FIC: Never Lie Down (SG1/FF) (oneshot)
Oh man, I am so late for a party. But that's okay. Here, have some fanfic with a very ironic icon.
Never Lie Down
A Stargate SG-1/Firefly crossover
Characters: All of them!
Disclaimer: MGM/UA, Gekko Productions et al. own all things Stargate SG-1. Joss Whedon et al. own Firefly. I'm only borrowing and will return them at the end of the fic.
Author's Note: silver_venus42 wanted some Stargate SG-1 meets Serenity's crew in the Ficlette Fiasco III. This story is set after Serenity for FF, and in season seven for SG-01, before Heroes, and contains no real spoilers except for the name of a place that we don't talk about. Daniel POV.
Word count:: 2,350
Summary/Introduction: Daniel Jackson has seen plenty of strange things in his life, but the battle spilling through the Stargate may be one of the strangest.
~*~
"We could be back within two days, sir."
While General Hammond considered what Sam had proposed, Daniel leaned against the only unsharp edge on a monitoring box and watched Jack, who was quietly trying to complete his crossword puzzle. Daniel had known Jack long enough to know that he was probably taking in most of the pre-mission briefing... probably.
"All right, SG-1, you have a go," Hammond said after a moment. "SG-3 will be back in a few hours from P3X-2G7. If Major Reynolds is up to it, I want him to accompany you."
"Is that necessary, sir?" Jack said, not looking up. "Standard recon, let Daniel look at the ruins and all that fun stuff." He crumpled the crossword puzzle in one hand and tossed it into the wastebasket beside Siler.
"Yes, it is," the General said. "With Major Carter and Dr. Jackson's main intent being on the possibility that these ruins contain information about the Lost City, it couldn't hurt to have another person to guard the perimeter, in addition to Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill."
Daniel expected Jack to protest; he usually did when he was told the four of them couldn't handle something. But, after a strange exchange of looks between Hammond and Jack, Jack just shrugged.
"If Reynolds is up to it."
Sam's eyebrows went up, but she didn't say anything. Daniel made a note to grill Jack on what was going on, later.
"In the meantime, I want--" Hammond's voice was cut off as the Stargate suddenly whooshed to life and alarm klaxons blared.
"Unscheduled incoming wormhole!" Harriman shouted, slapping his hand down on the iris control. The thin metal sheets spun together gracefully, blocking the event horizon.
"SG-3 isn't scheduled back for another three hours," Harriman continued, flicking switches and buttons as General Hammond leaned over his chair. "No other teams offw-- Incoming transmission."
"Let's hear it," Hammond said.
The control room fell silent underneath the alarms, everyone holding their breaths. Daniel threw a prayer out to the gods he didn't believe in anymore, and waited.
Static burst out of the radio. "--peat, SGC, this is SG-3, we are taking fire!"
Hammond hit the button on the radio transmitter. "This is Hammond, what is your status?"
The sound of bullet fire filled the radios, then screaming, so much screaming. "We're-- Harris, behind you!"
More screaming filled the radio, and shouting, and bullet fire. Daniel knew that sound, a screaming so desperate and hopeless and tortured, it made him want to start screaming himself.
A screen in front of Harriman burst to life. "We're receiving SG-3's IDC," Harriman said, his hand hovering over the iris control box.
The screaming dimmed suddenly, and new voices filled the radio. "Shoot for the gorram head!" one gruff male voice shouted, punctuated by what sounded a shotgun blast. "I ain't planning on being et alive!"
"General, we are severely outnumbered!" Reynolds shouted. "Do we have a go?"
Hammond hesitated for a movement that seemed to last forever. The background screaming still came through the speakers, almost blocking a gibbering that made Daniel want to hide, to kill something, anything to make that gibbering stop. He looked around, surprised that Teal'c was gone. A glance down into the gateroom told him that Teal'c, and about half a platoon of soldiers, were all aiming their weapons at the Stargate.
"Open the iris," Hammond told Harriman. "SG-3, you have a go." He flicked a switch on the microphone and his voice filled the gateroom. "They are coming in, people, under hostile fire."
Jack took off at a run to the stairs, while Sam slid into a chair next to Harriman. "What could be attacking them?" Daniel asked her.
