FIC: Midnight's Children (chapter 1)
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Title: Midnight’s Children (chapter 1)
Rating: R
Genre/pairing/warnings: Daniel/Vala, Drama, Action-Adventure, mentions of torture in later chapters
Setting: Post-Ark of Truth
Word count: 2,887
Summary: Daniel and Vala, captured and held prisoner, struggle to survive a dark and painful ordeal. Not to mention each other. The bonds forged through hardship may prove to be the strongest of all, if only they can see them.
Author’s notes: Title borrowed from the Salman Rushdie novel of the same name.
The stench, the absolute squalor of the place -- it was almost more than Sam could bear.
She adjusted the weight of her P90, the strap sliding slickly against the hot skin of her neck. A heavy bead of sweat inched from her hairline down her temple, finding its way unerringly to the sensitive membrane of her eye. It burned like acid for a moment and she resisted the powerful urge to swipe at it with the back of her forearm. Just a few more seconds. A few more unrelenting, maddeningly protracted, mercilessly tense moments, and she could uncoil like a loaded spring, could finally realise the full potential of the adrenaline surging through her system.
She ignored the dull ache in the balls of her feet, the uncomfortable stretch of abused muscle, the acrid sting at the back of her throat. She was the blade of the knife, the point of the bullet. Ready. Deadly. Cold.
Mitchell, just visible in the murk ahead of her, the back of his fatigues soaked and clinging at the small of his back and in the valley between his shoulder blades, raised one fist in the air. Time slowed. Breath stalled. Senses heightened. There was only the whump, whump, whump of her blood thundering through her veins, the thwish, thwish, thwish of its answering echo in her ears. Her vision narrowed to a single point: the filthy tunnel intersecting their own; their goal; the last obstacle barring their way.
Her own hot breath blasted across the overheated surface of her wrist, her weapon poised and clammy against her cheek. Each lungful was cloying, every exhale an effort. Mitchell remained frozen, the gleam of greasy brickwork just discernible beyond his outline. She waited for the smallest movement to interrupt that meagre shine, and when it came, the economy of it was incongruous to the carefully orchestrated chaos it unleashed.
A flick of the wrist, and the signal was given.
Sam launched from her position, aware of Teal'c's solid form in her periphery doing likewise, swinging his considerable bulk around the opposite corner a fraction of a second after the stun grenades flashed, banged, smoked the path ahead of them. A whoosh of air as she hit and rolled, coming up without pause to fire on the enemy, some of them staggering, some shouting, all of them already marked for death. No mercy. No regret. No time to think or reason. Pure instinct and training. Carefully rationed fury, siphoned, directed, channelled, boiling down to the feel of a finger on the trigger, the slam of the stock, the report ringing in her ears.
The tumble of bodies. The clatter of weapons. The drifting fog of the spent grenades. Almost before she could consciously grasp the fact, it was done. The sharp cold of foetid liquid seeping into her clothing registered somewhere in the back of her mind, alongside the metallic tang of blood in her nostrils and an electric bite -- pain, she realised absently -- thrumming along her thigh. Unimportant. Time later to take stock of the damage.
"Everyone okay?" Mitchell. His voice quick. Precise. Efficient. He felt the infectious urgency, too.
She heard Teal'c's deep affirmative. "I'm good," she added, already rising to her feet. Stepping over the bodies, kicking fallen weapons to one side. No inclination to check for life signs. Unarmed and therefore safely dismissed. Faceless. Any other considerations could wait.
She felt the absence of Teal’c at her back as he moved to examine the opposite route, but she didn’t need to check the way behind. She knew. This was the way. She called to him without looking back, moving deeper into the oppressive dark, her weapon raised and its flashlight beam fixed to slice through the choking miasma of lightlessness, stink and heat. It was a physical, solid thing: a living entity that forced its way into her nose and mouth, invaded her every pore. Her senses rebelled in disgust against its unnatural push. She shut down the need to turn her face from it.
The subtlest of sounds drew her attention, her head snapping with magnetic precision towards their origin. Human sounds. A whimper. A breath. A rustle of fabric. She almost denied them notice. Wanted with a fierce and sudden desperation to be mistaken. Not real. They couldn’t be. No creature could survive down here. No self-aware being would want to. Almost six months was too long. Impossible. Unthinkable. Terrible beyond words.
Still her treacherous feet compelled her forwards. A wet, unidentifiable slush yielded to the tread of her boots. The stink of death and human waste assaulted her senses as she passed cell after cell, their doors open to release their noxious aromas. Most were empty. Two contained the putrefying remains of long abandoned inmates, their bodies liquefying in plain view for any who cared to watch. Beyond a perfunctory glance to check for identifying features, she spared them little thought. It was not callousness that stayed her emotions. She had a job to do. Her survival, and that of her friends, was reliant on her keeping it together. Behind her, she thought she heard Mitchell gag.
At the very end of the hallway, the beam of Sam’s flashlight hit upon a seam in the wall. A low door. Solid, with a hatch barely wide enough to look through set in its precise centre. She bent to peer into the cramped space beyond, raking the light over its slimy walls, its grimy floor, its low ceiling that allowed no room to stand. The huddled form in the far corner.
A sharp nod of confirmation and she stepped back. She turned her head and promised herself it would be the last time she would look away. Teal'c's staff weapon pounded the locking mechanism with a pulse of blinding energy and it shattered with a burst of sparks and ozone.
Like all the others, the door had no handle, no hinges. Teal'c threw his weight against it, his forearm jammed against the metal, his large hand barely fitting into the hatch for purchase. With a reluctant, jarring scrape, the panel began to shift on its runners, and wedging his body into the space coerced into being, Teal'c forced the sliding door into its cavity with a resounding clang.
All thoughts of darting straight into that claustrophobic space left Sam's head as soon as the deed was done. She was about to cross into some unholy sanctuary. To pass the point of no return. She was entering the unknown to expose a foul collection of evil secrets, misery and shame. To acknowledge it was to make it real. To pull it into the cold light of day was cruelty beyond comprehension.
She pulled the strap of her weapon over her head, handing it wordlessly to Teal'c. He took it grimly and said nothing, barely concealed rage simmering beneath his composure. Behind her, Mitchell thumbed his radio. "We've got them. Stand by."
A terse nod from him and she crawled into the room. The cell. The hovel. Mitchell's flashlight traced the outline of the huddled figure before her, its back to them all, hunched over its precious bundle. She knelt, not touching. Leaving space. Giving ground. The syllables came thickly to her lips, her throat closing against them even as she forced them out. Low. Soothing. Fearful.
"Daniel."
A flinch, and the figure huddled lower, pressed closer to the corner of the cell. He began to rock, a low, tuneless humming his only response. She tried his name again, and the volume increased.
Willing her fingers to steady, she reached forward with a cautious hand, the barest whisper of a touch to his shoulder. He started violently, head whipping round with a terrified snarl, and she snatched her hand back. His hair, shorn jarringly short, was tacky with filth, the stark angles of his face obscured by only the barest of stubble. Wild eyes darted without recognition or comprehension, misery written in the tear tracks through the grime on his skin.
Sam held up her hands, wide and open. Not a threat. Non-aggressive. Friend. The very same gesture she'd seen Daniel produce on a countless number of occasions. If he recognised it she couldn't discern. He responded only with wary silence, blinking in bewilderment at the poor light intruding upon the insidious dark. Feral. Unpredictable. Pitiful.
"Daniel," Sam began again, somehow finding the moisture required for speech. "It's really us. We've come to take you home."
The suspicion was palpable. A malignant force that tightened her gut as those eyes, hysteria bright, skittered from hers to the shapes in the doorway, then back to her again. There was a frightening finality in the quietly whispered 'no' and he turned his head away.
Brutal to push, to continue with this gentle torture, but Sam could not back down. No choice. Must press forward. No time. She shuffled towards him just slightly, narrowing the space between them, motioning for the others to stay where they were. Perhaps borne of some intuitive empathy, they crouched to their haunches, offering a less threatening presence.
Sam once more laid a feather-light hand on Daniel's shoulder, eliciting a shudder and a moan, but she did not remove it. Mindful of the nervous sideways glances being flicked in her direction, she craned her head carefully, making her intentions clear.
"Let me see, Daniel. Please. I promise I won't hurt her."
His breathing began to chuff between them in panicked gasps and the shoulder beneath her hand tensed. She urged again and eased even closer, pressing her body up against him. He squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head in wordless denial, but seemed powerless to stop her as she reached to place tentative fingers against the pale expanse of throat.
Vala's voluptuous hair was gone, hacked obscenely to her scalp in ugly, uneven tufts, leaving nothing to bar the way for Sam's searching fingers. Daniel's breath caught and he froze as they made contact, his eyes fixed on the spot where her fingertips met skin. Sam's own lungs seized without conscious command, her body stilling completely as she willed life into the cool flesh beneath her touch. An eternity stretched. Eyes at her back bored into her. Silence and unspoken prayers. Then a rush of air expelled in welcome relief. The faint flutter of a pulse beneath her fingertips. "She's alive," she confirmed to the door, and knew Mitchell would take care of the rest.
Sam allowed herself an indulgent moment to breathe, to feel again, to close her eyes just briefly. Daniel relaxed almost imperceptibly by her side as, of their own accord, her fingers began a thankful caress of Vala's jaw.
Once the abating terror had diminished to its customary, ever present thrill, she assessed the man in front of her as best she could in the darkness, noting the delicate tremble, the sharp wristbones, the layer of unmentionable filth coating his body and clothing. Vala was wrapped in what was left of Daniel's jacket and the remains of his tattered shirt hung loosely from his frame.
The rocking began again, and her heart ached. Despite everything, she felt alone and unprepared. Fuck. There was not enough time to do this. No time to be gentle, to be patient, to be humane. They didn't have time to spare. Vala didn't have time.
The unmistakable pounding of approaching personnel broke the pregnant silence, and Daniel clutched Vala more tightly to himself. The humming returned, an extra edge of mania to it this time, the flavour of impending breakdown in its dissonance. The clack and clatter of equipment being prepared reverberated through the tunnel outside. Sam moved her hand cautiously to the back of his neck, hoping to ground him against the onrushing fear. She needed to take charge. She needed to be strong for him.
"Look at me, Daniel," she ordered, her voice brooking no argument. His eyes snapped to hers, wide and bright. "I know this is difficult, but you need to let us take her, okay? Let us help."
She had to fight her own instincts, choke back the desiccating lump crawling up her throat as Daniel began shaking his head again, mouthing the word 'no' with each completed denial. Cruel to do this. Cruel to be kind. They didn't have time. She stretched both hands out to grasp his wrists, encircling Vala with her own arms in a mockery of his embrace.
"No, no," he crooned, becoming progressively louder as the pressure of her grip increased. Her gentle, empty reassurances, her shushing and murmured apologies did nothing to calm him as she inexorably forced his arms to open. You can let her go now. It's okay. It's all going to be okay.
His resistance and the heartbreaking pleas almost broke her. She didn't have the strength to do this. Her eyes made a pathetic appeal to the doorway and Mitchell hung his head. No way out of this. He knew. He knew it had to be done. They just didn't have enough time.
Don't make me do this. Please, don't make me do this.
Conflicting surges of gratitude and horror as Mitchell approached to help, wrapping himself round Daniel's back, pinning his arms, easing him backwards, drawing him away from the limp body he fought to protect. Sam scooped Vala from Daniel's lap as Mitchell finally pulled them apart and felt as though she were stamping on fingers scrabbling at a cliff edge.
The physical contact broken, Daniel became frantic, at once keening and sobbing, and struggled weakly in Mitchell's firm grasp. That he lacked the strength to add volume to his screams only made them more distressing to listen to.
Sam felt shocky and sick even as she gathered Vala's unresponsive form to her chest, cradling her as gently as she could. Without needing to look, she could sense Teal'c ushering the stretcher team into position, the tight confines of the cell requiring them to manoeuvre awkwardly in the tunnel outside. Daniel's hoarse cries abruptly changed, harsh and raspy but no less difficult to hear. Hopelessness and grief. He was calling Vala's name.
Forcing herself to block out the crippling sounds of anguish, Sam positioned the frighteningly light body in her arms for the airman to take, entrusting Vala to near strangers only because the situation demanded it. The transfer was quick, and within moments she was being lifted for transport.
Once Vala was taken from sight, Daniel folded in on himself, shaking, a thin, broken wail poured into the ground. This was wrong. Ruthless. "I'm sorry," Sam heard herself repeating uselessly, a whisper when she wanted to shout, and the meaningless words shattered into a million sharp and deadly fragments each time they left her lips. It's okay. It's going to be okay. Isn't it? Please let it be okay.
The meeting of eyes. Mitchell's glittering and fierce in the dark. Hers filmed with unshed tears, warping the scene before her like a hellish house of mirrors. The more time they spent here, the greater the risk. SG-3 held the 'gate, but for how much longer? They had no time to waste. Still she could not move, felt her mind stutter and catch on the suffering in front of her. Frozen in horror.
Then there came Teal'c's presence beside her. No words needed. He would take control. Thank God. He knew what to do. A tragic parody of the same scene, Mitchell holding Daniel's shuddering body tightly against his chest, his grip fixed, his hard eyes challenging. Teal'c placed a hand on his shoulder and returned his gaze, and in that loaded moment an understanding was shared. The barest of nods and Mitchell's grip eased by a fraction. Permission. Acceptance.
The glint of a needle in the flashlight's beam and a tender grip on an under-fleshed arm. The point slid easily beneath skin loosened by dehydration, Teal'c's movements quick, methodical, calm. He rested a reassuring hand -- at once a benediction, compassion and apology -- on the back of Daniel's head as they waited for the drug to take effect. A small mercy; the only one they could offer. Sam wondered which of them exactly was being spared.
She couldn't be grateful for this. Would that come later? Would the relief she so desperately craved, had sought so tirelessly all these months, finally be granted to her, or was that a fantasy that would never be realised? Here they were again, finally reunited, all mercifully alive, home just a short dash away, and yet it wasn't enough. Selfish, perhaps, but she wouldn't be satisfied with this. Her hand anchored itself to Daniel's ankle as though this trinity of touch could make anything better.
The wrenching, near soundless cries faded first to exhausted gasps, then with a drunken moan and a wispy sigh, ceased altogether. Teal'c gathered up the reluctantly loosening limbs and lifted his charge into his arms.
SG-1 was finally going home. The perpetual midnight looked on with indifference as they left the cell, closing in to reclaim its domain in the wake of the departing flashlights. Sam spared one last look behind her before turning to follow her team, and wondered why it felt like they were leaving something behind in that dark and terrible room.
Go to part 2
Title: Midnight’s Children (chapter 1)
Rating: R
Genre/pairing/warnings: Daniel/Vala, Drama, Action-Adventure, mentions of torture in later chapters
Setting: Post-Ark of Truth
Word count: 2,887
Summary: Daniel and Vala, captured and held prisoner, struggle to survive a dark and painful ordeal. Not to mention each other. The bonds forged through hardship may prove to be the strongest of all, if only they can see them.
Author’s notes: Title borrowed from the Salman Rushdie novel of the same name.
The stench, the absolute squalor of the place -- it was almost more than Sam could bear.
She adjusted the weight of her P90, the strap sliding slickly against the hot skin of her neck. A heavy bead of sweat inched from her hairline down her temple, finding its way unerringly to the sensitive membrane of her eye. It burned like acid for a moment and she resisted the powerful urge to swipe at it with the back of her forearm. Just a few more seconds. A few more unrelenting, maddeningly protracted, mercilessly tense moments, and she could uncoil like a loaded spring, could finally realise the full potential of the adrenaline surging through her system.
She ignored the dull ache in the balls of her feet, the uncomfortable stretch of abused muscle, the acrid sting at the back of her throat. She was the blade of the knife, the point of the bullet. Ready. Deadly. Cold.
Mitchell, just visible in the murk ahead of her, the back of his fatigues soaked and clinging at the small of his back and in the valley between his shoulder blades, raised one fist in the air. Time slowed. Breath stalled. Senses heightened. There was only the whump, whump, whump of her blood thundering through her veins, the thwish, thwish, thwish of its answering echo in her ears. Her vision narrowed to a single point: the filthy tunnel intersecting their own; their goal; the last obstacle barring their way.
Her own hot breath blasted across the overheated surface of her wrist, her weapon poised and clammy against her cheek. Each lungful was cloying, every exhale an effort. Mitchell remained frozen, the gleam of greasy brickwork just discernible beyond his outline. She waited for the smallest movement to interrupt that meagre shine, and when it came, the economy of it was incongruous to the carefully orchestrated chaos it unleashed.
A flick of the wrist, and the signal was given.
Sam launched from her position, aware of Teal'c's solid form in her periphery doing likewise, swinging his considerable bulk around the opposite corner a fraction of a second after the stun grenades flashed, banged, smoked the path ahead of them. A whoosh of air as she hit and rolled, coming up without pause to fire on the enemy, some of them staggering, some shouting, all of them already marked for death. No mercy. No regret. No time to think or reason. Pure instinct and training. Carefully rationed fury, siphoned, directed, channelled, boiling down to the feel of a finger on the trigger, the slam of the stock, the report ringing in her ears.
The tumble of bodies. The clatter of weapons. The drifting fog of the spent grenades. Almost before she could consciously grasp the fact, it was done. The sharp cold of foetid liquid seeping into her clothing registered somewhere in the back of her mind, alongside the metallic tang of blood in her nostrils and an electric bite -- pain, she realised absently -- thrumming along her thigh. Unimportant. Time later to take stock of the damage.
"Everyone okay?" Mitchell. His voice quick. Precise. Efficient. He felt the infectious urgency, too.
She heard Teal'c's deep affirmative. "I'm good," she added, already rising to her feet. Stepping over the bodies, kicking fallen weapons to one side. No inclination to check for life signs. Unarmed and therefore safely dismissed. Faceless. Any other considerations could wait.
She felt the absence of Teal’c at her back as he moved to examine the opposite route, but she didn’t need to check the way behind. She knew. This was the way. She called to him without looking back, moving deeper into the oppressive dark, her weapon raised and its flashlight beam fixed to slice through the choking miasma of lightlessness, stink and heat. It was a physical, solid thing: a living entity that forced its way into her nose and mouth, invaded her every pore. Her senses rebelled in disgust against its unnatural push. She shut down the need to turn her face from it.
The subtlest of sounds drew her attention, her head snapping with magnetic precision towards their origin. Human sounds. A whimper. A breath. A rustle of fabric. She almost denied them notice. Wanted with a fierce and sudden desperation to be mistaken. Not real. They couldn’t be. No creature could survive down here. No self-aware being would want to. Almost six months was too long. Impossible. Unthinkable. Terrible beyond words.
Still her treacherous feet compelled her forwards. A wet, unidentifiable slush yielded to the tread of her boots. The stink of death and human waste assaulted her senses as she passed cell after cell, their doors open to release their noxious aromas. Most were empty. Two contained the putrefying remains of long abandoned inmates, their bodies liquefying in plain view for any who cared to watch. Beyond a perfunctory glance to check for identifying features, she spared them little thought. It was not callousness that stayed her emotions. She had a job to do. Her survival, and that of her friends, was reliant on her keeping it together. Behind her, she thought she heard Mitchell gag.
At the very end of the hallway, the beam of Sam’s flashlight hit upon a seam in the wall. A low door. Solid, with a hatch barely wide enough to look through set in its precise centre. She bent to peer into the cramped space beyond, raking the light over its slimy walls, its grimy floor, its low ceiling that allowed no room to stand. The huddled form in the far corner.
A sharp nod of confirmation and she stepped back. She turned her head and promised herself it would be the last time she would look away. Teal'c's staff weapon pounded the locking mechanism with a pulse of blinding energy and it shattered with a burst of sparks and ozone.
Like all the others, the door had no handle, no hinges. Teal'c threw his weight against it, his forearm jammed against the metal, his large hand barely fitting into the hatch for purchase. With a reluctant, jarring scrape, the panel began to shift on its runners, and wedging his body into the space coerced into being, Teal'c forced the sliding door into its cavity with a resounding clang.
All thoughts of darting straight into that claustrophobic space left Sam's head as soon as the deed was done. She was about to cross into some unholy sanctuary. To pass the point of no return. She was entering the unknown to expose a foul collection of evil secrets, misery and shame. To acknowledge it was to make it real. To pull it into the cold light of day was cruelty beyond comprehension.
She pulled the strap of her weapon over her head, handing it wordlessly to Teal'c. He took it grimly and said nothing, barely concealed rage simmering beneath his composure. Behind her, Mitchell thumbed his radio. "We've got them. Stand by."
A terse nod from him and she crawled into the room. The cell. The hovel. Mitchell's flashlight traced the outline of the huddled figure before her, its back to them all, hunched over its precious bundle. She knelt, not touching. Leaving space. Giving ground. The syllables came thickly to her lips, her throat closing against them even as she forced them out. Low. Soothing. Fearful.
"Daniel."
A flinch, and the figure huddled lower, pressed closer to the corner of the cell. He began to rock, a low, tuneless humming his only response. She tried his name again, and the volume increased.
Willing her fingers to steady, she reached forward with a cautious hand, the barest whisper of a touch to his shoulder. He started violently, head whipping round with a terrified snarl, and she snatched her hand back. His hair, shorn jarringly short, was tacky with filth, the stark angles of his face obscured by only the barest of stubble. Wild eyes darted without recognition or comprehension, misery written in the tear tracks through the grime on his skin.
Sam held up her hands, wide and open. Not a threat. Non-aggressive. Friend. The very same gesture she'd seen Daniel produce on a countless number of occasions. If he recognised it she couldn't discern. He responded only with wary silence, blinking in bewilderment at the poor light intruding upon the insidious dark. Feral. Unpredictable. Pitiful.
"Daniel," Sam began again, somehow finding the moisture required for speech. "It's really us. We've come to take you home."
The suspicion was palpable. A malignant force that tightened her gut as those eyes, hysteria bright, skittered from hers to the shapes in the doorway, then back to her again. There was a frightening finality in the quietly whispered 'no' and he turned his head away.
Brutal to push, to continue with this gentle torture, but Sam could not back down. No choice. Must press forward. No time. She shuffled towards him just slightly, narrowing the space between them, motioning for the others to stay where they were. Perhaps borne of some intuitive empathy, they crouched to their haunches, offering a less threatening presence.
Sam once more laid a feather-light hand on Daniel's shoulder, eliciting a shudder and a moan, but she did not remove it. Mindful of the nervous sideways glances being flicked in her direction, she craned her head carefully, making her intentions clear.
"Let me see, Daniel. Please. I promise I won't hurt her."
His breathing began to chuff between them in panicked gasps and the shoulder beneath her hand tensed. She urged again and eased even closer, pressing her body up against him. He squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head in wordless denial, but seemed powerless to stop her as she reached to place tentative fingers against the pale expanse of throat.
Vala's voluptuous hair was gone, hacked obscenely to her scalp in ugly, uneven tufts, leaving nothing to bar the way for Sam's searching fingers. Daniel's breath caught and he froze as they made contact, his eyes fixed on the spot where her fingertips met skin. Sam's own lungs seized without conscious command, her body stilling completely as she willed life into the cool flesh beneath her touch. An eternity stretched. Eyes at her back bored into her. Silence and unspoken prayers. Then a rush of air expelled in welcome relief. The faint flutter of a pulse beneath her fingertips. "She's alive," she confirmed to the door, and knew Mitchell would take care of the rest.
Sam allowed herself an indulgent moment to breathe, to feel again, to close her eyes just briefly. Daniel relaxed almost imperceptibly by her side as, of their own accord, her fingers began a thankful caress of Vala's jaw.
Once the abating terror had diminished to its customary, ever present thrill, she assessed the man in front of her as best she could in the darkness, noting the delicate tremble, the sharp wristbones, the layer of unmentionable filth coating his body and clothing. Vala was wrapped in what was left of Daniel's jacket and the remains of his tattered shirt hung loosely from his frame.
The rocking began again, and her heart ached. Despite everything, she felt alone and unprepared. Fuck. There was not enough time to do this. No time to be gentle, to be patient, to be humane. They didn't have time to spare. Vala didn't have time.
The unmistakable pounding of approaching personnel broke the pregnant silence, and Daniel clutched Vala more tightly to himself. The humming returned, an extra edge of mania to it this time, the flavour of impending breakdown in its dissonance. The clack and clatter of equipment being prepared reverberated through the tunnel outside. Sam moved her hand cautiously to the back of his neck, hoping to ground him against the onrushing fear. She needed to take charge. She needed to be strong for him.
"Look at me, Daniel," she ordered, her voice brooking no argument. His eyes snapped to hers, wide and bright. "I know this is difficult, but you need to let us take her, okay? Let us help."
She had to fight her own instincts, choke back the desiccating lump crawling up her throat as Daniel began shaking his head again, mouthing the word 'no' with each completed denial. Cruel to do this. Cruel to be kind. They didn't have time. She stretched both hands out to grasp his wrists, encircling Vala with her own arms in a mockery of his embrace.
"No, no," he crooned, becoming progressively louder as the pressure of her grip increased. Her gentle, empty reassurances, her shushing and murmured apologies did nothing to calm him as she inexorably forced his arms to open. You can let her go now. It's okay. It's all going to be okay.
His resistance and the heartbreaking pleas almost broke her. She didn't have the strength to do this. Her eyes made a pathetic appeal to the doorway and Mitchell hung his head. No way out of this. He knew. He knew it had to be done. They just didn't have enough time.
Don't make me do this. Please, don't make me do this.
Conflicting surges of gratitude and horror as Mitchell approached to help, wrapping himself round Daniel's back, pinning his arms, easing him backwards, drawing him away from the limp body he fought to protect. Sam scooped Vala from Daniel's lap as Mitchell finally pulled them apart and felt as though she were stamping on fingers scrabbling at a cliff edge.
The physical contact broken, Daniel became frantic, at once keening and sobbing, and struggled weakly in Mitchell's firm grasp. That he lacked the strength to add volume to his screams only made them more distressing to listen to.
Sam felt shocky and sick even as she gathered Vala's unresponsive form to her chest, cradling her as gently as she could. Without needing to look, she could sense Teal'c ushering the stretcher team into position, the tight confines of the cell requiring them to manoeuvre awkwardly in the tunnel outside. Daniel's hoarse cries abruptly changed, harsh and raspy but no less difficult to hear. Hopelessness and grief. He was calling Vala's name.
Forcing herself to block out the crippling sounds of anguish, Sam positioned the frighteningly light body in her arms for the airman to take, entrusting Vala to near strangers only because the situation demanded it. The transfer was quick, and within moments she was being lifted for transport.
Once Vala was taken from sight, Daniel folded in on himself, shaking, a thin, broken wail poured into the ground. This was wrong. Ruthless. "I'm sorry," Sam heard herself repeating uselessly, a whisper when she wanted to shout, and the meaningless words shattered into a million sharp and deadly fragments each time they left her lips. It's okay. It's going to be okay. Isn't it? Please let it be okay.
The meeting of eyes. Mitchell's glittering and fierce in the dark. Hers filmed with unshed tears, warping the scene before her like a hellish house of mirrors. The more time they spent here, the greater the risk. SG-3 held the 'gate, but for how much longer? They had no time to waste. Still she could not move, felt her mind stutter and catch on the suffering in front of her. Frozen in horror.
Then there came Teal'c's presence beside her. No words needed. He would take control. Thank God. He knew what to do. A tragic parody of the same scene, Mitchell holding Daniel's shuddering body tightly against his chest, his grip fixed, his hard eyes challenging. Teal'c placed a hand on his shoulder and returned his gaze, and in that loaded moment an understanding was shared. The barest of nods and Mitchell's grip eased by a fraction. Permission. Acceptance.
The glint of a needle in the flashlight's beam and a tender grip on an under-fleshed arm. The point slid easily beneath skin loosened by dehydration, Teal'c's movements quick, methodical, calm. He rested a reassuring hand -- at once a benediction, compassion and apology -- on the back of Daniel's head as they waited for the drug to take effect. A small mercy; the only one they could offer. Sam wondered which of them exactly was being spared.
She couldn't be grateful for this. Would that come later? Would the relief she so desperately craved, had sought so tirelessly all these months, finally be granted to her, or was that a fantasy that would never be realised? Here they were again, finally reunited, all mercifully alive, home just a short dash away, and yet it wasn't enough. Selfish, perhaps, but she wouldn't be satisfied with this. Her hand anchored itself to Daniel's ankle as though this trinity of touch could make anything better.
The wrenching, near soundless cries faded first to exhausted gasps, then with a drunken moan and a wispy sigh, ceased altogether. Teal'c gathered up the reluctantly loosening limbs and lifted his charge into his arms.
SG-1 was finally going home. The perpetual midnight looked on with indifference as they left the cell, closing in to reclaim its domain in the wake of the departing flashlights. Sam spared one last look behind her before turning to follow her team, and wondered why it felt like they were leaving something behind in that dark and terrible room.
Go to part 2