1995, Washington, D.C.
I had passed the security clearances for the new Stargate program. I had sacrificed an untold amount of bodily fluids for testing, and I had already written several papers on astrophysics and wormhole theory. Now, all that was left was the interview with the head of the Senate oversight committee for the project. A mere formality, I had been told. Senate oversight didn't normally interview people involved in their secret projects, especially when there was a whole chain-of-command between me and the Senate.
I was still a bit paranoid... this project was too good to be true. Something had to go wrong. My suspicions that there was something personal at stake were confirmed as I sat down across from Kinsey, and saw something ugly in his eyes. If I didn't suspect he hadn't gotten it up in 50 years, I'd have called his expression lecherous.
"Captain Samantha Carter," he said, reading from a paper in front of him. My transcript? "Female fighter pilot. Degrees in mathematics. Not typical of a woman, is it?" He looked up from the paper and stared at me. "I thought girls weren't supposed to be science-oriented."
My mouth was dry. "I do all right, sir."
Senator Kinsey looked down at his sheet. "Not married?"
"No, sir." I said the minimum I could. I didn't want to give him any rope with which to hang me.
"And your father is General Jacob Carter? Want to grow up to be just like him?"
I forced down my anger. "General Carter is my father, sir."
He looked at me with a more open expression now, letting me know just what he thought of such an anomaly. And just in case I wasn't getting the picture, he reinforced it verbally. "Do you know what I call smart, tough women fighter pilots who claim to be be married to the military?"
I was pretty sure I did.
"Homosexuals, Captain. Are you a homosexual?"
"No, sir," I answered calmly, not too forcefully, not too reticently. As I'd been trained to answer.
"You're pretty close," he muttered, contemplating the paper. "But they say you're the best man for the job." He laughed at his little irony, and reached for the approval stamp.
"Yes, sir."
He leaned over his desk and looked hard at me. "I'll be watching you, Captain Carter. God has entrusted me with the Stargate program, and everything will happen according to His plan."
I took the paper and left his office, stopping in the building to empty my stomach in the ladies room. I'd passed. I'd convinced Senator Kinsey I wasn't a homosexual, at least on paper.
But, of course, I was.
* * *
Present Day
"Did you think you'd be safe on another planet?" Kinsey's face bled into my field of vision. "Did you think it would be different? That you'd find an 'enlightened' world where you'd fit in? You're wrong. You're filth in every world." His hand tightened around my throat. "You're here because God was watching."
"I am your god!"
Kinsey's face morphed into Hathor's as she backhanded me. I was being tortured for information about SG1, but this wasn't a part of it. This was personal. I felt something warm on my cheek. Blood where her fingernails had burrowed, I suspect, and resisted the urge to reach up and touch the stickiness. I probably didn't have the strength anyhow.
"I know what you are, Samantha Carter." Hathor was saying. "Why you so easily resisted me. Why you were suspicious. I know." Her hands were around my neck again. "Now I have to decide whether to turn you over to Sokar..." She was squeezing. I wasn't resisting. "Or give you back to the natives. Do you know what they do to your kind? They believe that sexual deviancy comes from the liver. So they cut it out. It takes you days to die, and the worst feeling is not the incredible pain, but the helplessness, dying for want of one little organ..."
I blacked out.
* * *
1993, Riyadh, Saudia Arabia
First year of the Clinton presidency. He'd run on a platform of getting gays into the military. Things would be different. There would be honor in serving one's country. When he'd spoken, there were tears in his eyes.
Now, homosexuals were being washed out at a higher rate than in the history of the service.
God was watching.
Specialist Torrent had gone drinking in Riyadh with the boys from his squad. Things had gotten out of hand on the way back.
"Prissy Torrent. Fairy-dance your way into the force?"
Miguel Torrent tapped his marksman ribbon. "Blew my way in." He grinned wildly, flashing white teeth.
"Only fags are marksmen. Takes real finesse."
"Right on," Miguel answered, his jovial tone more forced than before. "It'd take real finesse on you, finding a brain tinier than a dinosaur's."
