Fic: 'Falling Back to Earth' (2/7)
Falling Back to Earth
Chapter Two
Sam is waiting in the hall for the rest of her newly formed team to get kitted, and she’s probably never felt more isolated than getting geared up in the tiny single women’s bathroom. Nice, clear, loud signal there. This facility seems unprepared for its new incarnation on a multitude of levels and she tries not to take that as a bad sign. After all, she doesn’t believe in signs.
Kawalsky and Ferretti appear, and she pushes off the wall to join them, shouldering her pack. They both give her solemn little nods, which would be more believable if they didn’t follow up with giving each other meaningful glances. They think Jack was fighting her place on the team, trying to get rid of her, and she supposes that is still better than the truth.
She bites down on her tongue and refuses to let any of the choice retorts rising in her mind escape.
Meanwhile, Jack has stepped out into the hall, glancing between the three of them.
Kawalsky and Ferretti try to look innocent and take off down the hall. Sam moves to follow them, but Jack stops her.
“Captain,” he says, reaching out to touch her arm only to draw his hand back, his fingers contracting into a fist.
She turns. “Sir?”
She doesn’t miss his wince and she wonders how long it’s going to be like this, walking on eggshells, thinking through every action and word three times before committing them.
She watches Jack transform before her eyes, expression becoming bland and cut off, and suddenly he’s the epitome of the tough guy Colonel. God does it hurt to see.
“There’s just one thing I wanted to discuss, Captain,” he says, business-like and almost detached.
She stiffens, bracing for his reincarnation as every other gung-ho CO ass she’s ever had to deal with. She really hopes this isn’t going to be some reminder that she actually has to do what he says now, like she’s not capable of understanding basic chain of command.
Unfortunately, this commander has also learned to read her rather well and raises a finger as if to stop her internal raging. “Hey,” he says. “Right there, that’s what I’m talking about. You need to quit it with this machismo crap.”
She stares back at him in complete horror. “Excuse me?” She thinks she manages to sound fairly in control and not at all like she’s considering decking him. Most of all though, she hates the disappointment welling in her stomach, the realization that maybe he really isn’t any different after all.
To her surprise, Jack’s face softens. “Look, I know you’ve gotten a lot of shit over the years, but I’m not West. Or Jonas. You have nothing to prove. You wouldn’t be on this mission if you hadn’t earned it just like the rest of us.”
This is pretty much the last thing she expects to hear, but that’s Jack, always throwing her curve balls when least expected. She feels her shoulders relax, and she’s beginning to get her first glimpse of what must make him an outstanding CO. He pretends to be dumb as dirt to amuse himself, but he gets people.
“Just do your job and let the stupid stuff go. Don’t let these boneheads get to you,” he says, gesturing in the direction the rest of their team has disappeared into. “They’re good guys. It just might take them a bit to get used to you.”
“Get used to me?” she repeats. She hates the idea of anyone needing to adjust to her presence.
“Hey, I know it isn’t fair. You’re just…” He waves at her body as vaguely as possible, as if scared to actually look at her too closely.
“A woman?” she asks curtly.
There’s a crack in his façade for a moment, the flash of an intimate, foolish grin that seems to say, ‘Oh, believe me, I’ve noticed,’ before he clears his throat, his eyes snapping away from her.
“Attractive,” he says, like he’s searched for the most neutral term in the universe to describe her. “You kind of make their brains mushy.”
She’d find this hilarious if it weren’t so damn painful. “Okay,” she says, wanting to let him off the hook and get this conversation over as soon as possible.
But despite what it might feel like, Jack probably hadn’t started this conversation just to torture either of them, and seems to want his material point understood. “I can’t have you doing unpredictable things just to prove you’re as strong and badass as the boys. You get that, right?”
She feels her face color as she remembers her less-than-professional verbal sparring with Kawalsky and Ferretti in the briefing. She’d just already been stretched so damn thin that she couldn’t deal with their crap on top of everything else. But she can’t afford to bring any of that into the mission-it’s too dangerous. That’s what Jack is reminding her. He’s trying to protect the team as much as her.
“I get it,” she promises.
“Yeah?” he asks, giving her a critical look.
She squares her shoulders. “Yes.”
He seems appeased, nodding his head. “Okay.” His eyes dart across her face and for a second she thinks he’s going to say something, reach out and touch her, but then just as quickly it’s gone. He jerks his head down the hallway. “Lets go do this mission.”
“Yes, sir,” she says, trying to work up the wonder that she knows is in her somewhere, beneath all this fallout. Today she is finally stepping through the Stargate. It’s something.
Maybe it can be everything.
They start walking down the hallway. “Besides,” Jack says. “You should have seen the shit they gave Daniel.”
Despite herself, she smiles.
* * *
Jack watches the gate grind its way into life, far more unsettled by this second trip than he’d been by the first. He tells himself he just misses Daniel’s obnoxious sneezing.
Right.
Sam is standing a few paces behind, and it’s weirder than it should be to see her fully kitted, helmet in place, pack on her back, and all of it handled with ease and obvious competence. She’s as much military as he is, but this is the part of their lives that never intersected, were never meant to overlap. Since they got together, he’s just been the retired, grouchy ass, and he thinks it must be weird for her too.
All of which he really should not be thinking about, and not for the first time, he wonders if Hammond is out of his fucking mind. But when Jack’s choice is between Abydos getting nuked and following Hammond’s sadistic rules, it’s not really a decision.
