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ivorygates, who gave me the prompt: Teal'c, "You can't go home again." Four times Teal'c walked away from home, and the many times that he didn't. Includes references to Teal'c's arc throughout the show, and specific references to COTG, Affinity, and Unending. Just over 2,000 words.
I played around with tenses and narrative voice, but it's all Teal'c's POV.
Wherever He Prospers
A man's homeland is wherever he prospers. - Aristophanes, Plutus, 388 BCE
1. Crete, home world of Cronus
Teal'c remembers very little of his father: the deep, comforting resonance of his voice; the soft rumble of laughter, more felt than heard, with his head tucked against Ronac's chest; the strong hands that lifted him on the rare occasions when Cronus allowed his First Prime to visit his family. He recalls nothing at all of the home where he was raised as a small boy, except, perhaps, the sensory memory of a rough blanket, thick and warm and slightly scratchy, that his mother tucked around his sleeping form on chilly nights.
He certainly does not remember the spitting fury of the false god that irrationally blamed his First Prime for failing to achieve victory in a battle that was unwinnable, and he is grateful, sometimes, that he cannot visualize the ugly, muddied mixture of blue and red blood leaking from a symbiote pouch, the agony that twisted the chiseled features as Ronac gasped out his life in unbearable pain.
(Nearly a century later, his prim'ta spitefully makes sure he will vividly recall the scene for the rest of his life.)
It was an act of mercy, his mother once tells him in a tone heavy with contempt, that Cronus allowed them to live. No one would have blinked had she and Teal'c been slaughtered out of hand, a collective punishment to Ronac even in death for his inability to do the impossible. Instead, his mother was brutally whipped and ritually shamed before being allowed to depart through the chappa'ai with nothing but the ragged clothes on her back... and her only child, clutching desperately at her hand.
"A treasure that Cronus never knew he had carelessly let slip through his fingers," she says, her tired eyes brightening at the thought. "But you, my Teal'c, shall prove his error."
In exiling them to enemy territory, to the heart of another Goa'uld's domain, perhaps Cronus expects them to suffer a cruel, violent death. What does a Goa'uld understand of Jaffa honor and integrity? Their refuge is on the outskirts of the town, poor and almost barren, but it is still shelter.
When Teal'c becomes Bra'tac's chal'ti with all the promise that entails, the last lines of bitter sorrow seem to smooth away from his mother's face. Teal'c stands straight and proud and tells himself that he is now, and always, Teal'c of Chulak.
*
2. Chulak
Was it a kindness, Teal'c wondered, that Bra'tac had so carefully opened his eyes to the reality of the false godhood of the Goa'uld? Or was it a cruelly bitter punishment, one that dragged on and on with no promise of surcease?
It was not enough to know and condemn Apophis as a selfish, blinded creature that sought only his own aggrandizement and pleasures. Teal'c was helpless to stop the atrocities that he was forced to commit, day after endless day, in his master's name. His knowledge only served to sour every victory, to poison every triumph. What purpose did all his efforts serve, if he could do nothing to deliver his own people to freedom?
Bra'tac counseled cold and pragmatic patience. The wily old man was too canny to promise that opportunity would actually come, but Teal'c knew that Bra'tac was right to caution him against futile rebellion that would lead to nothing but his own ignoble death. Patience, and caution, and wary watching. That was all they could do, Bra'tac reminded him in those rare moments when they achieved sufficient privacy to speak openly. Watch and hope, and be ready to seize the moment should it ever arise.
But Teal'c was weary of it, of the dragging burden of knowing that every action, especially those that won him praise, was to further the glory of one who deserved less than nothing. Even his affection for Drey'auc and his fierce pride in his child could not soothe the ache of futility.
So when three people in odd garb appeared in the dungeons, bearing technology beyond anything Apophis permitted among his planets, spirits strangely free and unbowed by the endless grind of generations of slavery...
"I can save these people! the older one shouted, his eyes intent and urgent. "Help me! Help me."
"Many have said that," Teal'c growled, and threw caution to the winds. "But you are the first I believe could do it!"
