Bowing over the gleaming, white porcelain, Colonel Jack
O’Neill puked his guts out. Not that
there was much left in him to come out since this was far from the first time
this day that had happened. Still, he
remained poised over the bowl until he was sure the retching had passed before
flushing and rising to walk over to the sink to rinse the sour taste from his
mouth.
He spit out the mouthful of water and lifted his head, taking
a deep breath. His eyes were caught by
his reflection in the mirror. Sweeping
down over his chest, visible beneath his unbuttoned shirt, they came to rest
just above his belt. Slowly, Jack
rubbed his hand across his body, feeling for some scar, some vestige of his
“wound” as Captain Carter had called it, but the skin was as unblemished as
ever.
“Crunches,” he had joked to Carter when she had marveled at
the smooth expanse of his abdomen. He
had just emerged from the sarcophagus and hadn’t yet begun to remember what
Hathor had done to him.
It was as though pieces of his memory had been blacked
out. At first he hadn't even realized
anything was missing. Then, Carter had
said some things that didn't make sense.
He'd tried to think about it and discovered he couldn't make connections
between recent events. He felt like his
brain had been short-circuited.
Frustration pushed down an initial wave of panic. What was happening in his head? Why couldn't he think straight? Had someone been messing with his mind? Had he said anything while he was out of it,
given away any classified information, endangered his team, his government, his
world? Jack felt lost, adrift in shifting
riddles.
Dr. Fraiser theorized it was an effect of the drug the alien
“goddess” had used on the men. The
effect had been temporary, and it hadn’t taken long before the memories
returned, in fragments at first, an image here, a word or phrase there. Eventually, the whole, ugly episode had come
back to him, and Jack remembered it all now.
In fact, he couldn’t stop remembering.
Hathor had enslaved him along with all the other men on the
base. She had used some kind of mind
control drug on them, beyond their technology and experience. They became a willing army for their new mistress.
The Air Force colonel who was accustomed to giving orders
had felt his will totally subsumed by the Goa'uld. The sticky, sweet fumes he inhaled clogged his senses until his
mind was no longer his own. Another
presence was directing it, changing his very thoughts to patterns of Hathor’s
design. He was possessed by an
overwhelming need to serve her, to do whatever she wished of him. He burned with the desire to please her, no
matter the request, no matter the sacrifice.
She was his queen, his goddess, his very life, and he would gladly give
himself to her to use as she saw fit.
Completely enthralled, Jack was in no condition to realize
that the fate she intended for him was one he held in the deepest
revulsion. She planned to condemn him
to carry a hated Goa'uld larva inside his body. She planned to make him into a Jaffa.
As a soldier, he was a logical choice. The Jaffa were warriors. Hathor couldn’t have known the particular
horror O’Neill felt for that state when she singled him out for her
“honor.” He knew, however, that it
would have made no difference to her.
He and the other men were tools in her plan to populate the earth with
Goa'ulds. Their feelings were of no
importance to her.
Jack had come to accept that a Goa'uld larva was an
intrinsic part of Teal’c, his friend and SG-1 teammate, but he tried not to
think about it if he could help it. On
the few occasions “Junior” had emerged from Teal’c’s pouch to show itself,
O’Neill had turned away and tried very hard not to gag. Aside from the fact that it was butt ugly,
the thought of the parasite cozily inhabiting his friend’s body literally
turned Jack’s stomach. Teal’c was
nurturing a being who embodied evil in a manner not previously encountered in
all the colonel’s experience of war.
The Goa'uld were a threat to the entire human race, and Jack was
dedicated to protecting humanity from their menace. He understood that Teal’c had no choice in the matter and would
die without the immune system it provided him, but Jack did not want to become
personally acquainted with it or any other Goa'uld.
He supposed it was ironic how very close he had come to
becoming extremely intimately acquainted with one after all. Not that he’d had a choice either. Despite all his Special Forces training in
resisting mind control, he could not stand against Hathor’s drug. He'd never before encountered anything with
a comparable combination of speed, strength, and undetectability. It insidiously penetrated his barriers like
an enemy infiltrating behind opposing lines before he had a chance to bring any
of his defenses to bear. Even now that
they knew of its existence and properties, Dr. Fraiser had not succeeded in
developing an antidote or immunization.
