Spoilers for "Hathor"
A Month Later
The original plan was to leave Ty with her father when she went to try on her wedding dress. But her dad wasn't feeling good today, so Samantha Carter has to take her three year-old son to the dress shop with her.
"Mommy, your dress is beautiful," he says in awe, touching it.
"Thank you Ty," she says.
"Whose dresses are these?" he asks, touching the bridesmaid dresses.
"Those are for Auntie Martha and Janet," Sam explains.
"Is the little one for me?" Ty asks, with eyes alight.
She giggles, "No, that is a flower girl dress, for your cousin Lilly."
"Oh, where is my ring bear dress?" he asks.
"Ring bearer," she corrects, "And you're not going to wear a dress, you're going to wear a handsome suit just like Daddy."
Ty thinks about this for a while, "But you can't spin around in a suit."
"Sure you can," his mother assures him.
"Right, but it doesn't twirl up like a dress."
Sam sighs, and looks at her son. She is willing to let him be himself, but not at a wedding, for crying out loud. If she buys her son a dress, everyone is going to think that it was her idea. They would think she was some sort of a monster who used her three-year-old son to make a statement about gender roles.
"How come everyone gets to wear something pretty except for me?" Ty asks mournfully.
"Sweetie, I'll let you pick out any tie you want. Really, anything, no matter how crazy. And then we'll buy one to match for Daddy."
Ty sighs, "I wish I could wear a pretty dress."
Sam looks at her son. It would be different if he just threw a tantrum. Then she would have no qualms about dragging him out of the dress shop, kicking and screaming. But this, this passive but pensive acceptance, is too much for her. "Your father is going to kill me," she mutters, with her eyes rolling to the sky. Then to the owner of the dress shop, she says, "Can I get another flower girl dress, in size 3T?"
One Week Later
Daniel is running his fingers over the new device.
"You mind if I take a look at it?" she asks, taking a few steps closer to it.
"Sure," he says, turning to her with a genuine grin on his face, "You're a lot more qualified than I am."
"I'm not sure that anyone is really qualified to examine a machine that magically brings people back from the dead," she replies dryly. The two of them look at the machine for a little bit before Janet speaks again, "So what does it say?"
"Nothing that explains its purpose," Daniel says, running a hand along an inscription. That brings his hand very close to contacting Janet's. She looks up at him trying to figure out if it was intentional or not. His eyes are still on the inscription, and she can't tell.
"Dr. Jackson, the General wants you in the control room," an airman says.
"Good luck figuring it out, Janet," Daniel says.
-0-0-0-
Daniel Jackson is amazed. Hathor, a goddess, right in front of him. It was all of his ancient texts coming alive and allowing him to meet the Pharaohs. Only better – after all, the Pharaohs were only part-god. All the interesting artifacts that he had studied, all the stories that he had read, it was like all of this, and so much more.
"Dr. Jackson? Please remain. We have other questions," Hathor says.
Daniel closes the door behind him, thinking of all the questions that he wants to ask her, "Sure."
"It is time that you become our chosen one," Hathor says.
Daniel walks toward her, knowing that that is a lie. No-one chooses Daniel. Not to be on their team in gym class, not to be their friends, not to be adopted. "Chosen one?"
"Will you always honor us?" Hathor asks.
Daniel isn't comfortable with whatever is going on right now. It sounds way too much like wedding vows, and he's far close to his first marriage to participate in those. Everything in him wants to scream 'no', but he hears himself saying, "Yes."
"Would you… die for us?" she asks.
"Die?" No way in hell. He wasn't going to die for her. He didn't particularly want to be in the same room as her.
"Yes," he hears himself say.
-0-0-0-
"Jack, there you are," Sam says, running down the hallway after him.
"Here I am, Angel," he says with a grin.
"I wanted to have a word with you about Hathor, if you don't mind," Sam says a little nervously. Jack is acting really weird, and she doesn't know why.
"Fascinating lady, isn't she?" he says.
Sam's blood boils a little bit, "A little too fascinating, don't you think?"
"What do you mean?" Jack asks.
Sam's voice has a little bit of a dangerous edge as she says, "Well, she seems to have you all so… infatuated."
"Us all?" Jack says with raised eyebrows.
"Yes. The men. Don't you think it's a little dangerous to be giving a Goa'uld such royal treatment?" she presses.
"Ah, relax, Sammy. She's on our side."
"So she says," Sam says.
Jack gives her a glare. "Captain, if you don't mind my saying so, you're treating her exactly the way you hate to see people treat Teal'c. A bit of a double standard, don't you think?"
"Teal'c has proven whose side he's on. She hasn't," Sam points out.
