Masquerade - Ch 4
Title: Masquerade - Chapter 4
Pairing: Sam/Janet
Rating: adult
Summary: SG-1 make the horrifying discovery that Janet Fraiser has been host to a Goa’uld for the past three years.
This chapter: Nephthys sure is short for a God.
It was hard to tell how long he had been awake and staring at the ceiling. What took longer to work out was that the ceiling was unusually low. Cam blinked and shifted as his body naturally reacted to regaining consciousness. His limbs struck resistance that sent hollow echoes boxing his hears.
A moment later there was a hiss and a line of light cut down the middle of the ceiling. It grew and grew and he realized the ceiling was opening. Cautiously Cam pulled himself up and swung his arms free.
“Oh.” He looked down over the edge of the golden sarcophagus, and gave it a hearty slap with the whole of his hand. “Another first. This is going in my diary.”
He was suddenly struck by a strange feeling of being watched, and looking up, he saw two men wearing strange cloth garments.
“Oh, hiya,” Cam said, giving a quick two fingered wave.
The men stood like stone sentries. Cam popped his mouth. After exchanging a signal between them, the men reached down and slipped their hands under Cam’s arms. He flailed at first but when they set his feet on the ground and released him he was less concerned about being manhandled as he was about the strange clothes he was wearing.
“Ohhh, I’ve had this dream,” he shuddered, appraising the long pale pants and tight strapped boots warily. He picked at and patted the thin undershirt and decorated vest with the same suspicion and then eyed his stern faced companions back and forth. He wiggled a finger. “You guys didn’t...I mean...You at least shut your eyes before...”
“Come with us,” one of the men said.
“Yup.” Cam decided he didn’t want to know. His weapon was gone, but he could feel a weight in a small pouch he discovered around his belt. When he checked it he found his radio had been left there.
Unrestrained, he walked curiously free between the two unarmed men out of the sarcophagus chamber and along a hallway. The base of the walls were a pink hued stone and supported a smooth pale yellow upper wall that captured the light spilling in from slender arched windows.
Their footfalls made satisfying claps against shining white marble, criss-crossed with black and grey tile patterns. Following the men through more and more extravagant halls and chambers, Cam observed hundreds of people bustling about with various tools or burdens, or tending to a variety of chores.
He could distinguish at least three distinct uniforms. Some wore simple loose fitting clothes. Others wore decorated garments like himself and a select few, such as the men leading Cam through the lavish building, were dressed in heavily embroidered cloth and dyed silks with golden bands around their head.
“You’re taking me to see Nephthys, right?” Cam amassed. “Any advice?” He looked from one man to the other, but neither responded. “You know, you two would be the worst company stranded on an Island.”
Finally they came to a pair of guarded arched doors. These the guards opened as they approached and Cam was led between two mighty rows of columns towards a throne where a woman sat, resplendent in exotic finery.
Brought before the woman, Cam was permitted time to appreciate the elegant, if ostentatious design of her bodice, accentuating flawless cinnamon skin and voluptuous curves of her decidedly petite frame. Her languidly crossed legs were bare and exposed under a long flowing skirt that had slipped open around her silken thighs.
Her lips, so perfectly sculpted into sharp and devilish points, curved slyly at the explorative gaze Cam was giving her. She swirled her arms from her lap and settled them on the rests of her throne, tilting her head so short, chestnut curls bounced gracefully above her shoulder.
Cam scoffed. “You must be Nephthys.”
The woman’s eyes glowed.
“Little short for a God, aren’t you?” he teased boldly.
Nephthys hummed in amusement. “Little cocky for a man who led his entire team to their deaths.”
Cam clucked his tongue sheepishly. “Touché.”
“Hm.” Nephthys uncoiled her legs and stood daintily from her throne. Her sandaled feet patted softly down the platform steps. “You remind me of Jack.”
Cam frowned and grunted in disappointment. “People keep saying that.”
“Then perhaps you should introduce yourself,” Nephthys suggested, coming to stand on the bottom step so that Cam’s eyeline skimmed the top of her head. In spite of this Cam felt himself shrinking by the minute.
“Alright,” Cam said, “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell.”
Nephthys’ dark eyes glittered with anticipation. Cam felt his bones ache.
“The rest of my team...”
“Are being revived,” Nephthys said, “You are lucky I saw you coming. I was able to send one of my patrol ships to pick you up.”
“Not before we were all shot to hell,” Cam stated, eyeing the Goa’uld with his brow low.
