This story may be archived by the Cascade Library.
Rated PG-13 for naughty language.
Author's Note: This isn't going to make much sense without a little background. In "The Serpent and the Sentinel," I write about a goa'uld who thinks that our favorite sentinel might make a good host. He's wrong. This piece continues the story, from a different POV (I don't do consistency). Other events from my series "The Summer of 1999" are also alluded to.
My stories are found at http://www.murphnet.org/fanfic.
No More Lies
by Helen W.
June 2?, 1999
The bowels of Cheyenne Mountain, CO
I just got a call from Naomi. She and Mary Margaret are going goa'uld hunting. She's describing herself as "Mag's" 'guide', as if that was a job category recognized by the IRS. "I'm so glad I saved a copy of your thesis," she said. "It's been invaluable." And, "I've never felt so close to you," and "it's as if everything in our lives has been working towards this."
Mom is one happy camper. In fact, she and Mary Margaret are talking about sprucing up MM's R/V. "We're going to paint 'Goa'uld Busters' on the side," I heard MM call out while Naomi and I were talking. "She's such a riot!" said Naomi.
Right after she hung up, Jim came into my cell, oops, make that junior-office-level temporary quarters. He still looks like hell, and it's killing me that I can't do a thing about it. Fortunately, he was only coming by to check in before watching a video in the common room with Jack - I don't think either of us could take another 'session' this instant. I mean that literally.
He saw me bristle when he mentioned O'Neill. "He's not an enemy," Jim said.
"He's no friend, either," I said. I'd have said more - a lot more - but Jim wiped at his eyes and of course I shut up. He keeps on telling me that the best thing I can do right now is treat him "as crummy as always", but it's hard, ya know?
He said they were going to watch "Old Yeller" so that he'd fit right in. I suggested they watch "Bambi" or maybe "Weird Science." When he shot me 'the look', I told him that old Anthony Michael Hall movies always "speak to me, man" and he left laughing. And I can pretend that that's how he's spending the evening - playing the straight guy, cracking everyone up, having the time of his life.
I didn't go with him because I'm absolutely whacked. The infection in my hand is FINALLY under control, but I'm not near 100 per cent yet.
I got as far as lying down and flicking the lights off. But I pretty soon realized I was a long way from sleep. I just had to get some stuff onto paper first, even though I'm sure this will never make it out of the installation. I want to try to get down how we ended up here at the SGC, before everything gets fuzzier than it already is.
So here I go.
Where to start. Two months ago? Four years? When I started to think that something really odd was going on with Jim at that museum in Indonesia? How about the moment I was proved, rather spectacularly, to be right?
See, I don't think, deep down, I believed that Jim had really been possessed by a demon, at least in the nonmetaphysical sense. I knew something was seriously up with him, something more than the normal sensory weirdness. I mean, he hadn't been eating, he'd been alternately downright tyrannical and taciturn, he'd even almost broken my neck by throwing me over that rail at that museum. And his senses were shot to hell. All of these things had happened before, though, to lesser degrees. Well, okay, the miraculous healing of his leg had been pretty odd, but that COULD have been some sort of new sentinel thing - maybe he'd suddenly gone from being overly sensitive to the pain to being completely oblivious.
Yes, part of me saw the whole exorcism thing as a way of telling him that he was being such a stubborn asshole that I thought demonic possession was a possibility.
Once it became spectacularly clear that I'd been right, that there was something inside Jim - well, I didn't handle that well. I think that thing could have killed Jim at any time. I don't think we had too much to do with stopping it.
Let me see if I can express the details coherently... Naomi and MM were hell-bent on torturing that thing out of Jim, and that that meant torturing Jim didn't faze them at all. From annoying music to pepper spray in about 20 seconds tops. Man. Naomi just doesn't get what my problem is with this - hasn't she ever heard of "excessive force?"
You know, maybe she HASN'T. OK, I've gotta make a note on that on something I can take out of here. Does exposure to police procedure render people less or more violent when acting in self-defense?
OK, where was I? MM sprayed Jim in the face, I got his cuffs on him, MM (or was it Naomi?) promised that thing that if it came out, they'd let it go into Prince the Cat, no questions asked. It took them up on the offer, at which point MM and Mom went medieval, resulting in one alien invader sealed (wonders of duct tape) in two of our best Corningware baking dishes.
