Chapter Text
“It’s okay to feel this way, Sam,” a woman says kindly from behind me, but I can barely hear her over the din of voices and memories in my brain. The woman- whom I feel like I knew well a lifetime ago- is deafened by a thousand other nameless voices and figures.
“Your serotonin and dopamine levels have dropped exceptionally low,” the voice continues gently. “That’ll also be the cause of your lethargy, as well as your trouble sleeping and staying asleep. I’ve been trying you on Prozac, but your blood work shows you’re eating through it much faster than you should be. It could be something to do with the foreign protein and mineral traces we’re finding in your blood.”
Her words wash by me like an endless stream of water, and I simply bury my face further into the pillow weakly. Even if my brain had the energy to focus on her, the meaning of what she was saying would probably drain through me like flour in a sieve. “I’m going to try a higher dose, together with a sedative, now, to make sure you get some sleep, and then let’s see how we get on. Is that okay?”
A part of me wants to get up and run and get away from here. I feel like I’ve been running from something… from a nameless man with a grey beard and off-white robes for years… and yet I don’t have the energy to move. Not even to say anything. I haven’t used my voice in days. Not since I found myself on a bed in an infirmary with an intense burning pain in my head, telling the Colonel of the sacrifice Jolinar had made for me. He’d saved me.
And then the flood of grief and pain rushes back and hits me hard. It’s overwhelming.
I feel relief as the needle in my arm breaks through the wall of emotion, and I welcome the brief respite that’ll quieten the rush and buzzing in my brain, if even for an hour or so.
—-
I don’t feel… right. Like I’m not quite me anymore. I feel hollow. No, actually, in truth, I don’t feel… anything except apathy. Not even visits from Cassie in my own home seem to make me feel anything genuine. Can I go on like this?
It’s taken me weeks to process and sift through my memories to determine which are mine and which are Jolinar’s; like every time Dad was being posted to another base, and Mark and I had to sort our stuff into ‘keep’ and ‘donate/chuck out’ boxes.
At least now I remember I even have a brother.
But if I don’t lie in the sessions with Doctor MacKenzie, and in my report, I’ll never be cleared for active duty. I’ll never go through the gate again. And going through the gate is what I was born to do. It’s what I’ve been doing for centuries. No- what he did for centuries.
I can’t be removed from active duty, even if I do become a liability down the road, just because I’ve been altered. I know it’s selfish, and there’s a possibility I’ll be putting my teammates in danger, but being on SG-1 is all I have to cling onto. I’m a soldier. Just like Jolinar is. Was.
I have to go through the gate and fight the Goa’uld, just like Jolinar.
It’s all I have.
And so, when my medical leave is over and I’m reinstated because I’ve successfully masked my inner turmoil and numb, emotionless state from the shrink, I sharply march through the corridors with my shoulders kept back, and my head held high. I smile and make menial, light conversation with my coworkers. I follow orders and meet deadlines, and simply act the epitome of how Captain Doctor Samantha Carter would… even though, inside, something nags at me, whispering that I’m not really her anymore.
I can’t suppress the continual feeling of need to run and hide, either. I keep looking around the corners of each corridor in case the Ashrak’s lurking, waiting to finish me off. I keep listening in to whispered conversations with a sense of irrational paranoia in case they’re talking about me, or plotting to betray me.
Maybe it’s not true that I don’t feel anything, because I feel fear. Fear that I’ll never be normal again.
—-
We’ve been accused of a crime we didn’t commit and are being held in an inescapable prison.
If things weren’t bad enough, a large, bald, foul-stenching man cornered me and tried to sexually assault me.
I’m a trained soldier. I’ve been in and escaped from this kind of situation before. But I couldn’t rationalize the sudden, paralyzing, deep-seeded sick feeling that had coursed through me. Then I’d been suddenly overcome with rage and anger. I’d imagined wearing a karra kesh on my hand and blasting him into the wall he was shoving me back against. I’d imagined gripping a pain stick and stabbing it deep into his putrid stomach folds, and relishing in seeing him writhe in pain.
I was glad Teal’c when intervened. I don’t like what I’ve become. A monster who enjoys imagined pain. How am I different from a Goa’uld?
—-
I feel bad for Daniel, and I feel guilty, too, because it’s the first time I’ve felt anything. I feel sympathy for him. Genuine sympathy.
If I’m a Goa’uld, then I wouldn’t be feeling this way for Daniel. And so, when I hug Daniel because he’s just watched his parents being killed again, I’m secretly glad.
But, my heart sinks later when I learn why I’d been forced to watch Daniel’s memory over and over. The Gamekeeper’s machine hadn’t worked on me. Apparently, my brain had protected against ‘output’. All I understood was it means my brain has been physically altered.