The gate swooshes into life and Jack finds himself instinctively looking to Sam, wanting to see her reaction to the thing she has yearned for for so damn long. She’s every bit as enthralled as he expects. He forces himself to look away.
Glancing up at the control room, Jack sees Hammond nod, giving his team the go ahead. “All right,” Jack says, waving Ferretti and Kawalsky up the ramp. “Let’s get moving.”
Ferretti and Kawalsky disappear into the puddle, Sam keeping pace with Jack as he steps forward. She pauses in front of the wormhole next to him, staring back at it with wide-eyed wonder.
Far too conscious of Hammond’s eyes on them, Jack gives her a curt, “Captain,” to get her to go through.
She darts a glance at him, looking embarrassed to be caught out like a curious kid. Damn does he just want to stand here and let her take her time, maybe tease her about it. He thinks shoving her through might just be worth the grilling she’d give him.
He bites down on the impulse and jerks his head to indicate she should go.
She nods, her hands tightening on her weapon and face wiping clean before she steps through.
She’s heaving off to the side of the gate when he makes it through, but she’s still got her weapon up and ready and one eye on their surroundings even as she’s green around the gills. Kawalsky and Ferretti are busy securing the perimeter. Jack swallows his own nausea from the rocky ride, stepping forward into the chamber.
From the look of the place, it’s been abandoned in haste very recently, a fire still lit in the middle of the room, flickering brightly against the warm yellow walls.
Jack steps a short distance into the room, and a kid with a weapon pops out. Jack lifts his weapon with one hand, the other held out flat palmed towards the kid. “Whoa there,” he says. “Any chance Daniel is around?”
The kid ticks his head to one side, and Jack thinks ‘Daniel’ may be the only word he understood.
Then the man himself appears around a corner. “Jack,” he says, waving for the kid to lower his weapon. “Hey.”
“Expecting trouble?” Jack asks, his eyes darting back towards the kid.
“Just being cautious,” Daniel says, voice slow and contemplative like he’s working something through. Some things just don’t change it seems.
Jack sees another few faces peer out from hiding places. Daniel gestures for them all to come forward and the next thing Jack knows they are all being swarmed by warm greetings. Kawalsky and Ferretti are introducing Sam around as they find old friends in the crowd, so Jack is free to focus on the familiar, dark haired kid holding out a lighter to him.
“Nah,” Jack says to the boy, refusing to take back the gift. “I took your advice and quit.”
Skaara’s grin is impossibly large and Jack gives in to the impulse to give the kid a giant bear hug. Pulling back, he catches Sam watching him, their eyes connecting for just a moment before she smiles and looks away.
Jack turns to Sha’re next, who has materialized by Daniel’s side. “Sha’re,” Jack says. “Nice to see you again.”
“And you as well, O’Neill,” she returns in lilting, nearly perfect English. Daniel has clearly been busy. Come to think of it, Jack hears a lot of English rattling around the chamber.
“So what brings you here?” Daniel asks, one arm wrapped around Sha’re.
Right, the mission. “It’s a bit of a tale,” Jack says.
“Then you should sit,” Sha’re says, taking control of them all and settling them around the fire. “And we will gladly hear it.”
As a sandstorm sweeps up outside the temple, they all sit and let Sha’re feed them while Jack fills Daniel in on the unexpected appearance of Ra’s evil twin on Earth.
Jack carefully hasn’t sat next to Sam, leaving her wedged between one of the Abydonian kids staring at her like she’s the first woman dressed in pants he’s ever seen, and Kawalsky, who seems to be finally warming up to her some.
After a while, Daniel and the Abydonians start in on tales about things on Abydos since they left, and Jack’s attention begins to wander. It’s clear that whoever that glowing eyed alien had been, he did not come from here. Which means he won’t have to blow up their gate. Small favors. He tries to use the time to focus on compartmentalizing, because all this sitting around isn’t doing wonders for his mindset. Especially since Sam keeps laughing at the antics around her. It’s distracting. And not just because he’s not the one making her laugh.
God. This whole thing is completely screwed.
He wishes Sam had just taken her out with Hammond, claimed they were no longer involved, that she’d gladly trade him for the mission. Selfish, maybe, but it’s a hell of a lot more galling, knowing she would have screwed it all to be with him if it had been her choice, knowing that this thing had come to mean more to her as well. All but her oaths, the direct order that makes all of that incidental anyway. So why couldn’t she just have taken the out and left him with the comforting illusion that the gate meant more to her anyway?
He just wishes he didn’t have to know.
“Jack.”
He looks up to find Daniel regarding him like maybe this isn’t the first time he called his name. “Yeah?”
“You okay?” he asks, squinting down at Jack in that annoying way of his he has that means he’s seeing a lot more than Jack likes.
“Fine,” Jack says, making his voice brusque. Giving Daniel even an inch to work with is always a bad idea.
Daniel gives him a wry, twisted little smile. “Whatever you say, Jack.” He hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “The sandstorm’s died down. I wanted to show you something that might give you the answers you’re looking for.”
“Sure,” Jack says, gratefully pushing to his feet, wanting to be doing anything other than sitting and thinking.
Daniel glances back at Sam. “Wouldn’t your Dr. Captain want to see this?”
She would. Hell, she’s probably the only one who will be able to make sense of whatever the hell Daniel is showing him, but he just can’t. He needs a little space if he’s going to get through this.
“Kawalsky,” he calls out. “Keep an eye on the place. I’ll be back in twenty.”
“Sure thing, Colonel,” Kawalsky shoots back.
