. He waited a moment, in anticipation, and then arranged the oversized straps of his own dungarees before following his sister in a wave of grass.
"This is who we were," Mia said, watching the sway of stalks mark the children's progress.
Jonas turned to face her and smiled, "and this is who I am now," he replied looking down at their entwined hands. "I have to stay, I am needed here."
Mia touched his cheek, "I know."
"And yet, you still gave me the choice?" Jonas queried.
"Yes," she replied, still looking into the grass.
"Why?"
Mia turned and looked deep into the pool of his eyes, "because you are my brother and above all else in the universe, your suffering hurts me the most."
She dropped her head but Jonas raised it between his thumb and forefinger, "you know Huitzilopochtli was wrong, it's love that gives us our strength."
"It is a balance of both," she answered, kissing him lightly on the cheek before fading into the shadows that had began to gather to tear the light from his vision.
Pain seared like lightening through his chest knocking him back down into the darkness of his mind. Memories engulfed him in rapid, flashing, images of anguish. He saw colourless people cleaved in the frozen earth, Andari peasants scattered like marble effigies in a shantytown that once promised their salvation.
An icy wind bit through his clothes with teeth of steel and gnawed at his unprotected fingers. He looked down at his hand and found he was holding the carved, ivory, hilt of a sword. Words of diplomacy swirled around its polished metal, breaking into letters on its sharp, savoir-faire, blade and falling as blood to the ground.
The dead around him rose, some clutching their wounds, their eyes vacant in their waxen skin. They followed the trail of scarlet left by the sword, scratching at the solid earth, trying to reform the droplets back into letters, to words, to hope.
A debauched laughter filled his head, whipping the flakes of snow into a frenzy. He rubbed his stinging eyes and when he opened them a woman with dark curls hovered in the wind before him. She tilted her head, her neck cracking as she moved it and watched him through her soulless eyes.
She brought a finger up to her lips and smeared them with the congealed blood that was seeping from the pulsating, leathery, scars that patterned her, patchy, blue skin.
She laughed again and scraped the knife, she held, across her naked breast, crimping the flesh in a gluey crimson.
The woman moved towards him, curling a length of hair around her finger, "one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all."
Her voice was disjointed, her movement erratic as her mind wandered aimlessly in its insanity. She held the point of the knife towards him and moved it down his chest, smiling with twisted lips.
"And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall, tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar, has given you the call."
She let the knife fall and Jonas watched it spiral, forever, into the snow. She held her finger to her lips, once more, and bid him to be quiet. She bent down to his ear, "the caterpillar is hiding in a kiss."
The woman moved her lips across his cheek and he felt the chill of her tongue on his flesh. Jonas closed his eyes as her dead mouth touched his in a cold kiss and he was suddenly thrown back to Booard's office.
Familiar images rambled across his mind, as the not to distant reality became abstract dreams. He saw his comatose self, cut and bleeding, on a padded couch while Huitzilopochtli stood over him like a large, spellbinding, bird of prey but the Goa'uld's attention was drawn by the panic of the klaxon and the creak of footsteps in leather.
The picture fluttered as time twitched and Jonas watched as Booard planted an imperfect kiss on Lieutenant Wright's surprised and irregular lips. For a brief moment, a second, her heart spread its wings and soared in the sunlight of her youth but then the Doctor grabbed her throat and squeezed her dreams from her forever.
She fell away from his austere embrace a betrayed woman, her blunt hands instinctively encircling the blackening, Machiavellian, necklace left by the impression of his fingertips. Something gorged itself on her wretched soul, supplanting it with its own consciousness, absorbing her into oblivion. The surplus Doctor dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut and Lieutenant Wright's pupils sparkled with calculating light.
===========
Jonas' exhausted eyes fought the fall-out from his visions under closed lids. Sam held his hand tighter as he shuddered fitfully in his delirium. His eyes opened, briefly, but only the whites showed as he stuttered something inaudible.
"Sssh, Jonas, save your strength," Sam replied, feeling something other than the Kelownan's hand in her grip.
