Rites and Passage - Part 2
Title: Rites and Passage - Part 2
Rating/Warning: PG-13 for some language, gen
Spoilers: References Stargate (the movie), COTG, Enemy Within
Author: randomfreshink
Recipient: settiai
Request details: The very first mission-gone-wrong where SG-1 (who are still barely strangers) have to work together as a team in order to survive.
Didn't Want: AU. Any type of non-con. Non-canon character death (unless it's temporary since - hey, Stargate).
Notes: Much thanks to
fignewton
fignewtonfor a fast and excellent beta--as always--and for indulging my insanity.
The colonel was shaking his head, and Sam couldn't blame him. She hadn't experienced that room, but if it could pull the color from the colonel's face, what would it do to the rest of them? Daniel had barely stuck his head in there and came out of it looking as shaky and sick as a junkie coming off a week-long binge. She glanced at Daniel for reassurance and saw him staring at the colonel, his jaw tightening, as if he had arguments ready.
But she was the one who'd stepped forward, and she had a few arguments, too.
"Sir, if we all go in, it may lessen the effect of whatever's in that room."
"We could hold our breaths?" Daniel offered.
Sam shook her head. "It's possible it could enter through the pores in your skin--but if we move fast…"
"I will not be affected, Captain Carter." Glancing at Teal'c, Sam wasn't sure she could believe this caution. But he stepped up to her, and inclined his head as if offering her a chair at a nice restaurant. "The larval Goa'uld I carry offers protection from many things--illness…."
"Drugs," Sam said, picking up on what now seemed obvious. "Of course, it acts like a--a blood purifier for you. It's not just an immune system."
Teal'c tipped his head again, an oddly courteous gesture, and she stared at him, wondered if he was being condescending to a female who, being weaker, needed more consideration. She'd bet that Jaffa culture didn't go in big for equality. Except she'd seen him offer this same kind of courtesy to Daniel, and to General Hammond.
"Indeed," he said, and since he wasn't smiling, she decided he wasn't trying to 'humor the pretty girl'--she got really sick of that sometimes. Which was when she usually booked some time on the shooting range.
Turning to the colonel, she waited for his decision. She could feel Daniel starting to fidget next to her, and she willed him to wait, too, but he didn't.
"Jack?"
It was just the one word, but it pulled the colonel's stare, and the two men locked gazes. She looked from one to the other, and wondered how it was that these two seemed to have some kind of weird simpatico going. Was it because of Abydos? It didn't seem to her as if one mission could create this kind of bond, so maybe it was more the shared losses--Daniel's recent one of his wife, and she knew the colonel was divorced as well. But while that might forge some understanding between them, she didn't she how it would create a bridge between such different personalities. And maybe that was the real answer--the differences.
She had a suspicion that the colonel and Daniel were like the Janus faces that looked away--different, always looking the opposite way from the other one. But, like the Janus faces, they had the same back of the brain--there were traits they shared, like this stubborn need to be the one who called the shots.
In another life, Daniel would be running his own research department--or dig--somewhere. He'd probably been doing that on Abydos, judging by what she'd seen of the respect given him. But while you could strip that away, you couldn't take away the personality that generated that ability to step up and get things done. Which is just what the colonel had, too. The thing was, he also had the responsibility and authority, which Daniel now lacked. So would Daniel eventually find this an untenable situation?
The staring match ended with the colonel looking away first, glancing at the door, and then seeming to make up his mind.
"Teal'c, you're on point again. Everyone else, grab a breath and let's go."
"Uh, Jack?"
"Yes, Daniel?" the words came out with more patience than Sam would have expected and the colonel turned to the other man just as Daniel gestured to the wall painting.
"We might do better hanging onto each other."
That was just what the painting showed, and Sam glance at it, then at the colonel--and, wow, could his lips ever thin.
"Hold hands?" the colonel asked.
Daniel shrugged, then grabbed Sam's hand. She couldn't but shoot him a smile--she liked his way of getting things done, and asking forgiveness later if it turned out to be the wrong thing.
The colonel let out a long breath, then held a hand out to her, and muttered, "One word of this gets back to the base, and you're on latrine duty for the team for the next two years."
"Yes, sir. I--mean, that is, no sir, it won't get back."
He nodded, but didn't look like he believed she'd resist gossiping--which was pretty much a military hobby--then he grabbed Teal'c's staff.
Teal'c eyed that, then put out a hand. "You will let go of my weapon and hold my hand, O'Neill."
"I don't think--"
"If I have need of my staff, I require that you do not hinder my aim nor my ability to--"
"Oh, for…fine. We're all just one big, happy family here. But no skipping!"
"Skipping?" Daniel asked.
And then Teal'c dragged them all into that room.
#
It was worse the second time, Jack decided. He knew what was coming--that rush of gut-churning fear, the smell like sweet onion that turned into the coppery stink of blood, the gibbering mind-stealing panic that lifted up out of the dark. And then he was out of it, leaning on a wall, and all he wanted to do was curl into a ball and shiver.
He got his eyes open instead and his head lifted, and he saw Daniel was crouched into a corner, his knees up and his arms folded over them, and his head tucked down on them. Carter tried to hold it together a second longer, then took a look at Daniel and seemed to take the sight of him as permission to be human, too. She slid down the wall, next to Daniel, settled with her head between her knees and looked to be gulping down air so she wouldn't lose her lunch. They'd both lost their helmets back in that room and Jack wasn't going to send anyone back for anything.
Teal'c--the bastard--just stood there like a benevolent genie who didn't understand why the wish he'd granted wasn't going over so well. Jack could learn to hate the guy--or he would, if he didn't also owe the man so big time.
"That," he said, straightening, and point back at the other room, "is never happening again."
"There should be no need to return, O'Neill."
Nodding, Jack glanced around. Oh, great, four doors again. "What is it with these people and doorways?" he muttered.
Daniel lifted his head. His eyes were still dilated and with that shaggy hair, he looked ready to sit in as a poster-boy for the counterculture. His glasses had slid down, but instead of pushing them up, he leaned his head back to look through them.
"Four--it must have some meaning to this culture. We've seen this before."
"Excuse me--one room?" Jack asked.
Glancing at him, Daniel blinked and seemed to be having trouble getting his head back to reality. Then he pushed up to his feet and gestured at the room they were in. "Two rooms--this and the first one. Plus the four doors into the great hall--four doors on each of four walls. And the four-sided pyramids. It's a recurring motif--and it probably means we'll have to go through four choices. Well, actually, three here, since we came through that one."
"Four?" Jack echoed, because the hair was standing on the back of his neck, and dear god, there were some things no one should have to live through twice.
He had heard Charlie calling his name, the second time through that room, and then the sound of a gun going off, and the splatter of his son's brains had hit his cheeks. Only the pressure of Carter's hand on one side, and Teal'c's grip on the other had kept him from losing it--and himself--in that waking nightmare. Once out, he'd put a hand to his face and found it wasn't gray matter, but tears on his cheeks. He could so learn to hate this place.
"Four," he said again, the word settling into his soul with the weight of a dead body.
"Well, not four of the same thing. That was--" Daniel's words stuttered off and he ran a hand over his face. "God, I'm not sure what that was."
"That was a test of our bonds. Of our abilities to work together and to look after each other." Teal'c said it like it had to be so, and Jack found himself nodding.
"I suppose that makes sense--in a really twisted kind of way."
"Yes, very twisted," Daniel muttered, and put his head down again.
Jack glanced at him, and both wanted to know--and didn't want to know--what Daniel had heard or seen in there. He wasn't going to ask, so he looked at the other doors instead, and he wasn't sure he could look into one of them without getting another damn bad thing slapped into his face. Carter gave him a few minutes more to pull it together by saying, "I heard a car accident, and my mothe--but I couldn't have, I wasn't there. And all of you were in there with her screaming."
She shivered, and Daniel looked up and nudged her boot with his. "Auditory hallucinations. Olfactory ones, too, and we'd have had visual as well, with our eyes open. Figments of the mind--that's how we best torture ourselves."
Daniel sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and Jack didn't want to know about that, either, so he pushed off the wall and flicked his flashlight into the nearest doorway.
"Body here--so no go. No body there, or there," he said, finishing up the recon. "So we're back to two choices."
Climbing to his feet, and looking about a hundred doing it, Daniel glanced around, finally pushed his glasses back into place. "No pictograms either. But…."
Words drifting off, Daniel went to stand in front of one of the doorways, his arms folded tight over his chest, and his stare fixed on something above the black rectangle of space. Jack glanced up, then put his flashlight on the area above the doorway--four of those squiggly lines leapt into relief, lines like in the room that had gotten them into all this trouble.
Oh, no, not going there, he thought, choosing the other doorway.
He started for that other doorway, calling out, "Come on, campers."
And then Daniel said, "Hey, Sam, what does this look like to you?"
That quiet voice had Teal'c pausing and Carter turning, going over to Daniel's side, and Jack wished there was some way he could bottle that. Because now Daniel had Jack's second staring up at the squiggles and interested, and Teal'c joined them to also stare, and all from just asking a question.
"Uh, well, it looks like a sine wave," Carter said, head tipping.
Jack rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to join them in staring at squiggles.
"What if that's just what it is?" Daniel asked, gesturing to the lines again with one hand and half-turned towards her now.
Frowning, Carter nodded, put her hands on her hips and kept staring. "So each line represents a specific harmonic motion?"
Jack stepped in front of them before this went any more cryptic. "Can we keep this in English--and how is this helping?"
Daniel pulled back, but Carter's eyes lit as if someone had punched the right button. "Sir, the human ear will recognize a single sine wave because those waveforms make a clean, clear sound."
"Like hitting a tuning fork, or a single note on a piano, or a…"
"I get the picture, Daniel."
"No, you don't." He gestured to the lines again. "That's the picture. And none of us get it because that's a unique, alien language no one's ever seen before."
Jack glance up at the curvy lines, then to Carter to see what she'd say, because Daniel's leaps were just a little too long for anyone's comfort, and this was a big one. Wavy lines did not a language make--they really could be there for decoration. But she was nodding as if the man made sense.
"If I had an oscilloscope, I bet I could match the waveforms."
Daniel gave a slow shake of his head. "Well, that would let us hear what the language sounded like, but it wouldn't give us any meaning."
"Yeah, we'd just be mimicking. But I've seen this pattern before."
"God, so have I!" Daniel turned suddenly to Jack, and pointed at the doorway. "We have to go this way."
Jack stared at the guy, then at the doorway. He wanted to ask why, but it seemed like a bad thing for a team leader to be asking that kind of question. "Daniel, I--"
"He's right, sir. These same waves were over the doorway that led us in here. That's where we've seen them before."
Now it was Carter's turn to get the stare, and her cheeks pinked enough that Jack knew he at least wasn't losing touch with his inner bastard of a commander. "Are you sure, Carter? Really sure? This isn't the kind of place that's going to give us room for errors."
"Well, yes, sir. Photographic memory, sir." She muttered the words as if this was a bad thing, but Jack nodded, and made a mental note, because it was always good to know what skills you had on your team.
Daniel seemed to be noticing too, since he glanced at Carter and nudged her with his elbow, and like a kid with baseball cards to trade, he offered, "I have perfect pitch."
Interest lighting, Carter looked up again--and Jack decided this was what geeks did instead of trading cards. "Really? That must be--"
"No." Daniel pulled a face. "You hear the sour note, too."
"I know, remembering…"
"Hey--can we bring this back to ground zero here?" Jack asked, and his geeks at least managed to shift their eyes down for a fraction of a second, even if he knew they'd be right back at it soon as he turned his back.
Then the rumble of a voice behind him put his hand on his gun.
"A test of intelligence."
Jack glanced over at Teal'c, and willed his heart rate to settle back down. He'd just about forgotten the guy, what with these two chattering, but it seems as if Teal'c had been following along with the science class. And now Daniel lit up like his buttons had been punched.
"You're right. The fact we can even recognize symbols would be an indication of--"
"Fine. Let’s indicate on the other side, shall we?" Jack asked, because he was seriously creeped out by this place, and he wanted his people out of here.
He walked into the next room, braced for something. Anything. Everything. He'd taken the safety off his gun, but now he put it back on because there was nothing. Stone. Four doors. And he hoped Daniel was right and they were half-way home now. He turned to wait for the others.
Carter came in, eyes so damn big she looked like one of those dolls you won at the fair. Daniel followed, his jaw set tight enough to set his pulse jumping there. It eased out at once and Daniel started poking around, curiosity easing out any kind of nerves, and Jack wondered if that's what made the man seem so fearless at times. And maybe he should worry about that trait; fear was a big help when it came to staying alive.
Teal'c really didn't have much fear, however, and he strode in like he owned the place. And then the stones started sliding up to cover the doorways.
#
Daniel jumped, heart pumping fast, when he heard the grating of stone on stone. Two of the door ways slammed shut so fast, the slam left his ears ringing, and Jack was yelling, and Sam was running. She dove over the stone that was raising up from the floor to seal the doorway, and Daniel glimpsed her light somersault in the other room--and it really was an amazing thing to see stone lifting up like that, as if it was being pulled by an invisible rope. Then something grabbed his vest.
He was jerked off his feet, tossed, and he thought it was Teal'c, but then realized the pull was dragging him forward on both sides, and Jack was yelling into his right ear, so it was Jack and Teal'c grabbing him and tossing him like he was a bag they'd packed.
His right shoulder hit stone, slammed hard, and he knew enough to rolling with it, but that only made the pain in his shoulder flare white hot, stealing his breath and burring his vision. He heard Jack's yell, and Teal'c's rumble, then Jack came flying over the stone and straight onto Daniel.
The air went out of his chest in a gasp, and he rasped to get some back in his lungs, but couldn't. Digging his fingernails into his palms, he told himself not to panic. It was just the air knocked out--his diaphragm had been stunned, and the muscles needed a minute to recover. Shallow breaths. But even as his mind made sense of it, his instincts clawed to get loose and panic. He could hear himself gasping, even as Jack struggled to his feet.
And the stone slammed shut.
Still yelling, cursing, Jack kicked at the stone, then slammed his fists on it. Daniel wanted to tell him not to do that, that he'd only hurt himself, but he didn't have the air for it. And Sam--Captain/Doctor Carter--pushed herself between the stone and Jack and yelled, "Sir! It's no good!"
For a frightening second, it looked as if Jack would sweep her aside and go after that wall again with his hands. He stared at her, eyes wild, and then ran a hand through his hair, knocking off his cap. He left the cap on the floor, which was a sure sign he wasn't thinking any kind of straight, but he glanced at Daniel. Then he looked away, but nodded towards Daniel again.
"See to him, Carter."
She hesitated, and got a sharp glare. That had her moving. Daniel gasped for another breath, got a fragment of air. And then Sam put her hand on his shoulder--the one that hurt.
That got him some air, and when he could think again, and not just writhe under the pain stabbing through him, he looked up at Sam. She was biting her lower lip, and he managed to get one word out, "Don't--"
As in please do not do that again.
Pulling off her backpack, she dug into it and brought out a box with a red cross on it, and Daniel closed his eyes. Sam's breath warmed his cheek--and how was it that she still smelled good after the kind of day this had been so far?
"Take it easy, Daniel. I don’t think it's dislocated, but it looks like you might have a hairline fracture."
He shook his head. He knew what a broken bone felt like. He'd had two, one from an unfriendly camel with a nasty kick, and the other from a fall when he'd been ten and trying to do something normal like learning to ride a bike, which he hadn't. This was different. A break was a deep, constant throb. This was more like someone was jamming an ice pick into his shoulder socket whenever he moved wrong.
Sam got out something that looked suspiciously like a sling, meaning she was going to try to move his arm, and he shook his head again. "Don't…"
This time, as in I don't really need all this fussing. And he didn't. He just needed to lie there and get his breath back so he could help Jack figure out how to get Teal'c back.
And it startled him to realize that he wanted, with a desperate urgency, to get Teal'c back.
He shouldn't. He should hate the guy, considering what he'd been and done. And walled up alive could be considered justice for someone who'd helped others to be walled up in their own minds by turning them into hosts. Except, along with the bad, Teal'c had saved lives. And Daniel was still trying to reconcile why it was that, given the man's past, he found it impossible to hate the guy. Of course, all of this was a good way to avoid thinking about the pain spiking in his shoulder.
Sam hovered over him with a couple of white tablets in her hand. "Aspirin."
She pushed them into his mouth before he could say anything, then held an open canteen to his lips, so he swallowed, then gasped again.
Then he watched Jack pull something out of a vest pocket. Sam seemed to know what it was because she stood and went over to Jack. "Sir?"
"Carter?"
"Respectfully, sir, the concussive force of a blast in this small an area could be fatal."
Blinking, Daniel realized Jack intended to try blowing open the door, and that seemed reasonable to Daniel, but maybe Sam knew better here.
Jack frowned, but managed to look like he'd been caught with his hand in Sam's candy stash--the one she kept in the second down from the top drawer of her filing cabinet, behind the stack of Petri dishes with the unappealing bacteria growths. Her idea of a security system. It worked, too--well, mostly, except with Daniel. Her words seemed to work with Jack, too, since he at least hesitated.
Struggling upright, chest aching and shoulder settling down to a low fire instead of a blazing inferno, Daniel let out a slow breath and dredged his brain for any kind of idea. He glanced at the door, then around at the other three doorways. As he expected, there were sine waves over one of the doorways. But there were also lines carved into the center of the closed door--which was odd. Except, maybe not.
They really hadn't seen other doors--just doorways. But what did the lines mean?
Comparing the waveforms on the door to those above the doorway, he noted the differences. And was it shorter, tighter waves indicated a higher frequency, or the other way around?
Jack was starting to pace, so Daniel said, "Look, there's got to be a way to open it."
Both Jack and Sam looked at him and he shrugged, then had to shut his eyes and tell himself to not do that again--please. Opening his eyes again, he found they were still staring at him. "Well, there has to be. No bones."
Rocking back on his heels, Jack looked at the stone, then walked over and pounded the end of his gun on it. He got the faint echo of a pound back, and he shook his head. "Remind me when we get home to teach Teal'c Morse code."
Daniel nodded, because he wasn't going to think about leaving Teal'c, either.
#
Rites and Passage - Part 3
Rites and Passage - Back to Part 1