She shook her head, fingers flying over the keyboard. "As far as we knew, P3X-2G7 was abandoned by the Goa'uld over one thousand years ago. It was one of the gate addresses that Colonel O'Neill put into the computers while he had the knowledge of the Ancients in his head."
Daniel tried to think of something to say, but then the first person spilled through the Stargate and whatever Daniel was thinking wasn't important anymore.
One of SG-3's people, Jefferson, staggered down the ramp, holding a strange man around the chest. Jefferson managed to take three steps before he collapsed, looking faintly surprised as he fell on top of the strange man, an axe sticking out of his back.
Another stranger fell through the gate, a girl. She saw the guns pointed at her and screamed, throwing her hands up in front of her face. Then she saw Jefferson and the man, and rushed over to them. "Simon? Simon!" she shouted, pulling the man out from under Jefferson. The man's head fell back at an odd angle and he lay still.
Someone burst through the event horizon, so covered in blood and dirt that Daniel couldn't tell at first who it was. A tall woman was holding Harris over her shoulder in a fireman's hold. She glanced around, took in the guns aimed at her head, but turned back to the gate and aimed a large gun at the event horizon as she backed down the ramp.
"Kaylee, get out of the way," the woman ordered the girl on the ramp.
"But Simon--"
"Kaylee, now!" The woman's boots hit the end of the ramp. Not taking her eyes off the Stargate, she laid Harris down on the ground, then hurried back up the ramp. She grabbed hold of Jefferson's uniform and pulled him down the ramp as Kaylee dragged Simon along.
No sooner had they cleared the ramp when a mass of fighting people came through the gate, screams and shouting and gunfire echoing. On one side, Sergeant Lee and a man in a long brown coat were trying to hold on to a woman. Something was attached to the screaming woman, and as Daniel watched, Lee raised her gun and fired point blank into the thing. It fell back as Lee kept firing into it, screaming the whole time herself. The man held the woman in one arm and fired his gun at it too, until he was out of bullets.
On the other side of the ramp, two of the things were grabbing at Reynolds and at another strange man, gibbering and screaming. Reynolds was holding his gun between his hands, trying to hold the creature off his face. As Daniel watched, one of the creatures bit deep into Reynolds's arm.
Suddenly, the creature jerked back, mouth stained with blood. It tried to turn around, but something sharp flew through the air, cutting into its neck. The liberated head flew across the gateroom, hitting the concrete wall with a wet red slap.
Daniel was only dimly aware that the iris was closing. The remaining creature flung itself on the strange man, and they went down screaming. From the bottom of the ramp, the girl Kaylee screamed, "Jayne!"
Time seemed to slow to crystalline clarity. A tiny slip of a girl, the last person through the Stargate, holding a large battle axe almost as large as she was, took two running steps toward the fallen man and creature. The axe moved as an extension of her arm, a graceful arc that hit the creature at the middle, slicing it in two.
Time rushed back in as the axe completed its arc up into the air. Screaming and shouting filled the air, but nothing seemed to matter to Daniel but the girl and her axe, standing at the top of the ramp as if she had always been there.
Hammond ran, faster than a man of his age should, toward the stairs. Daniel followed. When they burst into the gateroom, it was utter chaos. Medics were trying to help the wounded, but they hadn't anticipated this number of casualties. Hammond was trying to talk to everyone at once.
The first woman who had come through the gate was standing protectively in front of Kaylee and the man she'd called Simon. Her gun was gone, and they were surrounded by armed soldiers. Just by looking at the woman, though, Daniel knew that she wouldn't let the lack of a weapon stop her.
As Daniel walked by, a medic knelt by Simon, moving Kaylee's hands. "He's a doctor," Kaylee was saying. "Best doctor in the 'verse, top of his class."
"Kaylee," the woman said, laying her hand on Kaylee's head. Kaylee closed her mouth.
Moving on, Daniel saw the medics lifting Jefferson onto a stretcher, axe still stuck in his back. They were moving quickly, which meant Jefferson was still alive, still had a fighting chance.
The man in the brown coat was sitting halfway up the ramp, holding the wounded woman on his lap. Lee held a pressure bandage against the woman's neck, soaked through with blood. "Come on, Inara," the man said. "You know we ain't going to let no Reavers beat us. Come on." The woman's eyes fluttered open, then closed. Her hand tightened on Lee's sleeve, and the man smiled faintly.
