Salt of the Earth, by ELG (R)
Rec Category: Teamy goodness
Pairing: none
Category: team, gen, Samantha Carter, Jack/Daniel friendship, action/adventure, angst
Warnings: tortured!Daniel
Author on LJ: elgrey
Author's Website: ELG at Bunnyfic
Link: Salt of the Earth
Why This Must Be Read:
Greetings! Lucky reccer that I am, I get to rec Teamy Goodness this month: all those delightful stories that give us SG-1 acting as a team, working together to either save the world or drive each other insane - or possibly both at the same time. Let's get to it, shall we?
I've been waiting since late June to rec this wonderful, teamy story!
It's a new ELG fic!
...
What, you need more?
Okay, then, how about this? Salt of the Earth is a gripping mystery story, full of suspense, puzzles, danger, frustration, soul-searching, deep friendship, intelligent behavior and reactions, and lots of lots of teamy goodness.
Much of the story is told from Sam's POV - a real plus right there, as there are all too few good quality Sam gen stories. (I need a good acronym for that, as I mention it way too often!) In fact, Salt of the Earth is really her story - Sam's struggle to find faith in herself, and her scientific mindset, in the wake of Tollana's destruction.
ELG gives us good insight into Sam by showing us how very shaken she is when Tollana is defeated and Narim is killed. In a very strong sense, the Tollans represented Samantha Carter's ideal: an Utopian society, based on science and technology With the Tollans gone, Sam isn't quite sure where to go next. Add the pain of watching so many men who cared for her dying - Black Widow Curse jokes aside, it's incredibly cruel to make Sam suffer the deaths of Narim and Joe Faxon after she was forced to kill Martouf and watch Orlin leave - and Sam is more than a little bit lost. Her "guys" are there to offer strong, unwavering support, but it's up to Sam to move forward on her own.
The story takes us to a planet where the natives are clashing with a familiar, technologically advanced race that has recently arrived and seems to be bent on wiping out the indigenous people. SG-1 has to try and determine the true cause of the dying crops and the real intentions of the newcomers. When the team is split up - Daniel and Jack, and Sam and Teal'c, as seems typical of an ELG fic - each half finds itself forced to deal with the other pair's expertise. It's a good thing that the members of SG-1 have learned something from their teammates over the years!
We're presented with a major mystery and a minor one. I have no idea when ELG expected the reader to figure out the answers to both puzzles, but I was quite satisfied with the clues offered along the way. Most intriguing is the real nature of the enemy here; I can't explain further without spoiling the emphasis of the story, so I'll leave it at that.
The Danny-whumping in the story is brief, but somewhat intense. ELG chose to rate this as an R, and I'm assuming it's for that brief scene: not because the torture is all that brutal (it isn't), but because of the look into the torturer's mind - which isn't very pretty, because he's not enjoying it.
Either that, or because Daniel warns the bad guys that they really picked the wrong time of month to get Sam annoyed.... not that that deserves an R rating, either. ;)
No ELG fic could be complete without stellar characterization, great Jack/Daniel banter, natural-seeming humor, and delightful, thoughtful insight into SG-1's motives and reactions. As always, ELG does a great job of weaving the events and repercussions of various episodes into the story, giving us a realistic interpretation of the characters' behavior.
The story's title seems particularly apt once the reader figures out the main mystery. By the time the fic ends, nearly all of the problems on the planet have been resolved, as have Sam's doubts in herself. The epilogue, much like the prologue, is a satisfying addenum, with each member of SG-1 delightfully in character.
I loved Sam in this story, putting aside her personal pain (both physical, augmented, and emotional) to help the Tadeshi. I adored Jack and Daniel, at their snarky but supportive best. I loved Teal'c, with his solid POV and steadfast support of Sam. I loved 'em all, in fact, in this wonderful, teamy goodness fic.
"What do you propose that we do, Major Carter?"
She moistened her lips, feeling the dust against her dry mouth. She wondered how it felt to sit there helplessly as your milk dried up, watching your children shrivel with lack of sustenance in your arms. You must feel as if you were the one killing them, something wrong with you to not be able to provide them with the nutrition they needed. It was one of the most basic needs; right after the urge to procreate; the need to protect and sustain those so created. These men were no longer providers, not hunter-gatherers or farmers any more. They must sleep and wake to the sound of their children's hunger. No wonder they had come here, with the last of their strength, not as supplicants but as soldiers.
"The right thing." She half-smiled although she had never felt less like smiling. She could almost feel herself hardening like old clay, on the very point of cracking. "I just don't know what that is."
Teal'c laid a hand on her shoulder, voice low enough that only she could hear it as he said huskily: "I believe that you do."
I'm torn between half a dozen contradictory role models, she thought wryly. The Tok'ra were ruthless in their pursuit of freedom. Martouf, with whom she remembered all too clearly and painfully being in love, her own memories merging to the point of total confusion with those of Jolinar, had seen no harm in sending the corpse of Apophis back through the 'gate to the custody of Sokar, even though it meant the guiltless scribe in whose body he resided would also be revived, also be tortured, instead of being returned to the land in which his friends and family had died so many years ago. Her father had always believed that the hardest path was invariably the right one. Colonel O'Neill had closed the iris on Alar. Teal'c had murdered an unarmed man to save others. Daniel had gunned down the infant symbiotes in their holy urn. These were the best and bravest and most honourable people that she knew.
Who was she to decide what was wrong and right? She had cut the rope that left Joe Faxon behind to be killed. Perhaps her judgement couldn't be trusted. These people were starving and the Tollan were liars and betrayers and...
And Narim had also been a Tollan. The Omac who had trusted them against all his instincts and reason and been murdered for adhering to his beliefs had been a Tollan. She remembered him taking Daniel's hand. Remembered Narim trusting her with his innermost feelings so she would always know the warmth of that moment when she had realized that she had conjured these emotions in another.
"Major Carter..."
And, of course, in the end it was easy. Separated from her own grief and betrayal and guilt and disbelief at what had happened on Tollana, this situation was a simple one after all.
She lifted her head. "We try to stop a war, Teal'c, because as long as there's a chance we can find another way we should keep looking for it."
Perhaps, on reflection, she spent rather more time with Daniel than the other men in her life, but, he did have the great advantage over the others, that even when he died right in front of her, he always came back. She appreciated that trait of his more even than his many other virtues. Not that she wouldn't possibly have loved him even more if he had made less of a habit of dying right in front of her in the first place but at least he didn't permanently abandon her to grief and silence the way the other men in her life tended to do.
Carter dropped her gun that no longer worked on the sand and began to walk towards the approaching army. This was Daniel's job, of course. And, on condition that he wasn't currently dead or injured in any way, she was reserving the right to be very irritated with him for not being here right now to do his job. She was the scientist - he was the communicator. That was how things worked in a team. Everyone had their own allotted role, and hers was handling the science and backing up the colonel in a military capacity, and Daniel's was talking to the natives. You owe me chocolate, Daniel, she thought. And if I don't die in the next ten minutes, I intend to collect.