(no subject)
Title: Down Here Among the Wreckage
Author: Annerb
Summary: Five years ago, SG-1 broke in half. Two years ago, Earth lost. Today, there is one last chance to fix things. But sometimes the pieces just don’t fit back together again.
Warnings: Mature for language, violence, torture, non-con, adult themes, and some temporal meandering.
Categorization: AU, H/C, darkfic, tragedy, and apocafic for flavor. Team, Sam/Jack.
A/N: Special thanks to
la_tante for the beta and to katcorvi and holdouttrout for their phenomenal hand holding abilities.
Part One-History
Part Two-Prodigal
Prologue
Chapter 1: What Once Was Lost
Chapter 2: Omega
Chapter 3: Compatriots
Chapter Four: A Song for Our Fathers
Daniel watches Jack and Vala where they’re standing a few paces away, just far enough that he can’t hear what they’re saying. They’re leaning into each other with the obvious ease of two people who know each other well. Of course, Vala also looks pissed enough to pull her gun on Jack.
Daniel can relate to that.
Someone bumps into Daniel from behind, and, as Daniel turn to look at him, the half-muttered curse dies in the stranger’s throat. He stops talking mid-word and quickly ducks back into the flow of people on the sidewalk. There was a time such behavior might have seemed strange, but Daniel is getting used to it.
He doesn’t miss the way people give him space, the bustle of the street diverting around him like he’s a stone in a river. He’s resigned to the looks he gets from people when they realize he’s Tau’ri. He’s one part pariah, one part legend. And everyone treats him as if his people are already in the past tense, like he’s a walking ghost.
Like he’s cursed.
“Okay, handsome,” Vala says, appearing without warning by his elbow. “Give me three days and twenty weights of naquadah and we’ve got ourselves a deal.”
“Five up front,” Jack interrupts, right on her heels. He hands over their payment. “The balance when you deliver.”
Vala’s lips press together, but eventually she nods, taking the case, hefting it as if to judge the weight. Then she focuses her attention back on Daniel and gives him a lop-sided grin, her fingers dancing a pattern across his chest. “I’ll be in touch,” she promises with a sly wink.
She’s gone before he can think of a suitable response. He watches her as she disappears back into the crowd. “So this is what you’ve been doing all these years?” he asks Jack.
Jack slides him a look. “I’m not sleeping with her, if that’s what’s got your panties in a twist.”
Daniel glances up at him sharply.
Jack’s eyes narrow. “You don’t have any right to tell me how to live my damn life, Daniel,” he snaps, walking off.
“That’s abundantly clear,” Daniel says to his back. With a sigh, he follows Jack into the general store across the street. Jack is already talking with the storekeep when he catches up. Daniel is pretty sure that the crate on the counter next to them is the one he saw Jacob packing a few days before.
Daniel listens to Jack run through a large list of supplies. The pile on the counter grows quickly, full of staples like flour and cured meats, but also household items such as lamp oil that he can’t imagine Jack needs unless he’s got another cabin stashed away on a planet somewhere.
“Thread?” Daniel asks as the storekeep adds a few spools of various colors.
Jack ignores him. “You get any of those preserves from Nash? The nettleberry?”
The storekeep nods, a wide smile barely visible under his heavy beard. “Just came in last week. Got a few jars left.”
“Great,” Jack says. “I’ll take one jar of the preserves and that will do it.”
“Okay,” the storekeep says, marking something down in a ledger. He pats the crate. “I’ll get these to Laura.”
Jack quickly packs two boxes full of supplies, unceremoniously dumping one into Daniel’s arms, taking the slightly smaller one himself. “See you next month, Cyrus,” Jack says over his shoulder as he trudges back out into the street.
Daniel shifts his load and decides against asking questions Jack clearly has no interest in answering. At least until they hit the outskirts of town where Jack’s ship waits for them. Truthfully, it isn’t much to look at, but Jack has obviously taken a lot of time to optimize it because there are systems and modifications that Daniel’s never seen before, not that he pays much attention to that kind of thing. If he hadn’t seen Jack buried in various systems on the way out here, he might not have noticed that among Jack’s many new skill sets, grease monkey seems chief among them.
