"I don't get this," TJ had said to Belle—to the woman—the Goa'uld—standing beside her in flowing, white robes. She managed (she thought) to keep the fear out of her voice. They were standing in front of the Stargate, just the two of them. The woman, Cybele (even knowing the truth, TJ had a hard time not thinking of her as Belle) had chosen to come alone. TJ didn't understand why. She only had a whole planet to back her up.

"Humility," the woman said, her eyes on the gate. "A beggar should be humble. And he is less likely to kill anyone who isn't here. I hope." She glanced at TJ. "He will see me here alone. He will see you alive and unharmed. If I am lucky, he may give me time to speak."

Which was what TJ didn't understand. "You're terrified. Why?" It wasn't supposed to be safe to push Goa'uld. They snuffed out human lives with less empathy than TJ showed for bacteria in the operating room.

But, that also meant that anything that frightened a Goa'uld this much was something she needed to know about.

"The Dark One," the woman said. "The one you call Rush. He will not forgive what we have done."

The Dark One? What did that mean? What did Cybele think Rush could do, anyway? "There are a lot of people who won't forgive Goa'uld for what they've done. What makes him special?"

The woman gave her a pitying look. That was something else Goa'uld weren't supposed to do. There was something in that look that was very like Belle, but there was something else, too. The woman was old—millennia old, if her story was true—and TJ felt the weight of all of those years as the woman looked at her as though she were an innocent child who was all too soon to learn the harsh truths of life. "The difference is that he can make us pay, all of us."

TJ would have asked more, but that was when the gate opened and Rush walked out.

He seemed to be working from the same script as Cybele. He'd come alone—TJ had no idea how Rush had talked Everett into that. He wasn't even being followed by a kino to transmit the meeting back to the ship.

Cybele knelt down on the ground, her face against the earth, arms spread out before her.

Rush stopped just a few inches from her hands, barely controlling his fury. If that hand hadn't also been Belle's, TJ thought he'd be breaking bones in it with his heel. When he spoke, his voice was flat and cold and managed to radiate more disgust than anything TJ had ever heard.

"You think that's going to work? Making Belle grovel to me?"

Cybele sat up, though she continued to kneel and kept her eyes downcast. "Forgive me, lord. I have no other way to abase myself to you except in this body. Though I cannot abase myself enough, not after what I've done."

"No. You can't." He studied her a moment before lifting his hand. Cybele was Goa'uld. Alone and unarmed, TJ and Rush were no match for her—they were hardly a distraction. But, TJ saw the way Cybele shrank back from Rush and the murderous light in his eyes. She didn't understand how, but the scientist and the alien were both certain he would win this fight.

"Please, lord," Cybele said quickly. "A deal. I offer you a deal."

Rush's hand was still raised, but he didn't do . . . whatever it was he'd been about to do. "You got that from her."

Cybele nodded, still not looking at him. "The Dark One likes deals."

The Dark One. TJ still didn't understand that. But, she remembered what Cybele had said when she took over Belle—what she had screamed in terror.

I have killed us! I have killed us all! The Dark One is coming and he will destroy this world!

She couldn't mean Rush. She couldn't.

But, Rush seemed to understand what she meant. He said, "You only have one thing I want and you stole it. I don't make deals to get back what's mine."

"I have two things of my own to offer. Time. Power."

"I have those already."

"Not for you, Lord. For her." She looked up at him, meeting his eyes. "You know what I am, Lord. I have power after the manner of my kind. I have long life. I offer up both of these, gifts for this one you value. In return, I ask two things. Take your revenge on me and not my children, not the children of my blood and not on the Ursini, the children of my adoption. And, I beg you, save them from our enemies, from the drones who threaten this world. They—they threaten your people, too, I think. Please, let my children live."

He snorted. "You expect me to believe you care about the Ursini? And how, exactly, are you going to give those gifts to Belle? Am I just supposed to believe you'll sit back quietly and let her run things? I notice you've been doing all the talking since I got here."

"Would you believe the words are hers and not mine?"

"Oh, I don't have to believe anything. I'll know."

She nodded. "I understand. And I understand how you can be certain of this as well. The gifts I offer are based on my physical nature. My . . . control of her is based on my mind. You understand? You do not need one to have the other."

Rush still looked stony and cold, but the feeling TJ had had from the moment he showed up, that he was about to reenact what he'd done to the Lucian Alliance and leave corpses up and down the streets, eased. A little.

"That's quite an offer," he said softly. TJ shivered. Maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe there were still corpses in the near future. "Belle, what do you think?"

His voice was gentle, but his words felt like a command. TJ felt something, a force moving past, as if Cybele were a fly and a giant had just leaned past to flick her out of the way.

