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Part 5: Union

Sam had brief and brutal flashes of awareness.

There were long, low corridors and uncomfortably close impacts of weapons’ fire.  Burning agony in her side.  She vaguely saw a wormhole.  But beneath it all was the horrible understanding that she wasn’t in control.  There, in the background, was a whisper, but Sam couldn’t understand it.  She was too busy screaming; ranting at herself for being stupid enough to fall for what had obviously been a Tok’ra trick.  She screamed and screamed, brutally aware that she had no voice to follow the internal command. 

There were moments when time seemed to drag on indefinitely and others where years seemed to pass in the blink of an eye.  Sam cursed herself a fool one more time before the endless spinning derailed her internal dialog and then there was just blissful darkness.

*     *     *

Sam woke to soft, calm humming and someone whispering her name. 

‘Samantha.’

Sam tried to move, to look around for the source of that voice and anxiety rose again at her inability to control her body.

‘Shh…Samantha.’ 

But Sam was anything other than reassured, as the voice continued to fill her head.  She couldn’t remember how she got this way.  Why couldn’t she move?  Where was she?

What the hell was going on?

‘I had to take control.  You were panicking and there was little time left to escape.  You were confused, disoriented.  I…I saw no other way,’ the disembodied voice supplied.

‘Selmak?’ Sam finally managed to project, trying to ignore the way her mouth wouldn’t form the words.

‘Yes, Samantha.’

Sam could feel Selmak’s regret mingling with something that Sam could only describe as gratitude and affection.  It was not the most pleasant experience; Sam’s feelings were tumultuous enough by themselves.  Sam mentally took a deep breath and concentrated on relaxing.  At the very least, she was sure that it was Selmak.  It was impossible to mislead and lie at this, the barest level of intimacy.

‘If you are feeling calmer, I will gladly relinquish control,’ Selmak offered.

Sam nodded and with an absurd amount of relief, felt her head actually move.  She glanced around their surroundings and saw that she was lying in a small hut-like enclosure made of what looked like mud and twigs.  Sunlight streamed in through the entrance and she was caught for a moment, watching dust motes aimlessly swirl in the golden beam.

‘Thank you,’ Selmak said softly, bringing Sam’s wandering mind back to the situation at hand.

Sam didn’t have to ask what Selmak was thankful for.  Sam now clearly remembered sticking her hand into the warm waters of Selmak’s tank, the image sliding to the forefront of her-, no, their mind.

Their mind.

Without conscious thought, Sam’s hand lifted weakly to touch the back of her neck.  She tried her hardest not to think of it, to not remember, but unbidden, her feelings of helplessness, rage and even disgust bubbled to the surface.

Sam’s nails dug into her flesh as if seeking to tear out the intruder she knew had settled in against her spine.

There again, a sense of regret flooded her mind and she knew it was Selmak’s feelings. 

‘I’m sorry, Selmak,’ Sam said, feeling guilty for her reaction.  Neither Jolinar nor Keren had been Selmak’s fault.  She tried to force her trembling fingers to remember that too.

‘Do not be.  I know what this is costing you.  And while I appreciate it, you must know that I will leave you at any time.  I will not stay where I am not wanted, no matter what you may have come to believe about us.’

Images of her father looking kindly down at her with sympathy etched across his face rose in her mind.  But it wasn’t him, rather a monster hiding behind his features.

Sam ruthlessly pushed all thoughts of Keren aside, not wanting to think of him or his infernal machine.  Instead, she focused on taking stock of her situation, figuring out a way to get home.

Sam tried to push up to her elbow to get a better look around, but it trembled dangerously and Sam had to lower herself back down to the pallet lined floor.

‘Careful,’ Selmak advised.  ‘Your body is still very weak.’

It was only then that Sam remembered her left side weakness.  She raised her hand and deftly flexed her fingers.

‘I was able to repair the brain damage, but it took a great deal of time and I was unable to prevent the temporary atrophy of your muscles.’

Sam registered weakness in Selmak’s voice.  Healing her must have cost the Tok’ra a great deal.

‘Thank you,’ Sam said, knowing that Selmak had saved her life in more ways than one.  Sam seriously doubted she would have been able to make it out of the building on her own, let alone find a safe place to recuperate.  ‘Where are we, anyway?’

