21

She hoped he was resting down on the cavern floor, and that he was getting some respite from the pain he was in, but she realised when he shouted her for food that she should have known better. She didn't really need to eat yet, she could work a couple of hours still, it was better that he get the rations as he needed to heal, and she was fine, but when she tried to tell him all this he brushed her off and she knew he was going to order her unless she complied anyway, so she gave in. She made a joke about his cooking and watched him trying to catch his breath as he replied. She was gasping in sympathy with him at times, unable to watch the pain without reaction, so she decided to distract him and explain how she thought the 'gate had jumped. Only noticing after getting most of the theory out that he wasn't paying attention, his movements were getting slow, he was showing all the signs of hypothermia setting in, and she wondered how much longer he could last. He wasn't even shivering a lot of the time, not that she would wish him to shiver, with cracked ribs, but if he didn't shiver he couldn't keep his body heat up. At least he was drinking the heated water, that should help, it was the quickest way to warm up, from the inside.

She decided to get to the conclusion she had drawn, one that supported his theory on them getting rescued, but was worried to notice he seemed less than enthusiastic about it.

They worked on the DHD for several hours, finding a frozen serpent guard in the ice, before he made them break for food again. They had not been at it long, almost the whole of the top of the device was now free of the encasing ice, when he started coughing up blood! She knew his 'cracked' rib was more than cracked, and it had punctured his lung, that's why he was having so much trouble breathing. Thank god they would be home soon! She pressed the address, the gate taking an age to power up for each chevron, as she hit the red button in the centre, there was a whine like a turbine slowing and… nothing. She swore at it!

She had just decided she needed to clear down to ground level to access the crystals when he insisted that they sleep. She didn't want to, but he pointed out that they had been working for 28 hours or so, and that they had both been awake several hours before setting out from the SGC in the first place, so she brushed off what lose ice was in her clothing, ignoring the fact that most of it was soaked anyway, and she made her way to the cavern floor. By the time she got there he had collapsed and was unconscious!

She rolled him onto the waterproof sheet, pulled open the sleeping bags and zipped them together down one side and the bottom, she took off his boots and rummaged in his pack and got out clean dry socks, which she put on him, and then taking off her own boots and changing her socks as well, she lay down and fell to sleep.

She awoke after less than an hour, not knowing what it was that woke her. Then it happened again, he coughed. "Captain. Much as I might otherwise think this is nice…"

"Sshhh, try to sleep." She told him, reassuringly she hoped, but he then said something strange

"Is that what we were doing?" she realised it may look strange, him waking in a double bag with her so close, she tried to explain why she was there

"You were exhausted, you passed out. I just thought we had to combine body heat or we wouldn't make it through the night."

"That's fine, it's just really hard to sleep with broken ribs when someone's lying on you." Oh GOD! Couldn't she do anything right? And he was not angry with her about it, she must be causing him so much extra pain, and he …he…

"Sorry, sorry, sorry." She lifted her head up and put it on his shoulder

"That's better." He sounded a bit stronger in his voice that time, she told him to sleep and he said goodnight, as she lay back down, her left leg still over his she noticed some… movement… in his groin

"Oh…Colonel…!" she was shocked, she had almost forgotten the incident when they had thought Daniel was dead, and had put it down to the stress of the situation, but here, now, he was getting harder by the second, and she moved her leg slowly off him

"It's my sidearm, I swear…" she couldn't help it, she giggled! She never had herself pegged for a giggler; well not since her mother had been killed. She was not totally miserable, she could laugh, she just didn't… giggle… but here, in this situation, it was just funny.

"No giggling, please…!" she wasn't sure if he was saying it to make her giggle more, or because the vibration was hurting him, or because it wounded his male pride, but she cuddled up as close as possible without touching him anywhere… sensitive… and put her head back on his shoulder.

"If we don't make it, I won't have any regrets, you?" she meant it, she was not giving up, she was still going to try to get them home, but she was with one of the few people in the galaxy she trusted, in a situation that, if not comfortable, was safe. And dying of cold was like falling asleep she had heard, there were worse ways to go

"I'll regret dying…" he told her, in typical O'Neill fashion. They slept.

