SG-1 Fic: Undertow
Title: Undertow
Author: abyssinia4077
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Characters: Sam Carter, Daniel Jackson, Teal'c, Jack O'Neill
Rating/Warning: hard PG-13 (violence, torture)
Disclaimer: Stargate and it's characters belong to MGM and Bridges and other entities who are not me. I just have fun in their sandbox.
Word Count: 5832
Author's Note: Written for the sg1teamficathon.
Recipient: kellifer_fic.
Prompt: Who wants: The team adrift. (Can be anything... ship, space, mental separation)
And doesn't want: Mpreg, non-con, Daniel being the damsel in distress...
Huge thanks to: crazedturkey for advice on how to injure the team. rydra_wong for pushing my brain in a direction to create words. rigel_7 for a thorough, late-minute beta and last, but far from least, beanpot for helping me brainstorm, being patient while I flailed, and doing a wonderful beta.
Summary: Sometime after "Thor's Chariot" and before "The Tok'ra" SG-1 is captured and needs to hold together as their interrogators focus in on Sam.
&zeta
"Samantha Carter," she managed to spit out, along with a mouthful of blood. Her tongue probed the gash inside her cheek and she was grateful to find no loose teeth. "Captain. United States Air Force. Service number 456731479 ." She couldn't remember the question, but she knew this was the right answer - the only answer she had.
The wooden floor was rough under her palms and she watched her blood soak into the light grain. A pair of boots -- large, leather, scuffed -- came into view through the dark spots dancing at the edge of her vision. "What is the name of your symbiote?" The voice was deep and loud and too impressed with its own power.
Sam didn't understand -- neither where she was nor who this was nor why she was being asked questions that made no sense -- so she fell back to the only answer she had. "Samantha Car-"
A hand wrapped around the chain holding the tags around her neck, pulling to cut off words and air. She gasped, clawing at the chain, but her muscles were weak and sluggish and it drew tighter.
She felt his presence behind her, kneeling down, and hot breath caressed her ear before he spoke. "Why have you come to Tebesia? Who have you poisoned with your lies?"
Releasing her desperate hold on the chain, ignoring the way the room swam in and out of focus, Sam concentrated everything she had on driving her elbow back into his stomach. She smiled at the startled grunt and pulled forward as his grip slackened, ripping the tags from his hand and launching herself somewhere, anywhere. The zat blast caught her after two steps, sending her writhing on the ground, every muscle twitching and screaming in protest, before the world went black.
&gamma
Something was flowing into her mouth -- heavy and vile and slimy -- and for a second all she could think was of Jolinar forcing into her throat and she froze. But this was liquid on her tongue and there were hands holding her down so she twisted -- kicking out to connect with a shin, managing to grab a wrist, bite a finger. Whoever was holding the liquid shouted as it tipped and spilled onto her face -- running up her nose and overwhelming her, crawling over her skin. She stopped to cough and sputter, desperate to force air in. They took the chance to grab her again, pouring the liquid back down her throat and she swallowed convulsively, lungs burning until her eyes started dimming again.
Her last thought before slipping back into unconsciousness was that at least the Colonel wasn't screaming anymore.
&eta
The trapdoor overhead was opened and Daniel dropped through, landing with a groan and a thud that rocked their platform. Sam pushed herself back further against the lip behind her and braced herself against the rocking, trying to keep from falling off the world. Teal'c reached a hand out to pull her shoulders until she hunched forward and wrapped arms around her own knees. "You must not fall over the edge, Captain Carter," he told her and she marveled at how easily he moved over to Daniel, as though the world weren't trying to throw him off.
Colonel O'Neill was already there, helping Daniel roll onto his back and sit up. It was weird that Daniel pushed off his elbows and not his hands, but the colonel's voice echoed too loudly in her ears for her to even remember what she wanted to figure out. "Did you learn anything?"
"Yes, Jack, I'm okay. Thanks for asking," Daniel grumbled, pushing Jack away and sitting back on his heels. "I think the Goa'uld on this planet impersonates Ino, or Leucothea - she was a minor sea deity in Greek mythology. She also was nursemaid to Dionysius and associated with the maenads, though I'm really hoping she hasn't taken that aspect of mythology to heart or we're in more troub…"
Colonel O'Neill's hands clapped in front of Daniel's face and Daniel looked up to see him glaring, gesturing to the side of his head, which brought Daniel up short. Sam squinted, looking carefully until she made out the trace of dried blood by the colonel's ear.
"Oh, right," Daniel muttered. "Wait, I've got..." She watched him fumble awkwardly at the side pocket of his pants, his usually-deft fingers slipping numbly past buttons until Teal'c reached out and covered Daniel's hands with his own. Daniel looked up and nodded. "I've got a notebook and pen - they haven't taken it," he said quietly as Teal'c undid the buttons, fishing inside to find a small, cheap, spiral-bound notebook and a ballpoint pen.
Sam wondered how many of these Daniel stashed in various pockets and crannies all over his gear, and giggled at the image of him, storing them up like a squirrel stores nuts. All three of their heads turned to stare at her. "Sam?" Daniel prodded tentatively, as though afraid of her response.
&omicron
The ground beneath her was...rocking...and not actually ground, but -- her fingers splayed out, feeling patterns and splintery roughness -- wood. There was a persistent slapping noise like waves hitting a boat and she tried to roll over, groaning as every muscle protested and her stomach jumped into her throat.
"Jack!" Daniel shouted, much too loud. She tried to tell him to be quiet because the anvils in her head were quite loud enough, thank you, but her lips barely cracked open and her throat was too clogged to speak before he shouted again. "Sam's awake."
The hands that found her were not Daniel's nor Colonel O'Neill's, but Teal'c's and he gently turned her until she was propped against him. She hadn't realized how cold she was until she felt the warmth radiating from him, and suddenly all she could do was shiver in his arms. "Captain Carter," he said quietly in her ear. "You must try to drink."
A hand came down to rest on her ankle, squeezing briefly around her boot, and then something was brought to her lips. The hand on her ankle tightened when she tried to kick out and Teal'c said something calming in her ear, but it didn't soothe her panic. She froze, expecting more of the slime to spill into her mouth. Instead it was the barest trickle of water -- lukewarm and stale and the best thing she could ever remember tasting.
Before she could savor it, the cup was removed. Sam tried to chase it but Teal'c's hands held her back. She thought to open her eyes and blinked slowly, catching a washed-out image of the colonel sitting near her feet, his head cocked to one side. Daniel was across from her, arms curled loosely at his sides, and an endless blue sky behind him. Before she could focus the brightness stabbed to the back of her head and the world spun, going from white to grey to black. For an instant she didn't know whether she was going to throw up or pass out before her body settled on the less messy option.
&iota
She gasped awake as ice-cold water hit her, splashing onto her face and dripping down her back. Her arms were numb beyond the faintest tingle of circulation and she looked up to see them cuffed high above her head, holding her stretched so her heels barely reached the ground. "You will tell me your symbiote's name. You will tell me the names of your collaborators. You will tell me what lies you spread." The voice growled behind her, threat filling every word. "You will tell me what the traitors are planning."
Ocean stretched for miles in front of her until finally meeting sky at a hazy horizon where birds circled. "My name is Samantha Carter. I'm a Captain in the United States Air Force. My service number..." She didn't understand his questions, couldn't even invent convincing lies without knowing what truth she was meant to be hiding.
