Chapter 7:
Too long it had taken them to reach the room and find Sam. Even when they had found her, her gear and boots on the floor, Daniel wasn't sure until he saw her break the surface, panting. The water was only about a metre away from the grate on which they stood.
"Sam!" he shouted.
"Oh, thank God," she said, gasping. "I don't have much time. The Colonel is stuck down here, I'm breathing for him, but that won't work for very long. There's a computer terminal in that room. Daniel, you can't remove the water. You need to find the code that will release the Colonel's restraints."
She drew in a deep breath and dived under the water.
"I will return to the cross section which we passed, Daniel Jackson, and keep watch," Teal'c said, referring to another area which branched off from the passage that had lead to this room – where they'd been forced to wait yet again for a window allowing them to sneak through. "You must operate the computer."
"Right." And how exactly was he going to do that? he thought. But he dashed back to the computer console, and Teal'c ducked out of the room.
~~~SG1~~~
Sam returned to the Colonel. His eyes were scrunched closed in concentration and she tapped his shoulder to get his attention. They flipped open immediately, fixing onto hers. She could see the strain in them as he wrestled against his body's instinct to breathe. She forced her mouth into a thin, close-lipped smile and pointed toward the surface, hoping he would understand what she was telling him: that their friends had finally made it. When he glanced above them, she knew he understood, and not able to wait any longer she gripped his cheek gently and closed her lips over his. His mouth was impossibly soft, but it was hard to appreciate it – not that she should be appreciating it, she reminded herself. She exhaled; a constant but firm flow of air from her lungs and into his and as she exhausted her air supply her chest throbbed. It felt as though her insides were being sucked out with a vacuum. Struggling now with her own urge to inhale, she quickly reminded him not to breathe and pushed desperately for the surface.
"Daniel! How's it coming?" she yelled between lungfuls. She didn't know how much longer she could do this. Already the trip to the surface was several meters and getting increasingly difficult for her.
"I have no idea what I'm doing here," Daniel called out without leaving the computer lab.
"It's okay," she reassured him. Though she didn't feel so assured herself, the last thing she needed was for Daniel to panic. "Just keep trying."
She wondered though, when would it be pointless to keep trying? When freeing the Colonel was a moot point. Over her dead body, Sam thought.
So she descended back into the russet water.
Again and again she dove; ascending to draw as much air into her lungs as she could fit, and diving again. All the time focusing all her thoughts, all her considerable scope for concentration, onto one thought: Colonel O'Neill needs oxygen.
~~~SG1~~~
The blue of her eyes was clear even through the rippling effect of the water. Her golden hair floated around her face like a halo and she filled his vision as though she were all that existed in the world. He wanted to reach out for her, to touch the pale skin of a cheek, but his arms wouldn't move. Why? Angel his oxygen deprived brain suggested. But, as she breathed for him, another part of him whispered, Carter...
Sam broke the surface and gasped. She spared a quick glance at the platform; the water had reached it, her movements causing it to splash slightly over the ridge, but thankfully it seemed to have ceased rising there.
She was dizzy now, from pain and exhaustion. The pain of her torture and the lingering effects she felt in every joint, every muscle; the ache in her legs as she tread water, taking great gulps of air; the burning in her lungs. How much longer would her body move as she commanded? Anoxia... the Colonel would be suffering of it by now, soon, so would she. She could hear Daniel; the echoes of his shifting boots and muttering voice, reverberated around the room, bounced off the water.
With another great indrawn breathe, she allowed herself to sink back down. He no longer had his eyes closed when she came to him now; instead he always seemed to be casting about, looking for something. She reached him and his eyes stilled, alighting on hers, and he beamed: a big toothy grin that bloomed over his face ever so rarely. It was infectious but she closed her mouth over his and moved her hand to his chest, satisfied when she felt it expand beneath her palm. Too quickly, there was nothing left, and she drew her lips away.
Her eyes fluttered open and met his. He really did have the loveliest chocolate eyes, she thought hazily, especially when they were smiling at her as they were now. She was tired, so tired. Her chest hurt and her arms felt heavy. She tried to move them, but they wouldn't cooperate. She needed to rest for just a minute...just one minute wouldn't hurt...she felt her eyes close...
