Mathématique: Tradition

Unseeing, Teal’c stares at the sour cream, the cilantro, the Blazin’ Jalapeño Doritos, the cheese.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Tradition

Teal’c stands in the center of Dr. Lam’s sunlit kitchen, examining the nutrition information on containers spread over the surface of a small kitchen island. The room is filled with an emerging meal and an emerging mess in equal parts: salad, fruit in stages of peeling and dicing, and the ingredients for Colonel Carter’s famed, or perhaps notorious, cookies.

Without her kidneys, and dependent on dialysis, Dr. Lam is permitted only a limited amount of salt. 

Such a restriction makes meal preparation difficult. He has no doubt SG-1 is equal to the task.

After all, they’ve done it before. When the System Lords still ruled the galaxy, when O’Neill had led the team, before and after Daniel Jackson’s ascension, as Cassie Frasier grew from frightened girl to powerful young woman—they cooked meals for Janet Frasier.

By reflex, he commends her soul to Kheb. He catches himself. Stops. Wishes her spirit well.

Unseeing, Teal’c stares at the sour cream, the cilantro, the Blazin’ Jalapeño Doritos, the cheese.

His heart aches. It aches for the doctor before this doctor. It aches for O’Neill’s wry wisdom. It aches for Gerak, lost to the fires of the Ori. It aches for Chulak. It aches for all those caught in the never-ending procession of craven would-be deities demanding blind worship.

Will it ever end? Will there be an infinite line of false gods to conquer? Will he live long enough to see his people govern themselves? Create law, deepen custom, choose what to teach their children?

“Muscles.” Vala steps into Teal’c’s personal space with a bright familiarity that even his lovers have never adopted. “I’ve allotted you one hundred milligrams of sodium for the Chel’mek.” She holds a clipboard stamped CLASSIFIED in white block letters. He hasn’t seen such a clipboard at the SGC since late 1999.

Teal’c raises a silent eyebrow and allows amusement to soften his expression. He peers at the paper she’s consulting and finds small columns of numbers, written in accordance with Tau’ri conventions.

“More sodium is required,” Teal’c says.

Vala is not swayed.

“If it does not contain Doritos,” he explains, “it is not Chel’mek.”

“I still feel betrayed by this whole Chel’mek thing.” Mitchell eyes the salad he assembles with skepticism.

“Will you get out there and keep Lam company?” Colonel Carter stirs her doomed cookies. “Send Daniel back in here.”

“Jackson’s, like, top-tier company,” Mitchell says weakly. “Can’t swap him out for an inferior product.”

“Get in there,” Colonel Carter demands. “Before we all come down with a memory-obliterating virus and Daniel and Lam decide they’re married due to proximity?”

“So specific,” Vala says, with a mischievous tilt of her head.

“Oh!” Mitchell closes his eyes. “Wait—don’t tell me. I know this one.”

Teal’c raises an eyebrow.

“P2Q-463,” Mitchell says, eyes still shut. “Um, Vyus. Ke’ra. Destroyer of Worlds.”

“Congratulations, nerd.” Carter points at the door. “Go.”

“Hey. Who you callin’ ‘nerd’, nerd?”

“That actually happened?” Vala steals a strawberry from the bowl next to Mitchell and pops it in her mouth.

“Indeed,” Teal’c confirms.

“No,” Carter says.

“You can’t just leave it there, muscles,” Vala says, her mouth full of strawberry.

“I believe I can,” Teal’c replies.

He does not wish to think of Linea, Destroyer of Worlds, but even less does he want to think of Ke’ra, whose hair was long and curled and golden, whose mind was a drape of clean linen over the evil of her past. Ke’ra, whom Daniel Jackson had saved from the destruction she deserved because he could not save his wife.

Even now, six years on, worlds away, in the sun-filled kitchen of a Tau’ri woman of uncommon honor, Teal’c cannot banish the face of Sha’re from his mind.

He slices through cilantro, allowing the fresh smell of the herb to remind him of Ro’tal, of the way the vine curls around the roots of the great trees on Chulak. The way it had curled before he was born. The way it will still curl, after he dies.

“Go.” Colonel Carter’s voice carries only a hint of the irritation Teal’c sees in the set of her shoulders. “Tell Daniel I need him, and don’t come back to this kitchen until we call you.”

“Touchy,” Vala whispers to Teal’c.

Teal’c doesn’t reply. He guards Colonel Carter’s heart like he would guard his own.

“But,” Mitchell begins, “as I think I explained—”

“Man up already,” Carter says, “and go offer Lam some strawberries.”

“Beautiful,” Vala begins, “I can take over dessert preparation if—”

Teal’c places a hand on Vala’s shoulder, and, wisely, she stops speaking.

Carter shoves the bowl of strawberries at Mitchell. She turns back to her bowl of batter, stirring with muscular determination that must be painful, given her recent injuries.

