Entry tags:

fic: stargate sg-1

Fic: 'Scar Tissue' (Stargate SG-1, gen, R, 1/1)
Title: Scar Tissue
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Sarah Gardner (Osiris)
Word Count: 1536
Rating: R (for dark themes)
Spoilers: 4x13, 'The Curse'; 7x15, 'Chimera'
Warnings: (Non-graphic) rape mentions.
Disclaimer: No one mentioned belongs to me.
Summary: Whatever happened to Sarah Gardner?

---

Scar Tissue

Not all who wander are lost, the saying goes. The anthem of vagrants everywhere.

Sarah wanders, in every sense of the word, and she remains lost, in every sense of the word.

Some nights, when the layer of sweat on her brow is thicker than the skin it rests on, she hopes fervently that she is never, ever found.

---

For three years, she never cried.

For three months, she never stopped.

---

Sarah is in Texas somewhere, an hour outside of Austin, if the locals are to be believed. Humidity is rarely kind to the curly-haired, and the sun is no friend to the redheads of the world. She is red and raw, a sweaty, frizzy mess.

She has a laundry list of places she can never visit. Oxford. London. Chicago. Prague. Cairo. Colorado.

Sarah travels as quietly and as under the radar as possible. It doesn't much matter, she knows she will always be tracked, but it gives her a fleeting sense of independence and accomplishment. This aimless sojourn is hers alone.

She's making her way to Mexico. She thinks she still remembers enough conversational Spanish to get by, but it's hardly of consequence, since she doesn't particularly plan on talking to anyone.

In Austin, she tries to rent a car. A convertible, if possible. She craves open air. The woman behind the counter is unhelpful, insist there's nothing like that available currently, and would Sarah like blah, blah, blah. She doesn't recognize that this isn't a want, it's a need. Sarah snaps, and the voice that comes from within her isn't her own. It's cruel, cold, and vicious, and as the attendant's eyes widen, Sarah thinks Oh God, he's back.

She does not rent a car. Instead, she goes down the street and pays for a motel room in cash. She dry heaves in the bathroom for twenty minutes. She palms the back of her neck. The sarcophagus has since erased her scar, but she can still feel where it was, a phantom limb pain that won't go away.

Sarah sits on the taut bedspread with the phone pulled into her lap.

After three hours, she calls Daniel.

---

Daniel does not come to Austin. Instead, Sarah is collected by some airmen who smile at her uncertainly, uncertain why they're being involved and not sure what to make of her.

Daniel is waiting at the airport, drives her back to Colorado Springs. He chatters aimlessly, trying to fill the void with talk about whatever project he's working on now. Usually six at any given time. She rolls down the window. They're barreling down the highway, and the wind makes her hair fly all over the front seat. Daniel doesn't say a word.

---

In her experience, Daniel has only ever been either cheerfully distracted or disturbingly focused. It is the latter trait she sees as he escorts her around Stargate Command.

General Hammond is waiting for them in the briefing room, flanked on one side by a woman Sarah does not recognize. "Dr. Jackson, Miss Gardner, please have a seat," Hammond says. It's a request, not an order, not that there's much choice, but she appreciates it all the same. She sits. The chair is comfortable and allows her room to slouch. Her spine remains rigid for a moment, used to the hard back of a command throne in a pel'tac.

She uses the word too easily, does not need translation. Sarah sinks into the chair in defiance.

"This is Aldera," Daniel introduces the woman.

Aldera has blue eyes, icy in both color and the way they focus on Daniel, as if he's made a grievous error. She turns to Sarah with something resembling a smile. "I am Mihali," she corrects. "My symbiote is Aldera."

The distinction is clear. And Sarah relaxes.

---

They all come to see her off. "Standard operating procedure," says Colonel O'Neill, shifting his gun to one hip and watching that instead of her. She knows they're really there to make sure she doesn't run.

She has nowhere else to go.

This was Mihali's world, before she joined the Tok'ra. She looks out of place amongst the people she used to call family and friends. It is awkward to be amongst them even for short periods of time. It is no longer her world.

