fic: faith in royalty (or lack thereof) - 1/2
This got so long that I have to post it in two parts, WHAT? So much for not having ideas!
Um, so, I don't know if you know this about me, it might come as a bit of a shock, but. I like Sam! I like stories about Sam! I like stories about Sam being UHMAYZING, kickin' ass and takin' names like there's no tomorrow! I know, I know, you're reeling. What will you even do with this brand new information!!
Well, you could always put your little eyes all over this story I wrote about Sam being a badass motherfucker. Thaaat is one thing you could do.
title: Faith in Royalty (or Lack Thereof)
series: Stargate SG-1
rating: PG-13 for PUNCHAN and KICKAN and A LITTLE BIT O' SWEARAN
word count: 11,682
spoilers: Passing mentions of little details you wouldn't know without seasons 2, 4 and 6 under your belt. Takes place in season 7 (although I couldn't stop imagining it as 8?)
notes: ohhhh boy! Written for girlsavesboyfic, aka the very first real ficathon I've ever participated in! I have a lot of people to thank and they are: adventurepants, for beta-ing and patting me on the head when I got nervous, soaked_in_stars and peekadora, for encouraging me (prodding me? shoving me?) to do this in the first place, cheapmetaphor, joie_de_vivre, orangespaces and vivrebarefoot, for being really good pom-pom wavers, even if they didn't know it, and ME, for performing inception on myself, because this is basically an embellished and real-world-logic'd dream that I had after going to bed one night worrying that I wouldn't come up with a good idea for this in time. I almost wish I was kidding.
Sam awakens to the sweet smell of roses and the sound of somebody shushing her. And nobody shushes Samantha Carter.
It takes her a moment to realize she’s saying something, but the words don’t sound so much like words as they sound like unintelligible rambling, tumbling out of her mouth at a volume that she thinks might be uncharacteristically loud for her. She really wishes she could tell, but that rose smell seems to be permanently lodged up her nostrils and the only thing she can see is the floor, and no matter how many times she blinks, she can’t get it to stop swirling.
“Uh, Jack? I think she’s awake.”
“Yeah, I can hear that, Daniel.” Jack’s voice vibrates right through her stomach, and she feels her whole body bouncing in time with footfalls. She wriggles a little and hands clamp down on her harder in response. It’s when she finally realizes she’s looking at the floor from mid-air that she comes to the conclusion that she’s draped like a sack of potatoes across Jack’s shoulders. He’s carrying her. Why on Earth is he carrying her? It’s not like she doesn’t have two legs of her own.
“Put me down, sir,” she tries to say, but the clear request she thinks in her head and the slurred, muddled mess she ends up hearing in her ears are just so painfully different.
“Major Carter.” Teal’c’s voice is close to her ear, low and soothing. Had his voice always been so soothing? Gosh, it was soothing. “You must remain silent,” he continues. “We are attempting to escape and return to the Stargate.”
Escape? Escape from where? She tries to ask as much, but the only reply she gets is an awfully cranky, “Carter,” and she doesn’t think that’s a very good answer.
“I don’t care,” Jack hisses, “just stop talking so damn loud.” Oh. Did she say that last part out loud?
She lifts her head to get a better look at their surroundings, but a particularly hideous wave of nausea slams into her and she quickly decides to settle for looking at the floor. She hears herself let out a fairly undignified moan as she lowers her head, followed by Jack and Daniel shushing her again.
“Does anybody have any idea where we’re going?” Jack whispers. God, where are they? They have to be off-world, otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to escape from somewhere. Hopefully. She tries to sift through the thick fog that is her memory, but all she comes up with is roses. Roses, roses, that freaking smell of roses. Why is it so strong? It feels like it’s all over her, soaked into her entire body for all eternity, and the charm of the scent is beginning to wear off very quickly.
Stinging bursts of pain suddenly flare up like fire across her skin. “Did I get hit?” she mumbles, hoping her efforts to be quieter actually worked. Nobody makes any agitated noises, so she figures she succeeded.
“Yeah, Sam,” Daniel responds. “You got hit. We all did.”
A vague memory of something the size of a softball smacking her in the face pops into her head. It was black and round, like a giant grenade, except there had been no explosion, only… roses. And all hell breaking loose, but that was mostly Colonel O’Neill’s doing. But why? Where in the world are they and what in the world happened?
“And just where do you think you‘re going?”
They screech to a halt and Jack curses under his breath. “Oh, just… going for an evening stroll,” he says through his teeth.
“What are you doing with the princess?” a voice asks, the tone flat and annoyed. It’s male, whoever it is, and there’s a certain grating snootiness in the sound that suggests he holds some kind of authority, and did he just call one of them a princess? Oh, he’d better be talking about Daniel.
She feels Jack tighten his hold on her. “Well, she’d be kind of pissed if we went without her.” Crap. Definitely not talking about Daniel.
“You are trying to leave us,” the voice says. Sam hears a whole slew of shuffling and clicking and Jack takes a step backwards. Weapons.
“Look,” Jack replies loudly, sternly, “we’re taking a pass on this whole prince and princess thing. You let us go, and we won’t kick your asses.”
The voice chuckles. It might sound sinister if it didn’t sound so amused. “You are staying, and you will save our world. The ceremony can’t be completed without you, after all.”
A flurry of deep thumping and poofing noises ring out. Sam doesn’t have much time to wonder why that sounds so familiar, or what kind of weapons sound like fluffy fairy tale magic, before Jack quickly deposits her on the floor. The last thing she remembers before passing out again is the sensation of his body covering hers.
That, and the smell of those damned roses.
---
She’s just decided, in the confines of her barely conscious mind, that everything had been a crazy little dream after all when her stomach rolls under the weight of a sickly sweet odor and she sits up, tense and sweating and sporting a headache the size of the sun. It feels like the sun, too, and she blinks hard to shoo away the throbbing pain and the relentless blurriness clouding her vision. It accomplishes absolutely nothing, and she presses her palm against her forehead as she slides back down. Her back comes to rest on something hard and cold, and her other arm flops down and hangs over the side of whatever it is that she’s laying on. She’ll look at it in a minute, or whenever the world stops spinning, whichever happens first.
Sam can feel her arms and legs tingling, almost as if the naquadah coursing through her veins is furious that it was beaten down by mere sedatives. But, boy, those were some sedatives. The memories of how she and the rest of the team had gotten into this fine mess finally come back to her in a rush, and she exhales quietly as she resists the urge to lie there and sort through them all. There are more important things to worry about at the moment: she has no idea where she is or if she’s alone, and that doesn’t tend to be the sort of information she likes to go without.
She pushes herself up again, slower this time but wincing anyway. She inhales slowly, each breath coated with that nasty rose scent. When her breathing finally evens out a bit and her stomach stops flipping around like a fish on dry land, she opens her eyes and finds herself staring ahead at black metal bars. A cool breeze makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and she looks behind her to find a red stone wall with a thin, tiny window looking out into the black night. It’s too bad that it’s impossible to fit through, let alone fit an arm through. She turns back to the entrance to her cell, her gaze quickly sweeping over the ceiling and the walls on either side along the way. No cracks, no vents, just solid dark red stone. Fantastic.
She deliberately takes it slow when she finally stands, willing her knees to stop shaking and glancing at the stone bed beside her. She’ll call it a bed for simplicity’s sake, but it’s nothing more than a long stone slab sticking up out of the floor. And they certainly didn’t have the decency to give her a pillow, as the mild crick in her neck is quick to point out. But, then again, this is a cell, so she’s clearly a prisoner. A pillow is probably out of the question.
Her boots click against the stones as she makes her way toward the bars, and it takes her a few more steps than it normally should for her to realize that boots don’t click. When she looks down at herself, her stomach sinks as she suddenly sees what all that princess talk was all about: she’s definitely dressed to fit the part. Instead of BDUs, she finds a little light pink dress, so light that it’s almost white and with heels to match, plastered to her body. It’s smooth as silk and very… form-fitting, to say the least (she’s fairly certain she walked onto this world with two times less cleavage.) The dress begins just below her shoulders and ends in the middle of her thighs, and there’s a long train trailing out behind her. It swishes against the floor every time she moves and makes her feel positively ridiculous, like some sort of bizarre pink peacock. That feeling is only intensified when she reaches up to her hair, shoulders sagging as her fingers graze along the edges of a pointy little crown, pinned neatly to the center of her head.
And the guys saw her in this. They’d never let her live it down.
There’s some kind of massive golden necklace draped over her collarbone and there seem to be some tiny dangly earrings involved, too, but she’s officially had it with this world. She strides toward the bars of her cell with every intention of getting the hell out.
No sooner does she do so, however, than she hears voices coming in her direction and sees shadows moving along the wall. There hadn’t been any guards here the entire time, and she takes a second to mentally berate herself for wasting time being mystified by the damn dress before she darts back onto the stone slab. She lays flat, shuts her eyes, and stays as still as humanly possible. With any luck, these guys will keep talking and tell her something useful.