"Sam, have you ever heard the old saying: 'My enemy's enemy is my friend'?" Jack says with his voice much too dismissive for her taste
"But even when the CIA grants sanctuary to an enemy turncoat, they never trust him. They watch him like a hawk," Sam presses.
"Daniel's watching her right now," Jack says, patting her on the shoulder, "Relax."
"That's a little like having the fox watch the hen house, Sir," Sam says as Jack walks away.
-0-0-0-
Daniel knows that he was supposed to keep Hathor in her quarters. He doesn't actually know why he went with her to the gate room, he didn't really want to, but none the less he was here now.
"Tell us, our beloved, what are the questions swelling in your mind?" she asks, running her fingers across the sarcophagus and her eyes across the gate.
"I spent years studying you as a student, and now I'm… I'm with you. Do you know that you're described in history as the most beautiful woman ever was or ever will be, able to control men with just your beauty?" he says, his stomach twisting a little at the description. It was a bit too much like what is happening to him right now.
Hathor isn't paying attention to his worshipful words right now. Instead, she is looking at the gate, "We are pleased to see you, old friend. It won't be long until you will serve us once again." Then she turns to Daniel and asks him, "Tell us, do you believe this to be true, now that you have come to know us?"
"Well, I certainly have a deeper understanding of it now," he says, wishing that the academic and the emotional could stay apart in his mind.
"We are the queen of the gods. We are the mother of all gods," Hathor informs him.
"Yes," he says, feeling absolutely sure that that is true. Then he realizes that this doesn't have much meaning, "What does that mean, exactly?"
"From us, all others come."
"I don't understand," he repeats.
"The Jaffa. He has a Goa'uld child in his belly?"
"A larva. Yes," Daniel says.
"Did you ever wonder from whence the children come?"
Actually, Daniel had wondered a lot of things about the Goa'uld, but their methods of reproduction were not things that had ever made the list. "Are you saying that they come from you?"
"Yes. And others, like us."
"My god. You're like a queen bee. You create the Goa'ulds," Daniel says in shock.
-0-0-0-
"So you actually create the larvae. How?" Daniel asks Hathor when they are back in his quarters.
"We must first have the code of life from the juices of the species intended as the host," Hathor says.
"Code of life?" Daniel says, confused. Even a linguist could get tied in knots by the unusual language that Hathor used.
"In order to ensure compatibility for the Goa'uld child and the host," she explains.
A sick realization dawns on him, "DNA. You mean you need DNA to prevent rejection." Daniel is really hoping that he is wrong about the method that the Goa'uld use to secure the DNA.
"The code of life," Hathor says with a smile, "We do so enjoy the method of procuring the code in your species." She pulls off Daniel's glasses, and runs a hand through his long hair. "It is much more pleasurable than most."
"I bet," Daniel says, with a bite in his words.
"Since you are to be our first pharaoh," she says, pushing the jacket off his shoulders, "You will honor us by being the one to contribute the code." She puts a hand on his neck possessively.
"You want me to help you create more Goa'ulds?" he says in horror. She moves over to try to kiss him, and he reaches up to try to push her away. No, not this. He's a married man. Sha're may be dead, but he still loves her. He's not going to betray her, and he certainly isn't going to help create a bunch of babies that will destroy the universe. Especially not when he can't even create good normal babies.
Hathor breathes out a pink mist, and Daniel breaths it in.
He still wants to fight her, but he finds that his body, and even most of his mind, are incapable of protests. The part of his mind that he still has control of screams within him, but the screams don't go anywhere.
-0-0-0-
"It must be a pretty powerful drug Hathor's using. Jack is Special Forces trained to fight mind control techniques," Sam informs Janet.
"Well, not Goa'uld techniques, apparently," Janet says dismally.
"Yup. Well, Mama said there'd be days like this," Sam says. Although, that isn't really true. Her mother might not have been an optimist, but she hasn't exactly said that there would be days where your fiancé gets taken over by a mind-controlling beautiful women.
"Really? My ex-husband said that. 'You outa your mind, honey-buns? There is a reason they call it this man's Army'," Janet says with a roll of her eyes.
"'This man's Army'? Your husband actually said that?" Sam says with a laugh.
"Yeah. So, of course, I explained to him that it wasn't the Army, it was the Air Force, and they've had women for decades," Janet says.
Sam shakes her head, glad that for once there is someone out there that actually understands what she is going through, "Man. I think maybe it's just me, but I can't figure out how to feel like one of the guys with these guys, you know what I mean? I always feel like I'm The Girl."
"That's it," Janet says grinning at Sam.
"What?" Sam asks nervously.
"You just gave me an idea on how to get us out of here. Look, if Hathor's control drug is hormone-driven like I suspect, that means she's making the men… libidinous."
