After night had fully descended, Daniel appeared and beckoned to Cam. Cam disengaged himself and shrugged at the questioning looks from the others. Daniel and Cam and the ever present body guards strolled to the prow of the ship. Daniel leaned against the railing and looked at Cam. Mindful of the bodyguards, Cam waited for him to speak first.
At last Daniel said, "There are those that question my … sexual orientation because I have not taken advantage of my right to help myself to whatever woman takes my fancy. Elspetha has been what has kept those rumors at bay. We have allowed the court to believe that she is my lover. There is a faint odor of incest because she was my mother in law and that is the sort of titillation that the courtiers love. Because of the family tie, I could not arrange for a divorce for her and marry her or be open about our relationship, but it provides a reason why I have delayed remarrying. It works perfectly for me and has brought her much better treatment because she is believed to have great influence with me." He threw up his hands. "She does anyway. She's the only one I've had to talk to."
He turned and gazed out at the sea. He spoke very softly and Cam had to take a few steps closer to hear him clearly. "It has been most unfair to her. She has not been able to have any real romance in her life or to marry. I see what is going on between the two of you and I rejoice in whatever romance she decides is appropriate between you. For her safety, you must be very careful though. There are those who would kill her for the insult to the throne of betraying me by so much as a kiss. I have let it be known that you saved my life more than once in the past. If you are caught, it may be believed that I allowed you to have her to repay the debt I owed you."
Cam swore softly. It was degrading that these people traded women around in this fashion. Elspetha had stirred a protective instinct in him that was becoming fiercer by the day. "That's, quite frankly, pretty sordid."
Daniel turned back to him and nodded. "I couldn't agree with you more. Be careful. We don't want to have to fall back on that story."
"Do you ever listen to yourself?" Cam said. He kept his voice low and even, but he was very angry. "Talking about letting people think you gave her to me to pay a debt like she was property."
"I do not justify myself to you. I only tell you that you will not bring harm to Elspetha. We may not be lovers, but I value her above everyone else on this world except Davi. If you are responsible for ill coming to her, it will not matter how many times you saved my life in the past." Daniel turned his back on him and gave the guards an order in Linteri. Cam realized he had been dismissed.
Strolling back to the playroom, he had time to feel once again like a jerk. Daniel's instincts had all been to protect Elspetha and see that she was happy. They might not be lovers, but Cam realized that he was powerfully jealous of the connection they did have. He began to think, for the first time, about taking Elspetha away from this world, from her grandson, and from Daniel, and wondering if he had a snow ball's chance in hell of getting her to choose him over everything else.
By the time Cam had reached the playroom, Davi had been carried off to prepare for bed. Elspetha suggested that she show them each to their staterooms. The rooms were off a long corridor and Cam's was the last room. They watched the other doors close and she asked, "Would you mind if I came in and spoke with you privately for a moment?"
He smiled, but stopped himself from touching her. Daniel's words were seared in his brain. He worried now about kissing her on a balcony the night before, but clung to the hope that they had been in complete darkness and there had been clouds. She preceded him into the spacious cabin and took a seat on a wide divan. He sat opposite her.
"This is what I wish to say. His Grace Danyal has told me of the customs of your world. I know you think we are very – licentious – this is a correct word?"
"If you mean what I think you do."
"But it is only the court where such behavior is expected or condoned. I was not born into the aristocracy and my values were formed before I was brought here. From what he tells me the Tauri sleep together very easily, even more so than most of the court. Are you such a man, my Cameron?"
He gaped at her. "Uh, I'm not going to lie to you. I have certainly been with a few women and I wasn't married to them, but I do not believe I have ever taken sex lightly or seen it has something purely recreational."
"I wish that I could feel comfortable giving myself to you, but I cannot. The poor boy I married so long ago still lives, though I understand that he is near death and not expected to see the winter. Although I was not permitted to see him after I was taken from him, until he leaves this life, I will feel that I am bound to him despite what Davi's grandfather did to me. Still I yearn for you. I would like very much to touch you a little, to kiss you again, if you can grant me that, knowing that there cannot be more."
He looked at her wordlessly, his feelings shining in his eyes. He crossed the room and pulled her to her feet and into his arms. "I can't say no to you," he breathed into her fragrant hair. He lowered his head and kissed her, making it slow and worshipful. Then he sat on the divan and pulled her down next to him. He wanted her in his lap, but was afraid it could lead to more than she wanted or could accept. Instead he lay back against the arm of the divan and pulled her upper body across his. He pulled her silky hair forward so that it fell like a curtain around them. He was lost for a moment, just running his fingers through it. He had never seen such hair.
