Friendly Fire
Sam couldn't decide whether the slow, rattling breaths were comforting or terrifying. They meant that Colonel was still alive – but they made no promises that he would stay that way.
And, chained up as she was, there was nothing she could do to help him. He was too far away, she couldn't reach him. She could only watch from a distance as his face took on a greyish pallor, as his clothes soaked through with blood, as his lungs struggled to draw in enough life-sustaining air. He was unconscious, and he was dying. It was all her fault.
"We have to get him to Janet," Daniel said, tugging ineffectively against the chains that had him restrained to the wall a few feet to her left. Sam could hear the strain in his voice; a mixture of pain from his bleeding wrists, urgency, fear and concern.
"I know," Sam agreed tersely. With every moment, Jack's life was slipping away. The three bullet wounds were still bleeding profusely, and would continue to do so until pressure was applied.
But it didn't look like that was going to happen any time soon. Jack had been dumped in the corner and left to die by their captors. They hadn't even bothered to tie him up, because they didn't expect him to ever wake up again. And considering that they planned to execute the rest of SG-1 come sunrise, Sam didn't think they would be willing to give Jack the medical treatment he so desperately needed in order to live through the night, and they were even less likely to unlock her so she could help him.
At the moment, escape seemed next to impossible.
Their best chance would come when they were unchained just prior to being led off to their execution – but Jack couldn't last that long. It might even be too late already. He had lost so much blood...
"Sam, what are we going to do?" Daniel prodded insistently. "We can't just let him die."
Sam knew why he was looking to her for direction. Like Colonel O'Neill, he seemed to have boundless faith in her ability to get them out of whatever situation they landed in. More than that, though, was the fact that she was second in command. With Jack unconscious, she was supposed to be in charge. She was supposed to have all the answers. But she didn't.
"Dammit, Daniel, I can't work miracles!" she snapped irritably. "If you know a way of breaking out of thick iron manacles then please enlighten me!"
He didn't deserve it, but if she didn't snap then she would cry, and she couldn't afford to break down. Not here, not now.
"So you're just going to give up, is that it?" Daniel fired back, with ire matching her own. "Jack O'Neill wouldn't give up if it was you lying there bleeding to death!"
"Jack O'Neill wouldn't have shot me in the first place!"
The scene kept replaying in her head, over and over. SG-1 had only just started to explore beyond PJ9-355's Stargate when they had been set upon by a dozen native warriors, all big burly men wielding clubs and apparently heart set on capturing them. While the male members of SG-1 tried to fight them off by hand, Sam thought she'd had a bright idea – scare them off with the sound of gun fire.
She'd set her P-90 to multiple rounds per second, and started shooting into the sky.
But instead of running in fright, one of them tackled her, dragging her arm and aim down in the process. She hadn't released the trigger in time, and watched in absolute horror as three bullets – three of her own bullets – slammed into Colonel O'Neill's chest in quick succession.
The expression of pain and shock on his face would follow her to her grave.
Oh god, it was all her fault. If he died, she would never be able to forgive herself.
And now she couldn't hold back the tears any longer, no matter how hard she tried. She couldn't even wipe them away with her hand, because it was too securely fastened, so they slid unhindered down her cheeks.
"C-Car-Carter?"
The whisper was barely audible, but Sam heard it and her head snapped up.
"Colonel?"
Daniel's eyes widened. "Jack?"
Teal'c's eyebrow rose slightly. "O'Neill?"
"M-morn-ing – cam-campers."
Sam's overwhelming joy that Jack was conscious was quickly dampened when Jack coughed, a dry hacking cough that brought up blood and sent him curling in on himself in agony.
"Ah god!" he whimpered.
Sam couldn't bear to see him like this. Her heart physically ached, and she found herself fighting her restraints again, even though she knew it was futile. "Jack..."
He seemed to hear her, because he shook his head slightly. "No – no Carter, don't... not Jack... not dying. Not dying."
But he was. And it was all her fault.
"Jack, I'm so sorry. If I hadn't-"
His eyes flashed open, and he looked straight at her. "No, Carter – don't blame – friendly fire – happens..." His body lurched into another coughing fit, and he curled tighter.
Sam would have given anything to be able to run over to his side, gather him into her arms and ease away the hurt. But she couldn't and it was killing her.
"O'Neill," Teal'c rumbled. "Concentrate on my voice. The pain does not matter. We are still in danger. We are retrained, but you are not. You must free us."
Sam glared at him, furious that he would place the burden of saving them on Jack when he lay injured, dying.
Teal'c met her heated gaze levelly. "It appears we have no other choice, Major Carter," he said quietly.
"D-danger?" Jack repeated hazily.
Teal'c nodded gravely. "Indeed. In a few hours we are to be executed."
Jack frowned, and as he processed this information his brown eyes darkened with anger. "Not if I have anything to do with it," he growled.
And then, seeming to shove back the pain and draw on an incredible inner strength, he pushed himself to his feet.
Sam wanted to protest, knowing that his injuries were severe and could only get worse as he moved, imagining Janet yelling at all of them for letting him do this. But Teal'c was right, so she didn't say anything.
Jack wobbled unsteadily for a moment, but his face set with steely determination and he stabilised.
"What do we need?" he asked, eyes fixed on Teal'c.
"The guards outside have a key," Teal'c supplied.
Jack nodded slightly. "How many?"
"Two."
Jack nodded again and took one step, then another, towards the door.
Sam held her breath, half expecting him to collapse, but somehow he made it.
He leant against the wall briefly, his breathing pained and ragged. But gradually he silenced it, and tried the handle.
"Unlocked," he reported in a whisper.
In a single, swift, fluid movement, Jack pulled open the door and flung himself at the guards.
He took them by surprise. They had thought they were guarding three tightly chained prisoners and one dead man. So when the attack came, they were unprepared for it. If they hadn't been, Sam knew that Jack would have died. He was badly wounded, and severely weakened by pain and blood loss. Through sheer force of will, and incredible good luck, he was able to take down the two men, and even then he sustained a terrible blow to the head. Any clotting that his body had attempted to form over the gunshot wounds was burst wide open again, and blood poured from them more heavily than before.
Inside, Sam was screaming.
Jack dropped to his knees – by accident or purpose, it was impossible to tell – and searched through the pockets of the unconscious natives. His hand was shaking terribly as he finally withdrew a shiny, metal key and held it up to the moonlight. He seemed to be struggling to see it clearly.
"That is it, O'Neill," Teal'c confirmed gently.
Jack nodded slowly, sluggishly. He tried to stand again, but almost all of his strength had been sapped by the brief fight. Eventually he crawled his way over to his teammates, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
He stopped at Teal'c's feet, and gazed upwards. Sam could imagine that it seemed such a long way up, to reach the first of the manacles around Teal'c's wrists.
"You can do it, O'Neill," Teal'c encouraged softly. "You must do it."
"Must," Jack whispered. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then reached up a hand and wrapped it tightly in the hem of Teal'c's t-shirt. Drawing on what had to be the very last of his reserves, Jack literally pulled himself to his feet. Then he swayed, and sank against Teal'c's chest.
Ignoring the blood steadily soaking into his clothing, Teal'c remained calm, his voice at once strong and soothing. "Almost there, O'Neill."
Jack nodded, and stretched up with the hand that held the key. It took him a few tries, but the key finally slid into the lock and he twisted.
The manacle clicked open, and Teal'c's hand was free. He gently drew the key from Jack's fingers. "Well done, my brother."
He took over from there, unlocking his remaining hand and then lying an unconscious Jack out on the floor before freeing his legs and his teammates.
As soon as the task was completed, SG-1 sprang into action without any words needing to be spoken between them. Teal'c and Daniel pulled off their t-shirts and handed them to Sam to be shredded and used for bandages, and then dragged the guards into the room. They exchanged outfits with them, so as to be less noticeable when they made their escape, and relieved them of their weapons as well. Guns would have been preferable, but knifes and clubs would have to do.
Sam tore the t-shirts into long strips, wadded three of them to be pressed directly against the wounds and used the others to secure the wads tightly in place. She could only hope that it wasn't too little, too late.
Luckily for SG-1, Jack, not considered a threat, had not been relieved of his GDO so they wouldn't have to go searching for their equipment.
Teal'c passed Sam his weapons and took charge of Jack, scooping the injured man into his arms.
"We must make haste."
Moving as fast as they could while still remaining stealthy and careful not to hurt their leader, SG-1 made their way out of the native village.
Thankfully, their escape was not noticed until they had already reached the Stargate. In the distance, they could hear yelling and see torches flare to life, but it didn't matter anymore.
Daniel dialled the gate, Sam entered SG-1's identification code, and Teal'c was first through the shimmering event horizon. Daniel followed and Sam took up the rear to make sure that the rest of the team got through safely.
She glanced back one more time, her gaze automatically seeking out the place where she had nearly killed her commanding officer. She could see the dark stain of blood on the green grass where he had fallen, and her stomach lurched.
Forcibly, she pulled her attention away from the nightmarish memory, and stepped through the open wormhole.
ooOOoo
"...severe ballistic trauma..."
"... need four units of B negative blood..."
"...start him up on an I.V. immediately..."
"...we need to remove those bullets..."
"...sorry, Sam, but you have to wait outside..."
"...missed the spine by an inch..."
"...no shattered bones, slight nick in the left kidney..."
"...could have been much worse..."
"...O'Neill's a fighter..."
ooOOoo
Jack was floating.
He was never usually completely pain free – too many years in the Special Ops, too many injuries, a cranky knee and plain old age made sure of that.
So for him to be feeling absolutely no pain, paradoxically, had to mean that he had been hurt badly enough for Doc Fraiser to ignore his general dislike of painkillers and drug him.
It was actually quite a pleasant feeling, but he would never admit that aloud to anyone. He had an image to uphold, after all.
So what happened this time? he wondered absently.
He searched back through his memories, and encountered hazy, half-formed thoughts and sensations – indications that he had been viewing the world through a pain-glazed visor. The heavy stench of blood clung to all of them, and he had a bad feeling that it had all been his. He wasn't looking forward to the painkillers wearing off, then.
He searched back further, seeking the root cause of his latest mishap.
An image suddenly flashed into his mind: surrounded by club-wielding brutes, the Stargate in the background, a P90 aimed at his chest, Carter's face morphing into horrified shock as she lets go of the trigger a split second too late – and then the sensation of being hit by a two-ton truck.
Oh crap. Carter had shot him.
She hadn't meant to, of course. The guy grabbing her from behind and throwing off her aim had been an unexpected turn of events, and it was just an unfortunate accident that Jack had been in the line of fire.
Jack snorted quietly to himself. Unfortunate accidents seemed to happen to him a lot. It was almost funny, when you thought about it.
Except, he knew that Carter wouldn't be laughing. In fact, she was probably beating herself up about it right now. Analysing and over-analysing every moment of the skirmish, forcing herself to relive each second, and coming up with dozens of scenarios of what she could have done differently.
It wasn't her fault, but Carter wouldn't see it that way. She would be blaming herself for his close brush with death, and probably making herself sick with worry over him.
Which meant that he had to wake up.
After a few minutes, his brain finally caught on to the idea and worked to drag him out of the warm, comforting white haze that was drug-induced bliss. After his mind worked out how to send an instruction to his eyelids to open, they took their own sweet time to respond. Eventually, however, a sliver of light peeked through, and then he blinked and the infirmary came into focus.
Ah, the infirmary. Jack wouldn't be surprised if he had spent more time sleeping here than in his own home – especially since whenever he wasn't injured he tended to be off-world. He had to admit, he preferred to stare up at unfamiliar stars and make up his own constellations than up at the plain white ceiling of the infirmary. It was just so boring. Maybe he should buy one of those glow-in-the-dark star sets, like the one he'd given to Charlie on his 6th birthday, and decorate the ceiling with it. He wondered if Janet would mind.
Speaking of Janet...
"Hey, Colonel, I see you've finally decided to wake up."
She called him Colonel. That was comforting. It meant he wasn't dying. Janet and Carter only called him 'Jack' when he was dying. Colonel meant that they knew he was going to live, so they weren't willing to risk the use of his first name because it was against regulations and he'd tell them off for it once he was better. Dead men could tell no tales, however.
"Uh huh," was all he said out loud. It came out more croaked than he'd intended, and he had to wonder if Machello's device had switched his voice with the voice of a frog. Maybe Carter would come across this O'Neill-sounding frog and kiss it so it would turn into a prince. Would he look different as a prince? He would probably have his grey hair replaced with silver. Real silver. Gold would be a little over the top, and he usually left that to the Goa'uld.
He recognised, then, that his thoughts weren't making much sense, and realised that the drugs were still in effect. He forced himself to concentrate.