Nephthys shrugged. “So long as you’re here, I cannot order harm to come to you. That doesn’t mean I won’t indulge in the violent whims of others.”
She extended an enticingly shaped leg to the floor and Cam swallowed anxiously as she came up close to him. He pulled back a little as she reached for his face and pressed a finger between his eyes. “You were luckier than the others. A single shot. Death was instant for you.” She caressed his cheek.
Cam’s gaze followed Nephthys’s fingers down to his chest, where they spread like claws against firm flesh. “One poor woman was torn apart. Bullets ravaging through flesh and muscle but not one merciful enough to prevent the slow, agonizing death she endured.”
Her fingers pricking at his chest suggested the haphazard pattern she described, eyes glazed with morbid fascination.
Cam smiled thinly and looked down at the God. “You didn’t have to revive us.”
Nephthys flattened her hand against him and smiled. “It will be more fun this way.”
There was no time to negotiate the expression on her face. She was already turning away from him.
“My priests will take you to the guests’ quarters.” At the top of the platform she faced him once more. “As I said, the injuries your friends sustained were far worse than your own. They will take longer to heal.”
“Are we prisoners?”
A streak of delight swept across Nephthys’ pretty face. “Circumstances being as they are, you might consider yourselves my very special guests. I’m aware of the trouble your ship encountered with the Asgard. You may stay here until your people are permitted to return for you.”
“Actually,” Cam spoke up as Nephthys was about to turn from him again. She swept her body back on him. “We’re here to negotiate with you.”
A slender eyebrow lifted.
Cam lay on a luxurious sofa in the antechamber of what he was told were the guest quarters. It was a wide, round open area, furnished with chairs and rugs and pillows and sofas and potted plants. Cam sputtered his lips, bored.
The first to return was Teal’c, who towered between the priests escorting him through the doors.
“Cameron Mitchell,” Teal’c said in relief. Cam swung his legs and sat up as Teal’c hurried towards him, looking all around. “Colonel Carter? Daniel Jackson?”
Cam held up and waved his hands. “They’re not here. Yet,” he added when Teal’c turned on him in a panic. “I’m sure they’ll be here soon. Their wounds were probably more severe than ours.”
Teal’c sat down beside him and clasped his hands. “That does very little to comfort me.”
Cam chewed his lip. “Yeah. Me neither.” He put a consoling hand on his friend’s back. “I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”
Now that he was touching him, Cam noticed what Teal’c was wearing. His grey pants were made of an opulent fabric, and his chest was bare under his vest. Cam gave a nod. “Nice threads.”
Teal’c’s head turned slowly and Cam shuffled away from his loathing glare.
When the door next opened Sam was welcomed by Teal’c standing attentively. When she came close enough he held her shoulder and looked her up and down as though he needed to reinscribe her entire being into his senses.
“I’m fine, Teal’c.” She looked like she was going to insist again, but she smiled and gave the man more time to assure himself. Daniel and Vala soon joined them. Daniel was dressed much in the same way as Cam.
Sam and Vala had been clothed in halter tops made of a hardy dark fabric and wore form fitting jackets made of different materials stitched together. Vala was wearing a short dark skirt and boots while Sam was instead wearing slim fitting pants. The pair of them weren’t half distracting.
After spending a sinful moment admiring the women, Cam cleared his throat and announced his meeting with Nephthys.
Daniel folded his arms. “So, what was she like?” His voice was rather chirpy for a man who was dead only minutes ago. Cam supposed he was used to it.
He propped his hands on his hips and cocked his head. “Short?”
Vala narrowed her eyes with intrigue. “Isn’t she though,” she agreed.
“She knows us,” Cam went on, “Or she knows you guys. She said I reminded her of Jack.”
Teal’c’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Sam blinked and frowned, staring anxiously into space before setting her gaze on Cam.
“That’s not possible,” she said.
“SG-1 has never encountered Nephthys,” Teal’c confirmed.
The looks exchanged between Sam, Daniel and Teal’c gave Cam the most unnerving feeling he’d ever experienced. Sam had gone so pale, the colour had drained even from her eyes, and watching her, Daniel looked overcome by the same sickening thought.
“Oh,” he shook his head, “Oh, you don’t think. No. No...”
If he had ever heard a sadder, more desperate sound in his life, Cam couldn’t think of it. The devastation and despair laced in the single expression that gasped from Sam’s lips made his heart twist.
“Daniel...”
Daniel collapsed into the armchair behind him, head buried in his heads, pleading to someone who, evidently, was not answering.
