For a long time the only sounds coming from the ceremonial house were the constant, low rhythm of drum beats and the chanting of the women. Jack, Teal'c and Daniel hovered outside the entrance, prevented from forcible going in by four guards. Granted it was four guards they could take if they really wanted. But they were armed with scimitar-shaped swords that were probably made of this planet's version of bronze and O'Neill was still suffering. Daniel would have followed their lead if Jack and Teal'c had decided to use the military method of solving a problem.
Since they weren't hearing any sounds of Sam being in obvious distress, Daniel managed to keep Teal'c and Jack from simply beating their way in.
He suspected that Jack had caved because he wasn't doing all that well himself. He was feverish and still obviously in pain. Teal'c had sought help from the locals and was given a basket of root vegetables, told to mash one into a pulp and apply the paste to Jack's entire hand. While Daniel had been searching through back packs to find something to mash them with, Teal'c had pulverized one in his bare fist.
Jack had allowed the paste and the bandage that they wrapped around his hand. Jack had gotten a shot in the thigh with an epi pen only because Teal'c had done it without asking and Jack had been writhing on the ground with his eyes closed at the time. He refused everything else, every piece of first aid they had, including morphine shots, cold packs and antibiotics. No amount of pleading or frustration on Daniel's part had changed Jack's mind. It was all to be saved for Carter. Period. No more discussion. Say another word and die, Daniel.
It was more than that, Daniel knew. Jack embraced pain. He would fight through it himself, using it to make him stronger. He didn't want a kind hand, or sympathy or relief. He wanted the agony to stay armored. He'd been through this before. It was how he survived. This was especially true if one of his team was suffering the same fate. No way for Daniel to spin the conversation in the way he wanted it to go. Diplomacy didn't always work on Jack.
Who was he kidding? Diplomacy never worked with Jack. Honesty, brutal and frank and bottom-lined did. But spinning? Never.
The drums and chanting had almost convinced Daniel that the ritual didn't actually include being bitten. Maybe the worms ignored a hand coming down into their sand, maybe there weren't live worms in there at all, maybe it was just metaphor…..
Then the drums and chanting stopped. The silence was maddening.
The door opened and Sam appeared in the opening. The guards stepped to one side and bowed.
With no idea what to expect, the men stared at her, waiting for some sign some clue. Sam's hand was a mess – already swollen, veins throbbing, red and black and blue, with blood trickling from half a dozen small puncture wounds. The rest of her was winter-moon pale and her eyes were glazed.
The guards began escorting her towards a house. She fell in behind them. Daniel and Jack flanked her, with Teal'c behind her.
"Sir," she said in a low strangled voice.
"Here," Jack answered and Daniel thought that was an odd way for him to respond.
"I really need to take my hand out of the sand now. Okay?" she sounded desperate.
Daniel cast an anxious look over his shoulder at Teal'c, one that said what the hell and please don't fall apart on me; you're the only one I have left….
There was comfort in the steady stare Teal'c returned.
"Sure," Jack said, gently, "Take it out whenever you want."
"I just really need to," she insisted.
Sam was delirious. Pure adrenaline was keeping her on her feet and moving her, zombie-like, forward. Daniel found he was shaking suddenly. He hadn't realized how much he depended on the military members of their team being indestructible – even Sam, maybe especially Sam, who tried so hard not to be 'the girl' and Daniel respected that, encouraged it because he thought that was what she needed. But even now, thinking he might be getting a misty glimpse of understanding of the military mindset – random moments connecting, actions taking on different meanings in his too-active brain - he almost jumped out of his skin when Jack snarled,
"Captain Carter!"
Sam's steps faltered and her head turned slowly in the direction of her CO's voice. Her movements were heavy, deliberate, as if moving through the air was too much effort.
Jack - face flaming with fever, skin paper-dry, dark eyes narrowed to slits as he fought his own pain - barked at her like a drill sergeant,
"Take your hand out of the basket, now, Captain. That's an order!"
Sam swallowed. Her eyes flickered frantically back and forth in delirium for a brief, heartbreaking second. Her face became almost doll-like, porcelain skin now dotted with bright pink high on her cheekbones. Her eyes were glassy and vacant, already too incredible to look at for very long, now too shocking to look away from.
Somewhere behind those lovely eyes was a brain and thought processes to rival the best the Earth had ever had to offer and it was being derailed by pain.
And Daniel didn't miss the fact that the whip-sharpness of Jack's voice hadn't reached his dark eyes. Those were drenched in misery.
"Yes, sir," she said, swallowing again, "Thank you sir."
They made it to the squat adobe building they had been told was the Place of Meditation – even Jack had caught the words kel-no-reem and understood the meaning. The guards positioned themselves in two rows of two as Sam went inside, her team following her.
She stopped in the middle of the room, staring straight ahead, looking lost and robotic and oh-so-fragile.
The room was basic – a wide, low shelf made of the same adobe with a mattress of straw-stuffed linen. Baskets of fruits and tall, elegant jugs that held either water or wine lined one wall. There were ceramic bowls stacked neatly in columns according to size against the wall. Straw stuffed pillows were scattered throughout.
"Sit down, Carter," Jack said, cautiously motioning with his head to indicate the bed.
"Yes, sir," Carter answered, and promptly collapsed into the middle of the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
Daniel and Teal'c had both surged forward to catch her and got there only in time to stop her from falling to the side. Jack also moved to intercept her fall, too fast. The color drained from his face. He swayed dizzily and would have fallen on the other three had Daniel not risen to his feet again and caught him.
