Sometimes She Sleeps

Sometimes, She Sleeps

Title: Sometimes She Sleeps
Author: Azura Malka
Summary: Sha're considers the difference between capitulating and pretending to -- is there a difference if the end result is the same?
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Sha're/Daniel, Amaunet/Apophis
Feedback: desired.
Characters: Amaunet, Sha’uri, Daniel, Apophis
Betas: /
Author’s notes: /
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything and I don’t make any money off of this story.


The demon is not as strong as she believes herself to be.

She takes great pleasure in causing me pain, and in the anguish I feel to watch as she uses my body to inflict misery and evil on others. She tells me that she is a god, my god.

She is mistaken. She must be. I have seen how her kind enforce their own godhood. They crush the spirit with their rules and their laws, their torture and their massacres. Though I quietly ignored a few of his rules, one of her kind enslaved my people for generations. He was not a god. And he could be overthrown, could be destroyed. I saw it.

She knows these things. She speaks in my mind, attempting to refute all that I know, all that I am certain is true. Sometimes, I let her believe that she has started to succeed.

She tells me she knows all that is in my mind, and all that I ever cared about, all who keep me in their thoughts, close to their hearts, have forsaken me. Think me worse than dead. Cursed, irretrievable, irredeemable. She tells me she knows my rebellious thoughts before I can even recognize that they have sprung to my mind.

She is mistaken. She must be. I could never have believed a season ago that it would be possible, but I am able to think quietly to myself when she is tired or distracted, and she does not seem to know those thoughts... unless I later slip and travel the same mind-road again while she is attentive. I have tried to keep those mistakes few.

I am getting better at judging when she slips, when she does not keep such sharp watch on my mind, when she sleeps. She does sleep. She tells her king that she is simply resting to keep her mind and body pristine and energized to attend his wishes, but I know better. She tells him, and I think believes herself, that she keeps me in an unyielding grip constantly and that she is very strong.

I believe that I know as many of her inner secrets as she knows mine, however.

She fears losing her position. She fears disappointing her king. And in her innermost thoughts, she fears for her king's position in the ranks of the other rulers who vie for power across the stars.

She is just as mortal, just as frail, as any other creature. She has her self-doubt, the little fear that consumes from within that my good mother taught me of when I was but a girl. Mother did not have much time to teach me; life on Abydos was hard, but I learned her lessons well. The creature within me does have aspirations, pride, and weaknesses.

She is not my god. She is a demon, and I am not hers. I am not anyone's. Not my father's daughter, while within me, she hurts the innocent. Not my Daniel's wife, while my body is taken in her king's bed. Not my tribe's, while I am far, so far, from home. Yet I am my own.

It is not all the time, that I am able to indulge in these thoughts. It is very rare. But the demon knows that I do not actively resist her control of my body any more. That was an important step. When I yielded, she needed expend less effort on me. When I do not travel the mind-roads that lead to rebelliousness and discontent, she eases her grip. She began to trust that I would be silent, not try to distract her, to be the weakling she wanted to convince me that I am.

And she has started to believe it, because when she is attentive, I have started to believe it. I have started to placate her with servile phrases, to beg her not to hurt me, to whimper only softly when she uses the body for misdeeds that should enrage me, to quietly accept the pleasure her king's touch reminds the body to feel.

Perhaps I have given in too easily. Perhaps I am doing exactly what she wants. Perhaps there is no hope and I am merely circling a path that goes nowhere.

But I have this to cling to: sometimes, she sleeps, and I am nearly alone.

She either trusts my surrender, or she is not aware of my soul's quiet glow, gently seeping through me only when she is not aware.

I am careful not to move, no motion of my body at my command must give me away while she slumbers. But I know that I could move it, without her waking, just a little. Just enough to know that she lied when she told me that I would be carried about in her body for all time, never to know the freedom of moving in my own skin.

How much of what she tells me is lies? I will probably never know. There are so many things I will probably never know. So I cling to what I do know, bury it deep within myself, where if I am careful, she will never know of it.

I know that I am not dead. Nor am I confined to a never-ceasing eternity of seeing my body betray my honor and my convictions and my humanity.

I know that when she sleeps, I can quietly think within myself, and she does not react to the thoughts I have had when she wakes. It is a respite, not much of one, but it does happen.

I know that I have not given in, but have chosen to bank the coals of my soul and endure. To bend like the desert brush in the wind, and to protect my most precious essence beneath the storms that blow and scour the surface of my awareness, like the water-bulb root through the dry times, only yielding small volumes to the twigs to survive over the long season.

So I exchange small bits of help when I can. I keep alert when her attention is elsewhere and she misses small clues about rivals to her king's affection and esteem. And when I need to, I think very clearly about those clues, and she believes that I serve her. I encourage her when she doubts herself, and she believes that I worship her. And I save my hidden strength, deep within.

When she has suspected that I have been hiding something, I usually give token resistance, then guiltily admit that I am simply missing my home, my family, my husband. Those are true. I miss the comfort of my Daniel's touch the most. He who shared my smiles, my laughter, my ecstasy in passion. I have so many memories of his touch that the demon assumes whatever thoughts I try to hide from her must be some of those which I am too modest or ashamed to accept sharing with her.

His fingers, stroking and exploring under the covers, warming me in the chill hours before dawn. His mouth, kissing and sucking midafternoon, delaying the evening meal until past nightfall. His hair brushing over my skin, whisper soft, as we lay entangled, pointing out the stars to each other.

Our time together was so short, and yet we had such a bountiful harvest of joy. Our bodies and minds did not recognize the distance between our birthings, and our individual strangenesses that kept us apart from our own tribes were some of the best things that brought us together. We danced an intricate a pattern of marriage with such joinings and separations... our passion burned so brightly and our individual independence, even our misunderstandings only served to strengthen each of us and our union.

I can still hear his cries of passion in my mind as I pleasured him, his soft skin slick with sweat and heat in the desert night. I can remember his dark eyes shining at me in the firelight, only to close to slits as his sigh grew into a moan, his dampening hair clinging as he tossed to and fro in our lovemaking. I can almost feel how my own cries felt, deep in my throat, as his mouth and hands explored me, so many jolts of spark and fire. And I can almost feel the joyful release of sharing the ultimate of pleasures together. It has been so long since we shouted ourselves hoarse in such reckless abandon together. So much time, so much distance...

How different that union was from the union I now share with Amaunet.

She controls, I yield. Lately she does not as often cause me pain to punish, and seems to gain as much pleasure from hurting others as hurting me. I placate her, and compliment her wit and capability. I assist her in seeking the favor of her king.

Either I am bending or she has broken me.

I do not fear that she has broken me, for such a feeling would have no purpose. Either she has or she has not. Either I am giving her what she wants or I am not. There is no possibility, there is only what is. And my thoughts and feelings are what is.

I was my father's daughter, and my mother's. I was my Daniel's wife. Whatever I am now, those cannot be taken from me. The demon cannot have them.

I believe that she is not as strong as she believes herself to be. I believe that I am alive, that I survive, and that I am my own. I believe that my belief, my faith, is stronger than hers. And as my good parents taught me, I believe that the gentle act of believing can create truth.