The other man had sat up, watching the soldiers in the room with a wary eye. He didn't look to be hurt too badly, although his movements seemed odd. He seemed to be pushing his way down the ramp slowly, trying to avoid drawing attention. But from what?
The 'what' was facing the iris, battle axe clenched tight in her hands. Every few seconds, something hit the iris from the other side, something coming in from the Stargate on the other side of the galaxy.
"They never stop," the girl said in a fragile, fractured voice. "Never lay down, never stop."
Daniel stepped around a corpse and stopped by her side, hoping she wouldn't attack him. Up close like this, he could see how young she really was. Younger than Cassandra. Too young for this. "What doesn't stop?"
"Reavers." The girl flinched as the whumps on the iris increased in intensity. "They come at you in the black, come at you always, never stop."
Daniel looked at the bodies. They appeared human under the mutilations. "Is that what these are? Reavers?"
The girl nodded. "They made Simon stop." Her voice changed as her hands tightened on the axe.
Behind Daniel, someone swore in what sounded like Chinese. "River, you stopped the Reavers," the man in the brown coat said, coming over. "It's done, you can put the axe down. These folk mayn't take kindly to you turning them to mincemeat."
"They made Simon stop!" the girl shouted, her hopeless voice bouncing around the gateroom. "I can't hear him!"
Daniel took a few steps back. The man swung his head around, looking at the woman at the foot of the ramp. "Zoe?"
"Simon's alive, sir," she called, still holding onto Kaylee. "They got medics looking to him."
"See?" the man said to the girl, River. "You know we ain't lying, you can't hear your brother because he's out cold. Threw himself between Kaylee and that Reaver good." He inched forward warily. "Now, why don't you be giving me that axe before someone gets twitchy?"
River slowly let her hands relax, and the man grabbed the axe from her and dropped it off the edge of the ramp. She turned her attention to Daniel, her brown eyes huge in her face. The motion stretched out her neck and shoulder in a clean line, making her skin move in ways it shouldn't have, a line gashed in her flesh clean down from her shoulder to hip.
Daniel's eyes continued down, horrified, as he saw the blood that flowed down her leg, over bare toes, dripping through the holes in the ramp to mingle with the Reavers' blood. He was the only one close enough to River to catch her as she fell. She was so light in his arms, more a dream than a girl. He heard himself yelling for a medic, trying to find a place to put pressure on the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, knowing the man beside him was yelling at the girl that she couldn't do this, couldn't die, not yet, not now...
~~~
"How is she?" Jack asked from the shadows of the observation room.
Daniel didn't look around, keeping his eyes on the unconscious River in the room below. "Dr. Frasier said that she'll pull through. She lost a lot of blood. The drug cocktail in her system made things more difficult."
"What kind of drugs?"
Daniel shrugged. "The doctor said it looked like something for paranoid schizophrenia, but there were extra drugs in there she couldn't identify." He took another sip from his coffee cup, making a face at the stale cold liquid. "Learn anything?"
"Yeah. Their captain, says his name is Malcolm Reynolds. They'd landed on the planet to drop off cargo and these 'Reavers' followed them from space." Jack walked over and handed Daniel a fresh cup of coffee. "His story matches Reynolds's story. Reynolds said these guys seemed to be surprised to see SG-3. Kept asking if they were Alliance or something."
"I've never heard of that," Daniel said, taking a gulp of the hot drink. "Is it a grouping of Goa'ulds?"
Jack made a rude noise. "They say they've never even heard of the Goa'uld. Anyway, Reynolds said that without these guys, SG-3 would never have made it out."
"They'd have been eaten alive," Daniel said absently, intent on River, who had just opened her eyes and was staring up at him.
"Huh?"
A question formed in Daniel's head, and he leaned forward so River could see him. "No, Simon's going to be fine, he's already awake," Daniel said quickly. "Lt. Jefferson is still in surgery, but the axe missed his spine." A pause. "No, Inara can still talk, she's fine."
Relief. River closed her eyes, then blinked up at the ceiling. Another question.
"We're not going to hurt you."
"Daniel, what's going on?" Jack asked.
