Mark'd to Die

Chapter 4

Nurse of Shame

It doesn't happen right away because they have to taper her off the meds. He's taken to spending the entire day in a chair next to her bed, only leaving to do his physiotherapy two doors down. They try to make him leave more often, but he refuses until they'll let her leave with him, even if it's just back to his room. He doesn't like the idea that she could be unconscious or not rational and someone like Lorne has access to her room.

In two days, she's more lucid—shaking like crazy—but she recognizes him right away when he hobbles into her room from physio. Her hand reaches for the side of his face and when she touches his cheek she lets out a sob, until he grabs her, dropping his cane, wobbling, unstable with his own pain, but falling into the embrace.

He tells her he loves her every chance he gets, and she tries to shift over so he can have a spot next to her on the cot, but there's not enough room—there's never enough room—so he drags the chair over so it's even with the bed, and they pretend he's laying next to her.

What he doesn't do is mention the baby in any manner.

Figures she's got enough to focus on, getting her body clean, her mind right, before he starts digging at the grave she made in her mind for their daughter.

He has so many questions—Did she get to hold her? Who did she look like? How did it happen?—but he knows better than to pry.

Has to attend a meeting with Hammond—one Landry is supposed to be present for too but is suspiciously absent from—about the legalities behind what they did, the contracts the SGC is going to have to draw up, how when he leaves here with her, he's leaving carte blanche—honorably discharged.

Also gets a small house for them. The backyard he promised her, a little cottage for them to grow old in.

Just them.

Finally, they transfer her back to his suite and he finds her in the bathroom one day, just getting out of the shower—despite his earlier desires, he still hasn't managed to make it in there with her, thinks it's best to save it for when they're really alone.

She dries off—never gaining a shyness around him—she rubs the towel across her body, down her thin, still pale, arms with a now fading bruises rippling from yellow to brown, over her breasts that are no longer full of milk to her stomach where a scar slashes from hip to hip. It grins as she bends to dry her legs—still new, still red—and he knows that they cut their daughter out of her, that nothing about the situation was natural.

He holds her at night, yearning to touch her, to love her, to show her how much he does, but knowing that her body is precarious in the lapse of what it was creating.


In the last week, her withdrawal symptoms are the worst.

Once Landry found out that he wasn't going to be the good old military poster boy anymore, he basically sent them an eviction notice and as much as he'd love to honor it and get the hell out of this mountain, they can't leave until her body isn't dependent on the drugs anymore.

But with orders from her old man—the president—Lam speeds up the tapering process, like Vala's body—her alien and beaten body—is supposed to get the memo.

She starts getting horrible, blinding headaches that hit her out of nowhere. Cause her to hold her head and stop walking, sometimes she groans and grinds her teeth, sometimes she screams and tries to hide her face in the bed pillows, her legs cycling underneath to try and outrun what's inside of her.

He tries his best to help, but his medical knowledge is field-based, and he has no clue what to do.

He takes her Lam—who is more than weary of him, his threats, and his intent to act on them if they mistreat his wife any further—While she does agree to see Vala, she only checks her eyes, stating that because they're dilating, she's fine.

They leave with over-the-counter pain killers that she can't even keep down because of how much she's throwing up.

She wakes on the third night, her breathing elevated like she just ran a mile in a minute. He tries to calm her, holds her up and checks her pulse, he finds her heart beating so fast that when her whimpers quiet, he can see it jostle in her chest.

Lam doesn't even bother to greet him this time, just deadpans that it's a form of a panic attack, that it has nothing to do with withdrawal and if he could keep her calm, none of this would be happening.

That's when he snaps, tired of their nonchalance, their lack of compassion, their throw away treatment of his wife. He threatens to call a real ambulance and when doctors find naquadah in her veins, he's more than happy to discuss who she is, how she got here, what she did for the entire planet, and how the United States government has been repaying her over and over again by mutilating her body and holding her captive.

Lam bitches through the entire injection process, about how Landry's not going to like it, how the president gave them an eviction notice for a reason, and how it doesn't seem like he's serious about leaving.