The deaths of fellow Jaffa, those with whom he had laughed and shared anecdotes and rations on late nights, those he had personally trained, struck bone deep. Yet Teal'c willingly fired his staff weapon again and again, grimly determined to burn away the last vestiges of his life here on Chulak with rebellion against Apophis. He permitted himself only a fleeting pang of grief for his wife and son, and the vain hope that they might not be killed in retaliation for his deeds should his hand in the matter be discovered.
It was only when the Tau'ri inexplicably declared, "For this, you can stay at my place," that Teal'c wondered if there might yet be elsewhere he could claim as sanctuary, now that Chulak was no longer his home.
*
3. 4792 Riverside Avenue, Apt. 401
You know that your friends forget - willfully, perhaps - that you once commanded entire armies. You have a deeper, bitter understanding of the need to concentrate on what O'Neill calls "the bigger picture." As First Prime, you never had the luxury of focusing on this person, on that tragedy. While there was always the need to ensure that Apophis was sufficiently distracted by victorious displays of flamboyance and pageantry, your main vision had to be both focused and all-encompassing, ruthless in sacrificing wants and needs to achieve the ultimate goal.
It is this knowledge, this weary burden of long experience, that allows you to accept that General Hammond, despite what he might wish, can never allow you to live off base. The general recognizes that you, too, are all too familiar with the never-ending dance along a laser-thin line, striving to balance demand and necessity and compromise and still attain achievement. He appreciates and values your decades of experience and hard-earned wisdom, and the two of you have spent hours in earnest conversation. You know that he wishes he could arrange your freedom, but you understand why he cannot afford to squander the favors he owns for so small a thing and so great a risk.
O'Neill is different. He accepts the burden of generalship with reluctance, and while he strives to command with an even hand, he remains too close, too personal. You admire his courage in shouldering a responsibility that he does not wish, and you believe that he can do well. But you also think that he is too hampered by friendship and personal feelings to be objective in his decisions. So far, those incidents when his heart overruled his mind have come to a satisfactory conclusion, but there is no guarantee that such good fortune will continue.
Indeed, it seems that his choice to release you from the confines of the SGC might very well be the first such decision to prove disastrous.
You admit that you are glad he did it, despite the unhappy conclusion to this experiment in freedom on Earth. O'Neill promised you, all those years ago, to show you his world, and he has done his best to introduce you to the delights of Tau'ri living. You have enjoyed museums and hockey games, movie theaters and lakeside cabins, elegant restaurants and Krispy Kremes. Offering you a place of your own, trusting that your lack of a symbiote would be enough to serve the needs of security, is another great gift.
Politics and distrust are forcing you to abandon Apartment 401, but while you regret the loss, you do not grieve. Your gaze is always fixed on the ultimate goal of destroying the Goa'uld, and you will readily leave Colorado Springs and return to the Mountain to attain it.
*
4. The Odyssey
It was not truly by choice, but I have never blamed Samantha for the desperate solution she devised to keep us alive. If we were trapped thus, like insects in amber, with death sneering at us from the viewscreen, at least it was in good company.
I admitted to Daniel Jackson, once, that I wished that O'Neill had followed his impulse and joined us on this fateful journey to the Asgard, rather than General Landry. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
"No," he said at last. "Jack would be worse than Cam. He couldn't bear this."
I thought that O'Neill might be stronger than that, but I accepted that while the two of us shared a deep brother warrior's bond, O'Neill's connection with Daniel Jackson went beyond words and expression. Perhaps he was right, and I should be glad that O'Neill was spared the burden of decade after decade of waiting.
We all grieved when General Landry died, although he lived a long, healthy life by human standards. When Samantha wept in my arms and I comforted her in our shared sorrow, I carefully buried deep my relief that it was not O'Neill. It had been hard enough to watch him shrink under the burden of politics in Washington; it would have been evil indeed to see him wither utterly.
It was not all terrible on the Odyssey. There was joy and friendship and laughter, and the luxury of study - something that, as a Jaffa, I had never valued, but I had learned to appreciate and desire for myself in my years on Earth. Colonel Mitchell commented that we had collectively earned the equivalent of twelve or more degrees during our years of research and experimentation, and Vala Mal Doran offered to forge certificates we could display with pride. But it was still long - too long- before Samantha finally managed to discover a method to return to the safety of regular time.