“What is it?” Vala said, edging forward with concern. “What don’t you think?” She looked up at Sam and Teal’c in turn, then helplessly at Cam.
“No,” Daniel said again behind his hands. “No, we saw...” He looked up, finding Sam and Teal’c and telling them, “We saw her...” He held their gazes for a long time but his featured crumbled and he sobbed. “Oh god.” He covered his face in his hands again.
“The uh...” Sam closed her eyes against the difficulty of her next words. “...Body...was reduced to ash. Janet’s tags were... Ba’al only made it look like...” she watched Daniel rocking in denial through shimmering eyes.
There was a certain amount of courage needed to face such an idea. It was an amount Sam just didn’t have. She hated herself for being so cowardly.
“I uhh,” Cam began gently, so as not to aggravate already fragile emotions. “I told Nephthys we were here to negotiate. She told me she would contact us through one of her priests when she was ready. In the mean time I think we should get out of here. Go for a walk in town. Clear our heads.”
Vala, eager to get as far away from Nephthys as possible, rose readily to her feet. “Good idea.”
“Sam. Teal’c.” Cam urged them. They both nodded silently and moved around the sofa.
It took a lot more persuading to get Daniel to join them. The man was a mess. He didn’t speak a single word, or look up from his feet, as a priest guided them through the crowded market streets.
Sam and Teal’c walked together, but both seemed otherwise disengaged from the world. Vala walked at Cam’s side, and in striking contrast, fidgeted with restless energy.
“You okay?” he asked her.
“What?” Vala didn’t even look at him initially. Then she met his querying frown with an awkward smile. “Oh, I’m fine. Never better. We’re stranded on a planet lightyears away from home, and we’re houseguests for a Goa’uld. And not just any Goa’uld. Nephthys! Of all the...sick, twisted, psychotic, sadistic, evil...” Vala fused her lips together in a pout of fury and Cam had to chuckle.
“She didn’t seem that bad to me,” he said.
Vala laughed dryly. “Ah. Of course. That’s what she wants you to think. She’s cunning, that one. Sly. You never know what she’s really up to and when you do, it’s already decades too late.”
Cam squirted air between his lips. “Sounds like you two have a history.”
“Well,” Vala bobbed her head to the side. “I knew her only a short time. But I know what she’s capable of. She’s...scary.”
Cam couldn’t counter it with flippancy. Her concern was so earnest and her fear so genuine, Cam was reminded of how unsettled he felt as Nephthys described the delight she took at finding them dead in the desert.
With a churning in his gut he realized that the woman she had mentioned suffering the most had been Vala. She had been the last to join them, presumably needing more time in the sarcophagus to heal and revive.
“Don’t worry,” he said to her, struck by the hope and trust in her eyes. “Nephthys can’t do anything to us. Asgard treaty, remember?”
Vala scoffed and watched the sand washed stones under her feet. “Maybe she can’t physically harm us or hold us here against our will. But she will find a way to hurt us. Believe me.”
Their priest guide took them to a communal dining hall. The sand covered stone road continued inside a building filled with heavy wooden tables around a central, decorative fountain. People moved about carrying bronze trays of food and drink, voices swelled like waves rolling against the shore, and the atmosphere was entirely too cheerful for the weight of dread pressing down on SG-1.
They sat miserably at a table, picking at fruit or cakes and sipping dolefully from dented metal cups. Cam felt useless. He hoped some food and drink might at least alleviate some of their tension. He sat in witness to the unquiet of their expressions.
If the lethargy of Sam, Daniel and Teal’c concerned him, the exuberance by which Vala stuffed her face with cakes and gulped mouthfuls of the fruity beverage was just as worrying.
“What does she look like?”
Cam looked up at Sam’s tentative question.
“Well,” Vala said, wiping her mouth. “She’s got sort of...” She was waving fingers above her shoulder to indicate, Cam assumed, hair length, but he stilled it in his grasp and eyed her sternly.
He looked across at Sam sympathetically. “Even if we told you, you still wouldn’t know for sure until you saw her for yourself.”
“You should know what she looks like,” Sam said accusingly. “You’ve read all our mission reports. You must have read her file, seen her profile picture.”
“I really just skimmed,” Cam said. Responding to the disappointment on Sam’s face, there was no tone of defence as he said, “I read the reports, yes. But I didn’t see it necessary to read the personnel files of every military figure mentioned in them.”
Sam’s head drooped, gaze once more falling into her lap.
Vala stopped eating long enough to empathise with Sam’s pain.
