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written by Tiffany May Harrsch
For warnings, spoilers, ratings, and other information, see Pt 0. |
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I still have nightmares of the day I was kidnapped. I frolicked with my siblings in the soothing water of our room. Outside the glass, we could see the clear sky, the scenic grounds, and the path that led from our place of play. We watched the large, tall creatures come and go as was their wont, speculating amongst ourselves about their intents and purposes. Fanciful stories of the young did not to prepare me for their coming. One group, carrying a long rod with a container hanging from it, stopped outside. One removed the lid of the container as another lifted the protective covering from our home. The tall ones carefully added a cousin to our domain. We were excited and asked many questions of the newcomer. Where had he gone? What had he done? What were the tall ones up to? The excitement of yet another group of tall ones drowned any answers. There were only two of the new ones. Their coverings were very different, not brown and flowing as we were used to seeing. They carried many more tools, which sparked a fervent bout of speculative debate. They did not have the familiar markings on their heads, though one had circles on or over its eyes. One of my siblings immediately disliked them, and another was frightened because they did not approached us in the usual reverential manner. They acted as if they did not belong. They stopped outside our home. The one with the eye markings held out an object, thick, round, and long, but not as long as me. The other looked down at us for a moment before it struck. I had a brief glimpse of a foreign appendage dirtying up the water while I swam with my siblings in a circle of panic. I was jerked to a standstill by a sudden pressure on my middle. The grip tightened with every squirm I made until it hurt to move. The next few moments lingered in a disorienting rush. I remember coming into contact with dry, cold air. The object the tall one held became larger and smaller at the same time. I was forced into a hole barely larger than my body. A quick clank, a screech, and I was encased in darkness. It was a darkness unlike anything I had ever known. Nights were never as black. Or cramped. I was curled up on myself, barely able to move. The water merely made the walls slick. I screamed. I was suffocating. I panicked and writhed and tried to force my way out somehow, certain I was going to die in the tiny prison. The walls were too cold, too hard, and too close. And the water became too stale too quickly. My tomb moved jarringly, then paused. Through the stillness, through the walls of that horrible place, I felt as well as heard a distant rumble. A quick, jabbing, tap-taping thunder, followed by a softer sound I had never heard before. I knew instantly what it was and what it meant. I stopped my struggles. I wanted nothing more than to die with my family. I have no idea how long I was in that tiny, hard place. I paid little attention to all the movement and the soreness it caused. I made no attempt to decipher the strange sounds that filtered through the walls. Apathy vied with terror. There was no room for curiosity, no room for movement, simply no room. An interminable time later, the jarring stopped. The long pause was followed by a terrible screeching. Relative silence accompanied a blinding light from a small opening in one end of my cell. I fell through cold air, was caught by something warm. I recognized the grip of my abductor, or one like it. With a gentleness I did not understand, I was deposited into a cave. The cave was warmer than home, but also very comfortable. The fluid was not entirely water but refreshing nonetheless. It was tiny and cramped compared to the place I had shared with my brethren, but vast compared to my transport. The walls, though strong, were soft and giving. I could move with relative freedom without bruising myself against hard confines. I was too tired to test the flaps which covered the exit. I feared that if I peeked outside, if I tried to escape, I would find something worse than what I had already been through. The heat finally penetrated my lethargy. My body started to tingle, as did something in my memory. Without knowing where the information came from, I knew that this place had been made for me. The pouch I mistook for a cave had been designed into the tall ones to hold, shelter, and nourish those such as me while we grew. In return, we gave the host health and longer life. The tingle grew into an itch. I came to an awful realization. This host, this being whom I now resided within, was dying. It waited for me to heal it. The itch became painful in its intensity. I tried to ignore it. I did not want to heal anyone. I did not want to be a part of this… thing. The ones who took me, the creatures that killed my siblings, they must have known about the relationship between us. They must have known I could help this one. Which meant this one forced them into helping it, and they killed my cousins and siblings