“Sam?” Mitchell says.

Colonel Carter, unable to lock away her grief, doesn’t look at him.

“Sam,” Mitchell says again, mystified.

“What you need,” Vala says, abandoning her clipboard to take Mitchell’s strawberries, “is a wing-woman.”

“No,” Mitchell replies, “no, I don’t think I need that.”

Before Mitchell mounts a defense, Vala takes the elbow he didn’t offer and leads him through the door, strawberries in hand.

The kitchen is silent.

Teal’c stands at his station, watching the set of Colonel Carter’s shoulders.

“Vala’s great,” she says thickly. “Don’t you think?”

Teal’c inclines his head.

Colonel Carter turns. She looks at him with red-rimmed eyes. A tear falls into the bowl she holds.

“Your thoughts are of Janet Frasier,” Teal’c says.

She nods, wipes her tears with the back of a batter-smeared hand.

“As are mine,” Teal’c admits.

On Chulak, healers were rare. There was little need for such a profession, as Jaffa were kept whole and hale by the alien symbiotes they carried. Those with healing instincts served as lesser priests, praying or pleading for intercession to whatever false god had branded them.

Janet Frasier had waged countless battles for Teal’c own life, fire in her eyes, stone in her voice, pulling him from the teeth of death season after season, year after year.

“Janet would approve.” Daniel Jackson stands before the closed door of the kitchen as though he’s walked through solid wood. He watches them, his eyes the color of long frozen ice, deep in the glacial crevasses of Chulak. There is awareness in his gaze, in his stance, in the lines of his shoulders and his arms, which are wrapped around his chest.

Colonel Carter cannot bear the look he gives her. She turns away, hides her face.

“All the same,” Daniel Jackson continues, “We shouldn’t have let Mitchell talk us into this.”

As Teal’c looks at Colonel Carter, he agrees. He imagines her endless hours in the base infirmary, looking for Janet Frasier by habit, recalling over and over that she would not come again.

“He didn’t know,” Carter whispers. “He had no idea we did it for Janet.” She shrugs weakly. Attempts a smile. “Before his time.”

Daniel Jackson’s silence pulls on the space between the three of them, like a thing formidable, like the Hook and the Staff, like the Glacier of Whispers, where Jaffa speak to themselves or risk madness in quiet, endless air.

Carter bows her head, one hand pressed to her mouth.

“We honor her memory in doing this,” Teal’c offers.

His friends look at him.

“Yes.” Daniel Jackson agrees, “but that doesn’t make it easier.” His eyes are rimmed with red. He smiles, sad and small, using his own grief to soothe the raw edges of Colonel Carter’s. Of Teal’c’s own.

In the days after the Jaffa High Council fell to Gerak, in the days after Gerak fell to the Ori, Teal’c had resolved to learn something of Daniel Jackson’s skill. Perhaps, if he’d possessed even a fraction of it, Gerak would never have fallen. But, more than that—

Life is full of grief, and Teal’c worries Daniel Jackson may not always be present to level the ridges of their sorrow.

Teal’c crosses the kitchen and gently draws the bowl from Carter’s hands. She allows it. He places it on the counter. Wordlessly, he touches her shoulder. He would embrace her, if her chest were not held together by steel wire and slow-knitting bone.

Daniel Jackson clears his throat. “Now we’ve dispatched the newbies to the living room where they belong,” he says, “it’s time to make this thing come together.”

“There is, indeed, ish to be accomplished,” Teal’c agrees.

Colonel Carter laughs, watery and small. “Did you just say ‘ish’?” She pulls baking pans, marred by scorch marks, from a tote bag on the floor.

“Is this not an appropriate term to refer to articles or tasks of indeterminate kind?” Teal’c stirs the glue-like batter. He finds the going difficult.

“Kinda,” Daniel Jackson inspects the salad, then begins to slice carrot. “Mitchell has some verbal quirks.”

Teal’c gives the cookie batter a forceful turn and snaps the handle of the wooden spoon.

“Oh gosh,” Colonel Carter says, in understated dismay.

Daniel Jackson looks away, most assuredly trying not to smile and most assuredly failing.

“This spoon is defective,” Teal’c informs his teammates.

“Well yeah, now it is.” Colonel Carter looks at the batter. “These are gonna be terrible.”

“You have many skills,” Teal’c says. He does not add that baking is not one of those skills.

“Thanks, Teal’c.” Carter regards the broken spoon glumly.

“Hang on,” Daniel Jackson says. “I can fix this.”

“Can you?” Carter asks. “Since when?”

“Well, okay, I can’t fix it, but I know a guy.” Daniel Jackson pulls out his phone, navigating a shattered touchscreen with speed and surety.

“You’re calling someone about cookies?” Carter asks. “Who are you?”

