Gravity Always Wins in the End (3/6)
Title: Gravity Always Wins in the End
Author: Annerb
Rating: NC-17
Summary: After Sam is held hostage, Jack takes an impromptu trip to Atlantis.
Timeline: SGA Season 4, sometime before ‘Midway’
Categorization: H/C, SG-1/SGA Crossover, Sam/Jack
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Jack rolls over to find the bed empty and the sun high in the sky. It’s a testament to how poorly he’s slept these last three weeks that he could sleep in so late. Even so, he’s still pretty worn out, remembering Sam’s restless lack of slumber. He’s always been far too attuned to her moods to sleep through her nightmares. Last night it was the same, the tension never really leaving her body as she relentlessly fought against giving the dreams a chance to reappear.
She hadn’t slept, so neither had he.
As soon as dawn crept its way over the edge of Sam’s balcony though, Jack had felt her slide out of bed with exaggerated care as if she hadn’t known perfectly well he wasn’t asleep anyway. He’d let her have her little charade and less than ten minutes later, he heard her escape into the hall, undoubtedly on her way back to that damn desk of hers.
Exhausted, Jack had decided at least one of them should be getting some sleep, but six solid hours later he still feels hung-over. He wonders when exactly he became so damn soft.
Surviving on minimal sleep has always been a big part of Sam’s skill set, but even she has got to be running on fumes at this point.
With a groan he forces himself out of bed and into the shower. A while later he reemerges, feeling slightly more human, and heads for the commissary for supplies on his way to Sam’s office, knowing she won’t have eaten.
He drops into a chair in front of her desk, pushing a sandwich towards her. She picks it up and begins nibbling at it without comment, her eyes still focused on her computer screen. It feels a bit like those old days when he dropped by her lab and shared a fairly distracted meal with her. Only this time he’s pretty sure her lack of attention has less to do with distraction than her discomfort with his presence.
They eat in silence for a while, Jack taking the opportunity to observe her. She looks worse today than the day he got here, no matter what a great job she’s doing trying to hide it.
“Am I making this worse?” he asks after a while.
She looks up with a frown. “What?”
“Being here,” he clarifies. “I’m making this harder for you.”
She looks like she wants to deny it, but can’t quite bring herself to verbalize the lie.
“Well, you’re certainly making it harder to hide,” she eventually admits.
He tilts his head to the side. “I dunno, Carter, you seem to be doing a pretty good job of it.”
She flinches, obviously taking the observation as a criticism. Maybe she’s gotten a little too used to being surrounded by people unwilling to call her bluff.
He slides an apple across the desk towards her. “You do know it’s okay to ask me to leave, right?”
She’s automatically reached for the offered apple, but at his words bypasses it to grab his arm with a suddenness that seems to startle even her. She stares at her hand clenched around his wrist, knuckles white from the pressure, both of them stuck half-leaning awkwardly over the desk.
Her eyes dart to his face before she takes a deep breath and lets go. On her way back down to her seat, she pauses to take the apple.
“I’d like it if you stayed a while longer,” she says, her tone carefully controlled as if to counter the telling desperation of her action. “If you want to.”
Jack sits back, watching her take a rather self-conscious bite of her sandwich. “I want to,” he confirms.
“Good,” she says.
Frankly, he’s a bit surprised by her obvious relief. But then again, that’s Sam, always surprising him when he least expects it.
“This just doesn’t…feel like I thought it would,” she admits. “Having this happen to me while I’m the one in charge. I just can’t get away from any of it for even a moment.”
He gets that. At least as the SGC, they’d been able to go home, to get away even if it was only a matter of miles. Where is she supposed to go here? There isn’t a single space in this city where she’s not Colonel Carter, commander. That has to be exhausting.
It probably also means there isn’t a single person here she can honestly share her experience with, not without fear of appearing weak. No one but him, that is, but she doesn’t seem to have any intention of taking advantage of that.
“You can’t just ignore it.” Or me, he silently tacks on. She has to find a way to deal with this eventually.
She gives him sardonic look he knows he deserves. He’s not exactly the poster boy for dealing with things.
He leans back in his chair, lifting his hands behind his head. “‘Do as I say, not as I do’ isn’t going to cut it, huh?”
“No,” she says with a wan smile. “But points for trying.”
“Remind me, what exactly do these points get me?”
She smiles enigmatically, but before she gets the chance to answer, the giant swoosh of an incoming wormhole grabs her attention. She glances at her watch as she gets up from her chair. “That should be a team returning from M1K-439. Major Lewis went to relieve them a while ago.”
Sure enough, only moments after the shield drops, McKay and half a dozen other assorted personnel step through.
Jack follows Sam out of her office and down the stairs to where Sheppard is waiting, speaking to the military leader of the arriving team.
“Nothing much to report, sir,” the major is saying as they approach. “Just a whole lot of mud.”
Everyone’s gaze drops to the major’s caked boots.