Jack believed his only protection against it was avoiding further
exposure. If it were ever to be used
against him again, he feared he'd fall under its onslaught just as he had this
time.
There was one point when he’d recognized Hathor was
affecting him in some way that he couldn’t understand. Some part of Jack O’Neill had fought its way
through the spell she’d woven around him.
He had gone to her and attempted to question her about it, but she had
overcome him effortlessly.
His eyes fell shut as he relived that moment yet again, the
remembered scene painfully vivid against the blackness of his closed lids.
The chemical wafted softly from her exquisite mouth, and he
absorbed it eagerly as though it were the breath of life. The flowery fragrance overwhelmed him, each
breath drenched with an exotic perfume which made his head swim. The cotton candy taste, sweet yet
insubstantial, left him hungering for more.
Jack hadn’t suspected her intention when she’d embraced
him. He’d seen the energy glowing from
the tool on the belt she wore but never guessed at its vile purpose - not, that
is, until she enfolded him in her arms and pressed his body to hers. The energy had seared into his gut with the
most excruciating torment he’d ever endured.
He was pinned, like a butterfly fluttering helplessly on a collector’s
display, unable to move, unable to pull away, unable even to cry out in his
agony as the Goa'uld technology lanced into his body, carving him into a Jaffa.
His strength was drained along with his immune system, and
he would have collapsed if Hathor hadn’t held him up during the process. He did collapse the instant she let him go,
stumbling back against the wall and examining the freshly cut slits in his skin
with trembling hands before sliding weakly to the floor.
The shock must have diluted the drug enough so that some of
his own horror leached through the false desires she had imposed on him. Jack felt violated, his very body invaded by
the enemy. Anger flooded him at his own
weakness... the physical weakness compelling him to depend on his assailant for
support during the assault as well as his weakness of will in allowing it to
happen. Hathor, on the other hand, had
appeared to derive an almost sexual enjoyment from the interlude.
It was something of a sexual role reversal, he
realized. She had created a “womb” in
him in which she intended to implant one of her children. Yet the act held nothing of the warmth of
the human lovemaking he’d shared with Sara when they conceived Charlie. This bore a much greater resemblance to the
rape he later learned Hathor had inflicted on Daniel Jackson. Daniel and Jack were destined to be the
unwilling human partners required by the Goa'uld to release Hathor’s children
upon an innocent Earth. Ra would have
found it a fitting revenge.
Jack must have passed out then because the next thing he
remembered was Hathor helping him into the bath in the locker room where she
had given birth to her children. She
settled him into the water in the midst of the swimming larvae so that one of
them could enter his pouch and complete his transformation into a Jaffa.
Jack sat helplessly, still in shock he supposed as the
disgusting things swarmed about him. He
felt them writhing and wriggling over his body, instinctively searching for the
opening to the pouch where one of them could make its home. His skin crawled with revulsion, but he felt
powerless to prevent it. He wanted to
scream, wanted to swat them away, to jump from the water before the unbearable
happened. He didn’t know how he could
stand feeling one of them actually crawling inside him. Although the entry processes for a host and
a Jaffa differed, was this how Skaara had felt or Charlie Kawalsky or Sha’re
when the Goa'ulds had invaded their bodies?
He longed to at least go down fighting, but he lacked the
power to do even that. Just when he
thought he was lost, salvation arrived in the form of Carter and Fraiser and
Teal’c. The women and the Jaffa rescued
him from the water before implantation and healed him in the sarcophagus before
it was destroyed. He was Jack O’Neill
again - at least in body.
He wasn't so sure about the rest of him - his mind, his
spirit? He couldn't put it into
words. He was thankful his teammates
had saved his life, but they had been too late to save all of him. Jack felt that somehow a part of him had
been lost. Hathor had taken something
away from him that he didn't know how to get back. All he knew was how badly he wanted to hurt her as she had hurt
him.
