Sucks To Be Us Sometimes

Summary: This week on Stargate SG-1... Mobs, riots and general villager mayhem. The team are chased apart and Daniel and Sam struggle to make it back to the 'gate together á la the same number of limbs they left Earth with.

A.N: A tad more serious than it sounds, I assure. Sort of a tag from the opening line of the Foo Fighters' song Razor, which I will now sing for you *coughs*

Wake up it's time/We need to find a better place to hide...

Enjoy the evils...

~Telaka

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Until six seconds ago he had been keeping faith because of one circumstance that had held thinly in his favour – he hadn't been hurt. And until two seconds ago he hadn't warranted the possibility of being stabbed in the leg by one of his own people.

It was some kind of twisted bemusement that held him ridged with surprise so as he managed to stand firm, with a knife in his shin, sewn through as such so it stuck out again from his calf. It felt warm, though the blade was steel-cold and the wound hadn't started to bleed, yet – and it was only now, eleven seconds after being stabbed that he truly recognized who the stabber was.

And she him, it seemed, though she looked almost a stranger kneeling way down there in the tall grass and stone ruins, masked in grime and blood with wide, wild eyes and paled-to-nothing lips, dehydration haunting the colour of her skin and a pulse beating so fast she was practically salivating between short, sporadic breaths. Holding the knife deep in his leg like some huntress readying to drag down a prey ten times her size. But then as he looked at her and she him, and as her hand fell away from the black handle, he saw her expression twist into something altogether more recognizable, as Sam Carter – something altogether more soft and impugned and painful.

Daniel grunted and finally stepped back, lifting his eyebrows as he tried to gather together some semblance of words (any language would have done, really) to break the moment's awful silence between them. In failing to impress any conversation into the terrible awe though he just sat down, hard and silently onto some of the low, desolate stone ruins that framed the area of the event – the dry edges of a wide field of tall, yellow wheat stalks. A trickle of blood had begun to flow from the protruding tip of the dull blade which remained almost comically jutting from his shin.

Sam paused in a small, self-contained vortex of disbelief, holding deadly still as she entertained serious scepticism against whether or not what she had just done had really happened. It was almost too cruel after everything that had come just before this very second over the last few hours, almost too concentrated a stroke of cruel luck. And her head was pounding, she could barely gather the wit to focus her eyesight. But then Daniel hissed as he fingered the tip of the blade handle and in a flash she unbundled herself from her awkward crouch and dropped unceremoniously in front of him, a terrible look of realisation marring her already dreadful colour.

"Oh God, Daniel... I didn't know it was you! I thought—the villagers, it sounded like one of the men—I've been hiding... I didn't know; you and Teal'c and the Colonel—I didn't know where..."

Her hands hovered around the blade's handle, wedged firm, desperate to fix the mistake she had just made. But at that very moment, despite the dawning of the wound's pain, Daniel was more concerned for the way Sam was holding together – her whole body shaking, from her spine into to her hands and down through her ankles as if she was overloaded on adrenaline or some hyper shock. The way she leaned, bending her waist to the right, it looked like she had bruised some ribs and her right forefinger was staved and almost black – surely broken. There were streaks of blood and sweat where there was bare skin and he thought he could smell... urine. Chunks in her hair that he feared might be more than just bits of the terrain and both lips burst down one side, it looked like from some head-on collision with someone else's... head.

He wrapped a hand around her shoulder, beckoning her to ease up and break off the blameful gaze she held on her handiwork so as to look instead straight at him. He spoke gently with a tone of relief that he hoped hid the sound of pain. "We've been searching for you," he assured her sternly, "since the fire in the village."

Briefly Sam glanced at his hand on her squared shoulder. A solid weight from the touch of a friend she was unsure she'd ever see again. It was enough to null the worst of the shaking, to give her back some sense of professional focus. She held as still as she could next to him and he felt the expectancy for him to tell whatever fractured explanation he could offer. So he tried.

