Carter awoke slowly, every muscle in her body aching as if she had run a marathon. Her head pounded, compounding with her nausea to make her feel more ill than she ever had felt before in her life. It took a while for her to become lucid enough to realise that she was lying on her back, her mattress something soft yet curiously prickly; she was staring at what was apparently a ceiling made from planks of greyish wood.

She moaned softly, unwillingly, not wanting to succumb to the pain but doing so anyway. How had she ended up here? Wherever here was...

She sat up slowly, holding her head in her hands and swallowing down the hot bile that rose in her throat when she moved. She was in a small room, entirely constructed from the same grey timber. She had been deposited on a straw mattress. Opposite her bed there was a washstand, a small spotted mirror and a bar of suspiciously yellow soap. Turning her head slowly she saw through the doorway a large well scrubbed table and four chairs.

There was a groan away to her left. She turned, cursing as her head span sickly. Colonel O'Neill was lying on a mattress next to hers. There was blood crusted on the side of his face, in his hair, on his eyelids. He opened bloodshot eyes. "Carter."

It was said slowly, almost slurred from a raw throat.

She bent over him, brushing away some flecks of dried blood from his face. "Colonel?"

"Where are we?" The words were jumbled together, carried on the merest exhalation of breath.

"I don't know sir," she replied.

"God. I feel... awful," he said turning his head this way and that, "What happened? I-"

He stopped, his head flopping suddenly, arms dropping as he remembered. His blood shot eyes took on a blank, shut-off look. He closed them again and was silent.

"Sir?"

There was no reply and Carter sighed, laying a hand on his shoulder. "I'm here, sir."

The silence was filled with the roar of blood in her ears, heart beat slightly erratic and her stomach still churning. After a while she lay back herself, unable to think through a fog of fatigue and sickness. She fell asleep again.

*

O'Neill was not asleep. He was somewhere deep inside his head, crying in his very soul as flashes of the memories forced into his consciousness so vividly by the creature continued to play in his head.

Kawalski's death.

The engagement party.

His divorce from Sara.

Torture; over and over reliving the pain.

And Charlie's death, the sharpest sting of them all. The one memory that could reduce him to tears.

He couldn't feel Carter's hand on his shoulder, he was so absorbed in his misery. Eventually he seemed to pull away from the snippets of hazy pain, claw his way out of the dark pit of depression he had fallen into. He sat up suddenly, dislodging Carter's unregarded hand and waking her. He was breathing deeply as if he had been running, sweat soaked. The cuts on his head stung and his stomach was unsettled but he felt... better.

"Sir..? You better?"

"Yeah" he lied, "Where are we Carter?"

"I... don't know sir.. I fell asleep again. Uh, I didn't explore-"

"Hey, don't sweat it Carter," he cut in, trying to keep his voice light, "That was some party last night. And some hangover."

Carter winced at his quip, uneasy about turning such a situation into a joke, although O'Neill was obviously quite comfortable in doing so. But then humour was always his safeguard against emotional pain. "Yeah," she murmured, standing up and stretching.

O'Neill mimicked her, wincing as he put wait on his injured leg. She darted forward to offer him support which he gratefully accepted. "Nice place."

"I like what they've done with the decor here," she added, playing along for now.

"It's very... grey. Yes. Grey."

There seemed very little else to say as they explored their new house. There were the straw mattresses, a dining table and chairs, the washing facilities, a fireplace full of cold ashes and that was about it. Once upon a time the door had been painted red, but now the paint had faded to a pinkish colour and cracked, the wood underneath rotten. There was an outhouse for a toilet; not even O'Neill could think of a joke as they stared, dismayed, at the cracked wooden seat and smelly pit below.

O'Neill sat down on one of the rickety chairs around the table; he could feel the depression rising up again to take hold of his chest, in this grey house on an alien world, decrepit and quite possibly dangerous. Carter perhaps read this in his face and touched his arm once more. He met her blue eyes briefly and felt the feeling subside.

"Wonder what we do for food around here?"

"I think there's a larder..." Carter replied, pulling open a small door in the room of the main room. It was indeed a cold room, O'Neill blinked having never seen so many dead animals hanging up.

"Uh, feel like... kind of chicken... tonight?" He stood up unsteadily, using the chair as a support until he could reach far enough to unhook a thin bird.