in retaliation. That made it my enemy. I would rather have died than help my enemy. I restrained myself from giving what was needed until the itch-like pain became so great I could no longer think. Then I fell victim to instinct. Ironically, the body fought my intrusion even as it craved me. Some small part of it remembered not needing another intelligence to keep it alive and functioning. That remnant warred against me and lost; it did not remember how to function without my help. Our addictiveness and the body's memory failure was also bred into the host - a sure way to keep the host wanting us. Whether it, or we, liked it or not. The healing took more energy out of me than I thought I had. Healing always leaves me drained. This host gets into trouble often, frequently leaving me exhausted. Those are the times I hate it most. I often wish I could exact revenge on it by not healing it. Or avenge my siblings by injuring it somehow. But instinct always takes over despite my best efforts. My frustration is made sharp by anger and nightmares and random moments of terror. There is nothing I can do to immediately express my displeasure. And to truly scheme, one needs imagination. I can be imaginative… when I have facts to imagine with. Alone in my host, with only my emotions to distract me, I use the frustration to put an edge on my senses. I am determined to learn all I can of my host, its life and comrades and slaves. Someday, I will learn enough to make a move against it. Assuming it does not get us both killed first. L * L * L * L
For the first time in my life, I know loneliness. Since my kidnapping, I have been alone physically, mentally, and emotionally. The company of my siblings and cousins had been taken from me the moment I was deposited into this living cave. Even if what I fear they did to my siblings had not happened, I still would never again know their touch or hear their voices. Now I need this body, the same way the host needs me. If I leave, or if I can find a way to refuse to heal, we both die. It is that simple. At first I blamed my host for putting me into this situation. I was certain the host had ordered it's slaves to abduct me so that it could live. I know the kidnappers were the cause of the thunder and crackle that haunt my dreams. I had thought they were retaliating against their master by harming my siblings. It did not take long to realize I was wrong. As soon as the need for revenge cleared my mind enough to focus, I started to pay attention to the world outside. I listened to the voices with great care, hoping to learn the alien speech. I needed information to fulfill my one goal in life. Something was not quite right with what I heard. The ones who spoke in the presence of my host did not do so with the shades of fear, awe, loathing, or reverence one would expect slaves to speak in. Instead, I heard conversational tones, curiosity, demands, anger, pain and even humor from those outside. The implications came as a great shock to me. My host is not master over them. They are not slaves, not underlings, not even servants. Everything in their tones indicate that they are, at the very least, equals to my host. Occasionally, my host speaks as if to a superior. It is the comradeship my host shares with the three it most associates with that concern me. They are it's friends. While I had it in my head that they were slaves, it did not occur to me to hate my kidnappers and the murderers of my siblings. Slaves, after all, are not responsible for their actions, their masters are. However, if my host does not have slaves, then it must have been it's friends who have caused me such grief. Though I have not yet seen any of their faces, I have no doubt the voices belong to the same friends who put me into this life of solitary confinement. Friends of my enemy are also my enemy. Feelings I had only for my host expanded to include the three voices I hear most. It is easier to spread the animosity around, less painful to focus it on only one being. Unfortunately, stuck in here, there is nothing I can do about it. There is no way I can get back at them until I can leave this body. That will not happen until I am grown, and then only when I have become a part of another body. Or so says the strange, tingly, knowing. It is my only source of information other than my memories and the outside sounds. Sometimes it comes as flickering, disjointed images in my mind. Sometimes a snatch of music or a voice which does not originate outside my host. Sometimes it is merely sourceless knowledge, no imagery or feeling to accompany it. And sometimes, particularly in my dreams, it is like a vivid memory that had never been mine. I may have had a glimmer of the knowing before, I am not sure. The tingle has a distantly familiar quality to it. It might have been behind some of the heated discussions my siblings and I would all get into. Or maybe even the source of the stranger bits of speculations we would enjoy tantalizing each other with. If the knowing occurred before I was taken from my siblings, it had never happened with such intensity or frequency. Perhaps it needs long periods