‘With a group of people who call themselves the Binghi.  I have spent time with them in the past and knew we would be safe here.’

Sam decided to take her word on it, because her eyes were beginning to drift back closed.  Just a few hours of sleep, she decided, and then she could figure a way back home.

She fell asleep to the calls of strange laughing birds and Selmak’s soft humming.

*     *     *

Sam next struggled to consciousness to find a woman sitting in the small hut with her.  She could only see the silhouette of the soft curve of her back in the dim lighting, where she was clearly working on some task or another, her concentration focused on the practiced motions of her hands.

Sam shuffled uneasily, more than a little unnerved to wake to the company of a stranger.  Her pallet rustled beneath her and the woman turned to Sam, revealing a middle-aged face with dark eyes set in warm coffee-colored skin.  She moved to kneel by Sam and it was only then that Sam noticed that the woman wore little more than an apron tied around her waist, leaving her upper torso exposed.  Long black hair flowed nearly to her waist.

The woman smiled gently at Sam, lifting a cool hand to press to her forehead as if checking for fever.  Then she opened her mouth and spoke to Sam.  It was by far one of the strangest experiences Sam could remember.  One the one hand, the words sounded meaningless to Sam, a low choppy language accompanied by various hand gestures.  But at the same time there was as sort of instant internal translation that Sam belatedly realized was Selmak. 

“I am pleased to see you awake.  You must be hungry,” the woman seemed to be saying.

Sam could only nod mutely in response, her stomach choosing that moment to heartily agree with the sentiment by rumbling loudly.

The woman, whose name Selmak quickly supplied as Aroona, giggled softly behind her hand before rising gracefully to her feet and leaving the hut.

‘Aroona is a koradji, a healer,’ Selmak provided.  ‘She has tended to us during our stay.’

With a great deal of effort, Sam managed to lever herself into a seated position, her legs tucked underneath her.  She was dizzy for a moment and wondered why she felt like she had just been out with a nasty flu.

‘How long have we been here?’ Sam asked, stretching out her back and feeling her muscles protest in response.

‘A little over two weeks.’

‘Two weeks!’ Sam echoed in alarm.  Quick calculations told her that she had been gone from Earth at least five weeks, then, give or take a few days of delirium.  Everyone must be frantic, wondering where she was.  Or worse.  Was five weeks long enough to assume her dead?  Would they even still be looking?

Five weeks.  How was the war with Anubis going?  Was the dialing program working okay without her?  Was the SGC still even there?

Sam pushed away such disturbing thoughts and instead forced her wobbling legs beneath her, one hand digging into the crumbling walls of the structure for support.  She had to get back.  Now.

‘Samantha,’ Selmak said.  ‘Please be reasonable.  I can rehabilitate your muscles if you just give me a few more days.  I just need a little rest.  Then you can return to Earth.’

But Sam was convinced she was being reasonable.  What wasn’t reasonable was asking her to sit around for a few more days.  She had to get back.  Find the nearest Stargate and go home.

She managed one tentative step and then another, ignoring the screaming protests of her limbs and the prickles of light dancing around the periphery of her vision.  One more step that drained the last of her reserves and she was outside, blinking against the blinding light.

Sam wound her fingers around a vine-like object hanging from the entrance to the hut and waited impatiently for her eyes to adjust to the harsh illumination.  Slowly, as her legs continued to tremble alarmingly beneath her, the landscape gradually came into focus.

As far as her eyes could see, deep red soil stretched in every direction, only occasionally broken by small formations of brittle rocks.  For a moment, Sam thought she was back on K’Tau, the sun shifted dangerously to the infared.  But a glance up at the wide, open blue sky, so bright it was almost white, told Sam that this was different.  It was an infinite desert of red soil.

Against the vastness of the sky and the flat endless desert, Sam felt like the smallest fleck of dust.

The heat was the next to hit Sam and she almost wilted under the pounding sun.  She gently let her body down to the ground, leaning her back tiredly against the exterior of the hut, feeling the warmth of the surface bleed into her flesh.  There were a few other huts near hers and she could occasionally register a flash of movement within them.

