Her Kingdom

Her Kindgom


Title: Her Kingdom
Author: Azura Malka
Summary: Sha'uri waits for rescue... or does she?
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Amaunet/Sha'uri, Jack/Daniel, Amaunet/Sha’uri/Apophis
Feedback: desired.
Characters: Amaunet, Sha’uri, Jack, Daniel, Apophis
Betas: /
Author’s notes: /
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything and I don’t make any money off of this story.

'Mirror, mirror,' she says.

It sounds so strange, not just these words borrowed from my Danyel's world, but also her speaking. She is using my vocal chords, but it doesn't sound like me. It can't sound like me, because, if it does, pieces of me will rain down like grains of sand and I shall fall away to nothing. If it is not her voice, but mine, saying these things... then I am slowly going insane.

And I remember Danyel, sitting against the walls in the old temple and laughing because there were three moons in the sky instead of one. He held onto me, then, one hand on my hip and the other pressed to the floor, because the bottom was falling out of his world, he said. He was a million stars away from Earth, and only the one called Jack O'Neill knew where he really was. He relished the last bit, without realizing it himself, but I know now.

'If you're worried about being crazy,' he said into my hair, 'then you've got to be sane.'

I hope this is true, but I do not pray. The gods are false-- I shall never pray.

And if the moons of my home have called me out into their lunacy, I am past the point of caring.

Mirror, mirror-- and oh, she is mocking me, permeating my flesh with that which is Her alone, pulling me up through her thorns.

Danyel liked to tell me stories. I would hana'au back to him-- a native word, thick on my tongue, meaning 'talk-story'. In the dusk, our voices touched the myths of Earth and Abydos, which seemed like sisters cast away from one another-- exiled. So many tales where close, like shadows seen in a polished black obelisk, afraid to let you pin them down and see their true face. There was one, yes, about a queen who's beauty was her soul, endlessly needy. She spoke into polished glass, which was like calm water or the single eye of a snake-- unblinking.

'Spiegru, spiegru, heya ni'

Mirror, mirror, on the wall.

Danyel called her the Wicked Queen, which has no meaning to me-- in my mother's hushed-night words, she was the Jealous Birthgiver, the woman who envied her daughter, youth itself, until she lost everything that made her who she was. I can see Danyel's face, on the other side of the fire, golden with light flashing against his 'glasses', saying that these common themes unite our worlds, they are part of humanity and show the... "subconscious"? I confess to not listening past this point, turning my own version of the story over in my mind. As a child, it frightened me, flickered in the caves and in the glimmering stones which we mine, daring me to breathe; but at that time, in front of that fire with my Danyel, I was unafraid.

Only the dead and fools have no fear.

And I am thinking now that I am both.

She calls herself Amaunet, sometimes Neith or Anat, a Goddess. She is old without being ancient, because the last implies wisdom. She has none of that, only a gaping wound eager to devour more; more drink to slow her mind into languid dream-dance, more power to raise her from the chasm within, more pleasure to drive everything away for even just one bright moment. She slithers in my mind, pushes me back until I fall, as if against a flight of stairs. I run up, because the way down is far too dark for me to even consider.

I am not dead, Danyel! I'm still here, I am... in this High Tower she has made for me. Where am I hers alone and she is the only way I can see the world.

That, I think, is from a story you told me once, too.

In her world, this twisted land which is now mine as well, she is Divine, she is All. At her hand, everything has a name, the stars spin and hold their breath. With my voice, she calls Apophis her Lord, but inside the names for him are endlessly crude and uncaring. With a look, a word, they rehash arguments centuries old; with the flick of a hand or the raise of a brow, they wordlessly insult one another. They are together, they are man and wife and king and queen; but he preys upon her like a beast with large, uncareful teeth, and she pierces into him like a spider. More subtle, clinging to and destroying all at once-- as she lays with him, on those rare occasions, she thinks only of the many ways in which he could die at my/her hand.

He touches her through me, and my skin crawls.

In the same breath, we wish him dead together.

I'm loosing the thread here, but I need to keep weaving. Danyel!

I am--

Sha'uri, of Abydos. Kasuf's daughter, Skaara's sister, the wife of Tau'ri man called Doctor Jackson. Student, eager to learn.

[... Amaunet, of the Goa'uld. Hathor's daughter, Ra's sister, the wife of Apophis. Female god, called the Hidden One.]

She's here; she slips under the high walls of my desert and chases me until my heels pound against the backs of my legs and I tumble to the sand and into her arms. She knows me! She is there, she shines with her own idea of perfection and burns me until it hurts so much it's pleasurable. I'm loosing the thread, I am, and one day I'm not going to be able to find it. But, if I keep weaving, I may have something with which to climb down.

A foolish hope; this tower is as high as she wants it to be.

[as tall as the many ways in which own you]

This tower does not exist at all.