While they were having their fun, I grabbed Jim and hauled him into the bathroom, him screaming all the way that I should be apprehending "Ular," and that "he" shouldn't be harmed. Like I gave a damn. All I wanted to do was get the pepper spray off of us. I'd only gotten it on me from touching Jim, and my eyes were tearing so bad I could hardly see and I thought I might cough up a lung. Jim had taken the shot full in his face - his eyes were clenched shut, and I had no idea how he was bringing in enough air to yell at everyone.
Anyway, I got him into the shower somehow (his hands still cuffed behind his back - I had a pretty good idea where I'd dropped the key, but didn't want to take the time to go groping half-blind for it just then) and turned on the spray. Of course it was freezing and he screamed and recoiled. So we both sort of ended up toppling down into the tub, me on top of him. Don't know how the curtain survived. Anyway, in a moment the temperature was bearable (it's not for nothing I've lived there for almost four years) and I rotated us so that Jim was on top and facing the spray, still yelling and cursing. Then Naomi and MM came in, showing off how they'd caught and filleted their prize and divided the beastie up: "it's the only way to be sure," said Naomi.
"Why don't you just nuke it from space?" I asked.
"My, Dear, I hope that won't be necessary!" said Naomi.
"It's 'from orbit', not 'from space,'" said MM. "But two minutes on 'high' can't hurt!" And they were off.
At which point Jim went from swearing at the world to giving me career advice. "You will NEVER be a cop," he said, in his faux-calm voice, the one that's directed my way only, oh, every two or three months. "You will never, ever be a cop. Your first duty as a police officer is to serve and protect, and that includes people you find personally distasteful. If you don't have that INSTINCT then I can't work with you."
I told him what he could go do with himself and pushed his face back into the water. And fantasized about maybe never finding the key to the cuffs. To say I was pissed and hurt and damn tired of being Jim's emotional punching bag is putting it mildly.
He turned silent then, and stayed that way even when MM destroyed my little fantasy by bringing in the key to the cuffs and I got them off of him. Finally I decided that he'd been under the water long enough and I pushed him aside and put my face into the stream. It was hard to make myself open my eyes to the water but the relief was immediate. Jim took the hint and got off me. Before leaving the room, he tucked the shower curtain in a bit more securely and said, "If there's any water damage, you're paying for it."
Fortunately it was MM, not Naomi, who came in a few minutes later with some dry clothes. I might have said something unforgivable to my own mother. "Strip down and take a real shower, hon. These'll be waiting for you," she said, and I realized for the first time that I was still fully clothed. That's how mad I was.
Five minutes later the water was starting to get a little cool so I got out. Getting dressed was a challenge with my left hand (sliced open in several places almost a week prior, and getting progressively more painful and ugly-looking) pretty much useless. The gauze I'd had on it hadn't survived our afternoon's adventure, and then I remembered that the loft gauze was in my luggage. So that's why my hand was unbandaged when I came out of the bathroom. Jim brushed past me to take a proper (cool - hah!) shower of his own and didn't get a look at it, but Naomi and MM swooped upon me.
"Emergency room?" "Absolutely." "Ambulance?" "No, it'll be faster to drive him." "I'm betting 103.1." "No, 102.5." "Where would thermometers be..." I honestly couldn't tell who was saying what.
I shook them off and got the gauze and wrapped my hand just like I'd been doing. At least now I knew why I was feeling like shit and was shivering in the middle of June. I'd thought it was because the windows were now wide open and both our fans were going, presumably to get any lingering pepper spray out. I told them I'd go to a doc-in-the-box uptown, 'cause it was cheap and quick and I wasn't sure how good my 'Wild America' medical coverage was. And I went and put on a few more layers.
Then Jim came out of the shower, dressed and looking relatively (and completely) human. I braced myself for more abuse, but he just dropped into a chair and put his head in his hands. "What are we going to do now?" he asked. "You ladies have that all planned yet?"
Naomi and MM both pursed their lips; I got the impression they'd already talked some with Jim while I'd been in the shower, and that an uneasy truce had been reached.