Looking around the gate room floor, Jack briefly wonders whose job it will be to clean up the aforementioned mud now tracked across the floor. Maybe these fancy Ancient digs have self-polishing floors.
He doesn’t get a chance to ask, because McKay and another scientist appear at Sam’s side.
“I finally managed to get the ship’s main power back online,” McKay announces without preamble, “but now the linguists are all just sitting around scratching their collective heads.”
The woman next to him rolls her eyes, muttering something that sounds like French under her breath before turning her attention to Sam. “The Valedin’s written language is fairly obscure, though we believe there may be some similarity to the Genii system.”
“In other words,” McKay interrupts, “they don’t have a clue.”
The beleaguered linguist simply looks over at Sam, who nods at her in response. “Thank you, Dr. Durand. Let me know when you have something.”
Dr. Durand rather gratefully abandons the gate room.
McKay hands off his weapons, turning to Sam as if the linguist had never interrupted him. “I figured I would be more helpful here analyzing some of these power readings I recovered when I got the ship up and running.”
He pauses as if waiting for praise, but Sam doesn’t say anything, just crosses her arms and waits for him to get to his point.
“The ship actually has a pretty fascinating configuration. Completely primitive by Lantian standards, of course, but rather innovative nonetheless,” he says, holding out his data pad to her.
Pinching the bridge of her nose as if suffering from a headache, Sam waves McKay off. “I look forward to reading your report. Later,” she says without any of her usual curiosity. “Let me know the moment you find anything that might help Lorne.”
With that, she turns and disappears back up the stairs.
McKay watches her walk away. “She’s not really okay, is she?” he asks of no one in particular. Not waiting for an answer, he focuses his attention back on his data pad and hustles out of the room.
Sheppard’s looking at Jack in askance, but all he can do is shrug. He doesn’t follow after Sam either, recognizing the particular angle to the set of her shoulders that doesn’t bode well for her patience.
“So,” Jack says, clapping his hands together. “What do you do around here to keep yourself entertained while the brain trust do their thing?”
Sheppard slides him a shit-eating grin. “I’m sure Ronon would be happy to spar with you, sir.”
Jack’s eyes narrow. “Remind me, Sheppard. Didn’t I fire you?”
Sheppard clears his throat, smile disappearing as rapidly as it had appeared. “Video golf?” he asks, gesturing towards a bank of computers in the control room.
“Sure, why not?” It’s still better than paperwork. He thinks that’s at least one thing he and Sheppard can agree on.
They enjoy less than an hour of peace before McKay comes careening up to them, waving his data pad around. “Not good!” he declares.
His panicked tone carries loudly through the control room, Sam already heading their way before Jack even manages to get out of his chair.
“Use your words, Rodney,” Sheppard says when McKay continues to mutely poke at his machine in obvious alarm.
“Oh, yes,” he says, looking up at them all. “I think I figured out what this is. The power spike.” He makes a hand sign that is probably supposed to mean something, but Jack doesn’t think he’s imagining everyone else’s mystified expressions.
“What?” Jack snaps, unable to handle the man’s agitated dance any longer. Sam slides him a look and he shrugs apologetically.
“Homing beacon,” McKay finally spits out.
There’s a moment of silence while the words sink in and then Sheppard quite succinctly says, “Oh, shit.”
McKay gestures broadly at Sheppard. “Exactly my point. Not good.”
Sam is already moving though, leaning over a technician’s shoulder looking at his display. “John,” she says, without looking up, “get your team geared and grab some marines. I need you to get those scientists back here now in case the Valedin decide they want their ship back.”
Sheppard’s already halfway out the door. “I’m on it!” he calls back over his shoulder.
“Dial the gate,” Sam orders the technician.
The entire room has gone from casual alertness to ordered action in the blink of an eye, everyone efficiently doing their jobs while Jack does his best to just stay out of the way.
The wormhole whooshes to life and Sam nods to the technician.
“The line is open,” he confirms.
Sam taps her comm. “Major Lewis, this is Atlantis Command. Please come in.”
There’s the heavy thud of weapons’ fire and the garbled sound of a voice shouting orders. “Atlantis Command, this is Lewis. We are under fire. Request back up immediately.”
“Understood,” Sam says. “What is your position?”
“We are set up at 2 o’clock behind the damaged ship. The Valedin have taken up position between us and the gate,” he says as Sheppard reappears with his small force of seven men.
“How many?” Sam asks, her voice calm.
“I don’t know…at least a dozen.”
Sam glances at Sheppard and without a word he jogs back out of the room, Ronon right on his heels. Not much time passes before the roof retracts, a puddle jumper dropping down in front of the gate.
“They have two ships,” Major Lewis continues, “but have chosen to engage us on ground.”
The Valedins were probably ordered to return with their prisoners intact if possible. More bodies for the lab. Jack looks to Sam for any sign that she’s made the connection, but her face is unreadable.