She explored his face with her fingers and then she boldly kissed him. When they ended the kiss at last, she said, "That is the first kiss of passion I have ever initiated." She sighed. "How will I ever be able to watch you go back through that gate, my Cameron?"
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Sam stood and gazed out the porthole. The moon made a silver path that seemed to come right to her window and she fantasized that she could climb out and walk across the water to a simpler place. She had begun to see the trap of responsibility that Daniel could not escape. He could not be responsible for death on a massive scale, but the man he had to be to prevent that was slowly devouring him. She had learned his façade now well enough to see beneath it to the pain. She truly believed he was only happy when he was with Davi.
There was a soft scratching on the door and she went to it and then stood, transfixed, with her hand on the knob. All the warnings about the dangers of this place made her hesitate. "Sam, it's Daniel. Open the door."
Sam quickly opened the door and Daniel slipped in. "We need to talk," he said and sank to the couch. He put his head in his hands and seemed to gather courage before beginning to speak. "For three years, I lived with this act, but I'm losing my soul, Sam. There'll be nothing left of me soon. I'd almost forgotten who I was until I saw you."
She moved to sit beside him. She gently pulled one of his hands away from his head and took it in her own. "It's so like you to take on a whole planet's problems, no matter what the cost to you."
He gazed intently at her and for the first time she felt completely connected with who he really was although she had come close when they had been with Davi. "I've been developing some ideas of a way to transition power to someone I can trust to continue reforms. That's part of what the discussions have been on this trip."
She felt hope, real hope for the first time in days. "Is it going to work?"
"I think so." His face transformed and was graced with a real, heart happy genuine smile, the smile he saved for Davi, instead of the jaded amused expression of a cynical aristocrat that had served for conveying happiness adult to adult since they had arrived. That expression fell away to be replaced by hope mingled with anxiety. "Sam, if Davi and I go back to Earth, do you think there's a chance for us?"
Sam knew in that moment that she had loved him for a long time, but her screwed up notions of what she should be looking for in a husband and of marriage, based on the dysfunctional disaster lived out by Jacob and Mary Carter had caused her to misinterpret her feelings. "More than a chance," she said emphatically.
"As in maybe if I were to ask you to marry me, you would say yes?"
Just as Daniel slipped to one knee in front of her, there was the scrape of a chair being pulled back and Cam's voice said, "Carter, I don't think you've heard a word I said."
She looked up to see her CO, sitting in front of her and leaning across her desk. He had entered unnoticed while she had been daydreaming a wistful scenario describing what she wished had happened on Linter, instead of what actually had. "Good morning, sir," she said, trying to sound brisk and efficient. "If you don't mind me saying so, you look like hell."
"Oh, I think we had enough personal discussions on Linter that we've moved past qualifying a comment like that."
"Did you want to discuss Friday's mission?" she asked hopefully. She knew damn well that that wasn't it at all. Nope, Cameron Mitchell had decided that she was the one person on the base who could understand his angst or who knew Elspetha well enough to indulge in endless recollections of her. She was feeling her own pain and, although it made her feel selfish, she had about reached the breaking point listening to his. It had been a one way conversation because she hadn't been ready to share. Maybe, if she did, she'd feel better and he'd be less likely to drop by for these discussions more than once a day.
"Not really," he said. "It's much all pretty straightforward as described in the briefing materials." He toyed with her desk calendar and she moved it away from him. "That's a good thing because I just can't get her out of my head."
"Believe me I understand."
He looked up at her and asked what he assumed was a rhetorical question. He was a good man and did want to be there for her. It was just that she hadn't responded to his overtures so far. "What really happened with you and Daniel? Things seemed to be very cool between you our last day there. If it would help you to talk about it…"
"Actually, I think I should." She took perverse satisfaction at the shock and the hint of disappointment that crossed his face before he assumed a sympathetic listening expression. He was, after all, a nice guy. "That evening on the ship Daniel came to my cabin. He just demanded to come in, no please."
She sat quietly for a minute and let the recollection flow over her, deciding where and how to edit. The memories were so clear because she had gone over them a thousand times already.
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I remember I was thinking to myself when he demanded to come in, he can't say please. It's against the rules. I asked him, "When it's just the two of us, couldn't you say please?"
He stared at me blankly. "You want me to say please."
When I nodded, he said, "I can't Sam. It took me a little bit to work this out when I first came. I'm a Method actor. I'm the type of actor who has to live the part all the time. I can't take it off and put it back on when I need it. I have to believe that this is who I am." He spread his hands. "My son's life is the price of failure." He clenched his jaw and a muscle jumped. "After awhile, you become what you pretend to be. I'm not your Daniel any more."
