Stargate SG-1 Ficlet: A Way Out
Title: A Way Out
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jack O’Neill, Daniel Jackson, Ba’al.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 995
Spoilers: Abyss.
Summary: Jack is trapped, helpless, being tortured by Ba’al for information he doesn’t have.
Written For: Challenge 302: Gravity at fan_flashworks.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Stargate: SG-1, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
‘Damn the Goa’uld and their thieving ways, damn them to whatever hell they believe in for taking whatever they want and finding new and clever ways of turning it into a weapon, just so they can play games with it. And if they don’t believe in hell, I’ll give ‘em one!’
If the thought’s a tad incoherent, O’Neill figures no one can blame him. Coherency isn’t exactly a priority right now; anger is more sustaining, and he’s got plenty of that, right up there along with frustration, fear, and pain.
How many times has he been here, splayed against this cold metal grid, feeling as if he’s staring up at Ba’al’s smug, self-satisfied face from the bottom of a well? He doesn’t remember, he lost count somewhere around… was it the ninth or tenth time? He supposes it doesn’t matter in the long run because it’s just gonna keep happening, over and over again, tortured to death and then revived in a sarcophagus, until he tells that slimy bastard everything he wants to know.
Except that O’Neill doesn’t know what it is Ba’al wants! How can he give up information he doesn’t have? The Tok’ra symbiote is gone, he never should have agreed to them sticking a snake in his head in the first place, not even to save his life, but Ba’al keeps insisting that O’Neill knows everything the damned snake knew, and he doesn’t! He’s already told Ba’al that, multiple times.
Ba’al isn’t buying it.
So here O’Neill is yet again, at the mercy of artificial gravity, something every Goa’uld ship has, something the air force is installing in all of their craft capable of space flight. No one but a Goa’uld would ever think to weaponize gravity! That’s just insane, not to mention sadistic, and damned painful. No effort required on the part of his torturer; knives are simply dropped at him, or drips of acid that set his body on fire, white hot agony coursing through his veins, searing along every nerve, and all the time Ba’al keeps asking the same damned questions, over and over, until O’Neill thinks his head’s about to explode from them, and for what? Answers he doesn’t even have!
O’Neill’s been trained to withstand torture, but right now he thinks he might just tell Ba’al everything, if he had anything to tell, just to make him stop already.
Questioned, tortured, killed, thrown in the sarcophagus, revived, tossed back in a cell, a tunnel that a change in the direction of gravity turns into an inescapable pit, then dragged back to this room for more questions. Lather, rinse, and repeat, around and around until he’s dizzy, and he knows it’s never going to end.
Daniel could help him, except he claims he can’t. Daniel, whom Jack still isn’t entirely convinced is really here. How can O’Neill be expected to trust the word of someone he can throw his shoe through? Makes more sense, considering his pain and disorientation, and the long hours, maybe even days, of torture, to believe he’s hallucinating his deceased friend, and yet Daniel is all O’Neill has to cling on to, in an entirely non-physical way. The sole source of comfort he has in this nightmare situation, his one slim shred of hope.
Hallucination or not, it sure looks like Daniel. Sounds like him too, wanting to help O’Neill shrug off his mortality and ascend to a higher plane of existence. O’Neill wishes he could, but he’s not like Daniel; never has been. He’s career military, which is a whole other mindset to Daniel’s seeker after knowledge and the truth. He can’t be what he’s not, even if Daniel’s suggestion represents his only means of ending this hell, of escaping Ba’al’s clutches. It’s pointless to try; he might as well accept that he’s doomed.
The least Daniel can do is make O’Neill’s next death permanent, but even as he suggests it, he know Daniel won’t do it. In any other circumstances he’d respect that. Maybe. It’s the way Daniel is. But right now, it’s a betrayal too far. It cuts almost worse than Ba’al’s knives, burns like acid in his heart. Why can’t Daniel see that death would be preferable to this? Why can’t he be a true friend and grant that one final request? O’Neill would do it for Daniel. Hell, he did!
Gravity changes direction again, the wall becomes the floor, and the Jaffa come for him. He tells Daniel he doesn’t want to see this cell again, practically pleads with him, but it makes no difference; after the torture, after death, and revival in the sarcophagus, he’s back here again, but this time Daniel doesn’t come. Maybe, probably, it’s because he was never here in the first place.
Back to the torture room, pinned again to the damned grating like a bug in a display case, suffering, exhausted, weakening, desperately whispering Daniel’s name, and praying for the end… Time has no meaning anymore. There’s no hope left in him.
He tells Daniel as much back in his cell, grateful for the return of his friend’s insubstantial presence, and for one last chance to beg him to end this nightmare ordeal. But Daniel is different somehow, more intense, radiating all the hope O’Neill has lost.
“Jack, you just have to hang in there a little while longer. You were right. There’s always a way out.”
O’Neill isn’t sure what Daniel’s on about, but since when is that anything new? He’s never understood most of what Daniel says anyway. But Daniel claims there’s a way out, that Sam and Teal’c thought of something, and Jonas too. He just doesn’t say what.
Then the whole building shudders repeatedly with the force of multiple explosions. The lights flicker, the gravity generators go off, and the wall is the floor again… This is exactly what O’Neill’s been wanting, a fighting chance, and he takes it. Just maybe he’ll make it out of this after all.
The End
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jack O’Neill, Daniel Jackson, Ba’al.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 995
Spoilers: Abyss.
Summary: Jack is trapped, helpless, being tortured by Ba’al for information he doesn’t have.
Written For: Challenge 302: Gravity at fan_flashworks.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Stargate: SG-1, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
‘Damn the Goa’uld and their thieving ways, damn them to whatever hell they believe in for taking whatever they want and finding new and clever ways of turning it into a weapon, just so they can play games with it. And if they don’t believe in hell, I’ll give ‘em one!’
If the thought’s a tad incoherent, O’Neill figures no one can blame him. Coherency isn’t exactly a priority right now; anger is more sustaining, and he’s got plenty of that, right up there along with frustration, fear, and pain.
How many times has he been here, splayed against this cold metal grid, feeling as if he’s staring up at Ba’al’s smug, self-satisfied face from the bottom of a well? He doesn’t remember, he lost count somewhere around… was it the ninth or tenth time? He supposes it doesn’t matter in the long run because it’s just gonna keep happening, over and over again, tortured to death and then revived in a sarcophagus, until he tells that slimy bastard everything he wants to know.
Except that O’Neill doesn’t know what it is Ba’al wants! How can he give up information he doesn’t have? The Tok’ra symbiote is gone, he never should have agreed to them sticking a snake in his head in the first place, not even to save his life, but Ba’al keeps insisting that O’Neill knows everything the damned snake knew, and he doesn’t! He’s already told Ba’al that, multiple times.
Ba’al isn’t buying it.
So here O’Neill is yet again, at the mercy of artificial gravity, something every Goa’uld ship has, something the air force is installing in all of their craft capable of space flight. No one but a Goa’uld would ever think to weaponize gravity! That’s just insane, not to mention sadistic, and damned painful. No effort required on the part of his torturer; knives are simply dropped at him, or drips of acid that set his body on fire, white hot agony coursing through his veins, searing along every nerve, and all the time Ba’al keeps asking the same damned questions, over and over, until O’Neill thinks his head’s about to explode from them, and for what? Answers he doesn’t even have!
O’Neill’s been trained to withstand torture, but right now he thinks he might just tell Ba’al everything, if he had anything to tell, just to make him stop already.
Questioned, tortured, killed, thrown in the sarcophagus, revived, tossed back in a cell, a tunnel that a change in the direction of gravity turns into an inescapable pit, then dragged back to this room for more questions. Lather, rinse, and repeat, around and around until he’s dizzy, and he knows it’s never going to end.
Daniel could help him, except he claims he can’t. Daniel, whom Jack still isn’t entirely convinced is really here. How can O’Neill be expected to trust the word of someone he can throw his shoe through? Makes more sense, considering his pain and disorientation, and the long hours, maybe even days, of torture, to believe he’s hallucinating his deceased friend, and yet Daniel is all O’Neill has to cling on to, in an entirely non-physical way. The sole source of comfort he has in this nightmare situation, his one slim shred of hope.
Hallucination or not, it sure looks like Daniel. Sounds like him too, wanting to help O’Neill shrug off his mortality and ascend to a higher plane of existence. O’Neill wishes he could, but he’s not like Daniel; never has been. He’s career military, which is a whole other mindset to Daniel’s seeker after knowledge and the truth. He can’t be what he’s not, even if Daniel’s suggestion represents his only means of ending this hell, of escaping Ba’al’s clutches. It’s pointless to try; he might as well accept that he’s doomed.
The least Daniel can do is make O’Neill’s next death permanent, but even as he suggests it, he know Daniel won’t do it. In any other circumstances he’d respect that. Maybe. It’s the way Daniel is. But right now, it’s a betrayal too far. It cuts almost worse than Ba’al’s knives, burns like acid in his heart. Why can’t Daniel see that death would be preferable to this? Why can’t he be a true friend and grant that one final request? O’Neill would do it for Daniel. Hell, he did!
Gravity changes direction again, the wall becomes the floor, and the Jaffa come for him. He tells Daniel he doesn’t want to see this cell again, practically pleads with him, but it makes no difference; after the torture, after death, and revival in the sarcophagus, he’s back here again, but this time Daniel doesn’t come. Maybe, probably, it’s because he was never here in the first place.
Back to the torture room, pinned again to the damned grating like a bug in a display case, suffering, exhausted, weakening, desperately whispering Daniel’s name, and praying for the end… Time has no meaning anymore. There’s no hope left in him.
He tells Daniel as much back in his cell, grateful for the return of his friend’s insubstantial presence, and for one last chance to beg him to end this nightmare ordeal. But Daniel is different somehow, more intense, radiating all the hope O’Neill has lost.
“Jack, you just have to hang in there a little while longer. You were right. There’s always a way out.”
O’Neill isn’t sure what Daniel’s on about, but since when is that anything new? He’s never understood most of what Daniel says anyway. But Daniel claims there’s a way out, that Sam and Teal’c thought of something, and Jonas too. He just doesn’t say what.
Then the whole building shudders repeatedly with the force of multiple explosions. The lights flicker, the gravity generators go off, and the wall is the floor again… This is exactly what O’Neill’s been wanting, a fighting chance, and he takes it. Just maybe he’ll make it out of this after all.
The End