FIC: kings until the power failed, Stargate SG-1, Jack/Sam, Daniel, (Sam/Daniel), PG-13
Scraping in under the deadline (it's the 30th here, anyway), my apocalypse_kree entry:
TITLE: kings until the power failed
AUTHOR: _astralis
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: Jack/Sam, mentions Daniel/Sam
WARNINGS: The end of the world.
PROMPT: 135. Any. "One gets so used to one's own horrors, one forgets how they must seem to other people." Diane Setterfield - the Thirteenth Tale
NOTES: Title and cut tag text from Elton John's "Tinderbox"
kings until the power failed
0347
Daniel had been dreaming of sandstorms on Abydos. The raw ferocity of nature was like nothing he'd experienced on Earth and it had always unnerved him. Sha're, Kasuf, Ska'ara: they had always been calm and serene, checking guy ropes and supplies and then simply waiting, biding their time until the world calmed down. Daniel had always pretended to do the same and had never quite succeeded, but Sha're would hold his hand and smile at him and then he'd remember that this was where he'd chosen to be.
In his dream he'd walked to the entrance of the tent, pulled back the heavy canvas flaps and looked out. He saw golden sand racing through the air, so thick that it obscured the objects picked up by the maelstrom: a rusty old bicycle, a broom, candlesticks, a P-90, a fishing rod. None of it surprised him or scared him, but then all the tents in the settlement began to lift and whirl away, and the gate was in the mix, and people, so many people, everyone he'd ever known: Sha're screaming, Sam looking right at him, Jack and Teal'c and Cam and Vala and so many people, so many bodies, flying and spinning, blurred and vague, but Daniel knew them. Daniel always knew them.
He woke suddenly and sharply, in a lumpy old bed in a dark room, and knew instantly that it was still night, but a different quality of night. The world behind the curtains had changed.
Too twitchy to sit still, much less go back to sleep, Daniel got out of bed and went to the window. His heart was pounding too loudly, overwhelming the silence around him, and the chill of the air was unexpected after the hot golden sand of Abydos.
He opened the curtains and saw snow.
***
0718
Daniel woke again and thought, in the moment before he cleared his head, that the snow had been a part of the dream. His face was cold though: the snow was real.
He hauled himself out of bed and pulled on the thick woollen jersey he'd left in a heap on the chair. It had smelt powerfully of mothballs ever since they'd taken it out of the box where it had lived for countless years. Daniel hadn't yet reconciled himself to the smell, but it wore it anyway. Mothballs beat hypothermia hands down.
He found Sam in the living room, sitting on the floor in front of the fire. Her clothes, salvaged from the neighbours', were overwhelmingly red and two sizes too big, and the haircut she'd given herself with a knife when she got sick of her long hair did her no favours. She was still beautiful, though. At the end of the world, Daniel found that reassuring, while at the same time wondering why he still noticed these things about Sam, or about anything. It didn't seem important any more, if it ever had.
“It's snowing,” she said, without looking up. She was focused on the intricate pattern of the faded, threadbare rug she was sitting on.
Daniel sat down beside her. “Did you two have another fight?”
“No,” she said, absently, shaking her head.
“Where is he?”
“Chopping wood.”
“In this?” Daniel asked, looking through the window to where the snow still fell relentlessly. Way heavier than anything he was used to.
“He's a Minnesota native.”
“Born in Chicago,” Daniel pointed out, faintly amused by everything. Someone had to be.
“Well, he's in the woodshed.” Sam sighed and gently leaned sideways, laying her head on Daniel's shoulder. “He hasn't asked me about Nebraska for three days.”
Daniel couldn't figure out whether that was meant to be a good thing, so he just put his arms around her shoulders. She was nothing but skin and bone, his Sam: light enough to drift away on a snowstorm. “He hasn't forgotten.”
“I know.” Sam sighed, and in that sigh was every conversation they'd had on the topic. He'd understand, I can't tell him, he would have done the same thing: the things they'd said and the things they hadn't said, and all of it meant, in the end, that Sam hated herself for what she'd done and was terrified that Jack would too. “I'm going to go make breakfast,” she said, and didn't move.
“Open some tins, you mean,” Daniel said, only too glad to get back on stable ground.
“Hey, for once in my life I get to pretend I'm a gourmet cook.” Sam gave him a quick, tight smile and stood up and out of his embrace. “Don't knock it.”
Daniel watched her go and then prodded at the fire with the cast-iron poker, just for something to do. Behind him, the sliding door opened and closed, the wind racing past behind it. Footsteps approached - black boots, standard Air Force issue and dropping snow everywhere - and an armload of wood clattered into the copper tub beside Daniel. “Morning, sunshine.”
Even as Daniel looked up, Jack had gone back over to the door to take off his snow gear. “Morning,” Daniel said, feeling stupidly as though he was talking to himself. He wondered if Jack, too, would point out that it was snowing.
He didn't.
***
0900
Daniel had been enduring tediously long days ever since he and Sam had got here. At first, it had been nice to have the respite from walking, from running and hiding, to have an actual bed to sleep in at night, food to eat, and someone who wasn't Sam to talk to. There was little to do here - reading, writing, fishing, eating and sleeping had been all right for vacations, but the prospect of months, years even, doing nothing but that filled him with dread. Their supply of books was small, their supply of paper larger, but inevitably limited, and one couldn't fish in the middle of winter.
More than that, though, more wearying than anything else was the endless, repetitive interaction of three people stuck in a small space. Daniel knew them both as well as he knew himself, and loved them in spite of it, but none of them functioned well without breathing space. Jack and Sam's relationship was teetering on the edge of an explosion with Daniel as the hapless watcher and wary third wheel, the one who knew too much. Sometimes he thought he was in the way and other times he felt like the only thing stopping them both from combusting. He knew what Sam wouldn't tell Jack and what she didn't know Jack wasn't telling her. It was, all things considered, an incredibly uncomfortable situation.
Daniel was keeping a journal. He'd started it soon after he and Sam had fled the Springs, filling the pages of a small leather-bound notebook that had started its life as a repository of everything from shopping lists to odd words he needed to research. It had continued in a bunch of exercise books he'd picked up just outside Sterling, Colorado. As an archaeologist, especially as one who saw the big picture, the galactic picture, every time he closed his eyes, Daniel told himself it was his responsibility to maintain as accurate a record of the occupation as possible.
He couldn't be accurate without being personal, and that disconcerted him. Facts about the destruction of Cheyenne Mountain, of Air Force One (which Jack had missed being on by ten minutes) and Washington DC, rumours of attacks on other major world capitals and religious sites the world over: those things were nothing without the real, human cost of war and survival and failure. Daniel's world was reduced to three people, and there was too much of them all in the journal.
Hard enough to have predicted this war. To have expected it, dreaded it, tried to stop it for months. Worse to have had no real facts, no news from the outside world - from what was left of the outside world - for over six weeks. Worse still to have misplaced some of the people you cared about most. (Daniel had got that one from Jack. He wasn't much of one for euphemisms, except on occasions when he could irritate someone by using them, but he could use 'misplaced'. It had a fittingly temporary feel to it. One usually found things one had misplaced.)
Daniel's accuracy was personal and painful, but it disentangled his thoughts, straightened his emotions, even as he noted the petty things that Sam and Jack tore each other to shreds over, or glossed past the make-up sex that he could never quite block from his ears. He wrote about his dreams and nightmares, the way Jack sat alone outside for hours at night, surveying the stars that had once been his, and the way Sam carried a photo of Cassie in her pocket but refused to look at it.
That was this war, and that was what this war had done to them all.
He didn't write about the graves in the wood a half mile from here, and he didn't write about what had gone down in a small Nebraska town. Enough to read the journal, to know that things had happened, that they'd seen things and done things, and that afterwards they were different.
So, that morning, after they'd cleared away the breakfast things and he'd dressed in clothes that were just as worn as the ones he'd slept in, Daniel sat in a chair by the fire and wrote about things that were true. Jack sat on the window seat, spinning out his yo-yo and catching it over and over. Sam was at the table, designing a weapon she could never build here. She never said what it would do, and they never asked.
***
1154
Jack had yo-yoed. He'd used a blunt knife to whittle twigs into nothing in particular and then thrown them all in the fire. He'd provoked Sam by dismissing her weapon as a big gun and irritated Daniel by whistling while pacing the room.
