One of the conference rooms in the SGC had been converted into a common room for the refugees and Jack Gallagher had elected to join them in their temporary home. He was no longer confined to the jail cell that had been his home for the last week, but he was still a prisoner as far as he was concerned. Visiting with the people he had learned to accept as his own made his stay at the SGC a little easier. At least he wasn't considered a lunatic by these people.
The others had loosened up now that they weren't dealing with strangers, and Jack felt comfortable for the first time since he had been rescued. He was around people who understood his fear and anxiety; he didn't have to hide this from them, although he tried to anyway. Years of hiding his feelings from the world had been ingrained in him and he wasn't about to change now.
The tables and chairs had been removed from the conference room, making space for more comfortable furniture that included some cots for those who wanted to take a nap. The cots were currently being used by three small children who were sleeping soundly, despite the low rumblings of the adults in the room. Most of these adults were sitting on the floor in a circle, trying to come up with a plan and to rationalize their existence now that they were free. Of course, there were the few who insisted that they weren't free yet; the guards outside the door were proof of that.
Jack just sat there in the circle, surrounded by his friends, and listened to them work their way through this mess. He had given up on trying to convince them that they were free, as it wouldn't make a difference while they were kept locked up in this room.
Taria was there by his side, speaking up occasionally to air her views. They still hadn't had their chance to talk and Jack was getting impatient. It was important to him now to find out exactly why she had betrayed him. Granted, this was something he should have listened to when she had tried to tell him all those months ago, but Jack had decided that it was better late than never.
That talk was going to have to wait, however. Dargan was telling the story of when Jack first arrived in Hulmeshur and Jack felt it was his obligation to set the record straight. He did not trip over a shovel and land face first in the pile of manure that was used to fertilize the garden. He had been pushed, by Dargan no less, narrowly avoiding the pile of droppings, and only got some on his arm. There was some good natured arguing over that event, with some of the others joining in, until the room was filled with laughter as other stories were told.
This was something that they rarely had the opportunity to do, as life on Hulmeshur nearly drained the energy out of the people who lived there, well at least the slaves who lived there. This sitting around, telling stories and generally enjoying themselves was as foreign to these people as Thor's spaceship was. The people had been too tired and too scared to have any fun out of life, and Jack didn't want to ruin this opportunity for them now. So he sat with them and listened to their stories and to Taria's laughter, the sound of which had taunted him during the past week while he tried to pretend he didn't care about her.
Jack couldn't help staring at her as she laughed, reflecting on the memories that had haunted him during his stay in that cell. He smiled back at her when she sent him one of those smiles, thinking that she was still as beautiful as ever. But there was still her betrayal hanging over their heads and Jack was determined to at least listen to her explanations.
It was several hours later before Jack finally got the chance he was waiting for. Most of the other refugees had gone to their beds, while the few who remained had settled down on the cots or the floor of the conference room. Jack and Taria had retreated to a corner of the room, both knowing that this was her opportunity to explain her actions. But she didn't say anything. She just sat there staring into his eyes, searching his soul for something, and Jack knew that she was looking for his forgiveness.
They sat there in silence, until the suspense was threatening to strangle Jack. "Why didn't you ever give up on me?" he asked, needing to know the answer to this question just as much as he was determined to hear why she betrayed him.
He had surprised her, he could tell. "What?" she asked in confusion.
"You never gave up on me," he said again. "I hated you and literally made your life miserable, but you continued to love me. Most people would have given up, but you didn't," he added, looking for the answer in her eyes. "Why?"
She didn't answer right away, but Jack could see that she was struggling to find the right words. He didn't blame her, he well remembered snarling at her to shut her up whenever she tried to talk to him before. He took her hands in his and waited for the answer, hoping it would help heal the hurt that still raged inside his heart. "I love you, Jack," she finally said. "I had hurt you so badly and all I wanted to do was make the hurt go away, but I didn't know how." She stopped at that point, reaching out to place her hand on his face, while staring into his eyes, then continued. "I wanted to make it up to you."