“Hold on, Major,” she says. “We have a ship on route. Take cover and hang on.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they hear, another round of garbled shouts in the background.
The puddle jumper pushes through the wormhole, the six marines remaining behind, waiting for the signal to follow. Five minutes later the call comes back from Sheppard and Sam nods to the marines.
She watches them depart, her hand twitching against her thigh as if yearning for a P-90.
Jack doesn’t miss the movement. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“What does?” she asks, not looking at him.
“Having to stay behind.”
She’s quiet for a moment, her hands flattening against her legs. “I wish that had anything to do with it.”
Jack looks at her in surprise, the thread of rage in her voice catching him off-guard.
They wait for the all clear in silence.
* * *
A few hours later, everyone is safe back on Atlantis with whatever parts of the ships they had been able to salvage and fit through the gate. Luckily there were only a few minor injuries among the ambushed team, mostly thanks to their enemy’s obsession with taking prisoners.
In the end, it’s the three surviving Valedins who have ended up in Atlantis’ brig and it’s Sam’s job to decide what to do with them. She has more than a few tempting ideas. Which is exactly why she is standing in the observation room watching John and Ronon interrogate the first of the prisoners rather than being in there herself.
Though they were able to recover quite a bit of data from the ships, the linguists are moving very slow with the translations. Even the smallest chance that any of these Valedins might be able to help them far out weighs the risk of bringing them here. Unfortunately they have not proven particularly cooperative. So far not even Ronon’s most overblown posturing seems to have fazed the prisoner.
It’s tempting to try more persuasive tactics, but so far John has been meticulous, brushing up against the line a few times, but never crossing it. She knew he would be.
Somewhere in the middle of the second set, Jack wanders in to join her, watching in silence for a while.
“You aren’t doing the interrogations yourself,” he says, more observation than question.
There is absolutely nothing accusatory in his tone, but she still feels tension squeeze along her spine. “No,” she confirms.
“Why not?”
She sighs, crossing her arms over her chest. He knows perfectly well why not, he just wants to make her say it.
“Because I don’t trust myself not to break the rules.”
Her hands clench and she can almost imagine the Valedin’s bones under her fingers. It’s a dangerous dance, keeping her rage under control. She fears it will only take one brief moment’s lapse to lose it completely, thinks Jack is more than aware of that and yet still insists on poking at it.
She has way too many responsibilities right now to allow her weakness free rein. Forcing herself to relax her hands, she smoothes them self-consciously down the front of her uniform.
“What exactly happened out there, Sam?”
She looks over to find him watching her closely, that ever-present concern roiling right under the surface and for a moment she’s almost tempted to tell him. He would understand; she’s seen him in a mad rage more than once because of the things done to those under his command.
Maybe it’s the understanding she doesn’t want. Not yet.
They stare at each other, but before Sam can force any words to the surface, her comm chirps, Dr. Keller’s voice in her ear.
“Yes, Dr. Keller?” Sam asks, turning slightly away as she listens to the doctor’s words. “Ok, I’ll be right there.”
She thinks she might hear Jack sigh, but by the time she turns back to him his face is carefully neutral.
“Lorne is awake,” she explains.
“Then you’d better go,” he says.
She feels like she is failing some unspoken test, but it doesn’t stop her from slipping out of the room and away from the unanswered question.
He doesn’t follow.
Sam enters the infirmary to see Lorne propped up in one of the beds, Teyla speaking to him quietly off to one side. Teyla catches Sam’s eye, smiling at her, but Sam doesn’t pause, just continues on to Keller’s office after a brief nod of acknowledgement.
“He looks better,” Sam says, glancing back towards Lorne and Teyla, their voices now cut off by the glass walls.
“His viral load is finally leveling off,” Keller confirms, coming up to stand by Sam’s side.
Sam nods. It had been the same with Reed that last morning. “He’s made it through.”
“I think so.”
“So,” Sam says, turning back to Keller. “Any ideas yet about what they were trying to do?”
“I have a theory,” she says, moving back behind her desk and shifting through a stack of files. “What was the first thing they did to Reed when it became clear he would live? They let a Wraith feed on him. Everything you described makes it sound like they were sticklers for a clean scientific process. So why mess it up with the Wraith?”
“They were testing him,” Sam says, the significance finally clicking in place. “They wanted to see how the Wraith would react to him.”
Keller nods. “I think they’re trying to create an artificial immunity to the Wraith, something apparently found naturally in a tiny fraction of the human population of Pegasus.”
“They were trying to manipulate their genetic code,” Sam surmises. “That’s what the injections were about.”
“Yes. In many ways it’s a much more primitive version of the ATA gene therapy we use. Only, they obviously have some major flaws still in their version.”
“By major flaws are you referring to the fact that it didn’t work, or that it kills about half the subjects?” Sam asks before she can stop herself.
