BURNING BRIGHTLY

Chapter Two:

Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up, I truly thought I would be able to do it quicker than this but it didn't work out that way…

Wow! :) Thanks for all the great reviews people. Thanks for the heads up, Raylenth you're right, they should have been debriefed and checked in the infirmary and I appreciate your pointing it out.

Disclaimer: Did I say I'd give the characters back in one piece? Well, there might be a problem with that... still the characters aren't mine though.

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DANIEL:

"The Egyptians believed in an afterlife, in the reincarnation and the transmigration of the soul. The reason for embalming the bodies of the deceased was so that it would be preserved on its journey with ka, which is the force that is counterpart of the body, like what we call a soul. Pythagoras, he was an ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician, taught that the soul was immortal and merely resided in the body, hence the idea that the soul survives death. In this theory the soul continues on a circle of reincarnation and transmigration until bodily impurities have been removed. The Frevian culture seems to have developed along these lines, with the concept akin to the Christian belief of heaven and hell -, Teal'c? Am I boring you?"

Teal'c cranes his head around to face me through the doorway from the living room, where he is seated on the only armchair that isn't covered in books and papers and other odds and ends I haven't found places for yet- or in the past year or so. "I find the concept of an afterlife intriguing, DanielJackson. However, I am not sure our meal is supposed to give off such a scent."

I notice a faint smell in the air and hurry over to the oven, pulling out a rather over-cooked roast and burning my hands through the teatowel in the process. Ouch.

"Do you require assistance?"

"Nope, Im fine." Not. I poke at the roast with a fork. If its possible that something that is already dead could die again, I think I just managed it. "You don't mind... um... well-done food, do you?"

Teal'c enters the kitchen, his eyebrow rising at the sight of the poor wreck of a meal. Nevertheless, he helps me to spoon some potatoes onto plates and set the table. He chews at a section of the roast. "I do believe you have reduced the meat to its most basic carbon compound." he says, still with that damn eyebrow raised.

"Sorry." I apologise. "Guess I got a little carried away ..." I poke at my blackened and crispy meal for a moment before deciding that coffee is a better alternative. I pour myself and Teal'c a mug, and I've just taken a sip when the phone rings. "I'll just get that," I say into my mug and set it down. The ringing continues its shrill insistence that I do in fact HAVE a phone while I pull books and papers off the place where I judge the sound to be coming from.

"Um, yeah, Daniel Jackson." I say.

There is a slight pause at the other end. It's probably General Hammond, cutting short our break for some emergency or other. Not that I'd mind, because most of my important research equipment and material is at Cheyenne mountain, and Hammond had to practically order me off-base before I would leave it even for four days. So I brace myself to hear the words that Im needed back there. They don't come.

Instead, a clipped voice introduces herself as Dr Something-or-Other at the Air Force Academy Hospital and proceeds to verify that I am, in fact, Doctor Daniel Jackson. "Im afraid I have to tell you that a member of your team was bought in this evening with severe injuries. We're not sure of the extent as yet, but we were told you would need to be informed."

All this delivered in the space of three seconds in cold monotone by someone used to saying these words. Me, not used to hearing them, asking her for verification;

"Im sorry. What?"

"A-" slight pause. "Major Samantha Carter. Yes, she's in critical condition, unconscious since her arrival."

Wait, wait! What's going on? "How? I - I mean, how did this happen?"

"Car accident." the crisp voice shows a crack in it for a moment. "Third one tonight. Damn shame."

A car accident? What? No, they cant be talking about SAM here... I just saw her. She wasn't unconscious then, well, actually she was snapping at Jack for arguing with me. Which is strange because, considering that my arguments with Jack are pretty much a given in any situation that involves discussing culture or historical elements or anything else that requires him to think outside of whatever tiny little box his career-military mind is framed in, ends up with us going head to head. But definitely not in a car accident. I put the receiver down and look blankly at Teal'c. All we have to do is go down to the hospital and sort out this mistake.

"What is wrong, DanielJackson?"