There are two worlds, as there have always been, as I was taught since I was a child-- outer and inner. Body and soul; but now the landscape within myself, which I once tread so easily, is also hers. I loose my footing, my direction, become so caught up in her nightmare scenery that I forget myself. Who I am.

She is always there to catch me.

The worst part is-- oh, Danyel, I am so shamed-- that I may forget who I am, but I always remember Her.

She'll never really kill Apophis, you know. They are old together, having both lived so long that it cannot be called living. Time twists them like twin trees, and only they can see the ugliness, the solid white ribbon of awareness, behind the many human eyes they've worn. She needs him, or else no one would know Amaunet. The... person... she stopped being, so long ago that she herself doesn't really remember. Without Apophis, she is only the snake that lives in my body, and my body gives her no identity.

She is no better at keeping track of herself than I am-- she's just had more practice at it.

In her palace, in her chambers, there are only mirrors. On the floor, on the ceiling and all along with walls, reflecting forever until I am dizzy with it, lost in a maze. The looking glass shows so many women I know can not be me. They mustn't be! I am back here in my own skull, lost in her coils, listening to the echo of those who've met my same fate. I believe these are echoes. I tell myself that often, because surely these poor souls have found rest somewhere? Surely that same rest must be out there for me, lying far-off in the time when I am rescued or killed. In time, I hope/believe/wish/yearn for, I won't have to listen to these girls and women screaming, mouths open like robbed graves. Other hosts, a timeline stretching so far back it's staggering. Some are quieter than others-- some, in their days, simply shivered in the corner with Amaunet at the fore. She paid them as little heed as one pays a bright dot in the sky-- simply there, and of no concern.

Others, others were chosen by her with care.

[see, Beloved Sha'uri, see what I saw as my husband brought you before me to Choose or Discard. I am a God, I may have anything I please-- it is my right by existence and by birth. It pleases me to own you.]

She doesn't know what Love means, but she doesn't know what hate is, either. She just can't care about anything but her own continued existence. For her, it is well within her rights to kill and maim because she feels like it. Woe to those who think their lives so important as to contradict her will.

I wish they could hate-- I wish the Goa'uld could hate, I mean. I wish they could be able to feel that intensely, so their evil might be more apparent from the inside. From where I look out from between the bars of my own bones, She is terrible but also far too close. I wish that she would hate, so I might rally my own disgust and battle her with it, raising a thousand swords.

In the room of mirrors, she stands and watches me through my eyes. She touches me with my hand, calls me Beloved and Pretty One and even my own true name, Sha'uri. It makes me real to hear my name from my body, which looks like it's being worn by someone else.

It is.

Without her to say my name, who would know that there is still a me in here to rattle around and cry out?

Oh, Danyel, you are so far away. She presses my lips to the cool mirror that she might kiss me. Lays on the bed, watching in the ceiling reflection as she puppets my hands. I can almost feel the difference in the skin, when she thinks she's touching me, as opposed to when she makes me touch her. We lay together in the same space, the Royal Unity, and she cries out my name-- not really a cry, but a soft, imperial command-- as she comes.

Can I tell you a secret? Oh, you will think badly of me, for I so despise myself-- once or twice, when she slips on the waves of feeling, I have had my voice for my own, and I have called for her.

Amaunet.

[see, I am the only one who loves you, for you can not even love yourself.]

And you don't know what love is!

What if you never come for me, Danyel? What if I am really hers and I will always be lying inside her, having her nightmares while she has mine? I feel her true power, her power to make me need her, to make me so sick of myself that she is Glory by comparison. I can't find my way out, Danyel. I want to reach out with my hands to Skaara, shake him until his teeth rattle and he answers in that new low voice he only acquired three seasons ago. Her son is wrapped around his spine; I watch my brother wrestle with him, each pining with other, biting and clawing until I'm afraid there's nothing left of either of them.

Strange, but she fears this, too.

I hate feeling anything she does-- it makes a place where we touch and meld, where I am less my own and more hers. She treads carefully between her husband and her son, for the first she has disdain and for the other a curious desire-for-and-lack-of trust. It is not in her best interest to talk to-- or even take real notice of-- her 'son', so she does not.

Is it me that longs so to speak to Skaara, brush the hair away from his face, or does she too long for flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood? Somewhere in my brother's body is something born of her. Which has more power? I try to move through this, but I become tangled in my own logic. My despair reaches out to the horizon way off in the distance, seemingly limitless, and her arms are open to me. I run to her, because at least-- as I have heard O'Neill say-- she is the devil I know.

When she sleeps, she makes my body hug itself, as if she is embracing me. Apophis does not hold her or me-- their sex is strangely detached and abrupt-- she tells me I will only ever feel her touch now. She says that Danyel has abandoned me, left me to her because he knows who I belong to. She shows me the look in his eyes, that night he first came into our camp, watching O'Neill over the feast we presented to them. And, too, she shows me his eyes when my husband saw O'Neill once more.