of solitude to be activated properly. Or strong emotions like hate or fear. All I know is I can't will it to happen. Maybe this is what my ancestors had in mind when they were modifying these beings to house their offspring. Perhaps they hoped to activate the knowing before it would normally be ready. Maybe it was a survival trait at a time when we needed the survival traits the most. Certainly they would not have inflicted this on their young except in the name of survival. Would they? Did my ancestors realize what they were doing when they modified the hosts to carry the young? I know our numbers were dismally small when these beings, the humans, were discovered. By the time the first of them were successfully altered to become Jaffa, the population of our original hosts had dwindled to near nothingness. The knowing does not say what caused their decline, if it even knows. We had come too close to the point of no return ourselves. A few more decades or a small disaster and nothing would have been able to save us from extinction: not time, not knowledge, not gods, and certainly not foundling technology. So why, then, did the they make it so hard to heal that which was supposed to protect the young? Why make these… incubators from warriors - the ones who would die in wars and rebellions, taking the children along with them? Had they thought to weed out the weak? But even the weakest adds to the population, adds to the hope of growing and continuing. Even now we are not so many as the humans, and the human forms that the ancestors have spread across the galaxy. And why make it so the host can carry just one? The humans reproduce too slowly, in only ones and twos. When our kind mate, a great many are born. I realize that few ever survive past infancy, but would it not increase our chances if there were multiple children per host? At the very least it would make our lives less painful. What about the others? Don't the adults remember the terrible loneliness of this existence? Of hearing and knowing of the outside world and those who people it without being able to interact? Of not being able to communicate and share with any one for those long years between larva-hood and maturity? Even communication with the Jaffa who carries me is minimal at best. Maybe the current generation of adults do remember but do not know how to change it. Perhaps they are working on a way of raising the young together as the knowing said it had been done in the beginning. Maybe they just have not found a way to do so after the young reach a certain age, hence the continued need for the hosts. I hope so. Because if they do find a way, I might be rescued from this host and it's hateful friends. I have the bad feeling, however, that, after being alone for too long, one gets to like being alone. If so, the adults may not remember swimming with their sibling and cousins, and the exchange of information and touch that is not by proxy. They may not see anything wrong with this existence. I can think of an even worse possibility. It is one that would fit the bits of history the knowing has provided so far. There is the terrifying notion that maybe, just maybe, the adults do not care. No wonder then, if either of the last two are the case, the other intelligences of the universe think we are crazy. I try not to think of that idea. I have enough hate for my host and it's friends. I am not sure I can handle the notion of being abandoned by my own kind. L * L * L * L
I have been named! Names bestow power. Being named, knowing names, having a name and giving one; all are power of a sort. Up until now I did not have a name to give. Being recognized as an individual came only from my siblings. We did not name each other, that honor is reserved for the naming day. I identified them by the sounds of their voices and the feel of their touch. Had life gone on as normal for me, I would not have been named until I matured into adulthood and successfully took control of a host. I do not believe the adults even consider us people until the naming day. We are merely creatures to them, not quite alive things tended solely for the survival of our species. Why else leave us in the care of the tall one slaves? Once we have thickened, and changed color, and have reached the point where we are strong enough to subsume a host - only then are we considered people. Only then do we reach personhood and are finally treated as children or brethren, loved or hated, coveted or jealous of, considered allies or foes. The knowing says this was not always so. It is true the children of our species have always had an incredibly high mortality rate. Very few larvae were either viable or survived the first changing. However, between the first changing and the second, where I am now, the children were looked after more. The strongest were even named. They were not separated at so young an age to be kept in isolation from their kind for years in the body of a stranger with an equally high likelihood of death. No one had to live in this poor imitation of the pouch of the original hosts where the young were sheltered and grew in numbers. How much