The Tollan ring sat in my palm at 1601 in the Newport Avenue kitchen pantry where I had taken it after Walter had handed it to me at 1547 in the dress uniform he had pressed himself.
The ring was the simple band Narim's craftspeople had finished at 1430 that morning — Tollan-grade alloy, no stone, the inner curve smooth against the thumb. I turned it under the pantry's small overhead bulb. The inscription on the inner band caught the bulb's light at the angle I had not seen the inscription at before because Narim's courier had delivered the box on day one hundred five with the inscription pre-finished but I had not opened the box past the verification glance.
The script was Tollan formal, the kind used on civic registers and on the inner band of marriage rings — Narim had selected the register without asking me. The translation surfaced in my interior at the back of my skull in AURORA-7's cool register at 1601:14.
For the marriage that the ledger does not measure.
I held the ring in my palm.
I had not asked Narim for an inscription.
Narim had decided.
The decision was a Tollan gift. The Tollan-gift register meant we have looked at you and made a choice on your behalf and the choice is in the ring whether you accept it or not. Narim had owed me a personal-tier favor since the courier-rotation work at day fifty. He had spent the favor on the inscription.
I closed my hand around the ring at 1603.
Walter would hold it at the ceremony.
Cassandra walked Janet down at 1611:24.
The aisle was the hallway between the living room and the kitchen — six steps, the brass plate on the kitchen door that Cassandra had polished with Janet two evenings ago, the small carpet runner Janet had picked because the wood floor's grain ran wrong for the aisle's photograph angle. Cassandra in a dress she had bought herself with money she had earned tutoring two younger students at the high school's after-school program. Janet in a dress she had chosen at a department store in Colorado Springs at 1100 hours on day one hundred nineteen with Cassandra beside her and not a wedding dress in any conventional sense — a deep blue, knee-length, the kind of dress a doctor wore to a function where the function would last four hours and the doctor would have to be a doctor again at the end of it.
They reached the threshold at 1612.
Cassandra's hand was on Janet's elbow. Janet's hand was on Cassandra's arm. Both hands steady.
At the threshold Cassandra turned to Janet and said the line she had been holding since she had taken Janet's elbow at the staircase three minutes ago.
"Mom. He's good."
Four words.
Janet's eyes found me at 1612:18.
The line carried in her eyes the way Cassandra had built it to carry.
Hammond, in his formal-military officiation register at the head of the small assembly, did not move during the four-second pause Cassandra had built into the threshold. He waited. Cassandra released Janet's elbow at 1612:22. Janet took the last step to me at 1612:30. Her hand found mine. The hand did not press.
"Mr. Ramsey," Hammond said at 1614. "Dr. Fraiser. We are here to witness."
He read the ceremony in the formal-military register. The register was older than I was. He had used the register in 1991 at his daughter's wedding and again on day forty-one at the joint Tok'ra observation accord, and the register knew how to carry a small assembly through six minutes of statement without flourish.
Hammond reached the vow exchange at 1622.
"Mr. Ramsey, do you take this woman, knowing all that you know of cost and ledger and the work you carry, to be your wife."
The line was not the standard SGC officiation line. Hammond had written it for me. He had written it knowing what Janet had been doing in the SRD office at 0626 on day one hundred seventeen and what I had been doing at the territory map and what we had been doing at the kitchen at 2347 on day one hundred fifteen. The line was Hammond's witness register entered into the ceremonial record.
"I do."
The signature went down clean at 1622:14.
Janet's vow followed at 1624.
She had written hers herself. She read it from the small folded paper she had been holding in her left hand since 1612:30. The paper was the back of a triage intake form she had drafted on Day 118 and folded into thirds.
"Drew. I take you. Knowing the math you carry, knowing the ledger you keep, knowing the cost the work has put on your interior and the cost the work will continue to put on you for as long as you are doing it. I do, Drew, and the math is clean."
The line landed.
Sam, at the maid-of-honor station beside Janet, did not flinch.
Walter, at the small lectern with both rings, did not look up. Walter's eye-contact with the kitchen tile at 1626:08 was the chapter's most loaded micro-beat and the room did not catch it.
Jack handed me the Tollan ring at 1626:14.