There was a price to be paid. One of us needed to remain cognizant, aware of fifty years of unspooled history.
It was both a difficult and easy choice to make. In practical terms, my longer life span made it obvious that I was the best person for the task. I knew, also, that my long years as chal'ti, Jaffa warrior, and First Prime, long before I joined SG-1, had taught me a clearer view of sacrifice and self-imposed loneliness that humans would find hard to bear. Yet it would be painful to watch so long a history vanish, with only my own memories to sustain them, and share them with none other. Fifty years had changed all of us, including myself; would I find it impossible to maintain my friendships with the people for whom so many experiences no longer existed?
In the end, it did not matter. I had spent more time on the Odyssey than in any other home except Chulak, but I willingly left it behind for the sake of us all. I chose to move forward, even if it meant also turning back.
*
5. SG-1
Teal'c had become such an integral part of the SGC that many overlooked the reality that his primary purpose, despite his unwavering support for Earth's interests, had always been the freedom of his people. He chose to remain with SG-1 to best serve that goal, but when opportunity arose to benefit the Jaffa - whether it was a daring experiment to subvert their own prim'ta, a charismatic leader who seemed to unite the disparate Jaffa into a solid whole, or the first young promising shoots of Jaffa self-governance - Teal'c did not hesitate to show where his priorities truly were.
And yet... and yet...
Over and over again, Teal'c came back to Earth. Not so much to the SGC, but to his friends. Because his friends were trapped by Hathor, or his hopes proved false and he knew his friends would never abandon him, or Daniel Jackson lay unconscious due to a mysterious Goa'uld device abused by the woman who gradually became a friend.
Bra'tac needed only to speak for Teal'c to rush to his side, and Ry'ac and Kar'yn were his pride and joy. But in the end, Teal'c knew, his real meaning of home was SG-1. And he would never truly leave that behind.
End note: Yes, I invented Cronus' home world and the address for Teal'c's apartment in Colorado Springs. The apartment number is canon, but if there's some canonical reference to the address, please let me know.
ivorygates, who gave me the prompt: Teal'c, "You can't go home again." Four times Teal'c walked away from home, and the many times that he didn't. Includes references to Teal'c's arc throughout the show, and specific references to COTG, Affinity, and Unending. Just over 2,000 words.I played around with tenses and narrative voice, but it's all Teal'c's POV.
Wherever He Prospers
A man's homeland is wherever he prospers. - Aristophanes, Plutus, 388 BCE
1. Crete, home world of Cronus
Teal'c remembers very little of his father: the deep, comforting resonance of his voice; the soft rumble of laughter, more felt than heard, with his head tucked against Ronac's chest; the strong hands that lifted him on the rare occasions when Cronus allowed his First Prime to visit his family. He recalls nothing at all of the home where he was raised as a small boy, except, perhaps, the sensory memory of a rough blanket, thick and warm and slightly scratchy, that his mother tucked around his sleeping form on chilly nights.
He certainly does not remember the spitting fury of the false god that irrationally blamed his First Prime for failing to achieve victory in a battle that was unwinnable, and he is grateful, sometimes, that he cannot visualize the ugly, muddied mixture of blue and red blood leaking from a symbiote pouch, the agony that twisted the chiseled features as Ronac gasped out his life in unbearable pain.
(Nearly a century later, his prim'ta spitefully makes sure he will vividly recall the scene for the rest of his life.)
It was an act of mercy, his mother once tells him in a tone heavy with contempt, that Cronus allowed them to live. No one would have blinked had she and Teal'c been slaughtered out of hand, a collective punishment to Ronac even in death for his inability to do the impossible. Instead, his mother was brutally whipped and ritually shamed before being allowed to depart through the chappa'ai with nothing but the ragged clothes on her back... and her only child, clutching desperately at her hand.
"A treasure that Cronus never knew he had carelessly let slip through his fingers," she says, her tired eyes brightening at the thought. "But you, my Teal'c, shall prove his error."