What was his Angel doing? She only ever came, gave him life and went away again, she never stayed. He watched her eyelids shade the blue of her eyes, her body sink a little and drift closer until her head was resting on his shoulder. He smiled again, maybe she wouldn't leave him anymore, maybe she liked it here with him. He tilted his face till her flaying hair tickled his nose. He blinked...Carter. His mind cleared and panic seized him abruptly. He bucked...
Her eyes popped open and she blinked at the sting in them, but the pain brought her a moment of lucidity. She was underwater and she repressed the instinct to breathe, she had to get to the surface, but she wasn't yet sure how, her mind was lethargic, she could feel it; it wasn't working properly. She felt something nudge her and when she looked down, she saw a knee, it shoved her away and her vision refocused. He was scowling at her and she knew now what she was supposed to do. With every last ounce of strength she had left, she moved her arms and legs and rose...
He watched her shoot up through the water. He closed his eyes, relieved, and clenched his still bound fists at the agony in his chest and willed himself not to breathe. He felt a twinge in his mind, something like pain and his thoughts started to turn fuzzy...Why was it so gloomy and cold? Don't breathe, he remembered. If only she would come back, it was never as dismal when she was there...
Sam coughed and spluttered, took a breath and shouted, "Daniel!" It was little more than a hoarse bellow. Daniel, her team mate, her friend, came running out, but what she had planned to say seeped out of her memory. She tried to grasp at it, but it floated away; her mind supplied her with one word, "Hurry." But she wasn't sure whether she had spoken it. Air Sam thought; it was the only thing that seemed clear to her befuddled mind: the Colonel needs air. Sam took in as much as she could hold and plunged back into the depths...
He stopped his searching, he had found her, his Angel had come back to him. Somehow he knew she would. He didn't understand where he was, why he wasn't allowed to breathe...but she always pressed a finger over his lips before she left, and so he obeyed. He didn't understand why he couldn't use his arms either, maybe because she was an Angel and he wasn't allowed to touch her. But the one thing he did know, though he didn't know why, was that she would return, she wouldn't leave him here alone. And return she did, always.
He couldn't tear his gaze from her lovely face, as his chest began to fill. He thought maybe he should, but he couldn't remember why. He watched the way the tendons in her neck relaxed, just before she pulled away. It seemed faster than it had the times before. But then her eyes were looking into his and she touched his face...
Don't breathe,her mind told her, but she had forgotten why. His heart beat under the palm of her hand; his eyes were locked onto hers. For a moment they blurred in her vision, and then crystallized. She found her forehead resting against his...
She was staying with him this time, she wasn't going away. She closed her eyes, he didn't want her to, but he couldn't tell her. Instead he nudged her nose with his, hoping she would open them, but she didn't. He felt the need to breathe again. She hadn't told him not to this time, so maybe he could. But then something changed...his arms, he had them back. Was he finally being allowed to touch his Angel? He tried to pull them around her, but they hurt...why did they hurt so damn much? He concentrated and slowly, despite the pain, he had an arm around her waist. And then a hand intruded upon his vision, and yanked her out of his weak embrace. Confusion and anger surged within him, before he felt himself topple over...
~~~SG1~~~
Teal'c burst out of the water, Sam's head lolling on his shoulder, her face in the air. A couple of strokes brought him to the edge of the platform, where Daniel waited.
"O'Neill has been successfully released, Daniel Jackson," he said.
Daniel, on his knees, plunged his hands into the water, getting a grip on Sam and dragging her onto the platform with him. She was pale, and he was sure she wasn't breathing. He looked back up, but Teal'c had already dived for Jack.
"Sam!" he called out desperately, he pulled her onto her back and breathed into her once...twice...and suddenly she was coughing. Quickly pushing her onto her side, Daniel watched in relief as she spat out the last of the water in her lungs and breathed...
Just as Teal'c popped out of the water next to them, with a thrashing Jack in his arms. "O'Neill!" Teal'c bellowed, and Jack's brawling stopped. Daniel watched understanding clear Jack's eyes. He took in a great gulp of air, coughing on the exhale.
Jack struggled to pull himself up, even with Teal'c shoving him. Having his arms bound for so long would have left them weak and sore, Daniel knew, and he left Sam's side only long enough to help heave his friend out of the water.
"Are you okay, Jack? How do you feel?"