Daniel stared down at the girl, who was starting to shake with silent sobs. "I don't know, Jack. I just don't know."
--the end
Never Lie Down
A Stargate SG-1/Firefly crossover
Characters: All of them!
Disclaimer: MGM/UA, Gekko Productions et al. own all things Stargate SG-1. Joss Whedon et al. own Firefly. I'm only borrowing and will return them at the end of the fic.
Author's Note: silver_venus42 wanted some Stargate SG-1 meets Serenity's crew in the Ficlette Fiasco III. This story is set after Serenity for FF, and in season seven for SG-01, before Heroes, and contains no real spoilers except for the name of a place that we don't talk about. Daniel POV.
Word count:: 2,350
Summary/Introduction: Daniel Jackson has seen plenty of strange things in his life, but the battle spilling through the Stargate may be one of the strangest.
~*~
"We could be back within two days, sir."
While General Hammond considered what Sam had proposed, Daniel leaned against the only unsharp edge on a monitoring box and watched Jack, who was quietly trying to complete his crossword puzzle. Daniel had known Jack long enough to know that he was probably taking in most of the pre-mission briefing... probably.
"All right, SG-1, you have a go," Hammond said after a moment. "SG-3 will be back in a few hours from P3X-2G7. If Major Reynolds is up to it, I want him to accompany you."
"Is that necessary, sir?" Jack said, not looking up. "Standard recon, let Daniel look at the ruins and all that fun stuff." He crumpled the crossword puzzle in one hand and tossed it into the wastebasket beside Siler.
"Yes, it is," the General said. "With Major Carter and Dr. Jackson's main intent being on the possibility that these ruins contain information about the Lost City, it couldn't hurt to have another person to guard the perimeter, in addition to Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill."
Daniel expected Jack to protest; he usually did when he was told the four of them couldn't handle something. But, after a strange exchange of looks between Hammond and Jack, Jack just shrugged.
"If Reynolds is up to it."
Sam's eyebrows went up, but she didn't say anything. Daniel made a note to grill Jack on what was going on, later.
"In the meantime, I want--" Hammond's voice was cut off as the Stargate suddenly whooshed to life and alarm klaxons blared.
"Unscheduled incoming wormhole!" Harriman shouted, slapping his hand down on the iris control. The thin metal sheets spun together gracefully, blocking the event horizon.
"SG-3 isn't scheduled back for another three hours," Harriman continued, flicking switches and buttons as General Hammond leaned over his chair. "No other teams offw-- Incoming transmission."
"Let's hear it," Hammond said.
The control room fell silent underneath the alarms, everyone holding their breaths. Daniel threw a prayer out to the gods he didn't believe in anymore, and waited.
Static burst out of the radio. "--peat, SGC, this is SG-3, we are taking fire!"
Hammond hit the button on the radio transmitter. "This is Hammond, what is your status?"
The sound of bullet fire filled the radios, then screaming, so much screaming. "We're-- Harris, behind you!"
More screaming filled the radio, and shouting, and bullet fire. Daniel knew that sound, a screaming so desperate and hopeless and tortured, it made him want to start screaming himself.
A screen in front of Harriman burst to life. "We're receiving SG-3's IDC," Harriman said, his hand hovering over the iris control box.
The screaming dimmed suddenly, and new voices filled the radio. "Shoot for the gorram head!" one gruff male voice shouted, punctuated by what sounded a shotgun blast. "I ain't planning on being et alive!"
"General, we are severely outnumbered!" Reynolds shouted. "Do we have a go?"
Hammond hesitated for a movement that seemed to last forever. The background screaming still came through the speakers, almost blocking a gibbering that made Daniel want to hide, to kill something, anything to make that gibbering stop. He looked around, surprised that Teal'c was gone. A glance down into the gateroom told him that Teal'c, and about half a platoon of soldiers, were all aiming their weapons at the Stargate.
"Open the iris," Hammond told Harriman. "SG-3, you have a go." He flicked a switch on the microphone and his voice filled the gateroom. "They are coming in, people, under hostile fire."
Jack took off at a run to the stairs, while Sam slid into a chair next to Harriman. "What could be attacking them?" Daniel asked her.