It wasn't possible. Even the Tok'ra, who only took willing hosts and spent their whole lives trying to live as equals and symbionts, were supposed to be able to overpower their hosts if they wanted to. Goa'uld didn't get brushed aside by impatient scientists.

But, Cybele's face changed. There was still tension in her face but the fear was gone. TJ thought she recognized the light in her eyes. "Rum?" the woman (Belle?) said.

Rush's face changed, too. There was none of the coldness left, no killer light in his eyes. He reached out and cupped Belle's cheek, touching her as if she were the most precious thing in the world. "Do you want me to let her live, sweetheart?"

X

Belle was free of Cybele. Oh, she could still feel her there in the back of her mind; but the weight of her, pressing down against Belle—against every thought and memory—was gone. She looked up and saw her husband—saw him with her own eyes without filtering through the Other.

"Rum?"

He smiled, reaching out and cupping her cheek. For a moment, she wanted to forget everything, Cybele, the Ursini, the danger she remembered from Cybele's mind, the Drones waiting to destroy this world—forget that TJ was standing right by her and watching everything—and throw herself into her husband's arms.

Rum looked at her as though he were reading her thoughts, but he shook his head slightly. Not yet. "Do you want me to let her live, Sweetheart?"

His voice was tender and gentle as he said it. She knew Rum. She knew how much he must be wanting to crush Cybele out of existence.

And Rum knew Belle. He knew how many times she had urged him to show mercy, even when it was hard for him. He would find a way to spare Cybele if she asked.

"I. . . ." Belle tried to find the words. She thought of the Ursini, who didn't just worship Cybele, they truly loved her. They saw her as the great mother who had raised them from darkness and who was fighting with the last of her strength to save them from their enemies.

She thought of the good she had glimpsed in her—and there was good. Cybele's love for the Ursini was as real as theirs for her. She loved her children and grieved that she couldn't save them or give them real lives. Even her past hosts, they might have been less than slaves, brutally sacrificed for Cybele's own survival, but Cybele had an affection for them. By her own lights, she had tried to be kind. It might be a very small, cruel kindness, but it was more than nearly any others of her people gave. She had tried to teach her own children to give more—though, with the brief lives they had in their hosts and their weaker powers, equal sharing was the only hope they had for those lives to accomplish anything.

But, it meant something. It had to mean something.

Didn't it?

Belle tried to find some compassion, some forgiveness for the entity that had taken her over. But, all she could think of was the horror of Cybele flowing into her, taking everything, memories and feelings Belle hadn't even shared with Rum, invading every corner of her. She thought of the glimpses she had caught of Cybele's previous hosts, all of them just as brutally used.

The words died in her throat.

"Stop her, Rum. Please."

Belle saw the grief in his eyes (Rum always had the most expressive eyes). She might as well have told him everything Cybele had done to her, the violation of having the Other in her mind and body. He lifted her hand, kissing the back of it.

"As you wish, Sweetheart."

He reached towards her, his hand held only a few inches from her mouth. He made a come-here gesture, like a man trying to summon a frightened child.

The weight of Cybele inside her, pushed aside but still there, began to drain out of her. An image flitted through Belle's mind of a swollen wound finally being drained of its poison, the painful, burning pressure on the skin giving way as the filth was bled out of her.

X

Cybele came out of Belle as a long, white mist. At first, she looked like nothing more than breath on a cold day. But, she didn't dissipate, and the silvery-gray form in Rumplestiltskin's hands coalesced. Anyone who had seen a Goa'uld outside their host would recognize the snake-like form in his hands.

Lt. Johansen, gaping like a fish, seemed to be one of those people. "Rush—"

"Not now, Lieutenant," he said. The teacher in him, who had trained so many magic-users over the centuries (and heroes, too, not that the heroes always knew it), would have liked stop and explain. There were two ways, after all, to tear out a heart (and wouldn't the lieutenant love to learn that). One was gory and very messy, leaving stains that were next to impossible to get out, even if you didn't favor silk shirts. The other wasn't. What was drawn out with magic was both more and less than that physical heart. It was the idea of a heart, the strange jewel that held the life and core of a person.

What he held now in his hands was something similar. He held the essence of Cybele in a form that had its own kind of truth. This was the worm that burrowed in and ate men from the inside out, this was the ghost that had no flesh and blood except what it stole from others. It was frozen in this moment, unchanging, unfeeling, a thing for him to examine. He was a cruel man—right now, he wanted to be a cruel man—but he knew that wasn't what Belle wanted. Or, if it was, the guilt of wanting and getting that would hurt her far more than Rumplestiltskin granting that particular wish.

