He was weaker than he'd realized, and the trip through the StarGate left him sweating and trembling. He understood now why he'd had to fight so hard to get to come along.
"You ok, Jack?" Daniel asked, supporting him with an outstretched hand. Jack shook his hand off, nodded, and strode off in the direction of the little brook winding off in the distance. This wasn't the time for weakness-he'd collapse later.
The trip upstream took far longer than the hour he'd guessed it to be. But, then he'd been running and desperate. Now they were methodical and thorough. He hadn't left her out in the open, and it would be too easy to walk right pass the sheltered spot he'd half-dragged, half-carried her to-wherever it was. He cursed the mush Baal's sarcophagus had made of his mind and went on with the search.
Long after he'd begun to fear they'd overshot the mark, they found the escape pod. He'd known it was too late to save her from the time his memory returned, but until that very instant, a part of him had held on to a desperate hope that somehow she'd manage to cling to life. Looking down at the dried blood splattered about the pod's interior, he understood it was over. She was dead. Had probably been dead before he ever reached the Gate in the first place...maybe even before he'd pulled her out of the pod almost three days before. No, that wasn't true. She'd promised him she'd hold on. She'd been alive when he left her. Alive but dying. It had already been too late for the help he might have brought back then, and it was much too late for the help he was bringing now.
Teal'c put his tracking skills to work, and it was only a matter of minutes until O'Neill recognized the rocks he'd laid her behind. He found it was beyond his strength to make those last few feet, to round that last rock and see her dead body lying there. Daniel sensed his trepidation and came to a stop beside him. Together they watched as Teal'c, Frasier, and the rest of the rescue team went ahead. O'Neill looked at Daniel helplessly and shook his head. Suddenly, he wanted to be anywhere but here. Even Baal's ship would do.
He'd always known the day would come when he'd bury one of them, and they'd stay dead. When the Nox, the Ancients, the Asgards, and all the other varied ways with which they'd cheated death would run out and life really would be over. When no sarcophagus, no healing device, no advanced Asgard technology, no anything would be in the right place at the right time. He'd thought it was coming last year with Daniel dying inch by inch in the infirmary. But it hadn't...Daniel had found a way around the whole dying thing. But...still, he'd known there'd come a time when there was no way around it-and that time was upon him now. Bile rose in his throat, and he was trembling so hard Daniel had to place a steadying hand on his shoulder.
He'd buried plenty of fellow soldiers in his years in the Force. It had never been easy. And, it had been a long time since he'd been able to fool himself into believing burying a member of SG-1 would be on the par of other funerals he'd attended, that a coffin carrying one of his teammates would weigh no more than others he'd carried through the years, that the emotions of one of their deaths wouldn't equal the pain he'd felt burying his own son.
And to bury Carter. Knowing he'd left her to die alone. There wouldn't be a thing Baal or anyone else would be able to hurt him with after this...he wasn't even sure putting a bullet through his head would be enough to stop this pain. His luck he'd wake up on the other side with the knowledge he'd left her to die alone still intact and untouched by the destruction in the bullet's wake.
"We're too late," Janet thought when she caught sight of the still form of her best friend lying stiff and motionless in the soft ground at the base of a large rock. It wasn't hope, just an automatic response that made her reach out a trembling hand to feel for a pulse. She was so certain there wouldn't be one and so totally, unprofessionally shaken that it was a wonder she recognized the thin, thready feeling beneath her fingers as life. It was so weak she almost passed it off as just her own desperate desires. But, the pulse her imagination would have dredged up would never have been this weak, this close to nonexistent. Her shaky, indrawn breath of hope mingled with doubt brought the medical team to their knees around the two of them and suddenly, she wasn't at a dead friend's side but a medical emergency. Years of training took over, and it would be hours later before she'd shut the door to her office and cry hot tears against the cold, hard metal top of her military-issue desk.
Daniel realized the frenzy of activity beyond them could have only one explanation. "She's alive, Jack!" he said. Jack gazed at him uncomprehendingly, and Daniel pulled him along behind him until they could see Sam's still body in the midst of the hurried efforts of the med team. "She's alive," Daniel repeated, hardly believing it himself.
"Indeed, she is," Teal'c said, his voice sounding smug and content, as he stepped over to stand beside them. "You were not too late, my friend." Jack shook his head in disbelief, but the med team went right on doing their job and somewhere along the way, it began to sink in that yes, she was alive. He swayed weakly on his feet, and Janet, glancing up from her work, said, "Sit down, Colonel. We don't want to have to carry you both out of here!" He dumbly obeyed her order.