“I’m not sure if it will help at all, but...If Nephthys has taken your friend as a host there’s a chance she can be saved.”
Sam scoffed shamefully. “That’s not...We abandoned her to a fate worse than death. Imprisoned in her own body for three years, forced to commit unimaginable horrors, utterly powerless to stop it.”
Teal’c turned to look down at her and then looked away distantly.
Vala reached her hand across the table, hoping that closeness would comfort her. “You have hope, Sam.” She stared at her, so that their gaze would lock when she finally looked up. Then Vala said, “Which is more than you had yesterday.”
Still casting a hopeless look across the hall, Teal’c said, “And if Nephthys is not who we fear her to be?”
Sam smiled without humour and shook her head. “I don’t know if I would be relieved or...” her head bowed once again in shame.
Vala ached and tried to smile. “It is not a bad thing to hope there is a chance your friend is alive and can be saved.” She looked at Daniel. “That does not make you bad people.”
Daniel hugged himself and shrank deeper into shadow.
Cam couldn’t stand it. As a leader he thought he was prepared for anything, and being a member of an SG unit meant allowing for a more broad interpretation of the term than was acceptable, quite frankly. Since Vala had finished off the cakes, Cam left the table, ostensibly to fetch more.
He found their priest guide at the counters.
“Was wondering if you could tell me something,” Cam said.
The priest was a young man, perhaps a year into his twenties, and jittered with enthusiasm. “I will endeavour to tell you what I can.”
Cam’s brows bobbed, a little taken back by his response. “Great. Those guys that attacked us outside the city, who were they?”
“Heretics who roam the desert. They prey on anyone found outside the city walls.”
Cam slipped onto the barstool next to him, settling in for the conversation. “Why doesn’t Nephthys just use her godly powers to eliminate them?”
The priest nodded, understanding Cam’s doubt. “The mere existence of the heretics is enough to keep people leaving the city. They are the perfect shepherds herding her flock.”
Cam smiled tensely. “Of course.”
There was a sudden spark to the young priest’s eyes as he leaned forward confidentially. Cam bowed a little to hear the lowered tone of his voice.
“I know you and your friends do not believe Nephthys is a God,” he said, and looked away surreptitiously. “I am part of a modest group who also believe Nephthys is not a true God. We have plans to overthrow her. I wonder if we might employ your help.”
“Whoa, hang on there, Sparky,” Cam said. “Taking on a Goa’uld isn’t easy.”
“Goa’uld?” The priest turned the word slowly in his mouth. “Is that what you call devils like her?”
“She’s not a devil. There’s a snake in her head controlling her. We call it a Goa’uld symbiote.”
Cam slumped at the incomprehension displayed on the man’s face.
“Goa’uld symbiote. It’s sort of yay big,” Cam said, holding his palms apart. “Nasty little mouth. Gets in through the back of the neck. Look, if you and your buddies are planning an attack you need to hold off.”
Clasping his hands together on the counter the priest glanced across the bar again. “Yes. For whatever reason Nephthys has not treated you with the same hostility she has treated other guests. At first I thought this was because you were her allies. But you say that you know she is not a God, and you talk about her without fear. If she trusts you enough to let you roam the city and the palace freely then perhaps my people and I can use this to our advantage.”
For the first time in a long while, Cam felt a small brush of relief. “Let me speak with my team. You try and arrange a way to lead us to meet your people.”
The priest grimaced. “That may be difficult. Even I do not leave the city walls...”
“We don’t help with your strike until we meet your friends. Let them know we want to meet them and where we can find them. Let us figure out how.”
“Very well,” the priest condoned.
“You got a name?” Cam asked.
“Shu.”
Cam pressed his tongue behind his top teeth and took a moment to let every joke play out fully in his mind so it was out of his system. “Shu,” he said slowly. He smiled and turned off the stool. “Nice to meet you, Shu.”
“And you, Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell,” Shu said, smiling.
“Cam is fine.”
Cam returned to the table where his team were just as he had left them. The moment he sat down however, his radio crackled.
“SG-1, this is Colonel Davidson.”
Cam took the radio from its pouch. “This is Mitchell. Nice to hear from you again.”
The others looked up at the news. Vala looked especially relieved.
“The Asgard have permitted us to stay cloaked above the planet until Nephthys decides our negotiations are over,” Davidson reported.
“Copy that. We’ll be in touch.”
It wasn’t much, but it was some of the better news they’d heard all day. Until they had their first meeting with Nephthys, Cam feared the depths at which this misery would pull them.