"I'm surprised you didn't summon me to your chambers," I told him. I ignored his comment about not being Daniel any more. I didn't believe it. The way he was with his son, the selfless things he was doing for these people, they were evidence that he was still there.
He said, "I was afraid you might not have come. I brought you pain last night."
He was wearing a tunic of this marvelous velvety fabric that clung to his upper body and I yielded to the temptation to run my hands over it. I told him, "I was embarrassed all right …. At first."
He looked at me quizzically and slipped his arms around my waist. He asked, "Only at first?"
"You have anything in this world at your disposal, many women who are far more beautiful and less difficult than I, but you want me. It's very flattering."
"Have you thought at all Sam," he asked, the merest whisper of hesitation in his voice, "what it would be like if you were marked as mine and I were marked as yours?"
I said, "I thought you didn't want to deal with my lust for you."
He was looking at me from under half-closed lids, his face giving nothing away. "So that is what it is then, lust? When you think about us together, you only think about sex?"
"What is the point of this conversation, Daniel?" I asked. I lifted my hand to trace along his cheekbone and he turned his head and kissed my palm. "I'm not the kind of woman who could come here and be your, your, what? your concubine. I guess that's the word for a ruler's lover."
"You're not for sale and you are no one's concubine. These things I know." He made a soft growling sound and kissed me hard. One hand left my waist and traveled down to cup my backside and pull me tight against him.
It felt way too good and it would have been so easy to give in if he had more in mind than teasing kisses like the last time. I pushed him away. "Do you love me?"
He countered with, "Do you love me?"
"I love Daniel as I knew him. His Grace Danyal, I just don't know. I don't like the arrogance, the rudeness, and presumption. I don't like a man bleeding to death a few feet away from you without a trace of compassion on your part."
He sighed and he set me away from him. He rose and went to the door and then turned. "As my wife, I can make you happier sexually than you've ever been, I'm sure of it." Yes, he had gained a lot of confidence. "I can give you luxury like you've never known. I can make you the mother of a precious little boy. I can make you part of something very important for these people. I can love you BUT I can't be the Daniel you remember. Being that Daniel got Davi's mother killed. I won't risk anyone else I love." He looked at me very seriously. "Be sure you want to turn all that down because I won't offer it again."
I was crying but I shook my head and he left. The door shutting behind him sounded like them nailing my coffin shut.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Cam said, "Sam?"
She looked up and apologized. "I was just putting my thoughts in order. He came in and basically told me that he was a Method actor who had to live the part of the arrogant ruler all the time. He couldn't not be that person in private and carry it off in public. He kissed me. It was strange the way it happened, but…yeah…he proposed. The thing was he said he would be as he had been the whole time we were there. There would be no private Daniel Jackson from days gone past so I turned him down."
Cam said, "I guess you felt you didn't have any other choice."
"Exactly."
Her phone rang and she excused herself and picked it up. General Landry said, "Is Mitchell there with you?"
"Yes, sir," she responded.
"Why don't both of you come to my office. We've got a response from the government to the amended proposal Dr. Jackson sent back."
When they joined Teal'c and Jonas in Landry's office, their team members were already sitting around his small round conference table. Landry had stayed behind his desk and was leaning back. "Good news and you all are owed a vote of appreciation for your work getting Dr. Jackson to accept our offer with only minor amendments. There was some amusement at State about the inclusion of a supply of Jell-O."
Cam said, with barely controlled eagerness, "How will the signing be managed? When is it scheduled?"
Landry shifted a little and appeared slightly uncomfortable. "There was an unusual request when we notified the Linteri that agreement had been reached. Dr. Jackson was very careful to state that this request in no way reflects unfavorably on either you, Colonel, or Colonel Carter. Nonetheless, he has requested that neither of you return and that General O'Neill lead the team returning for the signature."
Sam
looked quickly at her CO who was staring ahead stony-faced. There was
no way to take this except as a personal rejection. It was possible
that Daniel had made this decision on Elspetha's part and she knew
nothing about Cam being asked not to return. Sam doubted it. For
herself, she was torn between relief and disappointment. Going back and
getting the cold and distant treatment she had received her last day
there would have been extremely painful even if she would have loved to
have another opportunity just to look at him.
After Jonas and
Teal'c had walked away, leaving the two victims of public Linteri
rejection standing together in the hall, Cam said fiercely, "I will not
believe this is what she wants. This is Daniel's doing. It can't end
like this."
Sam hoped for his sake he was right. For herself, there was only a cold, empty place at her core. She walked numbly back to her office, shut the door, and defiantly began to reconstruct her lovely dream once again.