Scenes from a Blending
by AstroGirl
He doesn't know exactly what to expect, but part of him can't help imagining it as an invasion, as something slimy and alien crawling into his body and violating his mind. That's the product of too many movies, he knows, but it's still a hard thought to shake off. At least this Selmak, from what little he's seen of her, seems like a decent enough person. Or alien. Not something that's likely to come bursting out of his chest, or take him over and send him on a killing rampage, anyway. He hopes.
He tries to put that thought out of his mind and concentrate on bracing himself for the one thing he is fairly sure he ought to be expecting: a sense of loss. Or diminishment. Maybe that's a better word. If he understands any of this crazy stuff correctly, he's going to be giving part of himself to this creature, body and soul. It scares him, far more than he's willing to let Sam or anyone else see, but whatever it's like, it has to be preferable to dying of cancer. And it's a sacrifice that he'll be making for his country -- hell, for his planet. When he thinks of it like that, it's a decision he's already made, a long time ago. Although he's pretty sure this ought to qualify as service above and beyond. Either that, or the biggest mistake he's ever made in his life.
He just hopes that if, afterward, he's something less than he used to be, Sam doesn't blame herself.
It isn't anything like that at all, he realizes as soon as he wakes up. As soon as he and Selmak wake up.
There isn't less of him now. There's more. So much more that it makes his brain feel swollen and tight, like in long-ago student days when he'd stay up all night cramming before a test, only a hundred times worse, and with an industrial-strength hangover headache pounding away on top of it. But he knows it's okay, knows that all of this is normal and should fade away soon. He remembers going through it all before. Sort of. From a different point of view. When he stops to think about that for a second, it's strange. Really, really strange. But it feels right.
In fact, headache aside, he feels pretty damned good. He's breathing easily, for the first time in far too long, and the pain and the weakness that have been fighting him and winning for months are gone as if they never existed. He feels like himself again. What a thought. Considering the circumstances, what a thought.
The person here with him feels it, too, the relief of being whole and healthy and no longer about to die. The fact that he's aware of that doesn't feel as weird to him as it ought to, either. Sensing Selmak's feelings seems as natural as being aware of his own; they're simply there. As is Selmak. He's expected the alien to feel like something intrusive and foreign stuck inside him like the IVs and tubes he suffered so recently in the hospital, only much further in, shoved right into the part he thinks of as himself. But there are only thoughts and feelings that might as well be his, they sit so comfortably in his brain, and a continuing sense of presence, like that of a friend standing just over his shoulder.
It would seem polite to ask you how you are, says Selmak, with something that feels a lot like a smile, but as you're becoming aware, I don't really need to.
Selmak. He thinks the name, not in any special way, but he knows that Selmak hears it, simply because he wants her to. I feel... He feels the headache, and the blissful relief from other kinds of pain. He feels great sorrow at the loss of someone who has been the other half of himself for decades, and a hopeful, welcoming feeling at the start of a new partnership. He feels strangeness and familiarity, concern for his comrades among the Tok'ra, relief that his daughter will not have to watch him die. How much of that is you? he wonders at Selmak, and how much is me?
About half of each, Selmak says. It's going to be more or less like that from now on.
He thinks about that for a moment, carefully considering it and all the other things Selmak is asking him without words, about whether this arrangement is going to work for him.
Okay, he says at last. I guess that makes us partners. And warmth floods through them, bouncing back and forth from one to the other, amplifying itself until it fills them both.
They're quiet for a moment, together, until a sound from somewhere finally reminds them that the outside world exists.
We need to open our eyes, one of them thinks. He's not sure which, but it doesn't really matter. He opens his eyes, and they both look out together.
When the explosions and the evacuating are all over and the headache has finally eased, Selmak expresses a gentle sense of amusement at his surprise at being free of arthritis after so easily accepting being free of cancer.
He retaliates by teasing her about her inability to help him re-grow his hair. It becomes their first running joke.
They're compatible enough, mercifully, that it's quite a while before they have their first real argument. But when it comes, it's a doozy.
Selmak slams his fist against a table, Jacob takes it back from him and slams it down again, and within moments, surreally, they're shouting at each other from a single mouth. Arguing with Selmak is far too much like arguing with himself, though, and Jacob knows what a stubborn bastard he can be. Besides, his usual tactics of closing down or stomping out of a room when he's angry don't exactly work with Selmak. Eventually, he gives in and reconciles himself to reconciling with Mark, even if he never explicitly agrees to do more than consider the idea.