She opened the strong fist that surrounded the alien's and five silver seeds fell out of their embrace.
=========
The Goa'uld reanimated the body, it now inhabited, with a subtle, muffled, gasp. It amplified the blood flow around the host, filling her heart so it juddered back to life and warmed her pallid skin.
Huitzilopochtli had hoped to use this pathetic shell to occupy one of the medical team that came to assist Quinn but now another opportunity had opened up to him.
Lieutenant Wright's body discreetly got to its feet and reached under the armchair where the Aztec God of War had hidden its ribbon device. It fastened the apparatus onto the Lieutenant's thick fingers and stretched them as its mind connected with the device again, which it had used early to get rid of Booard's useless body.
The Goa'uld looked down at the floor and pushed its toe into the powdered remains of the Doctor and an ember of a smile dusted the host's lips; Major Carter would make an excellent host.
Thanks again for those reviews – WOW.
Thanks to CT xx
As normal don't own, ain't mine.
Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight
Lead me out on the moonlit floor
Lift up your open hand
Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance
Silver moon's sparkling
So kiss me
Sixpence Non The Richer
Also lyrics from: WHITE RABBIT -- Jefferson Airplane
===========
General Hammond's explosive voice echoed throughout the base, like a divine herald, as the warning lights flashed in time with the pounding of the klaxon.
Lieutenant Wright replaced the receiver back into its cradle ending the curt call from Colonel O'Neill who had ordered her to make sure Quinn 'stayed put'.
She got to her feet and then hesitated, toying with the point of her collar as she so often did when in thought. Years of military service had taught her to read between the lines and this told her that the lockdown had something to do with the alien and therefore, could, endanger the Doctor.
She reached for a set of keys that was inside a clumsy, lopsided, clay pot that her nephew had made and opened the bottom drawer of her desk. She pulled out a small handgun that her father had given her when she'd hit thirteen and held it in her hand, reflecting on the girl she had been, back then, the idealistic and unattractive teenager who had, had her heart and virginity broken by faithless sex. She sighed heavily and ran her fingertips around her ears, pushing the bristles of her hair back to compose herself.
She slipped the loaded gun into her pocket and tapped it before walking the few steps toward Booard's office, the squeak of her shoes sounding her arrival long before she knocked on the door and entered.
This was her green mile.
=======
Colonel O'Neill stood impatiently in the lift watching the levels light up as he passed them. He tapped the side of his leg in frustration as the elevator stopped two floors short of his objective. An airman, hurriedly returning to his post, stepped in and saluted rigidly with his lips pursed. O'Neill quickly returned the gesture and stepped back further into the metal box. The airman pressed the button for the first level and the lift resumed its course.
Jack scrutinised the man's neck for signs of a symbiote entry wound. He stepped closer, his hand resting on the side arm he had requisitioned from the armoury, making the unfortunate airman feel even more uncomfortable.
"Sir?" The Private swallowed, giving Jack a nervous smile over his shoulder; O'Neill gave him an oppressive stare.
The lift reached level two and the doors opened with an obliging hiss. The airman saluted again, relief apparent on his face as he awkwardly moved out of the way so the Colonel could exit.
"Jack," Daniel called, as both he and Sam entered the corridor from a second elevator. They quickened their stride to join O'Neill; fastening the radios they had picked up, topside, to their equipment vests.
"You sure about this, Daniel, that, that this snakehead's, here, at the SGC?" The Colonel enquired, his mind racing passed polite greetings.
"Or on his way," the Egyptologist corrected, nodding, "yeah, Jack I'm certain."
The Colonel looked over at Sam, who was checking her side arm; the Major gave him a quick nod. "Well that's just great, this place is getting like Goa'uld central," he shook his head, "I've left Teal'c stationed by the Gate room to see if he can sniff our guy out..."
Daniel went to say something but O'Neill cut him short, holding up his hand, "just in case, Daniel, you're wrong about him being able to conceal himself."
Jackson gave him an ambiguous look, "well at least we've got Jonas," the Colonel continued with a half-hearted smile.
"Not if this guy gets to him first," Daniel replied, halting at the empty nurse's station.
