In a House of Tears

Chapter 1

I Would Bite

He stays true to his word.

Removes her from beneath the wretched mountain almost two years after his initial promise. Two years after their first meeting, while wearing an orange jumpsuit she tucked her legs beneath her for warmth, for safety, so no one would be able to yank her away and to somewhere she didn't want to be.

The weather is balmy, much hotter than she's used to. He calls this season 'summer', where the wind barely blows and when it does, it's humid, picking up pollen from flowers and trees creating a haze in the air that makes the atmosphere appear as steam. It's unusual because she's only seen this planet amidst a snowstorm, hidden at night, or drizzled in reflective rain.

It's their first night in the house together. The wooden floors shiny and bare, the kitchen clean, complete with a fridge and an oven, but no hearth or cauldron. There's also something called a washing machine and a dryer. She has no idea how to use any of them. The bed is just a rectangle form, which he promises he'll make up after supper.

Their day ran long, being evicted from the mountain, signing papers indicating that she will pretend that the Tau'ri never laid a finger on her when they touched her with several, when they dissected her, and removed a life from within her, while gassing her into compliance leaving her with a nasty grin of a scar and shock of a situation that she hasn't begun to realize.

Her body still shakes under the wake of negative pressure, of still being tired and hungry for two people, of no longer fitting into clothing that fit her before, but without a concrete reason why. He is more than understanding, categorizing her weakness as a side effect from the narcotics they were injecting her with until her arm swelled and bruised under the attempts—but it's not.

It's from her body wanting to give up. Having nothing left to give after being abused by various people. It's about her mind having to force the fatigue from her limbs and her heavy head as she helps Cameron pick out a sheet pattern, about needing to answer him when he asks what she wants for supper on her first free night, because they should be celebrating, this should be a celebration—but she has none left in her.

She sits in the backyard, on a stiff cushioned chair, the wind tingling the soft hairs on her arm as the trees grow black against the fading sun. The house beside them isn't as close as in Ver Isca, they have a fence running the perimeter of the yard, and several shrubs and plants growing against it for privacy. However, she can still hear the light jingle of some device hanging on the neighbors back porch.

The door was left open at his behest. He told her that it would cool down the house, which was a bit muggy, and when they first opened the red front door, it stuck in place. He explained that in hotter temperatures like these, paint tends to go sticky and wood tends to stretch, and that at night they should be hearing the groans of the house settling in the cooler temperature.

She knows the real reason is he was hesitant to leave her on her own. To allow her to be alone in their house for the first time. To be alone without eyes on her for the first time in two years. There were days when she holed herself up in that Ver Isca row house, days when he was marching and teaching the other soldiers how they might kill the Tau'ri—how now she wishes he would've been more diligent at his job—when she felt watched despite having the door locked four times.

Days when she would be wary of what she did indoors and the words she spoke to her own stomach.

As the gentle jingle sings from beyond the privacy bushes, she feels the strong sting of tears in her eyes.

But the front door squeaks open, and through the dim light of the house, she can see him yank the keys out while shifting a crinkling brown bag to his opposite hand, balancing it precariously, before using the heel of his sneaker to knock the door shut behind him.

Doesn't even put down the bag or his keys before he turns and locks the door, the same four locks bringing so much familiarity to a galaxy and a planet that doesn't want her.

Part of her is relieved when she hears the locks click into place because, ever true to his words, he's keeping her safe. Even his presence is relaxing, not only because she knows to what great lengths he'll fight for her, but that just having him, his familiarity with her, is a form of safety.

"Hey, I got dinner." He nudges his shoes off at the front door, by a braided rug they also bought in a store that she doesn't remember buying. His socked feet step out, and then across the wooden floors into the kitchen which sits just inside the back door. "Sorry it took so long. There was a line-up at the drive-thru."

Her fingers brush against her arm, and she feels the bumps begin to form across her skin. The wind stirs up, one gust, one arctic gust and the memory of crunching her boots over snow so clear.