Sam flinches. She really doesn't want to do anything that is going to be hard to explain to Jack later. She won't have the excuse of mind control. Besides, the idea of kissing anyone but her husband disgusts her. "Okay. Why do I get the feeling I don't like where this is going?"
-0-0-0-
Jack walks into the room deliberately. The way that you fight mind control is by keeping something important in your mind.
Sam, Ty, Sam, Ty, Sam, Ty. Two important things have to be better than one.
"Excuse me, ma'am. I'm ,uh… I'm sorry to barge in on you like this, but I'd like to ask you some questions." Well, already this isn't going well. Is he really apologizing to the women who imprisoned his wife?
"About?"
"About you, actually. See, you've… You've got me a little off-balance, and that's very unnatural for me."
"We are told by the one that you call Daniel that you are responsible for ridding us from the vile one, Ra," Hathor says seductively.
Jack nods, trying to make eye contact with the women, "Yeah, well, we kinda touched on that earlier. But I'd like to be the one asking the questions right now, if you don't mind."
"We must praise you and gift you a great honor."
This was a bad plan. He never should have gotten closer to someone who was using mind control on him. Now is the time to retreat, "Yeah. I'm sure that'd be just great, but not right…"
A pink mist fills the air, and Jack breaths it in. His mind screams, but his body, his face, they just sit there like a blank tablet, waiting for Hathor's stylus to imprint something on them. She pulls open his shirt, and then pulls a part of her own dress off to reveal a machine. She presses it against him. "Do not worry yourself. You will enjoy the richness that come with what we are giving you."
Jack flinches, "No, I'm pregnant," He protests, trying to push her away, "Please."
"You cannot fool me, the men of your species do not get pregnant. You will cherish the good health and long life that goes with being…" she pushes Jack away, against the wall, "Hathor's first, new, Jaffa."
-0-0-0-
This has definitely not been Sam's day. She was basically put in prison for trying to save the world. She escaped from that prison by seducing co-workers, people that she worked so hard to try to make see her as something other than just a girl. Then she conked the commander of the base across the head. Now she's looking at her pregnant husband in a tub full of screaming Goa'uld.
At least Hathor left. "Let's get him out of there." She rushes in to move under his arm to take the weight, "Okay, honey, we gotcha. Okay."
They pull Jack over to bench. Janet hands Sam her gun, saying, "Here, take this." She reaches into his new pouch, and feels around, "Yeagh… No. Nothing went in there yet."
"This is a good thing," Sam says firmly.
"Uh, maybe," Janet says.
"He no longer has an immune system. Without a Goa'uld larvae, he will soon die," Teal'c says.
Jack's eyes are still staring into the distance.
"Jack!" Sam screams.
He doesn't react to her words. "We have to get him into the sarcophagus."
-0-0-0-
Jack opens up his eyes, and tries to figure out where he was. Wherever he is, he's getting shot at. He ducks just in time.
Electricity zaps over the surface of the sarcophagus. Damn, Janet thought. That would have been a very useful tool to have in her infirmary.
"I don't think this is good," Jack says, while giving the signal to get out another door. The door doesn't even have time to shut before there is a big explosion.
"You all right?" Jack says to all present, but with a special emphasis to his wife.
"Yeah, good to have you back, Jack," Sam says.
"What, I left?" Jack asks, confused.
Janet stands up, holding her arm, which she has just noticed is causing her pain like it might be broken. They open the door to reveal a sarcophagus that is on fire.
"Jack, can I have a look?" Sam says softly, looking at her husband's stomach.
"The baby?" he asks with concern
She pulls his jacket open, "Wow. That's a miracle," she says in awe.
"Babies usually are," he whispers.
"Do you think the baby is going to be ok?" Sam asks over his shoulder to Janet.
"I don't know. We should get him looked out as soon as this is all over," her friend replies.
-0-0-0-
"Did you find anything?" Jack says as he watches his wife and Janet Fraiser take samples from the floor of the locker room. Just an hour ago, the good doctor had done an ultrasound which had revealed that his child had suffered no negative side effects for its brief run in with a Jaffa pouch. Which, of course, made sense; after all, Jaffa did have babies.
"Probably nothing we can use. Maybe we'll at least get a cellular level analysis on the Goa'ulds, maybe we even find some DNA information."
Daniel shifts on his feet, and does an awkward self-hug, "A lot of that will probably be mine."
Janet glances back, making a note to have a talk with Daniel about dealing with rape pretty soon. She'll try to get him into therapy, but she already knows that he's probably going to say no to that.
"Ew," Jack says, and Janet wants to slap him. That was definitely not the appropriate reaction.