Fall Away, Part 5/5
*does HAPPY DANCE*
I rule!! And I get to keep my soul! I have never finished a story this long this quickly. I have never written a story this long for something with a deadline. Holy crap! *grins grins grins*
*satisfied sigh*
Okay. So, yes, I have to actually post it. And then, off to eat dinner during which I will eat chips and salsa because I've earned it. I have.
Title: Fall Away
Author: knightshade
Rating: PG-13 for a bit of gruesomeness and the occasional swearing
Pairing: Mostly Gen. Shades of Jack/Sam, but not more than UST
Warnings: Apocafic. It’s a blood bath, in more ways than one. There will be character death.
Spoilers: Up to and including mid Season 7.
Prompt: Trapped off world, apocafic, any pairing. One team member goes insane, quietly or not quietly, but definitely with impact. Listen to Fuel - Hemorrhage (In My Hands) at time or two to find the mood (preferably dark)
Summary: SG-1 gets trapped on a planet suffering an Ebola-like plague. Will they be able to get home before they come down with the disease?
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. See MGM, Gekko, and Double Secret Productions, among others. This was just for fun (I have a warped concept of that term, admittedly), and no money was made.
Notes: This was written for apocalypse_kree. I’ll post a link there when I have all the parts posted. Thank you so much to moonbeamsfanfic for the quick beta on a story this size. Thank you as well to naushika, sjhw_tolerance, and aurora_novarum for help with research.
This takes place mid season 7 at some point before Heros
Lyrics in the first section and the title are from the song Hemorrhage by Fuel.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
-------------------
Camp was quiet. Quiet and mourning, but with a growing sense of the slightest hope. A couple of days had passed and Jack was starting to think that maybe they were in the clear. Maybe the three of them had somehow avoided getting sick. Carter was even starting to theorize that maybe since all three of them had had Goa'uld symbiotes in one fashion or another, maybe they had some extra immunity that Daniel didn't have.
It was something to hold onto anyway.
But things were still tense, silent. There wasn't enough to do. There weren't enough ways for Jack to keep busy. He and Teal'c had caught a days worth of food, but of course there was no way to keep the meat cold, so there was no point in trying to catch more. Over the last two days, Teal'c had collected enough firewood to keep them in business for a week. Carter had been the most quiet, sitting on the log and staring into the fire.
Jack was trying to respect her space, but he couldn't take the silence anymore. He sat on the log next to her and across the fire from Teal'c.
"You know what I miss most about Earth?" he asked.
Both Carter and Teal'c looked at him.
"Guess."
They were both quiet for a moment. "Your cabin?" Carter asked, her voice uncertain.
"Nope. Plenty of fish here. Fishing sort of loses its appeal when you have to do it to get by."
"Your telescope?" she ventured and Jack knew that he'd piqued her curiosity.
"Nope. I can live without."
"Beer," Teal'c said drolly from the spot across the fire.
Jack clapped his hands together once and pointed to him. "Ding, ding, ding. The Jaffa wins a prize!"
"Beer?" Carter asked, but there was the barest hint of a smile on her face.
"Come on, tell me you wouldn't love to have a cold one right now."
Carter gave a shrug of agreement. "I can't argue that."
"So what do you miss most?" he asked her, impressing on her with his eyes that he knew what they all missed the most, but he was not looking for the sad, truthful answer right now.
She obviously got it because she looked suddenly very rueful. "My bike. And my car."
"I may have to rethink my answer. I didn't think about my truck. Thinking, thinking… Nope, beer still wins. But you're right, Carter, you had sweet rides." He turned again to look at Teal'c. "What about you, T? What do you miss about Earth?"
"My Star Wars DVDs."
It made both Jack and Carter smile. And it felt good, if only for a few minutes, to smile.
"I will not, however, miss the three movies that purported to be Star Wars prequels. They were unworthy of the Star Wars name."
Jack got up and grabbed his hat to go collect some fruits or greens for dinner. He clapped Teal'c on the shoulder. "Forget them, big guy. They may as well have never existed."
And for all practical purposes, they didn't.
* * *
Jack had managed to find some of the berries that Daniel had been fond of. They hadn't gone looking for them since he'd gotten sick, but they needed something in their diet besides meat. He also managed to find more of a local root variety that wasn't too far off from a potato. It was a little bit tougher than he'd prefer but overall they were edible.
He made the quick trek back to camp feeling pleased with himself for having an overflowing hat and roots in both hands. Carter was sitting in the same spot still mesmerized by the fire.
"Hey, Carter, mind giving me a hand with these?"
She didn't even look up.
Jack set down his load and quickly crossed the camp to kneel next to her. "Carter?"
He passed his hand in front of her face and finally, after much too long, she snapped out of it and turned to look at him. "Yes, sir?"
"You okay?"
"Yes. I was just thinking." She looked sincere and sincerely confused, but the hair on the back of Jack's neck stood at attention. Carter certainly got involved in her thoughts, but not to the point where she wasn’t actually aware of her surroundings.
It crashed down over him. God, not her too. Not when things were looking okay. Jack tried to get a handle on himself. He didn't know that anything was really wrong, it was just suspicious. And she seemed okay, smiling weakly at him and radiating confusion. He wanted to believe she was fine.
"I'm alright, sir, really."
He stood up again. "Okay.”
He went to retrieve the food for dinner as Teal'c emerged from the cave. Teal'c caught his eye and Jack nearly stumbled under the weight of that look. He knew instantly that Carter hadn't just spaced out once. "Teal'c have you seen my knife? I left it somewhere."
"It is in the cave, O'Neill."
Jack followed him. He turned to glance at Carter before slipping inside and caught her looking suspiciously in their direction. More suspiciously than he would expect from her.
"O'Neill, I believe that Major Cater is ill," he said gravely, his voice low.
Jacked closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "She was just staring into the fire and didn't hear me when I asked her a question."
"I have seen that as well. She has also questioned why I would want to get the water. She did not accuse me of anything, but her tone of voice suggested that she feared I was tampering with our water supply."
Jack let his shoulders sag against the wall of the cave, ignoring the ick of the slimy vines against his t-shirt.
"Maybe she's just having an off day?" he suggested with his eyes closed. He opened them to see Teal'c's eyebrow raising its own suspicions. "Yeah, I don't really believe that either."
He pushed himself away from the wall. "There's nothing we can do now but keep an eye on her."
* * *
The wait wasn't long. She woke Jack up the next morning.
"No. The wormhole isn't bidirectional, it only allows travel one way," Carter muttered, still in her sleeping bag. Then she sat up suddenly. "No! You can't do that!"