Off to her right, Sam could make out a small cluster of trees, their verticality contrasting greatly with the panoramic view.  The calls of strange birds were coming from that direction and Sam imagined she could hear the sound of cool waters splashing.  But it was off to her left that the real landmark of this vista loomed.  A huge rock or mountain stood all by itself and Sam had a hard time judging the distance or size of the object as it wavered slightly in the silvery illusion of heat currents.

‘The Stargate?’ Sam asked.

‘It is some distance,’ Selmak answered.

Sam let her head fall back and closed her eyes against the glaring sun.

‘Just a few more days,’ Selmak reassured her.

Sam lifted her head and stared hard at the distant trees and the cool shade they offered, judging the distance.  ‘If I can make it to the trees, then we leave.’

‘Samantha-,’ Selmak began, but she must have sensed Sam implacability because she let her voice trail off, the rebuke unspoken.

Sam had bounced back from injury before without a symbiote to help her.  This time could be the same.  She would make it to the trees, step by step, and then she would go home.  ‘You rest, Selmak,’ Sam said, ‘I’ll worry about my muscles.’

Selmak’s only answer was silence.

When Aroona returned, tsking about Sam’s skin being too fragile to be in the sun, Sam silently let her assist her back into the hut and gratefully took a bowl full of food, not bothering to ask what goanna was.  It didn’t matter anyway.  All that mattered was that she got her strength back.  She’d eat anything.

*     *     *

Sam lay back on the pallet, resting up before her first attempt to walk to the trees in the morning.  After eating she had spent some time stretching her muscles, working out the kinks built up with lying immobile for weeks.  By the time she had finished dark had fallen in the camp and the gentle sound of voices and nightly activities gradually faded.  Aroona sat in the corner, her fingers working once again at some task by a small sputtering lantern.  Sam watched her for a while, her stomach pleasantly full and her eyes heavy.  Strange sounds and smells mingled in her senses, but not unpleasantly.

‘We should talk about Keren,’ Selmak said, intruding upon Sam’s quiet reflection.

All well-being quickly fled at the mention of the Tok’ra’s name. ‘What about him?’ Sam asked.

‘Well, to start with, why he went to so much trouble to get to you.’

‘I don’t know,’ Sam answered.  ‘He never really shared all that much with me, just something about wanting to destroy the Goa’uld once and for all.  Though, how torturing me helped him with that, I have no idea.’

‘He never even told you what he was looking for?’

‘No,’ Sam said shaking her head.

Her mind filled with a memory that wasn’t her own.  Jacob was strapped to a chair, a man Sam didn’t recognize standing over him.  “We have great plans, Selmak,” the man was saying, pacing back and forth across the room. “You could have been a part of it, if you’d just seen reason.”

He turned suddenly to look Jacob straight in the eye and Sam recognized who this must be.  The powerful flash of belief glowed in the man’s eyes like a fever and she knew that this was Keren, before he had stolen her father’s body.

“I will find Egeria’s Legacy,” he continued.  “I will win freedom for all of us.  Then you will see that all of this has just been a necessary step towards a noble goal.  When that day comes, all of this will be forgotten and all that will matter is that we have won.”

Selmak’s tired voice then filled the room.  “Careful, Keren, I fear you have lost the path.”

But Keren didn’t seem to hear her words.  He just leaned over them closely, an understanding smile covering his face.  “No, thanks to you, I’ve just found it.”

He gestured for some unseen figures to move forward, holding implements Sam didn’t recognize, but that caused the Selmak in the memory to squirm with terror.  ‘Jacob,’ she gasped.

The memory terminated, breaking off mid-thought and Sam found herself once again in the dark interior of the bark hut.  Selmak was quiet and Sam was still reeling from the intensity of feelings conveyed in the memory.  She had never really thought much about Selmak’s relationship with her father and only now did she finally realize the unbearable agony she must have suffered being forcibly removed from Jacob, being unable to prevent it.

Selmak loved Jacob, that much was clear.  It wasn’t really a love Sam could define or even understand.  It wasn’t simply romantic or platonic.  It was a bond Sam could barely comprehend, so fundamental a thing that loosing Jacob only to find herself floating alone in a sterile lab container must have felt a bit like tearing herself in half.

Sam felt tears welling and wasn’t sure if they were hers or Selmak’s.

‘What do you want to know?’ Sam asked, wanting to help if she could.