Daniel Jackson smiles. “A peaceful explorer.” He presses his shattered phone to his ear.

Teal’c uses the broken handle of the spoon to excavate its trapped lower half.

“I think it needs water?” Carter suggests.

Jackson sighs, then speaks, leaving a message. “Hi Nick, it’s Daniel. I’m calling with an urgent culinary question. I’ve got a batch of cookies headed down a dark road. Your neighbor says you’re good with this kind of thing? Call me.”

“You did NOT call a Fields Medalist about my cookies, did you?” Carter asks. “Please say no. Please tell me it’s some other ‘Nick’. Not Nick Rush…right?”

Daniel Jackson looks amused. “You’d have won about five Nobel prizes at this point if they’d ever let you publish anything. He should be honored to help with your cookies.”

“Having met him,” Teal’c offers, “I’m not certain this will be the case.”

“Yeah. I said he should be honored. He’ll probably be annoyed.”

“Daniel!” Colonel Carter wails. “I want to meet this guy. I want to talk about computational complexity theory. Not cookies. Am I a baker? No. I’m a physicist. I don’t want him judging me for my—”

Daniel Jackson’s phone rings. “Oh perfect,” he says, with evident satisfaction.

“Daniel,” Carter hisses.

“Hi Nick,” Daniel Jackson says. “Thanks for calling back.”

Carter gives Teal’c an imploring look.

Teal’c inclines his head in acknowledgement, blinks deliberately, and offers Colonel Carter his most serene confidence.

“Yeah,” the archeologist says, “Teal’c and I are ruining cookies. We need advice.”

Carter sighs in dramatic relief. Her anxiety is endearing and perplexing, given her intergalactic status as the Tau’ri’s most preeminent scientist, a capable and cunning warrior in her own right.

“The batter’s, uh, really thick,” Daniel Jackson explains, watching Teal’c dig around the contours of the wooden spoon with its broken handle, chiseling at an unyielding block of dough. “Less like ‘batter’, more like cement.”

Carter tosses the completed salad and watches Teal’c’s progress.

“No, when I say ‘cement,’ I mean cement. We snapped a wooden spoon trying to stir it.”

Teal’c emerges, victorious, with the lost portion of the spoon.

“You want evidence?” Daniel Jackson asks. “I’ll send a picture.”

Vala reenters the kitchen in a satisfied sweep of door and hair.

“How’s it going?” Colonel Carter glances in the direction of the dining room.

Vala winks at her, and flashes an ‘okay’ sign.

“He says ‘add liquid and maybe oil?’” Daniel Jackson says. “And don’t stir with a spoon.”

Teal’c looks dubiously between the bowl in his hands and the kitchen sink.

“I said that,” Colonel Carter replies, indignant. “Well, part of it. But you can’t add water indiscriminately, you have to—”

“I’m getting some pushback here. How much water?” Daniel Jackson asks.

Vala walks past Teal’c, swiping the bowl from his hands on her way to the sink. Teal’c makes no effort to hang onto it. Daniel Jackson is, perhaps, so distracted by Vala’s appropriation of the batter, he does not react when she pulls his phone out of his hand as she passes.

“Hello, gorgeous.” Vala turns on the water with an elbow and pins the phone between her ear and shoulder. “How are you today?”

“What just happened?” Daniel Jackson asks. “I was—did she—how did she know—”

Vala Mal Doran. Teal’c is sure she’ll be an excellent addition to SG-1.

“Why thank you, gorgeous, I think so too.” Vala sets the bowl aside as she washes her hands. “I wanted to buy ramps, but unfortunately this isn’t the season for locally grown ramps. I’m not sure if ramps grow in Colorado Springs. Do you know?” Her back to them, she digs her hands into the batter, incorporating a splash of water and cooking oil. “You should make more of an effort to blend in with the locals,” she advises. “You know what I mean. Less math, more drinking. Less sarcasm, more do-gooding. Fewer dress shirts, more firearms.”

“Less math?” Colonel Carter says in an affronted whisper.

“More firearms?” Daniel Jackson echoes soundlessly.

Teal’c decides that rather than stay here, watching Vala rescue Colonel Carter’s cookies, he will transfer the completed salad to the dining room. 

He exits the kitchen carrying the salad bowl and finds Dr. Lam and Colonel Mitchell seated at the table.

“—the mutation rate of the Origin virus was unbelievably high,” Dr. Lam says, “and we tracked that down to a high degree of promiscuity in the viral reverse polymerase.”

“Ah,” Mitchell says.

“That property turned out to be temperature dependent,” Lam continues, “and so I’m wondering if we could slow down the rate of mutation by keeping victims in a cold environment. That creates its own problems though, and it’s not a population-level solution. Bottom line, colonel, if the Ori turn their viral plague in our direction again, I’m not sure the outcome would be any better than last time.”