The guys laughed, a cruel sound. Miguel's target looked angry.
"Hey, Torrent," another called. "You like those rifles cause they're the biggest cock you can get?"
"Naw," Torrent answered. "Mine's bigger."
Laughter again. Tasting victory, Miguel turned his back on them. They were almost to the humvee. Then a weight hit him from behind, and he stumbled forward. An arm wrapped around his throat. He struggled, trying to hit the force behind him, but he couldn't find leverage. He flailed into the night.
"I want to see if his dick is pink," someone called.
Miguel felt hands unclasp his utility belt, reach for his crotch. "Let go!" He screamed, panic taking away his reason. "Let me go, you faggots!"
A solid blow across his face shut him up. "You're the faggot."
His pants were yanked down and his briefs laughed at. Throughout it all, the laughter was constant. An evil sound. Miguel felt something protruding against his ass. Sidearm? It was hot. Prick.
Shit.
He was thrown to the ground on his stomach. He inhaled dirt and sand. choked. Weight was on his back, compressing his lungs. Blows were striking his kidneys, his face, his arms.
"You tell anyone, you little fairy, and we'll tell the CO you made a pass at us." With that, they fell upon him like wolves.
* * *
That's how I found him, face down in the dirt. Tire tracks gouged deep--someone had gunned it out of there. He was bleeding from the anus. I turned him over. "Specialist?"
His eyes opened into black slits. "Lieutenant," he gasped.
"I've got my bike. Can you hold on?"
He licked his lips, wincing. "I think so." He inhaled to gather strength, then cried out softly with pain. "I think I got some broken ribs."
* * *
The moment I stopped the motorcycle, he sagged against my back. I knew he'd passed out from the agony. I called for a stretcher.
Inside, I watched from the corner as a small, female doctor cut off his clothes and barked orders at the nurses. I hadn't seen her before.
Bruises covered nearly every inch of Miguel's naked body. I turned around to puke.
"Lieutenant," the woman said, to get my attention. I looked up.
"I'm Doctor Fraiser." She glanced at Miguel, then back at me. "Lieutenant...Carter," she asked, reading my nametag, "What happened here?"
"I found him out on Damascus Road. Towelheads musta jumped him. You know how bad the gangs are around here."
"Lieutenant Carter," she said impatiently. "There's semen all over him. What happened?"
I looked away.
"You'd let this happen?" Her tone was suddenly angry. "I'd heard..."
What had she heard?
She moved closer to me, so I couldn't look away without straining my neck. Close enough that I could smell her. She placed her hand on my arm. Her hand was gentle, reassuring, and sent tremors through me. She tried another tack.
"There are worse things than losing your career," she said quietly.
I looked at Miguel. I knew that wasn't true. What had she heard?
That we take care of our own.
* * *
Present Day
Hathor's chamber. I was weaker today. I felt every blow more acutely. The hand device sapped my energy, the pain so intense I resisted despite myself. When she turned it off, I retched. I'd spent all of yesterday vomiting, but now there was nothing left to expel. I'd die of dehydration before anything else. I hoped the hallucinations would be fun.
Hathor didn't believe in the sarcophagus as a torture device. She believed it detracted from the purity of the experience. As god of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, she took the art of hedonism very seriously.
"I know SG1 is out there. If you tell me what I want to know about the iris, I'll return you to them. I won't tell them what happened at the castle."
I'd been trying not to listen, but she saw me flinch, and laughed. "Oh, yes, I know. Unfortunately, I didn't find out in time. They cut her liver out." She shook her head. "I unleashed my wrath, of course. Made an example of the priest. But I'd have preferred a chance to talk to the girl." Hathor licked her lips. "I could have learned all the secrets you whispered to her."
So like a god, I thought, to play both sides.
"Pagan superstition dies hard, you know," she sighed.
I know.
* * *
1998, Stargate Command, Cheyenne Mountain
I was in Daniel's office, practicing my pronunciation of Goa'uld, when an MP passed the doorway then retraced his steps. I continued reading.
"Carter?"
I recognized the voice and looked up.
"Captain Carter," he corrected himself with a wild grin.
"And Sergeant Torrent." I smiled. "What are you doing here?"
"I got assigned to the MP unit." He paused, looking around, glancing at my book. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm on SG1."
His eyes widened. "Cool."
* * *
I found out what he was really doing here three weeks later, when he made his move. I stepped out of O'Malley's with my team and saw him standing outside. O'Malley's was officers only, so I wondered how long he'd had to wait there.
"Guys, I'll catch up with you."
Jack O'Neill nodded slowly, watching Miguel. Jack watched everything. He was the only person I'd ever known smarter than me. Much better at observing empirical data, when you could get him to do it. He got bored easily.
I sat in the passenger seat of Torrent's car.
"Tell me how Narim walked through walls, Carter," he said coldly. No pretense, no foreplay.
I looked at him with shock. He grinned.
"You're NID," I said with disgust, referring to the secret government agency that used the Stargate program to develop weaponry for Kinsey's dark purposes.
He was calm. "We do what we have to, to survive."
I understood. After seeing Miguel's broken body, I'd started combat training. So far I was up to level three advanced. So I knew I could get out of the car. I reached for the door handle. "I'm not going to tell you anything," I said, sounding sure of myself.
"Oh, but you will, or I'll tell everyone your little secret. The one we used to share."
Used to? I forced bravado. "Everyone already knows."
"No, they don't." He smirked. I saw his face was flushed. I glanced down. His cock was tenting his jeans. He was backing me into a corner, and he liked it. He'd traded one perversion for a more acceptable perversion--power. How much of it was the NID, and how much of it was being rendered helpless by four men he'd trusted with his life?
I opened my mouth to talk him out of this. "Times have changed," I started.
"Don't give me that Executive Order bullshit." He cut me off. "Fodder in Somalia's one thing. The military finally learned who's best at redecorating a country." Miguel's hands gripped the steering wheel. "But this is a top secret facility, Carter, and you are a security risk."
I tried another tack. "I can do the same to you."
He laughed. "No, you can't I'm a ghost. But I can disappear, and still leave your life in ruins."
I rolled my head against the backrest and closed my eyes. "I'm not telling you anything."
"Suit yourself." He began to get out of the car. I knew he was going someplace to get off. I grabbed his leg. "Wait."
He looked back.
"I can still be valuable to you," I implored.
Miguel looked into my face for a long moment, then sat back in the car. I slid my hand up his inner thigh, watched him shudder. "I know all your secrets," I whispered. "Where else are you going to get it?"
He said nothing as I covered the lump in his pants with my palm, cupping him, caressing him. When my fingers undid the first button of his fly, I became like a dead thing. Samantha Carter was pushed aside. I was going to survive this.
I freed his penis, hard and wet, and lowered my head. I was going to survive.
There are worse things than losing your career.
* * *
Hathor had taken the day off, presumably to quell the natives. I was fed and watered. I spent the morning trying to escape, and when I failed, I settled on the hard floor again to doze, taking satisfaction in the broken bones and hopefully soon-to-be-infected teeth marks I'd left two of the guards with.
* * *
After that first night, Miguel only took me from behind. I studied his movements, his proclivities. I saw others surrender to him, saw him pass the information on. I said nothing. Sooner or later, he would find a man to rape and I would lose what little leverage I had. I had to act.
He was behind me, his cock inside my ass, tearing the delicate skin already raw from his pummeling. I was facedown on the cot in his quarters. "Do you take me like this so you can fantasize I'm a man?" I made my move. "Does it help that I'm taller than you are?"
"Shut up," He grunted, and rutted me harder. I felt his penis soften inside me, just a little bit. I was encouraged. "Because I'm not, you know. I'm a woman, with big, soft breasts and a wide, warm sucking vagina ready to swallow you whole."
"Shut up!" Torrent screamed, and hit me in the back of the head so hard I was quiet. I listened to him gritting his teeth. I imagined his eyes were closed, that he was fantasizing. Trying to forget me. He'd start with Brad Pitt, but he'd be reminded too much of a woman. So he'd move on to Steven Seagal, who'd remind him of Saudi Arabia.
I had him.
He wilted, and rolled off of me. Now he'd forget me, to forget his own impotence. "What do you fantasize about, Carter?"
I fantasized about dying.
I left. "Cunt," he said coldly to my back, as I slipped through the door.
My point exactly. He never touched me again.
* * *
Two weeks later a corpse was found in the desert, shot in the back of the head twice with a 9 mm. Execution style. John Doe. The story was on the page of the Denver Post Jack was reading at breakfast. I looked at it, then at him.
He met my eyes. "He was distracting you." Jack held my gaze.
I looked down. "I'd taken care of it."
He nodded thoughtfully. Was there sympathy in his eyes? Or did he just not want the competition? He didn't ask me why I'd done what I had with Miguel. Maybe he didn't want to know I was gay. Maybe he didn't want to think I was capable of being blackmailed.
Maybe he already knew everything.
I ate my cereal.
* * *
Present Day
I saw dark eyes in front of me, close enough that I could see myself reflected in them. I didn't look good. Her hands were touching me, healing me. Janet Fraiser was crooning to me, whispering in my ear, surrounding me aurally, visually, tactilely with tender compassion.
Her eyes were almost black. Devil's eyes. How can someone so good have eyes like that? They should be blue or green, like an angel's. Like an innocent's. But they were black. "There's demon in her." Senator Kinsey found me again, or maybe it was the voice of every fatherly white man judging me. Demons. They cut out the liver...
So what. I opened myself to the darkness, to the sin. She wasn't an innocent. She'd seen too much. She'd stuck her hand inside soldiers to search for the presence of evil, pulled her fingers out sticky with blood, holding up a wriggling, screeching larvae. Now she was reaching inside me, finding old wounds and tempering them, wrapping herself around me, whispering that I was safe.
She did the same for every airman, but I felt special anyway, imagining this is how my mother would nurture me, make me whole again. If she'd had the chance.
The nagging insecurity would never leave me, and I was convincing myself I had displaced affection when Janet's mouth covered mine. She was kissing me, softly at first, then harder, until I couldn't breathe, and her teeth drew blood from my lip. That's when I knew I was dreaming, then, as her body, smaller, but just as strong, covered mine. I didn't care. My hands went to her hips.
She was still in her lab coat, the way I always saw her. I was naked. Her hands were on my breasts. Her tongue was in my mouth, twisting against mine like a snake as she explored me. I deserved this break from reality. I needed to be touched. I couldn't remember the last time I had--only Miguel's hands on me, sullying me.
Janet's mouth was purifying. Her mouth was on my nipple, then my belly, taking away my wounds with her tongue. Her hand slid between my legs and found me, swollen and aching and hard. Please god, I prayed, let me climax before all this ends. I buried myself in her femininity, inhaling the scent of her skin.
A scream erupted from my lips, a cry of surrender that the pain of torture hadn't won from me. I called her name as I came, convulsing, clutching at her, but she was dissolving in my arms even as I shuddered with orgasm.
"I don't get it." I heard Hathor's voice said as Janet's weight, invisible, left me. I opened my eyes. The god, regal in gold and garnets, her red hair matted with sweat, had rolled to the side. "I don't get it." She repeated. "I mean, I respect it, being the goddess of sex and all, but it's just not for me." Hathor sighed. "I feel out of touch with my people."
I shook myself fully awake. "Don't look at me. I didn't ask for this, either," I muttered, propping myself up on my elbow, away from her, retching. I only managed to expel a thin pool of saliva. Dehydration had made the hallucinations more fun.
"Attendants, draw me a bath!" Hathor called out, getting to her feet. "I feel rather gross." She left.
I lowered my head back down to the cool floor, and closed my eyes.
* * *
Colorado Springs, 1997
General Jacob Carter sat across from me at the kitchen table. He'd come to stay for the weekend, completely out of the blue, to give a talk at the Academy. We'd never been particularly close. Estranged, actually. He was still the most important person in my life, at least the only one not somewhere in my chain of command, and I thought he'd be a good test case.
There was an Executive Order, and I had to try. Living a lie was wearing thin. "Dad, I'm gay." There, I said it.
The change in his face was immediate. He'd only been mildly interested in whatever I was going to say, but now his expression was cold. He stood up.
"Dad!"
"You're a dedicated officer, Sam. Try and get a grip."
He walked out.
"This wasn't my idea!" I called after him, tears stinging my eyes. "Dad, please don't leave."
* * *
"Please don't leave." The little girl tugged at my hand. I turned and knelt.
"Cassandra, I have to go. I have to go help another world."
She looked up at me with scared black eyes. Her mother's eyes.
How ironic that my first court-martial offense, my first disobeying of a lawful order, came about because of this innocent girl--because of my feminine instincts, and the role I would have played in a traditional society if I hadn't defied it to become a soldier. When forced to choose, I'd gone with my heart. I wonder what Kinsey would say about that?
That I was a disgrace to my country.
Cassandra tugged again. "I have a bad feeling."
"Sweetie, it's my job to help people. Whether or not it's dangerous."
Janet, leaning against her car door in my drive, stepped forward. She usually didn't like to interfere in my goodbyes on the weekends I had the kid, but she could see I was flailing. "Cassandra," she called, "Jack's brought the dog over."
Cassandra leapt for the car.
Janet and Jack, I thought, a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth. I looked toward my house, now empty. Empty enough to fill with secrets. But Janet was walking over.
"Sam?"
I turned back to her with a faint smile.
"Was she any trouble?" Janet asked, placing her hand on my arm. I shivered. Did she have any idea how her closeness made me feel?
"Trouble? Naw." I forced myself to grin. "She was an angel." A pause. "A tiny, carnivorous angel."
Janet laughed. "Glad to hear it." She looked at me with almost absent-minded concern. "Good luck on the mission, okay?"
"Okay."
I watched Janet get into her car and drive away, with Cassie waving at me until they were out of sight. I thought about how she'd been named after the prophet, not by two doting women of science, but by loving parents who had been slaughtered by a wrathful demon before her eyes.
* * *
"Well, this is nice," Jack commented as SG1 stepped from the shimmering Stargate. A crescent of darkly-garbed men waited to greet them.
Jack lifted a hand. "How."
Daniel glanced quickly at his companion, then stepped forward. "Hi, I'm Daniel Jackson. We're honored to meet you."
The apparent leader stepped forward. "We welcome you to Bijou!" He spoke in a tone I could only describe as jolly. "I am Mayor Br'on. This," he gestured to his right, "Is Preacher Farkin..." and on down the crescent.
Daniel smiled warmly. I wonder how he managed that year after year, treachary after treachary. He introduced us, and I nodded as my name was mentioned. The leader looked at me curiously, and the preacher eyed me with disdain.
I was going to ask Daniel what that was all about, but Jack beat me to the question and answer portion of our journey. Daniel had already gone over all of this in a memo, but Jack hadn't read it. Or hadn't understood it. He called himself an aural learner. I called him a lazy bastard.
The leader was leading us to his village for a feast.
"So, Daniel, what's the 411 on the PSX?" Jack inquired.
Daniel blinked, but recovered. "Their culture is similar to the Puritan settlers in early American history, but their technology is more akin to an Industrial Age. It's interesting that lust for production and power hasn't supplanted the rigors of religious code yet, though times are changing. They're polytheistic, but one name kept rising to the top in my research and the previous team's observations--Hathor. I can't tell if that's recent influence, or historical, kind of like how we're versed in Greek mythology even though it's been supplanted as a dominant religion."
"So, Hathor is Aphrodite?"
"More like Bacchus," Daniel corrected.
"Damn," Jack sighed. "Alex Tydings is far hotter."
Daniel took a moment to stare at him.
"Though, she's no Mary Steenburgen," Jack conceded.
I rolled my eyes, and we walked on.
* * *
We feasted. The food was disgusting, but conscious of my blood sugar levels and my irritablility, I forced down some of the safer-looking vegetables. Daniel, as usual, was inhaling everything in sight. We learned that Hathor had been gone for many cycles. We hadn't learned precisely how long a cycle was.
I noticed a dark-haired woman watching me. Her eyes were large and black like Janet's. I could easily get lost in them. I told myself she was just curious about the aliens, or at most, curious about a woman warrior. When I held her gaze for longer than a moment, her eyes dropped to her lap.
The Mayor, also, tossed me uncertain glances when he thought no one was watching. Desert came and he stood up to make a proclimation. I dug my utensil into the soup-like dish. Sour. Only my training to withstand torture prevented me from making a face.
"I have a gift to offer you, my honored guests." The Mayor gestured and four women stood up. A murmur went through the crowd. The dark-haired woman was one of the four, and she was looking directly at me.
"We hope you all will participate in the ritual blessings of Hathor."
"Hathor?" Daniel piped up.
"Rituals?" Jack echoed.
The leader flourished his hands. "My daughters!" The four women smiled pleasantly at us.
Teal'c raised his eyebrow. I began to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
"I guess we're expected to sleep with them. Maybe it won't be so bad," Jack was saying. "But his daughters? Kind of an ick factor there."
"Well," Daniel analyzed. "Maybe it's like Sodom and Gomorrah."
"Sodom and _Gomorrah_?"
"Look, look--Lot offered his daughters to some townspeople, to prevent them from devouring the angels at his home. Here it's just reversed."
"They think we're going to devour them?" Jack scanned the crowd.
Teal'c looked pensive. "People can become violent when their beliefs are threatened. They may not trust our appetites if we refuse an offering."
"They need to see that we're sated by the gesture." Daniel nodded. "That's why we accept most gifts as policy."
"All right," Jack conceded. "If it's policy."
"I think I'm going to be sick," I said.
"It's a ceremonial gesture," Daniel said, his tone soft. "I think it might go a long way in legitimizing homosexuality in this culture." He squinted at me. "I spoke to the Mayor at length during the feast. His eldest daughter," he nodded at the one with Janet's eyes, "Is kind of an outcast. Usually homosexuals, if revealed, are killed at puberty when the priest cuts out their--" He paused, searching his brain for the translation. "Livers. But the Mayor has been able to use his power to keep her alive, and she has the potential to become a symbol of the new age of Hathor."
"I can't."
"Carter," Jack said firmly. "It's just symbolic. You don't have to _do_ anything. Just cut the kid a break."
"You can't order me to bed some alien female," I said, surprising myself at the harshness of my tone. I felt trapped. One acknowledgement of those piercing black eyes and I would expose myself. They'd know the truth about me, and I could never go home.
"I can't," I managed.
"The Mayor is asking for our help. Think of the good you'll do for these people."
"I can't," I said firmly.
The leader looked dismayed. The eldest daughter looked down at her feet.
* * *
"You should have accepted me," the tall, dark-eyed daughter said, slipping into my room. I was stretched out on top of the bed in boxers and a tank top and dog tags, and I squinted at her with annoyance.
"It would have gone a long way into ending the persecution of people with my affliction, and legitimizing Hathor's supreme reign of pleasure."
"I'm sorry," I said, and almost meant it. "I'm not really interested in Hathor's reign."
"Now that the priest's opinion of this affliction has the backing of a superior race, I'm afraid that my father will not be able to protect me."
What could the priests do to cure her? I furrowed my brow. A question I'd been asking myself for years. "I'm sorry," I said again.
"Are there any people on your world like me?" Her tone was more confident than her question. She was sure of the answer, as she leaned toward me, placing her hand on my thigh, her red bangs falling in front of her dark eyes.
"Oh, yeah." I muttered. Her touch was signaling my groin, but I didn't move away.
"If I am to die," she went on, "I desire to experience this evil I am accused of, at least once. Otherwise," she sounded momentarily sad, "It will all be too senseless."
"It will all be senseless anyway," I said, but I began pulling my shirt from the waistband of my boxers. I knew Daniel would be spilling his heart to some young thing, probably crying in her arms about Sha're as usual. Jack and Teal'c would be sharing. Why shouldn't I indulge, too? The girl was right. If I were going to be punished for being gay, I might as well bother to commit the damn act. We were off-world, away from the prying eyes of the military. No one would ever know.
Did you think you were safe?
I yanked my tank top over my head and threw it to the floor, almost pleased at the intake of breath from the raven-eyed peasant. She straightened up to remove her clothes. "Let me," I interrupted, sitting. I brushed the straps of her nightgown off her shoulders, letting the fabric slide from her body into a pool at her lap. I traced her arms, then slid my calloused hands to her breast. She moaned.
"Show me what to do," she whispered, staring at my chest so intently my nipples hardened.
I grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand roughly between my legs, where I was wet. She was startled by the sudden force, and resisted. I was stronger, though, and pushed her fingers under my waistband, guiding them to my throbbing clit. Trapped, she began to stroke me.
She settled into the rhythm of sex, and I fell back onto the pillows, wondering how much of this was need, and how much was power, for both of us.
Later, when she was pinned under my lanky, naked form, and I was looking into her black eyes, riding her struggling body to orgasm, I think I called Janet's name. My bedmate probably thought it was a humans expression of passion.
I used her purposely several times that night. When I was totally sated, I fell asleep with her soft form entangled with mine, and her head pillowed against my breast. There are better things than your career.
When I woke up, she was gone, and the room was filled with the Jaffa of Hathor. I quickly sat up, not giving them the satisfaction of seeing me embarrassed about my situation.
Hathor stepped forward, regal in gold jewelry. "I have heard from my people that you frown on their ways. That you condemn their passions even as you indulge in them yourselves. Yes, I know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as well as your Daniel Jackson does. I helped create it!" Hathor's laughter was cruel. "This woman came here as an alien, and now she wants to play the judge." She smirked. "I'll find the other three soon, Carter. I already know you're the smartest, and here you are in my net. The others will fall quickly enough."
The quote was lost on me, but her tone wasn't, and surrounded and outnumbered, I surrendered.
* * *
Hathor had fled by the time the rest of SG1 rescued me. Apparently, rather than being scared off by our might, she had simply been recalled to a larger conflict with the system lords, and we became less of a priority. Fortuitous, if insulting. I'd said little on the way through the gate, and had gladly collapsed onto a bed in the infirmary, feeling I'd earned the coddling, after days of torture.
As I was restored by an IV drip, and most of my bruises were fading, my doctor decided I was well enough for her brand of psychotherapeutic interrogation. What the airmen named mothering. I'd provided few details of my experience with Hathor, and apparently General Hammond was worried that I'd been compromised.
"I know what's been going on. Miguel Torrent died because he was an NID operative," Janet said, leaning over me as I was lying on the bed. "The secret became too much, and they got to him." Her voice was full of compassion. Tenderness. She was reaching out.
I wouldn't meet her eyes.
"Sam," she said, covering her hand with me. "One day you won't be able to wriggle your way out of it with words, or blows, or time." She looked down at our hands. "You'll succumb. It'll be easier that way. You'll give up and turn like Torrent did. Then you'll end up with a bullet in your brain like he did." Her voice carried the sound of a heart breaking. "That's why it's such a security risk. Because you keep it a secret and they blackmail you. Don't let them."
"I won't," I responded, defiantly. I turned my head to look at her, met her large dark eyes, turned away again.
"Sam," she said softly. "I don't want to face losing you." Janet paused. "I'm asking."
I'll never tell her. All I have is my career.