Their words and touch had calmed her, but they had only been empty words and their touch could not protect her from her torturer. She had no idea how many times she'd been dragged from the room and strapped to that table in the days following. She didn't know if it was always the same alien who strapped her to the table or not. She didn't know what it/they wanted from her or what she could do to stop the pain. She was dimly aware that it wasn't actually the same table in the same room because they had been thrust through an activated StarGate more than once since this whole nightmare had started. But it was always the same routine: the rough handling, the strap, the needle, the sting followed by the nausea and dizziness, and then the pain, and then waking up confused and hurting to the increasingly concerned and battered faces of her teammates.

She was never able to bring herself to tell them what happened to her in that room. One or another of them was frequently taken from the others, but as far as she could tell they were just roughed up. When they were tossed back into the room it was obvious they'd been beaten, but except for slight, red markings where the strap held her, she had no physical signs of abuse. They were conscious and all too aware of what sort of treatment they'd been given where she had no idea what was done to her after the pain hit. They were defiant; the colonel yelled abuses at their captors whenever one entered the room. She knew it was his rather ineffective way of keeping the bad guys away from his team by trying to draw all the punishment on himself.

She, on the other hand, trembled at even the thought of doing anything to bring their captors' wrath down on her. She watched the colonel draw the aliens' anger and, though she thought him foolhardy, she was ashamed of her own fear. She felt the fight had been drained out of her and exposed her for the weak, cowering creature she really was.

When the aliens came for her, the guys would try to stop them though they were always just batted or kicked away for their troubles. Later, when she had fought her way back through the confusion and lay hurting in their cell, she would see again her friends being battered in a futile attempt to prevent what they could not stop. She could hear their desperate voices calling out to their captors.

"Why are you doing this? What are you doing to her?"

"Stop this! Just leave her alone, why don't you!"

"Captain Carter will tell you nothing."

She was afraid one of them would be killed trying to protect her and knew she wasn't worthy of their sacrifice. She begged them to not put themselves in danger on her account, but, of course, they continued.

"Carter, we're not just going to sit here and let them take you without a fight," O'Neill told her. She felt even worse. That was exactly what she did.

Only once had she found the courage to even question her tormenter, "Why, why are you doing this to me?" She hadn't expected to be given an answer, but the emotionless, mechanical voice of the translator had answered and destroyed what little faith she'd managed to pull together about her ability to put up a fight.

"We observed you before we took you. We watched and we saw. Your people are strong, but they have a weakness that will break them...you." The words had cut into her soul as much as the pain. O'Neill and Teal'c would die before they gave their torturer any pleasure in knowing he was getting to them. And Daniel, though he didn't have the military training or the rough soldier mentality, was made of stone deep inside. He, too, would die before breaking. They were all still fighting and defying their captors while she meekly let them drag her wherever they wanted. She believed the alien's words...she was the one who would break. She was afraid that if she knew what her tormentors wanted of her, she'd gladly give it if only they'd leave her alone.

When she blinked her way back into an awareness of who she was, that knowledge was her first waking thought. It would wash over her as relentlessly as the aching pain in her body, and the shame of it weighed her down. She found herself pulling ever more away from the other members of SG-1. She didn't want to look into their eyes and see their pity or their condemnation.

The knowledge of her own frailty was enough; the pain was overkill. It never left her anymore. It consumed her and exhausted her leaving her without the strength to eat the meager rations they were occasionally thrown or drink the scummy water that they were infrequently allotted. Her teammates took it upon themselves to make sure she choked down some of both.

She could see they weren't faring all that well themselves. Their bruised and battered faces grew ever gaunter, and they staggered about the cell with barely the strength to keep upright. Even Teal'c. Where at first they'd spent a lot of time throwing out possible theories of what their captors intended to do to them, they now had little to say. She thought their captors where slowly draining the life out of them all. Hers was going fast. It was harder and harder to respond when the others spoke to her, or to swallow when they pressed the ladle to her mouth or fed her small bits of their dry rations.

One day she didn't even bother to try. That was the day she knew the fight hadn't gone out of the colonel. "You will drink this, Captain! That's an order!" he had barked at her. "Come on, Carter! We're not going to let you just slip away like this. Every day you're going further and further away! We need you here. We're going to beat them...all of us. We're going to get out of here!"

She blinked at him through the pain. Didn't he know she was the weak link, the breaking point? She'd do them all a favor if she could just fade away. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she shook her head no.

"What do you mean no, Captain?" he held her eyes with the depth of his determination. He had such a strong will there had been times she truly believed SG-1 had survived for no other reason than because he refused to let them die. She didn't think his determination was enough this time.

"Sir-" it had been so long since she had talked, her voice was weak and hoarse. She shook her head. It took too much effort to fight through the pain to explain herself to him, and what was the use anyway?

"Talk to me! Sir, what?" he shook her gently when she closed her eyes instead of answering. "Carter." Almost a whisper and strained as though he was strangling. She forced her eyes back open. "Don't leave," he told her. "You've got to hold on...whatever they're doing to you, you've got to keep fighting. You're slipping away, and if you go, we all go."

"That's what it told me, Sir. I am the weak point they will use to break all of you."

"What? One of them told you that?"

"I'm sorry." She had thought she was too spent to cry, but she had been wrong.

"Don't tell me you believed that no-good-excuse for a lobster, Carter!" She couldn't meet his gaze. "You're not going to break, Captain," he assured her. Then he went on in a quiet, strained voice, "I'm afraid I'm going to break watching you die in slow motion. We all are...can't you see what it's doing to all of us? Please, I need you to keep going so I can-so all of us can. Come on, Carter, drink some water and eat something. Fight another day."

She wanted to believe he was right when he said she really wasn't weak. She wanted to believe she wouldn't betray his trust in her. But, she didn't want to believe their ability to keep fighting depended on her because she felt within herself her battle was already lost. She needed to believe they'd fight on after her and emerge victorious in the end.

She shook her head. "I don't know how to keep going, Sir."

"Find a way, Captain. That's an order." She wanted to obey him, to prove him right about her; but the pain weighing so heavily on her kept her from it. She curled into a small ball beside him without having taken any of the food or water he'd ordered her to take.

"I'm sorry, Sir," she tried to whisper but wasn't sure if it actually made it out of her mouth. He carefully lay down next to her and wrapped himself around her. She was cold all the time now even though the guys were sweating in the stale heat of their cell. They had banded together to do what they could against the cold. Whenever she was in the cell, one or another of them had taken to drawing her next to them and letting their warmth reach her through the pain. As the colonel's comforting warmth seeped into her aching bones, he started to speak again. "We're going to have to make a break for it...I know it doesn't look good, that's why we've waited, but none of us our getting any stronger here. I'm going to give the order. I only need you to do two things...lie low-don't get in the way-and hold on. Don't die before we can get you out of here." She thought he was asking her the impossible.

Lying beside him like this, she remembered their time in Antarctica when it had been her trying to warm him. He had promised her they'd make it out then, too. And he had been right though she hadn't believed him then. Any more than she believed him now. There was no getting out. They were locked in a one-room building in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by a large number of larger and stronger hostiles. Their adversaries were armed with both the energy weapon that they knew firsthand to be very effective and projectile weapons that looked much like their own guns. It would be suicide to attempt an escape. And it would be futile. They didn't even have a clue where the door to their cell was; let alone how to open it. She wanted to tell him to not do it-not for her. But, she was drowning in the pain and couldn't rise above it.