By a winding path in a medieval city, over the dry dusty tundra where she watched an aircraft spiral and crash. The touch of cold glass under her hand as she tapped, trying to get the man inside to allow her access to the craft to help him.

The burst of searing heat through her chest and the sight of her own blood splattered against the dark metal of the craft. Fingers, malicious fingers, digging their way into the wound for over a year to gain power, superiority, compliance.

Always seeking submission, because without it, there is no clear victor, and one cannot be equal with an outsider.

The loss of life from within her, crying out in a single wail that she reached her hands for despite being held weighted under a mask, despite having her body torn open and bleeding all over the table.

A single wail was all she got.

No smile, or blink, or sigh.

No tiny hand reaching towards her finger to grasp for her the way she grasped for them, before they subdued her, forcing her to breathe in more gas with each of her struggles. Not caring if she died as a casualty along the way.

Her body still holds what she assumes are phantom labor pains, cramps within her empty body because it would be around this time that their daughter would have been born naturally.

She felt conflicted leaving Ver Isca, where only the ignorance of the villagers threatened them. They were malicious, they were uneducated and ingrained in a religion that they didn't choose. If given the chance, some of them, like Seevis, may have been swayed to the side of reason and a proper uprising could have happened.

Instead, they returned to Earth—his planet, where he feels more comfortable because he knows the customs and protocols, knows what's acceptable and what is not, already knows the people and in his naively optimistic mind, he though that if need be, he thought the secrets he could spill would shift the power behind them.

What he didn't think of was the nature of the people he comes from.

While the villagers suffered from the education denied to them and obeyed only the rules they were told, the Tau'ri have an abundance of education, technological prowess radiating out into the galaxy, and instead of searching for companionship, for further learning, for partnerships or even charity through altruistic actions on lesser planets, they conquered their technology and used it for war, used it to hurt, and maim, and kill.

Killed threats against them, Anubis, the first Prior all lonesome on that planet, and left as a martyr.

Then the innocent.

Killed what they didn't understand because they didn't have the communication capacity to listen, because they'd been reared to be violent, to be physical, to be malignant like a virus taking over all before them.

"I didn't know what you wanted." There's banging from the kitchen as he digs through half-emptied boxes of dishes and appliances. Essentials they picked up while at an indoor bazaar he called a department store. "So, I just got you a Big Mac and fries—How do you know about McDonalds?"

His voice is only vaguely in her ear, over the din of crinkling newsprint meant to protect breakables. Over the wind rustling the leaves of their shrubbery sounding vaguely like the icy ocean waves on the frozen beaches where she grew up. Over dissonant noises in her head, swarming like a cloud of locusts, so loud she can't make out a word, can't make out a single word.

Can only hear a baby's cry.

"Hey." His thumb caresses against her cheek, as he brushes a kiss into the scar half buried in her hair, the scar that changed the periphery of her hairline with a white slash. "You okay?"

"Yes." Nods, blinking away her tears, breathing in deeply to stem the pain in her abdomen. "Sorry."

"S'okay." Grins, happy, innocent, a rare find on this planet. Full of love, full of safety, and a growing number of vendettas collecting within him, slowly dyeing the color of his soul. He kisses her again, this time softly on the lips. "I got the food set up inside."

"Can we eat out here?"

"See the clouds over the horizon—" he points passed their privacy fence and the house with a backyard adjacent to their own to the mountain peak where the orange-hued sky diffuses into bitter dark clouds "—the wind is picking up too."

"Meaning?"

He pulls his lips tight, means to question her reaction, but when she doesn't bring attention to it, he clarifies, "it's gonna rain soon."

"Does that matter?"

"Weatherman on the radio said we're in for a hell of a storm tonight. Listen—" keeps her quiet with a hand on her arm, and she hears the same leaf rustling, the same jingling as before "—the neighbor's windchimes are going crazy."

"Cameron, I've been kept prisoner under that mountain for the last two months. The rain against my skin is more than welcome."

He nods stiffly, just once, and raises from where he's crouched beside her chair. "I'll go get the food."


A/N: Story title borrowed from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Chapter title borrowed from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing