This chapter references a previous Glinda story entitled "The Little Legume of Hope". If you have not read it, one portion might not make sense. Just so's you know. :)

Taken

Dawn

"Is that too tight?"

"No, Glinda—it's fine. Thank you."

Glinda sat back on her heels, surveying her handiwork.

Although her trip to the quilt store had precipitated Glinda's participation in this whole situation, it was also rapidly becoming an essential key to their continued survival.

Glinda had been trying not to think about one of objects of her errand the afternoon before—that new rotary cutter. Her last view of it had been gruesome—the moonlight glinting on the protruding blade as it had quavered a bit while the Goa'uld's blood welled out around it.

Again, she found herself forcing that image out of her mind with other, more pleasing, mental pictures. For once, quilt math hadn't been possible—it had been too topical, so to speak. So she'd searched for, and found, an acceptable alternative.

Sean Connery currently flickered in the peripheries of her mind. And luckily, Paul Newman had been called in for backup.

She had cleaned Sam's wound as best as she could—they had both debated using the hand sanitizer as a cleanser, but then Glinda had remembered that she'd purloined some tiny packets of moist wipes from a seafood restaurant the week before. She'd located them in the little bag with the crochet hook, then dug a little deeper until she'd found the tiny sample packet of Neosporin she'd gotten from the podiatrist at her last visit. Until they could find some soap and water, they would just hope fervently that the wipes and ointment could help to fend off any infection. Although Glinda was still uncertain as to the amount of bacteria and contaminant material introduced by a single projectile. Did one need to keep bullets clean? The question boggled.

She'd used the broken seam ripper to cut a top-stitched pocket out of the interior lining of the bag, then folded it and tied it snugly to Sam's leg using strips torn off a width-of-fabric quarter yard that she'd received in her Block of the Month packet. The pocket had been chosen for its absorptive properties—the fabric having been folded over a piece of cotton batting before being sewn onto the lining piece. Although the batting was in the purse for reinforcement purposes, Glinda had surmised that the cotton would also be able to soak up at least a little blood. She hadn't been methodical as she'd ripped the piece out—she could make a new purse, but not a new Colonel. So the fabric had been wrenched out of the bag with very little care, and pressed into service as the singularly stylish bandage that had finally stemmed the flow of blood.

The bullet had ripped a path across the outside of Sam's leg just below her knee. A few inches up, and it would have impacted bone. Any lower, and the natural swell of Sam's muscle would have been enough for the bullet to actually have entered and done considerably more damage. As inexperienced with bullet wounds as Glinda was, she figured that if one had to be shot, there couldn't have been a much better place for it to have happened.

She'd said as much to Sam as she'd picked the pocket out of her purse. It was only when she'd looked up at the other woman that she'd noticed the Colonel's pensive expression.

"I'm sorry—I didn't mean to make light of your wound. I'm sure it's very painful."

Sam had jumped slightly, and refocused her attention on her companion. "What? No—I'm sorry. You weren't. I was just thinking that I've said that same thing many times in my career."

"You've been wounded often?"

"Yeah." Sam watched as Glinda wrapped the fabric around the pocket-turned-bandage. "Multiple times."

"So this is just another ordinary day for you?"

"No—not quite." Her smile seemed turned inward. "It's just that when you're in command, you concentrate on your team, and preserving as many people and resources as possible."

"And now you're thinking about the life of your child, too. And that means concentrating on saving your own life."

The Colonel nodded, then quirked a brow upwards. "And yours."

"I'm sorry I didn't obey you earlier." Glinda finished the final knot and chanced a look upwards. "I took that zat device from you and then you had no other weapon and were forced to throw the cutter and—"

"I'll buy you a new one."

"What?" Glinda's brows rose.

"That cutter thing. I'll buy you a new one. I'll buy you a dozen of them." Sam shrugged. "I'm just sorry that you had to lose it. I know it was something you'd been wanting."

"Better the Olfa than either of our lives. Although I'm not certain I'll be able to look at another one in quite the same way." Glinda glanced back down at the Colonel's limb, reaching out to readjust her pant leg around the bandage. "You're sure you don't want me to cut it off?"

They'd already discussed this particular issue—Glinda hadn't enjoyed the idea of the Colonel's walking around with the bloodied fabric flapping about. It hadn't seemed sanitary. But Sam's insistence on keeping it—the tear was negligible, after all—seemed tied to her mutterings about her legs matching the color of sour cream. Glinda's own limbs were pale, too, and quite noticeable under the hem of her skirt, but that hadn't changed the Colonel's mind one whit. Apparently, all was not equal when it came to translucent calves.

"Nope. No cutting." Sam moved her knee experimentally, wincing only slightly. "Wow. That feels better."

Glinda prepared herself for the next step. "Now, let's see your ribs."

The order brought the Colonel up short. "My what?'

Glinda fixed her with the same look she'd used on the Sunday School children she'd once caught coloring in the hymnals. "When you fell in the barn—behind the tank-contraption. You hurt yourself. I'm presuming it was your ribs."

"It's nothing."

"Are you certain?"

"Truly—Glinda." She'd never heard the Colonel whine before, but that particular note came close.

"Colonel Carter." This was the tone Miss Baldrich normally saved for the hotshots from Motor Pool.

For a moment, the only sound was a slight whooshing of the wind through the trees, but then Sam shifted on the log again, and reached for the hem of her blouse. "Glinda, they should make you a General." As she turned, she peeked over her shoulder. "You order people around better than Jack."

"I've had more experience." Glinda peered into the darkness, her eyes skimming the pale skin of the Colonel's back. "I take it you slid down the side of the tank?"

"Yeah—that's all—really. It stung, but it wasn't terribly damaging." Sam lowered her shirt. "I probably just have a scrape back there—or a raspberry."

Glinda made a thorough examination. The wound actually was more to the side, rather than on Sam's back. "Yes—it's a wide scrape. Right next to quite a large older scar." And again, Glinda found herself preparing to apologize. For bringing attention to the other woman's past life—past wounds. "Colonel, I'm—"

"No—really, Glinda. It's no secret. I actually got that one off-world—" She stopped, then wrinkled her nose. "Well, okay—that part is a secret. We were trying to figure out how to hide a village. One of the enemy soldiers shot me with an energy weapon."

"I'm surprised you lived."

"Yeah—well." Her soft smile flashed white in the moonlight. "I had something to come back to."

Glinda nodded. "The General."

"Yeah." She bit her bottom lip, and Glinda quickly looked away.

She'd often wondered what it would be like to feel that way about another person. Bruce Gillinsby had not been her opportunity. They'd had several pleasurable weeks together—and she'd been looking forward to more until his children had bought him a home in a retirement community in a place called Sun City. That he'd gone to Arizona without argument had told Glinda all that had needed to be said.

She had, at one point in her life, been engaged to be married. Thomas had flown into her life when most other women her age were already married. She'd been twenty-nine, and ready for something permanent. The sixties hadn't been nearly as exciting for her as they had been for her friends—most had married early and subsequently spent the decade popping out posterity.

Glinda had spent that time either mourning her mother or working and helping take care of her despondent father.

Thomas Foley had appeared at a friend's baby christening, full of himself but nice about it. He'd teased her about her red hair and freckles, and commented on the mischief lurking within her green eyes. And then he'd summoned up some seriousness when he'd asked her to marry him a few months later.

Her father's first stroke had delayed their trip to the Justice of the Peace. The second stroke had been incapacitating to the point of constant care and expensive treatments. Glinda had split her time between home and the Pentagon, scrimping wherever she could on her secretary's salary in order to afford the nurse that sat with Dad during the day. In the end, Thomas had not been up to the challenge. Glinda had let him go without malice—and even today felt a twinge of something blissfully poignant when she thought of him.

But again, when faced with the necessity to decide between her father and Thomas—it turned out that it was really no choice at all. And Glinda knew that it signified something that what she felt was only a twinge rather than a torment.

And so the idea of yearning for someone seemed foreign. To need someone like Sam needed Jack—and for this purpose, the nomenclature of General and Colonel just didn't seem right—that need was a sensation that Glinda hadn't ever quite understood.

But there had been times that she wished fervently that she did.

Because there had also been moments when she'd been soul-searingly lonely—when no amount of pleasant friendly activity had been able to assuage the empty that lurked within her. When she'd found herself talking with her geraniums, or begonias, or the ficus and desperately wishing to hear them answer.

And for the second time that evening, she felt that unwanted rush at her eyelids, and found herself blinking away tears.

And wondering exactly when it was that she'd given up on love.

This time, the Colonel made the inquiry. "Are you okay?"

But Glinda didn't dare answer. It was all quite suddenly too fresh—too raw—the blood and the fear and the regret.

"This sort of thing can be shocking the first time." Sam placed a hand on the outside of Glinda's shoulder. "It can really drain you emotionally."

And still Glinda just knelt there, her hands in her lap. She looked down at them, at her fingers that had somehow started looking like her Nana's. At her bare nails, the age spots that no amount of lemon juice had faded, at the crinkled skin and obvious veins. Useful hands—with their needle-forged calluses and short, serviceable nails.

And the barest hint of Sam's blood tinging them pinkish in the moonlight.

Sean Connery. Sean Connery. Sean Connery.

"Glinda?"

Automatically, the response came. "I'm fine." But even to Glinda, her voice sounded wrong.

