Stronger Now Than We Ever Were

Warning: marginally graphic in some parts, serious Cam-whumping and heavy on angst, our Cameron is really in need of some of that "Hurt/Comfort" that is promised in the story summary, but when will it come?

Disclaimer: Stargate and its characters do not belong to me. I'm just playing in the Cosmic Sandbox here.

Chapter VI: The Machinations of a Delusion

A jarring shake woke Cameron Mitchell from his trauma-induced, fitful rest in the same upright machine he'd been tethered to time and time again. Ba'al and his friends were back, though the Jaffa were unarmed, and Juggernaut was nowhere to be seen. Cameron blinked his pale eyes, trying to dissert the blurry shapes before him. The first Jaffa, a short man, released the clasps that held Cameron's upper body to the metal framework, while another two Jaffa caught him as he fell. How nice of them, he thought. No one said a word, and Cameron found himself too sore and too tired to even exchange barbed insults with his captors. He was alarmed to discover that he'd lost feeling in his feet. The fear of losing his ability to walk came shuddering to the surface of his consciousness, but his foot thumped against the bulkhead, and he felt pain. Sweet, blissful, blissful pain.

"Ahh, here we are now," Ba'al's heavily accented voice purred. The room Cameron now found himself in was not unlike the one he'd spent most of his time in over the last two months. Yes, it had been two months. Though he suspected he was losing his mind, and he'd long since lost the ability to recall the faces of his friends, of his parents, even Carolyn, who carried another man's child in her, he could still keep a mental tally of his days in captivity.

Thinking about Carolyn again brought a tear to his eye. He was a broken man, and he knew it. The psychological torture that Ba'al had administered had ruptured his fragile human mind. He'd been forced into imagining countless scenarios in which his closest friends betrayed him, attacked him, and left him for dead; each scenario more terrible than the first. He dimly knew none of it was true, but the level of psychological conditioning Ba'al's technology had put him through, had him questioning his very memories. It reminded him of a similarly terrifying experience on Galera. The tear rolled unhindered down Cameron's cheek. Ba'al glanced at him, but paid it no mind. Ba'al had stopped insulting and degrading Cameron weeks ago, he no longer found it necessary to mock the man personally, preferring to allow the subconscious to do it for him.

"I am going to reveal some very important things to you know, Colonel Mitchell," Ba'al drawled on, secure in his arrogance. "I hope your feeble mind manages to keep up with the proceedings."

Cameron blinked and leveled a weak glare at Ba'al, but inside he was beyond glad to hear the worldly insults again. It was a damn fine break from the torture his own imagination put him through on a regular basis as of late. "What you got for me?" he tried to say, but it came out more as "Wazugtme?"

Ba'al laughed then, stepping out of Cameron's field of vision. He was allowed a better look at the room now. Indeed, it was very similar to his own accommodations, but occupied now. In an eerie similar frame device, a very pale elderly man was attached to life support and the same wires and technology Cameron remembered vividly. Even more recognizable was the markings and clothing of the man on the torture frame. It was an Ori prior, and he looked far worse for wear than Cameron could imagine. His pale skin was approaching translucency, blotched with bruises and cuts, and his ivory eyes had little color if any now. The man's head lolled to the side, unnervingly lifeless, but the twitches in his fingers and feet remarked an inner resolve despite the torture he underwent.

"Look familiar, Colonel Mitchell?" Ba'al asked. "It should. Our friend here is experiencing the same luxury you yourself have enjoyed over the last two months."

Thank you for confirming my suspicions, you bastard, Cameron thought to himself. From his time in Special Operations, and the POW training he'd received, he knew hope was his number one savior and weapon, hope in himself and his abilities, and maintaining that hope was paramount to survival. By confirming Cameron's mental day count, Cam instantly knew he hadn't completely lose his mind. He just glared at Ba'al, unwilling to speak.

Ba'al laughed again. "So defiant, to the last. You see those delightful devices our friend is hooked up to? Why, those are not so different than yours. We have a mutual acquaintance on a planet called Galera, who specializes in memory modification. We used that technology to defocus the Prior's mental acuity, giving my Jaffa the edge over the Ori soldiers. Surely you noticed that on the planet you were captured on?"

Cameron hung his head, still being supported by his two Jaffa escorts. The explanation, that the entirety of Cameron's recent memory was falsified, that Carolyn wasn't pregnant by another man and his friends didn't hate him, was completely lost on him. He was mindlessly tired of hearing Ba'al drivel on about his own accomplishments. Even learning that he'd discovered a way to block the Ori powers to a prior meant little now; Cameron had long since stopped caring about anything more than survival. He groaned, hoping the lack of enthusiasm would result in a beating and being taken back to his cell for a period of rest, no matter how short it may be. Cameron thought it was sadly telling of his mental condition that he welcomed the physical abuse, for it offered him a break from the ongoing mental abuse he'd been subjected to all too often.

The room fell silent. Ba'al glared at the human for a long period, before making a snapping gesture and having the Jaffa remove him from his sight. Cameron was thankful, though he quickly grew resentful, when the Jaffa guards dropped him and continued dragging him bodily back to the cell. Consciousness came and went; he found his mind wandering the galaxy along what seemed much like the near-instantaneous transport lanes of the Stargate. His mind played pictures of the people he had met, the worlds he had seen, the adventures he had... and SG-1 was with him, and for once, they weren't taking part in the torture or reminding him of terrible things he'd done or had happen to him. For a moment, Cameron found some semblance of peace, of his own personal heaven, in the deepest recesses of his mind.

It was not to last, though.

----

A violent shudder shook the Goa'uld mother ship. Cameron was dropped and discarded on the floor.

Another shudder.

Sounds of staff weapon fire echoed throughout the corridors.

An explosion.

Cameron tried to move, but the pain was overwhelming. His shoulder had been dislocated in the fall.

A clank and a groan.

He wrenched his head to see one of the Jaffa escorts lying lifeless, his open eyes unliving.

Cameron groaned.

Chattering, chanting, echoed throughout the ship. More staff weapon fire.

Cameron felt himself being lifted, plucked back into the air, but gently so. It felt fantastic. Finally, he faded back into slumber, but the nightmares were there, eagerly awaiting his inevitable return to their horrible clutches.

----

Another jarring shudder brought Cameron back to reality. He was really beginning to resent the mishandling he endured. When his eyes opened, they saw an unfamiliar room, with unfamiliar faces; all glaring at him with a fury he'd not seen in Ba'al's Jaffa. Some wore tunics, but overall, the preferred dress of day seemed to be leather and plate armor, with staff weapons, as if Cameron had appeared in some terrible fantasy movie. Unfortunately for him, it was no movie, and it was anything but a fantasy. The men parted, for they were all male, and two robed individuals walked through the opening lined by soldiers.

A startlingly beautiful young woman was escorted by an old man who had seen better days. Cameron opened his eyes wider, only partly alarmed to discover he could only see well through one, and analyzed the newcomers. It was Adria, Val Mal Doran's 'over-aged, delusions of grandeur' daughter, and the same Ori Prior Cameron had seen back on Ba'al's mother ship. He looked better than he had earlier, the all too familiar prior serenity having returned to his countenance and expression. Adria, however, looked upon him with an unarming curiosity and pity. He hated it.

The young woman, scantily dressed for her part in a revealing robe, signaled for her entourage to leave her with the prisoner. Only the prior remained with her. The door behind them whisked shut, leaving a nearly naked Cameron Mitchell alone with an Ori prior and the Orici herself. Cameron groaned, a reaction he was becoming too familiar with, as the prior dropped back and allowed Adria free reign of the room. She paced closer, taking in every inch of his body, from the scars, the bruises, the dried blood, and the salty sweat that clogged his pores and made him feel filthy. A small smile was on her lips the whole time, as if she liked what she saw, but the feral look in her eyes made Cameron imagine it was more that she enjoyed seeing Ba'al's handiwork than the body he'd worked so hard to chisel into something both attractive and useful.

"Cameron Mitchell," she breathed at last, taking a step back with mocking reverence. "Rescued from the clutches of Ba'al by the Children of the Ori and their Orici."

"Full of yourself," he grunted, glancing up with half-lidded eyes.

"What was that?" she asked mockingly, stepping closer. He could feel the heat of her skin on his cheek, she was so close now. Her warm breath brushed his ear and neck. Any other woman, any other time, it would be enjoyable, but not here, not now. "Did you say something, Cameron?"

Cameron sighed. He was tired of megalomaniacs and their pretentious games. He just plain Jane, flat-out, no ifs-and-or-buts, did not care anymore. A violent gesture, a sudden reaction, Cameron reared his head up and forced it to the side, despite his restraints, and fixed Adria with the most venomous glare he could manage, made all the more hideous by his bruises and scars. "I said get out of my face," he hissed at her. He would have spat, had he the saliva to do so, but the dry, almost salt flat-like texture of his mouth prevented him from doing just that.

Adria laughed lightly, not an unpleasant sound. She brought her face down again, near his cheek, and whispered, "You'll be seeing a lot more of me, my dear."

She pressed a light kiss to an unblemished part of his cheek. Cameron knew he should be revolted, but after two months of torture, his body was so starved for human contact, for the warmth of another's touch and presence, that he very nearly leaned into the gesture. It felt too good, he knew, it was all a game, he knew, but damn if it didn't feel real nice. As Adria took a step away, joining her prior by the door, she winked at him and disappeared into the corridor beyond. Cameron was alone again, and he finally released the breath he'd been holding. As he watched them go, he lost it. Tears fell down his injured cheeks. He tried to summon a happy thought, any thought, to his imagination, but SG-1 wouldn't come, nor his family, not even Lyn, his beautiful Lyn.

But she wasn't his anymore, he reminded himself distantly. She had moved on, some time ago. All of them must have. He had been missing for over two months, and who waited that long? Not the team who had never wanted him, not the woman who had never needed or loved him, and certainly not the world who had never appreciated him. Perhaps, Cameron considered, just perhaps, they were better off without him. And, among other things, that meant he was better off without them.

And that was the thought he held, right up until electricity surged through his body. Nerves fired off randomly as the shocking pain tore through his body and rendered him mindless. The level of pain his body tolerated was only so much, and this new type of torture would have been a pleasant change, had it let him lose consciousness like Ba'al's had. But no, there was no happy ending with the Ori. After what was only minutes, but felt like years, the pain stopped. A bone-chilling cold replaced it, magnified by the brevity of his dress, and Cameron slouched against the cold cable restraints. He stared at the floor and let the tears come. He wasn't even alarmed to see a puddle of his own vomit at his feet, though he couldn't imagine what he'd thrown up, for he couldn't remember eating anything.

When he opened his eyes, there she was. Dark, beautiful, and alluring. Her skin was flawless, her dark, raven hair falling in locks of onyx and a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. Cameron would have smiled, if his lips had feeling in them. The last thing he remembered before slipping into sleep, where the nightmares were a better alternative to Ori torture, was how much Adria reminded him of Carolyn Lam.

And it didn't bother him one bit.

DUN DUN DUN!! dramatic music

What's happening here? When one thinks his mind has cleared, that Carolyn is so near to his mind, she disappears and is replaced by something far more sinister! I hope you all enjoyed this, I know I did. Sorry it took so long. I won't make any promises, save this: all is not hopeless, there is always a sunrise after the deep dark of night.