Of course, it’s something Janet has alluded to in my medical reports since Jolinar took me. A higher tolerance against drugs and alcohol. An unknown protein marker and naquadah in my blood. And I always have a weird, tingly feeling under my skin around Teal’c, Cassie and any stargate now. And obviously, mentally, it’s something that I’ve definitely quantifiably felt from the inside. But here is tangible proof that I am not the same as before. I really have been altered. And from today, it’ll go on official record that I’m different, like Teal’c. Like I’m another species, to quote the Gamekeeper.
So what does that make me?
Not human. That’s for sure.
—-
I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Every muscle in my body aches with pain. We’re not allowed to rest or sleep, and we’re barely given any food or water. My blood constantly tingles from the naquadah in the walls all around us. I’ve never been this exhausted in my entire life. Not even the time I escaped alone in a stolen tel’tak after being tortured for weeks… No, wait… that wasn’t me.
I feel like I’m expending every last ounce of strength to stay conscious. I don’t even know how I’m going to escape when Daniel finally comes through for us… if he does at all.
Something tells me there’s something wrong with the whole situation. The ruler of this place isn’t a Goa’uld, but he uses a sarcophagus. That… device. I get the creeps when I think of it, but I can’t place why. I hadn’t felt this way about the one that had been in the SGC when Hathor had invaded, so it has to be something Jolinar knew, and whatever it is, it’s been weighing on me as heavily as the mineral we’re picking from the cavern walls with our bare hands.
And speaking of Jolinar… his memories have been bleeding through more and more ever since we got here. It must be because of the naquadah all around me. Or maybe it’s because I’m just so tired…
…
I’m not surprised when I later slip into a vivid flashback of Jolinar’s. It’s the first time I’ve done it in front of the team, though, even though I frequently revisit her life in my dreams. I always see his thoughts in the Goa’uld language, and yet, even though I can’t speak it, I always innately seem to understand.
But despite my sudden lapse and outburst, neither the Colonel nor Teal’c seem afraid nor question it, as I had feared. And it gives us useful intel that explains Daniel’s out of character behaviour that the Colonel described, so I guess I got away with it with no repercussions.
I got lucky. And eventually, I got even luckier, because I didn’t end up dying in that mine.
—-
I don’t know what made me do it, but when I saw Kendra’s old possessions on her grave, I just had to try them. I just had to know…
I mechanically slipped the karra kesh’s finger caps onto my digits like it was almost second nature. Like I’d done it a thousand times.
And in a way, I have.
I stared at the central jewel, and my mind’s eye was suddenly awash with images of Jolinar using it on Jaffa, on slaves, on barricades blocking his way.
I recalled that the device utilises emotion to work, so I made myself recall that vile, putrid man in the prison that had conjured that unexpected, irrational reaction in me.
To my surprise, a heat pooled in my palm almost of its own accord, but then, the jewel only glowed briefly before deactivating…
I was almost disappointed that I didn’t get to experience that rush of power that I half-remember Jolinar feeling from activating a ribbon device.
“Concentrate,” Garwyn told me under the watchful eye of the Colonel.
I suddenly didn’t care what he might think of me. Of what consequences there might be if I successfully activate the weapon. I needed to try again.
I aimed it away from the Colonel and the others for their safety, choosing a spot just beyond Kendra’s grave. A person’s life, all boiled down to a pile of rocks because of the murderous Goa’uld that were here on this planet.
I noticed how the colour of the stones looked just like the tone of robes of that bearded man- no, Goa’uld- that’s been haunting me at night.
Cronus.
His name. I recalled it in time with an overwhelming rush of hatred. It’s his fault Jolinar was on the run. It’s his fault he had to go in me. It’s his fault I was almost killed by that Ashrak he sent.
Anger and need for vengeance raced like heat through my blood. It curdled into my left hand, and burst forth. A satisfying blast- my concentrated hate for that Goa’uld- left my body, exploding the dirt before me.
I felt empowered, strong, satisfied, but also terrified that I can, in fact, make such a device work. There’s no Goa’uld inside me, but I can use their technology. My brain chemistry’s been altered. I see atrocities and enemies and death every night.
I’m more like them than I am not.
—-
I’m standing at the pel’tac, looking down upon the swirling blue and white of the sky below. My allies are here in orbit, ready to attack on my command. Cronus shall either surrender, or be no more.
I contact Cronus’ lead vessel. His First Prime appears on-screen.
“Ronac!” I boldly address the darker-toned man. “Lo kak korosh-ni!”
He should flee now, should he wish to keep his life.
His eyes bead and he appears to recoil, and suddenly two vaguely familiar and out-of-place faces come into view either side of his.