"Yes, yes, we've been through all that," he snarled. "The. Name. Of. Your. Symbiote."
The prod in her side was her only warning before the Goa'uld painstick turned on, and she arched away from the fire lancing through her, gone before she could open her mouth to shout.
"Who are the men with you?" the voice asked, not giving her time to think of an answer to his last question.
"My team?" Her voice cracked on the word She didn't know where they were -- couldn't see or hear or feel them -- but usually they were the men with her. She wished they were here now, with a rescue party ready to take her away to a place with blankets and hot chocolate and no scent of ocean.
"An odd way to refer to slaves," he mused. "I wonder how much you truly care." His footsteps receded and sometime later more hands arrived to cut her down, drag her away and dump her back through the trapdoor.
&theta
"I think..." Sam gasped, forcing words through a throat that didn't want to work. "They think I'm a Tok'ra"
Sam tried to focus on the words swimming in her head rather than the eyebrows in front of her -- Teal'c's shooting up as Daniel's shot down and the Colonel's moved inward in frustration. Daniel turned his head and said something to Teal'c, who scribbled something on a pad and showed it to the colonel and this conversation was going to take more time than she had.
"Why would they think that?" Colonel O'Neill asked.
"The symbiote. We sense it." Sam watched all three of their heads whip around at the voice - high pitched and hissing around the letter s - which came from somewhere to the side. A girl sat with dirty hair and bare feet on the other side of the expanse of water separating them from the floating city above.
"You can sense symbiotes?" Daniel asked incredulously.
"We can do many things. Ino made us. Swim. Attack. Disable. Sense," she said, throwing a crust of bread into the fetid water, where it was snapped up by something with too few fins and too many teeth. "Don't try to swim."
"We were not planning on doing so," Teal'c said.
"Daniel!" Colonel O'Neill practically shouted. "What's she saying?"
"I think the people here are a Goa'uld genetic experiment," Daniel shouted back at him. Sam's hands flew to her ears, pressing tight to keep her skull from vibrating to pieces at his shouting. "They can sense symbiotes. I think they can sense the markers Jolinar left behind in Sam, so they think she has one."
"Which would explain why they have drugged Captain Carter but left us relatively unharmed," Teal'c added.
"Jolinar?" the girl asked, leaning forward in curiosity. "You know?"
"We...did," Daniel said carefully, looking at her with interest. "Have you heard of him?"
"Year ago. Through the Chappa'ai. Told us of freedom. Said the goddess wasn't real. Many believed. Not enough."
"Daniel, what's she saying?" Colonel O'Neill asked irritably. Daniel just waved an arm at him, hand flapping loosely at the wrist.
&delta
"Daniel Jackson!" Teal'c's voice floated from somewhere, sounding worried. "Are you damaged?"
"I…I, oh," Daniel's voice paused, then swam again into Sam's ears. "Yeah. This can't be good."
There was a groan from somewhere. Sam didn't think it was hers. "Jack, Jack," Daniel's voice called, creating a strange sort of Doppler effect in her ears that jumbled whatever he was saying.
"Why are you whispering, Daniel?" Colonel O'Neill shouted and Sam flinched, curling in tighter. "Damnit, Daniel, I can't hear what you're saying. What's going on? What's wrong with Carter?"
She wanted to reach out, to see if they were okay, but nothing would move. Fingers fumbled on her neck, skirting over her pulse, and a hand rested in hers -- large and warm and she thought it was Teal'c's. She tried to squeeze his fingers, to let him know she was okay, but there was the sound of a struggle and someone being dragged, and maybe Teal'c shouted Daniel's name but she was already slipping under again.
&lambda
This time, when they hauled her up through the hole, they brought the colonel behind her. In the room he was held back, struggling, as fingers pried her jaw apart and more tar was poured down her throat. She tried to spit it out, felt it dribble down her chin, soak her shirt at the shoulder. She managed to get one of them full in the face, earning her a vicious backhand that increased the drumming in her head.
She lay on her side, hands tied and a dirty rag in her mouth and the colonel was across the room with somebody standing over him. All she could do was watch as they questioned him -- words that slipped through her mind -- and he tilted his head, looked confused, shouted nonsense back. They seemed desperate - shouting about a conspiracy and infiltrators and sacrilege and nothing she knew anything about. Then they were left, alone, and the colonel crawled over and removed her gag, helped her to sit.
"We'll get out of this," he said, using the rag to try to wipe off the blackness at her shoulder. She tried to see if he was hurt, but her eyes kept sliding away from wherever she tried to focus them. "Hey!" His hands came up to either side of her head, turning her to look him in the face. "We will get home and we will be okay. I promise."
There were words trying to get out -- to assure him that she was okay, if only she could think straight -- that she trusted him to get them out, trusted Teal'c and Daniel and SG-1. But they only swam in crazy circles, chasing around her brain, not finding working vocal cords.
When they came to drag the colonel away, she wanted to scream.
&epsilon
The world was spinning but at least she could see it. Trying to sit up caused her stomach to lurch and she barely managed to roll and prop herself up on her elbows, before vomiting up whatever they'd forced down her throat. It wasn't any less slimy or vile coming back up and certainly didn’t smell better. The black splatter made her retch again and again until she was wrung dry and shaking. Only then did she notice that Teal'c had an arm around her and she let him pull her up and away. His hand was blissfully cool against her forehead as she leaned against him until she stopped shaking.
"You have worried us, Captain Carter," he told her when she finally shifted to support her own weight, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. "We believe you were drugged."
"No kidding," Sam muttered, looking up to get her bearings. "Teal'c, are we on a raft?" she asked incredulously. It was dark but there were specks of light above her - though only blackness directly overhead - and she thought the floor was rocking slightly.
"Indeed," Teal'c said. "This planet's inhabitants appear to build villages which float on their ocean. This platform floats on the water beneath the city and is accessed from above."
Sam took another look around the platform. It was approximately square with about twelve feet to a side and what looked like a lip, six inches high, all around the edge, maybe to keep them from rolling off. Across from them was a body, curled up tight. She was pretty sure it was the colonel.
"Teal'c, where's Daniel?" she asked.
"Daniel Jackson was taken several hours ago," Teal'c explained, indicating what must be a trapdoor overhead as she crawled over to check on the colonel. "Colonel O'Neill's hearing was damaged in our capture. It may be best not to wake him."
Sam peered closer, found something dark near his ears that flaked off when she touched it. "His eardrum must have burst," she muttered, looking around. "Teal'c, any ideas how to get out of this mess?"
&rho
"This is the longest you've been awake," Daniel said, sitting down next to her. "We were really worried."
"What happened?" Sam asked. "I keep remembering bits and having them slip away again."
"That makes sense. They thought you had a symbiote and were trying to drug the symbiote into submission to interrogate the host and, well, we've learned from Teal'c it's really hard to knock out a symbiote. No surprise the drugs left you out of it."
"I remember something about Jolinar?" Sam asked, hearing the voice echo in her head. "But he's dead."
"He was here a few years ago," Daniel explained. "Trying to incite a rebellion against the local Goa'uld."
"Just my luck to get the Tok'ra who causes trouble, huh?"