Keller looks away, no doubt discomforted by her icy tone.
Sam takes a moment to calm herself, pacing the few steps the small space allows her. “And what about Lorne? Did it work?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
Keller leaves unspoken that there is only one definitive test to know for sure. Sam rubs her fingers across her eyes, fighting off an image of Reed’s terrified face, frozen in the papery husk of his body.
When she looks up again, Lorne is staring across the room at her, his eyes latching onto her and holding with an expression she does her best not to define.
She just wants him to look away.
It takes three weeks for the night guard’s stupidity to finally overwhelm his caution, but even then Sam knows it has come far too late. There are already three bodies piled somewhere in the depths of this laboratory. Three too many.
Over the jangle of the keys as the man opens her cell, she can make out the low rasp that is Lorne’s breathing. He might become four.
This is her only chance.
Sam lays still, her back to the door, her eyes firmly fixed on the wall in front of her. She feels the first brush of the guard’s hand across her hip and bites down hard on her tongue, refusing to allow any outward reaction. The touch becomes bolder, moving all the way down from waist to foot, some small last sliver of his caution seeking to test her submission.
She is still.
His fingers slide under the edge of her shirt and there is a sound of inarticulate protest from the next cell, unheard or simply unheeded by the guard. But Sam hears it, registers the weight of someone watching them.
She shoves the thought away.
He rolls her onto her back and her complete lack of resistance pulls him into his second stupid mistake as he removes her manacles to get better access. Her hands now free, he stops, a moment of hesitation, but she doesn’t move, still staring at some point in the ceiling. She waits quietly until she feels the heat of his breath against her face, until his distraction allows her hand to move slowly across the edge of the cot, inching towards the taser strapped to his thigh.
His scream is loud in her ear when she presses the stream of current against the source of his stupidity. She’s on her feet before he can recover, grabbing his baton as he rolls uselessly on the floor, silencing him with one brutal hit across the back of his head.
She pauses a moment, the disgust of his touch still fresh in her mind and she fights the urge to hit him again. If she starts, she may not be able to stop.
“Colonel,” a rough voice says when she stands there a little too long.
She flinches at the sound of her rank, not quite able to meet Lorne’s gaze, but pushes back into motion, grabbing the keys and leaving her cell behind.
Three weeks too late.
“Sam?” Keller says, obviously not for the first time, her hand insistent on Sam’s arm. Lorne is still staring at her, now pushed up on one elbow as if considering getting up, only Teyla’s hand on his arm holding him in place.
Keller’s hand squeezes again and somehow Sam manages not to flinch away from the touch, fighting off the flashback and turning her back on Lorne.
“I’m fine,” she says as if nothing has happened, her voice the picture of control.
Keller doesn’t contradict her, just watches her with too much intensity for comfort as her breathing finally evens out again. Only then does Keller drop her hold, hesitating slightly before pulling a small envelope out of her pocket and holding it out.
Sam takes it from her hand, cracks it open to see a single pill nestled inside.
“You’re not going to be of much use to any of us if you don’t get some sleep,” Keller explains.
“Did General O’Neill--?”
“No,” Keller denies with a shake her head. “It’s my job to pay attention to this stuff, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” Sam says, slipping the envelope in her pocket.
Keller must be able to see she has no intention of taking it, sighing softly. “It’s not a weakness,” she says.
That’s easy for her to say, she doesn’t have an entire city looking to her, watching and waiting for her to fall apart.
“Thank you, doctor,” Sam says, slipping out of the infirmary without even glancing in Lorne’s direction.
By the time she gets back to her room that night, Jack is already in bed. She knows he’s not sleeping because she can feel his eyes on her as she peels off her uniform, dropping it piece by piece into a careless pile on the floor. Her fingers stumble over Keller’s envelope and she pulls it out of the pocket, hefting the insubstantial weight in her hand. She leaves it unopened on the dresser as she climbs into bed.
Jack reaches for her without comment, but she can feel the slightest edge of his hesitation, as if unsure if she will even allow him the right to comfort her in the safety of darkness. She wastes no time sliding across the space, plastering herself up against his side, beyond relieved when his arms tighten around her, when he lets her pull his mouth down to hers.
She lets herself believe, for a while, that it will be enough.
But whatever relief she finds doesn’t last and it’s not long until the dreams drive her back out of his arms. She sits at her vanity for ten minutes staring at the single pill, her entire being resisting the idea no matter how logical it is. Her eyes lift to her face in the mirror, the dark shadows that mar her skin, the exhaustion etched into every plane.
“It’s not a weakness,” she whispers to the reflection.
She wishes she believed that.
In one quick motion, she takes the pill, swallowing hard before she can think about it, wanting to gag on the rough edge as it slides down her throat. Returning to bed, she buries her face in the curve of his neck and waits for the drug to take hold.
The pill does its job and keeps the dreams away, but she still wakes up exhausted, Jack’s steady gaze burning a hole in her skin.