different things would be if we were cared for the way the tall ones care for their young. If we were raised as family, and protected as children, I would not be where I am now. My siblings and I would not have been left alone as we were. And even if that catastrophe had occurred, my siblings would have been avenged. And there would be someone out there looking for me… But it is difficult to think of an individual without benefit of a name, a face, or a touch. That is another power of names, to know you are known. Perhaps the most powerful name is the one given by the enemy. It means one has become a very real, specific threat to them. It brings me great pride to know one of my host's companions fears me so much. Though I am puzzled as to why. I am powerless to do anything against them until I have matured, and that will not be for many years yet. What would the adults think of me now if they knew? I am enough of a threat, before I have reached the second changing, to be a named one. Would it make me more real to the adults? If they found out, would they let me keep the name? I have gained power of another sort in my time here. I have learned the names of my host and it's companions. This took me much time. The language they speak in this place is amazingly difficult to learn. The knowing has not spoken of this strange tongue. They use deep, rumbling, drawn out words. It is clear just from the sounds of them I would never be able to speak the language on my own; my anatomy is too different. To communicate with them I would need a proxy. Part of my trouble is how muffled the outside world is. Here there are the heart beat, breathing, digestion, and other such noises of the living machine that is my host. Sound must be very loud out there, or close to the entrance to my abode, for me to hear. Then they need to be something clearer than mumbling. I have not gathered up the nerve to stick my head out just to listen in on the conversations. I have learned the most from my host. It's voice is the loudest. The sound of it from outside echoes the reverberations through the body. I recognized certain words as names even before I associated them with the appropriate voices. They are odd sounding words like 'O'Neill', 'CaptainCarter', 'DanielJackson', 'GeneralHammond', and 'DoctorFrasier'. The name of my host was the first word I learned from those outside. It is the least alien sounding. My host is called 'Teal'c'. The second word not spoken by my host I learned from the one called O'Neill - my name. It is the strangest of any I have learned so far. Just what kind of name is 'Junior', anyway? L * L * L * L
The invasion is fast, decisive, and imminently lethal. One moment we were fine, the next my host is in pain and being over run by alien parasites. I take the trespassing of my territory very seriously. My host is mine; I will not allow other things to share it with me. I immediately set out to conquer them. They out number me by the thousands. Despite my best efforts, they are conquering my host. In the short, interminable time I have been here, I have driven off all manner of bacteria and virus. At first I had thought my host must be particularly susceptible to these ailments. They are always trying to infiltrate his body, particularly through the wounds. I was surprised by the multitude more the knowing sometimes speaks about. Unfortunately, the knowing is useless against this new threat. With the knowing's help I have determined the new enemy to be a virus. Viruses are not uncommon, nor are their means of replicating using the cells of my host. This virus, however, is changing my host in a way I have never experienced in the past or is known in the knowing. My host is slowly ceasing to be my host. He is changing into something else, something alien, and I do not know how to fight it. I try to retaliate in every way I know how. Every defense and offense instinct, the knowing, and my imagination can come up with are easily being deflected by the growing invaders. My host is weakening rapidly. He has not put himself into the meditative state that allows me easier access to the body. For some reason he is not even trying to help me fight. I fear the virus is changing more than just his body. If his companions are trying to help, they are having as little luck as I. I wish I knew what, if anything, they are attempting. It might help if we pooled our efforts. Unfortunately, I do not have the strength or time to concentrate on the outside sounds and try to interpret a language I can hardly understand. I have come to the conclusion the illness is causing my host to loose his mind. There is no other reason for him to do this. He reaches into the pouch in which I reside, feeling around with fumbling fingers. I try to keep out of reach, but there is nowhere to go in the suddenly tight confines. Fingers brush me, then grasp me. He pulls me from the safety of my abode despite my protests. I scream and twist as I fall onto something which is not soft enough. I see my host for the first time as he turns his back on me and leaves. Teal'c has just condemned us both to death. Why? Why commit suicide in