MM spoke first. "I still think we should take it to Father Ian."
"Ma, again, Ular wasn't a demon, at least in the sense you mean," said Jim.
"And, again, you really have no way of knowing that, and I don't trust your judgment in any event," said MM.
Then Naomi suggested just burying the thing, but Jim nixed that. I just sat and stared at whatever caught my eye - I was beat, and if they'd decided to eat Ular I probably would have sat back and watched without comment.
Finally, Jim decided that it was best that the body be turned over to the PD - Simon was back at his desk, and could be convinced to deal. Jim, though, was hitting the road, because "I've been a guinea pig for enough years."
At this, I did focus. Enough to say "huh?"
"Sorry, Chief, no offense. But you know that my biggest fear all these years is that your thesis would draw the attention of - elements of our government."
Actually, I'd known no such thing. There's a big difference between a desire for privacy and full-blown paranoia, and I'd always considered Jim's reluctance to make his abilities public to be 80% a desire to keep his personal life private, 10% "freak" fear, and 10% a legitimate fear of having the bad guys know how to get the drop on him. Sure, there had been some hesitancy about arousing official interest, and we'd run into a few ex-gov loonies, but I hadn't registered any black-helicopter concerns.
"Jim, you ARE an element of our government!" I croaked.
"Better that than an elemental..." commented Naomi. I hate it when she tries to be witty.
Jim shook his head. "It was bad enough when I was just worried about being exploited because of my senses. I do not want anyone to get their hands on me to try to find out more about Ular, or why I attracted him, or - anything."
Naomi nodded. "I completely agree," she said. I couldn't believe that Jim and Naomi were going nuts in the same way.
"WHO is 'anyone'?" I said. Jim and Naomi just looked at me with pity for my naiveti; MM said she knew of a web site that listed the names of secret government operatives. I banged my head on the table. Just once - it hurt.
So it was decided that the moms and I would put Ular's corpse in the fridge overnight. This would give Jim a 12-hour head start. In the morning, we'd take it, and a note from Jim, to Simon, accompanied by MM's boss, Father Ian of St. Whomever. Jim would check in from the road and decide when it was safe to come in from the cold.
I still thought they were all completely nuts. Not that I had any other suggestions. All I wanted was for our mothers to go away and for me and Jim to just sit and talk and try to figure out what had happened and how he was coping and maybe, just maybe, for him to mention that I'd done a darn good job of dealing with the situation. I wanted us to both be able to rant and - whatever. Of course, I didn't say any of this.
Jim wrote out a note for Simon, then repacked a bag and grabbed his camping gear. Then he gave MM and Naomi kisses and I helped him carry stuff downstairs. Not that I could carry much.
He opened the passenger's side door and froze. "Where's the damn steering wheel?" he asked.
"Where it always is," I said.
He looked across the seat. "No... it should be over here."
"Jim, we were only in Indonesia a week, and you didn't drive the whole time we were there!"
"No, no, no, no, NO!" Jim banged his fist on the roof. He slammed the door shut and went around and got in the correct side. "I don't know what to do... How can I NOT know how to drive this thing? I've been driving since I was 15!"
"Let's just try," I suggested. I didn't know what else to do or say. I stowed his stuff and got in. Jim backed out of the space, and then looked long and hard - to the left. Not a good sign. A truck rumbled past from our right, and then Jim looked that way instead and, after an eternity, curved back into the (fortunately not too busy) side street.
"This just feels wrong," he said, driving slowly towards Prospect. "I've driven in Australia - I've driven on the wrong side of the street before. You just do everything backwards. But right now - I don't know WHAT is normal."
At Prospect, he looked left and right with equal attention, which really wasn't too unusual for Jim. After all, pedestrians could be anywhere. Then he turned right almost normally, then continued on without incident. I was about to ask to be driven back to the loft when we hit that new traffic circle-thingy around the statue of Dixie (Dixy?) Lee Ray. Jim started to turn left, then jerked right, almost colliding with a red convertible - he'd known which way to turn, but not which way to look, near as I could tell.
Jim, going half-speed, pulled off at the next spoke and into a parking space. "I can't do this," he said. "What's wrong with me? Am I acting - like Ular in any other ways? I'm acting normal, right?"
