Dr. Rookwood and the Kiss, part 8

part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
part seven

"So, now that you've heard it, what will you do this time?" He'd thought it couldn't have gotten worse from there, but Ercinee's decidedly wakeful voice proved him wrong yet again.

This time. Oh... He felt sick. What the Heck was this? After the moment of stomach-plummeting passed, warmth suffused his limbs as adrenaline pumped into them. She was awake. Crap crap damn, she was awake. He stood immediately and surveyed the room for her.

She hadn't moved.

"What is this," he murmured, his voice uncharacteristically gravelly. "What have you done?"

"I've done a lot of things," she answered smoothly, moving slow inches, as if testing the extent of her stiffness. "To what things, specifically, do you refer?"

Josiah frowned mightily. "You know what things. I've never met you before."

"Actually," she corrected, "we have met...many times," she sighed and smiled as if reliving fond memories, "but you, the you who you are now, would not remember them. The 'you' you are now is new...and I'm still searching..."

The linguist was piecing the situation together as quickly as he could, but he still couldn't come up with anything that made sense. Was he a clone of a previous Josiah? He'd heard of that kind of thing happening. Or... maybe she'd gotten him before and wiped his memory of it, so that he was something of a tabula rasa for her to try again. The SGC offered a colourful array of possibilities, he thought uncharitably.

"Searching for what," he tried.

"Searching for you, of course. I told you, Josiah. You. I have to save you, before something Bad happens. I just want back... what we shared once..."

Ercinee reached her hand above to get purchase on the vanity, and began to pull herself up.

Josiah shook his head in mute denial. Crazy. So, woefully crazy. He found his voice when she started groping for a handhold. "We've never met," he said again, softly. "We've never shared anything together, Ercinee. I'm sorry. I'm not who you're looking for..."

"WE HAVE MET!" she shouted suddenly and then swallowed and went on more calmly, "Yes... we have... and you were kind... and I was crazy and alone. It wasn't you... it was the other you. The first one. The one who is no longer... here. The one whose voice I will never have back. The other dimensions made you just a little different, but somewhere, Josiah, there is a you who is like he was... that is the one I'm looking for. He's the one I need," Her speech was broken up by
exertion as she managed, slowly, to get to her feet. She wasn't entirely well; she needed a little more time, but she was uncomfortable that Josiah had her memory locket.

Di...mensions? Other dimensions? She was going around to other dimensions and... kidnapping him from them? Oh... wow. This was bad. So much worse than he'd thought it was. Her comments made so much more sense now. And she'd said he was different from the others. The others who were really just him, from another plane where circumstances had shifted, just a bit. Fleetingly, he wondered whether there was one wherein his mother hadn't died, but the more immediate concern was: if he didn't fit the bill, what was she going to do with him? If he DID, what would she do? How long had she been doing this for?

Oh man, just how old WAS that MRE she gave him?

"What happened to that first one?" he murmured, eyeing her progress.

She was on her own two feet now, and moving towards him. "He told me he would be right back, that he would check to see if it was all clear... but it wasn't all clear. It wasn't. So they took him away and I hid because I was helpless at that time... they took him away, hurt him for the sake of hurting him, which they like to do, and he gave up and died. It's very important to me that it doesn't happen again," she reached out her hand, "return my locket."

Josiah watched her for a moment. The locket, at the moment, was the only thing he had against her. There were lots of things you could do with hostages. Smash them, dangle them over stuff, keep them away from the people who cared about them.

In his pocket were all of the Josiahs who'd been successes. Not quite perfect enough for her, but successes. Josiahs who loved her, who thanked her for "saving" them. Josiahs who broke under her "conditioning." He banished any lingering thoughts about her ability to actually change him. He'd already been changed by her, in who knew how many different dimensions.

So the Goa'uld took her little boyfriend. He refused to think of this other Josiah as himself. Took him then, tortured him. That explained why she wanted to make all Josiahs everywhere immune to pain. Crap. He was feeling sorry for her. Crap!

"I'll give it to you if you let me go," he tried without much hope of success.

Ercinee raised an eyebrow in something akin to surprise. She still looked like hell, but some color was returning to her cheeks. It did not bode well. "Oh? Really?" she asked, somewhat amused, and then looked around the room in an obvious restatement of the bleak facts: as long as he was here, the locket would not be getting very far. "Josiah, I'm being patient. Without the drug, you will think too much. This won't make sense," she sighed, her eyes expressing genuine sympathy.

Josiah didn't need the reminder, and he didn't appreciate it. He knew as well as she did that he was pretty well without options. His best bet was just to bide his time and look for an opportunity, and stay alive in case there was someone looking for him. While he was still vaguely worried about being programmed or having his brain data-mined, the possibility that she was just a simple crazy was up to 83% and rising, which meant he didn't need to worry so much about the distasteful prospect of taking his own life to protect millions and that sort of stuff. The linguist flexed his fingers and toes discreetly to test that whole drug thing, to make sure it was out of his system. He didn't feel heavy or anything, but ... without the drug, it won't make sense, she said. /That/ didn't sound good. Was he expected to actually /agree/ to this at some point?

She continued her slow, cautious approach. "They aren't dead," she said quickly, glancing at the bracelet, "because I saved them. It makes no sense to you now, but you need to trust me..." She held out her hand insistently, "Return it to me."

"Where are they now, if they aren't dead?" he asked softly, instead of handing it over. He clenched his fist around the locket and took a step backward as she advanced only to find his back up against the wall. His heart jumped at the contact, but he fought to slow it down. He'd known his back was against a wall. He'd put himself there. Stop jumping at the little stuff. There's a big stuff right in front of you.

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Ercinee (c) Mary
Post written co-operatively