such a painful way? He could have just killed me out right if he had wanted me dead. He could have done something less painful to himself than wasting away without my help. I do not understand this. Teal'c is a fighter. His companions are fighters. They, and he, would not allow death so easily. Alone, I scream once in inarticulate frustration. It takes this for me to realize I want to live! The depression that stuck with me for so long since I was abducted has changed course to anger, to motivations of revenge, to boredom, to curiosity, to this, the desire to be. The tall ones keep taking away my choices about life. I do not like being out in the open air. It is too dry and it hurts to breathe the crisp coldness. Everything feels strange. Sights and sounds are just off enough to be disconcerting. Everything looks and sounds... flat, somehow. The colors and my depth perception are not as accurate as they should be. Every little noise seems greatly amplified outside my host's body. I have not been out here but for a few minutes and already my skin itches. The cloth I lay on, though smooth, feels abrasive to my body. I try to keep as still as possible. Movement hurts and I do not wish to create a breeze in the already chill air. Besides, I see nowhere to go to keep myself safe. Yes, I could try to make my way to one of the tall ones laying near by. The one clad in blue is closest. I would have to gather energy enough to penetrate it, then to heal the wound the penetration would created, then do something about the injuries the tall one has. Assuming the motionless tall one is alive. I am exhausted and know I do not have the strength to manage even the first stage. Besides that, I am too young to take over a host. I have not yet even begun to thicken, much less change color. How could I possibly hope to be able to control the host once I was inside? I feel so helpless. There is no push of instinct to cause me to act where my mind will not. The familiar tingle of the knowing has abandoned me. I hear flat noises approaching. It takes my stunned mind a moment to identify them as voices. The air around me and the cloth I lay on jangle unpleasantly as a couple of tall ones join me in this place. One passes me without noticing me. The other comes uncomfortably close to stepping on me before it becomes aware of my presence. "Jack." This is another name for O'Neill, one only DanielJackson uses. "It's alive." DanielJackson's voice lacks it's usual muffled resonance. The owner of the voice comes into view and I freeze. Though I have only seen this face once before, it is forever engraved in my mind. It belongs to one of my abductors, one of the two tall one strangers who took me from my siblings. The moment flashes back into my mind. A strangely dressed tall one with circles on it's eyes handing a short, oblong object to the other… One nasty appendage, like that which had so rudely took me from my siblings, reaches out toward me. Still in the throes of memory, terrified, I scream and flinch away. The hand stops without touching me and draws away. I hold my breath and wonder what they, particularly DanielJackson, will do next. I am relieved their touch is not involved. O'Neill says something and pushes DanielJackson away. Using the smooth, scratchy cloth as a sort of sling, O'Neill bundles me up and carries me somewhere. I live for a long while in yellowed darkness and rumbling. It takes all my will to resist the urge to thrash about. Panic will not help the claustrophobia any. This is not nearly so dark or confining as the first time the tall ones took me. This time I have a clue as to my fate. They are friends to my host, they want my host to live, therefore they will no harm me. I keep repeating this mantra. It does little to allay the fear, and nothing for existing half in the present and half in those terrible moments from the past. The rumbling stops. My breathing, strained, sounds too loud in the comparative silence. There is more jostling, gentler than when I was transported in that hard container. DanielJackson makes a worried inquiry, O'Neill responds with firm optimism. I doubt they are speaking of me. More anxious voices. I recognize CaptainCarter, her voice higher pitched without the muffling of a body. Someone I do not know speaks. Then DoctorFrasier, her tones both demanding and compassionate. I am too agitated to try to decipher what little I know of their language. Eventually, I am deposited into a large tank similar to the place I used to share with my siblings. It is refreshingly spacious, but triggers a yearning for the company of my own kind. The tank is transparent, allowing me to see the outside world again. It helps to dispel the feeling of being trapped. And it gives me something to do while I wait for the tall ones to decide my fate again. They flitter in and out of the larger room mine is contained in. Sometimes they fiddle with things near me, sometimes with things laying around. I can not identify any of it, and the *knowing* remains persistently, annoyingly silent. The water I reside in draws my attention from the tall ones. At first it felt like the same stuff I