Day Four
Author: Annerb
Rating: NC-17
Summary: After Sam is held hostage, Jack takes an impromptu trip to Atlantis.
Timeline: SGA Season 4, sometime before ‘Midway’
Categorization: H/C, SG-1/SGA Crossover, Sam/Jack
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Jack rolls over to find the bed empty and the sun high in the sky. It’s a testament to how poorly he’s slept these last three weeks that he could sleep in so late. Even so, he’s still pretty worn out, remembering Sam’s restless lack of slumber. He’s always been far too attuned to her moods to sleep through her nightmares. Last night it was the same, the tension never really leaving her body as she relentlessly fought against giving the dreams a chance to reappear.
She hadn’t slept, so neither had he.
As soon as dawn crept its way over the edge of Sam’s balcony though, Jack had felt her slide out of bed with exaggerated care as if she hadn’t known perfectly well he wasn’t asleep anyway. He’d let her have her little charade and less than ten minutes later, he heard her escape into the hall, undoubtedly on her way back to that damn desk of hers.
Exhausted, Jack had decided at least one of them should be getting some sleep, but six solid hours later he still feels hung-over. He wonders when exactly he became so damn soft.
Surviving on minimal sleep has always been a big part of Sam’s skill set, but even she has got to be running on fumes at this point.
With a groan he forces himself out of bed and into the shower. A while later he reemerges, feeling slightly more human, and heads for the commissary for supplies on his way to Sam’s office, knowing she won’t have eaten.
He drops into a chair in front of her desk, pushing a sandwich towards her. She picks it up and begins nibbling at it without comment, her eyes still focused on her computer screen. It feels a bit like those old days when he dropped by her lab and shared a fairly distracted meal with her. Only this time he’s pretty sure her lack of attention has less to do with distraction than her discomfort with his presence.
They eat in silence for a while, Jack taking the opportunity to observe her. She looks worse today than the day he got here, no matter what a great job she’s doing trying to hide it.
“Am I making this worse?” he asks after a while.
She looks up with a frown. “What?”
“Being here,” he clarifies. “I’m making this harder for you.”
She looks like she wants to deny it, but can’t quite bring herself to verbalize the lie.
“Well, you’re certainly making it harder to hide,” she eventually admits.
He tilts his head to the side. “I dunno, Carter, you seem to be doing a pretty good job of it.”
She flinches, obviously taking the observation as a criticism. Maybe she’s gotten a little too used to being surrounded by people unwilling to call her bluff.
He slides an apple across the desk towards her. “You do know it’s okay to ask me to leave, right?”
She’s automatically reached for the offered apple, but at his words bypasses it to grab his arm with a suddenness that seems to startle even her. She stares at her hand clenched around his wrist, knuckles white from the pressure, both of them stuck half-leaning awkwardly over the desk.
Her eyes dart to his face before she takes a deep breath and lets go. On her way back down to her seat, she pauses to take the apple.
“I’d like it if you stayed a while longer,” she says, her tone carefully controlled as if to counter the telling desperation of her action. “If you want to.”
Jack sits back, watching her take a rather self-conscious bite of her sandwich. “I want to,” he confirms.
“Good,” she says.
Frankly, he’s a bit surprised by her obvious relief. But then again, that’s Sam, always surprising him when he least expects it.
“This just doesn’t…feel like I thought it would,” she admits. “Having this happen to me while I’m the one in charge. I just can’t get away from any of it for even a moment.”
He gets that. At least as the SGC, they’d been able to go home, to get away even if it was only a matter of miles. Where is she supposed to go here? There isn’t a single space in this city where she’s not Colonel Carter, commander. That has to be exhausting.
It probably also means there isn’t a single person here she can honestly share her experience with, not without fear of appearing weak. No one but him, that is, but she doesn’t seem to have any intention of taking advantage of that.
“You can’t just ignore it.” Or me, he silently tacks on. She has to find a way to deal with this eventually.
She gives him sardonic look he knows he deserves. He’s not exactly the poster boy for dealing with things.
He leans back in his chair, lifting his hands behind his head. “‘Do as I say, not as I do’ isn’t going to cut it, huh?”
“No,” she says with a wan smile. “But points for trying.”
“Remind me, what exactly do these points get me?”
She smiles enigmatically, but before she gets the chance to answer, the giant swoosh of an incoming wormhole grabs her attention. She glances at her watch as she gets up from her chair. “That should be a team returning from M1K-439. Major Lewis went to relieve them a while ago.”
Sure enough, only moments after the shield drops, McKay and half a dozen other assorted personnel step through.
Jack follows Sam out of her office and down the stairs to where Sheppard is waiting, speaking to the military leader of the arriving team.
“Nothing much to report, sir,” the major is saying as they approach. “Just a whole lot of mud.”
Everyone’s gaze drops to the major’s caked boots.
