Masquerade - Ch 9

[theastolat]

Title: Masquerade - Chapter 9
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: Jack remembers Janet.


Jack had been sitting alone in an empty room for so long he had forgotten what it was he had gone in looking for. He’d even forgotten why he hadn’t just left when he couldn’t find it. He was just thinking how strange it was when a pair of heels echoed from the outside corridor and drifted up behind him.

“Oh,” came the woman’s distinct exclamation, “Colonel. I was looking for Sam.”
Jack didn’t bother turning around. “She’ll be around somewhere. Could be helping Dr Lee with something. You know how easily she gets distracted.” He lifted one hand off his knee and pretended to dangle something from his fingers. “Show her a shiny new piece of alien technology and she’s like a kitten with twine.”

Janet’s laughter was a beautiful sound, though she wouldn’t know it. Someone needed to tell her. “Okay,” she said. He heard her turning to leave, but her footsteps did not continue outside the room. “Are you alright, Sir?”

“Me? Oh. I’m fine.”
“You know you’re sitting in the dark.”
“Am I? Huh.” He wondered how he had found a dark and empty room so inviting.

Janet’s heels came nearer, and Jack felt her presence just behind him. “Something on your mind, Colonel?”

There was a strength and patience in her voice that provided Jack safe place for his thoughts. He more often than not gave the doctor a hard time, firstly for being so darn short, and secondly for actually having the authority to shove uncomfortable things up his ass.

But during her first crisis at the SGC, which may have been only her first or second day on the job, Jack didn’t know and he’d never asked, she had been the only one he could connect to, the only one he could trust as he lost more and more of his mind to that devolving virus.

But she also had to have faith in him, to have faith that he could handle the treatment that might have easily killed him or left him catatonic.

In those frightening hours, Janet was his only connection to the world. And she saved him. If not for her, the entire Stargate Program would have had a very short run, and things could have been a hell of a lot worse.

“On my mind? One of two things, usually.”
Janet snorted. She edged a little more around him so that she could see his face. “You’re thinking about Merrin, aren’t you? The little girl from Orban.”
Jack smiled and opened his hands into a pitiful basin on his lap. He didn’t know what he was waiting to catch, but he was sure it would pour through the gaps in his fingers anyway.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” Janet said gently.
“Yeah.”

Janet sighed and was silent while she regarded a broken man. Then she spoke. “After hearing what happened I couldn’t stop thinking about it happening to Cassandra.”
Jack thought instantly of the little girl, growing so fast but still so bright and full of spirit. She had seemed so lifeless when they found her, but now she shined.

He remembered gazing into Merrin’s vacant eyes, purged of desperately precious things. His heart almost stopped to think the next time he saw Cassie, she could have eyes like that. He went cold.

“I got up in the night and I watched her sleep. When I tried to drag myself back to bed I only got as far as the floor outside her door. I sat there all night. Awake.”

He loved that little girl. Sure, Janet was her mother and Sam was her hero, but he loved how he could make her laugh, loved how she was the only one who listened to him when he talked about football and hockey and fishing, and he wasn’t sad at all thinking that he should have been teaching those things to his son. Not at all.

“You did a good thing, Colonel. An incredible thing. What you gave to those people, to those children...” She paused and Jack looked up to see her searching for words that would fully express the magnitude of her feelings. She needn’t have bothered. He was already touched, and he didn’t think his heart could take much more.

“I would go as far as to say that it’s the single greatest gift anyone could ever give.”
Jack nearly fell apart. No one had ever seen him fall into a sobbing mess and no one was ever going to. He raked his nerves together and held himself fast. “But I wasn’t the one who had to sacrifice myself to give it,” he said.

“No. You’re right,” Janet bowed her head solemnly.
Jack could feel the salt stinging his eyes, hear the tick in his voice as he said, “I feel...I feel like...if I hadn’t tried so hard to show her what it could be like to just...be a kid...she never would have forfeited her life just to share those experiences with the people of her world.”

Janet smiled tenderly. “She would have undergone the averium regardless.”
“But there was another way,” he insisted. “If we could have shown enough Orban leaders. Enough adults...”
Janet shook her head, her voice firm and logical. “Merrin knew it was the only way. And she did it because she believed in what you had shown her. You’re an amazing person Jack. I’m sure you were an amazing father.”