Following Jack into the ship’s hold, Daniel watches him put the boxes into another larger crate partially full of fabric, and now he gets it. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Jack has been taking care of her this whole time, but somehow it makes a difference knowing that Jack O’Neill isn’t so changed that he leaves his people behind.
Glancing around the hold, for the first time Daniel really looks at the space Jack calls home these days. The majority of the space is designated for cargo, so Daniel hasn’t spent much time here. Other than the flight out to this planet, they’ve been staying in a boarding house in town while they waited for Vala to show up.
His eye is caught by the small alcove at the rear, partially covered by a thin curtain. Daniel can just make out a narrow trunk bed with a pile of what might be star charts and a few worn paperbacks near the foot. The sparse belongings paint a painfully bleak picture of a Spartan existence. Whatever the truth is of what Jack O’Neill has been doing the last five years, it certainly hasn’t been comfortable, or easy, and Daniel just can’t stay angry, no matter how much he wants to.
Turning back to the crate, Daniel finds Jack watching him, as if daring him to comment, or maybe simply waiting for the next fight.
“Why come back now?” Daniel asks, not a critique or a heated complaint, just a simple question. Probably the most important question.
Jack seems surprised, but doesn’t pretend not to understand the question. He just looks down at the crate as if considering his answer. Eventually he shrugs. “Because it looks to me like this is it,” he says. “Am I wrong?”
Daniel shakes his head. He’s not wrong.
“I heard about Abydos,” Jack says after a lengthy silence.
Daniel flinches. He manages to forget, sometimes. Letting his mind fool him that it’s still waiting out there for him somewhere. That he hadn’t led them to their deaths.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says, still looking down at his hands so he doesn’t see something he’s not supposed to.
It’s such a familiar ruse that Daniel feels a horrid sort of deja vu, time wrapping around on itself. Maybe Jacob’s right. He’s still Jack O’Neill. And maybe none of them were really sane to begin with. There was a time they’d been deluded enough to think they could win this, after all, wasn’t there?
“I worry about Teal’c,” Daniel confesses before he can give it too much thought.
Now Jack turns, confusion on his face. Another thing that hasn’t changed: they always assume nothing can touch Teal’c. Except maybe Sam, he thinks, remembering her fingers on Teal’c’s face, the way Teal’c stepped away from her. He thinks Sam saw it. Recognized what no one else could.
“I think he’s beginning to regret this.”
Teal’c should have been pissed at Jack for deserting, or shown at least something other than sheer indifference. They both know that.
“Ry’ac?” Jack asks, his voice a shade lower than normal. Daniel wonders if that’s guilt weighing his tongue down. God knows there’s more than enough to go around these days.
Daniel nods. “And Bra’tac. And Chulak. Imhotep’s betrayal of the rebels. I don’t know when it began really.”
Jack crosses his arms, leaning one hip against the crate. “Is it as bad as they say?”
“Bad enough,” Daniel admits.
The Jaffa rebellion was supposed to be the cornerstone of the Goa’uld’s destruction. But Anubis foresaw the threat they could become. He snuck in a minor compatriot as a mole, a lure he used to stamp out as many renegades at one time as he could. Then he stepped up his production of mindless drones with only one directive: to serve Anubis.
The last of his loyal Jaffa he threw into bloody, pointless battles.
Anubis is steadily driving the Jaffa towards extinction.
But the Goa’uld’s dependence on the drones may be their one chance to find his damn Achilles’ heel.
Rodney is back at base right now, working on it. It’s the first tiny glimmer of hope Daniel’s seen in years. It’s what finally drove him to try to bring Sam back. The final pull, the last bet, all chips thrown in.
“All or nothing,” Daniel mutters.
Jack nods.
* * *
The grove is quiet, none of the women are training this late in the day, but rather attending to chores in their camp. The sun has not yet begun its decent behind the mountains so beats down upon Teal’c as he moves through his routine with his staff, the movements proscribed and imprinted on his brain since childhood.