Looking around the gate room floor, Jack briefly wonders whose job it will be to clean up the aforementioned mud now tracked across the floor. Maybe these fancy Ancient digs have self-polishing floors.
He doesn’t get a chance to ask, because McKay and another scientist appear at Sam’s side.
“I finally managed to get the ship’s main power back online,” McKay announces without preamble, “but now the linguists are all just sitting around scratching their collective heads.”
The woman next to him rolls her eyes, muttering something that sounds like French under her breath before turning her attention to Sam. “The Valedin’s written language is fairly obscure, though we believe there may be some similarity to the Genii system.”
“In other words,” McKay interrupts, “they don’t have a clue.”
The beleaguered linguist simply looks over at Sam, who nods at her in response. “Thank you, Dr. Durand. Let me know when you have something.”
Dr. Durand rather gratefully abandons the gate room.
McKay hands off his weapons, turning to Sam as if the linguist had never interrupted him. “I figured I would be more helpful here analyzing some of these power readings I recovered when I got the ship up and running.”
He pauses as if waiting for praise, but Sam doesn’t say anything, just crosses her arms and waits for him to get to his point.
“The ship actually has a pretty fascinating configuration. Completely primitive by Lantian standards, of course, but rather innovative nonetheless,” he says, holding out his data pad to her.
Pinching the bridge of her nose as if suffering from a headache, Sam waves McKay off. “I look forward to reading your report. Later,” she says without any of her usual curiosity. “Let me know the moment you find anything that might help Lorne.”
With that, she turns and disappears back up the stairs.
McKay watches her walk away. “She’s not really okay, is she?” he asks of no one in particular. Not waiting for an answer, he focuses his attention back on his data pad and hustles out of the room.
Sheppard’s looking at Jack in askance, but all he can do is shrug. He doesn’t follow after Sam either, recognizing the particular angle to the set of her shoulders that doesn’t bode well for her patience.
“So,” Jack says, clapping his hands together. “What do you do around here to keep yourself entertained while the brain trust do their thing?”
Sheppard slides him a shit-eating grin. “I’m sure Ronon would be happy to spar with you, sir.”
Jack’s eyes narrow. “Remind me, Sheppard. Didn’t I fire you?”
Sheppard clears his throat, smile disappearing as rapidly as it had appeared. “Video golf?” he asks, gesturing towards a bank of computers in the control room.
“Sure, why not?” It’s still better than paperwork. He thinks that’s at least one thing he and Sheppard can agree on.
They enjoy less than an hour of peace before McKay comes careening up to them, waving his data pad around. “Not good!” he declares.
His panicked tone carries loudly through the control room, Sam already heading their way before Jack even manages to get out of his chair.
“Use your words, Rodney,” Sheppard says when McKay continues to mutely poke at his machine in obvious alarm.
“Oh, yes,” he says, looking up at them all. “I think I figured out what this is. The power spike.” He makes a hand sign that is probably supposed to mean something, but Jack doesn’t think he’s imagining everyone else’s mystified expressions.
“What?” Jack snaps, unable to handle the man’s agitated dance any longer. Sam slides him a look and he shrugs apologetically.
“Homing beacon,” McKay finally spits out.
There’s a moment of silence while the words sink in and then Sheppard quite succinctly says, “Oh, shit.”
McKay gestures broadly at Sheppard. “Exactly my point. Not good.”
Sam is already moving though, leaning over a technician’s shoulder looking at his display. “John,” she says, without looking up, “get your team geared and grab some marines. I need you to get those scientists back here now in case the Valedin decide they want their ship back.”
Sheppard’s already halfway out the door. “I’m on it!” he calls back over his shoulder.
“Dial the gate,” Sam orders the technician.
The entire room has gone from casual alertness to ordered action in the blink of an eye, everyone efficiently doing their jobs while Jack does his best to just stay out of the way.
The wormhole whooshes to life and Sam nods to the technician.
“The line is open,” he confirms.
Sam taps her comm. “Major Lewis, this is Atlantis Command. Please come in.”
There’s the heavy thud of weapons’ fire and the garbled sound of a voice shouting orders. “Atlantis Command, this is Lewis. We are under fire. Request back up immediately.”
“Understood,” Sam says. “What is your position?”
“We are set up at 2 o’clock behind the damaged ship. The Valedin have taken up position between us and the gate,” he says as Sheppard reappears with his small force of seven men.
“How many?” Sam asks, her voice calm.
“I don’t know…at least a dozen.”
Sam glances at Sheppard and without a word he jogs back out of the room, Ronon right on his heels. Not much time passes before the roof retracts, a puddle jumper dropping down in front of the gate.
“They have two ships,” Major Lewis continues, “but have chosen to engage us on ground.”
The Valedins were probably ordered to return with their prisoners intact if possible. More bodies for the lab. Jack looks to Sam for any sign that she’s made the connection, but her face is unreadable.