They continue arguing for a while, though, over which one of them it was who bruised them in the fist-slamming. I don't know which one of us did it, Selmak finally says, but I know which one of us is going to heal it, so shut the hell up! Oddly, this serves as a sort of peace treaty between them.
During the visit to Mark, Selmak keeps a low profile. He isn't going to speak out loud, of course -- Jacob has no desire to explain to his son about the alien in his head, even if Mark had the security clearance to know -- but he's mostly quiet inside, too, giving Jacob the closest thing he can get to time alone with his family. Which is decent of him, but even if Selmak doesn't actually say "I told you so" when things turn out well, Jacob can still feel the bastard thinking it. On the other hand, he can also feel him thinking about how beautiful Jacob's grandchildren are so, on balance, he decides to forgive and forget.
Somewhere along the line, Jacob suddenly realizes that he's been thinking of Selmak as "he" for quite some time. When he raises the point, the symbiote gives the mental equivalent of a shrug, clearly not much bothered by the issue, and Jacob decides to carry on. After all, if I go around talking about there being a girl somewhere inside me, he says, I'm afraid people might get the wrong idea.
Selmak thinks this is hysterically funny, and for a while it replaces the running joke about the hair.
The second time he visits, Mark says, "I have to admit, Dad, I wasn't all that sure about letting you come last time. But, you know, you've really changed. You're... I don't know. You're easier to be with."
I'm not sure exactly how to take that, he says to Selmak, expecting his partner to deflect his unease with a quip about being a good influence on him.
But there's no trace of humor in Selmak's reply. Be glad, he says. If it helps you keep your family, just be glad. There are lifetimes of memory behind the words, two long millennia of love and losses and regrets. Jacob feels tears prickling in his eyes, and isn't at all sure whose they are. But he does know that it's he who puts his arms around his son.
He's never been one to dwell too much on the past, but it's impossible, after that, not to keep coming back to thoughts of Mark as a baby, of holding the tiny child in his arms and making all those new-dad promises that even then he'd known he might not be able to keep. But there's an odd quality to the memory. All the emotions are there, all the colors and the sounds, but it feels as if it's something that happened more than a lifetime ago, to someone not quite him. Most of his memories, he realizes with a sense of vague surprise, are like that now. Remembering his own life is not much different from remembering Selmak's.
He thinks that maybe he's finally found the thing he's lost in the blending, but Selmak recalls his very first host feeling the same thing, remembers her talking to an unblended friend and being told, "Don't be silly, that's normal for anyone who's been through an important change." Jacob considers this, thinking back on what it was like to remember his childhood as an adult, what it was like not so long ago to remember his life before the Air Force, and decides that it's probably right.
He's a little surprised by how quickly he adjusts to life among the Tok'ra. He's always considered himself a reasonably adaptable person; with a military career, it's practically a requirement. He's never had a problem moving from base to base, or living in the middle of a foreign culture. Hell, he even managed to get used to life in Washington. But he would have thought being stationed among actual aliens would seem, well, a lot more alien.
Selmak helps, of course. It's a lot easier to deal with people when you feel you've known them for years before you've even met them, and Selmak makes sure he never gets confused about what to do with the alien silverware. But it isn't only that. The truth is, he feels that he belongs here. What these people are doing, the way they're doing it... It's right. And there's nothing like a common cause, or a common enemy, to foster a sense of camaraderie. Not that some of these folks don't drive him absolutely crazy sometimes, but he figures people are probably like that all over the universe. He can deal with that.
But even though they've felt from the beginning like his people, he still isn't at all sure just when he started thinking of himself as Tok'ra first and Tau'ri second. Come to that, he isn't sure when he started thinking of himself as "Tau'ri" at all. He supposes the fact that he uses the word in his own mind now, so comfortably and interchangeably with labels like "American" and "human," means something, although he's not entirely sure what.
He hasn't stopped being an American, of course. He knows, as he always has, where his loyalties lie, and he's only added to them, not replaced them. As for being human... Well, he's a little less sure about that, maybe, but he's pretty confident he still qualifies in the ways that really matter.
He never pursues the question of terminology long enough, though, to realize that he's begun referring to the people of Earth as "you" instead of "we."
The very best thing about this job, he decides early on, is the technology. Admittedly, some of it scares the crap out of him. The realization that there are weapons out here in the universe that make hydrogen bombs look like Fourth-of-July sparklers is sobering, to say the least. But the spaceships... Oh, the spaceships!