As he turns, sweeping the staff high across his body, he catches sight of the woven patterns hanging in the trees out of the corner of his eye. Honor, diligence, and pride, they read. He stabs his weapon at each; short, blunt thrusts morphing into smooth, parrying retreats. Boldly strapped to the widest tree at the head of the grove is a pattern worn faint with time, but still legible: faith.
Teal’c’s grip slips, the head of the staff dropping to drag jarringly against the dirt.
As he recovers, he hears the heavy tread of a foot purposely dragged to announce the approach of an ally. There is only one here who would seek him out.
“I was not expecting you again so soon,” Ishta observes as she steps out of the forest. He has, in fact, not seen her in many months, though his visits here coordinated purposely in her absence are slightly more regular. She probably means to remind him that she is perfectly aware of his movements.
Ishta never says anything without purpose after all, without five meanings layered underneath the words. There was a time he found this fascinating, a tangled depth that he would have gladly spent a lifetime unraveling. Only nothing is as it should be, she least of all, and there have been fewer and fewer words between them. Teal’c could confirm what she is insinuating, that this place has become nothing but a worthy excuse for him, a default burden to explain his absences, to make his lies to Daniel Jackson slightly more palatable.
“You aren’t coming with us?” Daniel Jackson asks, O’Neill just behind him.
Teal’c doesn’t pause in his packing, reaching for his small case of tretonin, slipping the purple liquid into his bag. “As I informed Colonel Reynolds, I have a previous engagement on Hak’tyl.”
With O’Neill there, watching them both closely, Daniel Jackson does not dare call his bluff.
Ishta knows very well his time here ceased to be about her long ago.
“Would you care to spar with something that can actually fight back?” she asks, picking up one of the training staves, twirling it in her fingers with deftness that Teal’c can’t help but admire. He lets himself pretend, just for a moment, that they are nothing more than warriors bred of grace and skill, a mere pair among millions.
But then he remembers. Those millions are whittled down to struggling handfuls.
As for Ishta, she and her kind only survive because they are abominations, mutations no Goa’uld or First Prime could dream into existence. Pariahs who perhaps ever would have stood apart from their brethren, never to be accepted. Women taking up arms not out of necessity, but out of desire, drive. Women looting symbiotes from fellow Jaffa, back when there had been Jaffa to steal from. Yet they survive, these ex-priestesses and women who will not be wives, thrive even, while the rest of their kind wither and die, just like their customs, just like their strength.
Just like him.
“I know why you are here,” she says as she circles him, looking for an opening. He wonders when they became incapable of words without weapons between them. “I know why you come here again and again.”
She lunges at him and there is no more time for words, only action and reaction, the dance of attack and retreat. Teal’c has let his training with the staff slip, depending more and more upon the weapons of the Tau’ri. He knows she sees this because her attacks sneak unerringly under his rough edges, pressing at his weak points, yet she always holds back just the slightest bit, goading him with his weaknesses.
He parries, but never out of anger, no passion marring his serene surface.
Only when she tires of the game, her futile attempt to draw some form of reaction out of him, does she finally sweep his feet, winding him a little as his back slams into the ground. She is upon him, pinning him down before he can regain his feet, her staff across his chest.
“You still believe the drug makes you weak, less of a warrior,” she says, passion sparking in her eyes as she leans on the staff, shifting up and pressing it against his neck. “But you are wrong. Your weakness is of your own making.”
He shifts his hips to gain leverage and winds his legs through hers to buck her weight off of him, but she is ready for the maneuver, rolling with the movement like quicksilver, turning his momentum back against him. She raps the head of her staff against his thigh, a tight, stinging reprimand that reminds him of frigid days in the snow with Bra’tac by his side, the teacher patiently molding Teal’c into a warrior of free thought and compassion, while laying on him a burden it would take nearly a century to fully understand.
The very thought of Bra’tac should bring resentment or grief or even the warmth of familiarity, but Teal’c feels nothing, nothing but the crunch of non-existent ice against his skin.
Ishta stares down at him, her expression hard, breathing slightly labored, but in her eyes something else entirely as she searches his face. For a moment, she looks at him as she used to, like she might reach for him, but it is gone just as quickly.