"Define normal," I said.
"Sandburg..."
"Jim, you can be a complete ass sometimes, and I wasn't sure you weren't 'you' the whole time Ular was in charge."
"You're serious?"
I couldn't do anything except shrug.
"I've got to get out of here," Jim said after a few moments. He repeated, sounding more desperate. "I HAVE to."
"Okay, so I'll do the driving," I said. The doc-in-the-box could wait, I figured. What did I need a left hand for, anyway? "You wanna just keep going, or go back so that I can grab some stuff?"
"Do you really want to go back up there?" asked Jim.
I supposed that it was time I bought a new 6-pack of boxers anyway. And so, off we went, with a brief stop at the Jumbo Mart on Market St., where Jim ran in solo and came out with some munchies and along with flour, oil, boxers my size - I couldn't even think of a comeback for that one - and aspirin. Oh, and a sleeping bag I never would have chosen.
He tossed the pill bottle to me. "Here, these'll help." Somehow, I doubted it, but I took two anyway. "That's some bug you've got."
We headed east, mostly. Two hours after sunset, Jim said he thought he'd convinced himself that we really did belong on the right-hand side of the road, and took the wheel.
We didn't talk. I just didn't feel up to it. I drifted in and out of sleep, straight into dream state. Like, I'd dream we'd just driven into a lake, or into the loading dock of a space ship populated with snake-shaped aliens, and I'd awaken with a start to find us still driving on dark two-lane roads, heading I-knew-not-where.
Maybe around midnight, Jim pulled way off the road and we slept in the truck. At dawn, we were off again.
A couple of hours after noon, we left the main road (if you could call it that) and entered dirt-path land. Finally, around 24 hours after the Exorcism of Ular the Goa'uld, we'd reached Jim's objective - a glen in a lightly forested region of Montana or Idaho, I don't even know.
Jim was in recluse heaven. "Spent a few weeks here back during college," he babbled. "School closed completely for spring break, and I didn't feel like going home, so I just took off and ended up here. Didn't see a soul the entire time. There's a tributary to the Snake River right over that ridge, with plenty of trout. And, there's a spring right over there, for clean water. We'll still want to run the purifier, of course. In fact, why don't you get it set up to catch a few rays while I get the tent up?"
I'd been doing okay at our last pit stop, a couple of hours before, really I had. But now all I could do is walk about 5 feet then sit on the ground. My left hand throbbed, but was bearable if I kept it against my stomach; with my right hand, I got my knees pulled up, and then I was able to put my head somewhere before it drooped off.
About three minutes later Jim noticed me. "Sandburg, we're wasting daylight."
Which meant night was coming, and I'd be even colder. I wondered how Jim had managed to camp there in March. Even with a flannel shirt on, I started to shiver hard.
Jim stooped down in front of me. "What's up, Chief?"
I think I told him I felt like shit; I might just have stared at him. He pulled my hand out from where I was cradling it and pushed up my sleeve. And we both sort of gasped; I had been aware that my fingers were feeling puffy, but I hadn't even realized that my arm was swelling. Jim poked at the bit of my palm that wasn't covered by gauze and I yelped. He then unwrapped my hand and stared at it, in all its oozing glory, for a few moments.
Then he thwapped me on the head.
Then he proceeded to grill me - how long had my hand been like that, what had I been putting on it, why hadn't I told him, or insisted on seeing a doctor. Standard Jim stuff, but I wasn't really in the mood. I reclaimed my hand and told him to go to hell and then laid down and rolled over and seriously considered whimpering. "Just drive me somewhere," I said. "I'll stall telling them my name long enough for you to get back here, or find a - an UNVIOLATED hole to hide in, or something." My little tirade made me feel better for about 15 seconds, then, as usual, I felt like a heel for blaming Jim for being Jim. I sat back up and pushed my hair out of my face; he hadn't moved. "Sorry, man. Seriously, if you could give me a lift back to Buffalo Jaw, I'll be fine. There was a clinic, or something, right across from the gas station."
"No," said Jim. "I'm not going to drop you off in friggin' Buffalo Jaw." He paused, and for a dizzying minute I was afraid he was going to tell me to just tough things out.
"This ends now," he said. "No more running. No more lies."