She shook her head, fingers flying over the keyboard. "As far as we knew, P3X-2G7 was abandoned by the Goa'uld over one thousand years ago. It was one of the gate addresses that Colonel O'Neill put into the computers while he had the knowledge of the Ancients in his head."
Daniel tried to think of something to say, but then the first person spilled through the Stargate and whatever Daniel was thinking wasn't important anymore.
One of SG-3's people, Jefferson, staggered down the ramp, holding a strange man around the chest. Jefferson managed to take three steps before he collapsed, looking faintly surprised as he fell on top of the strange man, an axe sticking out of his back.
Another stranger fell through the gate, a girl. She saw the guns pointed at her and screamed, throwing her hands up in front of her face. Then she saw Jefferson and the man, and rushed over to them. "Simon? Simon!" she shouted, pulling the man out from under Jefferson. The man's head fell back at an odd angle and he lay still.
Someone burst through the event horizon, so covered in blood and dirt that Daniel couldn't tell at first who it was. A tall woman was holding Harris over her shoulder in a fireman's hold. She glanced around, took in the guns aimed at her head, but turned back to the gate and aimed a large gun at the event horizon as she backed down the ramp.
"Kaylee, get out of the way," the woman ordered the girl on the ramp.
"But Simon--"
"Kaylee, now!" The woman's boots hit the end of the ramp. Not taking her eyes off the Stargate, she laid Harris down on the ground, then hurried back up the ramp. She grabbed hold of Jefferson's uniform and pulled him down the ramp as Kaylee dragged Simon along.
No sooner had they cleared the ramp when a mass of fighting people came through the gate, screams and shouting and gunfire echoing. On one side, Sergeant Lee and a man in a long brown coat were trying to hold on to a woman. Something was attached to the screaming woman, and as Daniel watched, Lee raised her gun and fired point blank into the thing. It fell back as Lee kept firing into it, screaming the whole time herself. The man held the woman in one arm and fired his gun at it too, until he was out of bullets.
On the other side of the ramp, two of the things were grabbing at Reynolds and at another strange man, gibbering and screaming. Reynolds was holding his gun between his hands, trying to hold the creature off his face. As Daniel watched, one of the creatures bit deep into Reynolds's arm.
Suddenly, the creature jerked back, mouth stained with blood. It tried to turn around, but something sharp flew through the air, cutting into its neck. The liberated head flew across the gateroom, hitting the concrete wall with a wet red slap.
Daniel was only dimly aware that the iris was closing. The remaining creature flung itself on the strange man, and they went down screaming. From the bottom of the ramp, the girl Kaylee screamed, "Jayne!"
Time seemed to slow to crystalline clarity. A tiny slip of a girl, the last person through the Stargate, holding a large battle axe almost as large as she was, took two running steps toward the fallen man and creature. The axe moved as an extension of her arm, a graceful arc that hit the creature at the middle, slicing it in two.
Time rushed back in as the axe completed its arc up into the air. Screaming and shouting filled the air, but nothing seemed to matter to Daniel but the girl and her axe, standing at the top of the ramp as if she had always been there.
Hammond ran, faster than a man of his age should, toward the stairs. Daniel followed. When they burst into the gateroom, it was utter chaos. Medics were trying to help the wounded, but they hadn't anticipated this number of casualties. Hammond was trying to talk to everyone at once.
The first woman who had come through the gate was standing protectively in front of Kaylee and the man she'd called Simon. Her gun was gone, and they were surrounded by armed soldiers. Just by looking at the woman, though, Daniel knew that she wouldn't let the lack of a weapon stop her.
As Daniel walked by, a medic knelt by Simon, moving Kaylee's hands. "He's a doctor," Kaylee was saying. "Best doctor in the 'verse, top of his class."
"Kaylee," the woman said, laying her hand on Kaylee's head. Kaylee closed her mouth.
Moving on, Daniel saw the medics lifting Jefferson onto a stretcher, axe still stuck in his back. They were moving quickly, which meant Jefferson was still alive, still had a fighting chance.
The man in the brown coat was sitting halfway up the ramp, holding the wounded woman on his lap. Lee held a pressure bandage against the woman's neck, soaked through with blood. "Come on, Inara," the man said. "You know we ain't going to let no Reavers beat us. Come on." The woman's eyes fluttered open, then closed. Her hand tightened on Lee's sleeve, and the man smiled faintly.