Jack didn't know what to say to that, so he kept his silence as he processed her words. She had loved him, even though they had been forced on each other. She had grown to love him – just as he had learned to love her, until her betrayal destroyed it all.
"I was wrong in what I had done," Taria continued. "But you have to understand that I was afraid. I had seen them coming and I knew they would find us and I was… I panicked, Jack. I didn't want to go through the hak'tran. I remember seeing someone go through that when I was a small child, and I have been taught to avoid it at all costs." Her eyes took on a pleading look and Jack was drowning in them. She looked away at that point, staring at the wall behind him before continuing, "I thought that if they saw me begging you not to leave, they would spare us." She brought her gaze back to him, with tears glistening in her eyes and told him, "I was wrong."
"Yeah," Jack finally said bitterly. He had suffered immensely for his escape attempt, still was for all intents and purposes, and it was all because she had panicked. Anger swept through him as he remembered the agony of the torture he had gone through.
"Jack?" she said worriedly. Jack turned to look at her, wondering at the fear in her voice, then felt a measure of calm easing through him as something she'd said clicked into place.
"They had already seen us?" he asked, his mind racing with thoughts as the implication of what she had said started to sink in.
"Yes," she replied, as she nodded her head. "I saw them coming and I knew they would find us." This would explain the sudden change in her behavior, anxious to escape one minute then begging him to stop the next. Jack was beginning to understand her motives, despite the anger that was still churning just beneath the surface.
"Why didn't you tell me that they were coming?" he ventured to ask. Maybe they could have slipped away until the guards passed.
"There was no time," she said, desperation creeping into her voice. Jack heard the desperation, but still needed to hear it all before deciding on his next course of action. "The guards were nearly upon us when I first saw them," she added. "Please Jack, please understand."
Jack tried to ignore the tears that were now streaming down her face, as he dwelled on the story she was telling him. Her explanations all fit, he was just having a hard time with the total forgiveness part. Damn it, he was just being stubborn in admitting the fact that he had already forgiven her.
"Taria," he said, as he looked away. He was unable to look into her eyes at that point, but he knew that he had to make her understand his reluctance. "That punishment nearly destroyed me. It took away that part of me that kept me strong." He looked back at her, watching as tears poured down her cheeks. "I hated them for taking that away and I hated you for letting them."
"I couldn't stop them," she insisted. "You have to believe me, Jack. I…"
"I believe you," Jack rushed to tell her, "You wouldn't have been able to stop them anymore than I could, but you did turn me over to them and I hated you for that." She didn't respond and Jack couldn't stand the tears anymore, so he pulled her into his arms to give her a hug, hoping it would be enough.
They sat that way for a few minutes, each working on what they could say to mend their broken relationship. It was Taria who finally broke the silence, saying, "I knew that you hated me and why you hated me. I had hoped that you would eventually understand and forgive me, but you would not even listen to me. Every time I tried to tell you what happened, you turned me away." Jack wasn't ready to apologize for his behavior, so he kept his silence. Taria apparently decided to continue on anyway. "You hated me and I understood that. Your hatred hurt me very badly, but it was a punishment that I deserved. I had hurt you and you were punishing me. I really do understand."
What the hell? Jack pulled back from the embrace to stare at her in shock. What was she talking about? He had never thought about using his anger to deliberately hurt her, in fact the anger was more of a shield to protect himself against future betrayals. He had been determined to hang onto his anger and hatred to keep from trusting her again. But now that he thought about it, maybe it was a subconscious effort to hurt her for what she did. Oh hell, this was crazy. "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked her.
"I could not let your anger destroy us. I needed you to be there with me. I wanted a child to prove our loyalty to our master." Jack couldn't help the grimace that graced his features at that statement. "I thought that if I continued to love you," she continued, "You would eventually forgive me so that we could be happy again." She stopped then and stared at the buttons on his shirt. "I admit that I sometimes believed that to be a hopeless cause."
"What? That I would forgive you or that we could be happy again?" Jack asked, already knowing the answer.