As the voices move closer to her cell, she hears, “…and they have weapons shaped like serpents that can call spirits of lightning!” The guard sounds young, eager, and innocently excited by what must be his first real assignment.
“I’m still not so sure,” the other guard says. His voice is a little deeper, a little older, but still fairly young; he can’t be much more than 30. Both their voices are close now and Sam cracks one eye open, watching as the two position themselves on either side of the cell. They both appear to be holding long staffs with two prongs on either side of a black sphere.
“Oh, come on!” the younger guard exclaims. “They came through the Ancient Ring! And the legends say that-”
“I know what the legends say,” the older guard grumbles. “I just think this is all a little too convenient. These so-called messiahs appear just as the magistrate’s term is about to conclude? It’s too easy. He might be looking for a way to earn another one, and he must think these people are going to be able give it to him.”
The younger guard scoffs. “The magistrate would do no such thing; he is an honorable man!”
“He would do exactly this sort of thing. He adores his power; can’t you see it in his eyes?”
The younger guard doesn’t respond to that, so the older one continues speaking. “Legendary saviors coming through the Ancient Ring, completing the long-lost ceremony, appeasing the flame god… it’s the perfect way to placate the populace. They’ll love him for this. He’ll probably even get two more terms out of it!”
Flame god? That’s a new one. Sam remembers the magistrate (and his snooty voice) from their initial meeting, and remembers all the hubbub about ceremony this, Ancient Ring that, but she hadn’t heard anything about a flame god. She grimaces inwardly; given the way she’s dressed, they probably want her to marry it.
The younger guard sighs and falls silent for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice echoes against the walls of the cell; he must be facing it. “Even if that were true, this is still supposed to protect our world from all evils, and…” He trails off, making a series of quiet stuttering noises like he’s searching for words, and then finally says, “Well, just look at the princess! I’ve never seen anyone like her, she’s… she’s so beautiful.” God, he almost sounds like he’s getting emotional. He pauses, then adds almost regretfully, “It seems a shame to just… let them go through with the ceremony.”
The older guard seems to notice his current state. “Your face is red.” The younger guard begins stuttering again, and the older one chuckles. “Keep this up, and I’ll tell your wife.”
As the younger guard pleads frantically, “Oh, don’t tell her, please! She’ll have my head!” and the older guard taunts him with more playful threats, Sam decides it’s now or never. She really hates having to resort to this kind of thing (she’d roll her eyes if they weren’t still closed,) but she has to get these two to open the door, if only for a second.
She coughs once, twice, and immediately winces at how overdramatic they sound. Still, it gets the guards’ attention, and their talking stops abruptly. Their light armor shuffles and shifts as they turn to peer at her through the bars, and she sits up slowly, meeting their gaze with what she hopes is something like dazed innocence. If they’re so insistent on calling her a princess, then she might as well play the part.
“Oh…” she softly mutters, the back of her hand traveling to her forehead. “Where am I?”
The guards gape at each other, as if they never expected her to actually wake up while they were there. The older one is the first to regain his senses and he shakes his head momentarily. “Uh, greetings, Princess!” The younger guard gives him a look at the sudden disappearance of his skepticism, and the older one shrugs. “It’s all right,” he continues. “You’re in the castle.”
“And there’s good news!” The younger guard stands up a little straighter and puffs his chest out. “The ceremony preparations have been accelerated. It’s going to occur in just a few hours, so you won’t have to wait much longer.”
Sam stares at them blankly. The older guard takes the opening and speaks again. “I, uh. I know you must be frightened.”
“Ah, yes,” Sam replies, and thinks it was probably a little too quick. She nods as she says, “Absolutely. Frightened. Completely.” A somewhat awkward silence stretches out between all of them, so she tosses in a, “Help?”
“It’s all right,” the older guard reassures her again. “I know the ceremony must seem a little… barbaric. Honestly, I’m not so sure how I feel about it myself, but…”
The young guard picks up where he leaves off. “But the legends say you’ll be fine! And, and your prince will be there with you, and so will your servants.”
“And were anyone to assist you in, say, an escape,” the older guard says with a wince, “surely they would be punished by death.” The younger guard nods beside him. “We have families we need to take care of, you see. So if the ceremony does go forward, then… well, I’m sorry.”
Sam nods again, a little slower this time. The more they talk about this ceremony, the more upset they look. Whatever it is, it can’t be too pleasant.
“Where is… my prince?” she asks somewhat tentatively. “And my servants?” She has a guess as to who they might have classified as the prince, but she certainly doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions.
“Your servants are being held in the cells above us,” the younger guard answers. “But don’t worry; this is all for your own protection.” Oh yeah, Sam’s heard that one before.
“To be honest, though, I’m not sure where they’ve taken the prince,” the older guard muses. “They may have begun to prepare him for the ceremony. As you will eventually be prepared, of course.”
“Of course,” Sam responds. She does her best to inject some excitement into it, but it still comes out rather flat.
The younger guard does that chest-puffing thing again. “You will see your prince and your servants again at the ceremony, so there’s nothing to worry about. We shall keep you company until the appointed time.” He looks so proud; it might be adorable were he not standing directly between Sam and her freedom.
“Oh, well. That’s, um. That’s very nice. Thank you.” Sam clasps her hands together as she rises from the stone slab, offering them a smile as she slowly makes her way toward the bars. “You know what might be even nicer?”
The guard’s eyes widen with child-like awe as she comes closer to them. They shake their heads in response to her question, but stay utterly enraptured by her presence in their almost personal space.
Sam leans in close until her bangs brush against the bars. The guards do the same, not even aware that they’re doing it.
“It would be even nicer,” she half-whispers to them, “if you both kept me company for, oh, I don’t know.” She shrugs innocently. “Some fresh air. It’s awfully stuffy in here. I mean, the little window’s great, but it’s not all that conducive to good air flow.”
The guards give each other uncertain glances, but Sam presses on. “So, what do you say? Let’s go for a walk.”
The younger guard’s brow furrows. “Er, well. That would require… letting you out of here.”
Sam nods. “That… would be the general idea, yes.”
“That would be constituted as escape,” the older guard remarks. “We would die.”
“Escape? Oh. Oh, no, I- I wouldn’t dream of-” She stops. Their faces are blank as blank can be. They’re not buying it.
“We really cannot open this door,” the older guard continues. “It’s best for all us if we don’t open it.”
“Not even for a few minutes?”
“Listen, Princess, you…” The younger guard shifts slightly and looks at the floor. He swallows hard as he looks up again, and Sam swears she sees a teeny tiny bead of sweat working its way down the side of his head. “You became quite violent when you were first brought here. It was… frightening.”
“They told us you had been possessed by an evil spirit attempting to defeat you before the ceremony.” The older guard shrugs helplessly. “We do not wish to see that spirit.”
“Ever again,” the younger guard adds, his eyes widening slightly as if he’s plagued by some horrible, traumatic ghost of a memory.
Sam lets her head drop with a sigh. There’s no use mincing words anymore, and she’s always been better with the direct approach anyway. “Look,” she says, studying their faces with an expression she hopes will make her ever-increasing desire to go home known and appreciated, “I know everyone here thinks we’re destined to somehow save your planet because we came through the ‘Ancient Ring’, but number one: your planet is at peace. I don’t have any idea what we’re saving you from.”
The two men exchange puzzled glances. “Evil,” they say in unison like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Sam sighs again. “Okay. Well, number two: we’re really not that special. See, we’re explorers. We go through the Stargate - that’s what we call the Ancient Ring back on our world - every day. I know the gate is very important to your legends, but it’s also not something that’s unique to your planet.”
On the plus side, the guards’ worlds don’t appear to be flipping upside down with the introduction of this information. On the other hand, they also don’t appear to be totally plugged into her speech. She stares at them intently, hoping to reel them back in. “We’ve been through hundreds of gates. We come from another world, yes, but we’re human, just like you are. We’re not world-savers.” As soon as the words come out of her mouth, she’s struck by the hopeless inaccuracy of her statement and shuts her eyes. “Well, I guess we’ve saved some worlds before. But not-” She gestures to her currently royal attire. “Not like this.”
The guards glance at each other again. “The magistrate has made his declarations clear,” the younger one states.
“And, like it or not, his word is law.”
They observe her with something that looks like regret, like they’re genuinely disappointed that they can’t help her. She licks her lips slowly, thoughtfully, and draws in a measured breath through her teeth. She lets it go all at once in a huge rush of air.
“Okay,” she simply says before she takes a few steps backwards, turns around, and promptly collapses onto the floor.
It takes a moment for the whole thing to sink in for the guards. They stare at her, at each other, and then back again, jaws gradually becoming more and more agape.
“Princess?” the younger one asks. Sam offers no response whatsoever, not even a twitch. “Oh, sweet fires of- is she all right? Can you tell?”
“I…” The older guard shakes his head as if to clear it. “Yes! Yes, of course she’s all right. She was just talking to us!”