Jack bolted out of bed. "Carter?"
Her eyes were twitching this way and that, completely unseeing. Jack swallowed hard and then backed away from her. He couldn't do this again. He couldn't sit and watch her die like Daniel. They'd tried the wait and hope approach with him and it hadn't worked. He couldn’t do that again. Not with Carter.
Jack yanked on his boots, picked up his P-90, set his jaw, and tromped down the slope into the woods. He heard Teal'c call his name but he ignored it. Soon he was at a jog and then an all out run. He broke into the gate clearing feeling frantic. He reached the DHD and started pounding the symbols for Earth. Then he slammed the center crystal. Nothing! He did it again, beating the address into the DHD. Still nothing, dammit! He dialed the Alpha Site and slammed his fists into the DHD willing it to just work!
He took a step back thoroughly frustrated. The Tok'ra! He'd call the Tok'ra and maybe they'd have a cure by now! Something. Anything other than sitting here and watching his team die around him. He started punching in the first gate address he could remember. He must not have gotten it right, because the gate spun but didn’t lock the last chevon. "Come! On!" he yelled, stabbing at the symbols again.
A hand fell onto his shoulder. "O'Neill," Teal’c said, firmly.
"I have to try something!"
"Indeed. But Earth is gone, O'Neill."
“I know that! Maybe the Tok'ra."
"Do you know how to find them?"
"No. But I can at least try, dammit!"
"Jacob Carter said they would contact us."
Jack laughed bitterly. "Don't call us, we'll call you."
"Perhaps if he knew."
Some of the anger fell away. "If Jacob knew about Sam..."
"Perhaps they would work faster."
"Yeah." Jack let out a sigh. He stepped away from the DHD, suddenly realizing that he was exhausted. Over tired. Over worn. "We owe it to Jacob to try to get word to him that his daughter is dying, Teal'c."
"I will attempt to contact them."
Jack wanted to argue. He wanted to stay and punch every symbol over and over until they found the Tok'ra. But in all likelihood, he'd never find them in his lifetime -- however long that might be.
"Yeah, okay. You probably remember more gate addresses than I do anyway."
He gave Jack’s shoulder a squeeze and then stepped back. "One of us should stay at camp with Major Carter."
"I'll take care of her. Just find them, please."
* * *
The sun was setting slowly, and Jack chucked another log onto the fire. It was getting cold but he didn't want to move. Sam - there was really no point in continuing to call her Carter -- was lying on the ground on her side. He was cradling her head in his lap, her face turned away from him, toward the fire. He was grateful not to have to look at her wild eyes. She was past the point where she was saying anything, but her eyes were just as bad. Jack was slowly stroking her soft blonde hair. He was filled with such heaviness and all he could think was I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry….
Teal'c appeared at the edge of camp. Jack hadn't even heard him coming. Part of him jumped, feeling caught in the act. It was the part of him that still wanted to call her Carter and still clung to the rules and regulations. It was dying faster than Sam was.
And Teal'c had known for years now anyway. He was one of only two people from the SGC who’d been in that room all those years ago. One of only two who’d heard their confessions under the za’tarc machine. He'd never brought it up after that and had never even hinted at knowing about their feelings for each other. Jack had never really told him how much he appreciated that.
"I could not find the Tok'ra, O'Neill," he said, sitting down on the log across from the two of them. "I have attempted to dial every gate address I can recall."
Jack nodded slowly, avoiding his friend's eyes. "Thank you, Teal'c."
He saw Teal'c's nod in his peripheral vision but he focused on the soft yellow of Sam's hair instead, trying not to think about anything.
"I am sorry, O'Neill."
Jack tried to smile but knew it was coming out as a grimace. "I am too, Teal'c."
"This is not your doing."
"No." But he was responsible. He was supposed to protect them. He was supposed to bring them all home. But there wasn't even a home to bring them back to anymore.
"Then you have nothing to feel guilty about, O'Neill."
He nodded to appease his friend, not feeling any better. He just didn't want her to have to die like this. He didn't want any of them to die like this.
Teal'c tended the fire and made them dinner which Jack barely touched. He brought them water and they were able to get Sam to drink which was at least a little bit encouraging. He did all the work to allow Jack to sit with Sam. She was quiet most of the evening, and Jack was grateful that she hadn't been as visibly disturbed as Daniel had been. But then he wasn't looking at her eyes much. He still couldn't deal with the pain and fear there.
By morning the bleeding had started. Overnight it had created horrible little streams down her cheek, coloring the tips of her hair and sinking into the fabric of Jack's BDUs.
"Teal'c?" Jack called, hearing him moving in the cave.
He appeared, his eyes widening at the sight of the blood pooling around Jack's legs.
"Could you get me a t-shirt out of Daniel's pack?" Jack turned Sam's head a little and realized that she was bleeding from her eyes too - red, bloody tears. It closed off his throat almost completely. He needed to cough to get any air in. Then he gently wiped the red tears away with his bare fingertips.
"O'Neill. That is not wise."
Jack just looked at him. Did Teal'c honestly think he cared anymore? Did he honestly think they had any other fate in store for them other than to die the way Daniel had and Sam was about to?
Teal'c held his stare for a moment and then brought him the t-shirt.
Jack kept Sam's face as clean as he could. He dabbed at the pools that formed in her ear and tried to keep the blood out of her hair. Teal’c started the IV and they both waited.
* * *
She was screaming incoherently, and had thrown herself off Jack's lap. It was that shriek that split him in two each time. She looked nothing like the Sam he knew. Nothing. Her face was contorted and feral. He was lucky it had been dark when Daniel had gotten to this point so he hadn't had to see it clearly. Sam was a figure in horror - a figure that he knew used to be someone he cared about deeply and it tore him up to see her now.
She bolted away from him and Teal'c had to catch her. He restrained her in a tight bear hug from behind as she kicked and screamed. He picked her up off the ground and ducked into the cave, dragging her with him. Jack silently grabbed the zip ties and they sat her in the same place they'd restrained Daniel, tying her to the vines and resigning themselves to the fact that Major Samantha Carter was lost from this world.
* * *
Death came as simply as turning the lights out in her eyes. It was that simple and that awful. Jack watched her go, watched that light of hers wink out, and watched her body grow cold and quiet. He watched her head slowly slump forward under its own weight. He watched it all and then he got up and left. He walked out of the cave and walked down the slope to the stream. He just meant to clean his hands, splash some cold water on his face, but instead, he got to the bank and just kept going. He walked into the stream, boots and all. He waded out to the middle and watched the water swirl and eddy around his waist. He plunged his hands in and watched as the blood made little ripples around him.