“There is a difference between controlling one’s emotions and attempting to eradicate them,” she says, rolling off him and onto her feet in one smooth motion. “You have become stone.”
She tosses the staff down by his side, and he doesn’t miss the flick of disgust in the motion, the way her wrist snaps with impatience as she releases it. “Stone makes a poor bedmate. And an even poorer warrior.”
She holds his gaze and as the moments stretch silent between them, he sees the merest break in her haughty mask, a true flash of her anguish and bitter disappointment before she turns to leave.
“O’Neill returned today,” Teal’c says, finally finding his voice in the wake of that burning glimpse.
She stops, something tightening in her shoulders, but when she turns, he sees nothing but her resolve. “As you always suspected he would one day.”
Teal’c pushes up into a sitting position, feeling the protest of muscles unaccustomed to the rigors of training. “Yes.”
Her eyes slip past him, staring into the distance. “So it has finally come, this time of reckoning.”
They’d spoken often of this day in the beginning, back in those long lazy hours of night when they would lay with their limbs entwined, voices lowered to impassioned whispers of a future for which they would fight. Together. He remembers feeling that no matter how rough the path became they would find a way. Such surety.
But that was before. Back when Jaffa still filled this galaxy. Back when there was still hope.
“My people and I, we will fight,” Ishta pledges, bright and golden in the sunlight and he senses that somehow she still believes. Despite everything that has happened, she still believes they can be free. It’s seductive and tempting, and in that moment, he finally sees what maybe he should have long before. It’s clear to him as he sits in the dirt and looks up at her that though he may be nothing but a relic of a decaying past, she and her people are the future. Not abominations, not cast-outs, but the last fragile survival of a once proud people.
Above him, Ishta shifts, the sunlight catching the edge of her cheek as her eyes meet his. “Will you?”
Maybe there is one small chance left, Teal’c thinks, one treacherous, narrow, uphill path still to be attempted. Maybe that is faith enough.
He holds out a hand to Ishta.
She helps him to his feet.
Next: Down So Long
Author: Annerb
Summary: Five years ago, SG-1 broke in half. Two years ago, Earth lost. Today, there is one last chance to fix things. But sometimes the pieces just don’t fit back together again.
Warnings: Mature for language, violence, torture, non-con, adult themes, and some temporal meandering.
Categorization: AU, H/C, darkfic, tragedy, and apocafic for flavor. Team, Sam/Jack.
A/N: Special thanks to
la_tante for the beta and to katcorvi and holdouttrout for their phenomenal hand holding abilities.
Part One-History
Part Two-Prodigal
Prologue
Chapter 1: What Once Was Lost
Chapter 2: Omega
Chapter 3: Compatriots
Chapter Four: A Song for Our Fathers
Daniel watches Jack and Vala where they’re standing a few paces away, just far enough that he can’t hear what they’re saying. They’re leaning into each other with the obvious ease of two people who know each other well. Of course, Vala also looks pissed enough to pull her gun on Jack.
Daniel can relate to that.
Someone bumps into Daniel from behind, and, as Daniel turn to look at him, the half-muttered curse dies in the stranger’s throat. He stops talking mid-word and quickly ducks back into the flow of people on the sidewalk. There was a time such behavior might have seemed strange, but Daniel is getting used to it.
He doesn’t miss the way people give him space, the bustle of the street diverting around him like he’s a stone in a river. He’s resigned to the looks he gets from people when they realize he’s Tau’ri. He’s one part pariah, one part legend. And everyone treats him as if his people are already in the past tense, like he’s a walking ghost.
Like he’s cursed.
“Okay, handsome,” Vala says, appearing without warning by his elbow. “Give me three days and twenty weights of naquadah and we’ve got ourselves a deal.”
“Five up front,” Jack interrupts, right on her heels. He hands over their payment. “The balance when you deliver.”
Vala’s lips press together, but eventually she nods, taking the case, hefting it as if to judge the weight. Then she focuses her attention back on Daniel and gives him a lop-sided grin, her fingers dancing a pattern across his chest. “I’ll be in touch,” she promises with a sly wink.