“Then why isn’t she moving?”
“I don’t know!”
The younger guard moves toward the big black lock on the bars, but the older one smacks his hand away.
“What in the world do you think you’re doing?!”
“I’m going to check on her! She might be injured!”
“She’s not injured! This is clearly a ruse; weren’t you listening when she just said she wants to leave?” The younger guard ignores him, goes for the lock, and promptly gets his hand smacked again. “Do not open this door!”
The younger guard’s tone ratchets itself up an octave. “What if she dies?! I’m fairly certain the saviors need to be alive for the ceremony; do you really want to be held responsible for its failure because the princess is dead?!”
There’s a thought that gets the older guard’s blood chilling. The color drains from his face as his imagination runs wild. After a few agonizing moments of self-inflicted mental torture, he shuts his eyes very tightly and grimaces. “All right,” he says. “Just make sure she’s breathing, and then get back out here.” He brings his staff in front of him and readies it, pointing it directly at the spot where Sam lies. He backs out of the way only to let the younger guard venture inside, and plants himself right in the middle of the cell’s new possible exit.
The younger guard approaches Sam with a great deal of caution, circling her for a moment before leaning forward slightly and lightly prodding her arm with one of the prongs of his staff. She doesn’t move. He looks back to the older guard, who rolls his eyes, but urges him on. He steps even closer, kneels down, leans in a little more, and then…
And then Sam grabs the bottom of his staff, wrenches it out of his hands, and bashes him right in the side of the head with it. He goes down as she leaps up, but the older guard gives an aggravated cry of, “Oh, I told you!” and lets fly with a barrage of the poofing black things, materializing one right after the other from the sphere in the middle of the prongs. Sam dives behind the stone slab and swoons a bit at the return of the rose stench. Wispy pink smoke rapidly fills the cell and she covers her mouth and nose with her hand; there is no way she’s going to let that stuff knock her out again.
The older guard’s footsteps thump farther into the cell, and Sam knows there can’t be much distance now between her and him, so she picks up the younger guard’s staff again and swings it hard in a large, sweeping motion as she quickly rises from the floor. It clangs against the older guard’s weapon, knocking it out of the way and sending him a little off-balance. Sam doesn’t waste his mere seconds of distraction: she immediately darts toward him, grabs him by the shoulders, and rams her knee into his stomach. His staff drops to the floor with a clatter, and she shoves him out of her way and into the wall as she sprints out the door.
Once she’s out, however, she glances at the open lock on the bars and figures there had to be a key that opened it, so she silently swears and doubles back into the cell. The older guard is totally dazed, too dazed to do anything about her pouncing on the younger guy and patting him down in an effort to locate the keys. Something clinks in his pants pocket, and sure enough, the keys are there. Sam gratefully snatches them up and bounds back outside, prizes firmly in hand. She rests her staff against the wall beside her, pulls the bars closed and clamps the lock shut.
She’s mid-dash in another direction when she hears the faint swish of her train behind her and stops, rolling her eyes and dropping to one knee. Yanking the whole thing toward her, she finds the place just below where it meets the back of the dress and promptly spears a prong of the staff into it. It goes through easily, like a knife through butter, and she quickly saws the train right off without hesitation. She almost leaves it behind, but changes her mind at the last second and wraps it around her wrist.
A quiet, aggravated exhalation leaves her as she stands again, and she glances back into the cell. The guards aren’t moving.
“Sorry,” she mutters, and runs off without another look back.
---
They’d been looking forward to P4X-777. They really had been. “Lucky sevens,” Colonel O’Neill said brightly, sporting a rather infectious smirk as they all stepped through the wormhole. So where was the point, exactly, that things started to go awry? Was it when they emerged on the other side to a swarm of staffs pointed directly at their stomachs? Or perhaps it was when they were just getting ready to leave and that magistrate spread his arms wide, saying something about a ritual, and oh, would you please be so kind as to participate before you depart?
No, it had to have been, Sam thinks as she hears footsteps and presses her back flat against another wall, the point when she’d done her usual blabbering to some of the villagers about, “This is how the Stargate works,” and, “Wormholes are cool,” and she’d had an utterly captive audience the entire time. And if there’s one thing Sam almost never has when she starts talking science, it’s a captive audience. They didn’t understand a word of what she was saying, and she knew that, and they knew that, and yet they’d listened anyway, eyes wide and astonished as she prattled through the basics. It was kind of nice at first, but then some of the older, gray-haired women started gesturing toward the sky and muttering under their breaths and possibly crying to themselves, and that, Sam decides, is when things got weird. Looking back on it now, she realizes she must’ve done or said something that made them think she was their mystical, sparkly princess of yore. She certainly doesn’t feel very princess-like as she sneaks through this ridiculous maze of a castle that’s apparently a lot bigger on the inside than it originally appeared on the outside. The impossibly long hallways and the even longer sets of stairs are, unfortunately, giving her a lot of time to finally think about what got them here.
The Pyreneans (“Like the dogs?” the colonel had mused) were paranoid. Really, really paranoid. This was understandable, perhaps, since not one single person had come through their gate for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, and they’d gotten quite used to it being their greatest religious icon (otherwise known as, “Their big lawn ornament,” if the colonel’s never ending witticisms were to be taken with anything other than a grain of salt.) So when SG-1 waltzed through their gate, they panicked. Screams were uttered, women and children were hidden, and soldiers poured out of the castle in droves to “greet” them. It took a lot of forced smiling and a lot of Daniel’s usual verbal magic to convince them that they weren’t evil spirits hell bent on leveling their planet.
The magistrate, tall and thin with a hooked nose and a voice like a buzz saw, eventually appeared to call the soldiers off. He was positively hospitable after that, inviting one and all to come and meet their otherworldly visitors. What with the Stargate being in the middle of the village, and the village being situated right outside the castle, there were plenty of people poking their heads out of windows and doors, hoping to catch a glimpse of these strange new guests.
Things grew considerably more relaxed from there: suddenly there was a feast in their honor (otherwise known as the ritual, and hey, rituals involving food couldn’t be that bad) and Jack was muttering through his teeth that, “We should probably quit while we’re ahead,” and Daniel was muttering back, “Well, we definitely don’t want to be rude now,” and so they stayed, but only for the feast, and then they’d high-tail it home. It was clear that the Pyreneans weren’t likely to have any new or interesting technology since they were planted firmly in the medieval stages of life, and all four of them were far from averse to the idea of cutting their losses on this one.
Sam holds her breath as the shadow of another guard passes by her. When he’s gone, she glances down at the staff still firmly in her grip. They might’ve been wrong about new and interesting technology after all, what with these things having a clear ability to conceal large ammunition in a very small space, but it’s way past the point where anyone would care. And, Sam notes with an inward grumble, she still hasn’t been able to figure out how to make it work. Right now, it’s just a heavy stick, and that really bugs her.
But she digresses. As she peers around a corner, looking both ways before darting down another hallway, she recalls the feast. The magistrate had taken quite an interest in them by that point, and she assumed (And you know what they say about assuming, she thinks to herself rather bitterly) he was just trying to dispel any remaining concerns his people may have harbored. He asked a lot of questions, but none of them had really been all that personal. In fact, most of them were actually kind of bizarre: “Have you ever slain a rampaging beast?” (“Sure, we’ve done that. Right? We’ve slain some beasts?”) “Have you ever embarked into the clouds?” (“You mean like… flying? Yeah, we’ve done that.”) “Have you ever performed a miracle with your own two hands?” (“Carter blew up a sun once.”)
Of course, Sam sees now that it was a cleverly disguised test, a list of legendary savior criteria. The gleam in the magistrate’s eye as he excused himself temporarily was unmistakable, and not one of them missed it. She and the colonel had a clear view of him as he left and watched him converse with some soldiers a few yards away. He looked back at them, and he did this a lot, his eyes passing over each one of them in measured increments. It was more than suspicious, and it set off every mental alarm bell they had. By the time he returned to their table, they were already out of their seats.
The magistrate only eyed them greedily, an almost ravenous smirk appearing on his face as he snapped his fingers. Soldiers surrounded them again, closing them into a tight circle, and the magistrate declared in full proclamatory volume that “the promised time has come to us all.”
And then Sam got a face full of poofing grenade and somebody fired a zat and the sounds of punching and kicking gradually grew weaker as they were peppered over and over by the rose bombs. That’s the last thing she clearly remembers; ever since the guards mentioned it, she has a vague memory of waking up groggy and kicking somebody in the head, which must have caused them to chuck even more grenades at her, which would explain why she was the only one high as a kite when they’d tried to make their grand escape.
She hears a voice as she rounds the next corner, dropping in and out as it reverberates against the high walls, but clearly… singing?
“When you wish upon a star… makes no difference who you-”
“Stop! Stop your chanting right now! You are a prisoner!”
Sam grins and swallows a chuckle. Leave it to Daniel to figure out how to bug the crap out of his guards without even lifting a finger.