She got up after sleeping a whole ten hours! Damn she must have been tired! The Colonel did not wake up and so she went to work on digging out the controls of the DHD. She got the panel open in a couple of hours and tried removing the crystals one by one, in order, top to bottom, after each time she put the machine together again she tried dialling. Once she had run out of crystals to try she realised she had no more ideas, the chevrons were still holding a charge, they glowed faintly, but no wormhole, and without… SOMETHING changing, nothing was going to work.

She swore at it again, slapping her hands on the red button, the radio on her vest clicked. She couldn't hear a voice, but it meant he had to be awake so she scrambled down to him as quick as she could.

"I'm usually the first one up." She could vouch for that. When offworld he never slept deeply, the slightest noise and he was awake, that was what had worried her so much about him not waking earlier, but she had slipped her hand inside his jacket and found he was still quite warm, his pulse slow and steady, so she had left him to sleep.

"You're bleeding internally, I don't know how badly." Not quite true, she knew about the punctured lung and suspected that a couple more places were causing pain, he had only been to pee once since they got there, which could mean renal failure. Kidneys would stop working for a while if they got bruised to badly, usually they started up again before the body poisoned itself, but not always, as she could attest. "Your broken leg may already be frostbitten, I can't tell. I've been trying to warm it up with the last of our cooking sterno but that's about had it." She was feeling that despair clutching at her heart again, there was no positive side that she could see any more, she needed HIM to help her, to give her something to hold onto.

"What's the bad news? Help me up." She noticed he was shivering again, that was good, the body generated internal heat when shivering, as he went to move she held one hand lightly on his shoulder, it showed how hurt he was, that light touch seemed to immobilise him.

"No, Sir, you need to heal. That's an order." Worth a try, she thought.

"I give the orders around here." The stubborn…MALE… if that lung collapsed fully there was a chance that blood would leak into the other lung from where the bronchial tubes met, then he would die… FAST!

"Not Doctor's orders." No reply, he could be closer to death than she thought, one of the signs of hypothermia was sluggish thoughts, if he couldn't remember that she was not a medical doctor then he was in worse shape than he looked. She took the pan of water off of the cooker, she had kept topping it up with ice and having it boil as near to his immobilised leg as possible. It was about 50°, it should help his body to work towards healing and heating itself. "I want you to drink as much of this as you can. Once that sterno dies, we won't be able to thaw any more." She held it to his lips, watching as he managed to drink a little, not enough. She needed him to drink! "I should have gotten you out of here by now, I'm sorry." She was almost sobbing

She fed him the rest of the pan of water, and tried to get him to eat one of the energy bars, but he was having problems pausing his breathing enough to swallow, so in the end she gave up on the solids, just glad she had put some warmth back into him.

He passed out again and she headed back to the damn machine… she HAD to get it to work! She spent another hour trying the crystals, this time in pairs, nothing! Time to try the Colonels method, take things simply, follow the power first as that is what seems to be the problem… she followed it through the red one at the bottom, where it then went into the converter… that seemed to be OK, it was humming and a slight vibration could be felt if a finger tip was applied… that then went into that box, with a switch on it… Oh GOD! A RESET button! That would stop the chevrons glowing and allow her to start all over again, thank god! She radioed the Colonel to tell him the news, but he did not answer her, she did not want to spare the time to get down to him, when if she was right, she could have the wormhole open in that time!

The chevrons went out. She pressed the first symbol and this time there was no delay, a satisfying THUNK! As the first one locked. She dialled the other 5 for the destination and as she pressed the sixth she felt the ground shake, this was like going back in time, the whole damn facility used to shake before she got the dampeners fixed after that first mission to Abydos, bits of ice started falling from the roof and she covered her head until they stopped, she pressed the red button, confident that they were on their way home, but again the chevrons lost most of their glow, the shaking subsided and no wormhole formed. She was totally out of ideas.

"Work, ah…work…" she said, but the cold metal stood unresponsive to her plea.