Jack doesn’t linger to see Sam’s reaction.
* * *
Sam watches Jack leave the temple with Dr. Jackson.
She’s not exactly surprised that he’s left her behind rather than including her in Dr. Jackson’s show and tell. She’s been watching the tension ratchet up in Jack’s shoulders from the corner of her eye for a good hour now.
She tells herself that all he needs is a little space. She tries to believe that herself.
Neither of them is going to fall apart because of this, she reminds herself. They’ve survived without each other before. They can do it again.
There was a time, somewhere around the five-month mark of this thing between them, when they both had a major loss of faith. She’d been convinced that he was using her as a life preserver and the pressure of being his suicide-recovery sponsor was way too much. Maybe he’d worried about that too, or maybe he had never really been convinced he wasn’t anything more to her than a rebound fix-it project.
They hadn’t talked about any of that though. It was one of their many, many unspoken rules. Like not asking where this was going, or where they’d been. The future was almost as carefully off limits as the past. So he became prone to long brooding periods that drove her up the wall, and she returned the favor by being prickly as all hell and eventually everything just…fell apart.
They didn’t see each other for nearly a month. That was when Jack bought his house outside the city-though honestly ‘house’ is a bit of an exaggeration. More like ‘shack’. But he spent the month building that thing back up from the baseboards and staring at the sky through his telescope. She’d thrown herself back into her work. Maybe it wasn’t the Stargate, but it was her career, and she needed to get past that disappointment.
And so a month passed.
When he finally broke their long silence, he had sounded calm and settled on the other end of the phone and not at all like he’d crumbled on his own. Not anymore than she had.
They didn’t need each other. Nothing so desperate.
But she missed him. And apparently he wanted to be with her, not just cling to her.
“You never asked me why,” he’d said that day on the phone.
He didn’t have to elaborate; she knew what he meant. Why had he been willing to die out there on Abydos? But the real question was did she never ask because she didn’t think he’d tell her, or because she didn’t want to know?
She remembers taking a breath, making her decision. “I’d like to come out and see your place,” she’d said, “if that’s okay with you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think that would be good.”
She’d driven out and they’d talked, really talked, and by the end of the weekend, this thing had clearly transformed into something else entirely. No more unspoken rules, no more off-limit topics. Meaning that being on Abydos with him all this time later, she has a pretty clear picture of just how important these people are to him.
She wonders if it would have been a lot easier to let him go if they hadn’t had that break, if they hadn’t discovered this actually was a relationship and not merely grabbing onto the closest warm body.
Those doubts may have been just enough to take the sting out of this forcible separation.
Someone nudges Sam in the ribs, bringing her attention back to the present. She looks up with alarm to find Kawalsky sitting next to her, watching her closely. Dammit. She shouldn’t be letting her mind wander like this.
“Sir?” she asks, sitting up a little straighter, making sure her weapon is still within easy reach.
He spends a moment regarding her, and despite herself she tenses, preparing for something unpleasant.
His fingers tap against the butt of his weapon. “Here’s the thing, Captain,” he says, his expression hard like he’s bracing himself. “I honestly just don’t get it.”
Sam feels her mouth go dry. What the hell is he talking about? “Sir?”
Kawalsky presses his lips together. “Could you maybe just…explain the whole wormhole thing again?”
Sam lets out a breath and only now does she realize that he actually looks sheepish and uncertain, like he thinks she may just launch back at him with some scathing remark or lord it over him that she knows something he doesn’t. All of which is more than enough evidence that they have gotten off on the wrong foot.
Let the stupid stuff go.
Sam relaxes her shoulders. Smiling at him, she takes the olive branch he’s extending. “Of course, sir.” She glances across the plethora of food stacked up around them. “But I’m going to need a piece of fruit.”
Kawalsky lets out a surprised laugh. “If you say so,” he says and starts digging around the piles of food with her.
Sam has just finished her not-quite-an-apple as a representation of the galaxy spiel when the Stargate unexpectedly bursts into life behind them. Kawalsky is instantly on his feet, waving all the Abydonians to safety and ordering Sam and Ferretti into flanking positions by the gate.
She’s barely slipped into position when two giant figures completely covered in some sort of metal armor step through. Their heads are overly large and shaped like cobras, seemingly the very definition of threatening. She recognizes them from the descriptions in mission reports, and the ones in the morgue. Alien foot soldiers. Reaching the same conclusion, Kawalsky snaps off the order to fire.
They unleash on the figures, even as three more step through the wormhole behind them.
The bullets are just bouncing off them, and oh, what Sam wouldn’t do for some armor piercing ammunition right about now. She casts a critical eye over their armor, looking for any weakness and not finding any.
Across from her, Ferretti is getting backed into a corner.
“Shit,” she breathes. Stepping around a pillar, Sam circles behind the armored alien advancing on Ferretti, and there it is, what looks like a small soft spot at the back of the knees. Taking a breath, she aims and sinks two bullets in each joint, the soldier stumbling forward, giving Ferretti time to grab better cover.
The cost of the small victory is that another one of the soldiers has snuck up on her perpendicularly, grabbing her by the shoulder and slamming her back against the pillar. Stars explode in her vision as her head connects soundly with the stone surface. Stunned by the unexpected blow, she’s easily disarmed by the alien.
Sam breathes deeply, trying to clear her vision so she can counter whatever blow may be coming next. Instead, the snake hood drops open, revealing an all too human face, except for the large gold symbol embossed on his forehead. He stares down at her, then at his fallen comrade, and back again at her weapon he holds in his hand.