"Oh, this could be bad," O'Neill concluded, intuition furring his back.
He opened his radio with a click, "T, you got anything?"
The Jaffa's voice hissed with static, "negative, O'Neill, do you wish me to join you?"
"No, stay put, we could do with your expertise down there. We'll keep you posted."
"Very well, O'Neill, Teal'c out."
Jack looked towards Sam and gestured for her and Daniel to get behind him as he cautiously tried Booard's door.
The door opened but not fully, something was blocking it. The Colonel scanned what he could see of the office and entered, slowly, pushing against obstruction; Sam and Daniel followed.
Lieutenant Wright's motionless body barricaded the door from the wall, impeding its full movement.
Sam crouched down, placing two fingers to the woman's neck; she shook her head.
"Shit," O'Neill responded, his mind and body vigilantly checking the room for any movement.
Carter examined the bruising that spanned Wright's throat, "looks like she was strangled."
She picked up the handgun that was protruding from under the body and checked the chamber, "it's full, she didn't get a chance to use it."
Sam looked down into the older woman's shocked expression, which had masked her face in death. With the palm of her hand she closed Lieutenant Wright's sad and mirror-less eyes adding some dignity to the sprawled body.
Jack went towards the, carved, oak desk that sat resplendent in the large office, "nice," he commented, dusting his fingertip over its surface.
He stopped to examine the patisserie box and half eaten doughnut that seemed to soil its magnificence. He frowned, his mind focusing on the partial consumed cake; he picked it up and touched the side of the plastic cup containing the fruit tea, "still warm," he stated, looking towards Daniel and then Sam.
Carter got to her feet and gestured towards the closed door of the Doctor's adjoining office, the one he used for his sessions, the one with the couch.
O'Neill nodded and whispered, "Daniel, you stay here."
"Jack..."
The Colonel gave the younger man a 'no-nonsense' stare and Daniel withdrew his protest, staying close to the body of the fallen Lieutenant.
Again O'Neill and Sam entered the smaller room with caution, straining their eyes in the ambient light to make out the sparsely furnished room.
"Jeez!" Jack exclaimed, stopping in his tracks and placing his hand instinctively to his radio.
"We need a medical team to Booard's office now!" He exclaimed, watching Sam rush to the couch, to tend the injured Kelownan.
"Colonel?" General Hammond's voice boomed above the interference.
"It's Jonas, Sir, he's, he's...., Carter?"
Jack joined his 2IC who was trying to plug a wound to the alien's chest with a hand towel from a small porcelain sink in the corner.
"General, he has a deep wound to his chest and has lost a lot of blood," she looked at the pool shadowing the floor, "I think Huitzilopochtli tried to remove his heart, for real this time, but was interrupted, probably by Lieutenant Wright."
"Lieutenant Wright?" Hammond asked.
"I'm afraid she's dead, General," Jack replied, "strangled," he glanced back toward the body in the other room.
"Colonel, any sign of Doctor Booard?" There was anger in Hammond's voice.
"Negative, Sir." Jack replied, quickly glancing around the room again.
There was a pause, "could he be the host?" Hammond asked.
Jack looked towards Daniel, who was stood in the doorway, "I found this in the desk drawer," the Egyptologist stated, handing the Colonel a used vial and syringe of Goa'uld design.
"My guess is, whatever substance was in the vial cloaks the symbiote."
Jack looked down at the blue glass and nodded, "General, there's a good chance that Booard is the host."
"Okay Colonel, I'll get Siler to check the surveillance video for the Doctor's movements. Meanwhile I'm sending a team up to your position to secure the rest of that floor, I want you and Doctor Jackson to co-ordinate with them. Hammond out."
Jack released the button on his radio and looked at Sam who was struggling to stop the surge of blood, "how the hell did this happen, didn't he sense the attack? I mean, what's the use of having this all Seeing Eye thing if it doesn't protect you!"
Sam lifted Jonas' eyelid back, "he's been drugged, Sir," she concluded, " it was probably in the doughnuts".