She’s gone before he can think of a suitable response. He watches her as she disappears back into the crowd. “So this is what you’ve been doing all these years?” he asks Jack.
Jack slides him a look. “I’m not sleeping with her, if that’s what’s got your panties in a twist.”
Daniel glances up at him sharply.
Jack’s eyes narrow. “You don’t have any right to tell me how to live my damn life, Daniel,” he snaps, walking off.
“That’s abundantly clear,” Daniel says to his back. With a sigh, he follows Jack into the general store across the street. Jack is already talking with the storekeep when he catches up. Daniel is pretty sure that the crate on the counter next to them is the one he saw Jacob packing a few days before.
Daniel listens to Jack run through a large list of supplies. The pile on the counter grows quickly, full of staples like flour and cured meats, but also household items such as lamp oil that he can’t imagine Jack needs unless he’s got another cabin stashed away on a planet somewhere.
“Thread?” Daniel asks as the storekeep adds a few spools of various colors.
Jack ignores him. “You get any of those preserves from Nash? The nettleberry?”
The storekeep nods, a wide smile barely visible under his heavy beard. “Just came in last week. Got a few jars left.”
“Great,” Jack says. “I’ll take one jar of the preserves and that will do it.”
“Okay,” the storekeep says, marking something down in a ledger. He pats the crate. “I’ll get these to Laura.”
Jack quickly packs two boxes full of supplies, unceremoniously dumping one into Daniel’s arms, taking the slightly smaller one himself. “See you next month, Cyrus,” Jack says over his shoulder as he trudges back out into the street.
Daniel shifts his load and decides against asking questions Jack clearly has no interest in answering. At least until they hit the outskirts of town where Jack’s ship waits for them. Truthfully, it isn’t much to look at, but Jack has obviously taken a lot of time to optimize it because there are systems and modifications that Daniel’s never seen before, not that he pays much attention to that kind of thing. If he hadn’t seen Jack buried in various systems on the way out here, he might not have noticed that among Jack’s many new skill sets, grease monkey seems chief among them.
Following Jack into the ship’s hold, Daniel watches him put the boxes into another larger crate partially full of fabric, and now he gets it. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Jack has been taking care of her this whole time, but somehow it makes a difference knowing that Jack O’Neill isn’t so changed that he leaves his people behind.
Glancing around the hold, for the first time Daniel really looks at the space Jack calls home these days. The majority of the space is designated for cargo, so Daniel hasn’t spent much time here. Other than the flight out to this planet, they’ve been staying in a boarding house in town while they waited for Vala to show up.
His eye is caught by the small alcove at the rear, partially covered by a thin curtain. Daniel can just make out a narrow trunk bed with a pile of what might be star charts and a few worn paperbacks near the foot. The sparse belongings paint a painfully bleak picture of a Spartan existence. Whatever the truth is of what Jack O’Neill has been doing the last five years, it certainly hasn’t been comfortable, or easy, and Daniel just can’t stay angry, no matter how much he wants to.
Turning back to the crate, Daniel finds Jack watching him, as if daring him to comment, or maybe simply waiting for the next fight.
“Why come back now?” Daniel asks, not a critique or a heated complaint, just a simple question. Probably the most important question.
Jack seems surprised, but doesn’t pretend not to understand the question. He just looks down at the crate as if considering his answer. Eventually he shrugs. “Because it looks to me like this is it,” he says. “Am I wrong?”
Daniel shakes his head. He’s not wrong.
“I heard about Abydos,” Jack says after a lengthy silence.
Daniel flinches. He manages to forget, sometimes. Letting his mind fool him that it’s still waiting out there for him somewhere. That he hadn’t led them to their deaths.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says, still looking down at his hands so he doesn’t see something he’s not supposed to.
It’s such a familiar ruse that Daniel feels a horrid sort of deja vu, time wrapping around on itself. Maybe Jacob’s right. He’s still Jack O’Neill. And maybe none of them were really sane to begin with. There was a time they’d been deluded enough to think they could win this, after all, wasn’t there?