"It's okay to admit you're not, you know."

Glinda shook her head. "Okay to whom?"

"To me." The simple statement resonated. "And to Jack. And quite frankly, to yourself. We have to give ourselves the latitude to have needs. To falter, every once in a while."

"You'll have to forgive me if I don't quite believe that about you, Colonel."

"I think you're forgetting something." Sam gently chided. "I seem to believe a conversation that you and I had in a converted bathroom stall a few weeks ago. And how you helped me pull on my big girl pants and face my fears."

Somewhat grudgingly, Glinda acknowledged the past event with a slight shrug.

"So I don't want you to think that anything that you're feeling right now is wrong." The Colonel squeezed her shoulder, the grip firm. "And after this is all over, we'll work on making sense of it. But for now, we need to accept that it sucks, and then get through it."

Glinda hazarded a look up at her companion's face. Sam's normally bright blue eyes were dark in the shadows of the forest. And sincerity saturated her expression. "So—what do we need to do?"

Sam's smile seemed at once relieved and preparatory. "Well. We need to get up and moving again."

"Do you think they'll follow us?"

"Absolutely." Sam looked back in the direction of the barn. "I was expecting them to come earlier—but after the effects of the zat wore off, they must have been waylaid by the Goa'uld."

"By collecting his remains?" Glinda shifted on her knees, easing herself back into the prospect of standing up.

The Colonel's hesitation seemed loud. "Something like that."

Glinda pondered on that for a moment. "You think that they're going to try to revive him."

Sam tilted her head to one side. "I think that the Goa'uld is probably still alive and kicking, and that there's a perfectly good new body waiting for him in that tank in the barn."

A shudder ran down the secretary's spine. "I really don't know how you've grown used to this sort of thing."

The Colonel gestured with both hands, palms up. The motion seemed to say, "Who knows?"

Glinda tended to concur. But the motion had also highlighted the bloodstains on Sam's hands. Sighing, she reached into the now-pocketless bag for the little bottle of hand sanitizer, flipping the cap open and dispensing some into the Colonel's outstretched hands before squirting a dollop into her own.

"And can we split another granola bar?" Sam stood, reaching out a hand to help Glinda up, too.

Glinda accepted the hand up, then stretched out for a moment before reaching back into her bag. Withdrawing a banana, she handed it to the Colonel. "I've also got an orange, a few apples, and some Vienna sausages."

Sam immediately snapped open the top of the peel, her smile broad and contagious. "How on earth did you manage this?"

"In the kitchen." Glinda reached back into the depths of the purse. Fiddling briefly with the bag tie, she pulled out two bolillo rolls. "You acquired knives and meat tenderizers. I got sustenance."

As they walked, Sam devoured the banana. "You have no idea how hungry I was. For this, alone, you should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom."

Glinda smiled and handed over a roll. "So, what's next?" Reaching back into the bag, she searched for a can of sausages.

"We need to find a way out of here—contact Jack—and then we need to go back to the compound."

Her fingers briefly stalling within her purse, Glinda recouped and pulled out a can. "Why?"

Sam grimaced. "Well, I have the feeling that the actual Doctor Lee is in there, still. Possibly in that same basement area where we were being held."

"The unlocked room."

"That's what I was thinking." Sam had methodically broken up the bread and was downing it with military precision. "We can't leave him there. Among other things—he's a valuable source of intel for the program. And a friend."

The secretary popped the lid on the can of the little sausages. "Well, then, we'd better get all the nourishment we can in the meantime."

"We'll head that way." Sam pointed with a portion of her roll. "Maybe we'll run into another house, or a road. If we can somehow ascertain our location, we'll use your cell phone to call Jack."

"It will be daylight soon."

But the Colonel had stopped walking, and was cocking her head back in the direction they'd already walked. Her narrowed eyes and drawn features suggested that she'd sensed something troubling.

Glinda tried to be patient, but still found herself asking the question. "What's wrong?"

Sam frowned, her mouth suddenly tight. "Glinda—do you think you'll be able to run?"

"Run?" She shook her head. "Why?"

The Colonel glanced behind her, squinting into the distance. "Do you hear that?"

Glinda tried, but shook her head in frustration. The sausages churned in her gut. "Do I hear what?"

Sam threw the banana peel into the bushes, then grabbed Glinda's arm and drew her forward. Angling into a denser part of forest, she glanced at her companion as she broke into a jog. In her hand had suddenly reappeared the zat weapon.

"What do you hear, Colonel?" Glinda couldn't help it. Ignoring the pricks and pokes to the soles of her feet, she hurried to stay alongside the other woman, dodging branches and limbs as she ran.

Sam ducked under a series of low branches, pausing only long enough to catch Glinda's eye. "Quads. Someone's in the forest, and they're riding quads."