Jack looked at the sugar that still coated his fingers and wiped them down his shirt; he narrowed his eyes, "what you got there Daniel?"
The Egyptologist lifted something from the floor between his thumb and forefinger, "Huitzilopochtli's Obsidian blade, the one he used back on the planet," he replied, absentmindedly watching the Kelownan's blood drip from its edge.
Jack shook his head and rubbed his temples, "Carter how's he doing?"
Sam looked up without saying a word, O'Neill shook his head again, "damn it!" he cried walking back into the other office, "where the hell's that medical team?"
==============
The sky was the summerset of blues and the day was fat and lazy. Jonas stood at the edge of a field of honey grass watching its erect, smooth, stalks swaying against the seduction of the breeze. The head of orange flowers had long been sacrificed to the turn of the season and were, now, replaced by dense, slender spikes, heavy with the rasp of dry seeds.
He reached his hand out and caressed one of the long stems all the way up to its plump crown, which broke apart at his touch, giving up a cache of silver kernels into his palm.
=======
Sam watched Jonas' eyes quiver in his in-between state. She pressed hard on the wound keeping one eye impatiently on the door for the medical team to arrive. Jack and Daniel had left, momentarily, to direct the search of this level, as the CCTV had drawn a blank as to Booard's whereabouts.
She touched the Kelownan's forehead, leaving a bloody imprint and forced her lips to smile, "you've got to fight this Jonas, don't give up on us now."
She picked up his gloved hand, which was limp in her grasp and held it on his chest, "come on hero, we need you," she paused and gripped his fingers tighter, "I need you," she whispered, "I can't loose another friend."
The alien trembled, "yes," he said, softly, on tired lips.
================
Jonas felt the woman's arms encircle him in a soothing embrace and her head fall gently against the back of his neck, "we've been here before," she said tenderly.
"Yes," Jonas replied, without turning round, letting her embrace warm him.
She lifted her head, to look over the tall grass, her abundant curls tickling his skin, "and yet, you still blame yourself for my death."
"He brought the pain back again," Jonas responded, touching his chest with a spread hand.
"Which he meant to do, so when he took your heart it would be full of grief," she placed her palm on top of his.
He looked down to the ground, "Jonas, my death 'was' my destiny, there was nothing you could of done to prevent it from happening," Mia said quietly against his body.
He sighed and looked up again, "I know, it's just that, that I miss you," he replied.
She moved beside him, her blue robes imitating the breeze like waves curling on an ocean, "You know I can put an end to your suffering, Jonas. Come with me, leave this place, end this journey's circle."
She took his hand again and squeezed it, looking into his face with affectionate eyes.
A small girl made a path through lofty stalks her white, blonde, curls bobbing as she ran. She was dressed in cut off dungarees that frayed around the knees and were patched with leftover, patterned, curtain material. She tumbled over her young feet with a yelp and was quickly joined by her brother. He picked her up and steadied her back on her feet, brushing the earth from her clothes and placing the denim straps back on her shoulders. She saluted him, in a clumsy movement, sticking out her belly as she did. He returned the gesture and picked up the stick she had been carrying as a rifle. She took it from him and disappeared into the grass, giggling.
The boy turned his head to where Mia and Jonas stood watching their past unfold. His curious, green, eyes searched for them, sensing their presence in the dust of the sunlight. He waited a moment, in anticipation, and then arranged the oversized straps of his own dungarees before following his sister in a wave of grass.
"This is who we were," Mia said, watching the sway of stalks mark the children's progress.
Jonas turned to face her and smiled, "and this is who I am now," he replied looking down at their entwined hands. "I have to stay, I am needed here."
Mia touched his cheek, "I know."
"And yet, you still gave me the choice?" Jonas queried.
"Yes," she replied, still looking into the grass.
"Why?"
Mia turned and looked deep into the pool of his eyes, "because you are my brother and above all else in the universe, your suffering hurts me the most."
She dropped her head but Jonas raised it between his thumb and forefinger, "you know Huitzilopochtli was wrong, it's love that gives us our strength."
"It is a balance of both," she answered, kissing him lightly on the cheek before fading into the shadows that had began to gather to tear the light from his vision.