Hands firmly on Jack's shoulders, Daniel backed him to the bed. One simple shove had Jack sitting on the edge. Lifting Jacks' legs, Daniel had him sprawling on his back and sinking in the mattress.
"Move over."
"Why?"
"There's only one bed," Daniel explained. "And I'm not a biologist but this floor is sand and I don't think we want to risk that there might be fire worms living in it."
Even in his pain-wracked brain, Jack understood what they intended to do. He tried to get up.
"No," he said, "No no no…"
"Shut up, Jack," Daniel said, and wow, did it feel really good to have that shoe on the other foot. "You and Sam have shared a tent together. What's the damned difference?"
It was true. Since the military saw fit to only let them pack two double tents, it was a toss-up who got to share with who. On any given mission, Teal'c would normally sit outside and meditate, leaving one tent for Carter. But often weather conditions required them to share. Jack had shrugged it off, saying it didn't mean a thing and it was like the Beatles sharing motel rooms on tour and it didn't matter if he wound up with Paul, George or John.
Which had prompted Teal'c to blankly ask why beetles had names and went on tour; and Daniel to wonder which one he was and why Jack thought of himself as Ringo…..
Teal'c had scooped Carter up and deposited her on the mattress beside Jack. She lay flat on her back in the same position in which Teal'c had put her down, limp and listless.
"O'Neill?" Teal'c rumbled.
"It's fine," Jack growled back, which really meant It's not fine but I've had the crap kicked out of me and she's had worse and there isn't anything we can do about it anyway…..
And Daniel – the word geek – wondered when SG1's conversations had become almost entirely subtext. He got out the first aid kit and crushed the cold pack to activate the chemicals. Sam hissed sharply through her teeth when he put the pack on her hand. Teal was already crushing another root in his bare fist, with far more enthusiasm than Daniel thought was really necessary.
While Teal'c finished that, Daniel gave Sam a shot of morphine and slammed the epi pen into her thigh and Jack rolled over on his left side to give Sam more room. With nowhere to put his own pulsing hand, Jack was forced to let it rest gingerly on her hip.
Jack closed his eyes, breathing harshly through his teeth. He was in pain. Sam was in so much pain she had moved away from the reality of it into a strange kind of waking unconsciousness. She was staring at the ceiling and Daniel knew she was very far away. He took his glasses off and rubbed briefly at the moisture in his eyes.
She had done this for him. Jack had let her do it, for him. Daniel already knew what guilt felt like. He hadn't needed a reminder.
He was organizing their first aid supplies into a basket when Teal'c finished taking out his frustration on two of the roots and went to apply the paste to Sam's hand. Cold packs, morphine, two epi pens left, antibiotics, nothing he could just knock her out with but no help for that and, geez, when had he become Janet.
Then Teal'c had Sam's hand cleaned with alcohol wipes, slathered in pulpy goo and covered in a bandage with the cold pack on top. The morphine might have been taking effect at that point because Sam closed her eyes and tears leaked in individual drops from the corners.
"Teal'c?" Jack asked, demand in his voice overriding the pain.
"O'Neill?" he responded.
"How long did they tell you she would be like this?"
"A day," Teal'c's voice was laced with displeasure.
"Daniel!"
Jack moved just his eyes to pin Daniel. There was nothing in Jack's eyes now. No ferocity, no aggression, no murderous glint - nothing but a flat soullessness. Daniel understood the phrase now, about staring down the blank, black barrel of a gun.
He had to moisten his throat to speak. He felt a chill centipede-slither down his spine.
"Yeah?"
"How long is a day on this mother—"he broke off abruptly, swallowed and said, "How long?"
It was a question Jack would normally ask Sam, who could figure these things out in fifteen earth minutes by tracking the sun's movements on any planet they got sent to, doing the math in her head.
"Sam told me it's about 19 earth hours," Daniel answered.
Jack winced and Daniel thought it probably had nothing to do with the pain in his own hand.
"How long has it been?"
Daniel checked his watch.
"Forty two minutes," he whispered, and then added, "I can supply you with the appropriate curses in Mandarin if you want."
It turned out, given the long string of bright colored language that Jack proceeded to mutter, he really didn't need any help in that department, even from the team's 'word guy.'
"You should rest, O'Neill," Teal'c rumbled when the diatribe finally stopped.
"Yeah," Daniel agreed, trying for levity, softening the anxiety, "You get to bunk with George this time."
O'Neill rolled his eyes. "She's Paul," he informed them
Of course, Daniel thought, she's the cute one, which makes me George the quiet sensitive one, which makes Teal'c..… John. Lennon. No that can't be right…..
His scattered, meaningless thoughts dissolved into nothing in the next moment as Sam suddenly said,
"Sir… Jack?"
And he answered once again, "Here."
Sam moved with the grace and lightness of a granite carving, a statue fighting its own inertia. But she moved, shifted closer to O'Neill, seeking comfort and his physical presence as if she did it all the time. She sighed heavily and appeared to finally surrender to unconsciousness. Jack slipped his arm under her neck, molded his body to hers. His lids slid shut over the black depths of his eyes.
"Carter…" it was a soft exhalation that came just before sleep and Daniel shut his brain off sharply before it had time to process the subtext of that particular utterance.
In the silence that followed, Daniel and Teal'c held perfectly still and looked at each other and wondered just what the hell they were seeing.