She takes advantage of his distraction to work one hand down towards her knife, pulling it free. He barely manages to parry the move in time, using her own weapon to knock the knife from her hand. He looks a little stunned, like he can’t believe she’s still fighting.
“What are you?” he asks and Sam is thrown by the question as much as the fact that it’s in English.
The one in the gold armor approaches them, giving her an appraising look, his finger prodding her cheek like he’s checking a horse for its pedigree. He says something in a language she doesn’t understand, but the look he gives her is universal enough to make her skin crawl.
Sam renews her struggles against the solid body holding her in place, but it’s no use.
The gold one lifts his hand, something like a ruby sitting in his palm. There’s a burst of light and agonizing pain, and then nothing.
* * *
Jack stares up at the towering golden walls covered in symbols, trying to get his mind wrapped around the fact that the Stargate doesn’t just go to Abydos. It explains where those snake men had come from, clears those gate room deaths from his conscious, but opens a much larger can of worms that Jack has a feeling will give him a nearly endless supply of headaches in the foreseeable future.
“Are you sure?” Jack asks again.
Daniel shrugs, looking up from his journal where he’s been transcribing what he calls ‘addresses’. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
Jack thinks Sam would know. It’s well past time he swallowed his stupid discomfort and utilized her skills like any commander in his right mind would.
“Okay,” Jack says, pulling his cap back in place. “I’m going to head back and get Captain Carter and-.”
Jack’s radio crackles, Kawalsky’s voice yelling, “Colonel, we’re--.” The words are swallowed by the sound of weapon’s fire and raised voices before falling ominously silent.
“What was that?” Daniel asks, but Jack is already sprinting out the door, something terrible twisting in his gut.
Inside the temple it’s a war zone, people moaning with pain, smoke and blood and the stench of burned flesh in the air.
“Sha’re!” Daniel yells as he catches up to Jack. He runs around the space, frantically pulling back draped cloth and peering into alcoves. “Sha’re!”
“I am here, Daniel,” she says, looking up from a boy she is tending near the base of the gate. She has a streak of blood across one cheek, a gun slung across her chest, but otherwise looks unharmed.
Daniel crosses over to her side, kneeling next to her. He pulls her into an embrace, and she leans back into it. “I am fine, Daniel,” she says, but her eyes are bright with tears, her hand unsteady on the boy’s chest.
“What happened?” Jack asks.
Sha’re glances at the Stargate. “Great beast-men like the ones who once served Ra. Four of them. And with them, a man of gold with the powers of Ra.” She lifts one hand as if to mimic a hand-device.
“Ra?” Jack repeats. That just can’t be true, unless Daniel was right and the Stargate goes more places than they thought, because he didn’t come from Earth. And if Ra wasn’t quite the last of his kind… Shit.
Sha’re reaches for Daniel’s robes, her fingers twisting in the fabric. “They took Skaara.”
Jack jerks, his eyes passing over the room, falling on Ferretti a short distance away. One of the Abydonians is holding a bloody rag to his arm.
“Ferretti,” Jack says, crossing over to him. The wound doesn’t look life threatening, but there is a hell of a lot of blood.
Jack needs to get the gate dialed. Hell, where is Kawalsky? Where is Sam? He reaches for his radio.
“They took them, sir,” Ferretti says, his fingers digging into Jack’s arm. “Kawalsky and Carter.”
Everything seems to slow. God, no.
“Where?” Jack asks. “Where did they take them? Did you see?”
Ferretti’s jaw flexes. “No, sir. I’m sorry.”
Jack thinks of the hundreds and hundreds of addresses Daniel showed him. How will they even know where to start?
Ferretti makes a sound of frustration. “I should have--.”
Jack cuts him off. “It’s okay, Major,” he forces himself to says, even if it’s a lie. Nothing is okay.
“I saw.”
Jack turns to see Sha’re standing over them. She holds Jack’s gaze with a blazing one of her own. She points to her eye and then at the dialing device. “I saw the symbols. I remember.”
“Daniel!” Jack shouts. “Open the gate to Earth, now.”
Daniel is still standing stunned next to Sha’re, but at Jack’s voice, seems galvanized into motion. “Right, of course,” he says.
Jack hefts Ferretti to his feet, moving towards the steps. “Daniel, you are coming back with us. No choice this time.”
Daniel’s head snaps around. “What? No, I can’t.”
Sha’re looks up from the DHD where she is copying down symbols into Daniel’s journal before she forgets. “Yes. You will return, Daniel,” she says. “And I will go with you.”
Daniel touches her arm. “Sha’re.”
She shakes her head, and she looks scared as hell, but steady. “He is my brother, and you are my husband. I go with you.”
“The gate has to be buried,” Daniel says, as if willing her to understand the risk they take by leaving today. “In case anyone else bad tries to come through.”
Sha’re swallows, looking back at her people. “So it will be.”
“You’re certain,” Daniel says, one hand lifting to her cheek.
Her chin lifts. “Yes.”
Daniel wanders out into the crowd of survivors, their hands reaching to touch any part of them. He’s giving them orders about burying the gate, and Sha’re simply stands and watches, her fingers clenching in the fabric of her robes.
She looks over at Jack. “We will find them, yes? My brother and your friends?”
Jack wants to say yes, to lie to both her and himself, but can’t find the words. She seems to understand that, her lips pressing together.
“They will be found,” she says, like there isn’t any other outcome possible.