They were all having a bad day.
There had been a time when all it took for them to understand each other was a half-finished sentence, a hand gesture, a raised eyebrow. That instinctive communication had saved SG-1's collective butts time after time, and Daniel had always taken a certain pride in their ability to baffle outsiders with silent communication.
Those skills had regressed since their glory days. It was as if they'd gone from communicating with scalpels to communicating with the verbal equivalent of a staff weapon (equally good for blasting holes in someone or for hitting them about the head). They argued, bickered, shouted; any two of the three of them or all at once, and every time it happened the ground seemed to shift under Daniel's feet.
He'd finished his daily journal entry and was working on a comparative study of Latin and the Ancient language, because someday someone might find it useful, and for the same reason Sam was designing a weapon. It stopped his brain disintegrating.
Jack peered over his shoulder. “What'cha doing?”
“Working,” Daniel said, as a tentative and tenuous conclusion slipped out of his grasp. Jack knew perfectly well what he was doing.
“Why?”
“Because.”
“I know Daniel collected every scrap of paper lying around between here and Colorado Springs, but I don't know what you two are going to do when we run out,” Jack said, wandering around to Sam's side of the table. “How's the gun doing?”
“Fine.”
An uneasy silence, always the sign of an approaching storm.
“Don't you have something to do?” Sam asked, knowing quite well, Daniel thought, that he didn't. Cooped up in a cabin far from anywhere during a war he couldn't fight was a situation beyond even Jack's considerable coping abilities.
“Nope.” Jack slid his arms around Sam's waist and kissed her cheek. Daniel, pretending to focus on his work, saw Sam tense. He kept his head down so he didn't have to see their faces, and wished Jack knew when to leave her alone.
“Go away, Jack.”
“We need a plan for spring,” Jack said, letting her go.
“That's months away.”
“All the more reason to start planning now.”
As Jack walked over to the window, Sam threw her pencil onto the table and stared at his back, looking frustrated. This was another of the conversations they'd had multiple times. Daniel gave up the pretence of working and wondered if he could make a break for his room without them noticing. Probably not. “Planning what, exactly?” Sam demanded. “Walking into the city, sneaking up on the prior and hitting him over the head with a two-by-four so you can convince the population the Ori are falliable and start a worldwide rebellion?”
“Not a bad plan.”
“It's ridiculous. If we're going to do anything, it needs to be subtle.”
“Subtle as in that big freaking gun you're drawing?”
“Subtle as in not walking around shouting 'see me, I'm a revolutionary out to save the world'. The priors don't know we're here and I'd like to keep it that day. Daniel and I are on their most wanted list, if you've forgotten.”
Maybe he'd go for a long walk in the snow. That seemed like a really good idea.
Sam was pacing by now, Jack watching her from his perch on the window seat. Daniel couldn't read the expression in his eyes, but it boded no good. “The Bonnie and Clyde of Nebraska. No, Colonel, I hadn't forgotten. What was your crime, again?”
Sam stopped and stared at the wall. Seeing her shoulders tense, Daniel stupidly jumped in, regretting the words before he was halfway through his sentence. “You don't need the details, Jack.”
“Daniel, stay out of it.” Sam marched into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her and leaving Jack and Daniel alone in an empty silence, eyeing each other.
Daniel felt sick. “Don't provoke her,” he said, the brief anger fleeing and leaving him with nothing but exhaustion.
Jack rubbed his hands over his face. Daniel could spot the precise second he started wishing he hadn't pushed her. “She won't tell me what happened out there. I can't help her, I can't get through to her, I can't -”
“I know.” Daniel pushed his work away. He wasn't in the mood to keep going today. “She'll tell you when she's ready,” he said, without being entirely convinced she ever would.
Jack turned away to watch the snow again. After several long minutes he said, without turning around, “I know she made you promise not to tell. Cross your heart, hope to die and all that.”
Daniel waited.
“Just - did they - whoever they may be - did they - do anything to her?”
Daniel couldn't and wouldn't feign ignorance, not when that was what was on Jack's mind. He knew what that question must have cost. “No. Nothing like that.” Sometimes the truth was easy.
“Okay.” Jack sat down and took out his yo-yo again. “Good.”
***
1320
Daniel had made lunch - tuna and rice, and the tinned fruit left over from breakfast. There wasn't quite enough of any of it to be filling, but then they had a long cold winter to make it through. Jack had stocked the cabin for the convenience of not having to buy groceries rather than to keep three people fed through a Minnesota winter following an alien invasion. Sure, Jack's convenience (which probably had a side of Just In Case that he was refusing to admit to) was a little more comprehensive than most people's and included batteries, candles, fishing line, medical supplies and blankets. He claimed that if he'd been stockpiling in preparation for the end of the world he would have had more guns and a two-way radio.
They were better off than most, and they didn't have to rely on the prior's handouts of food and supplies, but they were probably going to be hungry by the end of winter. How they were going to feed themselves in the spring, let alone next winter, was a topic no one had got around to broaching yet. Enough to get through the winter before worrying about what would come next.
Daniel knocked on Sam's door to let her know lunch was ready, and she emerged slowly, her eyes only barely tinged with red. Daniel slipped surreptitiously back to the kitchen but couldn't help seeing the way she lingered in the doorway, hesitant, watching Jack.
Jack pocketed the yo-yo and walked slowly across to her. He tilted his head and muttered something; as Daniel looked down Sam stepped forward into his arms.
Daniel sat on the counter watching the snow and waiting for them. Lunch was cold that day.
***
1453
A fragile peace hung in the air. Daniel was re-reading The Hunt For Red October, which he'd read for the first time when they'd come up here with Teal'c after the defeat of the Goa'uld and which Jack refused to lay claim to. Jack had found another book to read, for which Daniel was grateful, and Sam was scrawling annotations onto her plans.
As the snow eased up, Jack put down his book and went out to bring in some more wood. They had enough indoors to get through the night and Daniel was inclined to wonder, not for the first time, whether Jack had a claustrophobic streak he'd never admit to.
Sam put down her pencil as soon as the door shut behind him. “I'm sick of fighting, Daniel.”
Daniel thought that the real problem was that none of them could fight the way they needed to, and so they were reduced to fighting each other. As far as insights went, that one was profoundly unhelpful. “I know.”
“How did we end up like this?”
“The Ori came, blew Cheyenne Mountain to bits and took over the world,” said Daniel, who didn't think she was looking for the truth. She probably already knew.
“All those times we saved the world just to fail in the end.”
“Better the Ori than the Goa'uld.”
“You think?”
High school gyms full of people bowing in fear before their new gods. Main Streets dominated by platforms designed to burn people alive. Silent queues in grocery stores as people waited to receive their weekly food ration. It was a pattern no doubt repeated the world over. “The Goa'uld would have killed everyone, not kept them alive.” Well. Most of them. Except the people lost in the original bombings the Ori had thought they needed to subdue such a large population, and the people burned alive, and the people killed for a hundred other petty reasons.
“Sometimes I wonder what's worse.”
Daniel turned the page without having finished reading it. “I bet McKay's sitting in his fancy lab on Atlantis, working on Merlin's weapon as we speak.”
If someone had gotten Sam's research through the gate. (Well, everyone knew what she was working on and everyone knew it was the key to defeating the Ori. Landry would have ordered someone to take it through the gate in the first wave of evacuations, if Cam or Teal'c hadn't thought of it first.)
If there had been a ship available to transport people to Atlantis. (Even if the Ori had blown the Odyssey out of the sky, the Daedalus would have headed for the Alpha Site when it was unable to make contact with the SGC.)
If the people on Atlantis weren't so stretched just keeping the Wraith from their door that they couldn't spare McKay for the weapon. (But if the plans had reached Atlantis, then so had the scientists from the Alpha Site and the ones who'd made it through the gate, and there'd be enough brain power in the city to spare a few minds for Merlin's weapon. Besides, Rodney McKay wouldn't pass up the chance to be hailed as the man who'd single handedly saved the world.)
They'd had this conversation a few times, too.
“Yeah, I bet,” Sam said.
If Rodney McKay saved the world, they'd never hear the end of it. Daniel would appreciate it all the same.
Outside, over the muted noise of the wind, Daniel could hear Jack chopping wood. He didn't think the wood needed any more chopping, any more than it needed to brought inside that afternoon.
“He'd never look at me the same again.”
Daniel tracked the non-sequitur back to Nebraska. “Sam.” Two months they've been having this circular conversation. “You did what you had to do to save those girls.” That line of reasoning had more impact than the others, but not enough perspective.
“I didn't have to kill him.”
Daniel had nothing to say to that. There were a heap of other things she could have done but none of them would have been as efficient, would have broken the Sheriff's stranglehold on that town, would have freed those girls so effectively.
Besides, one of them was so much like Cassie as a child that if Sam hadn't killed the guy, Daniel might well have done. “You can't change the past, Sam.”
“I know. I know.” Sam rubbed her forehead and looked out the window. “It's going to be a long winter.”
***
1613
Sam had disappeared for a nap. Daniel was pretty sure she was still having the nightmares that had started even before Nebraska and which she had always denied existed.
Daniel had his own nightmares. He knew the signs, and he knew when she was lying, but there were some things it wasn't up to him to interfere with. He didn't comment on the afternoon naps or on the fact that she was usually first up in the mornings.
Jack's only attempt to broach the topic with her had ended in a fight and two days of icy silence.
Now, because Sam had refused his offer of company, Jack was wandering again, picking things up and putting them down somewhere else, and lingering to look out windows as though he was waiting for something or someone.
Daniel would pace too (he's starting to feel like an animal in a cage) but he thought two of them doing it would produce chaos. His book was no better and no worse than the last time he'd read it and it only occupied half his brain. The other half was preoccupied with watching and worrying.
What he really wanted was a long solitary walk to work off the nervous energy and detangle his thoughts. There was no space here, no room to breathe.
“Daniel?” Jack stopped pacing abruptly. “Chess?”
Jack's notion of the rules was a little hazy - or at least, he pretended it was - but it was still the best offer Daniel was likely to get. “Sure.”
His tendency to break rules aside, Jack was a good player. His moves were quick and precise and as efficient as a well-planned battle campaign. Daniel usually lost when he played Jack, which was refreshing.
They played in silence for while. The sound of the wind outside and the tapping of chess pieces on the board did nothing to soothe Daniel's mood. Physical exercise had never been Daniel's forte; he would never have expected the lack thereof to unnerve him so much.
Or maybe it was the company, or the snow, or the vast and faceless Ori with their fear and terror and death that he couldn't do a fucking thing about.
He was weighing up the advantages of moving his bishop over moving his knight when Jack spoke. “Sam told me that you two slept together.”
Startled, Daniel moved his bishop and was quickly taken by Jack's queen. Well, she was perfectly entitled to tell him, and in fact, Daniel might have been bothered if she hadn't, sooner or later.
But she could have warned him.
“Okay,” he said, more for the purpose of filling the empty space in the conversation than to actually communicate anything. Jack was waiting for his next move. Daniel considered, and pushed a pawn forward. “We thought you were dead. It was like sometimes we were the only people left in the world, you know? We headed for this place because we'd always said - you'd always said - we'd rendezvous here in an emergency. And we didn't have anywhere else to go. There was nowhere that wasn't touched by the Ori. Every town we passed through. Everyone we met.”
“You don't have to justify it.”
Daniel wondered if Sam had already tried. “I don't know if I can.”
“It's the end of the world, Daniel. We've got bigger things to worry about than your sex life.”
“Then why bring it up?” Daniel asked, the beginnings of a headache nagging at his temples.
“Well, it's not like we've got anything else to talk about.”
Giving up the pretence of chess, Daniel dropped his head into his hands. Every time he thought he was close to understanding Jack it was as though Jack changed before his eyes. He was deceptively simple on the outside and despite knowing it, Daniel was as guilty of underestimating him as dozens of commanding officers, rulers of alien nations and people with big guns had been.
It was understandable when it was someone else. It felt like betrayal when it was Daniel.
“It's your move.”
“I'm not done talking about this,” Daniel said, without having a clue what he was going to say or why, in fact, he wasn't done.
“Okay, but it's still your move.”
Daniel moved his knight with bad grace, wondering if he did so if Jack had started the conversation just to ensure he'd win with less effort than usual. The theory seemed plausible. “Most guys would be freaking out.”
“Why, do you want me to?”
“At least I'd know you were human.”
“Daniel, if you don't already know that, there's no hope for either of us.” That, more than anything, seemed to be the thing that had gotten to Jack. Daniel felt vaguely guilty - it had probably been a poor choice of words - but disinclined to apologise. That probably meant that he was human.
“Well, sometimes I wonder.”
Jack took Daniel's knight, and dumped it carelessly on the table. “Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”
“You're the one who's been fighting with Sam all day.”
“I think 'all day' is an exaggeration, Danny Boy.”
“Every day,” Daniel said, the frustration he'd been feeling all day spiralling into anger.
“And it takes two to tango. Sam's no saint.”
“I never said she was. But you provoke her, Jack. You know she's upset about what happened in Nebraska and you know she's scared to tell you and yet you still - still - keep nagging on at her about it. The more you go on about it the less she's going to want to tell you. And you can't talk, anyway, Jack, because I know you haven't told her about what happened to the Hendersons.”
Low blow.
“That's different, Daniel.”
“Why?”
“Because it didn't make me different. All I did was clean up the mess.”
“They were your friends. And it changed you, no matter how much you try to deny it.”
“They were my friends, and I buried them. It's not the first time I've done that, Daniel.”
“Do you think I don't know that?” Daniel had never figured out how not to feel guilty about the times he'd died and left them to pick up the pieces. “I”m just saying it goes both ways, Jack. Tell her about the Hendersons and maybe she'll tell you about Nebraska.”
“None of which has anything to do with you.”
“As long as I have to live with you, it's got everything to do with me.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” Jack pushed back his chair and stood up. “I'm going for a walk.”
“Because that's a good idea,” Daniel snapped, hating himself.
Over by the door, Jack was pulling on his snow gear. “Tell Sam I've gone out,” he said, and stepped outside.
Well, at least it had stopped snowing.
Daniel listened as the door slid shut and dropped his head onto the table, dislodging half the chess pieces with the impact. Jack would have won anyway. It didn't matter.
Colossal idiot, Daniel thought, meaning all three of them. If anyone had asked him what he thought happen if the Ori made it to Earth, Daniel would have said that SG-1 would save the day. He might not have believed it, but he'd have said it. He'd have said that people would resist the Ori - not publicly, they'd learn that quick enough - but that they wouldn't let the Ori win. The world would be united in the quiet, faceless battle against the Ori.
Somehow, after years and years of witnessing discord and infighting and utterly irrational hatred even in the face of a common enemy, Daniel had managed to remain something of an optimist. That was special.
Sam's bedroom door creaked open behind him, and Daniel almost jumped. “Were you two fighting?” she asked. Daniel wondered if she'd actually been asleep or had just chosen to retreat from battle for a bit.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Where -”
“He went for a walk. Wanted me to tell you he's gone out.”
Sam sighed heavily and sat down beside Daniel. “What did you argue about?”
“I'm not really sure. Everything. Nothing.” The best answer to that question was 'you', but Daniel wouldn't say that. He might hurt Jack, but he couldn't hurt Sam.
“The very young do not always do as they are told,” she said, unexpectedly.
“What?”
“Good thing Thor can't see us now. He always thought humans were better than this. He liked us, God knows why.”
Daniel thought he knew what she was talking about. On their way here they'd passed town after town marked by fighting. Not physical markings, not smashed windows or buildings pockmarked with bullet holes. That would have been easier than the things they'd seen people doing to each other. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
“How long's he been out there?”
“A couple of minutes.”
“If he's not back in twenty, we're going after him.”
Daniel nodded and sat there drumming his fingers on the table and growing increasingly guilty about doing the exact thing he'd criticised Jack for doing. The minutes passed and Jack didn't return.
“Let's go.”
Seasoned professionals that they were, they loaded themselves up with first aid equipment, flashlights, rope and a blanket. Daniel hoped they wouldn't need any of it, and wasn't sure how he'd live with himself if they did. The cold weather gear Jack had acquired from the same neighbours he'd buried in the woods wasn't exactly Air Force issue, but it'd do.
His tracks were clear in the snow, and Daniel knew instinctively where he'd gone. He let Sam take point and they walked in silence through the dim, white world. Daniel had spent the day wanting to go outside, and now that he was he wished they were all safe back inside.
Sure enough, Jack's footprints led down the narrow trail Daniel had accidentally discovered hunting rabbits. The trail led to a clearing, and in the clearing was Jack, a tall figure outlined against the snow, and four crosses arranged in a semi-circle.
“Jack?” Sam's voice was soft and cautious. She knew a graveyard when she saw one.
Jack turned slowly. He must have heard them approach. “What are you two doing here?”
“Checking you're not dying of hypothermia somewhere.”
Daniel stayed where he was as Sam walked carefully forward, stopping at Jack's side.
“What is this place, Jack?”
It was inevitable. It was all coming out now. Daniel held his breath and waited.
“Do you remember the Hendersons?” Jack asked, without looking at her. “We met them in town one day. Couple with two daughters. They lived up here in the summer.”
Daniel knew, by the way Sam's back tensed, the exact second she did the math. Four people, four crosses.
“How did they die?”
“Katie. The youngest daughter. She was eight, I think.”
Sam remained quiet and let Jack tell his story. Daniel, who'd heard it all before, looked up at the sky and hoped they weren't going to be caught in a snowstorm.
“She had a heart transplant when she was a toddler. Nice kid, you know. Very mature for her age. I knew they'd be up here, so when I got here I went round to see if they were doing okay. They were holed up, had the sense not to let the priors know they were here. They had food for a couple of months, with their garden and their chickens, and they were in pretty good spirits. The girls liked to come round and fish. Katie never got one, but Emma got a couple. She'd take them home and they'd have them for dinner.” Jack kicked idly at the snow. “Then I didn't see them for a couple of days. Thought it was weird that the girls hadn't been over, so I went round to check up on them.”
There was silence for a minute.
“Jack?”
“It was the smell. That was the first thing I noticed. You know what it's like.”
They did, indeed.
“I smelt it, and I knew. So I went in, to see what had happened. I thought it was the priors, or someone trying to get into their good books. The dog was dead. On the kitchen floor. The place was always so clean, and there was the dog. He'd been shot. I didn't have to get close to see that.”
Sam reached out and took Jack's hand.
“Went upstairs and there they were. The girls were dead in their beds. I couldn't see - they hadn't been shot. I think he must have smothered them, and put their pillows back so they looked like they were sleeping. They looked so peaceful. I found Tom and Angie in their room. There was blood everywhere. Tom still had the gun in his hand.”
“He killed his family?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Jack's voice was tired. “I went back down to the kitchen. I was going to go out the back door and get a spade from the shed. And I noticed a row of pill bottles on the counter. They all had Katie's name on them, and they were empty.”
“The one who had the heart transplant.”
“Yeah. I figure that once they ran out of meds he knew Katie's body would reject the heart. There was no way they could get the medication they needed, so -” Jack paused again and looked away from Sam and the graves.
“So rather than let her die slowly he -”
“Yeah.”
“And you buried them.”
“Someone had to. I dug the holes and wrapped them in sheets. I buried the dog with Emma. He was her best friend. You guys arrived three days later.” Jack put his head down on Sam's shoulder, just for a second, and then straightened up. Always the soldier, was Jack.
“Come on,” he said. “It's getting cold.”
***
1834
They were all sitting silently in front of the fire when Sam spoke suddenly, her voice unexpectedly loud in the darkness. No one had spoken since they'd walked away from the graves in the woods, and her voice was all the louder for that. “The Ori don't kill people. People kill people.”
Daniel thought at first that she was making less and less sense as time went on, and then he realised what she was saying and reached for her hand. She squeezed it and gave him a tight smile, the firelight reflecting oddly on her face.
“There was a guy in Nebraska,” she said.
Once upon a time Jack would have pointed out that there were plenty of guys in Nebraska. “Okay.”
“The last car we'd found had run out of gas and we'd had to abandon it, so we were walking. We found a small town and figured it'd be safe to stay put for a couple of days, get some food and shelter, maybe find another car. Only something wasn't right. Everyone was terrified of the Sheriff. There was no prior there, but the Sheriff was hoping they'd make him one. He must have been a bastard before the Ori came, but once they did it was like he'd found a way to justify his actions. He was psychopathic, I'm sure of it.”
Daniel closed his eyes and squeezed Sam's hand tighter. He could hear in her voice how much this was costing her.
“He was trying to convert people to Origin so the Ori would reward him. He only knew a handful of quotes from the Book of Origin, but that was enough for his purposes. He wasn't into coercion. He was into force, and he was into little girls.”
“God.”
“Yeah. He was holding them hostage. There were five of them. The youngest was six and the oldest was twelve. He told the families he'd give them back if they complied and converted to Origin. They did - the whole town did - but he kept the girls. We heard about it from some old lady on the edge of town and figured it couldn't possibly be true. Like rapists and pedophiles would just stop because the world had been taken over by aliens. Well, it doesn't work that way. We heard the rumour again so we went to check it out. He was holding the girls in the cells at the police station.”
The fire crackled, and a log gave way with a thump.
“I killed him. I didn't even blink, just filled him full of bullets.”
“Well, good for you.”
Daniel closed his eyes, and silently pleaded with Jack not to screw this up.
“No.”
“No? Sam, you did what you had to do.”
“So Daniel keeps telling me.”
“All right. I don't get it.”
Sam was quiet for a long time, her grip tight on Daniel's hand. “I killed him,” she said, “and I liked it. I felt good. I lost it, and I killed him.”
Daniel had seen the look in her eyes afterwards. Terror, and something else.
“Sam,” Jack said, and Daniel could tell from his voice that he was hopelessly out of his depth. “The man was scum. Don't beat yourself up because he got what was coming to him.”
“He was lying on the floor in front of me and I kept firing. He was dead and I didn't stop. And then I ran out of bullets and walked away and - Fifth was right, you know. That Replicator. He knew what I could be before I did.” Sam shook, and broke down in tears, first time Daniel had seen her cry since it happened. He'd sat up watching her, night after night after night, waiting, and she'd never cracked. It had unnerved him more than anything else even as he kept telling himself that she was still his Sam.
Jack hesitated, only for a second. “Come here,” he said, and pulled her into his arms. Daniel suspected it was the only thing he felt confident about doing.
She didn't let go of Daniel's hand.
They sat there an hour or more almost without moving. Sam's grip was enough to give Daniel cramp in his fingers, the floor was cold and hard, and the dim light of the fire was giving him a headache.
But he could breathe again.
***
2108
Jack had made dinner while Sam took a shower and Daniel played Patience, and they ate sitting crammed onto the window seat. It hadn't been made for three. The chill outside seeped through the window panes, sending shivers up Daniel's back, but the rest of him was warm enough that it didn't matter. Sam was in the middle, pretending very very hard that she hadn't broken down earlier, and Jack, having obviously decided not to push the issue of why she felt the way she did about killing the Sheriff, was trying equally hard not to fuss over her. Had the subject matter not been the stuff of nightmares, Daniel might have been amused.
“You know who I wonder about?” Jack said, chasing the last of his pasta around his plate with a fork.
“Who?” Daniel asked.
“Martin Lloyd.”
Sam laughed. “I bet Marty's holed up somewhere, writing a movie about how his team saved the Earth from the wicked Vori.”
“Now he was an interesting guy,” Daniel said quickly, pushing the conversation away from Saving the World, and how they weren't. Things were too peaceful for that. “I wonder if Maybourne's been deposed yet.”
“I want to know why no one ever made me king,” Jack said. “Maybourne's a lying, sneaking weasel and what does he get? His own kingdom.”
“That lying, sneaking weasel was pretending to predict the future. You've got to have some special talent to be made king,” Sam pointed out.
Jack gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Spoilsport.”
“What's the bet Ba'al's still out there?” Daniel asked, putting his empty plate on the coffee table.
“I hope he's giving the Ori a run for their money. And I never thought I'd hope a Goa'uld would still be alive. Especially Ba'al.”
“Ba'al's not going down without a fight,” Sam said, sounding both tired and content. She leant against Jack and put her head on his shoulder.
“Well,” Jack said, thoughtfully, “neither are we.”
***
0245
Daniel dreamed of the SGC, and Teal'c and Cam and Vala and a hundred other people he had known once. They were all playing poker. Jack was there, and he had a crown. Well, why not. Sam was filling water guns with her father and Cassie, and Daniel found himself content just to sit and watch them all.
He woke for no reason, and knew that it was snowing again.
TITLE: kings until the power failed
AUTHOR: _astralis
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: Jack/Sam, mentions Daniel/Sam
WARNINGS: The end of the world.
PROMPT: 135. Any. "One gets so used to one's own horrors, one forgets how they must seem to other people." Diane Setterfield - the Thirteenth Tale
NOTES: Title and cut tag text from Elton John's "Tinderbox"
kings until the power failed
0347
Daniel had been dreaming of sandstorms on Abydos. The raw ferocity of nature was like nothing he'd experienced on Earth and it had always unnerved him. Sha're, Kasuf, Ska'ara: they had always been calm and serene, checking guy ropes and supplies and then simply waiting, biding their time until the world calmed down. Daniel had always pretended to do the same and had never quite succeeded, but Sha're would hold his hand and smile at him and then he'd remember that this was where he'd chosen to be.
In his dream he'd walked to the entrance of the tent, pulled back the heavy canvas flaps and looked out. He saw golden sand racing through the air, so thick that it obscured the objects picked up by the maelstrom: a rusty old bicycle, a broom, candlesticks, a P-90, a fishing rod. None of it surprised him or scared him, but then all the tents in the settlement began to lift and whirl away, and the gate was in the mix, and people, so many people, everyone he'd ever known: Sha're screaming, Sam looking right at him, Jack and Teal'c and Cam and Vala and so many people, so many bodies, flying and spinning, blurred and vague, but Daniel knew them. Daniel always knew them.
He woke suddenly and sharply, in a lumpy old bed in a dark room, and knew instantly that it was still night, but a different quality of night. The world behind the curtains had changed.
Too twitchy to sit still, much less go back to sleep, Daniel got out of bed and went to the window. His heart was pounding too loudly, overwhelming the silence around him, and the chill of the air was unexpected after the hot golden sand of Abydos.
He opened the curtains and saw snow.
***
0718
Daniel woke again and thought, in the moment before he cleared his head, that the snow had been a part of the dream. His face was cold though: the snow was real.
He hauled himself out of bed and pulled on the thick woollen jersey he'd left in a heap on the chair. It had smelt powerfully of mothballs ever since they'd taken it out of the box where it had lived for countless years. Daniel hadn't yet reconciled himself to the smell, but it wore it anyway. Mothballs beat hypothermia hands down.
He found Sam in the living room, sitting on the floor in front of the fire. Her clothes, salvaged from the neighbours', were overwhelmingly red and two sizes too big, and the haircut she'd given herself with a knife when she got sick of her long hair did her no favours. She was still beautiful, though. At the end of the world, Daniel found that reassuring, while at the same time wondering why he still noticed these things about Sam, or about anything. It didn't seem important any more, if it ever had.
“It's snowing,” she said, without looking up. She was focused on the intricate pattern of the faded, threadbare rug she was sitting on.
Daniel sat down beside her. “Did you two have another fight?”
“No,” she said, absently, shaking her head.
“Where is he?”
“Chopping wood.”
“In this?” Daniel asked, looking through the window to where the snow still fell relentlessly. Way heavier than anything he was used to.
“He's a Minnesota native.”
“Born in Chicago,” Daniel pointed out, faintly amused by everything. Someone had to be.
“Well, he's in the woodshed.” Sam sighed and gently leaned sideways, laying her head on Daniel's shoulder. “He hasn't asked me about Nebraska for three days.”
Daniel couldn't figure out whether that was meant to be a good thing, so he just put his arms around her shoulders. She was nothing but skin and bone, his Sam: light enough to drift away on a snowstorm. “He hasn't forgotten.”
“I know.” Sam sighed, and in that sigh was every conversation they'd had on the topic. He'd understand, I can't tell him, he would have done the same thing: the things they'd said and the things they hadn't said, and all of it meant, in the end, that Sam hated herself for what she'd done and was terrified that Jack would too. “I'm going to go make breakfast,” she said, and didn't move.
“Open some tins, you mean,” Daniel said, only too glad to get back on stable ground.
“Hey, for once in my life I get to pretend I'm a gourmet cook.” Sam gave him a quick, tight smile and stood up and out of his embrace. “Don't knock it.”
Daniel watched her go and then prodded at the fire with the cast-iron poker, just for something to do. Behind him, the sliding door opened and closed, the wind racing past behind it. Footsteps approached - black boots, standard Air Force issue and dropping snow everywhere - and an armload of wood clattered into the copper tub beside Daniel. “Morning, sunshine.”
Even as Daniel looked up, Jack had gone back over to the door to take off his snow gear. “Morning,” Daniel said, feeling stupidly as though he was talking to himself. He wondered if Jack, too, would point out that it was snowing.
He didn't.
***
0900
Daniel had been enduring tediously long days ever since he and Sam had got here. At first, it had been nice to have the respite from walking, from running and hiding, to have an actual bed to sleep in at night, food to eat, and someone who wasn't Sam to talk to. There was little to do here - reading, writing, fishing, eating and sleeping had been all right for vacations, but the prospect of months, years even, doing nothing but that filled him with dread. Their supply of books was small, their supply of paper larger, but inevitably limited, and one couldn't fish in the middle of winter.
More than that, though, more wearying than anything else was the endless, repetitive interaction of three people stuck in a small space. Daniel knew them both as well as he knew himself, and loved them in spite of it, but none of them functioned well without breathing space. Jack and Sam's relationship was teetering on the edge of an explosion with Daniel as the hapless watcher and wary third wheel, the one who knew too much. Sometimes he thought he was in the way and other times he felt like the only thing stopping them both from combusting. He knew what Sam wouldn't tell Jack and what she didn't know Jack wasn't telling her. It was, all things considered, an incredibly uncomfortable situation.
Daniel was keeping a journal. He'd started it soon after he and Sam had fled the Springs, filling the pages of a small leather-bound notebook that had started its life as a repository of everything from shopping lists to odd words he needed to research. It had continued in a bunch of exercise books he'd picked up just outside Sterling, Colorado. As an archaeologist, especially as one who saw the big picture, the galactic picture, every time he closed his eyes, Daniel told himself it was his responsibility to maintain as accurate a record of the occupation as possible.
He couldn't be accurate without being personal, and that disconcerted him. Facts about the destruction of Cheyenne Mountain, of Air Force One (which Jack had missed being on by ten minutes) and Washington DC, rumours of attacks on other major world capitals and religious sites the world over: those things were nothing without the real, human cost of war and survival and failure. Daniel's world was reduced to three people, and there was too much of them all in the journal.
Hard enough to have predicted this war. To have expected it, dreaded it, tried to stop it for months. Worse to have had no real facts, no news from the outside world - from what was left of the outside world - for over six weeks. Worse still to have misplaced some of the people you cared about most. (Daniel had got that one from Jack. He wasn't much of one for euphemisms, except on occasions when he could irritate someone by using them, but he could use 'misplaced'. It had a fittingly temporary feel to it. One usually found things one had misplaced.)
Daniel's accuracy was personal and painful, but it disentangled his thoughts, straightened his emotions, even as he noted the petty things that Sam and Jack tore each other to shreds over, or glossed past the make-up sex that he could never quite block from his ears. He wrote about his dreams and nightmares, the way Jack sat alone outside for hours at night, surveying the stars that had once been his, and the way Sam carried a photo of Cassie in her pocket but refused to look at it.
That was this war, and that was what this war had done to them all.
He didn't write about the graves in the wood a half mile from here, and he didn't write about what had gone down in a small Nebraska town. Enough to read the journal, to know that things had happened, that they'd seen things and done things, and that afterwards they were different.
So, that morning, after they'd cleared away the breakfast things and he'd dressed in clothes that were just as worn as the ones he'd slept in, Daniel sat in a chair by the fire and wrote about things that were true. Jack sat on the window seat, spinning out his yo-yo and catching it over and over. Sam was at the table, designing a weapon she could never build here. She never said what it would do, and they never asked.
***
1154
Jack had yo-yoed. He'd used a blunt knife to whittle twigs into nothing in particular and then thrown them all in the fire. He'd provoked Sam by dismissing her weapon as a big gun and irritated Daniel by whistling while pacing the room.
They were all having a bad day.
There had been a time when all it took for them to understand each other was a half-finished sentence, a hand gesture, a raised eyebrow. That instinctive communication had saved SG-1's collective butts time after time, and Daniel had always taken a certain pride in their ability to baffle outsiders with silent communication.
Those skills had regressed since their glory days. It was as if they'd gone from communicating with scalpels to communicating with the verbal equivalent of a staff weapon (equally good for blasting holes in someone or for hitting them about the head). They argued, bickered, shouted; any two of the three of them or all at once, and every time it happened the ground seemed to shift under Daniel's feet.
He'd finished his daily journal entry and was working on a comparative study of Latin and the Ancient language, because someday someone might find it useful, and for the same reason Sam was designing a weapon. It stopped his brain disintegrating.
Jack peered over his shoulder. “What'cha doing?”
“Working,” Daniel said, as a tentative and tenuous conclusion slipped out of his grasp. Jack knew perfectly well what he was doing.
“Why?”
“Because.”
“I know Daniel collected every scrap of paper lying around between here and Colorado Springs, but I don't know what you two are going to do when we run out,” Jack said, wandering around to Sam's side of the table. “How's the gun doing?”
“Fine.”
An uneasy silence, always the sign of an approaching storm.
“Don't you have something to do?” Sam asked, knowing quite well, Daniel thought, that he didn't. Cooped up in a cabin far from anywhere during a war he couldn't fight was a situation beyond even Jack's considerable coping abilities.
“Nope.” Jack slid his arms around Sam's waist and kissed her cheek. Daniel, pretending to focus on his work, saw Sam tense. He kept his head down so he didn't have to see their faces, and wished Jack knew when to leave her alone.
“Go away, Jack.”
“We need a plan for spring,” Jack said, letting her go.
“That's months away.”
“All the more reason to start planning now.”
As Jack walked over to the window, Sam threw her pencil onto the table and stared at his back, looking frustrated. This was another of the conversations they'd had multiple times. Daniel gave up the pretence of working and wondered if he could make a break for his room without them noticing. Probably not. “Planning what, exactly?” Sam demanded. “Walking into the city, sneaking up on the prior and hitting him over the head with a two-by-four so you can convince the population the Ori are falliable and start a worldwide rebellion?”
“Not a bad plan.”
“It's ridiculous. If we're going to do anything, it needs to be subtle.”
“Subtle as in that big freaking gun you're drawing?”
“Subtle as in not walking around shouting 'see me, I'm a revolutionary out to save the world'. The priors don't know we're here and I'd like to keep it that day. Daniel and I are on their most wanted list, if you've forgotten.”
Maybe he'd go for a long walk in the snow. That seemed like a really good idea.
Sam was pacing by now, Jack watching her from his perch on the window seat. Daniel couldn't read the expression in his eyes, but it boded no good. “The Bonnie and Clyde of Nebraska. No, Colonel, I hadn't forgotten. What was your crime, again?”
Sam stopped and stared at the wall. Seeing her shoulders tense, Daniel stupidly jumped in, regretting the words before he was halfway through his sentence. “You don't need the details, Jack.”
“Daniel, stay out of it.” Sam marched into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her and leaving Jack and Daniel alone in an empty silence, eyeing each other.
Daniel felt sick. “Don't provoke her,” he said, the brief anger fleeing and leaving him with nothing but exhaustion.
Jack rubbed his hands over his face. Daniel could spot the precise second he started wishing he hadn't pushed her. “She won't tell me what happened out there. I can't help her, I can't get through to her, I can't -”
“I know.” Daniel pushed his work away. He wasn't in the mood to keep going today. “She'll tell you when she's ready,” he said, without being entirely convinced she ever would.
Jack turned away to watch the snow again. After several long minutes he said, without turning around, “I know she made you promise not to tell. Cross your heart, hope to die and all that.”
Daniel waited.
“Just - did they - whoever they may be - did they - do anything to her?”
Daniel couldn't and wouldn't feign ignorance, not when that was what was on Jack's mind. He knew what that question must have cost. “No. Nothing like that.” Sometimes the truth was easy.
“Okay.” Jack sat down and took out his yo-yo again. “Good.”
***
1320
Daniel had made lunch - tuna and rice, and the tinned fruit left over from breakfast. There wasn't quite enough of any of it to be filling, but then they had a long cold winter to make it through. Jack had stocked the cabin for the convenience of not having to buy groceries rather than to keep three people fed through a Minnesota winter following an alien invasion. Sure, Jack's convenience (which probably had a side of Just In Case that he was refusing to admit to) was a little more comprehensive than most people's and included batteries, candles, fishing line, medical supplies and blankets. He claimed that if he'd been stockpiling in preparation for the end of the world he would have had more guns and a two-way radio.
They were better off than most, and they didn't have to rely on the prior's handouts of food and supplies, but they were probably going to be hungry by the end of winter. How they were going to feed themselves in the spring, let alone next winter, was a topic no one had got around to broaching yet. Enough to get through the winter before worrying about what would come next.
Daniel knocked on Sam's door to let her know lunch was ready, and she emerged slowly, her eyes only barely tinged with red. Daniel slipped surreptitiously back to the kitchen but couldn't help seeing the way she lingered in the doorway, hesitant, watching Jack.
Jack pocketed the yo-yo and walked slowly across to her. He tilted his head and muttered something; as Daniel looked down Sam stepped forward into his arms.
Daniel sat on the counter watching the snow and waiting for them. Lunch was cold that day.
***
1453
A fragile peace hung in the air. Daniel was re-reading The Hunt For Red October, which he'd read for the first time when they'd come up here with Teal'c after the defeat of the Goa'uld and which Jack refused to lay claim to. Jack had found another book to read, for which Daniel was grateful, and Sam was scrawling annotations onto her plans.
As the snow eased up, Jack put down his book and went out to bring in some more wood. They had enough indoors to get through the night and Daniel was inclined to wonder, not for the first time, whether Jack had a claustrophobic streak he'd never admit to.
Sam put down her pencil as soon as the door shut behind him. “I'm sick of fighting, Daniel.”
Daniel thought that the real problem was that none of them could fight the way they needed to, and so they were reduced to fighting each other. As far as insights went, that one was profoundly unhelpful. “I know.”
“How did we end up like this?”
“The Ori came, blew Cheyenne Mountain to bits and took over the world,” said Daniel, who didn't think she was looking for the truth. She probably already knew.
“All those times we saved the world just to fail in the end.”
“Better the Ori than the Goa'uld.”
“You think?”
High school gyms full of people bowing in fear before their new gods. Main Streets dominated by platforms designed to burn people alive. Silent queues in grocery stores as people waited to receive their weekly food ration. It was a pattern no doubt repeated the world over. “The Goa'uld would have killed everyone, not kept them alive.” Well. Most of them. Except the people lost in the original bombings the Ori had thought they needed to subdue such a large population, and the people burned alive, and the people killed for a hundred other petty reasons.
“Sometimes I wonder what's worse.”
Daniel turned the page without having finished reading it. “I bet McKay's sitting in his fancy lab on Atlantis, working on Merlin's weapon as we speak.”
If someone had gotten Sam's research through the gate. (Well, everyone knew what she was working on and everyone knew it was the key to defeating the Ori. Landry would have ordered someone to take it through the gate in the first wave of evacuations, if Cam or Teal'c hadn't thought of it first.)
If there had been a ship available to transport people to Atlantis. (Even if the Ori had blown the Odyssey out of the sky, the Daedalus would have headed for the Alpha Site when it was unable to make contact with the SGC.)
If the people on Atlantis weren't so stretched just keeping the Wraith from their door that they couldn't spare McKay for the weapon. (But if the plans had reached Atlantis, then so had the scientists from the Alpha Site and the ones who'd made it through the gate, and there'd be enough brain power in the city to spare a few minds for Merlin's weapon. Besides, Rodney McKay wouldn't pass up the chance to be hailed as the man who'd single handedly saved the world.)
They'd had this conversation a few times, too.
“Yeah, I bet,” Sam said.
If Rodney McKay saved the world, they'd never hear the end of it. Daniel would appreciate it all the same.
Outside, over the muted noise of the wind, Daniel could hear Jack chopping wood. He didn't think the wood needed any more chopping, any more than it needed to brought inside that afternoon.
“He'd never look at me the same again.”
Daniel tracked the non-sequitur back to Nebraska. “Sam.” Two months they've been having this circular conversation. “You did what you had to do to save those girls.” That line of reasoning had more impact than the others, but not enough perspective.
“I didn't have to kill him.”
Daniel had nothing to say to that. There were a heap of other things she could have done but none of them would have been as efficient, would have broken the Sheriff's stranglehold on that town, would have freed those girls so effectively.
Besides, one of them was so much like Cassie as a child that if Sam hadn't killed the guy, Daniel might well have done. “You can't change the past, Sam.”
“I know. I know.” Sam rubbed her forehead and looked out the window. “It's going to be a long winter.”
***
1613
Sam had disappeared for a nap. Daniel was pretty sure she was still having the nightmares that had started even before Nebraska and which she had always denied existed.
Daniel had his own nightmares. He knew the signs, and he knew when she was lying, but there were some things it wasn't up to him to interfere with. He didn't comment on the afternoon naps or on the fact that she was usually first up in the mornings.
Jack's only attempt to broach the topic with her had ended in a fight and two days of icy silence.
Now, because Sam had refused his offer of company, Jack was wandering again, picking things up and putting them down somewhere else, and lingering to look out windows as though he was waiting for something or someone.
Daniel would pace too (he's starting to feel like an animal in a cage) but he thought two of them doing it would produce chaos. His book was no better and no worse than the last time he'd read it and it only occupied half his brain. The other half was preoccupied with watching and worrying.
What he really wanted was a long solitary walk to work off the nervous energy and detangle his thoughts. There was no space here, no room to breathe.
“Daniel?” Jack stopped pacing abruptly. “Chess?”
Jack's notion of the rules was a little hazy - or at least, he pretended it was - but it was still the best offer Daniel was likely to get. “Sure.”
His tendency to break rules aside, Jack was a good player. His moves were quick and precise and as efficient as a well-planned battle campaign. Daniel usually lost when he played Jack, which was refreshing.
They played in silence for while. The sound of the wind outside and the tapping of chess pieces on the board did nothing to soothe Daniel's mood. Physical exercise had never been Daniel's forte; he would never have expected the lack thereof to unnerve him so much.
Or maybe it was the company, or the snow, or the vast and faceless Ori with their fear and terror and death that he couldn't do a fucking thing about.
He was weighing up the advantages of moving his bishop over moving his knight when Jack spoke. “Sam told me that you two slept together.”
Startled, Daniel moved his bishop and was quickly taken by Jack's queen. Well, she was perfectly entitled to tell him, and in fact, Daniel might have been bothered if she hadn't, sooner or later.
But she could have warned him.
“Okay,” he said, more for the purpose of filling the empty space in the conversation than to actually communicate anything. Jack was waiting for his next move. Daniel considered, and pushed a pawn forward. “We thought you were dead. It was like sometimes we were the only people left in the world, you know? We headed for this place because we'd always said - you'd always said - we'd rendezvous here in an emergency. And we didn't have anywhere else to go. There was nowhere that wasn't touched by the Ori. Every town we passed through. Everyone we met.”
“You don't have to justify it.”
Daniel wondered if Sam had already tried. “I don't know if I can.”
“It's the end of the world, Daniel. We've got bigger things to worry about than your sex life.”
“Then why bring it up?” Daniel asked, the beginnings of a headache nagging at his temples.
“Well, it's not like we've got anything else to talk about.”
Giving up the pretence of chess, Daniel dropped his head into his hands. Every time he thought he was close to understanding Jack it was as though Jack changed before his eyes. He was deceptively simple on the outside and despite knowing it, Daniel was as guilty of underestimating him as dozens of commanding officers, rulers of alien nations and people with big guns had been.
It was understandable when it was someone else. It felt like betrayal when it was Daniel.
“It's your move.”
“I'm not done talking about this,” Daniel said, without having a clue what he was going to say or why, in fact, he wasn't done.
“Okay, but it's still your move.”
Daniel moved his knight with bad grace, wondering if he did so if Jack had started the conversation just to ensure he'd win with less effort than usual. The theory seemed plausible. “Most guys would be freaking out.”
“Why, do you want me to?”
“At least I'd know you were human.”
“Daniel, if you don't already know that, there's no hope for either of us.” That, more than anything, seemed to be the thing that had gotten to Jack. Daniel felt vaguely guilty - it had probably been a poor choice of words - but disinclined to apologise. That probably meant that he was human.
“Well, sometimes I wonder.”
Jack took Daniel's knight, and dumped it carelessly on the table. “Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”
“You're the one who's been fighting with Sam all day.”
“I think 'all day' is an exaggeration, Danny Boy.”
“Every day,” Daniel said, the frustration he'd been feeling all day spiralling into anger.
“And it takes two to tango. Sam's no saint.”
“I never said she was. But you provoke her, Jack. You know she's upset about what happened in Nebraska and you know she's scared to tell you and yet you still - still - keep nagging on at her about it. The more you go on about it the less she's going to want to tell you. And you can't talk, anyway, Jack, because I know you haven't told her about what happened to the Hendersons.”
Low blow.
“That's different, Daniel.”
“Why?”
“Because it didn't make me different. All I did was clean up the mess.”
“They were your friends. And it changed you, no matter how much you try to deny it.”
“They were my friends, and I buried them. It's not the first time I've done that, Daniel.”
“Do you think I don't know that?” Daniel had never figured out how not to feel guilty about the times he'd died and left them to pick up the pieces. “I”m just saying it goes both ways, Jack. Tell her about the Hendersons and maybe she'll tell you about Nebraska.”
“None of which has anything to do with you.”
“As long as I have to live with you, it's got everything to do with me.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” Jack pushed back his chair and stood up. “I'm going for a walk.”
“Because that's a good idea,” Daniel snapped, hating himself.
Over by the door, Jack was pulling on his snow gear. “Tell Sam I've gone out,” he said, and stepped outside.
Well, at least it had stopped snowing.
Daniel listened as the door slid shut and dropped his head onto the table, dislodging half the chess pieces with the impact. Jack would have won anyway. It didn't matter.
Colossal idiot, Daniel thought, meaning all three of them. If anyone had asked him what he thought happen if the Ori made it to Earth, Daniel would have said that SG-1 would save the day. He might not have believed it, but he'd have said it. He'd have said that people would resist the Ori - not publicly, they'd learn that quick enough - but that they wouldn't let the Ori win. The world would be united in the quiet, faceless battle against the Ori.
Somehow, after years and years of witnessing discord and infighting and utterly irrational hatred even in the face of a common enemy, Daniel had managed to remain something of an optimist. That was special.
Sam's bedroom door creaked open behind him, and Daniel almost jumped. “Were you two fighting?” she asked. Daniel wondered if she'd actually been asleep or had just chosen to retreat from battle for a bit.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Where -”
“He went for a walk. Wanted me to tell you he's gone out.”
Sam sighed heavily and sat down beside Daniel. “What did you argue about?”
“I'm not really sure. Everything. Nothing.” The best answer to that question was 'you', but Daniel wouldn't say that. He might hurt Jack, but he couldn't hurt Sam.
“The very young do not always do as they are told,” she said, unexpectedly.
“What?”
“Good thing Thor can't see us now. He always thought humans were better than this. He liked us, God knows why.”
Daniel thought he knew what she was talking about. On their way here they'd passed town after town marked by fighting. Not physical markings, not smashed windows or buildings pockmarked with bullet holes. That would have been easier than the things they'd seen people doing to each other. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
“How long's he been out there?”
“A couple of minutes.”
“If he's not back in twenty, we're going after him.”
Daniel nodded and sat there drumming his fingers on the table and growing increasingly guilty about doing the exact thing he'd criticised Jack for doing. The minutes passed and Jack didn't return.
“Let's go.”
Seasoned professionals that they were, they loaded themselves up with first aid equipment, flashlights, rope and a blanket. Daniel hoped they wouldn't need any of it, and wasn't sure how he'd live with himself if they did. The cold weather gear Jack had acquired from the same neighbours he'd buried in the woods wasn't exactly Air Force issue, but it'd do.
His tracks were clear in the snow, and Daniel knew instinctively where he'd gone. He let Sam take point and they walked in silence through the dim, white world. Daniel had spent the day wanting to go outside, and now that he was he wished they were all safe back inside.
Sure enough, Jack's footprints led down the narrow trail Daniel had accidentally discovered hunting rabbits. The trail led to a clearing, and in the clearing was Jack, a tall figure outlined against the snow, and four crosses arranged in a semi-circle.
“Jack?” Sam's voice was soft and cautious. She knew a graveyard when she saw one.
Jack turned slowly. He must have heard them approach. “What are you two doing here?”
“Checking you're not dying of hypothermia somewhere.”
Daniel stayed where he was as Sam walked carefully forward, stopping at Jack's side.
“What is this place, Jack?”
It was inevitable. It was all coming out now. Daniel held his breath and waited.
“Do you remember the Hendersons?” Jack asked, without looking at her. “We met them in town one day. Couple with two daughters. They lived up here in the summer.”
Daniel knew, by the way Sam's back tensed, the exact second she did the math. Four people, four crosses.
“How did they die?”
“Katie. The youngest daughter. She was eight, I think.”
Sam remained quiet and let Jack tell his story. Daniel, who'd heard it all before, looked up at the sky and hoped they weren't going to be caught in a snowstorm.
“She had a heart transplant when she was a toddler. Nice kid, you know. Very mature for her age. I knew they'd be up here, so when I got here I went round to see if they were doing okay. They were holed up, had the sense not to let the priors know they were here. They had food for a couple of months, with their garden and their chickens, and they were in pretty good spirits. The girls liked to come round and fish. Katie never got one, but Emma got a couple. She'd take them home and they'd have them for dinner.” Jack kicked idly at the snow. “Then I didn't see them for a couple of days. Thought it was weird that the girls hadn't been over, so I went round to check up on them.”
There was silence for a minute.
“Jack?”
“It was the smell. That was the first thing I noticed. You know what it's like.”
They did, indeed.
“I smelt it, and I knew. So I went in, to see what had happened. I thought it was the priors, or someone trying to get into their good books. The dog was dead. On the kitchen floor. The place was always so clean, and there was the dog. He'd been shot. I didn't have to get close to see that.”
Sam reached out and took Jack's hand.
“Went upstairs and there they were. The girls were dead in their beds. I couldn't see - they hadn't been shot. I think he must have smothered them, and put their pillows back so they looked like they were sleeping. They looked so peaceful. I found Tom and Angie in their room. There was blood everywhere. Tom still had the gun in his hand.”
“He killed his family?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Jack's voice was tired. “I went back down to the kitchen. I was going to go out the back door and get a spade from the shed. And I noticed a row of pill bottles on the counter. They all had Katie's name on them, and they were empty.”
“The one who had the heart transplant.”
“Yeah. I figure that once they ran out of meds he knew Katie's body would reject the heart. There was no way they could get the medication they needed, so -” Jack paused again and looked away from Sam and the graves.
“So rather than let her die slowly he -”
“Yeah.”
“And you buried them.”
“Someone had to. I dug the holes and wrapped them in sheets. I buried the dog with Emma. He was her best friend. You guys arrived three days later.” Jack put his head down on Sam's shoulder, just for a second, and then straightened up. Always the soldier, was Jack.
“Come on,” he said. “It's getting cold.”
***
1834
They were all sitting silently in front of the fire when Sam spoke suddenly, her voice unexpectedly loud in the darkness. No one had spoken since they'd walked away from the graves in the woods, and her voice was all the louder for that. “The Ori don't kill people. People kill people.”
Daniel thought at first that she was making less and less sense as time went on, and then he realised what she was saying and reached for her hand. She squeezed it and gave him a tight smile, the firelight reflecting oddly on her face.
“There was a guy in Nebraska,” she said.
Once upon a time Jack would have pointed out that there were plenty of guys in Nebraska. “Okay.”
“The last car we'd found had run out of gas and we'd had to abandon it, so we were walking. We found a small town and figured it'd be safe to stay put for a couple of days, get some food and shelter, maybe find another car. Only something wasn't right. Everyone was terrified of the Sheriff. There was no prior there, but the Sheriff was hoping they'd make him one. He must have been a bastard before the Ori came, but once they did it was like he'd found a way to justify his actions. He was psychopathic, I'm sure of it.”
Daniel closed his eyes and squeezed Sam's hand tighter. He could hear in her voice how much this was costing her.
“He was trying to convert people to Origin so the Ori would reward him. He only knew a handful of quotes from the Book of Origin, but that was enough for his purposes. He wasn't into coercion. He was into force, and he was into little girls.”
“God.”
“Yeah. He was holding them hostage. There were five of them. The youngest was six and the oldest was twelve. He told the families he'd give them back if they complied and converted to Origin. They did - the whole town did - but he kept the girls. We heard about it from some old lady on the edge of town and figured it couldn't possibly be true. Like rapists and pedophiles would just stop because the world had been taken over by aliens. Well, it doesn't work that way. We heard the rumour again so we went to check it out. He was holding the girls in the cells at the police station.”
The fire crackled, and a log gave way with a thump.
“I killed him. I didn't even blink, just filled him full of bullets.”
“Well, good for you.”
Daniel closed his eyes, and silently pleaded with Jack not to screw this up.
“No.”
“No? Sam, you did what you had to do.”
“So Daniel keeps telling me.”
“All right. I don't get it.”
Sam was quiet for a long time, her grip tight on Daniel's hand. “I killed him,” she said, “and I liked it. I felt good. I lost it, and I killed him.”
Daniel had seen the look in her eyes afterwards. Terror, and something else.
“Sam,” Jack said, and Daniel could tell from his voice that he was hopelessly out of his depth. “The man was scum. Don't beat yourself up because he got what was coming to him.”
“He was lying on the floor in front of me and I kept firing. He was dead and I didn't stop. And then I ran out of bullets and walked away and - Fifth was right, you know. That Replicator. He knew what I could be before I did.” Sam shook, and broke down in tears, first time Daniel had seen her cry since it happened. He'd sat up watching her, night after night after night, waiting, and she'd never cracked. It had unnerved him more than anything else even as he kept telling himself that she was still his Sam.
Jack hesitated, only for a second. “Come here,” he said, and pulled her into his arms. Daniel suspected it was the only thing he felt confident about doing.
She didn't let go of Daniel's hand.
They sat there an hour or more almost without moving. Sam's grip was enough to give Daniel cramp in his fingers, the floor was cold and hard, and the dim light of the fire was giving him a headache.
But he could breathe again.
***
2108
Jack had made dinner while Sam took a shower and Daniel played Patience, and they ate sitting crammed onto the window seat. It hadn't been made for three. The chill outside seeped through the window panes, sending shivers up Daniel's back, but the rest of him was warm enough that it didn't matter. Sam was in the middle, pretending very very hard that she hadn't broken down earlier, and Jack, having obviously decided not to push the issue of why she felt the way she did about killing the Sheriff, was trying equally hard not to fuss over her. Had the subject matter not been the stuff of nightmares, Daniel might have been amused.
“You know who I wonder about?” Jack said, chasing the last of his pasta around his plate with a fork.
“Who?” Daniel asked.
“Martin Lloyd.”
Sam laughed. “I bet Marty's holed up somewhere, writing a movie about how his team saved the Earth from the wicked Vori.”
“Now he was an interesting guy,” Daniel said quickly, pushing the conversation away from Saving the World, and how they weren't. Things were too peaceful for that. “I wonder if Maybourne's been deposed yet.”
“I want to know why no one ever made me king,” Jack said. “Maybourne's a lying, sneaking weasel and what does he get? His own kingdom.”
“That lying, sneaking weasel was pretending to predict the future. You've got to have some special talent to be made king,” Sam pointed out.
Jack gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Spoilsport.”
“What's the bet Ba'al's still out there?” Daniel asked, putting his empty plate on the coffee table.
“I hope he's giving the Ori a run for their money. And I never thought I'd hope a Goa'uld would still be alive. Especially Ba'al.”
“Ba'al's not going down without a fight,” Sam said, sounding both tired and content. She leant against Jack and put her head on his shoulder.
“Well,” Jack said, thoughtfully, “neither are we.”
***
0245
Daniel dreamed of the SGC, and Teal'c and Cam and Vala and a hundred other people he had known once. They were all playing poker. Jack was there, and he had a crown. Well, why not. Sam was filling water guns with her father and Cassie, and Daniel found himself content just to sit and watch them all.
He woke for no reason, and knew that it was snowing again.