"Both," she said, as she looked back up into his face. "There were times when I thought maybe you had forgiven me, but then…" she sighed, then said, "I still love you, Jack."
He didn't answer her. Instead he cupped her face in his hands, then kissed her softly, wanting to know if she really meant those words. She kissed him back, and Jack deepened the kiss, taking everything she offered, all the while demanding more. He ended the kiss reluctantly and smiled at her before saying, "I love you too. I think that I always have, just too ornery to admit it."
She smiled back at him, but still had to ask, "Ornery? I am not familiar with that word."
"Mean and stubborn," he clarified, then grinned when she nodded her head in agreement.
"Definitely stubborn," she said. "I thought that they were going to have to kill you in order to make you a slave. You absolutely refused to give in."
"They won in that respect," Jack growled angrily, remembering his fears while living in that environment.
"Did they?" Taria asked, causing Jack to stare at her in astonishment.
"Well yeah," he responded sarcastically. "All it took was three days worth of constant, agonizing pain and I was a model citizen."
"You were never a 'model citizen', Jack," she responded patiently. "Dargan and Padral kept trying to guess how long it would be before you earned another punishment for being willful." She smiled at him through her disapproval and continued, "Mother was sure you'd be dead before the rains came. I knew better though. You were too stubborn to die."
Jack couldn't help it. Her smile was contagious and he grinned at her words. "Well, I'm glad your mother had faith in me," he said. Taria rolled her eyes and Jack's smile grew wider.
"I love my mother, Jack, but she can be so stubborn," Taria said. Her expression changed into one that was thoughtful, as she said, "Although, she did save me from the torture I was destined to go through."
"Taria," Jack said, as he pulled her into his embrace again. "Tell me what happened the day I was rescued."
She stiffened in his arms for a moment, then settled in to do some more explaining. Jack waited for her response, wondering what she had been thinking that day when the strangers came looking for her mate. Most importantly, he wanted to know why she had given Patterson that stone.
"I saw them coming and at first I was afraid of them," she said, as she laid her head on his chest. He sat there quietly and listened to her words as she told him what she had done. "They were asking about you and I was afraid that they had come to kill you. But they were wearing the same clothes that you had on when you first came here and I thought that maybe they were your friends. No one would talk to them, though. They were all too afraid to talk with the strangers." Jack nodded his head at those words. He knew the rules just as well as the other slaves.
"I am not sure why I decided to talk to them," Taria continued. "Maybe it was because I thought they could be your friends, but I do remember hoping they had come to rescue you. So I went up to them and told them that I could help them." Jack waited for her to continue, but she was lost in her memories. He stroked her hair as he waited for her to finish her story, relishing in the companionable silence they had found themselves in.
"Hey," he said after awhile. She brought her head up to look at him and Jack realized that she had her own demons running around in her mind. He could see the self-incrimination in her eyes and he had a sudden desire to chase her doubts away. "What happened next?" he asked her instead.
She shrugged, then answered, "They took you home."
"What about the stone?" Jack asked, frustration making an appearance. Was she doing this on purpose?
"Oh," she said, suddenly remembering that part of her conversation with the strangers. "I knew they wouldn't take me with them. I was just a slave. No one cares about a slave. But I wanted you to… I was hoping you would want to have something to remember me by. So I gave it to one of those men. Besides, I knew I would be killed because of your escape." She gave him a guilty look, then said, "I regretted giving it to him after he left."
A surge of anger had raced through Jack when she made her statement that no one would care about a slave, only to be replaced with a feeling of sadness as he thought about her loneliness after his escape. At least she had the rock to cling to when her loneliness had engulfed her while he was with her. He pulled her back into his embrace once again, hanging on tightly to her in an effort to chase away the sadness that was hovering over them. "I'm glad that your mother was able to keep you safe until I got back."
"I still cannot believe that you came back for me," she said in an awe-filled voice. "I really thought you hated me."
"I couldn't let you go through that," Jack responded honestly, "No matter how I felt about you. I fought off my rescuers so that I could grab you to take with us, but they wouldn't let me go long enough to find you."
