In a House of Tears

Chapter 2

Again Discarded Faith

It's not easy for her to settle in the house at night.

On waking, it takes longer than it should for her to recognize where she is, what planet she's on, and who is beside her.

Sometimes her rousing is so violent, that he starts awake beside her, and softly rubs his hand down her arm to get her to settle. Speaks to her about what they did that day in order to get her to remember.

Sometimes she wakes and she doesn't know who she is. If she's Qetesh, masquerading as Qetesh, or some third answer concerning her waning personality.

However, sometimes she remembers immediately, rising from their bed and moving to the ensuite in order to shower, and when he comes back from his morning jog and starts to shave in the mirror, she starts to scream because she doesn't know who he is.

It's not like this everyday, but enough days that it puts a strain on their relationship, whether he is willing to admit to it or not.

He still manages to calm her down each time, somehow speak to the humanity that's left within her as she investigates the slash in her stomach.

Sometimes he asks her if she remembers the baby.

Sometimes she responds by asking him if he does.

They don't speak of their daughter at first because the trauma is still fresh, still healing, and they're learning how to gravitate the living arrangement they find themselves in. Not tiptoeing around the subject entirely but working not to bring up what happened directly.

Supposes he doesn't know what happened because his people—those at the SGC—would have only told him the barest of details in order for him to keep a semblance of his rationality.

Once they've been in the house for a few weeks, maybe even months—she lost count of days although he keeps a calendar on the wall in the kitchen. She knows the names of the weekdays and the months thanks to Dr. Jackson, whose name causes her to flinch in memorandum of the last few moments she had with her daughter. Knows how to operate the basic appliances, tries to keep up her side of the commonalities by keeping a clean house, or by trying to cook a meal, but sometimes she truly doesn't want to get out of bed, despite still being plagued with bad dreams of masticating flames.

Sometimes the fog within her brain clarifies enough that she can have fun with him. That they can go for a walk arm in arm, wave to the neighbors, and kick their feet through the summer grass that still holds a sickly-sweet scent to it.

They can sit out back on clear nights and watch fireworks blaze across the sky in some unwarranted celebration. The bright colors pinwheeling over the stars, and she wonders what it looks like from space.

But some days she stays under the sheets, her head imploding with the imagery of many lifetimes, her body aching in memories etched into her skin, if she gets up, her head feels heavy, like someone has reigned her in and tied her to a post, like she is tethered to the bed.

He offers her food, any that she wishes, offers to set up the couch for her to lay on so that she might be distracted by the television and the various programs that the Tau'ri use in order to blind themselves to the heinous actions of their government, of their planet. Programs speckled with bright and flashy advertisements that hurt her eyes, and when she closes them, she sees fire, sees another fleet of Ori ships being constructed in a similar canyon, sees villagers fingers blistering under the creation of war machines they do not know the potential of.

Her eyes start to burn from what she expects are tears, her body grows hot with fever, and nothing ever seems to change.

Until one night while on the couch, curled up with her head in his lap, and his hand stroking her hair absently as he explains what life insurance is because the commercial keeps replaying, her body grows fervent with the heat, with the memories, the ache all the same, and she tears at the blanket covering her body, kicking it away as if her own heat will light it flame.

She bolts up beside him, first sitting, then standing, and he mimics her, stands at the other end of the couch, watching her with his mouth slightly agape.

"I'm sorry."

Apologizes although she's well aware that he's used to her behavior by now. Used to her antics. Normalizes taking her out to the indoor bazaars and the outdoor green spaces and answering all her questions about different Tau'ri implements, about the need to consume everything, or make everything beautiful, or give everything a predestined purpose when sometimes things are just meant to be unorganized and chaotic.

Things are just meant to be natural.

Which, perhaps, is why they get along so well.

He doesn't force her into the pre-set standards labeled by his people, and she doesn't hold their mistakes as a species against him.

But he doesn't answer her, staring at her still, and she can almost see his exhalations from his unhinged mouth. See the way his fingers twitch at his side against the knitted blanket with birds he calls 'pheasants' patterned on it.

"What?"

Would decorate her additional question with the bows of pleasantries if only they were not so natural with each other. If she hadn't seen the map work of scars embedded in his skin, in his thigh where he told her his people placed a metal rod in order to give him mobility back. Where he had to learn to move and be natural too.

As if he hadn't seen the gaping scar ripped across her abdomen, watched her stare at it in her reflection after she stepped out of the shrouding mists of the shower, like he doesn't fall asleep angling behind her, his body flush with hers, his hand curling around her stomach and his finger tracing the scar in memorandum of the life that was there.

"Your eyes—" reaches a hand forward to her, and she allows him to touch her cheek, to tilt her head up.

And she feels the sweltering heat swirl within her like a whirlpool of flames.

The face, the mouth, and the teeth following her wherever she lands, still planted within her, still sprouting fire and war.

Blinks and there are so many ships floating in the emptiness of space. Searching for something they don't understand but basking in the admiration of ascended beings they have no solid proof of. Bobbing along in an intergalactic battle on the buoyancy of belief and nothing else. The idea that there can only be one solid good, unaware that should they attempt to pass through the Supergate again, they will be obliterated seconds after materializing.

But they're searching for something.

As the realization hits her, the heat dissipates from within her, tingles throughout her body, snuffing out in her fingertips.

"Your eyes—" speaks again, his thumb pad coarse against her cheek "—they were orange for a second."

Swallows harshly, pursing her lips, trying to appear calm when she is anything but.

"Orange?"

"Yeah, they—" he laughs softly, as if to himself, and shakes his head. His hand places pressure on the back of her head, suggesting that she might bow forward, and when she does, he plants a kiss on her scar. "I'm tired, I must have imagined it."

But she knows he didn't.

Because she didn't imagine it either.


A/N: Chapter title borrowed from Shakespeare's King John