He looked up to see Teal'c watching him from the bank, streaks of blood soiling his shirt and arms from having to restrain her.
Jack closed his eyes, feeling the cold creep up his body, feeling the discomfort of the wet water in his boots. He leaned into the current of the stream as it pulled against his body.
It was washing away the blood but it could not remove the stain.
* * *
They worked until after sun down. Teal'c did all of the digging this time. Jack just didn't have the strength anymore. They carried Sam down the slope and laid her next to Daniel. There was plenty of room in their family plot.
There were even fewer words this time and both he and Teal'c trudged back up the slope together. They didn't bother with dinner. Jack just stared at the fire as it burned through the fuel. They weren’t hurting for wood or food or water. They had so many things, but not the things they really needed.
At some point Jack dosed off. When he woke it was pitch black and Teal'c was sitting on a cleared section of ground across from him, his eyes closed, sitting with his legs crossed and his hands resting palms up on his knees.
"I didn't think you did kel'no'reem anymore. Not after you lost Junior,” Jack whispered, figuring Teal'c could ignore him if he chose.
"I do not kel’no’reem." He opened both eyes and gazed at Jack with a serene expression that Jack envied. "I am meditating."
"Any particular reason?"
"I feel the need." He closed his eyes. "It brings me peace."
Peace was definitely something Jack envied right now. He wished it were as simple as sitting cross-legged and humming. "Are you okay?"
"I am."
Jack got up quietly and grabbed his pack to bunch under his head. It wasn’t a good pillow but it was better than nothing.
"They respected you, and appreciated your leadership. As do I. You have led us out of danger many times, O'Neill. There is nothing you could have done differently this time."
Jack bowed his head, grateful that Teal'c had his eyes closed. "Thanks, Teal'c."
* * *
When Jack woke in the morning Teal'c was gone. He had taken nothing -- even his staff weapon was left leaning against the cave wall -- but there was the air of permanence to the silence around camp. Jack knew without a doubt that he was gone. He'd made it clear in the beginning of this mess that if he got sick he'd leave and now he had.
Jack didn't bother to go looking for him. He understood that the decision was Teal'c's to make and it was one he respected. But the emptiness weighed on him nearly as much as carrying Sam and Daniel's bodies had. He brooded around camp for a while, doing the chores half-heartedly now that the only person he needed to provide for was himself.
That night it started to rain again. The sky opened up and poured down on Jack's little camp. There was thunder and lightening and hail. The torrents of water cut gouges in the hillside. It forced Jack to stay in the cave for shelter, which was quickly wearing on his nerves. He was fairly certain that if anyone would bother to haunt him it would be Daniel. Not only was the cave a perfect haunting kind of place with all the vines and dank dripping, but it fit perfectly into ghost lore by being the place where Daniel had taken his last breath.
Jack didn't want to stay there, but he didn't want to be soaked either. As soon as it stopped raining, he'd find himself another place to make camp. Somewhere away from the graves and the ghosts.
He slept fitfully that night. At one point he must have awoken from a horrible dream because he looked down and for a brief second saw a snake or long worm biting his forearm. He panicked and tried to brush it away, but there was nothing there. He wondered if this was the first stage of the disease, if this was the beginning of his end.
He lay there trying to force his mind to stop thinking and noticed there was an orangish light in the cave. He sat up and realized that Jacob Carter was standing at the entrance. It looked like he was talking, but Jack couldn't hear him. He blinked against the bright light and Jacob became hazier, indistinct, and then disappeared entirely.
* * *
As if there weren't enough things to hate on this planet, Jack seemed to be marooned in the monsoon season. The next morning the storms hadn't let up at all. Jack didn't want to try to start a fire in the cave itself, so he ate the potato-like vegetables and berries for breakfast and lunch. But sitting around with nothing to do was eating away at him. He couldn't figure out why he was bothering, but collecting firewood was better than staring at the walls.
He had a full armload of wood that he brought back into the cave along with the vines that made for good kindling. It would all have to dry before he could anything with it and he wasn't sure how long it would take for it to dry in this dank cave with it still raining outside.
Jack dumped the armload onto the floor and in a flash saw the snake on his arm again and felt something else squeeze his right bicep. Jack jumped back and flailed at his arms, sure there was something there, but when he calmed down enough to really look, there was nothing.
He sank down and leaned against the wall. He just wanted this to be over. He couldn't take cracking up. He'd lost his team, his whole planet, everyone he'd ever cared about. He didn't think he could just sit there and wait for death. Worse, he didn't think he could live out his life if he somehow didn't get the disease.
It was a relief that no one would be here to see him lose his mind, but the prospect scared him. Sam and Daniel had both seemed terrified in their hallucinations. He didn't want to die like that either.
Jack pulled out his pistol and looked at it. He wasn't ready for that yet, but it was always an option. And if he had an option then living was a choice.
It was a choice he was still strong enough to make.
At least for now.
* * *
He dreamed, or hallucinated about Jacob again. He was still in that orange light. He seemed to fade in and out, coming and going.
And sometimes he saw Daniel and Teal'c. They were standing in the background, not saying anything.
He half expected Daniel to try to talk him into ascension again. But maybe this time Daniel hadn't gone that route. Or maybe he just knew that Jack wasn't going to agree to it so there was no point trying.
* * *
He needed to eat something other than roots. What he really wanted was a cheeseburger off the grill in his backyard with a beer to wash it down, but apparently his grill was now just an ash or two in the smoking briquette that was Earth. So no cheeseburger. He wanted boar stew but Teal'c caught the boar and he was gone. Sam cooked the boar and she was gone too.
So he sat in the cold, wishing for things he knew he couldn't have.
He wondered what had happened to the Jack O'Neill -- two 'L's -- who had walked out of enemy territory in Iraq with a cracked scull and a whole lot of broken bones. He wasn't that man anymore. He was tired and beaten. He wanted this to end. He wanted Earth and his team to stop haunting him.
* * *
Jack wasn't sure what time it was anymore. With the endless drizzle, it was always dark and gloomy. He had no idea how many days he'd been on his own. He couldn't really muster the will to care. It had been as long as it had been.
He stared out of the cave entrance, watching the rain bounce off the stones in the ground. He watched the water collect into larger drops along the entrance and fall in a slower platter to the dirt below.
Jack closed his eyes, engaging in his new favorite hobby of dosing. When he opened them again, Jacob was standing there, just inside the cave, out of the rain.
"Hi, Jack."
"Jacob."
"How are you?"
"Been better."
"Hmmmm. I’d say so."
"You know, Jacob. Now really isn’t a good time. I'd rather not have ghosts haunting me.”
Jacob gave him a tight lipped smile. "I'm not a ghost, Jack."
"Nope. A figment of a disease addled brain. Ghost for short."
"I'm real, Jack. You have to start believing that."
"See, the thing is, real people don't have ghostly lights surrounding them."
Jacob smiled but it was starting to get darker in the cave. In the murk Jack could see that Jacob's lips were moving, but he couldn't make out what he was saying. Then slowly, Jacob faded away and Jack was alone again.
* * *
If he never saw rain again, he'd be happy. He wondered if there were a way to control his delusions, some way he could park himself on a beach covered with bikini-clad women, each carrying coolers of beer. If he was going to hallucinate, why couldn’t he at least hallucinate something good?
The rain just kept coming, and the cave just kept feeling more and more repressive. He really wanted to go down to the graves, make sure they were deep enough, make sure the markers had survived any flash flooding down the slope. At the time it had seemed like the best place to bury them, but now he wasn't sure.
Jack wanted to be buried with them, to be a family even in death. He loved them like family, he loved them more than family, but there was no one left to bury him. And Teal'c was gone, so they would always be missing someone. There was no one to even perform a missing man formation for Teal’c either. Not that they would. Not without Jack pushing. Teal'c was too easily written off by the Air Force because he was an alien. Jack had always found himself defending his friend and making sure that people understood how important his contributions were to Earth.
Not that it mattered anymore.
None of it mattered.
And he had nothing left to do but sit in the rain and hallucinate.
* * *
Finally, a delusion worth having. Sam decided to pay him a visit. If he was going to be haunted, then at least he wanted to be haunted by a pretty blonde.
Jack watched as she sat across from him in the cave, not saying anything, just looking at him, her eyes big and sad and frightened.
"You make the best guardian angel, Sam," he said picking at his boot laces.
She didn't answer or say anything. She just watched him, her eyes filled with concern -- sometimes horror. Sometimes they looked the same way they had when she'd lain in his lap, her mind coming to pieces before her body finally gave out.
* * *
"God dammit!" Jack yelled, trying to scrape off the worm or snake or whatever the hell it was that kept latching onto his left arm. It drove him nuts, made him want to shoot his arm off. When he woke up it was there, but the minute he tried to brush it off or slap it dead, it was gone. It was clear and lethargic and very, very unsettling.
Again, if he was going to go mad, why couldn't he have the bikini women? Or maybe he could write himself in as a character on the Simpsons and live through episodes? Or maybe catching the fish of his life in that barren pond of his? There were so many good delusions he could be having, why the hell did this disease insist on giving him bad ones? Snakes on his arm, what was that?!
He had taken to whittling to pass the time. He wasn't any good at it but he could take a perfectly good branch and cut it down to nothing with his knife. That part he had down. Toothpicks, no problem. Anything more useful than that was beyond him.
He was in the middle of cutting down another branch when she appeared again.
It was startling. Jacob had an orange halo whenever he was there, but Sam, Sam just looked like Sam. She walked into the cave, leaning on the doorway and asked if she could come in.
Oh why the hell not? He flipped the branch he was mutilating onto the ground next to him. "What would you like the talk about, Sam? Religion? Ascension? Oh, sorry that’s Daniel. What about astrophysics or some other topic that will get on my nerves?"
She looked stricken. She looked like she was going to leave. And he really didn't want her to go. He was tired of sitting on this planet alone. "I'm sorry," he said, and then gestured with his hand for her to come in.
She came close to him and sat on a bundle of vines that crisscrossed the bottom of the cave. "How are you feeling?"
"Why does everyone ask me that?"
"It's kind of the standard question for..."
"For someone who's dying?"
"You aren't dying."
"Oh, delusions are nice, aren’t they? Tell you what you want to hear."
She looked like she wanted to flee. He made a mental note to stop driving away the hallucinations that he wanted to have. He might end up with nothing but pink elephants if he wasn't careful.
"Sorry, it's just been a bad couple of days."
She nodded slowly.
He sighed. "Why are you here?"
"Because I care. We all do."
Jack nodded. "I noticed that Daniel didn't even try with the Ascension bit this time. That's good. "
"Sir?"
"I just mean that even if he was offering ascension, I wouldn't be interested. I plan to die like everyone else."
"Sir, why would Daniel be offering ascension?"
"Well, he did last time he was ascended and I was in a situation like this."
She looked down at her hands, and confusion spread across her features again. "He would have to be ascended to offer you help with ascending."
Jack closed his eyes. "Well, I guess I just assumed, him being dead and all, that he would have ascended again."
"Sir, Daniel's not dead."
"Of course he is," Jack said, getting angry. "Look, I don't mind you haunting me, but you don't get to play with my head. Daniel's dead and you're dead and Teal'c is either dead or well on his way. And I," he let out a deep and frustrated sigh. "I'm just waiting to be dead. Because I can't do this, Sam. I can't keep going knowing that you and Daniel and Teal'c are gone and I failed you. I failed to bring you home safely and now I have to sit here and live with that until this goddamn disease finally turns my brain into bleeding mush and kills me! And that is all I have to look forward to and that is something I just can't take anymore!"
He was shouting at her and she had closed her eyes to his onslaught. "Sir, please look around you."
He didn't. He wouldn't. He couldn’t. It was too much to keep trying. Instead he just looked down at the strap around his wrist. He picked at the leather, wondering why the hell this couldn't just be over with.
"Sir, look around you," she said emphatically. "I'm not dead, and neither is Daniel or Teal'c. No one got sick, Colonel. No one, but you."
That froze him up completely. "What?" he breathed.
"No one got sick but you, Jack. You came down with the disease."
He stared down at his hands, trying to figure out what she was talking about and suddenly the snake was back. He pawed at it, only this time, it was suddenly clear. It wasn't a snake that was biting him; it was an IV in the crook of his arm. He closed his eyes and then slowly opened them. He looked up to see Sam - Carter -- staring down at him with worry and confusion swarming in her eyes. She took his hand to pull it away from the IV. "No one got sick but you, Colonel. Dr. Fraiser and my dad have been doing everything in their power to help you for days. But you have to want to come back."
And suddenly the walls of the cave dissolved. The reality he had lived and believed and fought bitterly against melted away before his eyes.
Jack found himself in a bed in the SGC’s infirmary.
------------------
-knightshade
August 18, 2007
I rule!! And I get to keep my soul! I have never finished a story this long this quickly. I have never written a story this long for something with a deadline. Holy crap! *grins grins grins*
*satisfied sigh*
Okay. So, yes, I have to actually post it. And then, off to eat dinner during which I will eat chips and salsa because I've earned it. I have.
Title: Fall Away
Author: knightshade
Rating: PG-13 for a bit of gruesomeness and the occasional swearing
Pairing: Mostly Gen. Shades of Jack/Sam, but not more than UST
Warnings: Apocafic. It’s a blood bath, in more ways than one. There will be character death.
Spoilers: Up to and including mid Season 7.
Prompt: Trapped off world, apocafic, any pairing. One team member goes insane, quietly or not quietly, but definitely with impact. Listen to Fuel - Hemorrhage (In My Hands) at time or two to find the mood (preferably dark)
Summary: SG-1 gets trapped on a planet suffering an Ebola-like plague. Will they be able to get home before they come down with the disease?
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. See MGM, Gekko, and Double Secret Productions, among others. This was just for fun (I have a warped concept of that term, admittedly), and no money was made.
Notes: This was written for apocalypse_kree. I’ll post a link there when I have all the parts posted. Thank you so much to moonbeamsfanfic for the quick beta on a story this size. Thank you as well to naushika, sjhw_tolerance, and aurora_novarum for help with research.
This takes place mid season 7 at some point before Heros
Lyrics in the first section and the title are from the song Hemorrhage by Fuel.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
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Camp was quiet. Quiet and mourning, but with a growing sense of the slightest hope. A couple of days had passed and Jack was starting to think that maybe they were in the clear. Maybe the three of them had somehow avoided getting sick. Carter was even starting to theorize that maybe since all three of them had had Goa'uld symbiotes in one fashion or another, maybe they had some extra immunity that Daniel didn't have.
It was something to hold onto anyway.
But things were still tense, silent. There wasn't enough to do. There weren't enough ways for Jack to keep busy. He and Teal'c had caught a days worth of food, but of course there was no way to keep the meat cold, so there was no point in trying to catch more. Over the last two days, Teal'c had collected enough firewood to keep them in business for a week. Carter had been the most quiet, sitting on the log and staring into the fire.
Jack was trying to respect her space, but he couldn't take the silence anymore. He sat on the log next to her and across the fire from Teal'c.
"You know what I miss most about Earth?" he asked.
Both Carter and Teal'c looked at him.
"Guess."
They were both quiet for a moment. "Your cabin?" Carter asked, her voice uncertain.
"Nope. Plenty of fish here. Fishing sort of loses its appeal when you have to do it to get by."
"Your telescope?" she ventured and Jack knew that he'd piqued her curiosity.
"Nope. I can live without."
"Beer," Teal'c said drolly from the spot across the fire.
Jack clapped his hands together once and pointed to him. "Ding, ding, ding. The Jaffa wins a prize!"
"Beer?" Carter asked, but there was the barest hint of a smile on her face.
"Come on, tell me you wouldn't love to have a cold one right now."
Carter gave a shrug of agreement. "I can't argue that."
"So what do you miss most?" he asked her, impressing on her with his eyes that he knew what they all missed the most, but he was not looking for the sad, truthful answer right now.
She obviously got it because she looked suddenly very rueful. "My bike. And my car."
"I may have to rethink my answer. I didn't think about my truck. Thinking, thinking… Nope, beer still wins. But you're right, Carter, you had sweet rides." He turned again to look at Teal'c. "What about you, T? What do you miss about Earth?"
"My Star Wars DVDs."
It made both Jack and Carter smile. And it felt good, if only for a few minutes, to smile.
"I will not, however, miss the three movies that purported to be Star Wars prequels. They were unworthy of the Star Wars name."
Jack got up and grabbed his hat to go collect some fruits or greens for dinner. He clapped Teal'c on the shoulder. "Forget them, big guy. They may as well have never existed."
And for all practical purposes, they didn't.
* * *
Jack had managed to find some of the berries that Daniel had been fond of. They hadn't gone looking for them since he'd gotten sick, but they needed something in their diet besides meat. He also managed to find more of a local root variety that wasn't too far off from a potato. It was a little bit tougher than he'd prefer but overall they were edible.
He made the quick trek back to camp feeling pleased with himself for having an overflowing hat and roots in both hands. Carter was sitting in the same spot still mesmerized by the fire.
"Hey, Carter, mind giving me a hand with these?"
She didn't even look up.
Jack set down his load and quickly crossed the camp to kneel next to her. "Carter?"
He passed his hand in front of her face and finally, after much too long, she snapped out of it and turned to look at him. "Yes, sir?"
"You okay?"
"Yes. I was just thinking." She looked sincere and sincerely confused, but the hair on the back of Jack's neck stood at attention. Carter certainly got involved in her thoughts, but not to the point where she wasn’t actually aware of her surroundings.
It crashed down over him. God, not her too. Not when things were looking okay. Jack tried to get a handle on himself. He didn't know that anything was really wrong, it was just suspicious. And she seemed okay, smiling weakly at him and radiating confusion. He wanted to believe she was fine.
"I'm alright, sir, really."
He stood up again. "Okay.”
He went to retrieve the food for dinner as Teal'c emerged from the cave. Teal'c caught his eye and Jack nearly stumbled under the weight of that look. He knew instantly that Carter hadn't just spaced out once. "Teal'c have you seen my knife? I left it somewhere."
"It is in the cave, O'Neill."
Jack followed him. He turned to glance at Carter before slipping inside and caught her looking suspiciously in their direction. More suspiciously than he would expect from her.
"O'Neill, I believe that Major Cater is ill," he said gravely, his voice low.
Jacked closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "She was just staring into the fire and didn't hear me when I asked her a question."
"I have seen that as well. She has also questioned why I would want to get the water. She did not accuse me of anything, but her tone of voice suggested that she feared I was tampering with our water supply."
Jack let his shoulders sag against the wall of the cave, ignoring the ick of the slimy vines against his t-shirt.
"Maybe she's just having an off day?" he suggested with his eyes closed. He opened them to see Teal'c's eyebrow raising its own suspicions. "Yeah, I don't really believe that either."
He pushed himself away from the wall. "There's nothing we can do now but keep an eye on her."
* * *
The wait wasn't long. She woke Jack up the next morning.
"No. The wormhole isn't bidirectional, it only allows travel one way," Carter muttered, still in her sleeping bag. Then she sat up suddenly. "No! You can't do that!"