Jack’s gaze sank miserably to his empty hands. “...I had the chance to be.”
“I see how you are with Cassie. The things you’ve shown her, the things you’ve taught her. Maybe Sam and I worry too much about her education, whether or not she’s doing well at school, if she’s getting good grades.”

Jack sat silently, listening.

“A young girl needs a childhood. And Cassie’s didn’t start out so well. Jack. Whether you can see it or not, you’re really the closest thing she has to a father figure. There’s always time to learn about math and science and history. You only get one chance at childhood. You only get one chance to be a kid. The way you’ve played with her, all the catch, and tag and football, all the water balloon and water pistol fights, the fishing, the trips to the zoo to see animals other children take for granted and she finds so magical, the candy and carnival rides that make her sick and beg to go again anyway, what you’ve given her...I’ll never be able to thank you enough for it, Jack.”

“Doc?”
“Yeah?”
“...Are you calling me immature?”

Janet laughed, that adorable sound again making Jack smile, and she sniffed. It was then Jack finally looked up at her and saw the tears on her cheeks.

Her hands reached for him and Jack felt her small, delicate fingers cup his face and tilt back his head. Her soft lips touched his forehead and he closed his eyes.

As she slipped away, she let her hand squeeze his shoulder. He caught it in his own, holding her there, making her stay just a little while longer. She stayed until he let go and he heard her heels leaving the room.

There was a sudden click and the room filled with light. Then the sound of the doctor’s footsteps faded down the corridor. What Janet had given him he would never be able to thank her for. His heart had not been so full in too many years. He didn’t think it could ever hold anything ever again, but Janet proved him wrong.

It was almost so full it hurt. Maybe he had lost his son. But he had saved the young souls of an entire world from now until forever. Thanks to him, an entire people valued and treasured the most beautiful thing in the world; childhood.

The moment Janet made him realize this had stayed with him all this time. It was what he thought about when he thought of her. He felt his heart swell in the same pleasantly painful way as it had done by Janet’s impassioned words.

When Jack heard footsteps approach behind him, he could almost see the tiny doctor standing in the doorway.
“I came to let you know the Asgard have agreed to meet with you.”
Jack’s hopeful picture was shattered by Hank’s voice. It wasn’t the old General’s fault. Besides, Jack couldn’t waste his time with pictures in his head. He needed to start doing something to actually help.

“You’ll be able to state our case before the council,” Hank went on.
Jack scoffed. “You mean beg.” He swung around, hands in pockets, and met Hank’s sympathetic smile.
“Do you know what you’re going to say?” Hank asked.

“Have you ever known me to prepare for anything?”
Hank almost laughed but it never passed his lips. “Look, Jack. Worst case scenario, Janet Fraiser remains as host for Nephthys, but under Asgard protection. It will at least give us time to come up with other solutions.”

Jack looked down and scratched the heel of his shoe into the ground. “You mean until we’re prepared to make enemies of the Asgard. Somehow, I don’t see us being in that position any time soon.”
“We’re not going to give up, Jack.”

Jack sighed and scratched the back of his head. “I know, Hank. So when is this meeting supposed to...” His surroundings were fading as though they disappeared behind a veil of water. Everything went dark. Gradually there was light, dull and blue, and great columns rising up all around him.

He was in the familiar chamber of the Asgard council. “..take place.” Seated high above him was an Asgard. His beetle black eyes glinted back at him.
“My name is Hlin.”
Jack screwed his nose. “Thor not around?”
Hlin had a soft and soothing voice, but Jack didn’t recognize it, and that made him nervous.

“I understand you wish to contend a treaty made between us and a Goa’uld named Nephthys.”
Jack rocked on his feet. “It’s not so much the treaty as the woman Nephthys has taken as her host.”

“We are aware of the unfortunate circumstances surrounding one Dr Janet Fraiser,” Hlin said, unfurling long knobby fingers as though presenting the situation on his narrow palm. “Unfortunately the terms of the treaty never denied Nephthys the freedom to explore the galaxy outside of Asgard protected space. The host she acquired was taken outside those perimeters. We must honour our agreement with her.”