"From what Teal'c says, I think the Goa'uld would consider them all troublemakers," Daniel commented.
A head popped out of the water, causing Sam to jump. "Look back," the woman said, as two more heads joined hers.
Daniel's head turned and Sam followed his gaze to find flames on the horizon, glowing red in the night. "What is it?" she asked.
"Freedom," Teal'c announced. "A false god has been overthrown."
"The palaces of Ino burn," one of the men in the water agreed. "No more sacrifice."
"Hey, kids, look, they lit a bonfire!" Colonel O'Neill shouted.
"We know, Jack," Daniel shouted back.
Sam reached down to grab Daniel's hand, brushing fingers against fabric and pulling back when he winced and twisted his body. There was something there, something that happened, but just as the tendrils of memory reached her the people in the water shouted and dove deep.
"Who were they?" she asked after the people disappeared, promising they would reach the 'gate before long.
"The people of this planet - the Goa'uld altered their genetics, made them amphibious," Daniel explained. "Among other talents."
&kappa
"Here," the voice came from the shadows. Something was thrown onto the floor at Teal'c's feet. "I feed. You talk." Sam watched, huddled in her corner, as Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c divided the bread into four chunks.
"Don't suppose you have any water?" Colonel O'Neill shouted into the darkness. A wasterskin appeared, arcing through the air before landing near the bread. "Carter?" He held out the waterskin and Sam nearly flew at the chance to wash the slime from her mouth. She swished three precious mouthfuls carefully, gargling to wash away the slime in her throat before spitting over the edge.
When she turned back, Teal'c was ripping a piece of bread into small pieces to feed to Daniel, who looked very displeased with the situation. "Not to sound selfish," Daniel asked between mouthfuls. "But this venom you carry - please tell me it's temporary."
The girl made a chittering sound. "Yes, yes, few days. Ten at most. Incapacitates. Killing gives no information."
"Pleasant," Daniel muttered. He looked over as Sam scooted across the platform to hand Teal'c the waterskin. "Hey, Sam, you should eat." Sam looked at the bread, felt her stomach simultaneously rumble in hunger and lurch at the thought of food and shook her head.
"Captain Carter, you must retain your strength," Teal'c insisted, handing her a small piece, clearly not giving her the option to refuse. Sam took it, looked at it and nibbled, checking it would stay down before she ate another bite. She thought maybe her head had cleared a bit and she looked up to find Daniel in intense conversation with their visitor.
"Carter," the colonel said to her left, shoving Daniel's notepad into her hands. "I can't hear them anyway - I'll make Teal'c tell me later. Right now I need to know how you're doing."
Sam looked at him and took the pad in shaky hands - unsure how to answer his question, given how uncertain she was of her own thoughts. She watched, as though from far away, as her hand moved the pen slowly and shakily across the paper.
&beta
They found the woman not far from the 'gate. The corridors of this structure were made of roughly-hewn wood and looked as though they were built with no central plan. Daniel kept hoping each turn, each doorway, would be an exit, so they could see the place from the outside.
They turned a corner and she was there. Her hair was long, dark, and slicked back and she moved with a smooth, almost swimming motion - not quite human, but not entirely alien. She turned at their footsteps and her eyes widened when they approached.
"Hi, my name is Daniel Jackson," Daniel started to explain, stepping forward and raising his hands in a non-threatening manner. "We're explorers from far away and..."
The woman's eyes - green ringed with black - were locked on Sam in a mixture of horrified fear and vengeance. Sam took a step back as Daniel turned to follow her gaze. "We won't hurt you..." he started, but she turned as if to run. Sam watched, locked in place, as Daniel reached forward to grab the woman's arm. "No, wait!" he called and then shouted as something changed about the woman's skin - like hundreds of tiny spikes rippling beneath the surface. He pulled his hands back, gasping as though burned, and from feet away Sam could see the tiny pinpricks covering his palms and fingers.
The colonel was already stepping forward, gun lowered, pushing Daniel back when the woman opened her mouth and screamed. It was un-Earthly, inhuman, sending vibrations deep into Sam's skull, making her ears pulse. She slapped her hands over her ears, desperately trying to keep the sound out. Dimly she heard the colonel screaming, hands over his own head, and watched as he fell to the ground and then everywhere was light and sound and concussive force.
She never felt herself hit the floor.
&nu
They brought Daniel out and placed him across from her, tying them both into chairs. "We have seen that you treat your slaves as equals," the man said, leather creaking as he walked. "Presumably you prefer them undamaged."
"I can't tell you what I don't know," Sam said again, the same thing she'd been desperately telling him for the last hour. "I am not host to a symbiote. You captured us right after we arrived - there was no one we could have talked to. I know nothing about a rebellion."
"You lie," he sneered. "We can sense the symbiote within you. Do not lie to protect it." He reached down, fitting something over her hand and she looked to see the golden curve of a Goa'uld healing device across her fingers. "You will prove that you are lying."
For a moment, she didn't understand. The device didn't light up or make noise or feel any different than a rock, though something in her blood tingled and there were whispers in her head, negative images of using one before on bodies Sam didn't recognize. The man stalked over to Daniel's right, reaching down to take the limp hand dangling off the end of the chair. Sam remembered why -- because he'd been stung with some form of venom -- had no feeling, no movement -- only hoped to get it back. In the instant before, she knew what was about to happen, and she locked her eyes on Daniel's, begging him to keep looking at her, not down.
The snap of bone echoed through the chamber.
Before her Daniel flinched, his skin whitening, and yet no trace of pain crossed his face. Sam held his gaze through two more snaps, not daring to look, to assess the damage lest his eyes follow her gaze. "Heal him." She was so focused on Daniel she hadn't heard their interrogator move, but her arm was unstrapped and the hand with the device held forward.
"Sam, no," Daniel gasped. "You can't do it." But she'd done it once, the day they'd met Thor -- made a healing device glow and pulse with the potential of power -- maybe she could use it now, make something good happen. "Sam," Daniel said louder, determination in his eyes. "You. Can't. Do. It." And suddenly she understood that he didn't mean she couldn't heal him, just that she couldn't do it here and now, couldn't do anything that proved their captor right.
Back through the trapdoor, Sam managed to stave off the effects of the new dose long enough to take Daniel's hand in her own. She examined the three fingers bent at wrong angles, and carefully straightened them back, wincing at the grate of bone on bone. Daniel sat stoically, staring to the middle of nowhere and feeling none of it. She splinted and wrapped them with strips of fabric torn from her jacket and anything the colonel and Teal'c could find, somehow making it to the edge before emptying the contents of her stomach.
The whole time she never met Daniel's eyes.
&pi
There was a warm body pressed against her and a stifled gasp escaped from it as she twitched. "Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c's voice asked softly.
The body stirred and sat, slowly as though something hurt too much to consider moving and Sam tried to reach into the disappearing body heat. Her eyes opened at the sound of a hissed whimper through clenched teeth above her.
The colonel gingerly held Daniel's right hand -- wrapped in fabric and what looked to be a fairly decent makeshift splint -- and Daniel's face paled at the touch. "I didn't think I'd be wanting it to not wear off so quickly." Daniel's voice was strained.
"The bastards took all our medkits. No drugs, unless you want to grab one of them again," Colonel O'Neill said. "Just hang in there, Daniel. I don't think I can do anything without making it worse. We'll get you to Doc Fraiser soon."
"I'm so sorry, Daniel," the words escaped Sam's mouth before she thought to utter them, unsure why she was apologizing.
"Sam! How're you feeling?" Daniel looked happier than Sam thought he should.
She pushed herself up to her knees, listing sideways as the ground, no, boat, rocked beneath them and the colonel reached out, steadying her with an arm on either side. "Whoa there, Carter. Take it easy."
"No, sir, I think I need..." The boat rocked again, taking her stomach with it and she snapped her jaw closed, focusing her eyes on the distant horizon and taking deep breaths, counting prime numbers until the world stopped spinning. "I think I need to sit for a while."
Colonel O'Neill looked at her, leaning back when she seemed stable enough to not fall over again. "You're going to have to speak up."
&mu
"Brought them," the voice squeaked from the shadows. "Can help."
Sam turned her head, saw flickering candles across the way. Daniel and Teal'c were already at the edge and when she tried to push her way up, Colonel O'Neill came over, put his shoulder under hers, wrapped an arm around her hips, and helped her over when her muscles didn't want to respond.
"You come from Jolinar?" the voice was deeper.
"Uh, not exactly. But we've met Jolinar and we share the same goals," Daniel explained. It was odd to see him talking with his hands loose on his knees and not punctuating his words. "Can you help us?"
There was a flurry of voices and what sounded like an argument in clicking tongues and hissing lisps. "Ino not true god," one voice spat. "If we tell, they learn," another insisted. "Jolinar gave us" and "Two day," several agreed at once.
"There is feast - two days," one of the voices announced. "Uprising planned. Jolinar start. We free you then."
"Carter," Colonel O'Neill said in her ear. "What are they saying?"
Sam pulled her eyes from the flames, entranced by how they flickered and danced, then turned around to look the colonel in the face, forgetting why she was doing so. "They will help us escape, O'Neill," Teal'c's voice boomed over her head. "In two days time there will be an uprising against the false god. They will free us then." Sam let her head fall onto the colonel's shoulder. She thought she could last two more days.
&xi
The room was different this time -- darker, grimier -- and Sam couldn't remember them dragging her up through the door or how long she'd been here. Her tongue was coated in the vile liquid, her chin felt numb where it had spilled and she shook her head against the buzzing. Movement in front of her swam her vision in to focus on bodies moving around the room.
Daniel stood in front of her and fell to his knees from a push to his shoulder blades, unable to catch himself as he fell forward. She tried to reach him, catch his fall, but she moved too slowly and chains held her back.
"Leave him alone," she whispered, voice cracking over the words.
"Tell us what we need to know." She swung her head toward the voice, watched as he slid the healing device back over her fingers. "You can end this right now."
"No, Sam," Daniel said. "Look at me." She looked into his eyes, as lost in them as she'd been in the ocean earlier and he found the strength to smile at her and nod his head. "Almost time." He mouthed the words and then set his face as the man stepped closer.
"What is the name of your symbiote," the man asked, carelessly ripping off the dressings Sam had put on Daniel earlier.
"She isn't a host," Daniel shouted at him before Sam could open her mouth. "Just let us go." Sam heard the fear in his voice, knew that even though he couldn't feel the pain now, he must worry about later damage. She had watched him carefully handling artifacts, watched his fingers trace over carvings as though they can read the secrets buried in the stone. So, when another snap echoed through the chamber, Sam couldn't hold back a muffled cry as Daniel flinched at the sound.
Two more and she finally let out a strangled sob. "Stop! I'll do it, I'll do it." Daniel was shaking his head, eyes wide, but the man only smiled a grin with too many teeth and shoved Daniel forward until she could reach out her hand and will the device to turn on. It built beneath her skin, energy running at her fingertips, buzzing up her veins and she felt the voice whispering again about power and control and finally, finally, but nothing happened. She was about to lower her hand in defeat, bow her head and apologize to Daniel, when all the walls exploded.
There were shouts and voices and hands and Teal'c was there and she was falling away. She slipped the device into her cargo pocket, as they pulled her back to lose herself amongst the mass of bodies.
&alpha
Sam stepped through the event horizon, Daniel at her side, to find the colonel and Teal'c already looking around the room. "Huh," O'Neill said, staring at the wooden walls lashed together with rope. "Should we be worried they put their stargate in a shack?"
"The MALP didn't find anything of concern." Sam shrugged. "And we couldn't exactly send a UAV."
"Right. Wouldn't want to make first contact by punching a hole through their wall." Colonel O'Neill wandered off to survey one end of the room, waving his hand at Teal'c to check the other while Sam sent the MALP back to SGC.
"Um. Is the floor moving?" Daniel asked, squatting down next to her.
Sam put one hand to the floor, noticing a slight rocking she hadn't been paying attention to. "I think it is. Like we're on a large boat." She sniffed the air. "Does it smell salty to you?"
Daniel lifted his head and then sneezed violently. Blowing his nose he looked at her apologetically. "Sorry, can't really smell anything right now. Here's hoping it's not a stormy day?"
"Ready to explore, kids?" the colonel asked, walking over and tapping his fingers on the DHD. "I vote we try the door." He pointed toward Teal'c who was standing in front of a wooden door, hung on rusty hinges and not quite fitting in the surrounding frame.
&sigma
The boat rocked gently beneath her as Sam pushed herself up - finally awake and alert and much too tired of sleeping. Colonel O'Neill was curled up at one end of the boat, jacket pulled tight around him against the wind. Teal'c sat ramrod straight, legs crossed, eyes closed at the other end. Beside her Daniel sat, hunched over, and Sam realized what had woken her.
His breathing came in short, stuttered gasps, his hand cradled loosely in his lap, face white with the effort of holding still. Sam crawled over carefully, reached a hand out to his knee. His eyes were bright when he looked up.
"It's all worn off, hasn't it?" she asked quietly.
"When they come back," he said around clenched teeth, "I might ask..." Somehow she knew he wouldn't. She reached down, felt the round lump in her pocket, then slipped her hand in, pulling out the device.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly.
"Sam, it's not your fault. Janet will fix it," Daniel said, pretending they both could believe that he'd ever heal like new. His eyes widened when he saw what was in her hand. "You don't have to..."
"Yes, I do," she told him, reaching out to take his hand as gently as she could and then holding out the device, willing the memories to surface. It was as though she could feel the naquadah in her blood, buzzing and flowing, all concentrating down into her hand and her entire awareness focused on the damage in front of her - the broken bone and torn muscle, the cells fighting off infection.
The device in her hand pulsed once, twice, before it began to glow and she directed the tissue how to knit together, to reform, to become new. The power was heady and she dove deeper, finding scars she could repair, damage she could heal, making everything better and better until Daniel hissed and jerked and a warm hand enclosed her wrist, pulling it back.
"That is enough," Teal'c said in her ear. "You must stop, Captain Carter." She struggled, the siren song in her blood calling about what else she could do, and then froze. Teal'c's gaze was all too knowing, all too understanding as he slipped the device from her hand and flung it far into the ocean where it sank with a splash.
ETA: Go To This Entry to find the scenes in chronological order (author's note: I think it makes for a far less interesting story) and the deleted teamy goodness alternate ending.
Author: abyssinia4077
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Characters: Sam Carter, Daniel Jackson, Teal'c, Jack O'Neill
Rating/Warning: hard PG-13 (violence, torture)
Disclaimer: Stargate and it's characters belong to MGM and Bridges and other entities who are not me. I just have fun in their sandbox.
Word Count: 5832
Author's Note: Written for the sg1teamficathon.
Recipient: kellifer_fic.
Prompt: Who wants: The team adrift. (Can be anything... ship, space, mental separation)
And doesn't want: Mpreg, non-con, Daniel being the damsel in distress...
Huge thanks to: crazedturkey for advice on how to injure the team. rydra_wong for pushing my brain in a direction to create words. rigel_7 for a thorough, late-minute beta and last, but far from least, beanpot for helping me brainstorm, being patient while I flailed, and doing a wonderful beta.
Summary: Sometime after "Thor's Chariot" and before "The Tok'ra" SG-1 is captured and needs to hold together as their interrogators focus in on Sam.
&zeta
"Samantha Carter," she managed to spit out, along with a mouthful of blood. Her tongue probed the gash inside her cheek and she was grateful to find no loose teeth. "Captain. United States Air Force. Service number 456731479 ." She couldn't remember the question, but she knew this was the right answer - the only answer she had.
The wooden floor was rough under her palms and she watched her blood soak into the light grain. A pair of boots -- large, leather, scuffed -- came into view through the dark spots dancing at the edge of her vision. "What is the name of your symbiote?" The voice was deep and loud and too impressed with its own power.
Sam didn't understand -- neither where she was nor who this was nor why she was being asked questions that made no sense -- so she fell back to the only answer she had. "Samantha Car-"
A hand wrapped around the chain holding the tags around her neck, pulling to cut off words and air. She gasped, clawing at the chain, but her muscles were weak and sluggish and it drew tighter.
She felt his presence behind her, kneeling down, and hot breath caressed her ear before he spoke. "Why have you come to Tebesia? Who have you poisoned with your lies?"
Releasing her desperate hold on the chain, ignoring the way the room swam in and out of focus, Sam concentrated everything she had on driving her elbow back into his stomach. She smiled at the startled grunt and pulled forward as his grip slackened, ripping the tags from his hand and launching herself somewhere, anywhere. The zat blast caught her after two steps, sending her writhing on the ground, every muscle twitching and screaming in protest, before the world went black.
&gamma
Something was flowing into her mouth -- heavy and vile and slimy -- and for a second all she could think was of Jolinar forcing into her throat and she froze. But this was liquid on her tongue and there were hands holding her down so she twisted -- kicking out to connect with a shin, managing to grab a wrist, bite a finger. Whoever was holding the liquid shouted as it tipped and spilled onto her face -- running up her nose and overwhelming her, crawling over her skin. She stopped to cough and sputter, desperate to force air in. They took the chance to grab her again, pouring the liquid back down her throat and she swallowed convulsively, lungs burning until her eyes started dimming again.
Her last thought before slipping back into unconsciousness was that at least the Colonel wasn't screaming anymore.
&eta
The trapdoor overhead was opened and Daniel dropped through, landing with a groan and a thud that rocked their platform. Sam pushed herself back further against the lip behind her and braced herself against the rocking, trying to keep from falling off the world. Teal'c reached a hand out to pull her shoulders until she hunched forward and wrapped arms around her own knees. "You must not fall over the edge, Captain Carter," he told her and she marveled at how easily he moved over to Daniel, as though the world weren't trying to throw him off.
Colonel O'Neill was already there, helping Daniel roll onto his back and sit up. It was weird that Daniel pushed off his elbows and not his hands, but the colonel's voice echoed too loudly in her ears for her to even remember what she wanted to figure out. "Did you learn anything?"
"Yes, Jack, I'm okay. Thanks for asking," Daniel grumbled, pushing Jack away and sitting back on his heels. "I think the Goa'uld on this planet impersonates Ino, or Leucothea - she was a minor sea deity in Greek mythology. She also was nursemaid to Dionysius and associated with the maenads, though I'm really hoping she hasn't taken that aspect of mythology to heart or we're in more troub…"
Colonel O'Neill's hands clapped in front of Daniel's face and Daniel looked up to see him glaring, gesturing to the side of his head, which brought Daniel up short. Sam squinted, looking carefully until she made out the trace of dried blood by the colonel's ear.
"Oh, right," Daniel muttered. "Wait, I've got..." She watched him fumble awkwardly at the side pocket of his pants, his usually-deft fingers slipping numbly past buttons until Teal'c reached out and covered Daniel's hands with his own. Daniel looked up and nodded. "I've got a notebook and pen - they haven't taken it," he said quietly as Teal'c undid the buttons, fishing inside to find a small, cheap, spiral-bound notebook and a ballpoint pen.
Sam wondered how many of these Daniel stashed in various pockets and crannies all over his gear, and giggled at the image of him, storing them up like a squirrel stores nuts. All three of their heads turned to stare at her. "Sam?" Daniel prodded tentatively, as though afraid of her response.
&omicron
The ground beneath her was...rocking...and not actually ground, but -- her fingers splayed out, feeling patterns and splintery roughness -- wood. There was a persistent slapping noise like waves hitting a boat and she tried to roll over, groaning as every muscle protested and her stomach jumped into her throat.
"Jack!" Daniel shouted, much too loud. She tried to tell him to be quiet because the anvils in her head were quite loud enough, thank you, but her lips barely cracked open and her throat was too clogged to speak before he shouted again. "Sam's awake."
The hands that found her were not Daniel's nor Colonel O'Neill's, but Teal'c's and he gently turned her until she was propped against him. She hadn't realized how cold she was until she felt the warmth radiating from him, and suddenly all she could do was shiver in his arms. "Captain Carter," he said quietly in her ear. "You must try to drink."
A hand came down to rest on her ankle, squeezing briefly around her boot, and then something was brought to her lips. The hand on her ankle tightened when she tried to kick out and Teal'c said something calming in her ear, but it didn't soothe her panic. She froze, expecting more of the slime to spill into her mouth. Instead it was the barest trickle of water -- lukewarm and stale and the best thing she could ever remember tasting.
Before she could savor it, the cup was removed. Sam tried to chase it but Teal'c's hands held her back. She thought to open her eyes and blinked slowly, catching a washed-out image of the colonel sitting near her feet, his head cocked to one side. Daniel was across from her, arms curled loosely at his sides, and an endless blue sky behind him. Before she could focus the brightness stabbed to the back of her head and the world spun, going from white to grey to black. For an instant she didn't know whether she was going to throw up or pass out before her body settled on the less messy option.
&iota
She gasped awake as ice-cold water hit her, splashing onto her face and dripping down her back. Her arms were numb beyond the faintest tingle of circulation and she looked up to see them cuffed high above her head, holding her stretched so her heels barely reached the ground. "You will tell me your symbiote's name. You will tell me the names of your collaborators. You will tell me what lies you spread." The voice growled behind her, threat filling every word. "You will tell me what the traitors are planning."
Ocean stretched for miles in front of her until finally meeting sky at a hazy horizon where birds circled. "My name is Samantha Carter. I'm a Captain in the United States Air Force. My service number..." She didn't understand his questions, couldn't even invent convincing lies without knowing what truth she was meant to be hiding.
"Yes, yes, we've been through all that," he snarled. "The. Name. Of. Your. Symbiote."
The prod in her side was her only warning before the Goa'uld painstick turned on, and she arched away from the fire lancing through her, gone before she could open her mouth to shout.
"Who are the men with you?" the voice asked, not giving her time to think of an answer to his last question.
"My team?" Her voice cracked on the word She didn't know where they were -- couldn't see or hear or feel them -- but usually they were the men with her. She wished they were here now, with a rescue party ready to take her away to a place with blankets and hot chocolate and no scent of ocean.
"An odd way to refer to slaves," he mused. "I wonder how much you truly care." His footsteps receded and sometime later more hands arrived to cut her down, drag her away and dump her back through the trapdoor.
&theta
"I think..." Sam gasped, forcing words through a throat that didn't want to work. "They think I'm a Tok'ra"
Sam tried to focus on the words swimming in her head rather than the eyebrows in front of her -- Teal'c's shooting up as Daniel's shot down and the Colonel's moved inward in frustration. Daniel turned his head and said something to Teal'c, who scribbled something on a pad and showed it to the colonel and this conversation was going to take more time than she had.
"Why would they think that?" Colonel O'Neill asked.
"The symbiote. We sense it." Sam watched all three of their heads whip around at the voice - high pitched and hissing around the letter s - which came from somewhere to the side. A girl sat with dirty hair and bare feet on the other side of the expanse of water separating them from the floating city above.
"You can sense symbiotes?" Daniel asked incredulously.
"We can do many things. Ino made us. Swim. Attack. Disable. Sense," she said, throwing a crust of bread into the fetid water, where it was snapped up by something with too few fins and too many teeth. "Don't try to swim."
"We were not planning on doing so," Teal'c said.
"Daniel!" Colonel O'Neill practically shouted. "What's she saying?"
"I think the people here are a Goa'uld genetic experiment," Daniel shouted back at him. Sam's hands flew to her ears, pressing tight to keep her skull from vibrating to pieces at his shouting. "They can sense symbiotes. I think they can sense the markers Jolinar left behind in Sam, so they think she has one."
"Which would explain why they have drugged Captain Carter but left us relatively unharmed," Teal'c added.
"Jolinar?" the girl asked, leaning forward in curiosity. "You know?"
"We...did," Daniel said carefully, looking at her with interest. "Have you heard of him?"
"Year ago. Through the Chappa'ai. Told us of freedom. Said the goddess wasn't real. Many believed. Not enough."
"Daniel, what's she saying?" Colonel O'Neill asked irritably. Daniel just waved an arm at him, hand flapping loosely at the wrist.
&delta
"Daniel Jackson!" Teal'c's voice floated from somewhere, sounding worried. "Are you damaged?"
"I…I, oh," Daniel's voice paused, then swam again into Sam's ears. "Yeah. This can't be good."
There was a groan from somewhere. Sam didn't think it was hers. "Jack, Jack," Daniel's voice called, creating a strange sort of Doppler effect in her ears that jumbled whatever he was saying.
"Why are you whispering, Daniel?" Colonel O'Neill shouted and Sam flinched, curling in tighter. "Damnit, Daniel, I can't hear what you're saying. What's going on? What's wrong with Carter?"
She wanted to reach out, to see if they were okay, but nothing would move. Fingers fumbled on her neck, skirting over her pulse, and a hand rested in hers -- large and warm and she thought it was Teal'c's. She tried to squeeze his fingers, to let him know she was okay, but there was the sound of a struggle and someone being dragged, and maybe Teal'c shouted Daniel's name but she was already slipping under again.
&lambda
This time, when they hauled her up through the hole, they brought the colonel behind her. In the room he was held back, struggling, as fingers pried her jaw apart and more tar was poured down her throat. She tried to spit it out, felt it dribble down her chin, soak her shirt at the shoulder. She managed to get one of them full in the face, earning her a vicious backhand that increased the drumming in her head.
She lay on her side, hands tied and a dirty rag in her mouth and the colonel was across the room with somebody standing over him. All she could do was watch as they questioned him -- words that slipped through her mind -- and he tilted his head, looked confused, shouted nonsense back. They seemed desperate - shouting about a conspiracy and infiltrators and sacrilege and nothing she knew anything about. Then they were left, alone, and the colonel crawled over and removed her gag, helped her to sit.
"We'll get out of this," he said, using the rag to try to wipe off the blackness at her shoulder. She tried to see if he was hurt, but her eyes kept sliding away from wherever she tried to focus them. "Hey!" His hands came up to either side of her head, turning her to look him in the face. "We will get home and we will be okay. I promise."
There were words trying to get out -- to assure him that she was okay, if only she could think straight -- that she trusted him to get them out, trusted Teal'c and Daniel and SG-1. But they only swam in crazy circles, chasing around her brain, not finding working vocal cords.
When they came to drag the colonel away, she wanted to scream.
&epsilon
The world was spinning but at least she could see it. Trying to sit up caused her stomach to lurch and she barely managed to roll and prop herself up on her elbows, before vomiting up whatever they'd forced down her throat. It wasn't any less slimy or vile coming back up and certainly didn’t smell better. The black splatter made her retch again and again until she was wrung dry and shaking. Only then did she notice that Teal'c had an arm around her and she let him pull her up and away. His hand was blissfully cool against her forehead as she leaned against him until she stopped shaking.
"You have worried us, Captain Carter," he told her when she finally shifted to support her own weight, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. "We believe you were drugged."
"No kidding," Sam muttered, looking up to get her bearings. "Teal'c, are we on a raft?" she asked incredulously. It was dark but there were specks of light above her - though only blackness directly overhead - and she thought the floor was rocking slightly.
"Indeed," Teal'c said. "This planet's inhabitants appear to build villages which float on their ocean. This platform floats on the water beneath the city and is accessed from above."
Sam took another look around the platform. It was approximately square with about twelve feet to a side and what looked like a lip, six inches high, all around the edge, maybe to keep them from rolling off. Across from them was a body, curled up tight. She was pretty sure it was the colonel.
"Teal'c, where's Daniel?" she asked.
"Daniel Jackson was taken several hours ago," Teal'c explained, indicating what must be a trapdoor overhead as she crawled over to check on the colonel. "Colonel O'Neill's hearing was damaged in our capture. It may be best not to wake him."
Sam peered closer, found something dark near his ears that flaked off when she touched it. "His eardrum must have burst," she muttered, looking around. "Teal'c, any ideas how to get out of this mess?"
&rho
"This is the longest you've been awake," Daniel said, sitting down next to her. "We were really worried."
"What happened?" Sam asked. "I keep remembering bits and having them slip away again."
"That makes sense. They thought you had a symbiote and were trying to drug the symbiote into submission to interrogate the host and, well, we've learned from Teal'c it's really hard to knock out a symbiote. No surprise the drugs left you out of it."
"I remember something about Jolinar?" Sam asked, hearing the voice echo in her head. "But he's dead."
"He was here a few years ago," Daniel explained. "Trying to incite a rebellion against the local Goa'uld."
"Just my luck to get the Tok'ra who causes trouble, huh?"
"From what Teal'c says, I think the Goa'uld would consider them all troublemakers," Daniel commented.
A head popped out of the water, causing Sam to jump. "Look back," the woman said, as two more heads joined hers.
Daniel's head turned and Sam followed his gaze to find flames on the horizon, glowing red in the night. "What is it?" she asked.
"Freedom," Teal'c announced. "A false god has been overthrown."
"The palaces of Ino burn," one of the men in the water agreed. "No more sacrifice."
"Hey, kids, look, they lit a bonfire!" Colonel O'Neill shouted.
"We know, Jack," Daniel shouted back.
Sam reached down to grab Daniel's hand, brushing fingers against fabric and pulling back when he winced and twisted his body. There was something there, something that happened, but just as the tendrils of memory reached her the people in the water shouted and dove deep.
"Who were they?" she asked after the people disappeared, promising they would reach the 'gate before long.
"The people of this planet - the Goa'uld altered their genetics, made them amphibious," Daniel explained. "Among other talents."
&kappa
"Here," the voice came from the shadows. Something was thrown onto the floor at Teal'c's feet. "I feed. You talk." Sam watched, huddled in her corner, as Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c divided the bread into four chunks.
"Don't suppose you have any water?" Colonel O'Neill shouted into the darkness. A wasterskin appeared, arcing through the air before landing near the bread. "Carter?" He held out the waterskin and Sam nearly flew at the chance to wash the slime from her mouth. She swished three precious mouthfuls carefully, gargling to wash away the slime in her throat before spitting over the edge.
When she turned back, Teal'c was ripping a piece of bread into small pieces to feed to Daniel, who looked very displeased with the situation. "Not to sound selfish," Daniel asked between mouthfuls. "But this venom you carry - please tell me it's temporary."
The girl made a chittering sound. "Yes, yes, few days. Ten at most. Incapacitates. Killing gives no information."
"Pleasant," Daniel muttered. He looked over as Sam scooted across the platform to hand Teal'c the waterskin. "Hey, Sam, you should eat." Sam looked at the bread, felt her stomach simultaneously rumble in hunger and lurch at the thought of food and shook her head.
"Captain Carter, you must retain your strength," Teal'c insisted, handing her a small piece, clearly not giving her the option to refuse. Sam took it, looked at it and nibbled, checking it would stay down before she ate another bite. She thought maybe her head had cleared a bit and she looked up to find Daniel in intense conversation with their visitor.
"Carter," the colonel said to her left, shoving Daniel's notepad into her hands. "I can't hear them anyway - I'll make Teal'c tell me later. Right now I need to know how you're doing."
Sam looked at him and took the pad in shaky hands - unsure how to answer his question, given how uncertain she was of her own thoughts. She watched, as though from far away, as her hand moved the pen slowly and shakily across the paper.
&beta
They found the woman not far from the 'gate. The corridors of this structure were made of roughly-hewn wood and looked as though they were built with no central plan. Daniel kept hoping each turn, each doorway, would be an exit, so they could see the place from the outside.
They turned a corner and she was there. Her hair was long, dark, and slicked back and she moved with a smooth, almost swimming motion - not quite human, but not entirely alien. She turned at their footsteps and her eyes widened when they approached.
"Hi, my name is Daniel Jackson," Daniel started to explain, stepping forward and raising his hands in a non-threatening manner. "We're explorers from far away and..."
The woman's eyes - green ringed with black - were locked on Sam in a mixture of horrified fear and vengeance. Sam took a step back as Daniel turned to follow her gaze. "We won't hurt you..." he started, but she turned as if to run. Sam watched, locked in place, as Daniel reached forward to grab the woman's arm. "No, wait!" he called and then shouted as something changed about the woman's skin - like hundreds of tiny spikes rippling beneath the surface. He pulled his hands back, gasping as though burned, and from feet away Sam could see the tiny pinpricks covering his palms and fingers.
The colonel was already stepping forward, gun lowered, pushing Daniel back when the woman opened her mouth and screamed. It was un-Earthly, inhuman, sending vibrations deep into Sam's skull, making her ears pulse. She slapped her hands over her ears, desperately trying to keep the sound out. Dimly she heard the colonel screaming, hands over his own head, and watched as he fell to the ground and then everywhere was light and sound and concussive force.
She never felt herself hit the floor.
&nu
They brought Daniel out and placed him across from her, tying them both into chairs. "We have seen that you treat your slaves as equals," the man said, leather creaking as he walked. "Presumably you prefer them undamaged."
"I can't tell you what I don't know," Sam said again, the same thing she'd been desperately telling him for the last hour. "I am not host to a symbiote. You captured us right after we arrived - there was no one we could have talked to. I know nothing about a rebellion."
"You lie," he sneered. "We can sense the symbiote within you. Do not lie to protect it." He reached down, fitting something over her hand and she looked to see the golden curve of a Goa'uld healing device across her fingers. "You will prove that you are lying."
For a moment, she didn't understand. The device didn't light up or make noise or feel any different than a rock, though something in her blood tingled and there were whispers in her head, negative images of using one before on bodies Sam didn't recognize. The man stalked over to Daniel's right, reaching down to take the limp hand dangling off the end of the chair. Sam remembered why -- because he'd been stung with some form of venom -- had no feeling, no movement -- only hoped to get it back. In the instant before, she knew what was about to happen, and she locked her eyes on Daniel's, begging him to keep looking at her, not down.
The snap of bone echoed through the chamber.
Before her Daniel flinched, his skin whitening, and yet no trace of pain crossed his face. Sam held his gaze through two more snaps, not daring to look, to assess the damage lest his eyes follow her gaze. "Heal him." She was so focused on Daniel she hadn't heard their interrogator move, but her arm was unstrapped and the hand with the device held forward.
"Sam, no," Daniel gasped. "You can't do it." But she'd done it once, the day they'd met Thor -- made a healing device glow and pulse with the potential of power -- maybe she could use it now, make something good happen. "Sam," Daniel said louder, determination in his eyes. "You. Can't. Do. It." And suddenly she understood that he didn't mean she couldn't heal him, just that she couldn't do it here and now, couldn't do anything that proved their captor right.
Back through the trapdoor, Sam managed to stave off the effects of the new dose long enough to take Daniel's hand in her own. She examined the three fingers bent at wrong angles, and carefully straightened them back, wincing at the grate of bone on bone. Daniel sat stoically, staring to the middle of nowhere and feeling none of it. She splinted and wrapped them with strips of fabric torn from her jacket and anything the colonel and Teal'c could find, somehow making it to the edge before emptying the contents of her stomach.
The whole time she never met Daniel's eyes.
&pi
There was a warm body pressed against her and a stifled gasp escaped from it as she twitched. "Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c's voice asked softly.
The body stirred and sat, slowly as though something hurt too much to consider moving and Sam tried to reach into the disappearing body heat. Her eyes opened at the sound of a hissed whimper through clenched teeth above her.
The colonel gingerly held Daniel's right hand -- wrapped in fabric and what looked to be a fairly decent makeshift splint -- and Daniel's face paled at the touch. "I didn't think I'd be wanting it to not wear off so quickly." Daniel's voice was strained.
"The bastards took all our medkits. No drugs, unless you want to grab one of them again," Colonel O'Neill said. "Just hang in there, Daniel. I don't think I can do anything without making it worse. We'll get you to Doc Fraiser soon."