Pairing: Sam/Janet
Rating: adult
Summary: SG-1 make the horrifying discovery that Janet Fraiser has been host to a Goa’uld for the past three years.
This chapter: Nephthys sure is short for a God.
It was hard to tell how long he had been awake and staring at the ceiling. What took longer to work out was that the ceiling was unusually low. Cam blinked and shifted as his body naturally reacted to regaining consciousness. His limbs struck resistance that sent hollow echoes boxing his hears.
A moment later there was a hiss and a line of light cut down the middle of the ceiling. It grew and grew and he realized the ceiling was opening. Cautiously Cam pulled himself up and swung his arms free.
“Oh.” He looked down over the edge of the golden sarcophagus, and gave it a hearty slap with the whole of his hand. “Another first. This is going in my diary.”
He was suddenly struck by a strange feeling of being watched, and looking up, he saw two men wearing strange cloth garments.
“Oh, hiya,” Cam said, giving a quick two fingered wave.
The men stood like stone sentries. Cam popped his mouth. After exchanging a signal between them, the men reached down and slipped their hands under Cam’s arms. He flailed at first but when they set his feet on the ground and released him he was less concerned about being manhandled as he was about the strange clothes he was wearing.
“Ohhh, I’ve had this dream,” he shuddered, appraising the long pale pants and tight strapped boots warily. He picked at and patted the thin undershirt and decorated vest with the same suspicion and then eyed his stern faced companions back and forth. He wiggled a finger. “You guys didn’t...I mean...You at least shut your eyes before...”
“Come with us,” one of the men said.
“Yup.” Cam decided he didn’t want to know. His weapon was gone, but he could feel a weight in a small pouch he discovered around his belt. When he checked it he found his radio had been left there.
Unrestrained, he walked curiously free between the two unarmed men out of the sarcophagus chamber and along a hallway. The base of the walls were a pink hued stone and supported a smooth pale yellow upper wall that captured the light spilling in from slender arched windows.
Their footfalls made satisfying claps against shining white marble, criss-crossed with black and grey tile patterns. Following the men through more and more extravagant halls and chambers, Cam observed hundreds of people bustling about with various tools or burdens, or tending to a variety of chores.
He could distinguish at least three distinct uniforms. Some wore simple loose fitting clothes. Others wore decorated garments like himself and a select few, such as the men leading Cam through the lavish building, were dressed in heavily embroidered cloth and dyed silks with golden bands around their head.
“You’re taking me to see Nephthys, right?” Cam amassed. “Any advice?” He looked from one man to the other, but neither responded. “You know, you two would be the worst company stranded on an Island.”
Finally they came to a pair of guarded arched doors. These the guards opened as they approached and Cam was led between two mighty rows of columns towards a throne where a woman sat, resplendent in exotic finery.
Brought before the woman, Cam was permitted time to appreciate the elegant, if ostentatious design of her bodice, accentuating flawless cinnamon skin and voluptuous curves of her decidedly petite frame. Her languidly crossed legs were bare and exposed under a long flowing skirt that had slipped open around her silken thighs.
Her lips, so perfectly sculpted into sharp and devilish points, curved slyly at the explorative gaze Cam was giving her. She swirled her arms from her lap and settled them on the rests of her throne, tilting her head so short, chestnut curls bounced gracefully above her shoulder.
Cam scoffed. “You must be Nephthys.”
The woman’s eyes glowed.
“Little short for a God, aren’t you?” he teased boldly.
Nephthys hummed in amusement. “Little cocky for a man who led his entire team to their deaths.”
Cam clucked his tongue sheepishly. “Touché.”
“Hm.” Nephthys uncoiled her legs and stood daintily from her throne. Her sandaled feet patted softly down the platform steps. “You remind me of Jack.”
Cam frowned and grunted in disappointment. “People keep saying that.”
“Then perhaps you should introduce yourself,” Nephthys suggested, coming to stand on the bottom step so that Cam’s eyeline skimmed the top of her head. In spite of this Cam felt himself shrinking by the minute.
“Alright,” Cam said, “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell.”
Nephthys’ dark eyes glittered with anticipation. Cam felt his bones ache.
“The rest of my team...”
“Are being revived,” Nephthys said, “You are lucky I saw you coming. I was able to send one of my patrol ships to pick you up.”
“Not before we were all shot to hell,” Cam stated, eyeing the Goa’uld with his brow low.