"Water?" he croaked. Human-sounding croak. He wasn't a frog. Good, Carter probably wouldn't enjoy kissing a slimy green amphibian anyway. Not that she'd kiss him as a human, either... Well, unless she was infected with the cave man virus again. He missed that little tank top number.
Snap out of it, Jack, he ordered silently as a straw was slipped into his mouth. He forced himself to swallow slowly, knowing he'd be in trouble if he didn't.
"Better?" Janet asked as she pulled the drink away.
"Much," Jack said, sounding himself again. The green frog hopped away sadly, now forever denied his romantic encounter with Sam.
"Do you remember what happened?"
He thought about that question for a moment. He had to admit, he didn't really remember much after being blasted off his feet apart from a few random flashes. Being dragged by his foot through the mud was not one of his favourites.
"I remember being shot," he told his doctor dutifully. "But I don't really remember making it home." His eyes widened suddenly as a horrible thought occurred to him. "We all made it home, didn't we?"
Janet smiled down reassuringly at him. "Yes, you're all fine." Before he could ask about getting out of the infirmary, she cut him off with a quick, "but you're not fine enough to leave this bed just yet, so don't even think about it."
He pouted. Ah well, at least he was channelling a child instead of a frog, now. It was an upgrade of sorts.
"So what happened?" he asked.
Janet perched lightly on the edge of his mattress, reaching out a gentle hand and feeling his forehead for a temperature. "Well, from what Sam tells me, Colonel, you were quite the hero out there. You took out two guards, stole a key, unlocked Teal'c from his chains and your team took it from there."
Damn, but he was proud of his team. As unlucky as they were to get into nasty circumstances on a regular basis, the fact that they always made it out alive (well, in Daniel's case, alive after spending some time in a sarcophagus) was pretty damn impressive. They were an unlikely bunch – an aged soldier, an alien warrior, a scientific genius and an archaeologist/linguist – but they worked well together.
What, slipping into sentimentality now, Colonel? He remembered now why he had such a dislike for painkillers. They put him in a very strange frame of mind.
"No one else was hurt?"
"Not aside from a few bumps and bruises," Janet assured him. "You, on the other hand-"
"Ack!" He held up a hand to stop her. "I've been shot enough times, Doc. I know the drill. I don't need to hear all the wonderful details again." Besides, he had more important things to think about right now. "Where's Carter?"
Janet's face fell slightly. "She's just outside, Colonel. But I think I should warn you-"
"She's upset," Jack finished for her, and Janet nodded. "That's why I need to talk to her. Can you send her in?"
Janet looked to be on the verge of refusing, no doubt wanting to insist that he needed to rest and recover, but after a moment she relented. Her worry for Sam had overruled. "Just a few minutes, Colonel," she compromised, and raised the head of the bed so that he was in more of a sitting position.
Jack hid a smile. The doctor always said that, but by the time he'd chatted to Carter, and then had Daniel and Teal'c gate crash, followed by a visit from General Hammond once he was informed that Jack was awake, far more than just a few minutes would have passed. And, despite her trademark stubbornness when it came to her patients, Janet wouldn't be able to find it within herself to break the visits short. She knew it, and Jack knew it, and she knew that Jack knew, but she still liked to say it anyway.
Janet opened the door, and a tentative Sam entered the room.
Her features were flickering between numerous different emotions, Jack noticed. Relief, concern, guilt, worry, fear, sadness, shame. He wasn't all that surprised.
"Hey Carter," he said cheerfully. Letting her know that he wasn't angry with her.
"Colonel." Her lips curved into a slight, nervous smile. "It's good to see you awake."
He grinned at her. "Missed my scintillating conversation, did you?"
She didn't laugh, but then Jack hadn't expected it to be that easy to alleviate her sullen mood.
He pushed back the last vestiges of the drugged fog from his mind, leaving the pain killers to do their job without impairing his mental ability. He had to be all here for this, or Carter wouldn't think he was being sincere.
"So, Carter," he began more seriously. "We need to talk."
She sat down on the hard plastic chair next to his bed, staring down at her hands. "Yes, sir."
"You called me Jack."
Her gaze flashed up at him, incredulous. "Sir?"
"You called me Jack," he repeated. "Back on the planet. You didn't think I'd forget, did you?"
She frowned. He knew that she was expecting a reprimand for shooting him, not for calling him by his given name, but in actual fact this was more important to him. He'd get to the shooting thing later.