In exiling them to enemy territory, to the heart of another Goa'uld's domain, perhaps Cronus expects them to suffer a cruel, violent death. What does a Goa'uld understand of Jaffa honor and integrity? Their refuge is on the outskirts of the town, poor and almost barren, but it is still shelter.
When Teal'c becomes Bra'tac's chal'ti with all the promise that entails, the last lines of bitter sorrow seem to smooth away from his mother's face. Teal'c stands straight and proud and tells himself that he is now, and always, Teal'c of Chulak.
*
2. Chulak
Was it a kindness, Teal'c wondered, that Bra'tac had so carefully opened his eyes to the reality of the false godhood of the Goa'uld? Or was it a cruelly bitter punishment, one that dragged on and on with no promise of surcease?
It was not enough to know and condemn Apophis as a selfish, blinded creature that sought only his own aggrandizement and pleasures. Teal'c was helpless to stop the atrocities that he was forced to commit, day after endless day, in his master's name. His knowledge only served to sour every victory, to poison every triumph. What purpose did all his efforts serve, if he could do nothing to deliver his own people to freedom?
Bra'tac counseled cold and pragmatic patience. The wily old man was too canny to promise that opportunity would actually come, but Teal'c knew that Bra'tac was right to caution him against futile rebellion that would lead to nothing but his own ignoble death. Patience, and caution, and wary watching. That was all they could do, Bra'tac reminded him in those rare moments when they achieved sufficient privacy to speak openly. Watch and hope, and be ready to seize the moment should it ever arise.
But Teal'c was weary of it, of the dragging burden of knowing that every action, especially those that won him praise, was to further the glory of one who deserved less than nothing. Even his affection for Drey'auc and his fierce pride in his child could not soothe the ache of futility.
So when three people in odd garb appeared in the dungeons, bearing technology beyond anything Apophis permitted among his planets, spirits strangely free and unbowed by the endless grind of generations of slavery...
"I can save these people! the older one shouted, his eyes intent and urgent. "Help me! Help me."
"Many have said that," Teal'c growled, and threw caution to the winds. "But you are the first I believe could do it!"
The deaths of fellow Jaffa, those with whom he had laughed and shared anecdotes and rations on late nights, those he had personally trained, struck bone deep. Yet Teal'c willingly fired his staff weapon again and again, grimly determined to burn away the last vestiges of his life here on Chulak with rebellion against Apophis. He permitted himself only a fleeting pang of grief for his wife and son, and the vain hope that they might not be killed in retaliation for his deeds should his hand in the matter be discovered.
It was only when the Tau'ri inexplicably declared, "For this, you can stay at my place," that Teal'c wondered if there might yet be elsewhere he could claim as sanctuary, now that Chulak was no longer his home.
*
3. 4792 Riverside Avenue, Apt. 401
You know that your friends forget - willfully, perhaps - that you once commanded entire armies. You have a deeper, bitter understanding of the need to concentrate on what O'Neill calls "the bigger picture." As First Prime, you never had the luxury of focusing on this person, on that tragedy. While there was always the need to ensure that Apophis was sufficiently distracted by victorious displays of flamboyance and pageantry, your main vision had to be both focused and all-encompassing, ruthless in sacrificing wants and needs to achieve the ultimate goal.
It is this knowledge, this weary burden of long experience, that allows you to accept that General Hammond, despite what he might wish, can never allow you to live off base. The general recognizes that you, too, are all too familiar with the never-ending dance along a laser-thin line, striving to balance demand and necessity and compromise and still attain achievement. He appreciates and values your decades of experience and hard-earned wisdom, and the two of you have spent hours in earnest conversation. You know that he wishes he could arrange your freedom, but you understand why he cannot afford to squander the favors he owns for so small a thing and so great a risk.
O'Neill is different. He accepts the burden of generalship with reluctance, and while he strives to command with an even hand, he remains too close, too personal. You admire his courage in shouldering a responsibility that he does not wish, and you believe that he can do well. But you also think that he is too hampered by friendship and personal feelings to be objective in his decisions. So far, those incidents when his heart overruled his mind have come to a satisfactory conclusion, but there is no guarantee that such good fortune will continue.
Indeed, it seems that his choice to release you from the confines of the SGC might very well be the first such decision to prove disastrous.