They had exterminated the larvae and driven Hathor from
Earth. She had escaped through the
Stargate. Though deprived of the
immediate chance to strike back at her, he had no doubt they would encounter
her again. But for now, Earth was
secure from her machinations. That was
more important than his need for revenge.
Jack opened his eyes and somberly regarded his reflection in
the mirror. He could still feel the
squishy, wormlike nudges against his skin.
He shuddered, then bent over the toilet as he retched once more.
* * * * * * *
Smack!
Jack’s bat made a satisfying sound as it connected with the
ball. He adjusted his grip on the wood
and pulled it back over his shoulder to prepare for another swing.
Smack! Smack!
Smack!
Pitch after pitch from the machine was answered with the
same solid sound. Jack was on a roll.
A red mist formed over his sight, and he blinked it
away. The next ball flew towards him,
converting as it approached into an image of a squirming Goa'uld larva.
Smack!
Jack hit it squarely, splattering the hideous creature into
oblivion.
Each ball represented another of the hated aliens. Occasionally, the image changed from a
twisting larva to the smiling face of Hathor, but each time Jack smashed the
ball to a figurative pulp. He continued
until the machine was empty. When he
saw that no more balls were coming, he lowered the bat and stood in place,
breathing hard.
“O’Neill, when Dr. Fraiser advised R & R for you, I
understood that rest was a component of that treatment. I do not think she intended you to drive
yourself to physical exhaustion.”
“I can rest later.
This is the recreation part,” Jack waved away Teal’c’s concern, still
wheezing a bit between words. “Baseball
is the all-American pastime. Should be
just what the doctor ordered.” He
gestured to his offworld friend to join him in the batting cage. “Come on in. I’ll give you some pointers.”
When the doctor had advised some time spent away from the
base, Jack had taken the opportunity to initiate Teal’c into the mysteries of
Earth’s sports. During the drive to the
park, the team leader had attempted to explain the basics of the game which the
majority of Americans learned in childhood.
Once he got past his difficulty with the concept of a game
played for fun and viewed it in what was to him the more comprehensible terms
of a training exercise of sorts, Teal’c eagerly absorbed the fundamentals.
The two men spent some time tossing a ball back and forth
then gave up their game of catch to head for the batting cages.
Jack hadn’t exactly anticipated his batting practice to turn
into a battle with his private demons, but then, most every aspect of his life
was turning out that way right now so he wasn’t entirely surprised. He shook off the remnants of his visions and
concentrated on showing Teal’c the proper stance and the correct way to hold
and swing a bat. Then, he backed off
and started the machine.
After only a couple of misses, Teal’c began to hit the balls
on a pretty regular basis.
The rhythmic swings lulled Jack as Hathor's apparition again
shimmered into view. He ached to wipe
that teasing, superior smile from her sensuous lips, to banish that smug gleam
from her taunting eyes. Even in his
imagination she reigned victorious, laughing at his helplessness.
His hands balled unconsciously into fists. How he hated her for what she'd done to
him. She'd treated him like a puppet,
pulling the strings as he danced to her imperious tune. The worst part of it was she hadn't merely
forced him to do whatever she wanted... somehow she'd made him want the same
things. He wanted her to rule the
Earth, he wanted her to command the base, he wanted her to command him... he
wanted her.
Appalled at the way she'd controlled his actions, sickened
at what she'd done to his body, Jack yet recognized she'd gone beyond that
physical force to a deeper level to manipulate his thoughts and feelings, at
least for a time. She'd plumbed the
dark depths of Jack's soul and brought forth a base lust he hadn't known he was
capable of. He'd have done anything,
hurt anyone, for an approving look, a caressing touch... he even welcomed the
pain her caress brought in that brief, ecstatic moment before his own senses
had partially returned. He could
remember his intense desire, but all he could feel now was utter disgust...
with Hathor, yes, but also with himself for his failure to resist the urges
she'd inspired. Despite Dr. Fraiser's
explanations about pheromones, Jack couldn't rid himself of the notion Hathor
had stolen a piece of his humanity and left behind in its place a feeling
somehow alien and unclean.