‘I need you to remember what he did to you.’

Sam felt her heart begin to pound, translating into an unpleasant throb at her temple.  ‘Can’t you just access that yourself?’

Selmak might have sighed.  ‘This is your mind, Samantha, you must know that I would never do such a thing to you.’

Sam wiped her now sweaty palms on her legs, willing her breathing to remain calm.  But it didn’t seem to be working.  She could already feel the curling tendrils of panic beginning to rise around her and shook her head.  ‘I don’t think I can do this, Selmak.’

‘Please.  Just try.’

For Jacob.

The last bit was unspoken, but Sam heard it just as clearly as if she had shouted it.

Admitting defeat, Sam closed her eyes and took a deep steadying breath and tried to focus on the first time she had ever seen to device.

Sam was being led into the chamber and strapped into a chair by two large men, one with a black eye.  Sam felt a momentary flash of satisfaction, knowing she had given it to him.  But then Keren was there, wearing her father’s face and talking animatedly to her, the words garbled.

‘Concentrate, Samantha,’ came Selmak’s soft voice from somewhere in the distance.

Sam refocused her mind and the last of Keren’s word rung clearly throughout the room. 

“The sacrifice of one in the face of saving millions of innocent people is something that can’t be escaped.”

The Sam in the memory gasped something, but the words were once again lost as the sound of the machine warming up filled the memory.  And then the torture began.

Images flashed by at alarming speeds and Sam could register nothing but swirling colors and piercing pain that enveloped her body. 

‘Slow it down.  You have control here, Samantha, not him.  This can’t hurt you anymore.’

But what did those words mean when her mind was being torn apart?  The images just swam by even faster, emotions swirling along with them like a nauseating dance.  She was drowning in it.  The scream that bubbled up in her throat was echoed by the Sam in the memory.

‘Samantha!’ Selmak said.  ‘It isn’t real!’

For a moment, Sam felt control of her body being wrested away from her.

Blearily Sam felt the floor hard under her back and steady hands on her brow.  Tears mingled with sweat on her face as she continued to tremble.  Aroona’s frightened face hovered over hers, her brown eyes wide.

“Please,” Sam begged, “please don’t make me remember.”

Aroona didn’t understand her words and continued to gently bathe her face making small crooning sounds of comfort.  But in the background, Sam could feel Selmak retreating, pulling back from her memories.  The Tok’ra’s words hovered minutely in the distance.

‘As you wish.’

Sam let her eyes slide shut and she dreamed of warm arms supporting her and familiar fingers digging into her shoulder with relief and fear.  And in the distance, the softest sigh and the barest flash of ginger curls.

*     *     *

In the glimmer of false dawn, Sam pushed her aching body up off the pallet and took two short steps to the entrance of the hut.  She leaned there for a moment, shaking the clinging sleep off her body and mind.

The desert was breathtakingly beautiful with dawn nothing more than a purple smudge in the deep blue-black of the night sky.  A few stubborn stars still hovered dimly.  The air was refreshingly cool and Sam could feel a soft breeze lift away the sleepy heat of her skin.

Sam took a deep breath and turned her back on the sunrise, instead focusing on the small copse of trees.  All she had to do was reach them and everything would be okay again.  She would be able to go home, back to the SGC.  They would have a way to save Jacob.

Daniel.  He would be able to come up with something.  Maybe he knew something from when he was an Ancient.  Or Teal’c.  Maybe Teal’c knew a rebel Jaffa somewhere who’d had a sighting of Jacob.

Or Jack.  He would understand.  She just knew he would.

‘You miss him,’ Selmak observed.

It was a statement more than a question and Sam had to bite back the ingrained instinct to innocently say ‘who?’  Having a symbiote who could read your thoughts was damn inconvenient.

‘Jacob thought so, too,’ Selmak said with a small laugh tinged with sad fondness.

Sam focused on taking her next step, trying to ignore Selmak’s continuing dialog.  But the Tok’ra would have none of that, obviously feeling a little sadistic first thing in the morning.

‘You miss his council.  Lately he has been the only one to truly understand you, even when you didn’t understand yourself.  It’s…easier…to have someone to follow, someone to answer to.  You still half expect him to save you.’