Carter couldn't quite prevent her shudder of revulsion. "Um."

"I'll do the cooking," he reassured her.

"With your leg?" He frowned as she continued. "I'll do it. I still remember skinning a rabbit in basic survival training."

"A rabbit? We had a deer!" he replied.

"Yeah, well, when you did your basic survival you probably had to use spears and rocks to hunt down wooly mammoths..." Carter muttered under her breath.

O'Neill grinned, pretending not to hear as she started plucking the feathers from the bird.

*

"Ow. Itf howt."

"Of course it's hot. I just took it out of the fire," Carter returned as O'Neill winced and squirmed in his chair, writhing as his mouth was burnt by the hot not-chicken.

"Nife thow."

Carter laughed at his compliment. "Nice? It tastes like rubbery chicken."

O'Neill swallowed. "Cut me a break, Carter."

"Sorry," she whispered. There was silence, bar the vaguely animal sounds as they picked the meat from the charred bones of the bird with their fingers, not having any cutlery.

BAM BAM.

Carter's bone fell to the table with a clatter as a fist knocked so hard on the door the hinges nearly bent. O'Neill's hand started to shake almost involuntarily as memories assailed him. He concentrated on the trembling limb and the quivering stopped.

Carter stood up slowly and went to open the door, shivering with nervousness. The click of the latch sounded particularly loud in the hush of the room.

"Hello." Carter had opened the door to reveal a tall man, thin as a rake, with greying hair almost white at the periphery cropped close to his skull.

"Hello," Carter returned.

"Um. You're new here so I thought I ought to call round and explain a few things. May I come in?"

He reminded Carter of a government employee; he had the air of a man doing 'good' against great odds, but the 'good' he was trying to do was 'good' in the same way that taking bad tasting medicine was 'good.' She glanced to O'Neill for instruction, who nodded.

"Of course."

The man followed her inside and sat at their table. "Um. You know of course what tasks the masters have set you?"

"Uh. Yeah," O'Neill replied.

"Good. Um. You are still damaged from your capture. The doctor will see you tomorrow and advise us on how many days rest you require before you are fit to begin work. Um. You will work for eight hours a day on your assigned tasks, five days a week. For the other two you will join with the other population to be assigned other labour. Um. You will be granted days of leave depending on the success of your efforts. Your time out of work is your own. Um."

O'Neill blinked. "What if we don't want to work?"

"Um. I'm sorry?"

"What if we don't want to work?"

The bald man stared at O'Neill, horror and pity mingling on his gaunt face. "You have no choice. You will submit," he whispered, lips barely moving.

"Sir...?" said Carter, worried as O'Neill stared intently at the man.

Her voice seemed to snap him out his trance-like state. The man stood up to leave; Carter moved to hold the door open. As the door shut with a dull thud she heard O'Neill swear, thumping the table.

She needed to say something, could feel the darkness that was threatening to claim O'Neill as he ran a hand absently over the still raw cuts on his head.

"Well..." she began but O'Neill cut her off with a grunt.

"I'm going to get some more sleep."

"I'll join you in a minute sir," she said in reply, "I'm just going to take a look outside our front door..."

"G'Night Carter," O'Neill rumbled, as he hauled himself to his feet with a wince.

Outside night was falling, the sky tinged pink at the horizon, a chill in the air. There was a dirt track leading straight past their house towards what looked like fields of waving corn in the gathering gloom. Ahead she could see the space-port, a huge ship launching, a dark silhouette against the sky. There were other shapes too, smaller forms in the shadows. She shaded her eyes with her hand, squinting to see what they were, moving so delicately like dragonflies over the water.

It was the creatures, their wings extended as they glided gracefully from parapets and balconies of, for want of a better word, the palace. They seemed to draw her eyes until she could almost see the spiny outlines of their wings, the red gleam of their eyes...

She started to shake, unable to tear her gaze away from the creatures, hearing the echoes of them in her mind and--

"Don't look at them."

She jumped, O'Neill's hands were on her shoulders, the warmth from his palms seemed to radiate downwards and fill her with life again instead of the terrible hollow emptiness that watching the creatures fly conjured.

"Come inside. Sleep. I get the feeling tomorrow's going to be a busy day."

Carter met his brown eyes, concerned and tired.

"Yes sir."