I gesture to the phone and do a great impression of my goldfish. I shake my head and motion to the door. "Um," I manage. "We have to, um, go..." Why the freakin' hell is it so hard to speak? Teal'c, thankfully, is quick to catch on. He steers me towards the door, flicking out the lights and locking the door behind us, and two minutes later Im driving us through the rain-slicked streets, thoughts tearing around in my head madly. I inform Teal'c in monosyllabic sounds what the nurse told me. Then I make some garbled reference to mistakes being made, records being switched or some goddam thing that makes more sense than Sam being unconscious in hospital.


JACK:

Oh, man. I feel as if I've been on an all-night bender that included drinking heavy spirits, garden fertiliser and gasoline, walking across hot coals and ended with being thrown under a passing train, just for effect. What the fuck did I do last night?

I open my eyes and instantly regret the effort as brilliant white light stabs down. I don't have lights in my house like that. Im not the type of cruel, heartless bastard that would torture people just for fun by burning their eyes out. Not just for FUN, anyway.

Okay, so not at home. I give the whole eye-opening thing another shot, managing to see a bright white ceiling this time. A clean, smooth surface that confirms Im not at my house. I turn my head to one side, and find a white wall, adorned with a few empty shelves and a small cabinet. I turn my head to the other side, seeing a cream-coloured curtain. Like a hospital.

Shit. I sit upright abruptly, banging my hand on the cabinet which hurts a hell of a lot more than it should. I stare at it, noticing the bandage for the first time. My other hand has been similarly interfered with, and a clear tube runs from the back of it up to an IV stand.

Now I remember. A car crash. Sliding... blood, and pain, and a strand of blonde hair caught under an oxygen mask. Sam!

Oh, no. No no no. An icy needle drives itself into my brain, twisting its way deeper while I press a hand to my forehead. She cant be dead, because Sam cant die. Not like that. I silence the little voice that sings 'just like Charlie couldn't...' and slide my legs over the edge of the bed. Every movement hurts like the dickens, and a sharp tug at my wrist reminds me Im attached to something. The IV drip. For some reason, though my body aches in a thousand different little places, peeling the clear strip holding the needle in feels like someone peeling my skin off with a blunt stanley knife. I yank the needle out and stand. Then sit again while I wait patiently for the world to decide that it does obey the laws of gravity and I haven't suddenly started floating off in zero g.

I then realise that Im wearing a hospital gown. Oh yes. One of those lovely little numbers thought up by doctors to further the indignity of being sick or in pain by exposing a line of flesh down your back from your neck to your knees. And I've never looked good in pale blue.

I waver to the curtains edge, holding the fabric of my gown together behind me at waist height. I pull the curtain aside. There's a row of curtained cubicles, no doubt holding more poor suckers like me. I aim for the door, almost miss, but get through it out into a hallway lined with more doors.

I thread my way down the corridor, holding onto the nice solid wall for support.

'Colonel O'Neill." A voice cuts through the air, a sharp bark that could match General Hammond's dulcet tones any day. I almost snap a 'yes, sir!' until I turn and see that it's a nurse. The angry glare she gives me could melt a glacier. "You are NOT supposed to be out of bed."

"Im not." I say, instinctively, my voice sounding raw and hoarse. "That is... I mean..."

She raises a hand, pointing back to the room I just spent so much energy trying to get out of. "Back. Now."

"I need to..." My voice gives out on me, and I cough. "Carter."

Her glare softens. "Major Samantha Carter." she sighs, and an accommodating expression comes over her face. "Very well, come on."

She takes my arm to hold me up, and Im too busy using the other hand to make sure that the world doesn't get a front-row view of my arse to protest as we walk very slowly down the corridor. She opens a door, and leads me inside, saying as she did so that "Although she is unconscious, her EEG reveals rather higher than normal neural activity and nerve response. The cause or effects of this are unidentifiable, but her blood analysis should give us some clue."

Unlike the room I awoke in, this one is private, a single bed in a wide expanse of open floor. The room is too big for the impossibly small shape lying prone beneath the white sheet, tubes clamped over her nose and a drip feeding her. A monitor keeps the time with soft beeps, and her chest rises and falls rhythmically. Her face is so pale. I've seen faces that pale before, but only on dead people. She's got a bandage across her head, and its dark with a seeping stain. I was short of breath before. Now I just quit breathing altogether.