There was no accusation in her voice, just understanding, but Sam still wanted to deny it, wanted to flush with indignation and snap that Samantha Carter didn’t need anyone or anything, thank you very much.  But lying to yourself wasn’t nearly as easy when you had an old soul rattling around your synapses. 

‘This isn’t who I’m supposed to be,’ Sam finally replied, unable to deny it.

‘And who is that, exactly?’ Selmak prompted.

A few months ago Sam would have had an easy answer for that question.  But now the memory of herself cowering on the floor of the hut, begging, was far too fresh in her mind and all she could think of was the third Sam she had hallucinated, sitting in a corner with her knees hugged to her chest. 

How was she supposed to know anymore?

‘It’s harder for you out here,’ Selmak empathized.  ‘It was the same for your father at first.  No rules, no roles to play.  All you are left with is yourself.  He clung to them as long as he could, but in the end, he realized that none of that really mattered.’

Sam pushed doggedly on, trying to ignore Selmak’s words, not wanting them to be true of her.  She nearly tripped over a stone in her haste and she could feel her muscles trembling with fatigue.  Though she had traveled more steps than she imagined she could have the first day, the cool waters of the pond were still distant.  Sam was filled with a desperate need to cover the expanse.

‘I know it scares you,’ Selmak continued, refusing to be ignored.

Sam’s left leg buckled, refusing to be pushed any farther.  From her seat in the dust, Sam could only stare at her nebulous goal, forced to accept defeat for today.  Aroona hovered in the distance, ready to help her back to the hut.  Sam waved at her to come nearer, feeling the familiar cramp in her leg from her months old injury.

Sam rubbed at her leg, her anger at Selmak’s words and the position she found herself in burning brightly in her chest.  She petulantly wondered how having a symbiote was supposed to be so great if it couldn’t even fix her leg!

‘There is nothing wrong with your leg, child,’ Selmak said.  ‘There never was.’

Sam was stunned for a moment, and forced herself to concentrate on the feel of Aroona’s strong hands clasping her arms, levering her up off the dusty ground.

Of course there was something wrong with her leg, she thought rather waspishly.  It had been bothering her for months.  It’s not like she was just imagining it!

‘Other than some small weakness, you are in perfect health,’ Selmak reiterated.

‘But…,’ Sam protested.  She thought of all the times it had pained her.  The briefing, on Keren’s ship…in the temple on Pangar.  And now, when Selmak had pushed her...

I know it scares you.

And like a bolt of lightening, Sam could suddenly see the pains for what they were, physical manifestations of her fears.  She let out a harsh laugh, startling the forgotten Aroona.  Somewhere along the line, Sam had let herself become a head case.  Maybe they had been right to relieve her of duty.

But why?  Why now?  After everything she had been through, why was this the pain that benched her?  Why was this the time that she just couldn’t get over it?  What the hell was wrong with her?

‘The alpha site,’ Selmak prompted, obviously reading something Sam was consciously trying to ignore.

Unbidden, images of the super soldier leapt to the front of her mind.  Sam could feel panic building in her chest, her hands reaching for non-existent weapons in reaction.

‘Part of you wanted it,’ Selmak observed with awe as the memories flowed over them both.

‘Wanted what?’ Sam projected, even though part of her already knew the answer.

‘Wanted to die.’

Sam nearly tripped, pain flaming to life once again.  She stubbornly refused to reach for her flesh, to knead out the non-existent injury.  Instead, she gestured weakly for Aroona to let go of her and tumbled bonelessly to the ground as the woman reluctantly withdrew her support.

I know it scares you.

“This isn’t supposed to be me,” Sam confessed aloud to the surrounding desert, dropping to her knees in the red dust.

But the desert had no answer for her.

*      *     *

Every morning during the glow of pre-dawn and every evening after the last rays of the sun disappeared beneath the stretching horizon, Sam walked as far as she could towards the trees.  For her, it had become like an obsession.  She rested dutifully during the heat of the day and lay staring at the ceiling of the hut at night.

She never slept at night, somehow aware that in the dark her mind preyed on her, mocking her with her weaknesses.  Taunting her with dreams of failure, of giving up.  The disappointment and fear in Jack’s eyes.  Her father screaming soundlessly inside his own body.  Daniel’s harsh, ghostly voice, “Have a nice death, Sam.”