“I worry about Teal’c,” Daniel confesses before he can give it too much thought.
Now Jack turns, confusion on his face. Another thing that hasn’t changed: they always assume nothing can touch Teal’c. Except maybe Sam, he thinks, remembering her fingers on Teal’c’s face, the way Teal’c stepped away from her. He thinks Sam saw it. Recognized what no one else could.
“I think he’s beginning to regret this.”
Teal’c should have been pissed at Jack for deserting, or shown at least something other than sheer indifference. They both know that.
“Ry’ac?” Jack asks, his voice a shade lower than normal. Daniel wonders if that’s guilt weighing his tongue down. God knows there’s more than enough to go around these days.
Daniel nods. “And Bra’tac. And Chulak. Imhotep’s betrayal of the rebels. I don’t know when it began really.”
Jack crosses his arms, leaning one hip against the crate. “Is it as bad as they say?”
“Bad enough,” Daniel admits.
The Jaffa rebellion was supposed to be the cornerstone of the Goa’uld’s destruction. But Anubis foresaw the threat they could become. He snuck in a minor compatriot as a mole, a lure he used to stamp out as many renegades at one time as he could. Then he stepped up his production of mindless drones with only one directive: to serve Anubis.
The last of his loyal Jaffa he threw into bloody, pointless battles.
Anubis is steadily driving the Jaffa towards extinction.
But the Goa’uld’s dependence on the drones may be their one chance to find his damn Achilles’ heel.
Rodney is back at base right now, working on it. It’s the first tiny glimmer of hope Daniel’s seen in years. It’s what finally drove him to try to bring Sam back. The final pull, the last bet, all chips thrown in.
“All or nothing,” Daniel mutters.
Jack nods.
* * *
The grove is quiet, none of the women are training this late in the day, but rather attending to chores in their camp. The sun has not yet begun its decent behind the mountains so beats down upon Teal’c as he moves through his routine with his staff, the movements proscribed and imprinted on his brain since childhood.
As he turns, sweeping the staff high across his body, he catches sight of the woven patterns hanging in the trees out of the corner of his eye. Honor, diligence, and pride, they read. He stabs his weapon at each; short, blunt thrusts morphing into smooth, parrying retreats. Boldly strapped to the widest tree at the head of the grove is a pattern worn faint with time, but still legible: faith.
Teal’c’s grip slips, the head of the staff dropping to drag jarringly against the dirt.
As he recovers, he hears the heavy tread of a foot purposely dragged to announce the approach of an ally. There is only one here who would seek him out.
“I was not expecting you again so soon,” Ishta observes as she steps out of the forest. He has, in fact, not seen her in many months, though his visits here coordinated purposely in her absence are slightly more regular. She probably means to remind him that she is perfectly aware of his movements.
Ishta never says anything without purpose after all, without five meanings layered underneath the words. There was a time he found this fascinating, a tangled depth that he would have gladly spent a lifetime unraveling. Only nothing is as it should be, she least of all, and there have been fewer and fewer words between them. Teal’c could confirm what she is insinuating, that this place has become nothing but a worthy excuse for him, a default burden to explain his absences, to make his lies to Daniel Jackson slightly more palatable.
“You aren’t coming with us?” Daniel Jackson asks, O’Neill just behind him.
Teal’c doesn’t pause in his packing, reaching for his small case of tretonin, slipping the purple liquid into his bag. “As I informed Colonel Reynolds, I have a previous engagement on Hak’tyl.”
With O’Neill there, watching them both closely, Daniel Jackson does not dare call his bluff.
Ishta knows very well his time here ceased to be about her long ago.
“Would you care to spar with something that can actually fight back?” she asks, picking up one of the training staves, twirling it in her fingers with deftness that Teal’c can’t help but admire. He lets himself pretend, just for a moment, that they are nothing more than warriors bred of grace and skill, a mere pair among millions.
But then he remembers. Those millions are whittled down to struggling handfuls.