Jack bolted out of bed. "Carter?"
Her eyes were twitching this way and that, completely unseeing. Jack swallowed hard and then backed away from her. He couldn't do this again. He couldn't sit and watch her die like Daniel. They'd tried the wait and hope approach with him and it hadn't worked. He couldn’t do that again. Not with Carter.
Jack yanked on his boots, picked up his P-90, set his jaw, and tromped down the slope into the woods. He heard Teal'c call his name but he ignored it. Soon he was at a jog and then an all out run. He broke into the gate clearing feeling frantic. He reached the DHD and started pounding the symbols for Earth. Then he slammed the center crystal. Nothing! He did it again, beating the address into the DHD. Still nothing, dammit! He dialed the Alpha Site and slammed his fists into the DHD willing it to just work!
He took a step back thoroughly frustrated. The Tok'ra! He'd call the Tok'ra and maybe they'd have a cure by now! Something. Anything other than sitting here and watching his team die around him. He started punching in the first gate address he could remember. He must not have gotten it right, because the gate spun but didn’t lock the last chevon. "Come! On!" he yelled, stabbing at the symbols again.
A hand fell onto his shoulder. "O'Neill," Teal’c said, firmly.
"I have to try something!"
"Indeed. But Earth is gone, O'Neill."
“I know that! Maybe the Tok'ra."
"Do you know how to find them?"
"No. But I can at least try, dammit!"
"Jacob Carter said they would contact us."
Jack laughed bitterly. "Don't call us, we'll call you."
"Perhaps if he knew."
Some of the anger fell away. "If Jacob knew about Sam..."
"Perhaps they would work faster."
"Yeah." Jack let out a sigh. He stepped away from the DHD, suddenly realizing that he was exhausted. Over tired. Over worn. "We owe it to Jacob to try to get word to him that his daughter is dying, Teal'c."
"I will attempt to contact them."
Jack wanted to argue. He wanted to stay and punch every symbol over and over until they found the Tok'ra. But in all likelihood, he'd never find them in his lifetime -- however long that might be.
"Yeah, okay. You probably remember more gate addresses than I do anyway."
He gave Jack’s shoulder a squeeze and then stepped back. "One of us should stay at camp with Major Carter."
"I'll take care of her. Just find them, please."
* * *
The sun was setting slowly, and Jack chucked another log onto the fire. It was getting cold but he didn't want to move. Sam - there was really no point in continuing to call her Carter -- was lying on the ground on her side. He was cradling her head in his lap, her face turned away from him, toward the fire. He was grateful not to have to look at her wild eyes. She was past the point where she was saying anything, but her eyes were just as bad. Jack was slowly stroking her soft blonde hair. He was filled with such heaviness and all he could think was I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry….
Teal'c appeared at the edge of camp. Jack hadn't even heard him coming. Part of him jumped, feeling caught in the act. It was the part of him that still wanted to call her Carter and still clung to the rules and regulations. It was dying faster than Sam was.
And Teal'c had known for years now anyway. He was one of only two people from the SGC who’d been in that room all those years ago. One of only two who’d heard their confessions under the za’tarc machine. He'd never brought it up after that and had never even hinted at knowing about their feelings for each other. Jack had never really told him how much he appreciated that.
"I could not find the Tok'ra, O'Neill," he said, sitting down on the log across from the two of them. "I have attempted to dial every gate address I can recall."
Jack nodded slowly, avoiding his friend's eyes. "Thank you, Teal'c."
He saw Teal'c's nod in his peripheral vision but he focused on the soft yellow of Sam's hair instead, trying not to think about anything.
"I am sorry, O'Neill."
Jack tried to smile but knew it was coming out as a grimace. "I am too, Teal'c."
"This is not your doing."
"No." But he was responsible. He was supposed to protect them. He was supposed to bring them all home. But there wasn't even a home to bring them back to anymore.
"Then you have nothing to feel guilty about, O'Neill."
He nodded to appease his friend, not feeling any better. He just didn't want her to have to die like this. He didn't want any of them to die like this.
Teal'c tended the fire and made them dinner which Jack barely touched. He brought them water and they were able to get Sam to drink which was at least a little bit encouraging. He did all the work to allow Jack to sit with Sam. She was quiet most of the evening, and Jack was grateful that she hadn't been as visibly disturbed as Daniel had been. But then he wasn't looking at her eyes much. He still couldn't deal with the pain and fear there.
By morning the bleeding had started. Overnight it had created horrible little streams down her cheek, coloring the tips of her hair and sinking into the fabric of Jack's BDUs.
"Teal'c?" Jack called, hearing him moving in the cave.
He appeared, his eyes widening at the sight of the blood pooling around Jack's legs.
"Could you get me a t-shirt out of Daniel's pack?" Jack turned Sam's head a little and realized that she was bleeding from her eyes too - red, bloody tears. It closed off his throat almost completely. He needed to cough to get any air in. Then he gently wiped the red tears away with his bare fingertips.
"O'Neill. That is not wise."
Jack just looked at him. Did Teal'c honestly think he cared anymore? Did he honestly think they had any other fate in store for them other than to die the way Daniel had and Sam was about to?
Teal'c held his stare for a moment and then brought him the t-shirt.
Jack kept Sam's face as clean as he could. He dabbed at the pools that formed in her ear and tried to keep the blood out of her hair. Teal’c started the IV and they both waited.
* * *
She was screaming incoherently, and had thrown herself off Jack's lap. It was that shriek that split him in two each time. She looked nothing like the Sam he knew. Nothing. Her face was contorted and feral. He was lucky it had been dark when Daniel had gotten to this point so he hadn't had to see it clearly. Sam was a figure in horror - a figure that he knew used to be someone he cared about deeply and it tore him up to see her now.
She bolted away from him and Teal'c had to catch her. He restrained her in a tight bear hug from behind as she kicked and screamed. He picked her up off the ground and ducked into the cave, dragging her with him. Jack silently grabbed the zip ties and they sat her in the same place they'd restrained Daniel, tying her to the vines and resigning themselves to the fact that Major Samantha Carter was lost from this world.
* * *
Death came as simply as turning the lights out in her eyes. It was that simple and that awful. Jack watched her go, watched that light of hers wink out, and watched her body grow cold and quiet. He watched her head slowly slump forward under its own weight. He watched it all and then he got up and left. He walked out of the cave and walked down the slope to the stream. He just meant to clean his hands, splash some cold water on his face, but instead, he got to the bank and just kept going. He walked into the stream, boots and all. He waded out to the middle and watched the water swirl and eddy around his waist. He plunged his hands in and watched as the blood made little ripples around him.