“This isn’t chanting,” she hears him say as she creeps closer to his cell. “It’s singing. There’s really a big difference.”
“I don’t care! You will cease it immediately!” One of the guards has his back to her, and they’re so focused on Daniel and standing so close to his cell that they don’t have the slightest idea that she’s there. And that’s good, because it gives her enough time to sneak up right behind them, slowly raise her staff, and nail one of the guards right in the back of the head. He drops like a stone, leaving a very stunned guard and an equally stunned Daniel in his wake.
The other guard has himself planted so close to the bars of the cell that he doesn’t realize his staff is right within Daniel’s reach. Daniel jumps on his distraction and lunges forward, threading his arms through the bars and gripping the staff tightly. The guard attempts to wrench it from his grip, but Daniel’s a lot stronger than he gives him credit for, and he growls in frustration as he lets it go and charges at Sam.
This guard’s quite a bit bigger and stronger than the guys stationed at Sam’s cell, and he clearly has a much better idea of what he’s doing as he hurtles his body into her, slamming her hard against the wall. Stars swarm her vision and strong arms clamp around her as the guard drags her toward the cell. Still blinking away spots, she struggles against him, her shoes leaving the floor as she tries to twist herself out of his grip. It slows him down just enough, and she’s able to drive her heel into his boot before breaking free and slamming her fist into his face. He staggers backwards, hands against his nose, and she uses his momentum to steer him toward the wall, which she drives his head into, just in case. The guard finally goes down and Sam descends on his pockets, patting them down until she finds the keys she seeks. At this rate, she’s going to have quite a collection going.
“You all right?” Daniel asks her as she thrusts key after key into the bars’ lock.
“Yeah,” she nods. “Are you?”
Daniel nods back. “Yeah, although I was getting pretty bored there.”
She smirks at him as the lock finally clicks open. “So I heard.”
They take a few cautious glances around as Daniel slides out from behind the bars, and they immediately go about dragging the guards’ limp bodies into the cell. Once it’s closed and locked again, Sam snatches both staffs off the floor, tossing one to Daniel as he comes to stand beside her.
“Do you have any idea where they took Teal’c and Colonel O’Neill?” she asks him.
“Nope. I was sort of hoping you did.”
“Nope.”
They both take one last look inside the cell before breezing out of the room.
As another lengthy hall stretches out before them, Daniel asks, “Still stuck in that getup, huh?”
Sam groans and rolls her eyes. “I have never missed my uniform as much as I do right now.”
---
The two of them run around aimlessly for God knows how long, and that combined with periodically catching a nauseating whiff of rose starts to get the better of them. They find a small alcove, well-shaded by a row of pillars, in which to momentarily catch their breath.
As they crouch in the shadows, Sam fiddles with her staff, pangs of frustration gradually sinking in. If these stupid guards can fire off a volley without a second thought, why can’t she figure out how to do it? It cannot possibly be rocket science. She’s starting to suspect some kind of weird Pyrenean gene when Daniel, thankfully, interrupts her train of thought that’s well on its way to involving gratuitous use of expletives.
“Do you have any idea what these people expect us to be able to do for them?” he asks.
Sam sighs. “Apparently we have the ability to appease a flame god and banish all evil.”
“Ah. Well, that would make sense.” Sam gives him a skeptical sidelong glance, and he quickly adds, “In terms of language, I mean. ‘Pyrenean’. In this case, it’s probably an extension of the Greek root ‘pyr’.” Sam looks at him again. “Fire,” he confirms.
“Ah,” she says, and turns to her attention back to the staff.
After a moment’s silence, Daniel mutters, “Or, I guess it could also be for Pyrene.”
“Pyrene?”
“A figure in Greek mythology,” he explains. “Basically, Hercules forced himself upon her in a drunken stupor, she got pregnant and gave birth to a snake, and then she ran into the woods where she poured her heart out to the trees before she was torn to shreds by wild beasts.”
Sam stops what she’s doing and turns her head very, very slowly to stare incredulously at Daniel, whose gaze drifts up to the little crown still perched atop Sam’s head.
“And,” he continues, “she was a princess, so…”
Sam actually feels some of the color drain from her face, and suddenly finds herself uncomfortably aware of her dress.
“So we’ll hope it’s not that,” she says.
Daniel nods slowly and methodically. “Yeah.”
An odd bang startles them to attention, and they snap up their staffs and press themselves farther into the shadows. The sounds of some sort of commotion reach their ears, and they hear another muffled bang. Voices drift their way, all tense and shouting, but there’s one in particular that they recognize immediately. They don’t even have to look at each other before they hurry out of the alcove.
They cautiously peer around the corner, both relieved and anxious at the sight of Teal’c. He’s surrounded by about five or six different guards, all struggling to wrestle him into submission, and it looks like they might actually succeed. Sam feels Daniel twitch beside her as Teal’c roars in frustration.
Very quickly, she looks behind them. No guards. There aren’t any more leaping into the fray, either, so they might actually have a shot at knocking them all out together. Anything’s better than sitting here watching these guys wail on Teal’c, and when Sam glances at Daniel, he’s already looking to her for an answer to his unspoken question: “Are we just gonna sit here, or are we gonna go help him?” All it takes is one affirmative nod, and they’re off.
One by one, Sam and Daniel manage to peel a few of the guards away, giving Teal’c enough room to clobber the rest of them. They go down quickly, but when the three of them have finally sent the last one careening, Teal’c stumbles. Sam is the first to catch him, sinking down to the floor with him and noticing a spot of red trickling down the side of his head. Daniel comes to his side and latches onto his other arm, and together they guide him back to their alcove.
“Thought this might come in handy,” Sam mutters half to herself as she unwraps the former train from her wrist, tearing off a chunk of the cloth with her teeth. She presses it to the wound on Teal’c’s head, but he grunts in pain and jerks away from her. Daniel tries to hold him steady, tries to reassure him, but his eyes look so unfocused and disoriented and he reeks of rose.
“Teal’c, it’s us, look at me.” Sam presses her palm to the side of his face and he stills somewhat. “Look at me,” she says again, easing the cloth back onto his head. This time he doesn’t resist, and he eventually makes eye contact with her.
“Major Carter,” he mumbles, his voice thick and gravelly. “Daniel Jackson.”
“Yeah, Teal’c, it’s us,” Daniel tells him, positioning him so he can lean against the wall. Sam passes the cloth to him and he takes it, dabbing lightly at some of the red spots.
Teal’c’s eyes regain some of their luster, and he shifts his gaze to Sam, a small smile appearing on his lips. “It appears I did not need to retrieve you after all.”
She grins. “Yeah, we did all right.”
“Sam did all right,” Daniel corrects her. “I might’ve been stuck singing to guards for the rest of my life if she didn’t break me out.”
Sam tosses a smirk in his direction before turning her attention back to Teal’c. “Are you gonna be all right?” she asks. “How’s your tretonin?”
Teal’c rests the back of his head against the wall and places his hand against Daniel’s arm, gently leading it down and away from him. “I will be fine,” he says, directing it at both of them. “The soldiers merely attempted to incapacitate me with their sedatives.”
“Oh, we know how that goes,” Daniel muses.
“As for my tretonin,” Teal’c continues, “it was taken from me. But as I have said, I will be all right.”
Damn. Teal’c minus tretonin dramatically cuts down their available time, no matter how much he’d try to endure without it. Sam sighs, the wheels in her head turning at full speed as she tries to formulate a plan. “Do you know where they might’ve taken it?”
“Or the rest of our gear?” Daniel asks, not voicing the concern they’re all thinking: even if they manage to make it back to the gate, they’ll be stuck between a rock and a hard place without the GDO.
“Or Colonel O’Neill?” Sam finishes.
Teal’c responds exactly the way she thought he would: “I do not.”
Sam sighs again and stands, leaning her back against the wall as she thinks. They have to find Colonel O’Neill, and they have to do it soon. But that had always been true even before now, so nothing about the situation has changed, really. Still, the castle is huge, and the colonel could be anywhere. God knows how many stairs they’d have to climb and how many rooms they’d have to sneak into before they found him. And that assumes they don’t get caught and rose bombed along the way.
She supposes he could already be running around the place trying to get to them, but she has a funny feeling that’s not the case. Daniel and Teal’c still have their uniforms, meaning there’s only one person left to be the prince. He’s probably heavily sedated and heavily guarded, wherever he is. Not like she’d been heavily guarded, but that’s a whole new can of worms she doesn’t have time to open right now.
After a few moments, she notices the silence between them and finds it glaring enough to distract her from her thoughts. When she looks over at Teal’c and Daniel again, they’ve both risen to their feet, standing quietly beside her and, she realizes, patiently waiting. Waiting for her to announce their next move.
Of course. Command automatically defers to her in a situation like this; of course they would be expecting her to make the call. There’s a small part of her that thinks it should be a little intimidating, but it’s not. Not right now, not with them. Implicit trust radiates from both of them, filling her with confidence and a determined fervor.
Sam holds their gazes steadily as she declares, “Let’s go get him.”
---
on to part 2
Um, so, I don't know if you know this about me, it might come as a bit of a shock, but. I like Sam! I like stories about Sam! I like stories about Sam being UHMAYZING, kickin' ass and takin' names like there's no tomorrow! I know, I know, you're reeling. What will you even do with this brand new information!!
Well, you could always put your little eyes all over this story I wrote about Sam being a badass motherfucker. Thaaat is one thing you could do.
title: Faith in Royalty (or Lack Thereof)
series: Stargate SG-1
rating: PG-13 for PUNCHAN and KICKAN and A LITTLE BIT O' SWEARAN
word count: 11,682
spoilers: Passing mentions of little details you wouldn't know without seasons 2, 4 and 6 under your belt. Takes place in season 7 (although I couldn't stop imagining it as 8?)
notes: ohhhh boy! Written for girlsavesboyfic, aka the very first real ficathon I've ever participated in! I have a lot of people to thank and they are: adventurepants, for beta-ing and patting me on the head when I got nervous, soaked_in_stars and peekadora, for encouraging me (prodding me? shoving me?) to do this in the first place, cheapmetaphor, joie_de_vivre, orangespaces and vivrebarefoot, for being really good pom-pom wavers, even if they didn't know it, and ME, for performing inception on myself, because this is basically an embellished and real-world-logic'd dream that I had after going to bed one night worrying that I wouldn't come up with a good idea for this in time. I almost wish I was kidding.
Sam awakens to the sweet smell of roses and the sound of somebody shushing her. And nobody shushes Samantha Carter.
It takes her a moment to realize she’s saying something, but the words don’t sound so much like words as they sound like unintelligible rambling, tumbling out of her mouth at a volume that she thinks might be uncharacteristically loud for her. She really wishes she could tell, but that rose smell seems to be permanently lodged up her nostrils and the only thing she can see is the floor, and no matter how many times she blinks, she can’t get it to stop swirling.
“Uh, Jack? I think she’s awake.”
“Yeah, I can hear that, Daniel.” Jack’s voice vibrates right through her stomach, and she feels her whole body bouncing in time with footfalls. She wriggles a little and hands clamp down on her harder in response. It’s when she finally realizes she’s looking at the floor from mid-air that she comes to the conclusion that she’s draped like a sack of potatoes across Jack’s shoulders. He’s carrying her. Why on Earth is he carrying her? It’s not like she doesn’t have two legs of her own.
“Put me down, sir,” she tries to say, but the clear request she thinks in her head and the slurred, muddled mess she ends up hearing in her ears are just so painfully different.
“Major Carter.” Teal’c’s voice is close to her ear, low and soothing. Had his voice always been so soothing? Gosh, it was soothing. “You must remain silent,” he continues. “We are attempting to escape and return to the Stargate.”
Escape? Escape from where? She tries to ask as much, but the only reply she gets is an awfully cranky, “Carter,” and she doesn’t think that’s a very good answer.
“I don’t care,” Jack hisses, “just stop talking so damn loud.” Oh. Did she say that last part out loud?
She lifts her head to get a better look at their surroundings, but a particularly hideous wave of nausea slams into her and she quickly decides to settle for looking at the floor. She hears herself let out a fairly undignified moan as she lowers her head, followed by Jack and Daniel shushing her again.
“Does anybody have any idea where we’re going?” Jack whispers. God, where are they? They have to be off-world, otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to escape from somewhere. Hopefully. She tries to sift through the thick fog that is her memory, but all she comes up with is roses. Roses, roses, that freaking smell of roses. Why is it so strong? It feels like it’s all over her, soaked into her entire body for all eternity, and the charm of the scent is beginning to wear off very quickly.
Stinging bursts of pain suddenly flare up like fire across her skin. “Did I get hit?” she mumbles, hoping her efforts to be quieter actually worked. Nobody makes any agitated noises, so she figures she succeeded.
“Yeah, Sam,” Daniel responds. “You got hit. We all did.”
A vague memory of something the size of a softball smacking her in the face pops into her head. It was black and round, like a giant grenade, except there had been no explosion, only… roses. And all hell breaking loose, but that was mostly Colonel O’Neill’s doing. But why? Where in the world are they and what in the world happened?
“And just where do you think you‘re going?”
They screech to a halt and Jack curses under his breath. “Oh, just… going for an evening stroll,” he says through his teeth.
“What are you doing with the princess?” a voice asks, the tone flat and annoyed. It’s male, whoever it is, and there’s a certain grating snootiness in the sound that suggests he holds some kind of authority, and did he just call one of them a princess? Oh, he’d better be talking about Daniel.
She feels Jack tighten his hold on her. “Well, she’d be kind of pissed if we went without her.” Crap. Definitely not talking about Daniel.
“You are trying to leave us,” the voice says. Sam hears a whole slew of shuffling and clicking and Jack takes a step backwards. Weapons.
“Look,” Jack replies loudly, sternly, “we’re taking a pass on this whole prince and princess thing. You let us go, and we won’t kick your asses.”
The voice chuckles. It might sound sinister if it didn’t sound so amused. “You are staying, and you will save our world. The ceremony can’t be completed without you, after all.”
A flurry of deep thumping and poofing noises ring out. Sam doesn’t have much time to wonder why that sounds so familiar, or what kind of weapons sound like fluffy fairy tale magic, before Jack quickly deposits her on the floor. The last thing she remembers before passing out again is the sensation of his body covering hers.
That, and the smell of those damned roses.
---
She’s just decided, in the confines of her barely conscious mind, that everything had been a crazy little dream after all when her stomach rolls under the weight of a sickly sweet odor and she sits up, tense and sweating and sporting a headache the size of the sun. It feels like the sun, too, and she blinks hard to shoo away the throbbing pain and the relentless blurriness clouding her vision. It accomplishes absolutely nothing, and she presses her palm against her forehead as she slides back down. Her back comes to rest on something hard and cold, and her other arm flops down and hangs over the side of whatever it is that she’s laying on. She’ll look at it in a minute, or whenever the world stops spinning, whichever happens first.
Sam can feel her arms and legs tingling, almost as if the naquadah coursing through her veins is furious that it was beaten down by mere sedatives. But, boy, those were some sedatives. The memories of how she and the rest of the team had gotten into this fine mess finally come back to her in a rush, and she exhales quietly as she resists the urge to lie there and sort through them all. There are more important things to worry about at the moment: she has no idea where she is or if she’s alone, and that doesn’t tend to be the sort of information she likes to go without.
She pushes herself up again, slower this time but wincing anyway. She inhales slowly, each breath coated with that nasty rose scent. When her breathing finally evens out a bit and her stomach stops flipping around like a fish on dry land, she opens her eyes and finds herself staring ahead at black metal bars. A cool breeze makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and she looks behind her to find a red stone wall with a thin, tiny window looking out into the black night. It’s too bad that it’s impossible to fit through, let alone fit an arm through. She turns back to the entrance to her cell, her gaze quickly sweeping over the ceiling and the walls on either side along the way. No cracks, no vents, just solid dark red stone. Fantastic.
She deliberately takes it slow when she finally stands, willing her knees to stop shaking and glancing at the stone bed beside her. She’ll call it a bed for simplicity’s sake, but it’s nothing more than a long stone slab sticking up out of the floor. And they certainly didn’t have the decency to give her a pillow, as the mild crick in her neck is quick to point out. But, then again, this is a cell, so she’s clearly a prisoner. A pillow is probably out of the question.
Her boots click against the stones as she makes her way toward the bars, and it takes her a few more steps than it normally should for her to realize that boots don’t click. When she looks down at herself, her stomach sinks as she suddenly sees what all that princess talk was all about: she’s definitely dressed to fit the part. Instead of BDUs, she finds a little light pink dress, so light that it’s almost white and with heels to match, plastered to her body. It’s smooth as silk and very… form-fitting, to say the least (she’s fairly certain she walked onto this world with two times less cleavage.) The dress begins just below her shoulders and ends in the middle of her thighs, and there’s a long train trailing out behind her. It swishes against the floor every time she moves and makes her feel positively ridiculous, like some sort of bizarre pink peacock. That feeling is only intensified when she reaches up to her hair, shoulders sagging as her fingers graze along the edges of a pointy little crown, pinned neatly to the center of her head.
And the guys saw her in this. They’d never let her live it down.
There’s some kind of massive golden necklace draped over her collarbone and there seem to be some tiny dangly earrings involved, too, but she’s officially had it with this world. She strides toward the bars of her cell with every intention of getting the hell out.
No sooner does she do so, however, than she hears voices coming in her direction and sees shadows moving along the wall. There hadn’t been any guards here the entire time, and she takes a second to mentally berate herself for wasting time being mystified by the damn dress before she darts back onto the stone slab. She lays flat, shuts her eyes, and stays as still as humanly possible. With any luck, these guys will keep talking and tell her something useful.