“Do you think there could be any connection between the plague engineered by the Ori and the plague that wiped out the Ancients?” Mitchell asks.

Teal’c, half turned in the direction the of kitchen, stops. He turns back.

Mitchell meets Teal’c’s eyes and shrugs.

“Maybe,” Dr. Lam says. “What makes you ask?”

Mitchell shrugs. “They were one people before they went their separate ways.”

“I’ll run a phylogenetic analysis on every sequence we have of both viruses,” Lam says. “There’s no point in speculating until then. But—it’s a good thought.”

Privately, Teal’c agrees.

Mitchell looks up at Teal’c. “How we comin’ with the Chel’mek? Y’all need help?”

“No,” Teal’c replies, “you have been barred from the kitchen.”

Mitchell sputters. “I’ve been what now?”

“Harsh.”  Dr. Lam smiles.

Teal’c inclines his head with a faint smile.

“You guys don’t mess around,” Dr. Lam observes.

“Some would say that’s all we do.” Mitchell’s tone is rueful, and his gaze flicks toward the closed kitchen door.

“They’d be wrong,” Dr. Lam says, short and final.

Like Janet Frasier before her, Carolyn Lam bears a warrior’s heart.

Teal’c has posed the question often to himself: if he were born of the Tau’ri and not the Jaffa, if he’d never heard of Apophis or Ra or Amaunet, what would he have chosen to do?

Perhaps he’d have been a physicist, like Colonel Carter, or a scholar, like Daniel Jackson. Perhaps he would have designed structures that dwarfed the primitive blockishness of Goa’uld temples, not in size, but in intricacy, that soared through space with minimal bounding and limited ties to the earth. Or, perhaps, he would have walked the path that Dr. Lam and Dr. Frasier chose—to fight death in a literal way. Moment by moment. Action by action.

He likes the thought.

He’s a born warrior and has no regrets about the path his life has taken. And, in a way, does he not act as physician to the Jaffa Nation? Battling against poison, infection, corruption?

And, always, there had been a kinship between him and Janet Frasier.

His mind, turned broad with speculation, suggests a solution to the problem of low sodium Chel’mek.

Teal’c returns to the kitchen.

Just inside the door, he stops.

Vala stands before the window, a dark profile against the light of the afternoon. One hand holds Daniel Jackson’s phone, the other a spoon that she uses to portion batter onto a baking sheet. She looks at green lawn and blue sky and speaks of hard to find items in Tau’ri supermarkets, like she’s native to this world.

Daniel Jackson watches her.

Daniel Jackson watches her with an expression Teal’c recognizes. His eyes, afire and unmasked, burn with savage compassion.

Teal’c imagines it to be a difficult thing—to be the beloved of a man who spends his life challenging every god he meets.

Perhaps Vala will not choose that road.

Perhaps, if she chooses it, she will survive it.

Daniel Jackson sees Teal’c and smiles, diminishing again to a human of the Tau’ri—to Teal’c’s friend who talks too much and relies on coffee, who is there for Colonel Carter when she needs him, who speaks in support of offworlders who wish to join the ranks of the SGC, and who baits Colonel Mitchell because he misses O’Neill’s irascible patience as much as Teal’c does.

Teal’c steps to his station, settles himself, and bends over the Chel’mek.

Janet Frasier of Norfolk Virginia, he thinks, as he creates a depression in the center of the dip, it is to honor your memory that I prepare this dish. He deposits crushed cilantro, fragrant and green, into the depression he’s made. He places two individual Dorito chips into a mortar and begins to grind.

In the corner of his eye, he imagines he sees her: small of stature, in summer weekend flip-flops, the flyaway wisps of her hair shining in the sun.

Watch over your successor, he thinks, as the Dorito dust turns fine and red. She will have need of your strength and spirit.

His eyes burn, recalling her funeral. Inspired by the Jaffa tradition of reading the names of warrior’s battles, fought and won, he’d suggested Colonel Carter read the names of the people she’d saved. She would have approved, he is certain.

She approves now. He’s certain of that too.

Slow is smooth. Beneath Vala’s bright chatter, Teal’c can almost hear the doctor’s spirit speak the words. Smooth is fast.

Slowly, smoothly, as though Janet Frasier truly watches, Teal’c gathers the red dust between his fingertips. He lets it fall on the pale ring of the dip, creating a border of stylized flame.

Daniel Jackson comes to stand at his shoulder. He offers Teal’c a cocktail crafted by Vala, then takes a sip of his own. Together, they study Teal’c’s effort.

“Beautiful,” Daniel Jackson decides, drinking bourbon and salt.

“It is,” Teal’c agrees.

“There’s more to fire than—” Daniel Jackson eyes the bag of Doritos, “—Blazin’ Jalapeño.”

“Indeed.” Teal’c lifts the bowl and carries it out of the kitchen.