Pain seared like lightening through his chest knocking him back down into the darkness of his mind. Memories engulfed him in rapid, flashing, images of anguish. He saw colourless people cleaved in the frozen earth, Andari peasants scattered like marble effigies in a shantytown that once promised their salvation.
An icy wind bit through his clothes with teeth of steel and gnawed at his unprotected fingers. He looked down at his hand and found he was holding the carved, ivory, hilt of a sword. Words of diplomacy swirled around its polished metal, breaking into letters on its sharp, savoir-faire, blade and falling as blood to the ground.
The dead around him rose, some clutching their wounds, their eyes vacant in their waxen skin. They followed the trail of scarlet left by the sword, scratching at the solid earth, trying to reform the droplets back into letters, to words, to hope.
A debauched laughter filled his head, whipping the flakes of snow into a frenzy. He rubbed his stinging eyes and when he opened them a woman with dark curls hovered in the wind before him. She tilted her head, her neck cracking as she moved it and watched him through her soulless eyes.
She brought a finger up to her lips and smeared them with the congealed blood that was seeping from the pulsating, leathery, scars that patterned her, patchy, blue skin.
She laughed again and scraped the knife, she held, across her naked breast, crimping the flesh in a gluey crimson.
The woman moved towards him, curling a length of hair around her finger, "one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all."
Her voice was disjointed, her movement erratic as her mind wandered aimlessly in its insanity. She held the point of the knife towards him and moved it down his chest, smiling with twisted lips.
"And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall, tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar, has given you the call."
She let the knife fall and Jonas watched it spiral, forever, into the snow. She held her finger to her lips, once more, and bid him to be quiet. She bent down to his ear, "the caterpillar is hiding in a kiss."
The woman moved her lips across his cheek and he felt the chill of her tongue on his flesh. Jonas closed his eyes as her dead mouth touched his in a cold kiss and he was suddenly thrown back to Booard's office.
Familiar images rambled across his mind, as the not to distant reality became abstract dreams. He saw his comatose self, cut and bleeding, on a padded couch while Huitzilopochtli stood over him like a large, spellbinding, bird of prey but the Goa'uld's attention was drawn by the panic of the klaxon and the creak of footsteps in leather.
The picture fluttered as time twitched and Jonas watched as Booard planted an imperfect kiss on Lieutenant Wright's surprised and irregular lips. For a brief moment, a second, her heart spread its wings and soared in the sunlight of her youth but then the Doctor grabbed her throat and squeezed her dreams from her forever.
She fell away from his austere embrace a betrayed woman, her blunt hands instinctively encircling the blackening, Machiavellian, necklace left by the impression of his fingertips. Something gorged itself on her wretched soul, supplanting it with its own consciousness, absorbing her into oblivion. The surplus Doctor dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut and Lieutenant Wright's pupils sparkled with calculating light.
===========
Jonas' exhausted eyes fought the fall-out from his visions under closed lids. Sam held his hand tighter as he shuddered fitfully in his delirium. His eyes opened, briefly, but only the whites showed as he stuttered something inaudible.
"Sssh, Jonas, save your strength," Sam replied, feeling something other than the Kelownan's hand in her grip.
She opened the strong fist that surrounded the alien's and five silver seeds fell out of their embrace.
=========
The Goa'uld reanimated the body, it now inhabited, with a subtle, muffled, gasp. It amplified the blood flow around the host, filling her heart so it juddered back to life and warmed her pallid skin.
Huitzilopochtli had hoped to use this pathetic shell to occupy one of the medical team that came to assist Quinn but now another opportunity had opened up to him.
Lieutenant Wright's body discreetly got to its feet and reached under the armchair where the Aztec God of War had hidden its ribbon device. It fastened the apparatus onto the Lieutenant's thick fingers and stretched them as its mind connected with the device again, which it had used early to get rid of Booard's useless body.
The Goa'uld looked down at the floor and pushed its toe into the powdered remains of the Doctor and an ember of a smile dusted the host's lips; Major Carter would make an excellent host.