“Hold on, Major,” she says. “We have a ship on route. Take cover and hang on.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they hear, another round of garbled shouts in the background.
The puddle jumper pushes through the wormhole, the six marines remaining behind, waiting for the signal to follow. Five minutes later the call comes back from Sheppard and Sam nods to the marines.
She watches them depart, her hand twitching against her thigh as if yearning for a P-90.
Jack doesn’t miss the movement. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“What does?” she asks, not looking at him.
“Having to stay behind.”
She’s quiet for a moment, her hands flattening against her legs. “I wish that had anything to do with it.”
Jack looks at her in surprise, the thread of rage in her voice catching him off-guard.
They wait for the all clear in silence.
* * *
A few hours later, everyone is safe back on Atlantis with whatever parts of the ships they had been able to salvage and fit through the gate. Luckily there were only a few minor injuries among the ambushed team, mostly thanks to their enemy’s obsession with taking prisoners.
In the end, it’s the three surviving Valedins who have ended up in Atlantis’ brig and it’s Sam’s job to decide what to do with them. She has more than a few tempting ideas. Which is exactly why she is standing in the observation room watching John and Ronon interrogate the first of the prisoners rather than being in there herself.
Though they were able to recover quite a bit of data from the ships, the linguists are moving very slow with the translations. Even the smallest chance that any of these Valedins might be able to help them far out weighs the risk of bringing them here. Unfortunately they have not proven particularly cooperative. So far not even Ronon’s most overblown posturing seems to have fazed the prisoner.
It’s tempting to try more persuasive tactics, but so far John has been meticulous, brushing up against the line a few times, but never crossing it. She knew he would be.
Somewhere in the middle of the second set, Jack wanders in to join her, watching in silence for a while.
“You aren’t doing the interrogations yourself,” he says, more observation than question.
There is absolutely nothing accusatory in his tone, but she still feels tension squeeze along her spine. “No,” she confirms.
“Why not?”
She sighs, crossing her arms over her chest. He knows perfectly well why not, he just wants to make her say it.
“Because I don’t trust myself not to break the rules.”
Her hands clench and she can almost imagine the Valedin’s bones under her fingers. It’s a dangerous dance, keeping her rage under control. She fears it will only take one brief moment’s lapse to lose it completely, thinks Jack is more than aware of that and yet still insists on poking at it.
She has way too many responsibilities right now to allow her weakness free rein. Forcing herself to relax her hands, she smoothes them self-consciously down the front of her uniform.
“What exactly happened out there, Sam?”
She looks over to find him watching her closely, that ever-present concern roiling right under the surface and for a moment she’s almost tempted to tell him. He would understand; she’s seen him in a mad rage more than once because of the things done to those under his command.
Maybe it’s the understanding she doesn’t want. Not yet.
They stare at each other, but before Sam can force any words to the surface, her comm chirps, Dr. Keller’s voice in her ear.
“Yes, Dr. Keller?” Sam asks, turning slightly away as she listens to the doctor’s words. “Ok, I’ll be right there.”
She thinks she might hear Jack sigh, but by the time she turns back to him his face is carefully neutral.
“Lorne is awake,” she explains.
“Then you’d better go,” he says.
She feels like she is failing some unspoken test, but it doesn’t stop her from slipping out of the room and away from the unanswered question.
He doesn’t follow.
Sam enters the infirmary to see Lorne propped up in one of the beds, Teyla speaking to him quietly off to one side. Teyla catches Sam’s eye, smiling at her, but Sam doesn’t pause, just continues on to Keller’s office after a brief nod of acknowledgement.
“He looks better,” Sam says, glancing back towards Lorne and Teyla, their voices now cut off by the glass walls.
“His viral load is finally leveling off,” Keller confirms, coming up to stand by Sam’s side.
Sam nods. It had been the same with Reed that last morning. “He’s made it through.”
“I think so.”
“So,” Sam says, turning back to Keller. “Any ideas yet about what they were trying to do?”
“I have a theory,” she says, moving back behind her desk and shifting through a stack of files. “What was the first thing they did to Reed when it became clear he would live? They let a Wraith feed on him. Everything you described makes it sound like they were sticklers for a clean scientific process. So why mess it up with the Wraith?”
“They were testing him,” Sam says, the significance finally clicking in place. “They wanted to see how the Wraith would react to him.”
Keller nods. “I think they’re trying to create an artificial immunity to the Wraith, something apparently found naturally in a tiny fraction of the human population of Pegasus.”
“They were trying to manipulate their genetic code,” Sam surmises. “That’s what the injections were about.”
“Yes. In many ways it’s a much more primitive version of the ATA gene therapy we use. Only, they obviously have some major flaws still in their version.”
“By major flaws are you referring to the fact that it didn’t work, or that it kills about half the subjects?” Sam asks before she can stop herself.
Keller looks away, no doubt discomforted by her icy tone.
