Chance, by Mitai (PG-13)
Rec Category: Samantha Carter
Pairing: none
Categories: Samantha Carter, team, gen, action/adventure, hurt/comfort, drama, angst
Warnings: major whumping for Sam and Daniel; some language
Author on LJ:
mitai
Author's Website: unknown
Link: Chance (links to the next three parts at the bottom of each post)
Why This Must Be Read: Mitai wrote this gripping story for the wonderful sg1teamficathon. While it's chock full of teamy goodness, it also definitely fulfills the requirements of the request: "Doesn't want: Sam stuck in the background."
Crisis on a different planet: overtures of friendship actually mask a desire for mass destruction. "Does the name Euronda ring a bell?" And when Daniel is held hostage to Sam's abilities to help, the two of them, without saying a word, agree to do anything to stop it.
…And that's when the story first begins.
We get Sam-in-charge, doing anything and everything she can to survive despite truly horrific odds, as her desperate mantra becomes, "There was still a chance." We have Teal'c as avenging angel, both figuratively and literally, and Jack in the best and darkest of Black Ops mode. Even Daniel, despite spending much of the fic in a mostly-dead state, has a major impact on the story.
You'll be wincing and breathless and cheering for Sam every step of the way in this exciting story!
Sam closed her eyes, laid her head back on the stone, and waited. Her exhausted brain stalled on the mathematics of their odds. Before her experiences with SG1, she had always supposed in a panic or torture situation she would rely on mathematics, on numbers, to keep her brain occupied and clear. She had used the technique in controlled classroom settings when sodium pentothal had been administered in conjunction with hypnosis. The math prevented her from focusing enough on the hypnotist to be entrapped.
It had also helped, to a tiny degree, when she’d been drugged with the Blood of Sokar. It had helped her deal with the agony of the cold and her exhaustion in Antarctica.
But now just remembering the times math had helped her concentrate was . . . numbing. She couldn’t spare the energy for memories, let alone calculate their position, the hypotenuse of the triangle she was making as they sledged down towards the river. If she recalled their trip in correctly, the river had once been significantly higher, so there was likely to be a ledge and a height involved. Soon they’d come across a large enough rock that their slate would be forced upon its end, or the edge of the cliffs, and they would be crushed.
She’d accepted this already. They’d said their goodbyes.
She just hadn’t expected it all to take so long.
It was as though their rock sled had heard her thoughts. There was a deafening crack, a moment of complete stillness, and the sickening lurch of everything dropping away beneath them.
They fell for an eternity. It wasn’t like a freefall in a jet. She lost all relative positioning. The feeling of the rotation of the rock beneath her was foreign. She couldn’t tell where the sun was, couldn’t tell if the rock at her back had turned so they were beneath it, so that it was pushing them down. It was like one of those rollercoasters, built indoors and in total darkness, so that you had no idea which direction you would be pulled next. The dusty fog grew darker as they fell, and she squeezed her eyes shut, squeezed Daniel’s hand.
They struck something hard and sharp, that gave way like a glass coffeetable. A moment passed which reminded her of the weightless drifting of space. Then a frigid wave enveloped her, shocking and silent. For a brief moment she thought it was an empty void, it was death. She opened her mouth to speak, to shout, and it filled immediately. It wasn’t ash this time.
They’d reached the river.