“A few years back a race called the Tollan held a trial to determine who had the right to the body, the mind of the host or the Goa’uld symbiote.”
Hlin folded his arms across his lectern and steepled two fingers together. “I am aware.”
Jack wondered if the Asgard would honour precedents set in law by another advanced race in the galaxy. “They ruled in favour of the host.”

Hlin nodded and slowly blinked his eyes. “I understand what you are saying, General Jack O’Neill. But even if Janet Fraiser were able to speak for herself and were able to request such a trial, we would still be forced to honour our treaty with Nephthys. So long as she remains on Sekhem, we must protect her, and to do so, we must prevent any attempt to compromise her host.”

Jack felt as though blisters formed and popped over his skin. “Come on, Hlin. Throw me a bone here. We’re supposed to be allies. I thought we were friends. Give me something.”

It looked almost like the little mouth on the creature’s large head curved into a small smile. “You do me a great honour calling me a friend when we have never before now met, Jack O’Neill, but I am truly sorry. Janet Fraiser is a victim of our short sightedness more than she is that of the Goa’uld, and yet there is nothing even we can do.”

Jack could only sigh in disappointment. “Can’t you just...look the other way?”
Hlin was silent for a moment and Jack’s heart beat a little faster. The alien turned his head and looked into the shadowed corners of the chamber. “We will forever regret underestimating the Goa’uld all those years ago. It has always been our one and only regret as a race. And so it always will be.” Hlin lowered his gaze to Jack. “Were we to go back on our word now, how could anyone in the galaxy have confidence in our word again?”

Integrity was a noble virtue and one Jack had always respected. He’d tried to live his life with as much of it as possible. But this time, he just didn’t care.

“You have achieved many things we once believed were impossible, General Jack O’Neill,” said Hlin, “You may lack our superior technology and intellect, but your ability far exceeds that of any race we have ever encountered. It is that quality that is shaping our galaxy, and will take you across the universe. The Asgard are honoured to call the Humans of Earth our friends. We can only hope you will forgive us for our failure to see the Goa’uld for the threat they became.”

Jack rolled his eyes and moaned begrudgingly. “Of course we forgive you. I forgive you. Did that a long time ago. That isn’t even in question.”
“Goodbye Jack O’Neill,” Hlin said, blinking his giant black eyes again. “I sincerely wish you good luck.”

Everything shimmered. Jack’s eyes drifted shut in heartbreak.
“How did it go?”
Jack opened his eyes to see he was back in Hank’s office. The General was looking up at him from his desk. Jack grimaced. “Not good.”

Priests kept bringing food to the palace dining table. Sam watched Vala pick from tray after tray, sampling the offered fruits and cakes and delicacies with the lofty motions inherent in a Queen, and found herself smiling fondly. The comparison was absurd given the childish plaits of her hair and way she kept licking and sucking on her fingers.

“What?” Vala asked, shrinking guiltily with a piece of sugar glazed cake suspended between her teeth.
It was a rather loaded question, Sam realized, and she couldn’t think of where to begin answering it. It all stemmed, she supposed, from being grateful.

It was too hard to put into words, even if she could decide what those words would be. So she smiled and laughed softly. Vala eyed her curiously and slowly bit through the piece of cake and began to chew warily.

“It surprises me how vibrant this city is,” Daniel said, opposite Sam. He was prodding a pastry with a fork. “On other worlds ruled by Goa’uld almost all the people were slaves, made to mine naquadah day in day out. These people have real culture, an appreciation for the arts...”

Cam stabbed a similar pastry with his own fork and presented it in the air. “You saying Nephthys isn’t half bad for an evil space snake?”

“No. This isn’t a result of Nephthys’ leadership. It’s a result of her absence. What surprises me is that she has allowed it to continue. These people seem free to pursue the lives they had made before her recent arrival.”

Vala rolled her eyes impatiently. “Do I have to keep reminding you, Nephthys never had any interest in ruling over anything or anyone. This planet served as her storage facility. Nothing more.”

“Until she needed somewhere to hide,” said Teal’c.
Daniel used the edge of his fork to cut his pastry into smaller pieces. “And the only reason she is still hiding is because she doesn’t know Anubis, the Replicators and almost all the Goa’uld System Lords have been defeated.”

Cam had shoved his whole pastry into his mouth and scrutinized Daniel’s eating habits, chewing very close to his ear. Daniel stopped and glared at him. Still chewing, Cam smiled. Sam snickered, and it felt good to laugh.