I slid it onto Janet's finger. The ring found its seat against her hand. The inscription was inside, against her skin. She did not yet know the inscription. The showing was deferred.
Janet handed me her birth-mother's gold band at 1628:08.
Cassandra had held the band since age twelve when Janet had given it to her in the kitchen on a Saturday morning Janet did not talk about. Cassandra had handed it to Janet at 1547 today in the bedroom upstairs. Janet had held it through the procession down the staircase. She slid it onto my finger at 1628:08. The band found its seat. Cassandra at the maid-of-honor side held her breath for nine seconds and let it out.
Hammond pronounced us at 1629.
I kissed Janet. The kiss was small, brief, the registered-on-record kiss two people exchanged at a ceremony that had been about three other registers more than it had been about romance. Janet's eyes were dry. Mine were dry. The room exhaled.
At 1631 Cassandra placed her hand on my shoulder during the recessional at the kitchen door. The contact was four seconds. She withdrew. AURORA-7 catalogued the contact at the back of my skull in the same register she had catalogued Hammond's hand on the wall at the memorial.
At 1633 Daniel adjusted his glasses for the second time at the back of the room. The luminescent flicker at his left index finger lasted half a second. I did not see it. AURORA-7 catalogued it at the back of my skull at 1633:08 with a single tag I did not yet have language for.
Bra'tac, in the formal Jaffa dress he had arrived in at 1604, leaned to Teal'c at 1604:18 and said, in the Jaffa formal register that did not require translation in my interior because AURORA-7 routed the Jaffa-formal directly to her cool register: "I will speak with the consultant tomorrow."
Teal'c nodded.
I did not hear the line through the room's ambient noise. AURORA-7 filed it at 1604:24.
The after-reception in the Newport Avenue backyard ran from 1730 to 2230. Kawalsky brought the notebook of twenty-three names in his interior pocket and did not take it out. Siler kept the tie Jacob had loaned him at 1547 even though he had unbuttoned the top button of the coverall under it. Sam and Daniel spoke in the corner for eleven minutes without resolving the ethics question they had bracketed on day ninety-eight. Thor's hologram held motionless at the back kitchen wall for the duration. Rothman with ATHENA-3's ceremonial holographic presence stood by the punch bowl and ATHENA-3 spoke once at 1812 in the cool register I had not heard from her before — "Director, this is what survival looks like" — and Rothman did not flinch.
The last guests left at 2231.
Janet went upstairs at 2247 with Cassandra to review the final draft of the Diocletian assignment.
I was at the kitchen table at 2347 with the World's Okayest Consultant mug at my right hand, empty, Walter's note in my inside pocket, and the gold band on my finger.
The note was three words on a Cheyenne Mountain personnel slip in Walter's small even printing:
Yours, sir, congratulations.
The signature was Master Sergeant Walter S. Harriman.
It was the first formal-register written note Walter had ever given me.
I had been carrying it for nine hours.
Drew.
AURORA-7's voice at 2349:18.
The register was the cool register. No preamble. No comfort. No acknowledgment of the day.
Coded subspace alert. Source unknown. Signature partial-match to no known Goa'uld signature in SGC archive. Match coefficient zero point three one to one theoretical reference in ATHENA-3's secondary partition. The match is preliminary. I will not name the reference signature until coefficient exceeds zero point seven. Alert tier two.
I held still at the table.
I counted four seconds.
"Acknowledged."
The signature glyph surfaced in my peripheral interior at 2349:34. I did not turn to look at it. The glyph held at the lower-right of my visual field. The shape was nothing I had seen. The shape was the shape of something AURORA-7 could not anchor.
I waited.
Janet's footsteps on the stairs came at 2351:18.
She paused on the bottom step at 2351:20. She came around the corner into the kitchen at 2351:22. She had changed out of the blue dress into one of my Cheyenne Mountain t-shirts. Her hair was down. The Tollan ring caught the under-cabinet light at the angle Narim's craftspeople had built the inner inscription to be invisible at.
She did not ask what I had been thinking about for the last four minutes.
She came to the table. She sat. She put her left hand on the table beside mine.
The gold band on my finger and the Tollan ring on hers caught the same light at the same angle.
I did not speak.
She did not ask.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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