He looked up to see Teal'c watching him from the bank, streaks of blood soiling his shirt and arms from having to restrain her.
Jack closed his eyes, feeling the cold creep up his body, feeling the discomfort of the wet water in his boots. He leaned into the current of the stream as it pulled against his body.
It was washing away the blood but it could not remove the stain.
* * *
They worked until after sun down. Teal'c did all of the digging this time. Jack just didn't have the strength anymore. They carried Sam down the slope and laid her next to Daniel. There was plenty of room in their family plot.
There were even fewer words this time and both he and Teal'c trudged back up the slope together. They didn't bother with dinner. Jack just stared at the fire as it burned through the fuel. They weren’t hurting for wood or food or water. They had so many things, but not the things they really needed.
At some point Jack dosed off. When he woke it was pitch black and Teal'c was sitting on a cleared section of ground across from him, his eyes closed, sitting with his legs crossed and his hands resting palms up on his knees.
"I didn't think you did kel'no'reem anymore. Not after you lost Junior,” Jack whispered, figuring Teal'c could ignore him if he chose.
"I do not kel’no’reem." He opened both eyes and gazed at Jack with a serene expression that Jack envied. "I am meditating."
"Any particular reason?"
"I feel the need." He closed his eyes. "It brings me peace."
Peace was definitely something Jack envied right now. He wished it were as simple as sitting cross-legged and humming. "Are you okay?"
"I am."
Jack got up quietly and grabbed his pack to bunch under his head. It wasn’t a good pillow but it was better than nothing.
"They respected you, and appreciated your leadership. As do I. You have led us out of danger many times, O'Neill. There is nothing you could have done differently this time."
Jack bowed his head, grateful that Teal'c had his eyes closed. "Thanks, Teal'c."
* * *
When Jack woke in the morning Teal'c was gone. He had taken nothing -- even his staff weapon was left leaning against the cave wall -- but there was the air of permanence to the silence around camp. Jack knew without a doubt that he was gone. He'd made it clear in the beginning of this mess that if he got sick he'd leave and now he had.
Jack didn't bother to go looking for him. He understood that the decision was Teal'c's to make and it was one he respected. But the emptiness weighed on him nearly as much as carrying Sam and Daniel's bodies had. He brooded around camp for a while, doing the chores half-heartedly now that the only person he needed to provide for was himself.
That night it started to rain again. The sky opened up and poured down on Jack's little camp. There was thunder and lightening and hail. The torrents of water cut gouges in the hillside. It forced Jack to stay in the cave for shelter, which was quickly wearing on his nerves. He was fairly certain that if anyone would bother to haunt him it would be Daniel. Not only was the cave a perfect haunting kind of place with all the vines and dank dripping, but it fit perfectly into ghost lore by being the place where Daniel had taken his last breath.
Jack didn't want to stay there, but he didn't want to be soaked either. As soon as it stopped raining, he'd find himself another place to make camp. Somewhere away from the graves and the ghosts.
He slept fitfully that night. At one point he must have awoken from a horrible dream because he looked down and for a brief second saw a snake or long worm biting his forearm. He panicked and tried to brush it away, but there was nothing there. He wondered if this was the first stage of the disease, if this was the beginning of his end.
He lay there trying to force his mind to stop thinking and noticed there was an orangish light in the cave. He sat up and realized that Jacob Carter was standing at the entrance. It looked like he was talking, but Jack couldn't hear him. He blinked against the bright light and Jacob became hazier, indistinct, and then disappeared entirely.
* * *
As if there weren't enough things to hate on this planet, Jack seemed to be marooned in the monsoon season. The next morning the storms hadn't let up at all. Jack didn't want to try to start a fire in the cave itself, so he ate the potato-like vegetables and berries for breakfast and lunch. But sitting around with nothing to do was eating away at him. He couldn't figure out why he was bothering, but collecting firewood was better than staring at the walls.
He had a full armload of wood that he brought back into the cave along with the vines that made for good kindling. It would all have to dry before he could anything with it and he wasn't sure how long it would take for it to dry in this dank cave with it still raining outside.
Jack dumped the armload onto the floor and in a flash saw the snake on his arm again and felt something else squeeze his right bicep. Jack jumped back and flailed at his arms, sure there was something there, but when he calmed down enough to really look, there was nothing.
He sank down and leaned against the wall. He just wanted this to be over. He couldn't take cracking up. He'd lost his team, his whole planet, everyone he'd ever cared about. He didn't think he could just sit there and wait for death. Worse, he didn't think he could live out his life if he somehow didn't get the disease.
It was a relief that no one would be here to see him lose his mind, but the prospect scared him. Sam and Daniel had both seemed terrified in their hallucinations. He didn't want to die like that either.
Jack pulled out his pistol and looked at it. He wasn't ready for that yet, but it was always an option. And if he had an option then living was a choice.
It was a choice he was still strong enough to make.
At least for now.
* * *
He dreamed, or hallucinated about Jacob again. He was still in that orange light. He seemed to fade in and out, coming and going.
And sometimes he saw Daniel and Teal'c. They were standing in the background, not saying anything.
He half expected Daniel to try to talk him into ascension again. But maybe this time Daniel hadn't gone that route. Or maybe he just knew that Jack wasn't going to agree to it so there was no point trying.
* * *
He needed to eat something other than roots. What he really wanted was a cheeseburger off the grill in his backyard with a beer to wash it down, but apparently his grill was now just an ash or two in the smoking briquette that was Earth. So no cheeseburger. He wanted boar stew but Teal'c caught the boar and he was gone. Sam cooked the boar and she was gone too.
So he sat in the cold, wishing for things he knew he couldn't have.
He wondered what had happened to the Jack O'Neill -- two 'L's -- who had walked out of enemy territory in Iraq with a cracked scull and a whole lot of broken bones. He wasn't that man anymore. He was tired and beaten. He wanted this to end. He wanted Earth and his team to stop haunting him.
* * *
Jack wasn't sure what time it was anymore. With the endless drizzle, it was always dark and gloomy. He had no idea how many days he'd been on his own. He couldn't really muster the will to care. It had been as long as it had been.
He stared out of the cave entrance, watching the rain bounce off the stones in the ground. He watched the water collect into larger drops along the entrance and fall in a slower platter to the dirt below.
Jack closed his eyes, engaging in his new favorite hobby of dosing. When he opened them again, Jacob was standing there, just inside the cave, out of the rain.