God, Jack really hopes she’s right.
:: next::
Chapter Two
Sam is waiting in the hall for the rest of her newly formed team to get kitted, and she’s probably never felt more isolated than getting geared up in the tiny single women’s bathroom. Nice, clear, loud signal there. This facility seems unprepared for its new incarnation on a multitude of levels and she tries not to take that as a bad sign. After all, she doesn’t believe in signs.
Kawalsky and Ferretti appear, and she pushes off the wall to join them, shouldering her pack. They both give her solemn little nods, which would be more believable if they didn’t follow up with giving each other meaningful glances. They think Jack was fighting her place on the team, trying to get rid of her, and she supposes that is still better than the truth.
She bites down on her tongue and refuses to let any of the choice retorts rising in her mind escape.
Meanwhile, Jack has stepped out into the hall, glancing between the three of them.
Kawalsky and Ferretti try to look innocent and take off down the hall. Sam moves to follow them, but Jack stops her.
“Captain,” he says, reaching out to touch her arm only to draw his hand back, his fingers contracting into a fist.
She turns. “Sir?”
She doesn’t miss his wince and she wonders how long it’s going to be like this, walking on eggshells, thinking through every action and word three times before committing them.
She watches Jack transform before her eyes, expression becoming bland and cut off, and suddenly he’s the epitome of the tough guy Colonel. God does it hurt to see.
“There’s just one thing I wanted to discuss, Captain,” he says, business-like and almost detached.
She stiffens, bracing for his reincarnation as every other gung-ho CO ass she’s ever had to deal with. She really hopes this isn’t going to be some reminder that she actually has to do what he says now, like she’s not capable of understanding basic chain of command.
Unfortunately, this commander has also learned to read her rather well and raises a finger as if to stop her internal raging. “Hey,” he says. “Right there, that’s what I’m talking about. You need to quit it with this machismo crap.”
She stares back at him in complete horror. “Excuse me?” She thinks she manages to sound fairly in control and not at all like she’s considering decking him. Most of all though, she hates the disappointment welling in her stomach, the realization that maybe he really isn’t any different after all.
To her surprise, Jack’s face softens. “Look, I know you’ve gotten a lot of shit over the years, but I’m not West. Or Jonas. You have nothing to prove. You wouldn’t be on this mission if you hadn’t earned it just like the rest of us.”
This is pretty much the last thing she expects to hear, but that’s Jack, always throwing her curve balls when least expected. She feels her shoulders relax, and she’s beginning to get her first glimpse of what must make him an outstanding CO. He pretends to be dumb as dirt to amuse himself, but he gets people.
“Just do your job and let the stupid stuff go. Don’t let these boneheads get to you,” he says, gesturing in the direction the rest of their team has disappeared into. “They’re good guys. It just might take them a bit to get used to you.”
“Get used to me?” she repeats. She hates the idea of anyone needing to adjust to her presence.
“Hey, I know it isn’t fair. You’re just…” He waves at her body as vaguely as possible, as if scared to actually look at her too closely.
“A woman?” she asks curtly.
There’s a crack in his façade for a moment, the flash of an intimate, foolish grin that seems to say, ‘Oh, believe me, I’ve noticed,’ before he clears his throat, his eyes snapping away from her.
“Attractive,” he says, like he’s searched for the most neutral term in the universe to describe her. “You kind of make their brains mushy.”
She’d find this hilarious if it weren’t so damn painful. “Okay,” she says, wanting to let him off the hook and get this conversation over as soon as possible.
But despite what it might feel like, Jack probably hadn’t started this conversation just to torture either of them, and seems to want his material point understood. “I can’t have you doing unpredictable things just to prove you’re as strong and badass as the boys. You get that, right?”
She feels her face color as she remembers her less-than-professional verbal sparring with Kawalsky and Ferretti in the briefing. She’d just already been stretched so damn thin that she couldn’t deal with their crap on top of everything else. But she can’t afford to bring any of that into the mission-it’s too dangerous. That’s what Jack is reminding her. He’s trying to protect the team as much as her.
“I get it,” she promises.
“Yeah?” he asks, giving her a critical look.
She squares her shoulders. “Yes.”
He seems appeased, nodding his head. “Okay.” His eyes dart across her face and for a second she thinks he’s going to say something, reach out and touch her, but then just as quickly it’s gone. He jerks his head down the hallway. “Lets go do this mission.”
“Yes, sir,” she says, trying to work up the wonder that she knows is in her somewhere, beneath all this fallout. Today she is finally stepping through the Stargate. It’s something.
Maybe it can be everything.
They start walking down the hallway. “Besides,” Jack says. “You should have seen the shit they gave Daniel.”
Despite herself, she smiles.
* * *
Jack watches the gate grind its way into life, far more unsettled by this second trip than he’d been by the first. He tells himself he just misses Daniel’s obnoxious sneezing.
Right.
Sam is standing a few paces behind, and it’s weirder than it should be to see her fully kitted, helmet in place, pack on her back, and all of it handled with ease and obvious competence. She’s as much military as he is, but this is the part of their lives that never intersected, were never meant to overlap. Since they got together, he’s just been the retired, grouchy ass, and he thinks it must be weird for her too.
All of which he really should not be thinking about, and not for the first time, he wonders if Hammond is out of his fucking mind. But when Jack’s choice is between Abydos getting nuked and following Hammond’s sadistic rules, it’s not really a decision.
