Early morning in 239/240 [NFB]

[notcalledlizzie]

Elizabeth is muttering in her sleep, obviously distressed.

i ni ce. Ne tε se bamanankan na kosεbε

"Vous ne pouvez pas voir qu'ils meurent? Vous les tuez"Visions of starving children, being worked to death flash before her eyes. Their eyes are empty and lifeless as they look up at her, begging for her to do something. The children have been

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[janet_fraiser]

"Liz?" exclaims Janet. She sees Sam and nods at her. "Liz, are you all right?"

[notcalledlizzie]

"Nightmare," she whispers. "Damn nightmares."

[janet_fraiser]

She hurries over and hugs Liz too. "Oh, hon, I'm so sorry."

[notcalledlizzie]

Liz clings to Janet tightly.

[janet_fraiser]

"Do you want to talk about it," says Janet gently, rubbing Liz's back. "What happened in the nightmare?"

[notcalledlizzie]

"I was in Mali at first. The children... I couldn't help them Janet. They were dying, and they just didn't give a damn. It was cheaper for them to just go and buy more."

She shudders.

"When I was out there, I met a girl called Abi. She got malaria, and nothing would work on her. She died in my arms."

[janet_fraiser]

"Oh, Liz," says Janet, her voice sympathetic and understanding. She expected the Goa'uld to be inhumanly cruel. When she heard about humans treating each other this way, it was infinitely worse. "Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry. I know you did everything you could." She hugged Liz more tightly.

She was really beginning to hate that Ethics teacher.

[notcalledlizzie]

"I try not to think about her," she confesses. "Does that make me a bad person? The fact that I can't deal with seeing something that people over there have to live with?"

[carter_i_am]

"You're not a bad person, Liz." Sam pulls her closer. "If you thought about every bad thing you've seen all the time, you couldn't function to tie your shoes, let alone to do the things that the world needs you to be doing."

[notcalledlizzie]

"She was only eight years old."

[carter_i_am]

Sam closes her eyes in grief for a little girl she's never met. "I'm so sorry."

[notcalledlizzie]

"That's the way of life out there. They can't stop and grieve for a child they lose. They die because they don't have clean water... don't have access to medicines."

[carter_i_am]

"You're grieving for her. She's not forgotten."

[notcalledlizzie]

"She's one child in thousands. The other girls her age who lived will be mothers themselves now, and statistically, will have lost at least one child."

[carter_i_am]

"Whether a child lives or dies...it's more than just medicines and water that does that, Liz, although I won't deny that they're a big factor." Sam looks away, involved in her own grief for a minute, but still not letting go of Liz.

She never even told Janet what her gynecologist told "her", but maybe there'd be time and technology to fix things now.

[notcalledlizzie]

"I know," Elizabeth sighs. "But when you see them dying of something we protect ourselves from with one lousy vaccination..."