"Sorry, sir," she said, the tone of her voice suggesting that she didn't quite understand why he was making a big deal out of it.
"I know you, Carter. You only call me Jack when you think I'm dying."
She glanced away again. "That's not true."
"97 per cent of the time it is, Carter," he insisted. "And I'm disappointed that you gave up so easily. If I've taught you anything, I hope that it's that there is always a way out, always a way of surviving and making it back home. We've been caught up in some pretty damn-near impossible situations, and we've always made it out. Not always unscathed, but we made it. Haven't we?"
"Yes, sir," she admitted quietly.
"Now, I'm proud of my role as 'Mr. Positive', but I was out of it for a little while there. You're my second in command. And that's not just about taking over command decisions, Carter; it's about keeping up morale as well. If you give up on that, then you will miss the opportunities and solutions that are staring you in the face simply because you don't believe they exist. I think I've proved that on more than one occasion."
"Yes, sir."
"I know sometimes things can look pretty bleak. I also know that I put a lot of pressure on you to pull miracles out of your hat when the heat is on. But I think, if you keep an optimistic outlook, that you can handle it. And remember, it's not just up to you. We have a four-person team for a reason. We are there to support each other, and rely on each other. It's only by working together that we've been able to make it this far, and it's how we're going to keep moving forward. Okay?"
Carter smiled slightly. "Okay." Then her face darkened again. "But, sir, about what happened..."
Jack touched the bandages on his chest lightly. "You mean this?"
She swallowed and nodded, too afraid to speak.
"You had a good plan that back-fired, Major," Jack said firmly. "We've used the same tactic before and it has been very effective. This time it wasn't. You had no way of knowing what would happen."
"I shot you, sir." Her face paled at the confession. "I almost killed you."
"Your finger was on the trigger," Jack allowed. He wasn't going to deny the facts, because doing so wouldn't help anybody. "But you weren't aiming at me. I seem to recall a man twice your size repositioning your P90 for you."
"I should have let go of the trigger instantly," Carter self-recriminated.
"Three stray rounds, Carter. Considering how fast those babies spew their lead, your reaction was about as instantaneous as humanly possible."
"You almost died," Carter repeated stubbornly.
"It was accidental friendly fire, Major. It happens all the time." He could see that she was still going to fight him on this, and he sighed. He really hadn't wanted to bring personal experience into this, but it seemed that Carter was not in the mood to be consoled by anything less. "It happened to me, once. Except the guy I shot didn't make it."
Carter's eyes widened in involuntary shock. "You, sir?"
He wasn't proud of it. He could still remember that day; it was permanently etched into his memory. He still had nightmares about it every so often. A man, a good man, had died that day because of a small, simple mistake. Telling his widow had been one of the hardest things that Jack had ever had to do.
"Yes, Carter," he said softly. "Accidents can happen anytime, to anyone. That knowledge doesn't exactly make it any easier, but the trick is learning to live with it. It wasn't my fault back then, and this wasn't your fault now. You'll learn from this, and it will make you stronger." He smiled his most charming smile at her. "And hey, you can't get rid of me that easily."
As he'd hoped, the smile was contagious. "I know, sir."
"Good." He clapped his hands together, informally ending the serious conversation.
As if telepathically summoned – or given the heads up by Doctor Fraiser, either one – Daniel chose this moment to open the door and pop his head inside.
"Jack, you're awake!" The surprise in his voice wasn't terribly convincing, but Jack decided to let it go this time.
"Ya sure you betcha," Jack confirmed in his accented sing-song.
Teal'c appeared more regally in the doorway, and offered a respectful incline of his head. "It is good to see you well, O'Neill."
"Back atcha, T. So which one of you smuggled in the pizza?"
Teal'c lifted an eyebrow. "I believe you are aware of how Doctor Fraiser would feel about such a thing."
"No junk food in my infirmary," Janet piped in, striding into the infirmary from her adjacent office.
"What about outside the infirmary?" Jack asked hopefully.
"You are staying right here, sir, as you well know," Janet stated firmly.
Jack found himself pouting again, and beside him Sam laughed. When he heard the sound, Jack knew that she was okay, and that made the whole world right again.
His friends surrounded him, regaling him with tales of happenings around the SGC while he'd been unconscious. Soon they were all smiling and laughing and having a good time.
And despite the fact that the painkillers were beginning to wear off, Jack was happy.