GateWar Interludes
It's my fault.
How can I tell them this when they look at me with the beginnings of trust? How can I tell them when it would be so easy to crush this feeble glimmering of hope within me and make it die, make them believe than no Goa'uld can truly be trusted? Kill the last glimmer of hope that I have for my people?
We are the worst of beings, we could be symbiotes but we choose to be parasites, choose to enslave, choose to suck the strength and power from others. Choose individual strength over a greater unity.
So I made my choice, my choice to escape.
I think perhaps I had made the choice years before I consciously realized it.
But opportunity, such was rare and a place to be safe, a place where I could be strong, trusted, useful. A place where perhaps I could work towards a better future for the Goa'uld, a future where we could be seen as potential allies, potential friends.
I ask so much.
But I can offer nothing except my choice.
A choice towards a better future, but one not honestly obtained. Can a better future exist from a lie? Can my children live in a world where they can be considered useful members of society when the entire society was built on lies?
No, not lies.
Omissions.
I set the Tau'ri up.
The plan which trapped so many of their warriors, which resulted in Maktenos gaining a Tau'ri as a host, a trap which skirted so close to success was all my idea, my plan.
They were the least bad of all bad choices, hating the Goa'uld, never trusting but on occasion, willing to work with us. They had shown not just that they had the strength of will to resist, so many had displayed that over the centuries of our rule, but that they had the intelligence to know how they could best resist, what battles to fight and which to avoid.
But if I went up to them and tried to defect, I would simply be an intelligence assest, drained of my knowledge, ‘trusted' under carefully controlled conditions. I would be a tool.
Now, I have proven a wiliness to fight for them.
I am proving a wiliness to follow orders and requests with this side trip to the Tollan homeworld. I prove myself, and I will have to with every step I take and every word I say.
This will not be easy, but is anything worth fighting for truly easy?
That I do not know, those kinds of choices are rare in the memory of my ancestors. I can only think of one other who made a similar choice and she didn't go as far as she should. Egeria may have realized we are not Gods, but she never left the Goa'uld arrogance behind, a trait that still clings to her own children.
Perhaps with my choices, I can gain the trust of the Tau'ri and from that trust, gain their protection. With that protection, with that strength, can I, a single Goa'uld Queen, begin the rebirth of our people?
I do not know.
I must try.
I can not do anything else.
Yet, in time I know the truth will out. My lies, my manipulations will become clear, should I admit know and blow out the fragile candle of hope or wait, hope I have a solid enough grasp of my goals that they will continue anyway when the Tau'ri reject me for what I have omitted?
I do not know the best part and the indecision worries me, yet I must do what I must. The goal matters… but is the way you achieve it any less important?
Sometimes I think it would have been so much easier just to be a normal Goa'uld.
“It was your masters plan that resulted in that mess on PC-49x wasn't it?”
“Yes,”
A sigh, a slight shake of the head, deep thought, then “she will never be fully trusted until she proves she is fully able to trust us, that means trusting us to make the right choices as well.”
“I understand that,” a nod at the unspoken implication, “but how did you know?”
“We have an expression, about wearing your heart on your sleeve,”
“I do not understand,”
“No, you don't.”
Puzzled, Enerist gazed after O'Neill as he walked away, then with a slight shrug at the vagaries of the Tau'ri, turned back to her work.