Nephthys shrugged. “So long as you’re here, I cannot order harm to come to you. That doesn’t mean I won’t indulge in the violent whims of others.”
She extended an enticingly shaped leg to the floor and Cam swallowed anxiously as she came up close to him. He pulled back a little as she reached for his face and pressed a finger between his eyes. “You were luckier than the others. A single shot. Death was instant for you.” She caressed his cheek.
Cam’s gaze followed Nephthys’s fingers down to his chest, where they spread like claws against firm flesh. “One poor woman was torn apart. Bullets ravaging through flesh and muscle but not one merciful enough to prevent the slow, agonizing death she endured.”
Her fingers pricking at his chest suggested the haphazard pattern she described, eyes glazed with morbid fascination.
Cam smiled thinly and looked down at the God. “You didn’t have to revive us.”
Nephthys flattened her hand against him and smiled. “It will be more fun this way.”
There was no time to negotiate the expression on her face. She was already turning away from him.
“My priests will take you to the guests’ quarters.” At the top of the platform she faced him once more. “As I said, the injuries your friends sustained were far worse than your own. They will take longer to heal.”
“Are we prisoners?”
A streak of delight swept across Nephthys’ pretty face. “Circumstances being as they are, you might consider yourselves my very special guests. I’m aware of the trouble your ship encountered with the Asgard. You may stay here until your people are permitted to return for you.”
“Actually,” Cam spoke up as Nephthys was about to turn from him again. She swept her body back on him. “We’re here to negotiate with you.”
A slender eyebrow lifted.
Cam lay on a luxurious sofa in the antechamber of what he was told were the guest quarters. It was a wide, round open area, furnished with chairs and rugs and pillows and sofas and potted plants. Cam sputtered his lips, bored.
The first to return was Teal’c, who towered between the priests escorting him through the doors.
“Cameron Mitchell,” Teal’c said in relief. Cam swung his legs and sat up as Teal’c hurried towards him, looking all around. “Colonel Carter? Daniel Jackson?”
Cam held up and waved his hands. “They’re not here. Yet,” he added when Teal’c turned on him in a panic. “I’m sure they’ll be here soon. Their wounds were probably more severe than ours.”
Teal’c sat down beside him and clasped his hands. “That does very little to comfort me.”
Cam chewed his lip. “Yeah. Me neither.” He put a consoling hand on his friend’s back. “I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”
Now that he was touching him, Cam noticed what Teal’c was wearing. His grey pants were made of an opulent fabric, and his chest was bare under his vest. Cam gave a nod. “Nice threads.”
Teal’c’s head turned slowly and Cam shuffled away from his loathing glare.
When the door next opened Sam was welcomed by Teal’c standing attentively. When she came close enough he held her shoulder and looked her up and down as though he needed to reinscribe her entire being into his senses.
“I’m fine, Teal’c.” She looked like she was going to insist again, but she smiled and gave the man more time to assure himself. Daniel and Vala soon joined them. Daniel was dressed much in the same way as Cam.
Sam and Vala had been clothed in halter tops made of a hardy dark fabric and wore form fitting jackets made of different materials stitched together. Vala was wearing a short dark skirt and boots while Sam was instead wearing slim fitting pants. The pair of them weren’t half distracting.
After spending a sinful moment admiring the women, Cam cleared his throat and announced his meeting with Nephthys.
Daniel folded his arms. “So, what was she like?” His voice was rather chirpy for a man who was dead only minutes ago. Cam supposed he was used to it.
He propped his hands on his hips and cocked his head. “Short?”
Vala narrowed her eyes with intrigue. “Isn’t she though,” she agreed.
“She knows us,” Cam went on, “Or she knows you guys. She said I reminded her of Jack.”
Teal’c’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Sam blinked and frowned, staring anxiously into space before setting her gaze on Cam.
“That’s not possible,” she said.
“SG-1 has never encountered Nephthys,” Teal’c confirmed.
The looks exchanged between Sam, Daniel and Teal’c gave Cam the most unnerving feeling he’d ever experienced. Sam had gone so pale, the colour had drained even from her eyes, and watching her, Daniel looked overcome by the same sickening thought.
“Oh,” he shook his head, “Oh, you don’t think. No. No...”
If he had ever heard a sadder, more desperate sound in his life, Cam couldn’t think of it. The devastation and despair laced in the single expression that gasped from Sam’s lips made his heart twist.
“Daniel...”
Daniel collapsed into the armchair behind him, head buried in his heads, pleading to someone who, evidently, was not answering.
