Love's Labor's Lost
Chapter 3
Themselves Destroy
She half expects to end up on some tertiary planet on a different warm slab of stone. Hopes this time that they'll at least have the forward thinking to allow women essential roles other than childrearing and prostitution. Fortunately, this trip ends like any stroll through gate, perfectly reanimated in the Milky Way galaxy, however, they're flanked by an Ori ship on either side.
The space is still, and dark, but somehow feels more familiar to her because she knows that somewhere out in the leagues of emptiness, there's her home planet. That somewhere out there, is Earth waiting for their return. Stares at the stars while she has a chance, because she can't help the nagging feeling that she's going to be forced back under that mountain, with the stars once again covered up by the rocky face.
Cameron's gentle squeeze of her elbow draws her out of her reverie, her nightmare, her probably accurate prediction. His grin is soft, easing, but the slant of his eyebrows betrays his calm exterior. "You okay?"
She nods, not wanting to dull him with how heavy the costume they force her to wear is, or how the serenity of being back in their own galaxy, closer to home than they have been in more than eight months, if offset by the plaguing intuition that everything is about to take a drastically bad turn, the notion curling up inside her, roommates with their child, permanent and heavy.
But eight months living together in virtual sin, masquerading as spouses until they eventually fell into the roles of caring for each other—neither needed much coercing—seeking the other out when they strayed too far, pining for each other despite knowing it was bad for the situation, bad for the decisions they couldn't meet a neutral impasse at.
"Nah, something's wrong." He jostles her arm, again drawing her back to the ship, but also back beside him. Anchoring her as she anchors him, and the words he spoke to her when first arriving in a forest clearing have never had so much of an impact.
We both go, or neither of us do.
"I just—" she sighs because she's unsure of how to put into words her exact hesitancy of this whole ordeal—how surreal the whole ordeal is because two days ago at this time, she very well could have been kneading bread to bake in their hearth while a week ago at this time she was chained up in the middle of the city holding on to the majority of her beliefs that Cameron would come for her, while ignoring the sliver that said she was always in this alone. "I feel—"
But a bombardment on the ship interrupts her poorly translated thoughts. She braces herself against the window ledge, using it as support. Cameron does the same thing but slips a hand behind her back to help steady her.
His eyes are wide when he stares at her, asking the unvoiced question if what he thinks just happened, actually happened.
She responds by nodding at him again, hauling herself back up beside him, and craning her head to scan out the window for any sign of Tau'ri vessel that took shots at them only to witness two more blasts aimed directly for them without enough recognition to prepare herself for the attack.
Their ship shudders from the impact, the power flickering off for a moment before just as quickly clicking back on. The ship groans as it moves, languid, turning, attempting to return fire.
"Tau'ri?"
"Yeah—they're open firing on us."
"I'm having an odd sense of déjà vu."
"It's not déjà vu, Honey, it's a book ending."
Another blast streaks by outside the window, illuminating the entirety of the room like the camera flashes that trailed Cameron off the stage when he finished a speech.
As Cameron helps steady her, she stares at him, knowing what they have to do, trying to make him understand without having to clarify it in defined details. When he understands her desire, he simply shakes it head.
"No."
"It will be easier for—"
"This is exactly what happened last time."
They always disagree about duties, about morals, about choosing the harder task which is usually the right choice, or the easier task and being complicit in many deaths—their own deaths even.
"Well, that's why it's bookended, Darling."
"No, it's not." He scans out the window again, perhaps taking count of the ships, perhaps searching for one that's recognizable. "We're staying right here until—"
"Until Lorne opens fire on the ship, cracking it in half, and we die frozen and oxygen deprived in the cold vacuum of space?" He's horrified, and it's understandable, but he did bring this conversation into fruition. "No one is going to find us because no one is looking. If we stay here, we're resolving ourselves to our own deaths. Is that what you want?"
"And how do you think your plan of storming a ship full of Ori soldiers with ready staffs is going to go?"
"The chaos of the battle is in our favor." It's true as even outside their doors they can hear the plodding foot falls of several soldiers with instructions being shouted out in tandem. Some men shout as the ship is hit again, a moderately sized piece of the propulsion unit breaking off into empty space. "I suppose it's just a choice of if you'd like to die fighting or die cowering."
"That's not fair, Baby." He presses a hard kiss to her cheek and tugs her arm, guiding her towards the door. He snatches up a vacant staff sitting in the nook behind the door. It was meant to be part of the armor doled out to him once he became more mobile. After arming himself, he glances back to her for the nod of approval before opening the door. "You know which one I'm always going to pick."
A/N: Chapter title borrowed from Shakespeare's Hamlet