Silence by Zylstra
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Pairings: S/J -- ; I felt shippy that day
Neither one of the two people locked in the cell say much. They are waiting half patiently, half desperately for something to happen. Their gazes scan the room over and over again, looking anywhere but at the explosive device ticking beyond their reach in the opposite corner of the room. It lies beyond the force shield holding them in their prison, keeping them from it. They've found themselves in several such situations, and they know enough to realize that panicking would do no good: they either will be saved at the last minute or they won't. Though they are determined not to look at it, they can hear the timer as it ticks down to zero at an extraordinarily slow pace. One of them gets up and goes over to the force shield, looking beyond its transparent barrier, and pokes it slightly, just to make sure its still there. Immediately, it turns blue and he feels his finger go numb.
"I told you it wasn't a good idea to touch it, sir," says the other, remaining seated on the cold concrete floor.
"How is it that stuff can get in, but we can't get out?" he asks. "I never got that"
His 2IC shrugs: she obviously doesn't feel like explaining at that particular moment.
"We've got out of more difficult situations than this, haven't we?" he says. She shakes her head.
"Both of those times we had something else on our side," she replies. "Like those armbands, or people on the inside, or an actual control panel on the inside of the force shield: Teal'c and Daniel are already dead, the Tok'ra operatives were dead before we even set foot on this planet." For lack of something better to do, she stands beside him at the force shield and pokes it also, shaking her hand as it goes numb.
"You're being quite negative," he says, turning to her and raising his eyebrows in mock discipline.
"Just telling it like it is, sir," comes the monotonous answer.
"Good point." They lapse into silence, listening to the hypnotic beeping sound from the device. After a moment, he finds something in the depths of his mind to say. "So this is really the end this time, huh?"
She forces herself to look at the timer on the device. "Yeah, most probably."
He nods. "Just checking." He sighs.
She frowns. "What's up?" she asks.
"Oh, I was just wondering if there was anything I needed to say before we're all blown to hell."
"I suppose there's a hell of a lot we could say."
"..Would it make much difference if we said it now?"
"Guess not." An awkward silence falls between them.
The timer has reached one minute, and the seconds seem to tick away faster now.
Thirty seconds.
"Well, seeing as we're about to die...I, uh...You know that stuff that was probably not going to make a difference anymore?" he says. "Believe it or not, this time I actually have something in mind." She frowns.
Ten seconds.
He bridges the gap between the two of them, wrapping his arms around her and she doing likewise to him, conveying what they had to say without words.
And then the bomb goes off.
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