“Even if she did know she would never take advantage of the situation. At least, not in any typical Goa’uld fashion,” Vala said.
“There is something about her,” Daniel agreed, gazing distantly. “Something...”
“Scary,” Vala said. She looked down at her plate. None of the food she’d eaten had even touched it. It had gone straight from her fingers to her mouth.

Daniel bounced his fork on the edge of his finger. “I was going to say ‘odd’...”
Cam finally swallowed his undignified mouthful and said, “She doesn’t seem all that scary to me.”
Teal’c set down his metal goblet of drink. “Could it not be Janet Fraiser’s influence?”

“Nephthys did say that she was less inclined to mute out the conscious thoughts of her host,” said Daniel.
Vala nodded. “That’s because their fear and helplessness amuses her.” She closed her eyes, grimacing the moment half the words were out of her mouth. “...Sorry.”

Sam just reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. She knew the woman didn’t mean to upset her. Somehow, knowing more about Nephthys and the way she behaved was a comfort. It would help her to form a rescue strategy.

Daniel had begun daintily to scoop the pieces of his pastry to his mouth with the graceful manoeuvring of his fork. “She’s obviously done something to upset some of the people of this planet or there wouldn’t be rebels planning to overthrow her.”
Teal’c eyed his teammates along the table. “So long as there is power, people will seek to obtain it.”

“Teal’c’s right,” Cam said, rising off his seat to reach across the table. He sat back with a cake the size of a burger clutched in his hands and then tore into it like a piece of meat and spoke with his mouth full. “It probably has less to do with anything Nephthys did, and more to do with the power she asserts over them.”

Vala finished sucking the sugar from her fingers and said, “I’m trying to tell you, Nephthys is one twisted individual. You only have to look at Marduk and Anubis. She is not like other Goa’uld. She has no interest in ruling. She only wishes to cause chaos and anarchy and anguish...”

Sam watched each word shudder from Vala, rising like ghostly demons. They had been so focussed on Janet and how to help her that they had been ignoring Vala’s agitated behaviour. Sam had been so preoccupied by her own pain and fear she hadn’t realized Vala had been hiding her own.

As Vala went rigid, Sam felt it too. The naquadah that still coursed through her veins sizzled at the approach of a Goa’uld. Even before Nephthys’s voice pierced the sanctuary of their intimate group, it was painfully obvious Vala was terrified.
“Oh Qetesh. I have missed the way you used to flatter me.”

Cam, Daniel and Teal’c tensed, and reached for weapons they just didn’t have. They could see the Goa’uld walking towards them from the across the hall, but Sam had to turn on her seat and look over her shoulder.

She hated to see Janet’s eyes so bright and yet so dark. She hated seeing her look so beautiful, hated the way the golden light from the arched windows lit her skin and skipped in her hair, longer and full of lavish waves that would feel so soft and silken running through her fingers.

She hated the way she felt, watching Janet’s hips as Nephthys walked and how her mind raced to places where she’d held them between her hands. She hated the way she could hear Janet’s voice and not hear Janet.

Mostly she hated that Vala was shivering beside her, and that Nephthys came right up behind her and Sam couldn’t even move.

Nephthys perched her fingers on Vala’s shoulders, digging into bone. A hiss quaked in between Vala’s teeth and she held her breath, eyes shimmering and unfocused, concentrating only on not moving and not giving Nephthys a reason to hurt her.

“Her name is Vala,” Daniel said, tactfully, making sure to look the Goa’uld in the eyes. Nephthys took her fingers from Vala’s shoulders with the elegant wave of her hands, but settled one against her cheek and the other in her hair.

Sam cringed, her heart pounding. The hand snaking around Vala’s cheek was braced with a golden Goa’uld hand device. Vala’s fingers were curled and trembling. Sam wished she was brave enough to stand up and pull Nephthys off her, but the Goa’uld’s hand slipped lower down Vala’s cheek and cradled her chin.

Sam had seen people with less strength than a Goa’uld snap the skull from the neck so fast there was no time to even react. If Nephthys wanted to kill Vala, there was nothing any of them could do about it. All Sam could do was hope Nephthys wouldn’t violate the Asgard treaty.

