Quench the Fire
Chapter 1
With Words
She is content to spent most of her afternoons sitting alone in the backyard. The blades of grass have grown long and wild, with many weeds sown about. Flowers he calls weeds with a beautiful petal pattern, a marvelous lifespan before turning into floating wisps.
He picked one after complaining about them, after she asked where all the yellow flowers went—their backward no longer dotted with vibrancy, but the subtle puffs of demise—then blew it towards her, the little seeds held onto the end of a feather-light star floating in the air, swirling in the wind, and around her face until speckling her hair.
He dragged his finger through, thoroughly sweeping them all away, before pulling her in for a kiss.
"That's magical," she spoke of the germination technique, the ability to literally see life floating before her eyes, landing on the ground with a hope to take root.
All she wanted was to take root.
"It's annoying," he grumped, reaching down to tear at the plants in the grass, ripping them up with curled fingers and tossing them to the ground. Before she laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, beckoning him back to her, back from the slaughter.
"Stop, my love." When he glanced at her, saw her pitiful attempt at blinking away her tears because things can be ripped apart so easily, can be ravaged, and destroyed within a blink of an eye. "Please stop."
She doesn't remember what happened after that, only that he left the plants alone to grow in their yard, and although he said he has to do something called mowing, he said he's putting it off for her.
The tea in her hand is tepid and unflavored, lacking in any distinct taste. Living on home grown and brewed teas that electrified the taste buds in her mouth and the responses in her body to stave off illness, sadness, stiffness, have ruined her for this world and it's weak imitation.
Even the sugar is less sweet than she remembers.
So, the making of tea becomes more of a routine, then it does a treat for her mouth or stomach.
The air grows colder by the time he returns home, and it's not until he calls her out of her reverie, that she realizes how much time has passed—truly. They've been living in this house for almost four months.
Birdie would be almost three months old.
The extra room is filled to look like an office with a sleek desk and office chair, even a clear plastic floor covering, so the wheels don't become caught. There are some extra boxes in the corner with empty picture frames and other décor items they have yet to place in the house, but Cameron assures her, they're all moved in.
"You're gonna catch a cold sitting out here, Honey."
He drops one of his large, fleecy sweaters into her lap like he doesn't know the place of her origin—because he truly doesn't—but the heavy material adds a level of warmth, nonetheless. No longer does he hint at, or request, that she return indoors to have meals with him—he doesn't prod or repeat her name when she doesn't form an answer to him either. Instead, just offers her up what she might need, and leaves her to make whatever decision she chooses.
As his body starts to slip away from within the mouth of the door, she speaks to the lawn, to the yellow flowers, and the cold dirt she sometimes needs to rake through her hands because as a child she did the same thing when the world became too much for her. The grit, the coolness, the scent of fresh earth willing her nerves to relax because as everything comes from the land, so must everything return, and eventually everything will be dirt.
Only dirt.
"I had another vision today."
They've stopped calling them dreams, because the scenarios of dreams are haphazard and don't contain the immanent death of a world during every iteration as far as she knows.
Earth embroiled in flames.
"Oh yeah?" He tries not to sound interested as he pops halfway back out the door. Tries not to sound scared but the tremble in his voice isn't buried deep enough for her not to find.
"They're coming, Cameron."
That bring him fully out of the house, transitioning onto standing aloof, a few steps away from her on the porch. When she glances up at him, he's watching the birdfeeder, it's been a week and a half, but no birds have graced their porch or their windowsills. In the morning she wakes to the incessant sound of the neighbor's wind chimes—Cameron divulged the name to her and explained they're an audio attraction to most.
Not to her.
They drown out the sound of everything.
Even the dreams where the hoards of Ori ships are blasting through their galaxy and shooting down countless innocent individuals. How the imagery blends in her mind to the memories of Qetesh, the tackiness of drying blood, the weight of a decapitated head, what a body looks like bisected.
The dreams where she becomes the famished flames blazing on top of the ceiling, her hungry eyes scanning the crowd for sustenance. The thrill and smell of burning flesh—of a charred corpse.
The dreams they've taken to calling visions now.
He does his best to keep calm so she can leech off his demeanor. In his stray from panic, she can remain relaxed while speaking of the atrocities she's witnessed, she's experienced.
"Honey." The weight of his hand falls to the back of her head, his fingers pull through her hair, send shivers down her spine at the contact—the only contact she can remember that wasn't meant to tame her, to change her. "We talked about this."
"A conversation hardly changes anything." She turns, his hand falls from her hair as she glances up at him, adorned professionally in what he calls slacks and a dress shirt, the beard shaved from his face because she mentioned in passing that she's not a fan. "You should know that by now."
There's a groan from the downturned metallic basin they purchased to collect rain to water the plants, because living frivolously for almost a year hardly dissipates from their system so easily. It leaves dark streaks of running water over the concrete as he stoops to sit on it beside her, his hand falling to her knee. "What makes you think they're coming?"
"I can feel them."
"Feel them how?" His warm hand jostles her bare knee, the movement squeaking her chair. "Feel them like this?"
"I can feel their rage. Their want for war. I can feel them in my blood, wanting to tear apart anything that—"
"Okay." His hand cups her cheeks, trying to prevent her from breaking down further. But in his eyes, she can tell that he knows the two outcomes, the two possibilities of what must happen. "It's okay."
"You have to take me back."
His thumb strokes over her cheek, the calluses softened with no longer flying planes, no longer teaching young soldiers how to use guns. "Take you back where?"
The depictions of so many laying dead. Many slain from her own hand, a parasite running her own hand, the blood thick and warm, the bodies twitch. So many yet to fall, the mountain leveled in a single blast from space, the entirety of one military installation razzed to rubble burning and singed into the ground.
Shaking her head forces a tear free and she stares into the horizon, at the mountain in the backdrop of their backyard. "I have to go back."
"To Ver Isca?'
She holds his hand to her face, hoping to cement her in their backyard, not millions of miles away where plots are underfoot to tear apart this planet.
"To the mountain."
His voice drops the softness he's uses to placate answers out of her, to garner her trust, which he has, and gains an edge, the same coarseness it gains whenever they speak of the SGC, and his old colleagues. "Why?"
"It's dangerous. They're coming—"
"Sweetheart, we don't even know if—"
"They're coming, Cameron."
"Okay." He takes both her hands in his own, trying to be gentle with his words to her, although he always argues about the verity of her visions—of her dreams—even after she becomes engorged and aflame, he still attempts to understand her concerns. "Let say the Ori are coming here—"
"They are."
"Okay, so the Ori are on their way here right now." She nods to affirm this point. She cannot calculate how far away they are, only that they haven't managed to slip into this galaxy yet. "Why are they coming here."
"To get me."
"Please don't take this the wrong way, but why would the Ori construct all new ships, go through the havoc of breaking into this galaxy, just to get you?"
"Because I think I'm the Orici."
A/N: chapter and story title borrowed from Shakespeare's Gentlemen of Verona