The gate swooshes into life and Jack finds himself instinctively looking to Sam, wanting to see her reaction to the thing she has yearned for for so damn long. She’s every bit as enthralled as he expects. He forces himself to look away.
Glancing up at the control room, Jack sees Hammond nod, giving his team the go ahead. “All right,” Jack says, waving Ferretti and Kawalsky up the ramp. “Let’s get moving.”
Ferretti and Kawalsky disappear into the puddle, Sam keeping pace with Jack as he steps forward. She pauses in front of the wormhole next to him, staring back at it with wide-eyed wonder.
Far too conscious of Hammond’s eyes on them, Jack gives her a curt, “Captain,” to get her to go through.
She darts a glance at him, looking embarrassed to be caught out like a curious kid. Damn does he just want to stand here and let her take her time, maybe tease her about it. He thinks shoving her through might just be worth the grilling she’d give him.
He bites down on the impulse and jerks his head to indicate she should go.
She nods, her hands tightening on her weapon and face wiping clean before she steps through.
She’s heaving off to the side of the gate when he makes it through, but she’s still got her weapon up and ready and one eye on their surroundings even as she’s green around the gills. Kawalsky and Ferretti are busy securing the perimeter. Jack swallows his own nausea from the rocky ride, stepping forward into the chamber.
From the look of the place, it’s been abandoned in haste very recently, a fire still lit in the middle of the room, flickering brightly against the warm yellow walls.
Jack steps a short distance into the room, and a kid with a weapon pops out. Jack lifts his weapon with one hand, the other held out flat palmed towards the kid. “Whoa there,” he says. “Any chance Daniel is around?”
The kid ticks his head to one side, and Jack thinks ‘Daniel’ may be the only word he understood.
Then the man himself appears around a corner. “Jack,” he says, waving for the kid to lower his weapon. “Hey.”
“Expecting trouble?” Jack asks, his eyes darting back towards the kid.
“Just being cautious,” Daniel says, voice slow and contemplative like he’s working something through. Some things just don’t change it seems.
Jack sees another few faces peer out from hiding places. Daniel gestures for them all to come forward and the next thing Jack knows they are all being swarmed by warm greetings. Kawalsky and Ferretti are introducing Sam around as they find old friends in the crowd, so Jack is free to focus on the familiar, dark haired kid holding out a lighter to him.
“Nah,” Jack says to the boy, refusing to take back the gift. “I took your advice and quit.”
Skaara’s grin is impossibly large and Jack gives in to the impulse to give the kid a giant bear hug. Pulling back, he catches Sam watching him, their eyes connecting for just a moment before she smiles and looks away.
Jack turns to Sha’re next, who has materialized by Daniel’s side. “Sha’re,” Jack says. “Nice to see you again.”
“And you as well, O’Neill,” she returns in lilting, nearly perfect English. Daniel has clearly been busy. Come to think of it, Jack hears a lot of English rattling around the chamber.
“So what brings you here?” Daniel asks, one arm wrapped around Sha’re.
Right, the mission. “It’s a bit of a tale,” Jack says.
“Then you should sit,” Sha’re says, taking control of them all and settling them around the fire. “And we will gladly hear it.”
As a sandstorm sweeps up outside the temple, they all sit and let Sha’re feed them while Jack fills Daniel in on the unexpected appearance of Ra’s evil twin on Earth.
Jack carefully hasn’t sat next to Sam, leaving her wedged between one of the Abydonian kids staring at her like she’s the first woman dressed in pants he’s ever seen, and Kawalsky, who seems to be finally warming up to her some.
After a while, Daniel and the Abydonians start in on tales about things on Abydos since they left, and Jack’s attention begins to wander. It’s clear that whoever that glowing eyed alien had been, he did not come from here. Which means he won’t have to blow up their gate. Small favors. He tries to use the time to focus on compartmentalizing, because all this sitting around isn’t doing wonders for his mindset. Especially since Sam keeps laughing at the antics around her. It’s distracting. And not just because he’s not the one making her laugh.
God. This whole thing is completely screwed.
He wishes Sam had just taken her out with Hammond, claimed they were no longer involved, that she’d gladly trade him for the mission. Selfish, maybe, but it’s a hell of a lot more galling, knowing she would have screwed it all to be with him if it had been her choice, knowing that this thing had come to mean more to her as well. All but her oaths, the direct order that makes all of that incidental anyway. So why couldn’t she just have taken the out and left him with the comforting illusion that the gate meant more to her anyway?
He just wishes he didn’t have to know.
“Jack.”
He looks up to find Daniel regarding him like maybe this isn’t the first time he called his name. “Yeah?”
“You okay?” he asks, squinting down at Jack in that annoying way of his he has that means he’s seeing a lot more than Jack likes.
“Fine,” Jack says, making his voice brusque. Giving Daniel even an inch to work with is always a bad idea.
Daniel gives him a wry, twisted little smile. “Whatever you say, Jack.” He hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “The sandstorm’s died down. I wanted to show you something that might give you the answers you’re looking for.”
“Sure,” Jack says, gratefully pushing to his feet, wanting to be doing anything other than sitting and thinking.
Daniel glances back at Sam. “Wouldn’t your Dr. Captain want to see this?”
She would. Hell, she’s probably the only one who will be able to make sense of whatever the hell Daniel is showing him, but he just can’t. He needs a little space if he’s going to get through this.
“Kawalsky,” he calls out. “Keep an eye on the place. I’ll be back in twenty.”
“Sure thing, Colonel,” Kawalsky shoots back.
Jack doesn’t linger to see Sam’s reaction.