As for Ishta, she and her kind only survive because they are abominations, mutations no Goa’uld or First Prime could dream into existence. Pariahs who perhaps ever would have stood apart from their brethren, never to be accepted. Women taking up arms not out of necessity, but out of desire, drive. Women looting symbiotes from fellow Jaffa, back when there had been Jaffa to steal from. Yet they survive, these ex-priestesses and women who will not be wives, thrive even, while the rest of their kind wither and die, just like their customs, just like their strength.
Just like him.
“I know why you are here,” she says as she circles him, looking for an opening. He wonders when they became incapable of words without weapons between them. “I know why you come here again and again.”
She lunges at him and there is no more time for words, only action and reaction, the dance of attack and retreat. Teal’c has let his training with the staff slip, depending more and more upon the weapons of the Tau’ri. He knows she sees this because her attacks sneak unerringly under his rough edges, pressing at his weak points, yet she always holds back just the slightest bit, goading him with his weaknesses.
He parries, but never out of anger, no passion marring his serene surface.
Only when she tires of the game, her futile attempt to draw some form of reaction out of him, does she finally sweep his feet, winding him a little as his back slams into the ground. She is upon him, pinning him down before he can regain his feet, her staff across his chest.
“You still believe the drug makes you weak, less of a warrior,” she says, passion sparking in her eyes as she leans on the staff, shifting up and pressing it against his neck. “But you are wrong. Your weakness is of your own making.”
He shifts his hips to gain leverage and winds his legs through hers to buck her weight off of him, but she is ready for the maneuver, rolling with the movement like quicksilver, turning his momentum back against him. She raps the head of her staff against his thigh, a tight, stinging reprimand that reminds him of frigid days in the snow with Bra’tac by his side, the teacher patiently molding Teal’c into a warrior of free thought and compassion, while laying on him a burden it would take nearly a century to fully understand.
The very thought of Bra’tac should bring resentment or grief or even the warmth of familiarity, but Teal’c feels nothing, nothing but the crunch of non-existent ice against his skin.
Ishta stares down at him, her expression hard, breathing slightly labored, but in her eyes something else entirely as she searches his face. For a moment, she looks at him as she used to, like she might reach for him, but it is gone just as quickly.
“There is a difference between controlling one’s emotions and attempting to eradicate them,” she says, rolling off him and onto her feet in one smooth motion. “You have become stone.”
She tosses the staff down by his side, and he doesn’t miss the flick of disgust in the motion, the way her wrist snaps with impatience as she releases it. “Stone makes a poor bedmate. And an even poorer warrior.”
She holds his gaze and as the moments stretch silent between them, he sees the merest break in her haughty mask, a true flash of her anguish and bitter disappointment before she turns to leave.
“O’Neill returned today,” Teal’c says, finally finding his voice in the wake of that burning glimpse.
She stops, something tightening in her shoulders, but when she turns, he sees nothing but her resolve. “As you always suspected he would one day.”
Teal’c pushes up into a sitting position, feeling the protest of muscles unaccustomed to the rigors of training. “Yes.”
Her eyes slip past him, staring into the distance. “So it has finally come, this time of reckoning.”
They’d spoken often of this day in the beginning, back in those long lazy hours of night when they would lay with their limbs entwined, voices lowered to impassioned whispers of a future for which they would fight. Together. He remembers feeling that no matter how rough the path became they would find a way. Such surety.
But that was before. Back when Jaffa still filled this galaxy. Back when there was still hope.
“My people and I, we will fight,” Ishta pledges, bright and golden in the sunlight and he senses that somehow she still believes. Despite everything that has happened, she still believes they can be free. It’s seductive and tempting, and in that moment, he finally sees what maybe he should have long before. It’s clear to him as he sits in the dirt and looks up at her that though he may be nothing but a relic of a decaying past, she and her people are the future. Not abominations, not cast-outs, but the last fragile survival of a once proud people.
Above him, Ishta shifts, the sunlight catching the edge of her cheek as her eyes meet his. “Will you?”
Maybe there is one small chance left, Teal’c thinks, one treacherous, narrow, uphill path still to be attempted. Maybe that is faith enough.
He holds out a hand to Ishta.
She helps him to his feet.
Next: Down So Long