“What is it?” Vala said, edging forward with concern. “What don’t you think?” She looked up at Sam and Teal’c in turn, then helplessly at Cam.
“No,” Daniel said again behind his hands. “No, we saw...” He looked up, finding Sam and Teal’c and telling them, “We saw her...” He held their gazes for a long time but his featured crumbled and he sobbed. “Oh god.” He covered his face in his hands again.
“The uh...” Sam closed her eyes against the difficulty of her next words. “...Body...was reduced to ash. Janet’s tags were... Ba’al only made it look like...” she watched Daniel rocking in denial through shimmering eyes.
There was a certain amount of courage needed to face such an idea. It was an amount Sam just didn’t have. She hated herself for being so cowardly.
“I uhh,” Cam began gently, so as not to aggravate already fragile emotions. “I told Nephthys we were here to negotiate. She told me she would contact us through one of her priests when she was ready. In the mean time I think we should get out of here. Go for a walk in town. Clear our heads.”
Vala, eager to get as far away from Nephthys as possible, rose readily to her feet. “Good idea.”
“Sam. Teal’c.” Cam urged them. They both nodded silently and moved around the sofa.
It took a lot more persuading to get Daniel to join them. The man was a mess. He didn’t speak a single word, or look up from his feet, as a priest guided them through the crowded market streets.
Sam and Teal’c walked together, but both seemed otherwise disengaged from the world. Vala walked at Cam’s side, and in striking contrast, fidgeted with restless energy.
“You okay?” he asked her.
“What?” Vala didn’t even look at him initially. Then she met his querying frown with an awkward smile. “Oh, I’m fine. Never better. We’re stranded on a planet lightyears away from home, and we’re houseguests for a Goa’uld. And not just any Goa’uld. Nephthys! Of all the...sick, twisted, psychotic, sadistic, evil...” Vala fused her lips together in a pout of fury and Cam had to chuckle.
“She didn’t seem that bad to me,” he said.
Vala laughed dryly. “Ah. Of course. That’s what she wants you to think. She’s cunning, that one. Sly. You never know what she’s really up to and when you do, it’s already decades too late.”
Cam squirted air between his lips. “Sounds like you two have a history.”
“Well,” Vala bobbed her head to the side. “I knew her only a short time. But I know what she’s capable of. She’s...scary.”
Cam couldn’t counter it with flippancy. Her concern was so earnest and her fear so genuine, Cam was reminded of how unsettled he felt as Nephthys described the delight she took at finding them dead in the desert.
With a churning in his gut he realized that the woman she had mentioned suffering the most had been Vala. She had been the last to join them, presumably needing more time in the sarcophagus to heal and revive.
“Don’t worry,” he said to her, struck by the hope and trust in her eyes. “Nephthys can’t do anything to us. Asgard treaty, remember?”
Vala scoffed and watched the sand washed stones under her feet. “Maybe she can’t physically harm us or hold us here against our will. But she will find a way to hurt us. Believe me.”
Their priest guide took them to a communal dining hall. The sand covered stone road continued inside a building filled with heavy wooden tables around a central, decorative fountain. People moved about carrying bronze trays of food and drink, voices swelled like waves rolling against the shore, and the atmosphere was entirely too cheerful for the weight of dread pressing down on SG-1.
They sat miserably at a table, picking at fruit or cakes and sipping dolefully from dented metal cups. Cam felt useless. He hoped some food and drink might at least alleviate some of their tension. He sat in witness to the unquiet of their expressions.
If the lethargy of Sam, Daniel and Teal’c concerned him, the exuberance by which Vala stuffed her face with cakes and gulped mouthfuls of the fruity beverage was just as worrying.
“What does she look like?”
Cam looked up at Sam’s tentative question.
“Well,” Vala said, wiping her mouth. “She’s got sort of...” She was waving fingers above her shoulder to indicate, Cam assumed, hair length, but he stilled it in his grasp and eyed her sternly.
He looked across at Sam sympathetically. “Even if we told you, you still wouldn’t know for sure until you saw her for yourself.”
“You should know what she looks like,” Sam said accusingly. “You’ve read all our mission reports. You must have read her file, seen her profile picture.”
“I really just skimmed,” Cam said. Responding to the disappointment on Sam’s face, there was no tone of defence as he said, “I read the reports, yes. But I didn’t see it necessary to read the personnel files of every military figure mentioned in them.”
Sam’s head drooped, gaze once more falling into her lap.
Vala stopped eating long enough to empathise with Sam’s pain.