"But as soon as my name hits the computer... though I could lie, give them a false name and tell them I lost my ID and my insurance card."
"No. You need good care, Chief. You don't get that by holding back."
He got up and efficiently dismantled the bit of camp he'd already started to establish - rolled the tent back up, put it and the lanterns back in the truck. Then, he came back over and, without asking if I needed help, hauled me to my feet by my shoulders. "We should be at that clinic in 90 minutes. Think you can make it that long?"
"It's not like my hand's going to drop off," I said, though I let Jim help me to the truck and tuck my sleeping bag around me.
Again, we didn't talk while Jim drove, but this time it was him shooting me the furtive looks.
Sure enough, 90 minutes later we were in the sleepy little community of Buffalo Jaw, Montana (I think), and pulling up to door marked "Emergency" at the Hawk County Community Hospital. I've seen larger mini-marts.
Once inside, Jim strode up to the ubiquitous triage-nurse-behind-the- desk. "My name is James Ellison," he said, very distinctly, flashing his Cascade PD badge for good measure. "My partner, Blair Sandburg, needs his hand looked at. It's badly infected."
She smiled at me kindly. "What seems to be the problem, Mr. Sandwell?"
"Burg," said Jim. "Sand-burg."
"With an 'e'?" she asked as she came out to us and slipped on gloves.
"No, a 'u'!"
Poor Jim, falling on your own sword can be hard sometimes.
She and the other nurse womaning the ER set about clucking over me - okay, "clucking" is a pretty harsh term, and Nurse Gina and Nurse Henderson really don't deserve anything but kindness from the world. But they DO come across like momma hens. Good thing they'll never read this.
Anyway, I had to explain about how I cut up my hand, how the first thing I did was dip it in a bathroom cistern in a $5/night guest house at the equator, how I didn't pay it much attention to it afterwards, "and then, I didn't want to ruin our camping trip..." Gina clucked some more and then started to make phone calls, calling the doc on call and nurse anesthetist (Dr. Bob and Henny, I was soon to learn) back from their families. Nurse Henderson explained that, had I come by a few days before, she'd probably have just dealt with me herself, but that the infection had spread enough that she wanted the doc in on things. And she took a blood sample so that they could start working on figuring out exactly what sort of bug was at work. Oh, and I had to pee in a cup, not sure why.
Next thing I knew, Dr. Bob and Henny had arrived, did their own poking and prodding, and again got me to explain my total disregard for germ theory. Then I was being knocked out with happy juice. I slipped under trying to remember if I'd ever even given them my insurance information. Maybe Jim and I COULD be out of there before my name set off any alarms.
What felt like only minutes later, I woke up a little. And what were the words I heard Jim say? Not, "you've got to save him, doc, I can't live without him," or even, "he's had a hard time of it. Give him the GOOD drugs." Nope, what I heard Jim say way, "so, that means he can't join the force like he was planning." I was a little afraid that that meant they'd had to chop off my hand or something, but mostly I just wanted to tell Jim to give it a rest, already. Then Jim said, "he's waking up!" and I decided it would feel good to make a liar out of him, so I let myself sink back to sleep.
When I woke up again, I knew it was very late. Or, rather, very early.
"Hey, Chief, how ya doing?" said Jim. "You want me to keep the lights low?"
I said "uh" or something very close, and he handed me a juice box, straw already deployed. Apple. Yum. Then I noticed the IV hindering my juice box arm. Not so good. "What's this thing for?" I asked.
"Rehydration and antibiotics. They're guessing staph, which is pretty straightforward to treat. Preliminary guess is that you don't have any heart or kidney damage. But, you know, you could have."
"Great," I said. Then I forced myself to look to my left. My hand was braced and bandaged, but was definitely there. And five fingers, the correct color as far as I could tell in the dim room, were protruding, just like they should have been.
Jim was following my eye movements. "You were concerned?" he asked.
"Yeah," I admitted.
"Does it hurt?"
"Not too bad," I said, truthfully.
"Good," he said. "That's good." And then he looked straight at me. "We have to talk, Chief. They're coming for me."
"Who's they?"
"I don't know. An hour ago, the local sheriff came by and told me to stay put. There's a deputy outside the door."