"Hi, Jack."
"Jacob."
"How are you?"
"Been better."
"Hmmmm. I’d say so."
"You know, Jacob. Now really isn’t a good time. I'd rather not have ghosts haunting me.”
Jacob gave him a tight lipped smile. "I'm not a ghost, Jack."
"Nope. A figment of a disease addled brain. Ghost for short."
"I'm real, Jack. You have to start believing that."
"See, the thing is, real people don't have ghostly lights surrounding them."
Jacob smiled but it was starting to get darker in the cave. In the murk Jack could see that Jacob's lips were moving, but he couldn't make out what he was saying. Then slowly, Jacob faded away and Jack was alone again.
* * *
If he never saw rain again, he'd be happy. He wondered if there were a way to control his delusions, some way he could park himself on a beach covered with bikini-clad women, each carrying coolers of beer. If he was going to hallucinate, why couldn’t he at least hallucinate something good?
The rain just kept coming, and the cave just kept feeling more and more repressive. He really wanted to go down to the graves, make sure they were deep enough, make sure the markers had survived any flash flooding down the slope. At the time it had seemed like the best place to bury them, but now he wasn't sure.
Jack wanted to be buried with them, to be a family even in death. He loved them like family, he loved them more than family, but there was no one left to bury him. And Teal'c was gone, so they would always be missing someone. There was no one to even perform a missing man formation for Teal’c either. Not that they would. Not without Jack pushing. Teal'c was too easily written off by the Air Force because he was an alien. Jack had always found himself defending his friend and making sure that people understood how important his contributions were to Earth.
Not that it mattered anymore.
None of it mattered.
And he had nothing left to do but sit in the rain and hallucinate.
* * *
Finally, a delusion worth having. Sam decided to pay him a visit. If he was going to be haunted, then at least he wanted to be haunted by a pretty blonde.
Jack watched as she sat across from him in the cave, not saying anything, just looking at him, her eyes big and sad and frightened.
"You make the best guardian angel, Sam," he said picking at his boot laces.
She didn't answer or say anything. She just watched him, her eyes filled with concern -- sometimes horror. Sometimes they looked the same way they had when she'd lain in his lap, her mind coming to pieces before her body finally gave out.
* * *
"God dammit!" Jack yelled, trying to scrape off the worm or snake or whatever the hell it was that kept latching onto his left arm. It drove him nuts, made him want to shoot his arm off. When he woke up it was there, but the minute he tried to brush it off or slap it dead, it was gone. It was clear and lethargic and very, very unsettling.
Again, if he was going to go mad, why couldn't he have the bikini women? Or maybe he could write himself in as a character on the Simpsons and live through episodes? Or maybe catching the fish of his life in that barren pond of his? There were so many good delusions he could be having, why the hell did this disease insist on giving him bad ones? Snakes on his arm, what was that?!
He had taken to whittling to pass the time. He wasn't any good at it but he could take a perfectly good branch and cut it down to nothing with his knife. That part he had down. Toothpicks, no problem. Anything more useful than that was beyond him.
He was in the middle of cutting down another branch when she appeared again.
It was startling. Jacob had an orange halo whenever he was there, but Sam, Sam just looked like Sam. She walked into the cave, leaning on the doorway and asked if she could come in.
Oh why the hell not? He flipped the branch he was mutilating onto the ground next to him. "What would you like the talk about, Sam? Religion? Ascension? Oh, sorry that’s Daniel. What about astrophysics or some other topic that will get on my nerves?"
She looked stricken. She looked like she was going to leave. And he really didn't want her to go. He was tired of sitting on this planet alone. "I'm sorry," he said, and then gestured with his hand for her to come in.
She came close to him and sat on a bundle of vines that crisscrossed the bottom of the cave. "How are you feeling?"
"Why does everyone ask me that?"
"It's kind of the standard question for..."
"For someone who's dying?"
"You aren't dying."
"Oh, delusions are nice, aren’t they? Tell you what you want to hear."
She looked like she wanted to flee. He made a mental note to stop driving away the hallucinations that he wanted to have. He might end up with nothing but pink elephants if he wasn't careful.
"Sorry, it's just been a bad couple of days."
She nodded slowly.
He sighed. "Why are you here?"
"Because I care. We all do."
Jack nodded. "I noticed that Daniel didn't even try with the Ascension bit this time. That's good. "
"Sir?"
"I just mean that even if he was offering ascension, I wouldn't be interested. I plan to die like everyone else."
"Sir, why would Daniel be offering ascension?"
"Well, he did last time he was ascended and I was in a situation like this."
She looked down at her hands, and confusion spread across her features again. "He would have to be ascended to offer you help with ascending."
Jack closed his eyes. "Well, I guess I just assumed, him being dead and all, that he would have ascended again."
"Sir, Daniel's not dead."
"Of course he is," Jack said, getting angry. "Look, I don't mind you haunting me, but you don't get to play with my head. Daniel's dead and you're dead and Teal'c is either dead or well on his way. And I," he let out a deep and frustrated sigh. "I'm just waiting to be dead. Because I can't do this, Sam. I can't keep going knowing that you and Daniel and Teal'c are gone and I failed you. I failed to bring you home safely and now I have to sit here and live with that until this goddamn disease finally turns my brain into bleeding mush and kills me! And that is all I have to look forward to and that is something I just can't take anymore!"
He was shouting at her and she had closed her eyes to his onslaught. "Sir, please look around you."
He didn't. He wouldn't. He couldn’t. It was too much to keep trying. Instead he just looked down at the strap around his wrist. He picked at the leather, wondering why the hell this couldn't just be over with.
"Sir, look around you," she said emphatically. "I'm not dead, and neither is Daniel or Teal'c. No one got sick, Colonel. No one, but you."
That froze him up completely. "What?" he breathed.
"No one got sick but you, Jack. You came down with the disease."
He stared down at his hands, trying to figure out what she was talking about and suddenly the snake was back. He pawed at it, only this time, it was suddenly clear. It wasn't a snake that was biting him; it was an IV in the crook of his arm. He closed his eyes and then slowly opened them. He looked up to see Sam - Carter -- staring down at him with worry and confusion swarming in her eyes. She took his hand to pull it away from the IV. "No one got sick but you, Colonel. Dr. Fraiser and my dad have been doing everything in their power to help you for days. But you have to want to come back."
And suddenly the walls of the cave dissolved. The reality he had lived and believed and fought bitterly against melted away before his eyes.
Jack found himself in a bed in the SGC’s infirmary.
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-knightshade
August 18, 2007