* * *
Sam watches Jack leave the temple with Dr. Jackson.
She’s not exactly surprised that he’s left her behind rather than including her in Dr. Jackson’s show and tell. She’s been watching the tension ratchet up in Jack’s shoulders from the corner of her eye for a good hour now.
She tells herself that all he needs is a little space. She tries to believe that herself.
Neither of them is going to fall apart because of this, she reminds herself. They’ve survived without each other before. They can do it again.
There was a time, somewhere around the five-month mark of this thing between them, when they both had a major loss of faith. She’d been convinced that he was using her as a life preserver and the pressure of being his suicide-recovery sponsor was way too much. Maybe he’d worried about that too, or maybe he had never really been convinced he wasn’t anything more to her than a rebound fix-it project.
They hadn’t talked about any of that though. It was one of their many, many unspoken rules. Like not asking where this was going, or where they’d been. The future was almost as carefully off limits as the past. So he became prone to long brooding periods that drove her up the wall, and she returned the favor by being prickly as all hell and eventually everything just…fell apart.
They didn’t see each other for nearly a month. That was when Jack bought his house outside the city-though honestly ‘house’ is a bit of an exaggeration. More like ‘shack’. But he spent the month building that thing back up from the baseboards and staring at the sky through his telescope. She’d thrown herself back into her work. Maybe it wasn’t the Stargate, but it was her career, and she needed to get past that disappointment.
And so a month passed.
When he finally broke their long silence, he had sounded calm and settled on the other end of the phone and not at all like he’d crumbled on his own. Not anymore than she had.
They didn’t need each other. Nothing so desperate.
But she missed him. And apparently he wanted to be with her, not just cling to her.
“You never asked me why,” he’d said that day on the phone.
He didn’t have to elaborate; she knew what he meant. Why had he been willing to die out there on Abydos? But the real question was did she never ask because she didn’t think he’d tell her, or because she didn’t want to know?
She remembers taking a breath, making her decision. “I’d like to come out and see your place,” she’d said, “if that’s okay with you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think that would be good.”
She’d driven out and they’d talked, really talked, and by the end of the weekend, this thing had clearly transformed into something else entirely. No more unspoken rules, no more off-limit topics. Meaning that being on Abydos with him all this time later, she has a pretty clear picture of just how important these people are to him.
She wonders if it would have been a lot easier to let him go if they hadn’t had that break, if they hadn’t discovered this actually was a relationship and not merely grabbing onto the closest warm body.
Those doubts may have been just enough to take the sting out of this forcible separation.
Someone nudges Sam in the ribs, bringing her attention back to the present. She looks up with alarm to find Kawalsky sitting next to her, watching her closely. Dammit. She shouldn’t be letting her mind wander like this.
“Sir?” she asks, sitting up a little straighter, making sure her weapon is still within easy reach.
He spends a moment regarding her, and despite herself she tenses, preparing for something unpleasant.
His fingers tap against the butt of his weapon. “Here’s the thing, Captain,” he says, his expression hard like he’s bracing himself. “I honestly just don’t get it.”
Sam feels her mouth go dry. What the hell is he talking about? “Sir?”
Kawalsky presses his lips together. “Could you maybe just…explain the whole wormhole thing again?”
Sam lets out a breath and only now does she realize that he actually looks sheepish and uncertain, like he thinks she may just launch back at him with some scathing remark or lord it over him that she knows something he doesn’t. All of which is more than enough evidence that they have gotten off on the wrong foot.
Let the stupid stuff go.
Sam relaxes her shoulders. Smiling at him, she takes the olive branch he’s extending. “Of course, sir.” She glances across the plethora of food stacked up around them. “But I’m going to need a piece of fruit.”
Kawalsky lets out a surprised laugh. “If you say so,” he says and starts digging around the piles of food with her.
Sam has just finished her not-quite-an-apple as a representation of the galaxy spiel when the Stargate unexpectedly bursts into life behind them. Kawalsky is instantly on his feet, waving all the Abydonians to safety and ordering Sam and Ferretti into flanking positions by the gate.
She’s barely slipped into position when two giant figures completely covered in some sort of metal armor step through. Their heads are overly large and shaped like cobras, seemingly the very definition of threatening. She recognizes them from the descriptions in mission reports, and the ones in the morgue. Alien foot soldiers. Reaching the same conclusion, Kawalsky snaps off the order to fire.
They unleash on the figures, even as three more step through the wormhole behind them.
The bullets are just bouncing off them, and oh, what Sam wouldn’t do for some armor piercing ammunition right about now. She casts a critical eye over their armor, looking for any weakness and not finding any.
Across from her, Ferretti is getting backed into a corner.
“Shit,” she breathes. Stepping around a pillar, Sam circles behind the armored alien advancing on Ferretti, and there it is, what looks like a small soft spot at the back of the knees. Taking a breath, she aims and sinks two bullets in each joint, the soldier stumbling forward, giving Ferretti time to grab better cover.
The cost of the small victory is that another one of the soldiers has snuck up on her perpendicularly, grabbing her by the shoulder and slamming her back against the pillar. Stars explode in her vision as her head connects soundly with the stone surface. Stunned by the unexpected blow, she’s easily disarmed by the alien.
Sam breathes deeply, trying to clear her vision so she can counter whatever blow may be coming next. Instead, the snake hood drops open, revealing an all too human face, except for the large gold symbol embossed on his forehead. He stares down at her, then at his fallen comrade, and back again at her weapon he holds in his hand.