A short woman with a plump brown bun embraces Sarah. It's the first time she's been touched since she left Stargate Command. Sarah stiffens at the unfamiliarity of it. She does not relax, and the woman lets go.

"I'll come check up on you," Daniel promises, as SG-1 heads for the Stargate after dinner.

He's lying, but as usual, he doesn't realize it.

---

After a month, Sarah starts to relax. It's a planet full of wide, open spaces, flower-dotted fields, and sometimes she just lies down in the grass and stares at the sky. She wonders if staring at the sun will damage her eyesight, or if that's only true for looking at the sun from Earth.

It doesn't matter anymore. She's not going back.

She sleeps well for the first time in almost a year.

---

After two months, she's grown accustomed to the bitter tea everyone drinks. It should make her think of boarding school, but doesn't.

She's sort of made a friend, a chatty woman named Alta who bakes delicious bread and doesn't mind that Sarah rarely speaks. Sarah brews the tea while Alta kneads the dough and tells gossip about people Sarah doesn't know.

One morning, Alta tells her, "Lindes has his eye on you." Lindes is a kassa farmer, well to do, pleasant enough to look at, and nice by all accounts. He smiles at her one afternoon in the town square, and Sarah's blood runs cold.

---

He used to touch her. The Goa'uld were asexual by biological design only, and Osiris had only known male hosts before. He violated her with her own cold fingers, took on various Jaffa lovers, all in the name of scientific curiosity and his attempts to learn the subtleties of female anatomy.

She itches, deep under her skin where she can't reach. She empties the contents of her stomach, but none are the foreign body she's trying to expel.

---

Sarah lies on the floor for four days. She's malnourished, cold, and shaking. She wants to die, but honestly doesn't know if it will help.

She wakes up to a hand on her shoulder and recoils. "You're safe," a voice promises melodiously, and she realizes it's Mihali.

"I'm a monster," she chokes out.

It is not Mihali who speaks this time, but Aldera. "It is not your fault. You are a victim, and you are luckier than most. You were broken free before you lost your soul. It is not too late. You can be made whole again."

She's heard it before. Daniel, the psychiatrist at Stargate Command, the doctors who aided her recovery, they have all told her this. She has no reason to believe the shuddery, echoing voice of another of them. But she has memory enough to know that Osiris hated the Tok'ra. This is more than enough.

She starts to believe it might be true. That she might someday be saved.

---

Daniel comes to the planet sometime after the six month mark. She measures the time by seasons; what passes as spring has now faded into a hot, muggy summer. She helps Alta harvest wheat and uses a cloth to keep her hair back. Manual labor leaves her too tired for anything but an utterly dreamless sleep. In the evenings, she's started writing down all of Alta's stories. It's only after she's filled up every scrap of parchment in her small house with notes that she remembers this is what she used to do, this is who she used to be.

She doesn't tell Daniel any of this. He comes alone, in an army jacket, flashing her a cautious smile. "I'm sorry it took so long. Things got a little busy."

She's heard the excuse before too many times before. She used to resent him for it, but now it seems so unimportant. She finishes knotting the cord around the bale she's bundled and wipes the back of her hand across her damp forehead.

"You look good," he says.

Her hair is a little lighter and a lot shorter. She's rounded out some, built muscle in her arms and thighs. She is starting to look like a different woman. She is starting to feel like a different woman.

"Are you okay?" he asks. "Do they treat you well?"

They do. She's been accepted, more or less, and they find her recalcitrance to be little more than a quirk. Lindes continues to stare and smile, but Alta keeps him at bay. Sarah sleeps well at night.

"It's better now."

He stares at her. It's painfully obvious he doesn't know what to say. But Sarah no longer minds.

---

The memories come fewer and farther between now. The darkness of them does not alter, and she always ends up horrified. The horror, she thinks, is a good sign. It reassures her of her humanity, reminds her it wasn't stripped from her completely.

She finds bits of herself, day after day.