have lived in with my host. It is warm and revitalizing and capacious. I do not know just what it wrong with it. It is not stale, yet it is not quite… alive. One tall one, who is shorter than the others, visits most often. The knowing flares up just enough to identify it as female before becoming quiescent again. The tall one is continually adjusting things near my room. When she finally speaks in my presence, I realize I have 'met' her before. She has the voice of DoctorFrasier. Maybe she knows what is wrong with my water. I am startled by the presence of another female tall one. She is the one who abducted me with a bruising grip and forced me into the tiny transport. Now she stands too close gazing down at me. I cling to the farthest corner, wishing for an opaque room. I would rather be stuck back in cramped darkness than be under her eyes again. With the first word she utters, I know instantly who she is. CaptainCarter. They were both friends of my host. I knew this, of course. Intellectually. My host's companions are not his slaves. But I had never associated any of the familiar voices or names with the faces that haunt my dreams. I knew there were tall ones out there, somewhere who had killed my siblings. Now, knowing the particular names belonged to the faces I have seen only once before today just makes what I knew real. I will her to go away and amazingly she leaves. Only to return later with those terrifying eyes. I wish she would take DanielJackson's example and avoid me. I do not know why she persists in joining DoctorFrasier in the human sport of staring. The wrongness with the water counteracts the reviving effect of the warmth and sustenance. I no longer have the energy to float, so I settle to the bottom of the tank. I peer out the partition at the tall ones standing around. Why weren't they doing anything? Surely they know something is wrong with me. Why do they just watch? CaptainCarter says something to her shorter companion. Her words spark a bit of recent memory. A time when names like 'Tok'Ra' and 'Ashrak' and 'Jolinar' were spoken with worry, hate and anxiety in connection with CaptainCarter. They were words the knowing knew. Though Jolinar was a stranger, it was a proper Goa'uld name. CaptainCarter is solely a tall one, now. But now she has the knowing too. Being older when it was given to her, certainly her knowing knew how to make this water more alive. Why doesn't she say? Her insistence of not doing anything conflicts with the worry in her voice when she speaks. O'Neill comes in and speaks to the women. The one who named me stays conspicuously distant from me. At his order, CaptainCarter and accesses her knowing. She and DoctorFrasier adjust things near my housing, and suddenly the water becomes fresh and alive again. This is the second time O'Neill has saved me from the abductors. If only he had been there when they first encountered my siblings and I. He, at least, wanted me to live. He must be a true friend of Teal'c. I do not know what caused the delay, but they finally deliver me to my host. I am appalled by what I find. Most of his body isn't his. The virus is still present but declining. There are injuries to his skin and the entrance to my pouch. And another alien substance had been introduced into his system. I start on the newest threat before I realize it is not a threat at all. The new stuff is killing the virus. I am elated at the implications. The tall ones have succeeded where I could not and helped my host. All I have to do is finish the job and we would both be fine. The healing takes a long time and leaves us both exhausted. When I finally get a chance to rest, my host decides to do otherwise. I hear him talking to DanielJackson, asking questions and sounding content to just be in the other's company. It is company which I will forever feel uncomfortable. My depression comes back to haunt me. The source is this morbid thought - Even named, I am no more a person to them than I am for the adults of my own kind. I am merely a useful, hated, tool. If my host did not depend on me, they would let me die. They might even expiate matters. These people who care so much for an ex-enemy would not have cared enough to find me a new host had Teal'c died. They would not have taken me back to the care of my own kind. They would have done nothing to save me. Fed up with myself, I forcefully push the thought and feelings aside. My host is well, and because of this I am alive. This is all that matters. So I tell myself. |
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______________________________________________________________________________ Author's notes: Feed back of any of every sort wanted and appreciated. Hate it, love it, just didn't get it, or think I didn't get it - I want to hear them all. So, what did you think of my attempt to get into the head of this particular alien? |
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© 2000 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. Back to Daniel's Mirror This page last updated on 24 Jan 2003: New server and color scheme. |
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