She takes advantage of his distraction to work one hand down towards her knife, pulling it free. He barely manages to parry the move in time, using her own weapon to knock the knife from her hand. He looks a little stunned, like he can’t believe she’s still fighting.
“What are you?” he asks and Sam is thrown by the question as much as the fact that it’s in English.
The one in the gold armor approaches them, giving her an appraising look, his finger prodding her cheek like he’s checking a horse for its pedigree. He says something in a language she doesn’t understand, but the look he gives her is universal enough to make her skin crawl.
Sam renews her struggles against the solid body holding her in place, but it’s no use.
The gold one lifts his hand, something like a ruby sitting in his palm. There’s a burst of light and agonizing pain, and then nothing.
* * *
Jack stares up at the towering golden walls covered in symbols, trying to get his mind wrapped around the fact that the Stargate doesn’t just go to Abydos. It explains where those snake men had come from, clears those gate room deaths from his conscious, but opens a much larger can of worms that Jack has a feeling will give him a nearly endless supply of headaches in the foreseeable future.
“Are you sure?” Jack asks again.
Daniel shrugs, looking up from his journal where he’s been transcribing what he calls ‘addresses’. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
Jack thinks Sam would know. It’s well past time he swallowed his stupid discomfort and utilized her skills like any commander in his right mind would.
“Okay,” Jack says, pulling his cap back in place. “I’m going to head back and get Captain Carter and-.”
Jack’s radio crackles, Kawalsky’s voice yelling, “Colonel, we’re--.” The words are swallowed by the sound of weapon’s fire and raised voices before falling ominously silent.
“What was that?” Daniel asks, but Jack is already sprinting out the door, something terrible twisting in his gut.
Inside the temple it’s a war zone, people moaning with pain, smoke and blood and the stench of burned flesh in the air.
“Sha’re!” Daniel yells as he catches up to Jack. He runs around the space, frantically pulling back draped cloth and peering into alcoves. “Sha’re!”
“I am here, Daniel,” she says, looking up from a boy she is tending near the base of the gate. She has a streak of blood across one cheek, a gun slung across her chest, but otherwise looks unharmed.
Daniel crosses over to her side, kneeling next to her. He pulls her into an embrace, and she leans back into it. “I am fine, Daniel,” she says, but her eyes are bright with tears, her hand unsteady on the boy’s chest.
“What happened?” Jack asks.
Sha’re glances at the Stargate. “Great beast-men like the ones who once served Ra. Four of them. And with them, a man of gold with the powers of Ra.” She lifts one hand as if to mimic a hand-device.
“Ra?” Jack repeats. That just can’t be true, unless Daniel was right and the Stargate goes more places than they thought, because he didn’t come from Earth. And if Ra wasn’t quite the last of his kind… Shit.
Sha’re reaches for Daniel’s robes, her fingers twisting in the fabric. “They took Skaara.”
Jack jerks, his eyes passing over the room, falling on Ferretti a short distance away. One of the Abydonians is holding a bloody rag to his arm.
“Ferretti,” Jack says, crossing over to him. The wound doesn’t look life threatening, but there is a hell of a lot of blood.
Jack needs to get the gate dialed. Hell, where is Kawalsky? Where is Sam? He reaches for his radio.
“They took them, sir,” Ferretti says, his fingers digging into Jack’s arm. “Kawalsky and Carter.”
Everything seems to slow. God, no.
“Where?” Jack asks. “Where did they take them? Did you see?”
Ferretti’s jaw flexes. “No, sir. I’m sorry.”
Jack thinks of the hundreds and hundreds of addresses Daniel showed him. How will they even know where to start?
Ferretti makes a sound of frustration. “I should have--.”
Jack cuts him off. “It’s okay, Major,” he forces himself to says, even if it’s a lie. Nothing is okay.
“I saw.”
Jack turns to see Sha’re standing over them. She holds Jack’s gaze with a blazing one of her own. She points to her eye and then at the dialing device. “I saw the symbols. I remember.”
“Daniel!” Jack shouts. “Open the gate to Earth, now.”
Daniel is still standing stunned next to Sha’re, but at Jack’s voice, seems galvanized into motion. “Right, of course,” he says.
Jack hefts Ferretti to his feet, moving towards the steps. “Daniel, you are coming back with us. No choice this time.”
Daniel’s head snaps around. “What? No, I can’t.”
Sha’re looks up from the DHD where she is copying down symbols into Daniel’s journal before she forgets. “Yes. You will return, Daniel,” she says. “And I will go with you.”
Daniel touches her arm. “Sha’re.”
She shakes her head, and she looks scared as hell, but steady. “He is my brother, and you are my husband. I go with you.”
“The gate has to be buried,” Daniel says, as if willing her to understand the risk they take by leaving today. “In case anyone else bad tries to come through.”
Sha’re swallows, looking back at her people. “So it will be.”
“You’re certain,” Daniel says, one hand lifting to her cheek.
Her chin lifts. “Yes.”
Daniel wanders out into the crowd of survivors, their hands reaching to touch any part of them. He’s giving them orders about burying the gate, and Sha’re simply stands and watches, her fingers clenching in the fabric of her robes.
She looks over at Jack. “We will find them, yes? My brother and your friends?”
Jack wants to say yes, to lie to both her and himself, but can’t find the words. She seems to understand that, her lips pressing together.
“They will be found,” she says, like there isn’t any other outcome possible.
God, Jack really hopes she’s right.
:: next::