As the voices move closer to her cell, she hears, “…and they have weapons shaped like serpents that can call spirits of lightning!” The guard sounds young, eager, and innocently excited by what must be his first real assignment.
“I’m still not so sure,” the other guard says. His voice is a little deeper, a little older, but still fairly young; he can’t be much more than 30. Both their voices are close now and Sam cracks one eye open, watching as the two position themselves on either side of the cell. They both appear to be holding long staffs with two prongs on either side of a black sphere.
“Oh, come on!” the younger guard exclaims. “They came through the Ancient Ring! And the legends say that-”
“I know what the legends say,” the older guard grumbles. “I just think this is all a little too convenient. These so-called messiahs appear just as the magistrate’s term is about to conclude? It’s too easy. He might be looking for a way to earn another one, and he must think these people are going to be able give it to him.”
The younger guard scoffs. “The magistrate would do no such thing; he is an honorable man!”
“He would do exactly this sort of thing. He adores his power; can’t you see it in his eyes?”
The younger guard doesn’t respond to that, so the older one continues speaking. “Legendary saviors coming through the Ancient Ring, completing the long-lost ceremony, appeasing the flame god… it’s the perfect way to placate the populace. They’ll love him for this. He’ll probably even get two more terms out of it!”
Flame god? That’s a new one. Sam remembers the magistrate (and his snooty voice) from their initial meeting, and remembers all the hubbub about ceremony this, Ancient Ring that, but she hadn’t heard anything about a flame god. She grimaces inwardly; given the way she’s dressed, they probably want her to marry it.
The younger guard sighs and falls silent for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice echoes against the walls of the cell; he must be facing it. “Even if that were true, this is still supposed to protect our world from all evils, and…” He trails off, making a series of quiet stuttering noises like he’s searching for words, and then finally says, “Well, just look at the princess! I’ve never seen anyone like her, she’s… she’s so beautiful.” God, he almost sounds like he’s getting emotional. He pauses, then adds almost regretfully, “It seems a shame to just… let them go through with the ceremony.”
The older guard seems to notice his current state. “Your face is red.” The younger guard begins stuttering again, and the older one chuckles. “Keep this up, and I’ll tell your wife.”
As the younger guard pleads frantically, “Oh, don’t tell her, please! She’ll have my head!” and the older guard taunts him with more playful threats, Sam decides it’s now or never. She really hates having to resort to this kind of thing (she’d roll her eyes if they weren’t still closed,) but she has to get these two to open the door, if only for a second.
She coughs once, twice, and immediately winces at how overdramatic they sound. Still, it gets the guards’ attention, and their talking stops abruptly. Their light armor shuffles and shifts as they turn to peer at her through the bars, and she sits up slowly, meeting their gaze with what she hopes is something like dazed innocence. If they’re so insistent on calling her a princess, then she might as well play the part.
“Oh…” she softly mutters, the back of her hand traveling to her forehead. “Where am I?”
The guards gape at each other, as if they never expected her to actually wake up while they were there. The older one is the first to regain his senses and he shakes his head momentarily. “Uh, greetings, Princess!” The younger guard gives him a look at the sudden disappearance of his skepticism, and the older one shrugs. “It’s all right,” he continues. “You’re in the castle.”
“And there’s good news!” The younger guard stands up a little straighter and puffs his chest out. “The ceremony preparations have been accelerated. It’s going to occur in just a few hours, so you won’t have to wait much longer.”
Sam stares at them blankly. The older guard takes the opening and speaks again. “I, uh. I know you must be frightened.”
“Ah, yes,” Sam replies, and thinks it was probably a little too quick. She nods as she says, “Absolutely. Frightened. Completely.” A somewhat awkward silence stretches out between all of them, so she tosses in a, “Help?”
“It’s all right,” the older guard reassures her again. “I know the ceremony must seem a little… barbaric. Honestly, I’m not so sure how I feel about it myself, but…”
The young guard picks up where he leaves off. “But the legends say you’ll be fine! And, and your prince will be there with you, and so will your servants.”
“And were anyone to assist you in, say, an escape,” the older guard says with a wince, “surely they would be punished by death.” The younger guard nods beside him. “We have families we need to take care of, you see. So if the ceremony does go forward, then… well, I’m sorry.”
Sam nods again, a little slower this time. The more they talk about this ceremony, the more upset they look. Whatever it is, it can’t be too pleasant.
“Where is… my prince?” she asks somewhat tentatively. “And my servants?” She has a guess as to who they might have classified as the prince, but she certainly doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions.
“Your servants are being held in the cells above us,” the younger guard answers. “But don’t worry; this is all for your own protection.” Oh yeah, Sam’s heard that one before.
“To be honest, though, I’m not sure where they’ve taken the prince,” the older guard muses. “They may have begun to prepare him for the ceremony. As you will eventually be prepared, of course.”
“Of course,” Sam responds. She does her best to inject some excitement into it, but it still comes out rather flat.
The younger guard does that chest-puffing thing again. “You will see your prince and your servants again at the ceremony, so there’s nothing to worry about. We shall keep you company until the appointed time.” He looks so proud; it might be adorable were he not standing directly between Sam and her freedom.
“Oh, well. That’s, um. That’s very nice. Thank you.” Sam clasps her hands together as she rises from the stone slab, offering them a smile as she slowly makes her way toward the bars. “You know what might be even nicer?”
The guard’s eyes widen with child-like awe as she comes closer to them. They shake their heads in response to her question, but stay utterly enraptured by her presence in their almost personal space.
Sam leans in close until her bangs brush against the bars. The guards do the same, not even aware that they’re doing it.
“It would be even nicer,” she half-whispers to them, “if you both kept me company for, oh, I don’t know.” She shrugs innocently. “Some fresh air. It’s awfully stuffy in here. I mean, the little window’s great, but it’s not all that conducive to good air flow.”
The guards give each other uncertain glances, but Sam presses on. “So, what do you say? Let’s go for a walk.”
The younger guard’s brow furrows. “Er, well. That would require… letting you out of here.”
Sam nods. “That… would be the general idea, yes.”
“That would be constituted as escape,” the older guard remarks. “We would die.”
“Escape? Oh. Oh, no, I- I wouldn’t dream of-” She stops. Their faces are blank as blank can be. They’re not buying it.
“We really cannot open this door,” the older guard continues. “It’s best for all us if we don’t open it.”
“Not even for a few minutes?”
“Listen, Princess, you…” The younger guard shifts slightly and looks at the floor. He swallows hard as he looks up again, and Sam swears she sees a teeny tiny bead of sweat working its way down the side of his head. “You became quite violent when you were first brought here. It was… frightening.”
“They told us you had been possessed by an evil spirit attempting to defeat you before the ceremony.” The older guard shrugs helplessly. “We do not wish to see that spirit.”
“Ever again,” the younger guard adds, his eyes widening slightly as if he’s plagued by some horrible, traumatic ghost of a memory.
Sam lets her head drop with a sigh. There’s no use mincing words anymore, and she’s always been better with the direct approach anyway. “Look,” she says, studying their faces with an expression she hopes will make her ever-increasing desire to go home known and appreciated, “I know everyone here thinks we’re destined to somehow save your planet because we came through the ‘Ancient Ring’, but number one: your planet is at peace. I don’t have any idea what we’re saving you from.”
The two men exchange puzzled glances. “Evil,” they say in unison like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Sam sighs again. “Okay. Well, number two: we’re really not that special. See, we’re explorers. We go through the Stargate - that’s what we call the Ancient Ring back on our world - every day. I know the gate is very important to your legends, but it’s also not something that’s unique to your planet.”
On the plus side, the guards’ worlds don’t appear to be flipping upside down with the introduction of this information. On the other hand, they also don’t appear to be totally plugged into her speech. She stares at them intently, hoping to reel them back in. “We’ve been through hundreds of gates. We come from another world, yes, but we’re human, just like you are. We’re not world-savers.” As soon as the words come out of her mouth, she’s struck by the hopeless inaccuracy of her statement and shuts her eyes. “Well, I guess we’ve saved some worlds before. But not-” She gestures to her currently royal attire. “Not like this.”
The guards glance at each other again. “The magistrate has made his declarations clear,” the younger one states.
“And, like it or not, his word is law.”
They observe her with something that looks like regret, like they’re genuinely disappointed that they can’t help her. She licks her lips slowly, thoughtfully, and draws in a measured breath through her teeth. She lets it go all at once in a huge rush of air.
“Okay,” she simply says before she takes a few steps backwards, turns around, and promptly collapses onto the floor.
It takes a moment for the whole thing to sink in for the guards. They stare at her, at each other, and then back again, jaws gradually becoming more and more agape.
“Princess?” the younger one asks. Sam offers no response whatsoever, not even a twitch. “Oh, sweet fires of- is she all right? Can you tell?”
“I…” The older guard shakes his head as if to clear it. “Yes! Yes, of course she’s all right. She was just talking to us!”
“Then why isn’t she moving?”
“I don’t know!”