And her own face, staring back at her, talking in riddles.  “At least you still have us.”

It was on the fourth day that Sam managed to make it all the way down to the edge of the trees, finally discovering for herself the small collection of water surviving in the minute patch of shade.  She sank gently to her knees in the soft river sand, her fingers dipping into the cool water.

There were birds softly calling to each other in the sparse branches of the few stalwart trees surviving on the edge of this desert oasis and the surface of the water rippled outward at the movement of some unseen creature below the surface.

Selmak had been unusually quiet since their discussion the first morning and Sam almost missed the company. 

Almost.

Sam could feel the energy returning to her limbs and knew that Selmak had regained her vigor and even now was working on her muscles, strengthening them.  Getting Sam’s body ready for whatever came next. 

But reaching her goal of this small billabong had not afforded Sam the peace she had imagined.  Because as her single-minded obsession with this place began to clear, Sam was left to face the one fact she had been ignoring all along.

“I can’t go back, can I.”

Sam spoke the words out loud, needing to make the thought that had been dancing around the periphery of her consciousness more real somehow, giving them purchase in this reality.

Selmak stirred in the back of her mind.  ‘Only you can decide that,’ she said.

Right.  Sam’s decision.  It always came back to her.

Her mind automatically began reciting protocol.  Her iris codes would have been invalidated ages ago, even if she actually had a GDO.  Plan B for a stranded soldier was to report immediately to Cimmeria, where a small survival pack was stashed with a radio.  Dial Earth from the safe haven and wait for a retrieval team.  Simple, easy and effective.

Unless you had a Tok’ra stowaway along for the ride.

The same safeguards on Cimmeria that made it a Goa’uld free zone also made it impossible for Sam to travel there without killing Selmak or abandoning her on this planet.

‘There is a person here willing to be host to me,’ Selmak offered, her tone and emotions carefully neutral.

It was tempting, Sam couldn’t deny it.  This was a Tok’ra issue, after all, and she was not and had never chosen to be a Tok’ra.  She had saved Selmak’s life.  That had to be enough, right?

‘And then what would you do?’ Sam asked, pushing the disturbing thoughts aside for a moment.  ‘Live the rest of your life here?’

‘No,’ Selmak said.  ‘I would find Jacob and Keren.’

Sam felt Selmak’s determination, but underneath it was the hopelessness she couldn’t quite hide from Sam, no matter how hard she was trying.

‘You have no idea where to even start looking,’ Sam said with a sigh.

Sam could feel Selmak pulling back from her, keeping something from her.

‘But you think I do,’ Sam concluded with anger rising in her throat.

‘I’m not justifying what Keren did, far from it.  But at the same time, there is the possibility that he managed to find what he needed in your mind.  If we can discover what that is, we might be able to find him.’

Sam had been avoiding thinking about Keren and his infernal machine, choosing to instead focus relentlessly on a single goal: getting home.  But home was looking farther and farther away by the moment.  Because no matter how tempting it was to abandon Selmak here, Sam couldn’t ignore the fact that Selmak needed her.  Her father needed her. 

Sam knew there were other paths back to the SGC besides Cimmeria, any number of planets she could contact them from.  But after what Keren had done, no one in the SGC would have any reason to trust her.  She couldn’t hide the fact that she had a symbiote and there was no way to prove who she was.  And even if there was, it would take time.  Time they didn’t have.  If Selmak was right, Keren already had almost three weeks on them.

Sam sighed and rubbed at her temple.  Logically, she knew she should just return to the SGC and deal with the consequences.  Follow protocol.

But Selmak had been right.  Things were different out here and Sam was different, too.  And if she had enough guts, maybe she could find out a little bit more about this new Sam that had so long been eluding her.  Maybe she could stop being afraid.

She so desperately wanted to stop being afraid.

‘I can’t let them keep thinking I’m dead,’ Sam said, a plan already formulating in her mind once her decision had been made. 

Selmak waited patiently for her to continue.

Taking a deep breath, Sam finally said, ‘Then I think you’d better tell me why Keren thought I could help him find this Egeria’s Legacy thing.  And how you’re going to help me find out if I did.’

Logically, Sam knew Selmak didn’t have a face, but she could have sworn she smiled.