A beeping from sensors tells me that five enemy ha’tak vessels have dropped out of hyperspace.
No! It’s Apophis! He has betrayed me!
“Ha’taaka! Go’tak Apophis-!”
“Carter! Snap out of it!”
My eyes fly open properly, and the canopy of a standard US military-tent comes into view above me.
I’m not Jolinar, in orbit of Malkshur, talking to Cronus’ former First Prime, who I realize now with vivid recollection that he looks remarkably similar to Teal’c, even down to the gold tattoo on his forehead. No, I’m Sam- Captain Samantha Carter- and I’m on a mission off-world with the rest of SG-1.
“I- I’m okay,” I pant, and quickly brush away a bead of sweat I feel rolling down my forehead. “Just a dream of Jolinar’s, I guess.”
“You said it wasn’t safe to someone called Ronac. Who’s that?” asks Daniel concernedly. He’s leaning over me from my left. The Colonel is squatting in the right corner of the tent, looking alarmed and concerned, and Teal’c is poking his head through the unzipped opening of the tent. I guess he must have been on watch duty and must have heard me talking in my sleep. Or… worse.
I’m pretty ashamed, but I try my best to gather my thoughts to answer Daniel’s question, but I find that the vision of the memory is already slipping away at bewildering speed. Who was Ronac?
As I fumble through my fast-fading recollections, I’m taken by surprise when it’s Teal’c who answers.
“He was my father. He was First Prime to Cronus.”
I suck in a breath as Daniel and the Colonel gasp. Yes, it makes sense. I can see the man’s face again, and I see now in my mind’s eye that the tattoo the Jaffa bore was Cronus’ mark, not Apophis’.
“Wow, Sam... Jolinar knew Teal’c’s Dad?”
“I should like to know more, Captain Carter, if there is more that you recall.”
I’ve haven’t seen Teal’c look so emotional and pained since his son was brainwashed by Apophis. I want to help him, so I hesitantly nod despite feeling rather sickened that I’ve been caught having more Jolinar flashbacks. The episode in the mine had been bad enough. My mask had slipped because I’d been so starved and sleep- deprived. But here I am on just a regular, standard recon mission. Why did it even happen this time? And what if this happens more and more?
When the Colonel opens his mouth to speak, I half expect a reprimand, or for him to question my fitness for duty, but he simply tells Teal’c to switch shifts with him. Then I watch in silence as he slides out the tent to keep watch while Teal’c comes in and kneels on an empty sleeping bag.
After over a year of Teal’c being the informant on all things Goa’uld, it feels really weird being the one to tell him things he didn’t know about the Goa’uld. About his own father, even. A man who’d lived and died decades before I was even born.
—-
A part of me isn’t happy with the order I’ve been given. It’s exactly why I’d tried to hide my flashbacks from the team and from written reports and from MacKenzie and General Hammond.
I never wanted to become a human guinea pig.
I’m afraid of what digging into Jolinar’s memories will do to me. I had to work so hard to pull my small self out of the ocean of personality of a several-thousand year old being. What if it triggers a recall of his memories? What if I can’t resurface? What if I’m drowned out permanently? Or what if I become unable to suppress the occasional violent urge I get to inflict pain on someone? What if I hurt someone?
And yet, simultaneously, just like the Pentagon, I’m curious, too. I can use Goa’uld technology. I speak and think in Goa’uld in my dreams from him, but I wake up without a clue. What else do I know? I never see more than brief, vague flashes when I’m awake. I know there’s more in there. I feel somehow shallow, like there’s a hidden depth to me buried just beneath the surface. Like I’m just a single page from an entire novel. Only, the rest of the book is illegible, or written in code in some old language that not even Daniel can translate.
But if this works, I might be able to understand and use Goa’uld technology. I might even have a fundamental understanding of technology and the universe far beyond that of a normal human. It could be vital in our fight against them, and a part of me feels an instinctive draw to his personality, because I’m pretty sure that as well as being a soldier, Jolinar was a scientist, just like me. And despite the way he took my body by force (which I now understand had been a desperate act while fleeing from Cronus’ assassin), and despite the occasional violent urges or impatience that broils beneath the surface, I’m sure she was a good person. And I’m sure it had never been his intention to bring harm to me.
So, I do it. I follow orders, like the good Captain I am, and undergo hypnotic regression.
I’m hesitant but I force myself to relax. I let go of my fears. I open my mind, and I sift through the deep recesses of my mind in the hope that I find something useful.
And there, in a crystalline underground cavern of fleeing people do I find it- a gate address. I can intrinsically sense the memory is less than two years old or so. Not much before Jolinar went on the run. These people might still be there. I need to go. I need to try to meet these Tok’ra, and find out more about Jolinar. More about me, and who I am now.