"Jack."

I whirl on the man with the urgent, strained voice. Daniel, Teal'c by his side enter the room. "Oh my God, Sam." he says, almost as pale as she is.

I have an odd habit off hugging the crap out of Daniel, and this is one of those times when I do just that. Teal'c's hand settles on my shoulder.

"They told us you were driving." Daniel says, through a mouthful of my hospital gown. Im not letting go, because if I do Im just going to slide to the floor. "You're lucky you weren't killed."

I was driving...

For some reason, it hasn't hit me yet. I was driving the car. I was driving the damn car.

"Colonel O'Neill will need to accompany me back to his bed now." the nurse says, and Teal'c and Daniel walk me back there, none of us saying anything until the nurse clears them out so that I can get some sleep. Yeah, right. I stare up at the bright ceiling. I was...

I clench my injured fist, making the fracture sing with pain. I hit it against the cabinet deliberately. I was driving... Again, harder, gritting my teeth and welcoming the pain.

I was driving...

JACK:

It's night-time when I wake, and I don't remember having gone to sleep. The pillow is uncomfortably hard, the sheets are unfamiliarly stiff. I feel cold, but the blanket doesn't seem to help. There's a light on in the hallway, spilling golden through the glass window in the door, and a hacking cough from beyond the cream curtain separating the next cubicle from mine shakes the last vestiges of sleep from my mind.

Someone, probably Daniel, was thoughtful enough to bring some of my clothes from home, including a bathrobe which I slip on before using all of my special ops training to evade the nurses and night staff and make my way down the half-lit corridors to the Intensive Care wing.

She's still lying there.

I pull a seat up next to the bed, listening to the rhythmic throb of Sam's vital signs. A sudden sound makes me look up, but its Daniel slipping in through the door.

"Sorry." He says, seeing me. "I, um, I couldn't sleep."

"Me neither." I say, staring at Carter's still form.

"Are you okay? I mean, I know that's a stupid question and all, but really, do you feel alright?"

I lean my head in my arms, taking a deep breath. "No."

"If you want to talk or anything..."

"I don't wanna talk." I reply, sitting in silence for a few moments. "Its stupid. Its so goddam stupid. Think of the threats we've faced. We've saved the planet countless times. We've saved countless planets countless times. And this-" I wave my hand at my motionless 2IC. "THIS is how Carter dies?"

As soon as the words have left my mouth I know that this is bad, but I keep going. "We've faced death so many times. I've stood there and seen my own death. Seen the deaths of people I care about. But Carter? Like this..."

"So what, you want a heroic death?" Daniel asks innocently, jumping as I whirl on him in anger. "No, don't get me wrong. My experience with the military is that death in service of your country is a 'noble sacrifice'. A worthy sacrifice…"

"NO." That's not what I meant. But what do I mean? The thought of a debate with Daniel lacks its usual appeal. Im too tired. Rubbing my eyes, I go on. "I don't want her to die, Daniel. There's always a back door, you know? A last minute solution. Something that manages to keep us all alive and together. Something that saves our arses."

Daniels face is pale in the leaking light through the window. He looks as buggered as I no doubt do, eyes underlined with black smudges, hair tousled and shoulders slumped. Somehow I cant say what I mean to say. That there might not be any back door out of this one. That this might be it.

That Im scared.

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Hmm, Im afraid this chapter is a bit boring, but the next one will be better and will be up soon so please please please keep reading and reviewing, k?

NB: I put Sam and Jack in the same hospital Jacob Carter was in during 'Tokra' and has been used and referred to a few times in the show. Whether or not this is where she would be, I have no idea. My knowledge of these things is sadly lacking and born entirely of what I see on TV, because I don't know much about locations etc in the U.S. I also don't know much about medicine and comas apart from what I see on TV and researched on the Internet so Im only pretending. Any inaccuracies are unintentional.

~*IzureAngel*~