Without a very calm voice, and without glancing away from his wife whose vitals start to settle as soon as a small amount of the drug is in her system, he states, "I don't give a shit."

Finds himself camping out in the chair beside her for the night again. Falling asleep to the gentle rhythm of her vitals repeating on the machine to the right of him. Knows that he has to keep his cool because they're almost free.

Thought they were free before, and each time he was wrong..

This time it seems like everything he wants is being presented to him wearing bows and all it took was the sacrifice of their daughter.

His child.

The only one he's every going to have.

Vala wakes early in the morning, her hungover eyes examining the room quietly beside him as he tumbles out of an uneasy sleep. Catches her movement in the slow blink of his eyes, his chin dipping off the curve of his hand and immediately waking him up.

He clears his throat and is surprised when she's not watching him like a hawk. Her fight or flight mechanism is off the hook lately. Whenever anything moves now, she scans and waits like a wild animal—preparing to attack or preparing to run.

He knows that the SGC did that to her.

Knows that the villagers in Ver Isca did that too her.

Knows that the way she's been treated in the last two years has reverted her to animalistic defense mechanisms that she never employs against him.

Reaches for her hand, and she doesn't flinch, allows him to collect cold and clammy fingers, wrapping them in his palm while watching her eyes dart around the room.

"I'm back in medical?"

"Yeah."

Their voices rival each other in sleeplessness. In pure exhaustion.

"Why am I back in medical?"

Sometimes she has lapses in judgement—how much she can eat, how late it is, how far away something is, how cold the temperature is—and sometimes she has lapses in memory, forgetting what happened mere seconds ago, forgetting simple and important things like his name or hers—just for a few seconds, but seconds have never felt like years before—sometimes she stares at him and doesn't know who the hell he is, but still innately knows that she can trust him.

He scratches a hand over his chin. He's starting to grow a beard and he kinda likes it, only it probably doesn't help her when she forgets who he is.

"You had a little relapse." Pets a hand over her head, and she closes her eyes briefly at his touch.

"A relapse?" Her hands aren't shaky anymore, and even though her skin is still pale and sweaty, she's balancing more easily, slowly regaining her equilibrium, her movement, her personality.

"Yeah, umm—the drugs that—"

"I'm really hungry."

He stops trying to explain to her how the people they trusted at the SGC have betrayed her again. How the words of one man can outweigh the lives of those he's supposed to represent and protect. He's seen injustices happen before, seen soldiers take advantage of their position when posted in other countries, seen superiors turn a blind eye to violence and illegal activities performed under them, seen them give praise to wild—almost feral—men, who then get promoted and continue the cycle.

It's not everyone he's worked with—not common enough to happen daily—but happens enough— he's been around enough—to see the patterns.

Happens enough that he knows he can't do very much to change it, because he's only one guy, and it's his word against a dozen others.

But he never thought the dishonesty would run this deep.

That suppressing people would happen for no reason other than because it can—to drill in the rules, what is acceptable and what is not, what rights humans have and how people who aren't human are not privileged to the same rights.

How people who aren't human—or fully human—are disposable.

They took his daughter.

His baby girl.

They murdered his daughter and every time he thinks of it, it makes his blood boil anew. But he knows he needs to temper his emotions for the sake of his wife.

She sits, her hands folded into her lap, complaining of being hungry. She hasn't eaten in over a day because the meds and the withdrawal hurt her stomach, make her vomit.

Knows that she's hungry, but she's also putting on a show for him.

Knows because of the way that her lips twitch into the smallest grin, letting him know that if he can put away the emotions—the rage—that she's willing to forget all that's happened to her just to keep his good company for awhile.

He squeezes her thigh beneath the thin hospital blanket and leans forward to peck a kiss onto the scar on her hairline. "Let's go get some food."

She gestures through the privacy curtain to a currently empty medical area. Most of the lights are off, and there's no nurse at the station. "No one's released me yet."

Tugs on her hand, getting her to sit while he drops down the railing on her bed. "It doesn't matter anymore."


A/N: Chapter title borrowed from Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece.