Fic: 'Rusted Wheel' (Sam/Jack) Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Day Four
Sam spends another day on ringer duty. She doesn’t think she’s imagining that the women in this section are quieter than usual as if overly aware that there is one less person working with them today.
Timid little Donna spends a great deal of time spreading the cloth haphazardly across her station as if attempting to obliterate any evidence that there had ever been someone else sharing it with her. Sam recognizes this as the coping mechanism it is. Delusion and faulty memory, it’s the only way these women know how to deal with the helplessness. Pretend it doesn’t exist and it might just go away.
Sam wishes she didn’t find that impulse quite so familiar as she does.
Not even Tess, on her standard predatory march through the ranks, stoops so low as to bother Donna, or to acknowledge the missing woman who had only died yesterday but already might as well never have existed.
Sam never even bothered to learn her name.
Tess instead focuses on Sam, a far more neutral target. “How’s the hand, sweetie?” she drawls with a wink as she passes by.
Sam ignores the dig, putting her energy into turning the crank on the ringer, pulling the cloth through. She holds her tongue because she’s bigger than that, she tells herself, and not at all because she’s still got a raging headache and can’t think of anything better than, ‘My hand will feel a lot better after it wipes that smirk off your face.’ Clearly insults have never really been her thing. She’ll have to ask the Colonel for some pointers when he gets back tonight.
Wiping a hand across her brow, Sam arches her back, thankful to have another day at the relatively easy task rather than bucket brigade duty. She can only hope the effects of her misguided attempt to study the collars won’t last too long. She’d slept like the dead the first few nights here, but an inconvenient bout of insomnia is setting in now. If this trouble sleeping is born of ill ease-the haunted images of that nameless woman strangled slowly-well, she can’t afford that sort of weakness. She needs her strength to find a way out of here, not to mention survive the long days of labor and the shifting manipulations of the prisoners.
She needs to do her best to forget, just like everyone else.
The end of second shift doesn’t come a moment too soon as far as Sam is concerned. Ignoring her hunger and fatigue, she steps into the shaded alcove, sitting down and pretending to be fighting with the laces on her boots. The rest of the women file out without giving her a second glance.
Once alone, Sam reaches under the bench and pulls out the rough ceramic jug she pinched earlier from the trash bins. Originally used to hold dye, it will duplicate very well as a water bottle. It’s been the biggest challenge so far, thinking of ways to get enough water to survive a trek in the desert, should it ever come to that.
Tugging her BDU shirt from around her waist, she wraps it carefully around the jug, tucks it under her arm, and takes the back way to the dormitory. It’s empty when she gets there, all the other women out meeting the wagons.
Shifting the worn pile of blankets that serves as their bed, Sam pries the loose board they’d worked free the second night here, and slides the empty ink jug into the space underneath. She’ll retrieve it to fill with water from the stream later after everyone has fallen asleep.
This is only the fourth day, but they’ve already got a pretty good stash of water and supplies going in their little hiding spot. Their escape is an unspoken inevitability. They just need to find a way around the collars.
“Hey.”
Sam looks up to see the Colonel in the doorway. “Sir,” she says, carefully sliding the plank back in place and covering it with blankets.
They walk over to the cookhouse together, but don’t join the rest of the prisoners at the tables, rather retreating back outside. There’s a fallen log on the ground near the stream, under some of the only shade available. It’s hot and dusty, but at least offers them some semblance of privacy to discuss any developments of the day.
Neither have much to report today, but Sam’s been working a few nagging questions at the back of her mind all day. “There’s just one thing that’s bothering me,” she says, pausing slightly when she realizes she’s left herself open for a glib remark there, but the Colonel just keeps eating. She tries not to read into that too much. “Where is the naquadah going?”
He looks up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s a warehouse here where all the textiles are being stockpiled. Hannah says a wagon train is sent out once a season, back to the provincial capital. But what about the naquadah?”
“They load it in wagons,” the Colonel says, his eyes slipping distant as if trying to visualize it. “But they don’t follow us back to the compound.”
That isn’t exactly surprising considering she’s seen no evidence of technology here that could utilize electricity, let alone naquadah, but it certainly is suspicious. “So where is it all going?”
“As far as I could tell, they’ve only moved the collected ore once.” He points to the right of the compound. “If we think of the mines as being to the north, they went off almost due east.”
Sam follows his gesture, staring off to the east of the camp, but she can’t see anything other than flat desert stretching almost to the horizon where a low lying, jagged looking set of hills bleed into the sky. It’s hard to imagine that there is anything out there.
“And the wagons were back the very next day?” That would mean their stockpile must be pretty close within range.
“I couldn’t say for sure they were the same wagons.”
“You could try following it next time,” she says, knowing it needs to be said.
His eyes dart over to the tall trees just on the other side of the fence, the newly disturbed earth that is the only grave marker in the rudimentary cemetery.
It’s an uncomfortable reminder that choosing a direction and just going isn’t an option for them, not with Sam tethered to the camp. They have to take the claim that stepping even a foot beyond the fence will kill her a hell of a lot more seriously now.
“They’ll come for us,” the Colonel says with his typical hard-edged optimism.
“Of course,” she agrees, not voicing what both of them know perfectly well-that if this is a different planet than Methos, the SGC actually finding them will be a lot like finding a needle in a haystack. If they don’t even know how they got here, how is anyone else supposed to figure it out?
With a sigh, Sam pushes to her feet, stretching her back before taking the Colonel’s empty cup and refilling it at the stream.
He gives her a funny look, but mutters, “Thanks,” before downing the water.
They drop back into silence as they finish their evening meal.
She watches him over the edge of her bowl though, gauging the shadows in his face, the angles of his shoulders. He looks exhausted. He lost weight during his recuperation, but hadn’t gained much back before he returned to the field. It isn’t their style, taking extended time off. SG-1 believes far too much in getting back through the gate as soon as possible as the best possible form of therapy.
She wonders if that just makes them all fools.
“You’re tired,” she observes before she can think better of it.
“Nah,” he says, shrugging off her concern. “Not my first stint in a naquadah mine, if you remember.”
“Sir,” she chides.
“I’ll survive,” he insists, steel under his flippant tone.
He’s angry.
There’s nothing in his body language to support this, nothing in his typically impenetrable façade beyond the exhaustion etched into his face, the weary slump of his shoulders. She still catches herself reaching out to touch his arm, her hand pulling back at the last moment.
He eyes her, the unexpected gesture not lost on him. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she replies, tucking her hand back under her leg.
His eyes narrow. “Carter.”
“It’s just a headache,” she insists.
If he can lie, so can she.
* * *
His detox from the sarcophagus takes almost two weeks.
She sits outside the door sometimes, forces herself to stay there and listen to every heinous word that pours out of his mouth. Logically, she knows this is just the addiction talking, the agony of his body suffering through withdrawal.
He takes turns, raging against each of them, against anyone he can blame for the pain he’s in. Baal, Kanan, the Tok’ra, even Daniel for some reason. But most of all her. Never by name, but she hears it just the same.
She earned this, every hateful word and horrifying flashback.
“Over my dead body!”
She did this to him.
* * *
Day Five
“For God’s sake,” Sam exclaims as the tepid water slops over the edge of the table, ruining her last hour of work and seeping down into her boots.
“I’m so sorry,” Donna stutters, desperately trying to sop up the water she just spilled but only managing to dowse Sam again. “My hand slipped and I--.”
Sam lifts a hand, feeling a particularly nasty spike of pain erupting behind her eye. “Just…stop,” she snaps.
Donna seems to deflate, wincing at the hard edge in Sam’s voice. She nods silently, stepping out of the way as Sam takes over the clean up. Sam tries to feel bad about yelling at someone as timid as Donna, but her feet are sloshing unpleasantly and how the hell is she supposed to think with this damn pounding in her head?
“Problems, sweetheart?” a voice asks.
“Not now, Tess,” Sam bites out, closing her eyes and trying to take a deep breath.
Tess’ hand lands on Sam’s arm and it’s just the last straw. Before she can give it serious thought, Sam spins, dislodging the unwelcome hand, her arm hard across Tess’ chest as she shoves her back towards the nearest post. The anger burning in her stomach with white-hot intensity is whispering for Sam to just let it all go for once, to give Tess exactly what she deserves.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tess sputters, face livid. There’s no fear here despite the huge disparity in their heights, no timid apologies, just indignation and not a little anger.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sam catches the movement of Tess’s cronies quickly converging on them. Shit. Sam forces herself to drop her arm, gritting her teeth in an attempt to rein in her frayed temper.
“You’ve gone and done it now,” Tess says, one hand rubbing at her throat.
Sam’s trying to come up with a suitable rejoinder when without warning pain slashes across her back. The cronies are still way too far away to have touched her, and Tess is just staring at her, her eyes widening in momentary shock before her jaw clenches with distaste and what might be pity as Sam slips to her knees.
Sam strangles back a cry as another slash of red-hot anguish erupts across her back, but the third and the fourth follow too quickly and she can’t hold back any longer. Around her, she’s barely aware that the entire courtyard has fallen to silence, only the hiss and spatter of the fires vying with Sam as she pants against the pain.
She watches feet move around her, no one pausing to help, no one interested in her personal drama after the initial moment of shock. Not even Tess lingers, revenge apparently no longer on her mind.
At some point, one of the younger girls must have fetched Hannah because she’s at Sam’s side, helping her hobble into the shade. There’s no new pain now, just the lingering agonized echoes and if Sam didn’t know better she’d think someone had taken a lash to her flesh.
“Is it your back?” Hannah asks.
Sam nods, biting down on her lip.
Hannah disappears again for a moment, coming back with relief in the form of cool wet cloths that she drapes across Sam’s back. Sam sighs with appreciation, the water soothing enough of the pain away to make it at least bearable.
Her hands are still shaking.
“How could he be so foolish?” Hannah mumbles furiously.
Sam tries to twist around to look at her. “What…what do you mean?”
Hannah shakes her head, handing Sam a cup of water. “I thought you said your heathmate was a man of compassion!”
Sam’s brain isn’t exactly working at peak efficiency at the moment, so she sucks down the water and tries to breathe deeply.
“He must have angered the guards,” Hannah continues to mutter under her breath. “Foolish man.”
“I don’t understand,” Sam manages.
Hannah pauses. “They must have told you when you arrived.”
“Told me what?”
“She will pay the price in your stead,” Hannah intones like an oft-repeated phrase.
Sam shakes her head, ignoring the bile rising in her throat. “You can’t possibly mean…”
She is bound to you.
Sam watched that woman die two days ago. She gets that the collars have kill switches, but is Hannah trying to say they also translate…punishment? Pain? She latches on to the problem like a lifeline, focusing her mind down onto it like a logic puzzle.
She supposes theoretically it’s possible. After all, when she’d used the memory device to recall Jolinar’s time in Netu, she’d experienced the Tok’ra’s pain as if she had really been there. But even that hadn’t quite felt like this.
Gingerly, Sam lifts her shirt, still not certain what she’s going to find. Twisting slightly, she catches sight of the tail end of a deep red welt curling around her side, her skin puckered and angry, but not broken.
She can’t even begin to theorize how something like this is possible. The sensation of pain is one thing, the reality of actually having damage transferred to her body… That’s impossible, right?
Her fingers lift to the collar, the faint hum of the metal that she hopes she’s just imagining. If the signal feeds directly to her brain stem, if it is somehow capable of convincing the brain of the reality of the injury, could her body truly react? Could her blood vessels rupture in response?
God, is it possible?
“You should return to your quarters,” Hannah advises, probably catching the blanching of her skin. “No one will expect you to work any more today.”
Sam’s not sure she believes that, but when she looks up, the other women in the laundry are all studiously looking around her or through her and it’s so similar to the woman’s death the other day that Sam feels her stomach clench.
They don’t want to see her, to be reminded of what might happen to them at any moment.
This is helplessness Sam never thought she would have to experience.
* * *
When the Colonel returns from the mines that evening, Sam watches him from the corner of the cookhouse, registers the slightly stiff way he walks as if refusing to betray any discomfort in front of the guards. Sam doesn’t think she imagines the way the other men look at him, like they are all a little in awe of him. Or afraid. But it’s nothing to how the women stare when his back is turned, the uneasy mix of resentment and apprehension.
Sam grabs two bowls of stew and leaves the cookhouse.
The moment Sam walks up to him, she knows he has been oblivious to all of this. He has no idea what he’s done.
“Are you okay, sir?” Sam asks, keeping her voice carefully neutral, refusing to let any of her own pain show.
He grimaces when he tries to shrug nonchalantly. “Had a little problem with the guards today.”
She can hear the anger under his words, or maybe that’s still her own anger still bubbling right under the surface, a remnant from this morning. From before everything went to hell. Only now she’s having a hard time remembering why she’d been angry. Donna hadn’t really done anything worth the reaction. What really set her off?
She rolls her neck, trying to shake off the buzz of anger that’s making it hard to think properly.
Sitting gingerly down on the log next to the Colonel, she hands him his bowl of food. “You should be more careful, sir.”
He stares straight ahead at the horizon, but it’s like he’s seeing something else entirely. “It’s not bad,” he says.
He’s lying. He’s been lying for a long time.
“What about you? Anything new?” he asks, blinking something away as he shifts on the log to look at her.
“No,” Sam says, keeping her eyes trained on the dirt. “Nothing happened.”
She forces herself to eat.
* * *
Sam is hovering outside the infirmary. It’s been three days since the Colonel escaped Baal’s fortress, since he made it back against all odds.
“Can I see him?” Sam asks when Janet steps out into the hall.
“Let me see if he’s up?” she says, giving Sam a strained smile.
Sam follows after Janet, knowing she’s intruding, but drawn in by the sound of their voices and the wariness on Janet’s face. She stops behind the first row of curtains.
“Sir, Sam is here to see you,” Janet says.
“No,” he says, his voice hoarse but certain. Ruthlessly certain. “Tell her I’m asleep. Tell her--. Hell, I don’t care. Just, no. I don’t want to see her.”
Janet steps back out, clearly surprised to find Sam so close. Surprise quickly morphs into pity though, and Sam can’t stand to see it. She heads back out into the hall, Janet right on her heels.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Janet starts to say. “Just give him some time. I’m sure--.”
“It’s fine, Janet,” Sam says, already backing away, a fake smile plastered on her face like his words haven’t hurt her. Why would they? “Don’t worry about it.”
The lies don’t stop the burning in her stomach.
* * *
Day Six
Hannah appears in the doorway the next morning just as the Colonel is leaving for the wagons. Sam feels a lurch in her stomach, assuming Hannah has come to check on her, scared that she might give away her secret.
Sam can’t explain why she’s keeping her injury from the Colonel, can’t even begin to justify it, just knows that sitting there on the log with him, she’d seen something, understood something in him in that moment that kept her silent. She can’t explain it.
Sam needn’t have worried that Hannah would say anything though. The moment the woman catches sight of the Colonel, she shrinks quickly out of the way, her eyes dropping to the floor, but not before Sam catches the edge of her distaste.
The Colonel gives Sam a look, his eyebrows lifting in question, but she just shakes her head, giving him a small smile. She doubts explaining Hannah’s fear of him would work anymore than trying to convince Hannah that the Colonel is actually the last man here she would ever have reason to be scared of. Not with these bruises still fresh on her skin.
The smile drops off her face the second he turns his back on her.
Hannah waits until he disappears outside before stepping into the space with Sam. “I thought you would require help this morning,” she says.
“It’s really not that bad,” Sam insists, getting to her feet with minimal wincing. Grin and bear it is a way of life with SG-1. Just another normal day, she tells herself.
Hannah doesn’t look like she believes her, but doesn’t press.
They step out of the dormitory, and Sam presses a hand to her temple as she squints against the searing light, the way it notches up the pressure building along the base of her skull. It’s enough to make her momentarily forget the discomfort of her back. She thinks it may be time to finally admit the truth-the headache isn’t going away. It’s only getting worse.
“Sam, are you unwell?” Hannah asks.
“A headache,” she confirms.
There’s a flash of alarm on Hannah’s face, her body leaning slightly away from Sam as if scared of contamination. “I see. Has it gotten worse or is it simply the same since you arrived?”
Sam doesn’t know what makes her lie. “The same,” she says. Maybe she just can’t stand to have Hannah, her one connection here, begin to look through her like a ghost like everyone else.
Hannah’s relief is obvious. “It will fade with more time,” she says, nodding her head as if it is a foregone conclusion.
“I’m sure it will,” Sam says, forcing a smile on her face.
Hannah digs into her pocket, her hand pulling free with a small ceramic jar. “Take this,” she says, pressing it into Sam’s hand. “For the bruising.”
Sam twists open the jar, a deep earthy smell-slightly pungent with a trace of something flowery like lavender-reaching her nose. Inside are the remnants of a creamy salve, clearly much used. Sam doesn’t need to be told to get how precious resources are here.
Sam shakes her head, trying to give it back. “I couldn’t.”
“Keep it,” she insists.
Sam has long ago realized that Hannah is a woman who defines herself by her helpfulness, like a mother hen without a brood. She thinks Hannah belongs somewhere surrounded by grandchildren, but the bizarre lack of children here is one of the questions Sam simply refuses to ask.
“Thank you,” Sam says, slipping it into her pocket.
“Have a good day,” Hannah says, turning towards the building housing the looms. She pauses after only a few steps, looking back at Sam. “If you are indeed still ill, you should see the warden. Perhaps there is something he can do.” She isn’t quite meeting Sam’s eye as she says this, but Sam thinks even an empty suggestion is better than what she has right now.
“Okay,” Sam says. “Thanks.”
Hannah nods and disappears into the workshop.
She drags herself to the laundry, but her concentration is shot and after a while she becomes convinced that Hattie is going to smack her upside the head if she drops one more freshly laundered bolt of cloth in the dirt. When she mentions seeing the warden, Hattie practically shoves her out the door with relief.
The warden eyes Sam suspiciously, clearly wary of her claims of a malfunctioning collar, the building pressure in her mind, the headaches that won’t fade.
“Please,” she insists.
Maybe she looks as bad as she feels because he eventually shrugs. “Fine. Stay here,” he orders, turning to go into his office.
For a moment Sam considers following him, pretending confusion or stupidity, but the guard hasn’t taken his eyes off her, his body shifting across her path.
A few moments later the warden reappears, a small device in his hand. Sam’s eyes latch on to it, noting the color of the metal, the glyphs that clearly mark it as Goa’uld. Her fingers twitch.
The warden squints down at the device, holding it up to her neck. He mashes at the buttons with the incomprehension of someone unfamiliar with technology, and she knows then that the warden is just another pawn in the food chain.
“It’s functioning fine,” he says after a moment, jamming it carelessly back into his pocket. “Now get back to work.”
Sam hesitates, weighing the risk of just grabbing the damn thing, and the warden doesn’t miss it.
He gestures at the guard. “I said get back to work.”
The guard gives her a little push with the butt of his rifle, nothing particularly savage, but he unerringly manages to hit a nasty patch of bruising on her back. Sam’s jaw tightens against the nausea rolling in her stomach at the spike of pain, gingerly walking off before the guard can give her another jab.
She doesn’t go back to the laundry, instead wandering past the cookhouse and the rear storage sheds until there’s nothing between her and the desert other than the flimsy, faded rope line. She stares at it, this impenetrable line, and tries to fight the swell of hopelessness building in her stomach.
Eventually she hears the wagons approach in the distance, the lowing of the alien beasts pulling them. She watches the dust disperse around her, back out into the desert.
He’s looking for her.
“Where the hell are you, Carter?” she hears as if he has whispered in her ear.
She turns.
There’s no one there. She’s alone.
She walks back towards the buildings.
* * *
He can’t breathe. Kanan has ruthlessly shoved him so far back into a corner of his own mind that he imagines himself gasping for air, scrambling for a way out. Panic claws at him.
He has no control.
Fucking Tok’ra. He can’t even feel a beat of smugness at being proven right. In the end, there really is no difference. A snake is a snake, and a host is just a vehicle.
When Kanan finally lets him up for air, the snake’s chokehold on his senses releasing, they are standing in the doorway to a small chamber.
A girl looks up at them from where she sits on the edge of a bed. Her head tilts to one side, eyes sad and confused and yet somehow, still trusting.
“Is it you?”
* * *
Day Eight
Sam spends the next two days watching the men and their hearthmates as she waits for the marks on her back to fade. She’s building facts, testing her hypothesis, really really hoping to prove it false, but the evidence only builds and compounds upon her suspicions.
She sees the way the women serve their mates with barely the need for a word between them. It’s far more than mere survival instinct, she’s realizing. More like an intuition, an ability to read mood and anticipate needs. Like slackening a man’s thirst after a long dusty ride.
It’s the one tool the women have, this connection, but it’s just another part of the trap.
Sam’s fingers trail along the metal of her collar, wondering at the part of her brain that can still be fascinated by the technology keeping her here. More important than the how is the why. Where had these people gotten their hands on it? The collars are technology incongruous with the primitive world of the camp. She hasn’t seen even the tiniest sign anywhere else. They are still doing laundry over open fires and using handmade soap for God’s sake.
She remembers the warden poking at the accompanying collar device with all the understanding of a two year old.
Her eyes begin to linger on the warden’s house. She logs careful mental notes about who goes in and who goes out, and when. Only twice a day does anyone other than the warden or a guard enter the building. Mid-morning a woman Sam doesn’t know approaches with buckets, rags, and a broom, apparently being in charge of cleaning his house. And then there is the varying troop of women who approach each evening after sunset. Sam suspects those duties are a bit different.
She files the information away.
At lunch, Sam jabs her spoon into her bowl, and tries to work her way around to the question she needs to ask Hannah. One last piece of information to gather, because there is still the possibility that all of this is really nothing more than Sam losing her mind.
Sam clears her throat. “Can I ask…”
Hannah lifts her head. “Yes?”
Sam forces herself to put down the spoon and stop fidgeting. “I was wondering if the collars… If maybe…” She stumbles, having no idea how to breech this topic. She takes a breath and tries a different tack. “Do the collars only translate pain?”
“What do you mean?”
Oh, hell. She’s just going to have to come out and say it. “Have you ever felt your hearthmate’s emotions, or…thoughts, or anything?”
Hannah’s eyes widen, like maybe this is something the women just don’t discuss. She looks away. “I feel his…needs, his temper. But his thoughts, no.”
Sam blows out a breath, nodding. “Okay.” Maybe there is something different enough about their brain chemistry to explain it, or maybe she messed something up when she tinkered with the collars. Who knows?
The only thing Sam can be remotely thankful for is that it seems to be only working in one direction. When she scalded her hand that first day, he hadn’t felt a thing. So she doesn’t have to worry about Jack O’Neill hearing her innermost thoughts.
She just has to worry about hearing his.
* * *
In the dark, Sam watches Jack sleep.
If she’s been uncharacteristically quiet, he hasn’t noticed, too busy slipping into his own impenetrable stretch of silence. The long days in the mine are beginning to take their toll on him and it’s just one more thing grinding away at them in this godforsaken place. She thinks maybe the impossibility of their situation is finally sinking in. They’re trapped, and every day that passes without sign of rescue is another notch of inevitability.
His sleep is troubled more often than not now, his face compressing in the patch of moonlight.
It’s nothing concrete, just a feeling of frustration, claustrophobia, words he tries so damn hard to hold back. A woman’s voice, distant and echoing. Is it you?
She doesn’t know what any of it means, but it’s enough that she suspects.
His labored breathing seems loud in the small space, somehow amplified as she watches him in the dark. He jerks awake on a curse.
“Sir,” she says, even though she knows better. He’s never had a nightmare off world, but it seems obvious that she should ignore it, look the other way.
She can’t.
He ignores her, grabbing for his shoes and pulling them on with jerky movements. Every nuance of his body language screams for her to leave him alone, to give him space, but she knows exactly what is underneath. He’s drifting, a little lost. Nothing to hold on to.
Is it you?
“Are you all right?” she tries again, her fingers reaching out to brush across his arm, his flesh warm and fevered.
“Leave it, Carter,” he snaps, shrugging off the contact and pushing out through the door. He leaves nothing but echoing pain and frustration in his wake, jarring against her skull.
She can’t follow his order, even if she wants to.
No one’s giving her a choice.
Chapter Three