"The people have scattered; most fled to the hills, to other villages I assume. But many of the younger men and women stayed to fight amongst themselves. For us. For the right to ownership. They wanted Teal'c mostly. Jack, none of us, expected the herding. It was... it was insane; I've never seen such, such structured primal behaviourisms amongst that level of, of social sophistication—"

Daniel trailed off; currently was not the time to be in awe of the whole disaster's anthropological mysteries. Sam was vibrating albeit at some sub-sonic level now and he was bleeding, not too profusely but it would surely flow like water once they took the blade out. Always his favourite part...

"The Colonel, and Teal'c?"

Daniel grimaced; it was an almost unanswerable question, painful to consider. Neither was he so fond of how Sam kept dropping colour like a bleached cloth. Hell the whole mission had gone to the dogs and this was just the extra bone of contempt.

"We lost each other, not long after we lost you. We saw you being herded off towards the river; I was the only one who managed to break through the," he frowned, "the mobs – Jack told me to keep going, to find you or to escape through the Stargate and bring reinforcements back. But I was forced across the river and I ended up following your trail..."

It concluded a bad outcome to an ill-fated recon mission, where there had until 24-hours ago been real hope of a successful trade of basic weaponry defences for locations to mines. But it had turned out the price for the locations, what had been asked as 'defences' but had actually meant a trade of slave labour, had been unacceptable and the people, though technologically primitive were also tactically savage beyond comparison. They had strategy of the kind Daniel could only compare with the wild; hyenas who use sheer force of numbers and muscle and their tactless laughter to drive away the lionesses, before turning on each other for the spoils. Behaviourisms which matched with none of the admirable stoical pride and relenting sense of community these people had shown SG-1 when first they had conversed over a meal of humble peasants food and water...

Travelling through the wheat fields after escaping across the river Daniel had thought Sam to be one of the vagrant villagers when he'd first spotted her, or the shadow of her bulk; a scout crouched behind some low ruins readying to flush him into a net of his peers. Which was why he had come at her from a tight angle using the tall wheat crop to stalk up to her and the nose of his zat to lead. Unlucky for him she had been high on adrenaline and a little blind of sense...

"They were together when I last turned to look, heading roughly east – opposite from us. It looked like Teal'c was giving them hell. Jack was playing his own strategies. They were in a better position to get back to the Stargate; I just hope they took it."

It was solemn and white but Sam nodded. She eased back into the grass at Daniel's feet to think. Which was no easy accomplishment. She couldn't tell Daniel, or she wouldn't, but her body was giving her hell. A splay of cracked ribs under her left shoulder blade and a shattered right forefinger as well as half a foot of broken toes were all the damage her skeleton had taken for her; her whole face throbbed like she had kissed a concrete wall, her gut wrenched as she lost her adrenalin rush and more than a little self-esteem and pride. Weapon-less, pelted with mud and shit, pissed on, they'd even stolen her boots which Daniel had noticed at an after-glance. Though in the end she had won, fought them hard and at enough of a distance to then hide, she had become entirely untrusting of the field's silence and the swallowing grey of the thick forest behind it. It had left her burned out but wired up on paranoia. So now she had to swallow hard and force a deep breath down a hot, stinging throat to allow for a moment of bare focus, just a second to think; there was still duty to perform, still an effort to be made for her friend's sake.

"Let me see your leg," she asked finally, gently. And they both felt it as she spoke, a sort of release of tension that had strung around them unconsciously, a moment that allowed them to catch up with the craziness, to become Daniel and Sam again, not just two people with familiar faces rushing around on mad instinct and hard habit.

"Do you have a kit with you?" he asked, extending his leg so it was almost straight; it caused his cheeks to flush with exertion.

Sam nodded then stretched behind the ruins she had been hiding along; where Daniel had reddened Sam paled as she pivoted and moved. They were a sorry pair, but they had seen each other through a kind of worse that was hard to imagine at times.

She felt the air around the handle, twitching her fingertips as she assessed the best way to pull the offensive intrusion out. Daniel watched her closely, trusting implicitly but tense with anticipation. It was entirely unpredictable whether this was one of these situations the colonel would have to laugh at, or would pull the major's ass out from underneath her so fast she'd get a concussion. But Daniel had a way of taking this sort of thing in his stride.

"Soooo, that's quite a strong... stab you've got. There. Good thrust...good, yeah..." Sam had begun to pull out swabs from the small first aid kit she had stashed in her BDU parka which she had shed, but she looked up at Daniel to spare him a foppish grin. The relief he felt at seeing it surprised him a little, and then he returned it with his own wry, pale smile.

Which was when she pulled the knife out.

Inside he screamed, like a girl. But he punched his fists into the stone he was sitting on and bit the inside of his lip so hard he felt the soft tissue bruise, keeping the scream to a sardonic whimper. She pushed against the flow of blood with a thick pile of swaps and he almost pulled his leg away, his body trying to buck away. It was spectacular, how one action so quick and mistaken, could damage so profoundly. He would be limping for weeks. Or at the least he had another scar to add to the collection.

To her credit though Sam was swift and deft, more skilled than any of them perhaps at stitching up her wounded, light-fingered and neat as she was. Jack had a disturbing way of fixing things up to look worse than the open wound they'd started as...

She used almost as much gauze as they had by the time she had cleaned, butterfly-stitched and padded the wound. In its way the result looked comical, a thick wrap of clean white bandage over his dusty and blood streaked fatigues – like a cartoon almost. It sang like a bitch though, even after the Tylenol she fed him. There was little colour left to his face but a slight yellowish tinge around his cheeks and he was resisting a deep, primal urge to lay down in the grass and huddle, as if embracing himself would ward away the enormously frustrating pain.

Sam was satisfied though, at least that the bleeding had been stymied and that Daniel's eyes were sharp, totally aware despite his pale colouring.

"We should consider where to go from here... What way back to the 'gate," she husked through her teeth, suddenly aware again of everything that hurt. The tightness of her face and the trimness of her words did not escape Daniel's concern. He frowned towards the now setting sun.

"Maybe we should set up camp, for the night at least. We're what, ten miles from the 'gate? Four from the village at least... We wouldn't make it Sam, either of us. I take it you've lost your radio as—Whoa, hey, Sam!"

Daniel lunged suddenly forward and instantly paid for it; he could feel the slice of a wound in his shin stretch longer, the blood eagerly flowing again. He cursed freely but he managed to grab Sam before her head pitched into the hard ground, as she slumped awkwardly to the side. Daniel might have been pale from the pain but Sam was practically translucent and, as he carefully laid her on her side, brushing unkempt clumps of ashen blonde hair from her forehead, hot.

She was already down to her black tee, her bare arms streaked with mud and worse. Daniel wrapped his hand around an elbow and squeezed gently.

"Sam?" he asked as he checked her pulse (quick, erratic) and felt her forehead (gloweringly hot). And to his relief and slight surprise she murmured back, an incomprehensible slur but she shifted slightly as she answered, trying instinctively to roll onto her back.

"Hey," he said feigning light hearted conversation-tone, feeling though like he'd just plunged into a freefall dive down a waterfall. It was far too unnerving leaning over Sam as vulnerable as she suddenly was, like having his back exposed. Too often he took her stoical, military professionalism for granted, wrongly understanding her to be indestructible on the front line, like Jack, Teal'c; exactly like none of them were.

Daniel took it all to one side for now though and focused, just as she had for him. He tried to coax her to open her eyes by helping her onto her back and cupping his hand over her right cheek. He watched her face carefully, scanning every twitch, every flicker that made it look like she would open her eyes for him. Her cheek burned under his hand and for a moment she was almost so still as to be like white stone, with her lips slightly parted to allow only a ragged trail of breath. Then, a twitch at the corner of her mouth, and with barely any volume, but through the weakest of smiles, she said,

"Race you back to the Stargate..."

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A.N: A Chapter Two? Probably... Eventually...