Rations were low. The last three attempts at resupply had been utter failures. And even if rations were plentiful, the MRE's were so monotonous that they craved a little variety in their diet. So they began to explore the few areas of vegetation in hopes of finding something, actually anything eatable. Carter stumbled upon some leaves reminiscent of romaine or maybe spinach. They discussed it, O'Neill recalling the trip to paradise he and Mayboure took, so Carter took only a small bit. The taste was vile and the leaf never got passed tongue and teeth, but still manager to give her a night of gastric discomfort. The urge to experiment left them for a few days until a bush filled with blue berries lured O'Neill. He picked a handful and showed them to Carter, who suggested he only start with one.

"One, you could barely even taste one."

So, she told him how she had felt that night.

"How about one now and save the rest for dessert."

He ceded to her better judgment. He selected the largest berry about half the size of your average grape and popped it in his mouth. Tentatively he bit into it. It actually didn't taste too bad, not as good as an Earth blueberry but not bad. His stomach didn't start bothering him until dinner. He thought that his imagination was playing tricks on him. Normally after a day of hard labor he was starved, even with the prospect of eating MRE's, but tonight he felt somewhat uneasy. Carter noticed his lack of enthusiasm but just rack it up to the tastelessness of their fare and the prospect of real food – those plump berries.

They turned in shortly after cleaning up. O'Neill didn't feel bad just uneasy enough not to eat any more of the berries and dissuaded Carter from trying any.

"Tomorrow" he said as he felt some rumbling in his lower tract, "let's see if that berry stays put tonight."

Around one or two in the morning O'Neill bolted out of his sleeping bag and wasted no time getting to the latrine. No time to waste, no boots, no pants, no time to spare. Some thing wanted out and wanted out NOW. After a good half hour he felt confident enough to return to his bunk. His inners were a little calmer and he tried to get some rest. An hour or so later the same hurry call came, this time it left him feeling rather spent by the time he made his way back to his sleeping bag. The third and forth time this happened he was weak and dizzy from the experience. The fifth time, at about sunrise, he told Carter not, under any circumstances, to eat those berries.

H e managed to drink half a cup of coffee and trudged off to O'Neill's brick yard. Carter thought that perhaps he should spend the day in easier pursuits.

"If we don't get a decent shelter built we may freeze before we starve."

She knew he was right. From her observations she knew winter was on its way and the taste of it that they had had when they arrive was nowhere near the worst of it. When she returned to camp at lunch time she found him sitting down with his back against the rock face. He looked dazed. She squatted down next to him and saw that his clothes were soaked with sweat. She offered him a sip of water and his hand trembled so that she had to help him get it to his lips. She ran up to the rock shelf to get the sleeping bags and root though one of the few containers that arrived whole this morning. When she climbed back down with the supplies she found that he had attempted to crawl to the latrine. He had only made it a few yards when on all fours he brought back up the sip of water and what seemed to him like the lining of his stomach. Carter was reading the directions of the epipen of Compazine on the fly. She leaned over him and told him she needed some thigh and proceeded to undo his pants. He looked over his shoulder at her and said.

"This is hardly the time to get romantic, Carter."

If it hadn't been the exhausted sweat soaked man about to nose dive into a puddle of his own vomit, she might have laughed. After she injected him he tugged up his pants while she unfurled one of the sleeping bags. She helped him over to it and pulled the sweat and vomit splattered t-shirt off of him. No sooner than he lie down than he asked her for help to get up.

"Need to get to the latrine."

"I'll get a bucket"

"No. Now."

She helped him up and helped him stagger to the latrine with one of his hands over her shoulder and one hand holding up his pants. When he sought privacy she got a shovel and went to cover the mess in their front yard. It wasn't too bad and a shovel full of dirt would make it disappear. This little clean up detail would also distract her too from O'Neill, who was in very obvious gastric distress from all directions. She looked down and realized that there were streaks of blood in that regurgitated sip of water. She flung the dirt on it and prayed that the Compazine would take effect.