The other man had sat up, watching the soldiers in the room with a wary eye. He didn't look to be hurt too badly, although his movements seemed odd. He seemed to be pushing his way down the ramp slowly, trying to avoid drawing attention. But from what?
The 'what' was facing the iris, battle axe clenched tight in her hands. Every few seconds, something hit the iris from the other side, something coming in from the Stargate on the other side of the galaxy.
"They never stop," the girl said in a fragile, fractured voice. "Never lay down, never stop."
Daniel stepped around a corpse and stopped by her side, hoping she wouldn't attack him. Up close like this, he could see how young she really was. Younger than Cassandra. Too young for this. "What doesn't stop?"
"Reavers." The girl flinched as the whumps on the iris increased in intensity. "They come at you in the black, come at you always, never stop."
Daniel looked at the bodies. They appeared human under the mutilations. "Is that what these are? Reavers?"
The girl nodded. "They made Simon stop." Her voice changed as her hands tightened on the axe.
Behind Daniel, someone swore in what sounded like Chinese. "River, you stopped the Reavers," the man in the brown coat said, coming over. "It's done, you can put the axe down. These folk mayn't take kindly to you turning them to mincemeat."
"They made Simon stop!" the girl shouted, her hopeless voice bouncing around the gateroom. "I can't hear him!"
Daniel took a few steps back. The man swung his head around, looking at the woman at the foot of the ramp. "Zoe?"
"Simon's alive, sir," she called, still holding onto Kaylee. "They got medics looking to him."
"See?" the man said to the girl, River. "You know we ain't lying, you can't hear your brother because he's out cold. Threw himself between Kaylee and that Reaver good." He inched forward warily. "Now, why don't you be giving me that axe before someone gets twitchy?"
River slowly let her hands relax, and the man grabbed the axe from her and dropped it off the edge of the ramp. She turned her attention to Daniel, her brown eyes huge in her face. The motion stretched out her neck and shoulder in a clean line, making her skin move in ways it shouldn't have, a line gashed in her flesh clean down from her shoulder to hip.
Daniel's eyes continued down, horrified, as he saw the blood that flowed down her leg, over bare toes, dripping through the holes in the ramp to mingle with the Reavers' blood. He was the only one close enough to River to catch her as she fell. She was so light in his arms, more a dream than a girl. He heard himself yelling for a medic, trying to find a place to put pressure on the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, knowing the man beside him was yelling at the girl that she couldn't do this, couldn't die, not yet, not now...
~~~
"How is she?" Jack asked from the shadows of the observation room.
Daniel didn't look around, keeping his eyes on the unconscious River in the room below. "Dr. Frasier said that she'll pull through. She lost a lot of blood. The drug cocktail in her system made things more difficult."
"What kind of drugs?"
Daniel shrugged. "The doctor said it looked like something for paranoid schizophrenia, but there were extra drugs in there she couldn't identify." He took another sip from his coffee cup, making a face at the stale cold liquid. "Learn anything?"
"Yeah. Their captain, says his name is Malcolm Reynolds. They'd landed on the planet to drop off cargo and these 'Reavers' followed them from space." Jack walked over and handed Daniel a fresh cup of coffee. "His story matches Reynolds's story. Reynolds said these guys seemed to be surprised to see SG-3. Kept asking if they were Alliance or something."
"I've never heard of that," Daniel said, taking a gulp of the hot drink. "Is it a grouping of Goa'ulds?"
Jack made a rude noise. "They say they've never even heard of the Goa'uld. Anyway, Reynolds said that without these guys, SG-3 would never have made it out."
"They'd have been eaten alive," Daniel said absently, intent on River, who had just opened her eyes and was staring up at him.
"Huh?"
A question formed in Daniel's head, and he leaned forward so River could see him. "No, Simon's going to be fine, he's already awake," Daniel said quickly. "Lt. Jefferson is still in surgery, but the axe missed his spine." A pause. "No, Inara can still talk, she's fine."
Relief. River closed her eyes, then blinked up at the ceiling. Another question.
"We're not going to hurt you."
"Daniel, what's going on?" Jack asked.
Daniel stared down at the girl, who was starting to shake with silent sobs. "I don't know, Jack. I just don't know."
--the end