You admit that you are glad he did it, despite the unhappy conclusion to this experiment in freedom on Earth. O'Neill promised you, all those years ago, to show you his world, and he has done his best to introduce you to the delights of Tau'ri living. You have enjoyed museums and hockey games, movie theaters and lakeside cabins, elegant restaurants and Krispy Kremes. Offering you a place of your own, trusting that your lack of a symbiote would be enough to serve the needs of security, is another great gift.
Politics and distrust are forcing you to abandon Apartment 401, but while you regret the loss, you do not grieve. Your gaze is always fixed on the ultimate goal of destroying the Goa'uld, and you will readily leave Colorado Springs and return to the Mountain to attain it.
*
4. The Odyssey
It was not truly by choice, but I have never blamed Samantha for the desperate solution she devised to keep us alive. If we were trapped thus, like insects in amber, with death sneering at us from the viewscreen, at least it was in good company.
I admitted to Daniel Jackson, once, that I wished that O'Neill had followed his impulse and joined us on this fateful journey to the Asgard, rather than General Landry. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
"No," he said at last. "Jack would be worse than Cam. He couldn't bear this."
I thought that O'Neill might be stronger than that, but I accepted that while the two of us shared a deep brother warrior's bond, O'Neill's connection with Daniel Jackson went beyond words and expression. Perhaps he was right, and I should be glad that O'Neill was spared the burden of decade after decade of waiting.
We all grieved when General Landry died, although he lived a long, healthy life by human standards. When Samantha wept in my arms and I comforted her in our shared sorrow, I carefully buried deep my relief that it was not O'Neill. It had been hard enough to watch him shrink under the burden of politics in Washington; it would have been evil indeed to see him wither utterly.
It was not all terrible on the Odyssey. There was joy and friendship and laughter, and the luxury of study - something that, as a Jaffa, I had never valued, but I had learned to appreciate and desire for myself in my years on Earth. Colonel Mitchell commented that we had collectively earned the equivalent of twelve or more degrees during our years of research and experimentation, and Vala Mal Doran offered to forge certificates we could display with pride. But it was still long - too long- before Samantha finally managed to discover a method to return to the safety of regular time.
There was a price to be paid. One of us needed to remain cognizant, aware of fifty years of unspooled history.
It was both a difficult and easy choice to make. In practical terms, my longer life span made it obvious that I was the best person for the task. I knew, also, that my long years as chal'ti, Jaffa warrior, and First Prime, long before I joined SG-1, had taught me a clearer view of sacrifice and self-imposed loneliness that humans would find hard to bear. Yet it would be painful to watch so long a history vanish, with only my own memories to sustain them, and share them with none other. Fifty years had changed all of us, including myself; would I find it impossible to maintain my friendships with the people for whom so many experiences no longer existed?
In the end, it did not matter. I had spent more time on the Odyssey than in any other home except Chulak, but I willingly left it behind for the sake of us all. I chose to move forward, even if it meant also turning back.
*
5. SG-1
Teal'c had become such an integral part of the SGC that many overlooked the reality that his primary purpose, despite his unwavering support for Earth's interests, had always been the freedom of his people. He chose to remain with SG-1 to best serve that goal, but when opportunity arose to benefit the Jaffa - whether it was a daring experiment to subvert their own prim'ta, a charismatic leader who seemed to unite the disparate Jaffa into a solid whole, or the first young promising shoots of Jaffa self-governance - Teal'c did not hesitate to show where his priorities truly were.
And yet... and yet...
Over and over again, Teal'c came back to Earth. Not so much to the SGC, but to his friends. Because his friends were trapped by Hathor, or his hopes proved false and he knew his friends would never abandon him, or Daniel Jackson lay unconscious due to a mysterious Goa'uld device abused by the woman who gradually became a friend.
Bra'tac needed only to speak for Teal'c to rush to his side, and Ry'ac and Kar'yn were his pride and joy. But in the end, Teal'c knew, his real meaning of home was SG-1. And he would never truly leave that behind.
End note: Yes, I invented Cronus' home world and the address for Teal'c's apartment in Colorado Springs. The apartment number is canon, but if there's some canonical reference to the address, please let me know.
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