You, wicked queen, don't you know humans have room enough in their hearts to love more than one person?

I have loved and Danyel has loved. He wanted to teach me and I wanted to learn; this was the foundation of our marriage. The trade of knowledge, though I always felt I had less to offer him. I could only talk-story and show him how to grind the grain, how to mend his robes. He showed me the stars, the letters of the Tau'ri tongue.

Never so happy, never so happy was I than when the work was done and we relaxed against one another by the fire and he drew those foreign shapes in the sand. I would try to mimic them, say the sounds aloud.

Aey-- bee-- see-- dee.

Cat, which is a four legged Earth creature. Sand, which is what covers the desert. Daniel, his name, and Sha're, which sounds enough like mine. Love, which is affection you feel.

You can't only love one person.

[you will only ever love me]

You can't own someone.

[you are mine]

You can't take this away from me!

I have loved, and Danyel has loved-- not always each other. I loved my cradle-sister Kome, who's mother suckled me when my own had died. Kome, who grew up with me-- who kissed me under three moons and pressed our bodies into the rough sand. She drew a circle around us, for protection, only to join my mother the very next day in the teeming, no-light city of the dead. Kin, my brother's best friend, who came to our tent and watched me with shy eyes; he made me little wooden animals and only ever kissed me on the cheek-- I loved him. And my own dear friend Reip; I lay with her in affection, even after she was married.

Amaunet has Named all that falls within her kingdom, but I have Named things too.

Danyel is Teacher and Husband.

Skaara is Brother.

O'Neill is Friend-- even if Danyel comes to Name him Most Loved.

[Beloved.]

I fade in and out, like a ghost-- I am real but I am not. I have only her words to go on, I turn them away and later fall on them, desperate for food. I can only hold out for so long-- a person can only take so much.

I have lasted this long, I shout over her insistences to the contrary, I can last just that long again.

Danyel will save me, or he will put an end to my suffering. Dearheart, kill me that I may live. She says there is no escape, and-- hugged by my own arms-- I sometimes believe her.

She is pregnant with Apophis' child, and so am I-- it is the child of my body and that of the body Apophis' occupies. Sometimes, when Amaunet shares his bed and the serpent king turns in old, worn nightmare-battle with his Other, I long to reach out. I want to speak to the man locked away in his own mind. I want to say, 'it's all right'-- even if it isn't-- and tell him that I, too, have been consigned to the Land of Hell.

In the Sarcophagus, Amaunet and I are living while dead.

If they buried me, I might not notice for a while. She's always here, with me-- her embrace is so tight I can't get free, can't slip between and out from underneath her arms.

Soon, they shall send me home-- my bones and flesh will be turned back over to me, as if I have bartered for them. I grasp towards this brief promise of freedom with a desperation that shakes me close to shattering. I am grateful... to her, of all beings. To her, and she laughs, trails a gold-tipped finger down our cheek, laughing at me. Her pet, her little bird, she says-- and I have no freedom, I should know that. I may return to my father's house and grind the grain, carry the water and do a thousand other things that anchor me to Home, but it is all a heat shimmer over the next dune.

Danyel, I'm starting to think I'll never get out!

I fear your gaze upon me-- I don't want you to see this. There is a darkness inside each of us, like the gaps between the stars, that we never willingly let each other see. Your darkness is the color... the color of O'Neill's eyes-- I saw it that once, before I was taken to this nightmare place.

I do not wish you to see this thing that has bloomed in me, this grotesque, non-survival flower clinging to my spine.

She says that I will still feel her, even when she sleeps. I can not tell her dreams from mine, anymore.

She stands before the mirror, my hand on my swollen belly. While she makes my lips smile at the thought of creating a new host for her King, I am sick. Sick unto death with it, bashing myself against the walls of my mind, uncaring if I kill myself in the process of trying to get free. I have to hold on, just a little bit longer. Terror is a part of my heartbeat now; I'm afraid to let go, even if I no longer remember what will happen if I do. She wears my body beautifully and is radiant with child, touching the physical me with loving hands. Murmuring low that this is another thing to bind us together, me and her. She'll have me yet. In her mind, the world is an endless golden mirror, and subjects bow before her, worshiping. Amaunet dreams of conquering Earth and Abydos, though she knows that one or two or a hundred more planets will not quench her thirst. What she wants has no name-- it lays beyond death, which is the one thing she will not partake of. We stare at each other through the mirror, and neither of us likes what we see.

[I see that which is mine, that which will not except my rightful rule]

I can't let go. I won't.

'Most High,' she hears the Tau'ri call her, bowing as they stare in wonder.

She will never be their god, their ruler, or their Only.

But-- if there is a real and true God, please help me!-- she is mine.