O'Neill hadn't known which end to aim in the latrine. He was sure there wasn't a speck left inside of him but that didn't seem to stop his gut from trying desperately to empty. Just to make life complete there was a pain behind his left eye that while dull this morning was starting to grow in intensity, starting to throb. He knew that exsanguinate meant to bleed to death, he wondered if there was a word for shiting yourself to death. Daniel would know. Then things started to calm down, maybe he was finally empty – no contents in his stomach, no contents in his intestines, probably no stomach or intestines either. Or maybe the injection worked or maybe he be dead soon. Somehow he didn't care, now that his gut stop churning, all he could think about was the god awful pain in his head. He dragged himself to the lakeside and knelt by the waters edge to wash away the sweat and stench that covered him. Carter appeared at his side with a wash cloth and towel. In a rather intimate act she washed what she could and offered him a canteen of fresh water to rinse out his mouth. He asked for a minute and stripped off the rest of his clothes and washed and wrapped the towel around himself. The previously sweating man began to feel as though someone had poured ice water into his veins. By the time they made it back to the sleeping bag he was shaking with chills. She helped him into the fresh skivvies, t-shirt and sweat pants that she had laid out for him. He told Carter that he thought the Compazine had taken effect but his head hurt so much he thought that he was having a stroke. If he died he didn't care if she rolled him into the latrine and threw a few rocks on him or maybe three blasts with a zat would be less strenuous. She fumed at him. "You will not leave me alone on this rat hole."

He smiled. It turned into a gasp as the pain in his head shot from eye to sinuses to molars. Carter put her hand to his temple and the shivering man held her cool fingers against his burning head. Realizing that he couldn't keep down any pain meds Carter left him to rummage around in the first aid kit for some morphine. If O'Neill said it was bad – it had to be awful. She also slipped into a fresh set of cloths herself. Not much point hovering over a sick man reeking of his vomit yourself. At this point Carter was not sure if this was proper medical procedure she just hoped that the morphine she was about to give him wouldn't kill him. There was no way to consult Janet so she gave him as little as possible hoping to at least take the edge off the pain so he could rest. She was afraid too that if she gave him too much and he were lying down if he brought up more stomach acid he could aspirate. She injected him with the morphine and was wary when he didn't object. She put the still rolled sleeping bag behind her back against the rock wall, wrapped a thermal blanket around her shoulders and coaxed O'Neill to move forward so that his head lay on her shoulder. She pulled up the sleeping bag he was on to cover his lower half and wrapped his chest with her arms and the thermal blanket. She had at hand her med supplies and a canteen and a few power bars. She had no intentions of leaving him.
His chills gradually stilled and he seemed to fall into a very deep sleep as did she. Next morning she woke amid a rather arousing dream only to realize that O'Neill, too, seemed to be dreaming. He was rubbing his face against her left breast.

In a haze due to the meds and sleep, O'Neill found himself back on the mind stamp planet, where he was too hot or too cold and always a little hungry. But he did have her or rather they had each other, remembering and not quite remembering, just knowing that they had loved one another in the foggy memory of the mines. And it was alright to be together, her slipping into his bunk at night or finding a place where they could be intimate without an audience, trembling at her touch, shivering in delight and expectation as her hands drew him closer and deeper.

She felt him shiver and drew the blanket tighter around him.

When his hand came up to caress her breast she started, grabbed his hand and called to him. He was totally unaware of his actions, only muttered softly, "Thera".

"Colonel. Feeling better, Sir"

"Fine, I'm fine"

She disentangled herself and shoved the rolled bag under his head. He hugged it like he was holding a woman and seemed to fall back asleep.
For the next week it took an effort for him to eat. The sight and smell of food held no allure for him but he knew that if he didn't eat, he couldn't work and if he didn't finish the shelter, they would both die. When he had admitted that he would rather die than loose Carter he didn't just mean some spectacular display of devotion. No he was just an ordinary man; he was willing to work himself to death for her.