Sam takes a moment to calm herself, pacing the few steps the small space allows her. “And what about Lorne? Did it work?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
Keller leaves unspoken that there is only one definitive test to know for sure. Sam rubs her fingers across her eyes, fighting off an image of Reed’s terrified face, frozen in the papery husk of his body.
When she looks up again, Lorne is staring across the room at her, his eyes latching onto her and holding with an expression she does her best not to define.
She just wants him to look away.
It takes three weeks for the night guard’s stupidity to finally overwhelm his caution, but even then Sam knows it has come far too late. There are already three bodies piled somewhere in the depths of this laboratory. Three too many.
Over the jangle of the keys as the man opens her cell, she can make out the low rasp that is Lorne’s breathing. He might become four.
This is her only chance.
Sam lays still, her back to the door, her eyes firmly fixed on the wall in front of her. She feels the first brush of the guard’s hand across her hip and bites down hard on her tongue, refusing to allow any outward reaction. The touch becomes bolder, moving all the way down from waist to foot, some small last sliver of his caution seeking to test her submission.
She is still.
His fingers slide under the edge of her shirt and there is a sound of inarticulate protest from the next cell, unheard or simply unheeded by the guard. But Sam hears it, registers the weight of someone watching them.
She shoves the thought away.
He rolls her onto her back and her complete lack of resistance pulls him into his second stupid mistake as he removes her manacles to get better access. Her hands now free, he stops, a moment of hesitation, but she doesn’t move, still staring at some point in the ceiling. She waits quietly until she feels the heat of his breath against her face, until his distraction allows her hand to move slowly across the edge of the cot, inching towards the taser strapped to his thigh.
His scream is loud in her ear when she presses the stream of current against the source of his stupidity. She’s on her feet before he can recover, grabbing his baton as he rolls uselessly on the floor, silencing him with one brutal hit across the back of his head.
She pauses a moment, the disgust of his touch still fresh in her mind and she fights the urge to hit him again. If she starts, she may not be able to stop.
“Colonel,” a rough voice says when she stands there a little too long.
She flinches at the sound of her rank, not quite able to meet Lorne’s gaze, but pushes back into motion, grabbing the keys and leaving her cell behind.
Three weeks too late.
“Sam?” Keller says, obviously not for the first time, her hand insistent on Sam’s arm. Lorne is still staring at her, now pushed up on one elbow as if considering getting up, only Teyla’s hand on his arm holding him in place.
Keller’s hand squeezes again and somehow Sam manages not to flinch away from the touch, fighting off the flashback and turning her back on Lorne.
“I’m fine,” she says as if nothing has happened, her voice the picture of control.
Keller doesn’t contradict her, just watches her with too much intensity for comfort as her breathing finally evens out again. Only then does Keller drop her hold, hesitating slightly before pulling a small envelope out of her pocket and holding it out.
Sam takes it from her hand, cracks it open to see a single pill nestled inside.
“You’re not going to be of much use to any of us if you don’t get some sleep,” Keller explains.
“Did General O’Neill--?”
“No,” Keller denies with a shake her head. “It’s my job to pay attention to this stuff, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” Sam says, slipping the envelope in her pocket.
Keller must be able to see she has no intention of taking it, sighing softly. “It’s not a weakness,” she says.
That’s easy for her to say, she doesn’t have an entire city looking to her, watching and waiting for her to fall apart.
“Thank you, doctor,” Sam says, slipping out of the infirmary without even glancing in Lorne’s direction.
By the time she gets back to her room that night, Jack is already in bed. She knows he’s not sleeping because she can feel his eyes on her as she peels off her uniform, dropping it piece by piece into a careless pile on the floor. Her fingers stumble over Keller’s envelope and she pulls it out of the pocket, hefting the insubstantial weight in her hand. She leaves it unopened on the dresser as she climbs into bed.
Jack reaches for her without comment, but she can feel the slightest edge of his hesitation, as if unsure if she will even allow him the right to comfort her in the safety of darkness. She wastes no time sliding across the space, plastering herself up against his side, beyond relieved when his arms tighten around her, when he lets her pull his mouth down to hers.
She lets herself believe, for a while, that it will be enough.
But whatever relief she finds doesn’t last and it’s not long until the dreams drive her back out of his arms. She sits at her vanity for ten minutes staring at the single pill, her entire being resisting the idea no matter how logical it is. Her eyes lift to her face in the mirror, the dark shadows that mar her skin, the exhaustion etched into every plane.
“It’s not a weakness,” she whispers to the reflection.
She wishes she believed that.
In one quick motion, she takes the pill, swallowing hard before she can think about it, wanting to gag on the rough edge as it slides down her throat. Returning to bed, she buries her face in the curve of his neck and waits for the drug to take hold.
The pill does its job and keeps the dreams away, but she still wakes up exhausted, Jack’s steady gaze burning a hole in her skin.
Day Four