"The window?"
"No, Chief. This stops now. No more running. No more lies. Ever."
"How long do we have?"
"A couple more hours, I think. Maybe less."
"Shit."
Jim was still staring straight at me. Blue eyes. I'd never noticed how blue they were. "I hate myself for leaving you like this. I never meant it to turn out this way," he said. And he looked away. "I never meant for any of this to happen. I'm sorry."
"I'm going with you, man!" I said.
Jim shook his head. "Even if they wanted you to come along, you're too sick to travel."
"Bullshit. I can take antibiotics by mouth. Or by an IV when we get wherever they want us to go. But you aren't going alone!"
"Why do you want to come?"
Exasperation, thy name is Ellison. "Jim, if, in twenty years, you've married my ex-wife, and shot my dog, I'd STILL bust my gut to track you down. You're stuck with me, man. Haven't you figured that out yet?"
"Why would I shoot your dog?" He shook his head, then pulled up the blanket, letting his hand stay on my shoulder for a moment.
"Think the doctor will be back around?" I asked, to change the subject.
"Maybe," said Jim. "Do you, uh, want the rundown?"
I nodded, so he filled me in. The doc thinks he got all the infected tissue cleaned out, but they're leaving packing in place while my hand heals from the inside out. I'm looking at some surgery a bit down the road, probably, to reinforce the bones in my left palm, because they probably have been weakened. And, while my heart PROBABLY wasn't affected by the infection, an ultrasound wouldn't be a bad idea at some point, to make sure all the valves look healthy. Lab work on the other tests has since shown everything is fine, though Jim didn't know that just then. All in all, I guess I came off easy.
"So I'll be able to play the piano?" I asked.
"Sure."
"Funny, I never could before!" and I had to laugh a while; I'd been waiting my whole life to use that one.
Jim waited me out, his expression infinitely patient. For Jim, 'infinite patience' lasts 2 minutes.
"But," he interrupted, "you probably shouldn't ever use that hand for shooting a fire arm. The recoil could really mess it up."
"I guess me being right-handed doesn't help?"
"Yeah, it does - you wouldn't be able to shoot at all, if that was your dominant hand," he said. "But to shoot well, you have to be able to use both hands. And you can't."
"So the academy is out," I said.
"Yeah."
I didn't know how to feel. I'd been wanting an 'out' for a while, but having the POSSIBILITY of police work taken away, was, well, a shock.
I closed my eyes.
Jim asked me if I wanted to rest and I nodded, figuring I'd be better able to handle whatever was going to happen if I got a little more sleep.
The next time I woke up, Jim had his head on the bed, just below where my right hand rested, not quite touching my hip. Looking away from me, of course. My first thought was that I must be dying or something. I didn't feel mostly-dead, though. "Jim?" I whispered, stroking the back of my fingers through his hair, glad the IV had disappeared while I slept. "What's wrong?"
He made a low sound, half moan, half sigh. I continued stroking. Was this his parting gift - this vulnerability? This was screwy - he wasn't going anywhere without me! I hoped.
"Jim, I need you to look at me."
He straightened and let me see his face. He looked utterly exhausted.
"Everything's going to be okay," I said.
Jim shook his head. He grasped my hand, the one I'd been trying to comfort him with, with both of his. "I want you to publish. Your paper on Sentinels. No matter what. No more lies, okay? If I don't come back, Simon and Megan will back you up."
The kindest thing I could think of to do was to nod. "I need something from you, too," I said. "I need you to forgive me and our moms for Ular."
"I've already forgiven Mary Margaret and Naomi," said Jim. "They didn't know what they were doing."
"But not me?" Maybe there were drawbacks to honest-Jim.
Jim shook his head; if anything, his grip on me tightened. "I don't hate you for it, but..." and he looked away, holding on to me but unable to face me.
"Jim, what the hell would YOU have done?"
That got his attention, to my surprise.
I continued, "if a mind-controlling space-alien snake had just crawled out of MY mouth, would you have treated it with kid gloves until you could figure out how to Mirandize it? Or would you have done everything you could think of to make sure I was okay first, provided it didn't seem to pose an immediate threat to the defenseless?"
"I was okay," he said.