"I'm so sorry, Daniel," the words escaped Sam's mouth before she thought to utter them, unsure why she was apologizing.
"Sam! How're you feeling?" Daniel looked happier than Sam thought he should.
She pushed herself up to her knees, listing sideways as the ground, no, boat, rocked beneath them and the colonel reached out, steadying her with an arm on either side. "Whoa there, Carter. Take it easy."
"No, sir, I think I need..." The boat rocked again, taking her stomach with it and she snapped her jaw closed, focusing her eyes on the distant horizon and taking deep breaths, counting prime numbers until the world stopped spinning. "I think I need to sit for a while."
Colonel O'Neill looked at her, leaning back when she seemed stable enough to not fall over again. "You're going to have to speak up."
&mu
"Brought them," the voice squeaked from the shadows. "Can help."
Sam turned her head, saw flickering candles across the way. Daniel and Teal'c were already at the edge and when she tried to push her way up, Colonel O'Neill came over, put his shoulder under hers, wrapped an arm around her hips, and helped her over when her muscles didn't want to respond.
"You come from Jolinar?" the voice was deeper.
"Uh, not exactly. But we've met Jolinar and we share the same goals," Daniel explained. It was odd to see him talking with his hands loose on his knees and not punctuating his words. "Can you help us?"
There was a flurry of voices and what sounded like an argument in clicking tongues and hissing lisps. "Ino not true god," one voice spat. "If we tell, they learn," another insisted. "Jolinar gave us" and "Two day," several agreed at once.
"There is feast - two days," one of the voices announced. "Uprising planned. Jolinar start. We free you then."
"Carter," Colonel O'Neill said in her ear. "What are they saying?"
Sam pulled her eyes from the flames, entranced by how they flickered and danced, then turned around to look the colonel in the face, forgetting why she was doing so. "They will help us escape, O'Neill," Teal'c's voice boomed over her head. "In two days time there will be an uprising against the false god. They will free us then." Sam let her head fall onto the colonel's shoulder. She thought she could last two more days.
&xi
The room was different this time -- darker, grimier -- and Sam couldn't remember them dragging her up through the door or how long she'd been here. Her tongue was coated in the vile liquid, her chin felt numb where it had spilled and she shook her head against the buzzing. Movement in front of her swam her vision in to focus on bodies moving around the room.
Daniel stood in front of her and fell to his knees from a push to his shoulder blades, unable to catch himself as he fell forward. She tried to reach him, catch his fall, but she moved too slowly and chains held her back.
"Leave him alone," she whispered, voice cracking over the words.
"Tell us what we need to know." She swung her head toward the voice, watched as he slid the healing device back over her fingers. "You can end this right now."
"No, Sam," Daniel said. "Look at me." She looked into his eyes, as lost in them as she'd been in the ocean earlier and he found the strength to smile at her and nod his head. "Almost time." He mouthed the words and then set his face as the man stepped closer.
"What is the name of your symbiote," the man asked, carelessly ripping off the dressings Sam had put on Daniel earlier.
"She isn't a host," Daniel shouted at him before Sam could open her mouth. "Just let us go." Sam heard the fear in his voice, knew that even though he couldn't feel the pain now, he must worry about later damage. She had watched him carefully handling artifacts, watched his fingers trace over carvings as though they can read the secrets buried in the stone. So, when another snap echoed through the chamber, Sam couldn't hold back a muffled cry as Daniel flinched at the sound.
Two more and she finally let out a strangled sob. "Stop! I'll do it, I'll do it." Daniel was shaking his head, eyes wide, but the man only smiled a grin with too many teeth and shoved Daniel forward until she could reach out her hand and will the device to turn on. It built beneath her skin, energy running at her fingertips, buzzing up her veins and she felt the voice whispering again about power and control and finally, finally, but nothing happened. She was about to lower her hand in defeat, bow her head and apologize to Daniel, when all the walls exploded.
There were shouts and voices and hands and Teal'c was there and she was falling away. She slipped the device into her cargo pocket, as they pulled her back to lose herself amongst the mass of bodies.
&alpha
Sam stepped through the event horizon, Daniel at her side, to find the colonel and Teal'c already looking around the room. "Huh," O'Neill said, staring at the wooden walls lashed together with rope. "Should we be worried they put their stargate in a shack?"
"The MALP didn't find anything of concern." Sam shrugged. "And we couldn't exactly send a UAV."
"Right. Wouldn't want to make first contact by punching a hole through their wall." Colonel O'Neill wandered off to survey one end of the room, waving his hand at Teal'c to check the other while Sam sent the MALP back to SGC.
"Um. Is the floor moving?" Daniel asked, squatting down next to her.
Sam put one hand to the floor, noticing a slight rocking she hadn't been paying attention to. "I think it is. Like we're on a large boat." She sniffed the air. "Does it smell salty to you?"
Daniel lifted his head and then sneezed violently. Blowing his nose he looked at her apologetically. "Sorry, can't really smell anything right now. Here's hoping it's not a stormy day?"
"Ready to explore, kids?" the colonel asked, walking over and tapping his fingers on the DHD. "I vote we try the door." He pointed toward Teal'c who was standing in front of a wooden door, hung on rusty hinges and not quite fitting in the surrounding frame.
&sigma
The boat rocked gently beneath her as Sam pushed herself up - finally awake and alert and much too tired of sleeping. Colonel O'Neill was curled up at one end of the boat, jacket pulled tight around him against the wind. Teal'c sat ramrod straight, legs crossed, eyes closed at the other end. Beside her Daniel sat, hunched over, and Sam realized what had woken her.
His breathing came in short, stuttered gasps, his hand cradled loosely in his lap, face white with the effort of holding still. Sam crawled over carefully, reached a hand out to his knee. His eyes were bright when he looked up.
"It's all worn off, hasn't it?" she asked quietly.
"When they come back," he said around clenched teeth, "I might ask..." Somehow she knew he wouldn't. She reached down, felt the round lump in her pocket, then slipped her hand in, pulling out the device.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly.
"Sam, it's not your fault. Janet will fix it," Daniel said, pretending they both could believe that he'd ever heal like new. His eyes widened when he saw what was in her hand. "You don't have to..."
"Yes, I do," she told him, reaching out to take his hand as gently as she could and then holding out the device, willing the memories to surface. It was as though she could feel the naquadah in her blood, buzzing and flowing, all concentrating down into her hand and her entire awareness focused on the damage in front of her - the broken bone and torn muscle, the cells fighting off infection.
The device in her hand pulsed once, twice, before it began to glow and she directed the tissue how to knit together, to reform, to become new. The power was heady and she dove deeper, finding scars she could repair, damage she could heal, making everything better and better until Daniel hissed and jerked and a warm hand enclosed her wrist, pulling it back.
"That is enough," Teal'c said in her ear. "You must stop, Captain Carter." She struggled, the siren song in her blood calling about what else she could do, and then froze. Teal'c's gaze was all too knowing, all too understanding as he slipped the device from her hand and flung it far into the ocean where it sank with a splash.
ETA: Go To This Entry to find the scenes in chronological order (author's note: I think it makes for a far less interesting story) and the deleted teamy goodness alternate ending.