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stringertheoryTitle: Mnemonic
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Cameron Mitchell, appearances by Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, Teal'c
Word Count: 1843
Categories: angst, grief, drama
Spoilers/Warnings: Set post "Collateral Damage" (9.12) and "Stronghold" (9.14). Spoilers for the same.
Summary: "A memory is what is left behind when something happens and does not completely unhappen." - Edward de Bono
Note: Thanks to lolmac for the beta.
Memory is not linear. It takes hold like a seed, spreads like roots, is formed and directed by what came before, by what comes after. Memories are not self-contained. One memory trickles through others like water through rock, irreversibly shaping and changing what it touches. Separating a single memory from all the rest is as impossible as separating a river from the sea.
Cam does not remember, but he does not forget.
The actual memory of the murder is gone. He can no longer feel the weight of the vase in his hands, the rage trembling in his fingers, the vibration of each blow quivering through his body. There is no coppery smell lingering in his nose, no warm, sticky blood on his skin. Everything of the false memory is gone. But memories of that memory linger.
The Galarans did not erase his memories of reliving the murder. They did not—could not—erase his memories of hearing about it in detail, first from the Emissary as he was accused, then from his own lips as he described again and again what he had seen, what he had felt. Those memories are branded on his mind like a tattoo.
The feelings given to him by the memory remain like an echo. Faint but persistent, they remind him of feelings brought on by the telling of a good story, the emotions of second-hand experience fluttering in his chest like ghosts of the real thing. The murder itself is gone, but memories of it cloud his mind like smoke, filled with whispers of sensations he never really felt. And the confusion and disgust and terror and fury and brittleness he felt in the aftermath—everything connected with the experience remains fresh in his mind. There are no knives that could remove it, no machines that could erase it. The false memory stays alive through the memories it created, the memories it touched.
The disastrous mission in the Middle East carries the added weight of other events now: it is forever linked to the murder he didn't commit. His father's strength and determination are tied to his own struggle and the memory of blood on his hands.
At first, the memories recede. He is not haunted by Reya's empty eyes, by memories that are not his own. They leave him in peace. When he wakes in a cold sweat three days after they get back from Galara, it surprises him. When it happens again, he realizes what is happening. The same thing has happened before—after his father, after the flubbed mission, after Antarctica. The reprieve was brief, the remembering endless.
A few weeks later, Jackson shakes him out of a fitful nap during an off-world trip. Cam jerks awake and squints against the sunlight, blinking away the memory of a dark room and dark blood. Jackson and Sam are both watching him with worried expressions, and Cam scrubs a hand over his face, trying to pull himself together. He takes the canteen Sam offers him with a nod of gratitude, unsure if his voice would be steady enough for a response.
Sam catches his eye as he hands back the canteen.
“You okay?” she asks.
Cam clears his throat. “Yeah,” he replies, wincing inwardly at how rough his voice sounds. “I'm good.”
“You were, uh—” Jackson waves his hand ineffectually “—muttering.”
Cam looks away under the pretense of checking the time. “Was I?” he says with faux nonchalance.
“Bad dreams?”
The phrase comes out of Jackson more as a statement of fact than a question, but with just enough inflection on the end to invite discussion should Cam need it. Cam contemplates keeping everything to himself, years of self-reliance and the military beat of putting up a strong front kicking in before he can really decide otherwise. But then he recalls that these people already know the story. They have already seen the worst; this is just refuse from a storm long passed. He lets out a breath.
“Memories from Galara,” he says simply.
Sam and Jackson share a look.
“The murder?” Sam gently inquires.
Cam nods. “It's still there.”
Jackson looks surprised by the admission and frowns slightly. “I thought they took that memory? You had it erased, right?”
“Mostly,” Cam replies evasively.
He catches Sam's eye, and her expression indicates that she hears what he isn't saying, understands what Jackson is missing. She looks away and nods once to herself, as if in confirmation. Cam ponders her reaction. Had she known about his state of mind and not said anything? As if hearing his unspoken question, she glances up again and meets his gaze, and he realizes that she hadn’t known. Suspected, maybe—had probably even expected it, given how much she knew about the Galaran technology—but she hadn't known for certain until he admitted to it in his own roundabout way. She gives him a small smile, a deep understanding in her eyes that seems to extend beyond Cam's own experience. Something clicks inside him, and Cam stares at her in surprise for a moment. Sam, perhaps more than anyone, could understand what it was like to carry around someone else's memories. Maybe he should have talked to her before.