When the last ball had been pitched from the machine, Teal'c
exited the cage.
Shaking himself from his reverie, O’Neill gave his friend a
congratulatory slap on the back. “Any
more homers like that, and you’ll be giving Hank Aaron a run for his money in
no time.”
Teal’c cast the colonel a puzzled glance. “It was my understanding that the object was
to run the bases oneself for fun and exercise, not give the run to someone else
for payment. Who is this Hank Aaron?”
“He, uh, holds the home run record,” Jack explained as they
walked across the grass in the direction of the parking lot. “I just meant you were batting almost well
enough to present a challenge to one of the game’s best players. It was a compliment.”
“I see.” Teal’c
solemnly considered O’Neill’s words.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.
You sure you never played this before?
For a rookie you picked it up awfully quickly.”
“Swinging the bat is not unlike swinging the staff weapon in
hand-to-hand combat. I have done
extensive training in that with Master Bra’tac.”
Jack kicked absently at a stone in his path. “Yeah, right. Martial arts, war games, sports... it all comes down to battles
of one sort or another.”
“And what battle are you using this game to fight,
O’Neill?” Teal’c’s eyes seemed to
penetrate Jack’s casual facade with their intense gaze. “That against Hathor?”
Jack stumbled but caught himself before actually
tripping. He should have known he
wasn’t fooling his comrade. The SG-1
teammates had gotten to know each other very well. It was a quality necessary for their missions, but it could be an
awkward one at times like this.
“Something like that,” he mumbled, unwilling to commit himself to
revealing the full story.
“It is one thing to prepare. It is another to wear ourselves out fighting the enemy before he
stands before us,” the Jaffa pronounced.
“Yeah well, there’s more than one kind of enemy.”
Teal’c continued walking beside Jack in silence for a few
moments. “You speak of the enemy
within,” he said at last. “The battle
that must be fought with oneself.”
Jack tugged his baseball cap lower over his eyes. “Having a Goa'uld running around the base
was unsettling. It doesn’t happen every
day, you know. I just need to get a few
things settled is all.”
“I know the Goa'uld I carry makes you uneasy. It was unpleasant for you when Hathor tried
to make you into her Jaffa.”
“Unpleasant.
Yah. Teal’c, anyone ever tell
you you have a gift for understatement?”
“You have faced a fate your enemy would impose on you and
have survived. This can only strengthen
you.”
Jack thought that over.
“We have a saying,” he told his companion. “That which does not kill me makes me strong.”
“It is a good saying.”
Teal’c nodded his approval. “I
will strive to remember it.”
“So will I,” Jack said as they arrived at the car, and he
unlocked the doors. Privately he dismissed
the axiom as irrelevant in his current situation. He didn’t feel any stronger - quite the reverse.
They said little as they drove back to the base. Both were occupied with their thoughts. Jack hoped Teal’c’s were about
baseball. He appreciated his friend’s
solicitude, but he couldn’t talk about the Hathor incident with the Jaffa. That was the problem: Teal’c was a Jaffa himself - a Jaffa who
hoped to save his people from that fate in the future, and one whom Jack knew
opposed Hathor’s actions but a Jaffa nonetheless who couldn’t possibly perceive
what had happened with the same abhorrence as the human. No, he couldn’t talk to Teal’c about
that. He returned to the much safer
topic of baseball.
* * * * * * *
Shutting himself in his office, the colonel immersed himself
in paperwork. This probably did not
come under the doctor’s definition of rest either, but it had the advantage of
keeping his mind focused on something other than the encounter with Hathor.
He was interrupted once by Captain Carter who attempted to
recruit him for a dinner expedition to town.
He declined, making a valiant attempt at a smile to allay the worried
expression in her wide blue eyes.