Jack spared him a glower. "Daniel, do the words road kill mean anything to you?" he croaked, then flopped onto his back, letting out a few more barking coughs.
Daniel felt the tension he'd held in his shoulders loosen at his friend's grouchiness, and felt a grin tug at him in remembrance. "I think I may have heard it somewhere before," he replied ruefully, but unable to keep the smirk from his face.
"O'Neill. We cannot linger here," Teal'c said, after he'd leaped easily onto the platform.
With a hand protectively on Sam's shoulder, Daniel was readying himself to protest this when Jack turned his head – rather laboriously Daniel thought – to study Sam lying prone next to him. Her lids were pressed closed and her chest rose and fell too rapidly still. When Jack's troubled eyes met his in question, Daniel simply shook his head. She wasn't ready to move, she'd nearly died, for God's sake. But Daniel wasn't sure that Jack was ready to hear that, and so he remained silent, fairly certain their team leader could use some time to catch his own breath.
"Just give it another minute, T," he said, closing his own eyes and taking a breath he let out in a sigh.
Eventually Daniel felt Sam's breathing even out under the hand he kept on her shoulder. She coughed quietly, and opened her eyes.
'Take it easy, Sam," he soothed. "You should rest a while longer."
"Carter? You okay?"
"Yes, sir. I think so," she said, a little breathlessly and propped herself up on her elbows. But her eyes were bloodshot and Daniel could see purple shadows under them. He shook his head, hating that she never seemed to complain when he felt so strongly that she should. He shot a glare at Jack, whom – in the absence of any other military personnel – he blamed for it.
Jack returned it with a face that clearly said 'what did I do?' Then he dragged himself up to a sitting position and asked, "Okay. Now, does somebody wanna tell me what the hell happened?"
"We got here as quickly as we could. There were some people..." Daniel felt himself blanch and he had to swallow at the memory. Killing was bad enough, but to not leave a single trace that someone even existed, nothing for their families to find... it made him a little sick to think of it. "By the time we got here, the water was already nearly at this platform."
"You found the controls to release the Colonel." Sam patted his knee where he still sat beside her, in congratulations. Her voice was hoarse and she rubbed at her temples as though her head hurt. Daniel saw confusion and worry pass momentarily over Jack's face when he looked at her and then he pressed his own hand to his head. Daniel guessed they both shared an aching head.
"Yes! Well, in a way," he corrected her assumption by holding up the remote device. "We found this on one of the... um... people here," he cringed; one of the people they'd reduce to nothing.
Sam immediately sat up and reached for it. "Let me see it," she said. Daniel figured he shouldn't have been surprised. It would have been like presenting him with a newly unearthed Mayan artefact that showed a calendar extending passed 2012 and predicting the future. The colour started to return to her cheeks as her mind found something to focus on other than her own exhaustion.
He handed it to her, glancing up at Jack. He expected the older man to roll his eyes, or be looking at him expectantly to finish the story, but instead Daniel found Jack's gaze on Sam, a tiny smirk playing at the edges of his mouth as he watched her turning the device over in her hands. It only lasted a second and before Daniel could think on it properly, Jack's face sobered and he shifted his attention back to him.
"I just pressed anything and everything until we heard a clunking sound," he finished. "Then Teal'c dived in, and apparently it worked."
Teal'c inclined his head in agreement when Jack looked at him. But then said, "O'Neill. We should not become complacent. This area does not seem to be in use for the moment, but we have observed much enemy activity not far from here."
"Right, T. Help me up here, will ya?" Teal'c gripped Jack's arm, and with his help, Jack found his unsteady feet.
Daniel did the same for Sam. She swayed for a moment and he kept his arms around her, but she was still engrossed in the alien contraption and didn't seem to notice. "Sam?"
She blinked up at him. Then shook out her legs as she steadied herself and made her way over to the gear she had piled up on the grating. "This is interesting," she said. "The computer inside seemed to have control access to some main systems, but this device..."
"Carter. You can play with your new toy later. Right now, we gotta get outta Dodge," Jack said, but when Daniel looked at him he saw the same threat of a grin at the corners of his mouth, before he looked around. "And also...would anyone have a change of clothes by any chance?"
~~~SG1~~~
A/N: Thoughts?