For once, Jackson's playing catch-up, the frown melting from his face as understanding dawns. “And all the times you went through it...” He trails off as Cam nods again.
“It's still in there.” Cam taps a finger to his temple. “Like watching a home movie. You're in the scene and you remember what happened, but you're disconnected from it. The feelings aren't as strong, but they haven't gone away.”
Both Sam and Jackson fall into quiet contemplation after that. Just as Jackson seems about to say something, Teal'c returns from his patrol, his arrival disrupting any further conversation. They pack up and prepare to head to the next mark on their map. If Teal'c notices anything odd in their demeanors, he doesn't indicate as much. Cam forces himself back into his typical easy-going mood and by the time they reach their destination, the somberness of their last stop is forgotten.
But the memories still haunt his dreams, and Cam finds sleep difficult. They don't bother him every night, but when they do, he gets little rest. The face that greets him from the mirror the next morning is drawn and haggard and though he manages to appear more like himself by the time he reaches the mountain, he knows the traces of his nighttime struggles are still there for anyone to see.
He is sitting alone in the commissary late one night, nursing a cup of coffee and debating whether he is exhausted enough for dreamless sleep, when Teal'c joins him.
“Hey, Teal'c.”
Teal'c nods his head. “Colonel Mitchell.” He scrutinizes Cam closely. “You do not look well.”
Cam snorts. “That bad, huh?”
“Indeed.” Teal'c pauses as if debating his next words. “Colonel Carter has indicated that you have been plagued by memories from our time on Galara.”
“I wouldn't say 'plagued,'” Cam says, swirling the dregs at the bottom of his cup. “More like 'sporadically bothered.'”
“They are powerful memories,” Teal'c continues as if Cam had not spoken. “It is to be expected that they would trouble you for some time.”
Cam eyes him. “Speaking from experience there?”
Teal'c bows his head slightly before raising his chin and staring into the distance over Cam's shoulder.
“Many times during my service under the Goa'uld, I watched terrible atrocities committed in the names of false gods. Even when the actions were not by my hand, they weighed on my mind.” Teal'c meets Cam's eyes. “This is no different,” he says wisely. “You carry the memory of a horrible deed, one that holds much pain for you. That you wear it so heavily speaks to your character. That you bear it so well speaks to your strength.”
Cam stares back at Teal'c, unable to look away from the knowledge and understanding in his eyes. In the still of the commissary, one of the refrigerator coolers clicks on. The whir of the motor hums in the air. Teal'c stands, sliding his chair back with a barely audible scrape.
“Go home, Colonel Mitchell. Try to get some rest.”
Cam nods dumbly, rising from his seat as well with a sigh. “Yeah, I should probably do that.”
“I believe General O'Neill would say that you need to 'catch up on your beauty sleep,'” Teal'c rumbles, a faint twinkle in his eye.
Cam grins at him, clapping him on the shoulder as they head for the commissary door.
When Cam dreams of Galara that night, Teal'c is there. He stands in full Jaffa battle armor, expression stoic, but deep pain in his eyes. His eyes lock with Cam's, and Cam finds himself pulled away from Reya's apartment, from the lab. It all fades to black, and he settles into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Over time, the pain of the memories begins to fade. They trouble him less often and getting through them takes less away from him. Traces of the memories show up in other places—the color of a stranger's hair at the supermarket, a glass of red wine at the table next to him when he goes out to dinner with Sam—but the feelings they evoke don't make him feel like he has just had the wind knocked out of him. And the memories manipulate his choices in minor ways, but they do not control him. They become just another shadowy spot he prefers not to explore.
The call from Bryce pulls him back under the shadow.
He asks Sam if using the Galaran device makes him a hypocrite. It does, but it doesn't make him a bad man. He isn't taking a memory or implanting a false one or altering an existing one—he is merely giving something that, by rights, shouldn't belong to him in the first place.
His memories of the device and the technology behind it carry their own weight. Now they will mingle with his memories of Bryce—of flying together, fighting together, of his life being saved at the price of another's. And those memories will blend with the ones he pours into the device (and into Bryce), memories of the Stargate and the missions and the extraordinary life he leads because of one man's sacrifice. They will combine and shift and settle back into place in his mind. They will weave together like the roots of redwoods. He will always have them.
Memory is not linear. Memories are not self-contained. They do not ever fade, for even if forgotten, they remain in what they have touched and shaped, what they have created and destroyed.
Cam does not remember, but he cannot forget.