“I’m not sure if it will help at all, but...If Nephthys has taken your friend as a host there’s a chance she can be saved.”
Sam scoffed shamefully. “That’s not...We abandoned her to a fate worse than death. Imprisoned in her own body for three years, forced to commit unimaginable horrors, utterly powerless to stop it.”
Teal’c turned to look down at her and then looked away distantly.
Vala reached her hand across the table, hoping that closeness would comfort her. “You have hope, Sam.” She stared at her, so that their gaze would lock when she finally looked up. Then Vala said, “Which is more than you had yesterday.”
Still casting a hopeless look across the hall, Teal’c said, “And if Nephthys is not who we fear her to be?”
Sam smiled without humour and shook her head. “I don’t know if I would be relieved or...” her head bowed once again in shame.
Vala ached and tried to smile. “It is not a bad thing to hope there is a chance your friend is alive and can be saved.” She looked at Daniel. “That does not make you bad people.”
Daniel hugged himself and shrank deeper into shadow.
Cam couldn’t stand it. As a leader he thought he was prepared for anything, and being a member of an SG unit meant allowing for a more broad interpretation of the term than was acceptable, quite frankly. Since Vala had finished off the cakes, Cam left the table, ostensibly to fetch more.
He found their priest guide at the counters.
“Was wondering if you could tell me something,” Cam said.
The priest was a young man, perhaps a year into his twenties, and jittered with enthusiasm. “I will endeavour to tell you what I can.”
Cam’s brows bobbed, a little taken back by his response. “Great. Those guys that attacked us outside the city, who were they?”
“Heretics who roam the desert. They prey on anyone found outside the city walls.”
Cam slipped onto the barstool next to him, settling in for the conversation. “Why doesn’t Nephthys just use her godly powers to eliminate them?”
The priest nodded, understanding Cam’s doubt. “The mere existence of the heretics is enough to keep people leaving the city. They are the perfect shepherds herding her flock.”
Cam smiled tensely. “Of course.”
There was a sudden spark to the young priest’s eyes as he leaned forward confidentially. Cam bowed a little to hear the lowered tone of his voice.
“I know you and your friends do not believe Nephthys is a God,” he said, and looked away surreptitiously. “I am part of a modest group who also believe Nephthys is not a true God. We have plans to overthrow her. I wonder if we might employ your help.”
“Whoa, hang on there, Sparky,” Cam said. “Taking on a Goa’uld isn’t easy.”
“Goa’uld?” The priest turned the word slowly in his mouth. “Is that what you call devils like her?”
“She’s not a devil. There’s a snake in her head controlling her. We call it a Goa’uld symbiote.”
Cam slumped at the incomprehension displayed on the man’s face.
“Goa’uld symbiote. It’s sort of yay big,” Cam said, holding his palms apart. “Nasty little mouth. Gets in through the back of the neck. Look, if you and your buddies are planning an attack you need to hold off.”
Clasping his hands together on the counter the priest glanced across the bar again. “Yes. For whatever reason Nephthys has not treated you with the same hostility she has treated other guests. At first I thought this was because you were her allies. But you say that you know she is not a God, and you talk about her without fear. If she trusts you enough to let you roam the city and the palace freely then perhaps my people and I can use this to our advantage.”
For the first time in a long while, Cam felt a small brush of relief. “Let me speak with my team. You try and arrange a way to lead us to meet your people.”
The priest grimaced. “That may be difficult. Even I do not leave the city walls...”
“We don’t help with your strike until we meet your friends. Let them know we want to meet them and where we can find them. Let us figure out how.”
“Very well,” the priest condoned.
“You got a name?” Cam asked.
“Shu.”
Cam pressed his tongue behind his top teeth and took a moment to let every joke play out fully in his mind so it was out of his system. “Shu,” he said slowly. He smiled and turned off the stool. “Nice to meet you, Shu.”
“And you, Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell,” Shu said, smiling.
“Cam is fine.”
Cam returned to the table where his team were just as he had left them. The moment he sat down however, his radio crackled.
“SG-1, this is Colonel Davidson.”
Cam took the radio from its pouch. “This is Mitchell. Nice to hear from you again.”
The others looked up at the news. Vala looked especially relieved.
“The Asgard have permitted us to stay cloaked above the planet until Nephthys decides our negotiations are over,” Davidson reported.
“Copy that. We’ll be in touch.”
It wasn’t much, but it was some of the better news they’d heard all day. Until they had their first meeting with Nephthys, Cam feared the depths at which this misery would pull them.