The younger guard moves toward the big black lock on the bars, but the older one smacks his hand away.
“What in the world do you think you’re doing?!”
“I’m going to check on her! She might be injured!”
“She’s not injured! This is clearly a ruse; weren’t you listening when she just said she wants to leave?” The younger guard ignores him, goes for the lock, and promptly gets his hand smacked again. “Do not open this door!”
The younger guard’s tone ratchets itself up an octave. “What if she dies?! I’m fairly certain the saviors need to be alive for the ceremony; do you really want to be held responsible for its failure because the princess is dead?!”
There’s a thought that gets the older guard’s blood chilling. The color drains from his face as his imagination runs wild. After a few agonizing moments of self-inflicted mental torture, he shuts his eyes very tightly and grimaces. “All right,” he says. “Just make sure she’s breathing, and then get back out here.” He brings his staff in front of him and readies it, pointing it directly at the spot where Sam lies. He backs out of the way only to let the younger guard venture inside, and plants himself right in the middle of the cell’s new possible exit.
The younger guard approaches Sam with a great deal of caution, circling her for a moment before leaning forward slightly and lightly prodding her arm with one of the prongs of his staff. She doesn’t move. He looks back to the older guard, who rolls his eyes, but urges him on. He steps even closer, kneels down, leans in a little more, and then…
And then Sam grabs the bottom of his staff, wrenches it out of his hands, and bashes him right in the side of the head with it. He goes down as she leaps up, but the older guard gives an aggravated cry of, “Oh, I told you!” and lets fly with a barrage of the poofing black things, materializing one right after the other from the sphere in the middle of the prongs. Sam dives behind the stone slab and swoons a bit at the return of the rose stench. Wispy pink smoke rapidly fills the cell and she covers her mouth and nose with her hand; there is no way she’s going to let that stuff knock her out again.
The older guard’s footsteps thump farther into the cell, and Sam knows there can’t be much distance now between her and him, so she picks up the younger guard’s staff again and swings it hard in a large, sweeping motion as she quickly rises from the floor. It clangs against the older guard’s weapon, knocking it out of the way and sending him a little off-balance. Sam doesn’t waste his mere seconds of distraction: she immediately darts toward him, grabs him by the shoulders, and rams her knee into his stomach. His staff drops to the floor with a clatter, and she shoves him out of her way and into the wall as she sprints out the door.
Once she’s out, however, she glances at the open lock on the bars and figures there had to be a key that opened it, so she silently swears and doubles back into the cell. The older guard is totally dazed, too dazed to do anything about her pouncing on the younger guy and patting him down in an effort to locate the keys. Something clinks in his pants pocket, and sure enough, the keys are there. Sam gratefully snatches them up and bounds back outside, prizes firmly in hand. She rests her staff against the wall beside her, pulls the bars closed and clamps the lock shut.
She’s mid-dash in another direction when she hears the faint swish of her train behind her and stops, rolling her eyes and dropping to one knee. Yanking the whole thing toward her, she finds the place just below where it meets the back of the dress and promptly spears a prong of the staff into it. It goes through easily, like a knife through butter, and she quickly saws the train right off without hesitation. She almost leaves it behind, but changes her mind at the last second and wraps it around her wrist.
A quiet, aggravated exhalation leaves her as she stands again, and she glances back into the cell. The guards aren’t moving.
“Sorry,” she mutters, and runs off without another look back.
---
They’d been looking forward to P4X-777. They really had been. “Lucky sevens,” Colonel O’Neill said brightly, sporting a rather infectious smirk as they all stepped through the wormhole. So where was the point, exactly, that things started to go awry? Was it when they emerged on the other side to a swarm of staffs pointed directly at their stomachs? Or perhaps it was when they were just getting ready to leave and that magistrate spread his arms wide, saying something about a ritual, and oh, would you please be so kind as to participate before you depart?
No, it had to have been, Sam thinks as she hears footsteps and presses her back flat against another wall, the point when she’d done her usual blabbering to some of the villagers about, “This is how the Stargate works,” and, “Wormholes are cool,” and she’d had an utterly captive audience the entire time. And if there’s one thing Sam almost never has when she starts talking science, it’s a captive audience. They didn’t understand a word of what she was saying, and she knew that, and they knew that, and yet they’d listened anyway, eyes wide and astonished as she prattled through the basics. It was kind of nice at first, but then some of the older, gray-haired women started gesturing toward the sky and muttering under their breaths and possibly crying to themselves, and that, Sam decides, is when things got weird. Looking back on it now, she realizes she must’ve done or said something that made them think she was their mystical, sparkly princess of yore. She certainly doesn’t feel very princess-like as she sneaks through this ridiculous maze of a castle that’s apparently a lot bigger on the inside than it originally appeared on the outside. The impossibly long hallways and the even longer sets of stairs are, unfortunately, giving her a lot of time to finally think about what got them here.
The Pyreneans (“Like the dogs?” the colonel had mused) were paranoid. Really, really paranoid. This was understandable, perhaps, since not one single person had come through their gate for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, and they’d gotten quite used to it being their greatest religious icon (otherwise known as, “Their big lawn ornament,” if the colonel’s never ending witticisms were to be taken with anything other than a grain of salt.) So when SG-1 waltzed through their gate, they panicked. Screams were uttered, women and children were hidden, and soldiers poured out of the castle in droves to “greet” them. It took a lot of forced smiling and a lot of Daniel’s usual verbal magic to convince them that they weren’t evil spirits hell bent on leveling their planet.
The magistrate, tall and thin with a hooked nose and a voice like a buzz saw, eventually appeared to call the soldiers off. He was positively hospitable after that, inviting one and all to come and meet their otherworldly visitors. What with the Stargate being in the middle of the village, and the village being situated right outside the castle, there were plenty of people poking their heads out of windows and doors, hoping to catch a glimpse of these strange new guests.
Things grew considerably more relaxed from there: suddenly there was a feast in their honor (otherwise known as the ritual, and hey, rituals involving food couldn’t be that bad) and Jack was muttering through his teeth that, “We should probably quit while we’re ahead,” and Daniel was muttering back, “Well, we definitely don’t want to be rude now,” and so they stayed, but only for the feast, and then they’d high-tail it home. It was clear that the Pyreneans weren’t likely to have any new or interesting technology since they were planted firmly in the medieval stages of life, and all four of them were far from averse to the idea of cutting their losses on this one.
Sam holds her breath as the shadow of another guard passes by her. When he’s gone, she glances down at the staff still firmly in her grip. They might’ve been wrong about new and interesting technology after all, what with these things having a clear ability to conceal large ammunition in a very small space, but it’s way past the point where anyone would care. And, Sam notes with an inward grumble, she still hasn’t been able to figure out how to make it work. Right now, it’s just a heavy stick, and that really bugs her.
But she digresses. As she peers around a corner, looking both ways before darting down another hallway, she recalls the feast. The magistrate had taken quite an interest in them by that point, and she assumed (And you know what they say about assuming, she thinks to herself rather bitterly) he was just trying to dispel any remaining concerns his people may have harbored. He asked a lot of questions, but none of them had really been all that personal. In fact, most of them were actually kind of bizarre: “Have you ever slain a rampaging beast?” (“Sure, we’ve done that. Right? We’ve slain some beasts?”) “Have you ever embarked into the clouds?” (“You mean like… flying? Yeah, we’ve done that.”) “Have you ever performed a miracle with your own two hands?” (“Carter blew up a sun once.”)
Of course, Sam sees now that it was a cleverly disguised test, a list of legendary savior criteria. The gleam in the magistrate’s eye as he excused himself temporarily was unmistakable, and not one of them missed it. She and the colonel had a clear view of him as he left and watched him converse with some soldiers a few yards away. He looked back at them, and he did this a lot, his eyes passing over each one of them in measured increments. It was more than suspicious, and it set off every mental alarm bell they had. By the time he returned to their table, they were already out of their seats.
The magistrate only eyed them greedily, an almost ravenous smirk appearing on his face as he snapped his fingers. Soldiers surrounded them again, closing them into a tight circle, and the magistrate declared in full proclamatory volume that “the promised time has come to us all.”
And then Sam got a face full of poofing grenade and somebody fired a zat and the sounds of punching and kicking gradually grew weaker as they were peppered over and over by the rose bombs. That’s the last thing she clearly remembers; ever since the guards mentioned it, she has a vague memory of waking up groggy and kicking somebody in the head, which must have caused them to chuck even more grenades at her, which would explain why she was the only one high as a kite when they’d tried to make their grand escape.
She hears a voice as she rounds the next corner, dropping in and out as it reverberates against the high walls, but clearly… singing?
“When you wish upon a star… makes no difference who you-”
“Stop! Stop your chanting right now! You are a prisoner!”
Sam grins and swallows a chuckle. Leave it to Daniel to figure out how to bug the crap out of his guards without even lifting a finger.
“This isn’t chanting,” she hears him say as she creeps closer to his cell. “It’s singing. There’s really a big difference.”