The first time he flies one is probably the most amazing experience of his life. Well, all right, the second most amazing. It's kind of hard to beat the experience of waking up with a symbiote in your head. Although at least this experience doesn't involve a headache, just a feeling of exhilaration and wonder. Because, holy Hannah, he's flying an actual spaceshipAnd yet his hands, even when he's controlling them, know exactly what to do.
You're a natural, says Selmak, with what feels like an almost-paternal pride.
That's not me, he says. You're the natural. I'm just cribbing off your notes. Yes, but you're actually faster than me. Look.
Well, I'll be. Looks like I am useful for something, after all! The grin on his face is Selmak's, but it might just as well be his own.
Don't be so modest, Jake. You know I'd be nowhere without you. Selmak chuckles and passes control of his body back to him.
He puts the ship into a barrel roll and lets out an exuberant whoop. Not terribly dignified, but what the hell. There isn't anybody but Selmak here to see.
As pleased as he is to be accepted -- well, mostly accepted -- by the Tok'ra, he's still not at all sure about that whole "wisest among us" thing. That's pretty much OK, though, because neither is Selmak. But it's more useful for both of us, he tells Jacob with the equivalent of a sly smile, to let them continue thinking it until they discover otherwise.
You manipulative bastard, you,
Jacob replies, affectionately. That kind of thinking is probably what got you the reputation in the first place.For a while afterward, he nicknames Selmak "Machiavelli." Selmak retaliates with ever-more-ridiculous nicknames for him until he stops.Just before he went through the Stargate that very first time, one of the technicians at SGC -- he never did catch the man's name -- told him, in rather embarrassingly hushed tones, that he admired Jacob's courage, his willingness to agree to this new partnership without knowing exactly what it would entail. He accepted the sentiment with good grace, or at least made a reasonable attempt at it, but he wondered then, and still wonders now, if there was anything truly courageous in the decision at all, if the things he told himself about serving his country weren't simply justifications, rationalizations to cover up a desperate, straw-clutching fear of death. It's an unpleasant thought, one that sometimes troubles him during dark hours when he ought to be asleep. He's known himself to be some less-than-ideal things in his life, but the thought of himself as a coward is somehow more disturbing than any of them.
Oddly enough, it helps when he realizes at last that it's not entirely his own fears and doubts on the subject that keep his eyes open and his body unable to rest, but Selmak's, too.Did I coerce him into it? comes a thought that isn't his, on what must surely be the bad night to end all bad nights. Was I really as indispensable as I wanted to think, or am I as afraid to die as he worries that he is?He sends Selmak a warm acknowledging feeling, but the symbiote's mental touch shrinks away from him, apologetic and embarrassed. Sorry. You weren't supposed to hear that.
Why not? he responds. Misery
loves company, right? And you know what? Turns out it's a lot easier to
see how dumb that kind of thinking is when it's somebody else doing it.
Because coming from you... it sounds really dumb.
Selmak laughs, silently, and so does he. He feels a lot better, all of a sudden.
Do you ever regret it, though? Selmak asks after a moment. Even just a little?"No," he says, out loud, his voice startlingly loud in the quiet of his sleeping chamber. No, I honestly don't. I might not have had a clue what I was getting into, but I wouldn't trade it. Cancer or no cancer.
He's almost surprised to realize how certain he is of that answer. Some of the memories he's gained from Selmak are pretty terrible, after all, things that do their share to keep him awake on nights like this. But they're no worse than the things he sometimes finds inside his own mind, and it isn't like he has to bear them alone. A few sleepless nights, when he stops to think about it, seem small enough payment for all the things he's gained. Not just his life and his health, but a friend, a buddy who'll quite literally watch Jacob's back as if it were his own. Not to mention his own personal voice of reason. And, OK, that last can get annoying, but the truth is Selmak is wise, probably more so than he realizes. A guy could do a heck of a lot worse for a voice inside his head.
Besides, he likes having a real purpose again. When fate finally catches up with him, he fully expects to die in the pursuit of a cause worth fighting for, not in a hospital bed, ravaged by some random, pointless disease. Maybe it's morbid of him, but that thought makes him genuinely happy.
Yeah, it's a pretty good life, really. A pretty good pair of lives.
He reaches across his body and squeezes his right hand in his left, a warm and loving clasp. It's a stupid-looking thing to do, probably, but he knows Selmak will feel it and understand.
A moment later, Selmak gently moves into control, smiles, and reverses the gesture, left hand in right. There is nothing more that needs to be said, or thought. Slowly, they drift together into sleep.
In the morning, they wake up and go back to work.