"Bullshit. What would you have done?"
"Blair - I'm not used to thinking about things in that way."
"What, you don't do empathy?"
"No, I don't."
"That's impossible!" I sputtered. "You, of all people!"
His voice, his face turned hard. "Blair, if put myself in other people's shoes - to be honest, 95% of the time I'd find their actions wanting. Not because I'm some sort of superman, but because my training, and my senses, allow me to do things others can't. And, I've seen enough bad shit happen to enough people that if I let myself feel what they felt, I think I'd lose my mind."
"Like last week in Jakarta."
"Yeah. Just like that."
"I'm sorry."
But now Jim was smiling. "But I take your point. I'd have probably wasted Ular, had our positions been reversed." And now, he could let my hand go.
"So, is this new insight going to go in your paper?" he asked.
"No - yes - maybe -" I croaked, and I realized he was laughing at me.
"You know, you ARE the most screwed-up person I've ever met," I informed him.
"That's what Ular kept on saying." He tilted his head. "Hear that?"
Yes, I could, now - a chopper. "Big enough for both of us?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
Now that we were finally communicating, I really wanted to ask Jim about the time Ular was in his body. But I REALLY wanted to get myself somewhat decent before whatever was going to happen could happen, so I did a quickie wash-up, with a little help from Jim. Then a nurse came in to check on me and reattach the IV for another dose of antibiotics. Then breakfast arrived, which Jim and I almost fought over.
And then a couple of kids dressed like soldiers walked in. "Regards from Colonel Jack O'Neill," said the one old enough to shave (maybe). "We'd like both of you to come with us, at your earliest convenience."
"Like now," said the other. "Sirs."
I was sort of hoping that the medical staff would fight us leaving - it was obvious that our soldier friends wanted both of us together, and I wanted more time. But even Nurse Gina, nearing the end of her double shift, seemed to want us gone. I think the deputy guarding our room had some history with her. Or something. Anyway, lickity-split, I was dressed and Jim was being given detailed instructions about my care. I suggested they just pin them to me, and so they did :-/ And then we were in the chopper. Can't talk in a chopper. Then a small military transport, which was almost as noisy.
I couldn't tell whether or not Jim was surprised that our escorts were connected with Jim's old friend, Jack O'Neill. When Jack had made approaches to Jim in May about a job of some sort, he'd seemed to take 'no' as his answer with good grace. Had he changed his mind, and was this a forced recruitment, which just happened to coincide with Jim's possession? Or was there something even more odd at work?
I should know to always vote for 'odd'.
- - - -
Gosh, I've been writing for hours and my right hand now hurts worse than my left and I still haven't gotten to what's been going on with us here at the SGC. It turns out, they DID want Jim so that he could tell them all he could about Ular, and, more specifically, anything he might have picked up about other goa'ulds. I'm skeptical, though, that "SGC" really stands for the "Search for Goa'uld Committee", and that that's all that goes on in this mountain.
Remembering has been hard on Jim. I mean, really, really hard, and they are being complete bastards about it. Jim seems to think that it's necessary; I don't get the time urgency at all. Why not just let us go home, and we'll call in if something useful comes up? Not this sifting through bits and pieces of a thousand years of a mostly-joyless life, commingled with memories from the people Ular possessed which predate their possessions. It's awful. For a while the day we got to Colorado, and again today, I really and truly thought that things had gone too far, that everything had finally shattered Jim's psyche, but he's been bouncing back. Well, partly back.
Gack, and I haven't even touched on how Naomi and MM seem to be heroes to the people here. They haven't been here (Jim says that the military isn't THAT crazy), but I've heard whispers: I'm picking up that nobody had ever successfully performed an exorcism without a lot of high technology before. Naomi, as I mentioned earlier, even has my number here; I got a phone just for her calls, I think, though I can't call out.
Before I end, let my write my secret shame. Despite all the pain Jim has gone through, despite us being virtual prisoners of our own government at the moment, a part of me is thrilled. Jim isn't going to hide his abilities anymore. "No more lies," he keeps on saying. I'm hoping this means that I can somehow get my sentinel research published, and maybe still salvage a career in academia. At the very least, I might be able to help other sentinels in modern society.
*** The End ***
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