Author: Eventhorizon7
Rating: T
Categories: Hurt/Comfort/Romance
Pairing: Sam/Daniel
Summary: When they are stranded upon an alien planet for Christmas, Sam decides that she is going to try and find out the reasons behind Daniel's apparent dislike toward the holiday season.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters they belong to Stargate SG-1 and MGM studios etc. I am making no money from them and sadly never will. If I did own them, believe me Sam and Daniel would have had much more fun with each other.
Feedback: If you have the time please leave a review as they are like oxygen to authors and breathe life into new stories.
Author's Note: This is my entry for the 'silly season' challenge that I set on Amaranth's and Thraesja's website. Go take a look at their website because it simply rocks!
This is a WIP, but as the silly season is already upon us and the culmination event is but only a few weeks away, it serves as a great deadline to have the story finished by.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Enjoy!
Two Million Light Years From Christmas
Chapter One.
"I don't believe this!"
Samantha Carter directed an irritated kick toward the treads of the MALP, her steel toed boot delivering a glancing blow of frustrated annoyance. She knew it wasn't the machine's fault, but like the age old adage, it had felt good to shoot the proverbial messenger.
Or in this case… to give it a damn good kicking.
Word had just come through from Stargate Command of their enforced stay upon the planet. They had been ordered to remain there until further notice, until the emergency that had befallen the base and its occupants had been rectified. No provisions could be sent through to them, for fear of contamination, nor could they send anything back through the event horizon, least of all a flesh and blood human being. As from that moment, Daniel and Sam were effectively cut off from their home world, reliant upon the continued hospitality of the residents of the village that they had been staying in for the past six days.
She knew that they were not the only people to find themselves stranded on a planet millions of light years away from Earth, there were at least nine other teams in the same situation as them. One team was running dangerously low on provisions and had to constantly forage for food and water in order to sustain themselves. Another team would have to brave the merciless elements of a planet caught in the grip of an impending ice age.
Is was obvious that the predicaments of those teams far outweighed their own, for she and Daniel were relatively safe and had befriended the villagers that lived close to the ancient ruins that they had been studying. She knew that the villager's would continue to look after them and feed them, of that she had no doubt. Even so, the timing of the unexpected announcement could not have been worse.
Of all the three hundred and sixty plus other days of the year that the SGC could be locked down with a contagion, why did it have to be now?
Why did it have to be on Christmas Eve?
From what she had been able to gather, the marines of SG-11 brought more than just the spirit of Christmas back from their last mission. With them had travelled a virulent form of retro virus, resulting in a pneumonic condition, similar to flu, but much more dangerous. It had swept through the base complex with all the speed of an unrestrained forest fire, infecting the personnel with frightening speed. A state of quarantine had therefore been enforced and the base had been shut off from the outside world so as not to spread the infection further.
Hence their little extended vacation.
She looked down at the MALP, considering kicking it again, if only to give her pent up annoyance an outlet, but she knew that the miniscule amount of satisfaction gained in assaulting the vehicle would soon be offset when reality returned again.
She let out a soft sigh of resigned acceptance.
"So much for me being on that flight to San Diego this evening." She ran a weary hand through her close cropped blonde hair. "Mark and the kids were going to pick me up from the airport." Her eyes glanced toward the now inactive Stargate. "I hope Landry manages to get a message to him?"
"I'm sure he won't leave your brother hanging, Sam." The sound of Daniel's voice caused her to turn toward him. He was sitting upon a dusty boulder a couple of feet away from her, his right hand wrapped around his water bottle. As she watched, he raised it to his lips and began to sip at its contents thoughtfully. His eyes met with hers over the rim of the bottle, a guarded expression passing across their blue depths before he quickly looked away, glancing toward the shimming heat haze in the distance.
That was another gripe that she had about being stranded on this planet. It wasn't even the same season here as it was back home. As if to confirm her last thought, a trickle of perspiration began to meander its way down between the valley of her breasts, sticking her khaki vest top to her body as if it were affixed there by super glue.
She plucked ineffectually at the garment, pulling it away from her heated body, trying to get some semblance of air flowing across her hot skin. Not even a waft of coolness passed across her flesh and she released her hold on the vest with a dissatisfied sigh, watching as it moulded itself to her once again.
It was so unfair.
Back in Colorado the snow already lay thick and crisp and even, while here, it looked as if a summer drought had taken a vicious hold upon the planet. The earth beneath her combat booted feet was sun baked and parched, the ground cracked with a multitude of long, jagged fissures that ran off in a myriad of directions. The trees of the forest showed signs of stunted growth, the leaves so dry and brittle from lack of moisture that they disintegrated into tiny particles of dust at the merest touch.
She calculated that it must have been many months since it last rained.
All in all… it wasn't an environment conducive to the North American yuletide season.
"Do you know what really rankles?" Her soft blue eyes left the horizon that she had been staring at and settled once more upon the sun bronzed face of her teammate and best friend. "I decided to treat myself to a first class seat, thought it might be a good idea to travel in comfort for a change."
A look of contrition swept across Daniel's face.
"I'm sorry." His eyes left hers, dropping to look at the dusty ground at his feet. "If it's any consolation, I will reimburse you the price of the ticket when we get back home."
"This wasn't your fault, Daniel."
"Yes, it was."
"No, it wasn't."
"Yes, it was."
He sighed, closing the lid on his water bottle, replacing it back upon his belt. He twisted a little to one side, using his hands to brush across his fatigues, sending small puffs of brown dust skyward as his fingers dislodged some of the accumulated dirt and grime.
"These ancient ruins aren't that important. I shouldn't have insisted that we come here." He pulled a green bandana out of a Velcro pocket, using it to wipe the dirt encrusted sweat from his face.
"You didn't know that at the time." Sam tried to placate him with her words, knowing that if she didn't, he would blame himself for what had happened. "You based your decision on the initial telemetry sent back from the MALP."
"Still, it could have waited until after the holidays." He paused to tie the bandana around his neck. "It's only through my insistence that you're here." He shrugged his shoulders in resignation. "So in the grand scheme of things…it's my fault."
Sam had become too accustomed to seeing Daniel react like this, it had happened so often during their long friendship that she had almost convinced herself that guilt and blame had become his default setting.
She continued to scrutinise him as he rose from the boulder, hauling his backpack over his shoulders, adjusting its weight with a nudge and a push until it sat in a more comfortable position. He pulled his boonie hat out of his pants pocket and tugged it firmly down upon his head, shielding his eyes from the sun's strong midday glare.
To anyone else it looked as though he were preparing himself for the long hike back to the village, however, to Sam, his body language and sudden lapse into silence bore witness to the fact that he was still chastising himself over their predicament.
"Daniel, I don't blame you." She tried to reassure him again, but from the look on his face, she realised that her words had fallen far short of their intention. "There was no way that you could have seen this happening."
"I still shouldn't have brought you out here so close to the holidays." He stared at her, his eyes soft with sorrow. "Worse…I should have kept to the original schedule. I shouldn't have asked you if we could extend it past the twenty-third, it's only through my selfishness that you are going to miss out on one of the few chances you get to be with your family."
He looked as if he was about to say something else, but in the end he just shook his head dejectedly. He took a few hesitant steps away from the clearing, leaving the MALP to stand silent sentinel over the Stargate and headed down toward the trail that led back to the village.
Sam fell into step beside him, trying to think of something else she could say that would lighten the burden of guilt that he was determined to heap upon his shoulders.
"Has it occurred to you that even if we had returned to Earth on schedule, we still would have been caught up in the lockdown."
"You can't be sure of that." Daniel paused, checking the webbing on his backpack straps, adjusting them slightly so as they didn't bite into his shoulders. "We could have managed to avoid it."
"I don't think so." Sam took a moment to adjust her own pack, which had slipped slightly lopsided. She jiggled and wriggled a bit before she managed to shrug it into a more stable position, all the while fixing her gaze upon that of her unhappy friend. "Returning on schedule would have meant that SG-11 would have come back on the same day as us. We would have been caught up doing the usual round of debriefing, report making and housekeeping. You know as well as I do that neither one of us would have left the base before today, so in all likelihood we would have been stranded there instead."
She waited for her words to sink in, letting out a soft breath of relief when she noticed a tiny relaxation of the stress lines around his eyes, a small concession in the blame game that he had undertaken with himself.
"Daniel, if we had gone home on time, it would have exposed us both to the contagion that SG-11 brought back with them. We would have been quarantined with the rest of the base and I still wouldn't have made it on that plane tonight."
He nodded slightly, an acknowledgement of the validity of her argument, but she knew from years of experience that it usually took more than that for him to let himself off the hook entirely.
She also knew that it was likely that a part of him had been secretly pleased that he would not have to partake in the Christmas festivities. She felt certain that it was probably that realisation, accompanied by his genuine sorrow at Sam's missed opportunity, that was really fuelling his guilt fest.
In all the years that she had known him, she had never been able to understand why he disliked this time of year. Whenever she had brought the subject up, he had just shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something about spending too many Christmas holidays in foster care, but she knew that there was much more to it than that.
He just didn't want to talk about it.
In the past it had only been Jack's persistent badgering of him that had made him take part in any of the base activities. Since the General's departure to Washington, Daniel had become more and more isolated during this period, locking himself away in his lab, preferring to be on his own, treating the days leading up to the main event like they were any other.
Last year he managed to get himself on an archaeological dig in Egypt and he was gone for all of Christmas and New Year, only turning up at the SGC again when he knew that all the bunting and tree lights had been taken down and boxed away.
From the looks of things…this year he had gone one better. He had managed to put himself millions of light years beyond the reach of the Christmas festivities.
A thought suddenly occurred to Sam, lifting the despondency that she was feeling at missing her flight home to her family.
She had the perfect opportunity to try and find out once and for all why Daniel hated this time of year. With a little effort on her part, she might be able to get to the bottom of his annual melancholia and in so doing, find a way for him to enjoy this special time of year.
"Daniel?"
"Hmmm."
"Will you be okay on your own for a while when we get back to the village? I have a few things I'd like to do before supper."
He looked at her curiously, as though he was trying to ascertain why she might need some time away from him. His eyes bore intently into hers for a few moments longer before he seemed to reach a decision with himself, then he slowly nodded his head in acquiescence.
"I'll be fine, Sam. You take all the time that you need. I've got that latest stone tablet to translate and then I have to catalogue the artefacts that we found the day before yesterday."
"Thanks, Daniel."
Already she was making a mental checklist of what she would need to make her bourgeoning plan work. It would take some nifty improvisation on her part, but hey…she'd blown up a sun…so, theoretically what she was contemplating now should be a piece of cake.
She just hoped that she could get everything up and running in the short time period that was allotted to her.
As they resumed their trek back toward the village, the pieces of her impromptu idea started to fall further into place and she couldn't help a smile from playing across her lips.
If she wasn't going to make it home in time for Christmas, then she was just going to have to make Christmas come to her.
And she knew just how to do it!