This was also, he thought, a form he could easily work with. In his hands, Cybele was like mist and moonlight. The cloudy shape of her was also like stray tufts of wool. He could shape her as he pleased.

But, before he began, he took a moment to study her, feeling out along the strands of fate.

As Goa'uld went, Cybele wasn't so bad. She tried to be kind to her slaves.

But, they were still slaves. Worse than slaves. They had less say over their lives than the children the Duke of the Frontlands drove to their deaths against the Ogres.

Still, he looked at the threads. What happens if I let you live? Nothing was clear—even in his own world, where magic had run so thick it was hard not to be drunk on it, it took work to see futures clearly. Especially when those futures touched on something near to him. When they touched on Bae—or Belle.

All he caught were feelings. There were no images to explain them. As he looked down roads where he let Cybele go, he felt sickness and horror. He thought of her and the crew of Destiny, and the sick feeling was even worse.

Destiny held the only humans Cybele had encountered since her exile. She had hungry children starving for the lives hosts would bring them. Cybele herself, even if she were denied Belle, would want another body to live in. It was one thing to accept death when she had an angry Dark One staring her right in the face. It was another thing to accept it when he let here go and an alternative only a few light years away—and she had gates from the seed ship, now. He didn't think it would be that hard to find a way to come after them.

Still, he looked down other threads, threads where he kept this bargain—or some part of it—with Cybele, just to see if they were better. After all, he wanted to kill her. And he was as hungry for the gift Cybele offered as she must have been when she saw Belle and knew she still had a chance at life. And wanting something that badly had a way of leading him into some of the worst mistakes of his life.

Life, he thought. Centuries of life for Belle regardless of what happened to him. That was what Cybele was offering. It would also give Belle magic of a sort, power to protect herself from Lucians and Nakai and the next Evil Queen who thought the Dark One's wife made an excellent chess piece.

All the same, he tried to listen to what his sight told him, not just what he wanted to believe. He tried not to blind himself to the dark, hidden traps that might be lying ahead.

No sick feelings plagued him, no sense of dread or regret. He thought, perhaps, he even felt happy—he even felt hope.

If it was his sight, if he wasn't just feeling what he so desperately wanted to (and he was trying so hard to see the truth), this was the best option. His choice was made.

Once he had decided that, Cybele—the essence of Cybele—changed in his fingers, like mist, like fine wool. He began to twist and move the strands of her.

The Lieutenant was watching, of course. Staring, actually. She'd been on less technologically advanced worlds, but he didn't know if she'd ever seen anyone spin. His lip twisted. He knew many people on her world looked down on the humble crafts some still called "women's work," as if providing clothing, blankets—even simple things like the bandages the lieutenant used to treat the wounded—were worthless skills instead of things that often made the difference between life and death.

They could also be beautiful, he thought, in the hands of someone with the skill and desire to make them so. He looked at the strands, pulling out the gifts Cybele had offered, twisting into a thread as though a drop spindle were pulling them into shape beneath his fingers. Life. Safety. He could see them glittering in the small coil forming beneath his touch.

After a time, there was nothing left but Cybele herself.

He let that go, letting it dissipate, a last strand of mist on a sunny day, a puff of warm breath against the cold. It vanished and was gone.

He went back to Belle who was still kneeling on the ground, still looking tired and drained. He lifted her hand as he had when he'd kissed it moments before. But, this time, he lifted it, palm up, and placed the coil of thread he had spun there. "It's the price she offered," he told her. "Just that. She's gone. I promise." He hesitated. He wanted Belle to have this, the protection, the safety, the life Cybele had offered. But, he needed to ask Belle. He tried to smile. It felt broken and half-hearted against his face. "No one decides your fate but you, Sweetheart. Will you take it?"

Belle looked at the thread, strands of a ghost. "Should I?"

"It's not her," he said. "And, the next time an Ursini tries to kidnap you, you can just blast him into next week."

That won a smile from her even if it looked nearly as broken as his own. "That's a good argument." She gave a quick, decisive nod; though he thought he saw uncertainty still in her eyes. He covered her palm with his own. The strands melted into Belle, becoming part of her, the vitality and power of a Goa'uld. The mind and the hungers that had driven it, those things he had thrown away.

Belle's hand closed tightly around his, her eyes glowing for a moment. "Rumplestiltskin. . . ."

"It will be all right, Sweetheart," he said, helping her up. "Give yourself time to adjust."

"The Ursini—the drones—Rum, you have to help them—"

"I keep my bargains, Belle. You know that. The danger will be taken care of." He looked over at TJ. "All the dangers. Lieutenant, what do you think of this little show? And what do you think I should do now you've seen it?"