Although grateful she'd saved his life and proud she'd led the women in
Hathor's rout, he wasn't up to her company tonight. Apart from the fact that just the mention of dinner set his
stomach churning again, he couldn’t face the prospect of spending the evening
being cheered up. He was pretty sure
that was what Sam had in mind. She
meant well, but it was the last thing he needed.
After a couple of hours of burying himself in his work, Jack
headed home for the night.
Climbing out of his car, he approached the entrance, his
mind still back at the base. Some sixth
sense warned him of another presence, and he halted warily, until he recognized
the silhouette leaning against the wall by the front door.
“Hello, Daniel,” he greeted tiredly as the man straightened
and stepped forward out of the shadows.
Jack really wasn’t in the mood for another pep talk.
“Jack,” came the quiet answer.
Reevaluating the situation as he got close enough to see the
haggard expression on the scientist’s face, Jack opened the door and extended
an arm in invitation. “Come on in.”
Tossing his jacket on the nearest chair, O’Neill watched
Daniel run a hand through his long hair.
“How 'bout a beer?”
“Sure.”
Collecting a six-pack from the kitchen, Jack returned and
handed a bottle to Daniel. “Let’s take
'em up here,” he suggested with a movement of his head to indicate Jackson
should follow him. He led the way
upstairs to the roof where he had his telescope set up. The two men got settled comfortably and
started on their drinks.
The cold liquid soothed Jack’s throat. When it showed no immediate indication of
coming up again, he took another cautious sip.
He gazed quietly up at the stars.
It was a clear night and multitudes of them were visible, pulsing and
glowing against the inky sky.
“Sometimes it’s hard for me to realize we’ve actually been
up there,” he observed. “We’ve traveled
to so many worlds, and yet we’ve never really been in space, in a ship, flying
past the stars.”
“Yet, Abydos is there,” Daniel agreed, “and somewhere
Sha’re...”
“And Skaara,” Jack added.
“Chulak.” The
anthropologist looked away from the stars and back down at his friend. “And Hathor.”
Jack returned the look evenly. “And Hathor. We’ll go
after her someday. We can’t do it right
now because we’re not equipped, any more than we’re equipped to defeat
Apophis. But we will be.” He uttered the statement as though it were a
vow. “It’s a strategic decision, and I
have no problem with it militarily.”
“Ah,” Daniel nodded, tilting his bottle forward for
emphasis. “But how about personally?”
“Oh well, personally,” Jack shrugged. “Personally, I’d like to blow her pretty ass
away with a bomb just like the one we used on Ra.” He took a final pull at the beer bottle and opened another.
Daniel did the same.
“I know how you feel.”
“Do you?” The
question was a challenge.
The response was quiet, but firm. “Yes. I do.”
Hard brown eyes stared across the dark rooftop to penetrate
through glass lenses to the distressed blue eyes beyond. What they read there reminded him he was not
the only one with a grievance against Hathor.
“Yeah, you do, don’t you?” Jack sighed. Daniel was the one person who’d been...
damaged was the word he settled on, by Hathor as he had been.
“Hathor took over the base, drugged the men, imprisoned the
women, even had Teal’c and Dr. Fraiser shot, but you and I are the ones she...
violated.” Daniel’s last word came out
little above a whisper. “It’s natural
if we take it personally.”
“Natural? There’s
nothing natural about what happened,” Jack protested. Drawing a shaky breath, he continued, “I should have taken her
more seriously from the beginning, not treated her like some harmless
nutcase...”
Daniel shook his head, denying the usefulness of O’Neill’s
wistful hindsight. “Then what? What would you have done, Jack? There was nothing any of us could have
done. She was too powerful...”
“I should have stopped her,” Jack interrupted savagely,
“somehow. I’m the team leader, for
cryin' out loud, and I let her get to me.”
He dropped his eyes. “I let her
get to you.”
“Let her? Me?” Daniel closed his eyes for a moment then
opened them and gazed squarely at O’Neill.
“Jack, don’t take that onto yourself.
You had nothing to do with that.
I took her cuffs off. She got to
me as soon as she showed up. Hathor’s
the villain here.”
“Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll - you tried to warn me, but I
brushed it off with a joke.” Jack’s
fingers tightened around the bottle’s icy neck as though it was Hathor’s lovely
throat he was wringing.
“Even knowing who she was, we had no way of knowing what she
was capable of,” Daniel argued. “That’s
the trouble with age-old myths - the lack of reliable information. We tried to fight her. She was too strong for us. We’ve got to accept that.”
“I can’t accept it,” Jack demurred. “I’ve been in bad situations, Daniel. I’ve fought, I’ve been hurt but nothing on
this scale.” He shook his head and went
on listlessly. “Hathor broke me. She took everything I had, everything I am,
and left nothing to fight with.”
“Not everything, Jack.”
“Daniel, she took my body, and she took my mind.” His voice was filled with despair. “What else was there?”
“Something of the host remains,” Daniel murmured
softly. “There was your heart, Jack,
and your soul. She didn’t touch
those. She didn’t touch mine.”
Closing his eyes, Jack gave a small shake of his head. “I’m not sure I have either one of those
left.”
“I am.” Jackson
smiled sadly. “You wouldn’t be feeling
responsible for what happened to me if you didn’t.”
“Habit,” the colonel averred. “I can’t get past what I almost became. Oh, I’m functioning. I’m
going through the motions, but it’s eating me up inside.”
“Is that why you’ve been running to the men’s room about
every hour to throw up?”
Jack blinked. “Oh,
you noticed that, did you?”
“Kinda hard to miss.”
“Yeah, well...” He
turned bleak eyes to his friend. “I
can’t get her - get them - out of me. I
can still feel her, Daniel. Burrowing
into my gut, trying to fill me with one of those...those things...”
“Those things that I helped her create.” Daniel’s statement lay like a raw chasm
between them.
“She forced you...” Jack excused him.
“Yes, she did.”
Daniel’s eyes were unfocused as he gazed past Jack into the night or
into his own dark past. He folded his
arms across his chest. “I can still
feel her, too, Jack. Feel her hands on
me, feel what she did to me, feel what she made me do...” He shivered and hugged his arms more closely
together.
“Daniel.” Without
conscious thought, Jack was up and across the intervening space, reaching out
to grasp Daniel’s shoulders. “It’s
over. She’s gone. She can’t hurt you anymore.”
The blue eyes came back into focus and shifted to gaze into
the depths of the brown ones. “Can’t
she?” he asked simply.
Jack’s arms dropped from his hold on his friend. “You’re right. She is still hurting us both.
Isn’t she?”
Daniel nodded mutely.
“What are we going to do, Daniel?” There was a pleading look in O’Neill’s dark eyes. Jackson was the one he looked to in dealing
with emotional situations. He was no
good at it. Action was more his forte
than feelings. He just couldn’t cope with
this emotional overload he was now undergoing.
“I don’t have any easy answers, Jack.” Daniel put down the bottle he was still
holding and removed his glasses, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands
before putting them back on. “I think I
came here tonight because I had questions,” it was his turn to reach out and
grip Jack’s arms, “and somehow I felt that in order to get past this, we have
to start facing those questions together.”
Jack half expected the familiar sick feeling in the pit of
his stomach, but somehow it didn’t come.
Instead, he felt a thread of relief that he wasn’t in this alone. Daniel may not have brought him a
resolution, but right now just having someone to share the pain lightened
it. Drawing renewed strength from that
sharing, Jack managed to dredge up a faint smile of acquiescence. He brought his hands up to clap Jackson’s
arms reassuringly before they each released their hold on the other.
With one final glance at the stars, Jack started across the
roof to go back downstairs. He had an
idea they had a long way to go before reaching some resolution of the painful
issue, but he already felt lighter for the good beginning they’d made. Making an effort to share this new mood, he
declared, “I think we’re up to some tough questions. I’ll take Goa'ulds for a hundred, Alex.”
He was rewarded with a tentative smile from Daniel. For now, that was enough.
Originally published in the zine Gateways 1
© November 1998 The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.