"I am just a slave…"
"Stop that!" Jack snarled, sitting back to force her to look at him. "You are no longer a slave. You are free to be whatever you want to be, and I don't care how lowly we were made to feel, we are still people who are worthy of more than just a glance or an order. We are not the animals that Handar insisted that we were. Do you understand?"
She nodded at that, her eyes wide as she stared at him with shock. It had been just a statement, a lie that she had been told all her life, and Jack's reaction must have surprised her. He knew that he was going to have to work hard to get Taria and the others to believe in him and in themselves.
"Look," Jack said, feeling foolish for reacting so violently. "I'm sorry. It's just hard for me to accept your beliefs when I know them to be false."
"Now you are calling me a liar," Taria said, her eyes narrowing as she stared at him.
"Yep," Jack said with a grin. "And with enough time, I'll be able to prove it to you. In the meantime, I have something better to do." He didn't give her a chance to argue with him, instead he kissed her with all the passion he could muster, leaving them both breathless when he finally pulled back. "Too bad we couldn't find someplace private," he told her.
"What will happen to us now?" Taria asked, effectively stopping Jack from kissing her again.
"We take it one day at a time," he responded, wondering at the anxious look she was now giving him. "The others will be taken to a place where they can live out the rest of their lives in freedom. You could go with them if you wanted to." Jack tried to keep his voice neutral when he said that, but even though he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to happen from this point on, he knew that something in him was debating on keeping Taria with him.
"You will not be going to this place?"
"I may go to see how everyone is doing, but not to live there. My place is here helping to defend this planet from the bad guys."
She didn't say anything else and her silence was scaring Jack. What was she thinking? Did she want to stay with him or not? She probably didn't want to be separated from the family and friends she had lived with all her life and Jack had hurt her badly. Why would he think she would forgive him so easily? It was because she had forgiven him for it already, he rationalized. She just needed time to think, and so did he.
"Would I be welcome to stay here with you?" she finally got up the nerve to ask, effectively cutting into his time to think. Jack couldn't help but wonder at the elation that flowed through him. He was not supposed to give in so easily.
Oh to hell with it. "Yes," he responded with a smile. "But I want you to realize that it will be hard going for awhile. You won't get to see your mother or your friends for months on end, maybe even years. I'm gone for days, sometimes even weeks, and you would be alone until I got back. Life as a military wife can be lonely for some."
"I would have our child to keep me company," she said shyly.
"Our child?" Jack asked warily.
"Doctor Lam tells me that I am six weeks pregnant." Her smile lit up her face as she announced, "I am going to have a baby."
"A baby," Jack repeated, not so sure how this affected things now. A few weeks ago, he would have been ecstatic because the news would have gotten Handar and the guards off his back. But now that he was free, a child seemed like a permanent leg iron in his life. "A child," he said again, smiling now as he thought about what he could teach this baby as it grew to adulthood in freedom. He looked at Taria to see doubts marring the smile she had on her face and he gave her a broad smile, knowing that this child was going to make it to adulthood if he had anything to say about it. He was determined that he wouldn't make the same mistakes he'd made with Charlie.
The doubts melted from Taria's eyes as she took in his smile and Jack hugged her tightly, too tightly as she protested his treatment of her. He loosened his hold on her, but didn't completely let her go. "We're going to make it," he told her with a good deal of conviction in his voice. "We're definitely going to make it."
She smiled back at him, then kissed him fervently. Jack knew that they were in for some rough times, but he was determined to make the best of it. He had survived slavery, beatings and a punishment that had nearly destroyed his mind, body and soul, and if he could survive that, he was pretty sure he could survive marriage and fatherhood again. It just took perseverance and he figured he still had a lot of that left.
All he needed to do now was to convince O'Neill and the powers that be that Taria could be trusted to live among Earth's population. O'Neill had already hinted that Taria's fate was up to Jack, now all he had to do was find out exactly what the General was talking about when he'd said that. Another battle, he thought, as he smiled at Taria. He already had the ammunition, he figured, as he put his hand on her stomach. He was so looking forward to using it.