“I don’t care! You will cease it immediately!” One of the guards has his back to her, and they’re so focused on Daniel and standing so close to his cell that they don’t have the slightest idea that she’s there. And that’s good, because it gives her enough time to sneak up right behind them, slowly raise her staff, and nail one of the guards right in the back of the head. He drops like a stone, leaving a very stunned guard and an equally stunned Daniel in his wake.
The other guard has himself planted so close to the bars of the cell that he doesn’t realize his staff is right within Daniel’s reach. Daniel jumps on his distraction and lunges forward, threading his arms through the bars and gripping the staff tightly. The guard attempts to wrench it from his grip, but Daniel’s a lot stronger than he gives him credit for, and he growls in frustration as he lets it go and charges at Sam.
This guard’s quite a bit bigger and stronger than the guys stationed at Sam’s cell, and he clearly has a much better idea of what he’s doing as he hurtles his body into her, slamming her hard against the wall. Stars swarm her vision and strong arms clamp around her as the guard drags her toward the cell. Still blinking away spots, she struggles against him, her shoes leaving the floor as she tries to twist herself out of his grip. It slows him down just enough, and she’s able to drive her heel into his boot before breaking free and slamming her fist into his face. He staggers backwards, hands against his nose, and she uses his momentum to steer him toward the wall, which she drives his head into, just in case. The guard finally goes down and Sam descends on his pockets, patting them down until she finds the keys she seeks. At this rate, she’s going to have quite a collection going.
“You all right?” Daniel asks her as she thrusts key after key into the bars’ lock.
“Yeah,” she nods. “Are you?”
Daniel nods back. “Yeah, although I was getting pretty bored there.”
She smirks at him as the lock finally clicks open. “So I heard.”
They take a few cautious glances around as Daniel slides out from behind the bars, and they immediately go about dragging the guards’ limp bodies into the cell. Once it’s closed and locked again, Sam snatches both staffs off the floor, tossing one to Daniel as he comes to stand beside her.
“Do you have any idea where they took Teal’c and Colonel O’Neill?” she asks him.
“Nope. I was sort of hoping you did.”
“Nope.”
They both take one last look inside the cell before breezing out of the room.
As another lengthy hall stretches out before them, Daniel asks, “Still stuck in that getup, huh?”
Sam groans and rolls her eyes. “I have never missed my uniform as much as I do right now.”
---
The two of them run around aimlessly for God knows how long, and that combined with periodically catching a nauseating whiff of rose starts to get the better of them. They find a small alcove, well-shaded by a row of pillars, in which to momentarily catch their breath.
As they crouch in the shadows, Sam fiddles with her staff, pangs of frustration gradually sinking in. If these stupid guards can fire off a volley without a second thought, why can’t she figure out how to do it? It cannot possibly be rocket science. She’s starting to suspect some kind of weird Pyrenean gene when Daniel, thankfully, interrupts her train of thought that’s well on its way to involving gratuitous use of expletives.
“Do you have any idea what these people expect us to be able to do for them?” he asks.
Sam sighs. “Apparently we have the ability to appease a flame god and banish all evil.”
“Ah. Well, that would make sense.” Sam gives him a skeptical sidelong glance, and he quickly adds, “In terms of language, I mean. ‘Pyrenean’. In this case, it’s probably an extension of the Greek root ‘pyr’.” Sam looks at him again. “Fire,” he confirms.
“Ah,” she says, and turns to her attention back to the staff.
After a moment’s silence, Daniel mutters, “Or, I guess it could also be for Pyrene.”
“Pyrene?”
“A figure in Greek mythology,” he explains. “Basically, Hercules forced himself upon her in a drunken stupor, she got pregnant and gave birth to a snake, and then she ran into the woods where she poured her heart out to the trees before she was torn to shreds by wild beasts.”
Sam stops what she’s doing and turns her head very, very slowly to stare incredulously at Daniel, whose gaze drifts up to the little crown still perched atop Sam’s head.
“And,” he continues, “she was a princess, so…”
Sam actually feels some of the color drain from her face, and suddenly finds herself uncomfortably aware of her dress.
“So we’ll hope it’s not that,” she says.
Daniel nods slowly and methodically. “Yeah.”
An odd bang startles them to attention, and they snap up their staffs and press themselves farther into the shadows. The sounds of some sort of commotion reach their ears, and they hear another muffled bang. Voices drift their way, all tense and shouting, but there’s one in particular that they recognize immediately. They don’t even have to look at each other before they hurry out of the alcove.
They cautiously peer around the corner, both relieved and anxious at the sight of Teal’c. He’s surrounded by about five or six different guards, all struggling to wrestle him into submission, and it looks like they might actually succeed. Sam feels Daniel twitch beside her as Teal’c roars in frustration.
Very quickly, she looks behind them. No guards. There aren’t any more leaping into the fray, either, so they might actually have a shot at knocking them all out together. Anything’s better than sitting here watching these guys wail on Teal’c, and when Sam glances at Daniel, he’s already looking to her for an answer to his unspoken question: “Are we just gonna sit here, or are we gonna go help him?” All it takes is one affirmative nod, and they’re off.
One by one, Sam and Daniel manage to peel a few of the guards away, giving Teal’c enough room to clobber the rest of them. They go down quickly, but when the three of them have finally sent the last one careening, Teal’c stumbles. Sam is the first to catch him, sinking down to the floor with him and noticing a spot of red trickling down the side of his head. Daniel comes to his side and latches onto his other arm, and together they guide him back to their alcove.
“Thought this might come in handy,” Sam mutters half to herself as she unwraps the former train from her wrist, tearing off a chunk of the cloth with her teeth. She presses it to the wound on Teal’c’s head, but he grunts in pain and jerks away from her. Daniel tries to hold him steady, tries to reassure him, but his eyes look so unfocused and disoriented and he reeks of rose.
“Teal’c, it’s us, look at me.” Sam presses her palm to the side of his face and he stills somewhat. “Look at me,” she says again, easing the cloth back onto his head. This time he doesn’t resist, and he eventually makes eye contact with her.
“Major Carter,” he mumbles, his voice thick and gravelly. “Daniel Jackson.”
“Yeah, Teal’c, it’s us,” Daniel tells him, positioning him so he can lean against the wall. Sam passes the cloth to him and he takes it, dabbing lightly at some of the red spots.
Teal’c’s eyes regain some of their luster, and he shifts his gaze to Sam, a small smile appearing on his lips. “It appears I did not need to retrieve you after all.”
She grins. “Yeah, we did all right.”
“Sam did all right,” Daniel corrects her. “I might’ve been stuck singing to guards for the rest of my life if she didn’t break me out.”
Sam tosses a smirk in his direction before turning her attention back to Teal’c. “Are you gonna be all right?” she asks. “How’s your tretonin?”
Teal’c rests the back of his head against the wall and places his hand against Daniel’s arm, gently leading it down and away from him. “I will be fine,” he says, directing it at both of them. “The soldiers merely attempted to incapacitate me with their sedatives.”
“Oh, we know how that goes,” Daniel muses.
“As for my tretonin,” Teal’c continues, “it was taken from me. But as I have said, I will be all right.”
Damn. Teal’c minus tretonin dramatically cuts down their available time, no matter how much he’d try to endure without it. Sam sighs, the wheels in her head turning at full speed as she tries to formulate a plan. “Do you know where they might’ve taken it?”
“Or the rest of our gear?” Daniel asks, not voicing the concern they’re all thinking: even if they manage to make it back to the gate, they’ll be stuck between a rock and a hard place without the GDO.
“Or Colonel O’Neill?” Sam finishes.
Teal’c responds exactly the way she thought he would: “I do not.”
Sam sighs again and stands, leaning her back against the wall as she thinks. They have to find Colonel O’Neill, and they have to do it soon. But that had always been true even before now, so nothing about the situation has changed, really. Still, the castle is huge, and the colonel could be anywhere. God knows how many stairs they’d have to climb and how many rooms they’d have to sneak into before they found him. And that assumes they don’t get caught and rose bombed along the way.
She supposes he could already be running around the place trying to get to them, but she has a funny feeling that’s not the case. Daniel and Teal’c still have their uniforms, meaning there’s only one person left to be the prince. He’s probably heavily sedated and heavily guarded, wherever he is. Not like she’d been heavily guarded, but that’s a whole new can of worms she doesn’t have time to open right now.
After a few moments, she notices the silence between them and finds it glaring enough to distract her from her thoughts. When she looks over at Teal’c and Daniel again, they’ve both risen to their feet, standing quietly beside her and, she realizes, patiently waiting. Waiting for her to announce their next move.
Of course. Command automatically defers to her in a situation like this; of course they would be expecting her to make the call. There’s a small part of her that thinks it should be a little intimidating, but it’s not. Not right now, not with them. Implicit trust radiates from both of them, filling her with confidence and a determined fervor.
Sam holds their gazes steadily as she declares, “Let’s go get him.”
---
on to part 2