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Cameron Mitchell, appearances by Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, Teal'c
Word Count: 1843
Categories: angst, grief, drama
Spoilers/Warnings: Set post "Collateral Damage" (9.12) and "Stronghold" (9.14). Spoilers for the same.
Summary: "A memory is what is left behind when something happens and does not completely unhappen." - Edward de Bono
Note: Thanks to lolmac for the beta.
Memory is not linear. It takes hold like a seed, spreads like roots, is formed and directed by what came before, by what comes after. Memories are not self-contained. One memory trickles through others like water through rock, irreversibly shaping and changing what it touches. Separating a single memory from all the rest is as impossible as separating a river from the sea.
Cam does not remember, but he does not forget.
The actual memory of the murder is gone. He can no longer feel the weight of the vase in his hands, the rage trembling in his fingers, the vibration of each blow quivering through his body. There is no coppery smell lingering in his nose, no warm, sticky blood on his skin. Everything of the false memory is gone. But memories of that memory linger.
The Galarans did not erase his memories of reliving the murder. They did not—could not—erase his memories of hearing about it in detail, first from the Emissary as he was accused, then from his own lips as he described again and again what he had seen, what he had felt. Those memories are branded on his mind like a tattoo.
The feelings given to him by the memory remain like an echo. Faint but persistent, they remind him of feelings brought on by the telling of a good story, the emotions of second-hand experience fluttering in his chest like ghosts of the real thing. The murder itself is gone, but memories of it cloud his mind like smoke, filled with whispers of sensations he never really felt. And the confusion and disgust and terror and fury and brittleness he felt in the aftermath—everything connected with the experience remains fresh in his mind. There are no knives that could remove it, no machines that could erase it. The false memory stays alive through the memories it created, the memories it touched.
The disastrous mission in the Middle East carries the added weight of other events now: it is forever linked to the murder he didn't commit. His father's strength and determination are tied to his own struggle and the memory of blood on his hands.
At first, the memories recede. He is not haunted by Reya's empty eyes, by memories that are not his own. They leave him in peace. When he wakes in a cold sweat three days after they get back from Galara, it surprises him. When it happens again, he realizes what is happening. The same thing has happened before—after his father, after the flubbed mission, after Antarctica. The reprieve was brief, the remembering endless.
A few weeks later, Jackson shakes him out of a fitful nap during an off-world trip. Cam jerks awake and squints against the sunlight, blinking away the memory of a dark room and dark blood. Jackson and Sam are both watching him with worried expressions, and Cam scrubs a hand over his face, trying to pull himself together. He takes the canteen Sam offers him with a nod of gratitude, unsure if his voice would be steady enough for a response.
Sam catches his eye as he hands back the canteen.
“You okay?” she asks.
Cam clears his throat. “Yeah,” he replies, wincing inwardly at how rough his voice sounds. “I'm good.”
“You were, uh—” Jackson waves his hand ineffectually “—muttering.”
Cam looks away under the pretense of checking the time. “Was I?” he says with faux nonchalance.
“Bad dreams?”
The phrase comes out of Jackson more as a statement of fact than a question, but with just enough inflection on the end to invite discussion should Cam need it. Cam contemplates keeping everything to himself, years of self-reliance and the military beat of putting up a strong front kicking in before he can really decide otherwise. But then he recalls that these people already know the story. They have already seen the worst; this is just refuse from a storm long passed. He lets out a breath.
“Memories from Galara,” he says simply.
Sam and Jackson share a look.
“The murder?” Sam gently inquires.
Cam nods. “It's still there.”
Jackson looks surprised by the admission and frowns slightly. “I thought they took that memory? You had it erased, right?”
“Mostly,” Cam replies evasively.
He catches Sam's eye, and her expression indicates that she hears what he isn't saying, understands what Jackson is missing. She looks away and nods once to herself, as if in confirmation. Cam ponders her reaction. Had she known about his state of mind and not said anything? As if hearing his unspoken question, she glances up again and meets his gaze, and he realizes that she hadn’t known. Suspected, maybe—had probably even expected it, given how much she knew about the Galaran technology—but she hadn't known for certain until he admitted to it in his own roundabout way. She gives him a small smile, a deep understanding in her eyes that seems to extend beyond Cam's own experience. Something clicks inside him, and Cam stares at her in surprise for a moment. Sam, perhaps more than anyone, could understand what it was like to carry around someone else's memories. Maybe he should have talked to her before.