With little effort, The Goa'uld eased Vala’s head back, petting her hair with misshapen affection. The little sounds and squeaks Vala made cut little wounds into Sam’s heart. She only watched because Janet had no choice and she wasn’t going to hide when the woman she loved needed to know she could count on her.

Cam inched forward and backward in his seat uselessly, jaw tight and eyes ablaze. Sam knew, like her, his skin was itching all over being unable to act. Teal’c kept a close eye on Nephthys’ hands and Vala’s condition. Daniel had not broken his focus from Nephthys once.

Nephthys began to graze the cold metallic tips of her hand device along the tightened skin of Vala’s crudely stretched neck, slowly up and down. “All of who Qetesh was, her memories, her thoughts, her feelings, they remain inside Vala’s mind. What are we if not the sum of our feelings and experiences?”
“But those thoughts and feelings need self awareness,” said Daniel.

Vala’s eyes were closed, but Sam noticed tears glistening on her long, dark lashes.
“Believe me, Daniel Jackson. There is a very thin and fragile line separating what makes this woman Vala Mal Doran, and what once made her Qetesh.” Nephthys wrapped one hand tightly around both of Vala’s plaits and gave a short and vicious tug.

A fretful whine rose from Vala’s throat and in that moment her legs kicked with panic. With a quiet sob of regret she composed herself, shaking as Nephthys drew tender lines around her frightened yet beautiful features.

“Shall I show you?” Nephthys asked, exposing the curious encrusted jewel on her palm and lifting it over Vala’s forehead. The woman’s eyes flashed open and her breath came fast through her nose.

All three men launched to their feet but could only stand and watch, helplessly. Sam held her breath, watching the way Vala’s legs squirmed beneath the table as though she tried to dig herself away with her heels.

The jewel glowed and Vala sobbed and tightly shut her eyes, hands shaking on the table. Sam reached for one, snatching the trembling form into her hand and feeling it vibrate up the length of her arm.

“Stop!” Sam looked up at Nephthys and didn’t care how afraid she looked. “Stop,” she said again, “Unless you intend to violate the Asgard treaty. Then there will be nothing stopping us beaming you aboard our ship and ripping you from your host.”

Vala’s fingers clenched so tightly around the blonde’s, Sam was almost in tears of pain herself. Nephthys deactivated the hand device and smiled at her as she released her hold of Vala. The trembling woman sat forward gingerly, as if expecting Nephthys to grab her again.

“At least you finally acknowledge that she’s mine,” Nephthys said to Sam.
Sam grit her teeth and swallowed to keep from retorting. Without breaking eye contact, Nephthys reached for Vala’s hair again. The instant her hand rested flatly on the crown of her head, Vala tensed and curled in on herself with a small sob.

Nephthys turned, bringing herself right up against Vala’s back. “To think. All those hundreds of years trapped in stasis and I am freed only a few short of preventing the Tok’ra removing Qetesh from your pretty little head.”

The wicked tips of the hand device pressed against Vala’s cheek, and drew small circles. The muscles beneath Daniel’s eyes twitched.

“Yeah, well,” said Cam, “Them’s the breaks.”
Nephthys chuckled and let Vala go again. “As you say.”
“Will there be anything else?” Cam spat, smiling dangerously.

“Nothing for now,” Nephthys said, walking around the table. ‘We can have our first formal negotiation this evening. Until then, feel free to explore the city.” On her way past Sam, she cupped her cheek. “Try not to get yourselves killed again.” Her fingers brushed around the back of Sam’s neck as she turned and walked away, and the tickling of short hairs there sent shivers scampering down Sam’s spine.

Not one of them moved until the Goa’uld was gone from sight. Sam hesitated but reached an arm around Vala’s shoulders. She felt her body jerk at first but then relax into her comforting touch.

“Are you alright, Vala Mal Doran?” Teal’c asked, the depth of his concern as heavy as his voice.
Vala sniffed and smiled. “See? What I tell you?”
Cam bowed his head shamefully as he sat back down. “Starting to see what you mean.”

Sam rubbed gently back and forth across Vala’s shoulders. Daniel’s brow was contorted in thought, a finger curled ponderously over his lips. Whatever was on his mind the man didn’t say. Unless it was a way to get Nephthys off this planet and help Janet, Sam didn’t want to hear it anyway.