For once, Jackson's playing catch-up, the frown melting from his face as understanding dawns. “And all the times you went through it...” He trails off as Cam nods again.
“It's still in there.” Cam taps a finger to his temple. “Like watching a home movie. You're in the scene and you remember what happened, but you're disconnected from it. The feelings aren't as strong, but they haven't gone away.”
Both Sam and Jackson fall into quiet contemplation after that. Just as Jackson seems about to say something, Teal'c returns from his patrol, his arrival disrupting any further conversation. They pack up and prepare to head to the next mark on their map. If Teal'c notices anything odd in their demeanors, he doesn't indicate as much. Cam forces himself back into his typical easy-going mood and by the time they reach their destination, the somberness of their last stop is forgotten.
But the memories still haunt his dreams, and Cam finds sleep difficult. They don't bother him every night, but when they do, he gets little rest. The face that greets him from the mirror the next morning is drawn and haggard and though he manages to appear more like himself by the time he reaches the mountain, he knows the traces of his nighttime struggles are still there for anyone to see.
He is sitting alone in the commissary late one night, nursing a cup of coffee and debating whether he is exhausted enough for dreamless sleep, when Teal'c joins him.
“Hey, Teal'c.”
Teal'c nods his head. “Colonel Mitchell.” He scrutinizes Cam closely. “You do not look well.”
Cam snorts. “That bad, huh?”
“Indeed.” Teal'c pauses as if debating his next words. “Colonel Carter has indicated that you have been plagued by memories from our time on Galara.”
“I wouldn't say 'plagued,'” Cam says, swirling the dregs at the bottom of his cup. “More like 'sporadically bothered.'”
“They are powerful memories,” Teal'c continues as if Cam had not spoken. “It is to be expected that they would trouble you for some time.”
Cam eyes him. “Speaking from experience there?”
Teal'c bows his head slightly before raising his chin and staring into the distance over Cam's shoulder.
“Many times during my service under the Goa'uld, I watched terrible atrocities committed in the names of false gods. Even when the actions were not by my hand, they weighed on my mind.” Teal'c meets Cam's eyes. “This is no different,” he says wisely. “You carry the memory of a horrible deed, one that holds much pain for you. That you wear it so heavily speaks to your character. That you bear it so well speaks to your strength.”
Cam stares back at Teal'c, unable to look away from the knowledge and understanding in his eyes. In the still of the commissary, one of the refrigerator coolers clicks on. The whir of the motor hums in the air. Teal'c stands, sliding his chair back with a barely audible scrape.
“Go home, Colonel Mitchell. Try to get some rest.”
Cam nods dumbly, rising from his seat as well with a sigh. “Yeah, I should probably do that.”
“I believe General O'Neill would say that you need to 'catch up on your beauty sleep,'” Teal'c rumbles, a faint twinkle in his eye.
Cam grins at him, clapping him on the shoulder as they head for the commissary door.
When Cam dreams of Galara that night, Teal'c is there. He stands in full Jaffa battle armor, expression stoic, but deep pain in his eyes. His eyes lock with Cam's, and Cam finds himself pulled away from Reya's apartment, from the lab. It all fades to black, and he settles into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Over time, the pain of the memories begins to fade. They trouble him less often and getting through them takes less away from him. Traces of the memories show up in other places—the color of a stranger's hair at the supermarket, a glass of red wine at the table next to him when he goes out to dinner with Sam—but the feelings they evoke don't make him feel like he has just had the wind knocked out of him. And the memories manipulate his choices in minor ways, but they do not control him. They become just another shadowy spot he prefers not to explore.
The call from Bryce pulls him back under the shadow.
He asks Sam if using the Galaran device makes him a hypocrite. It does, but it doesn't make him a bad man. He isn't taking a memory or implanting a false one or altering an existing one—he is merely giving something that, by rights, shouldn't belong to him in the first place.
His memories of the device and the technology behind it carry their own weight. Now they will mingle with his memories of Bryce—of flying together, fighting together, of his life being saved at the price of another's. And those memories will blend with the ones he pours into the device (and into Bryce), memories of the Stargate and the missions and the extraordinary life he leads because of one man's sacrifice. They will combine and shift and settle back into place in his mind. They will weave together like the roots of redwoods. He will always have them.
Memory is not linear. Memories are not self-contained. They do not ever fade, for even if forgotten, they remain in what they have touched and shaped, what they have created and destroyed.
Cam does not remember, but he cannot forget.
no subject
on 2012-02-05 03:45 am (UTC)