A moment later, he felt the dinosaur touching his cheek. The scaly snout felt different from what he'd have thought. It wasn't cold, or slimy, like a lizard's might be, but warm. Like a hairless dog. Barney was saying goodbye to him.
He was awfully awake, now. He'd have to get down. He'd have to climb over that edge. Jack had him. Jack wouldn't let him fall... They were so horribly high up... He wouldn't look down.
Daniel took a deep breath and pushed himself over the edge. He felt the rope tighten, and he knew Jack was holding on to it... Lowering him down. What had Jack said... that Daniel should grab the rope and help with his feet. He did that as best he could, grasped the rope, and tried to put his feet against the wall.
The rope was terribly tight around him... But of course, it had to be, he didn't want to fall from this high... He'd already fallen one time too many... And he was definitely not going to look and see how high he was. The rope was digging into his side. It felt awful. His foot slipped, and the rope slid even higher up--too high--around his ribs--he couldn't breathe-
Panicking, he let go of the rope, just hanging from it limply. He had to be pretty near to the ground. He had to. But he wouldn't look. He closed his eyes. Almost there, he told himself. Keep breathing.
He was sure he was going to faint, bright spots were floating across his closed eyes--and then, he felt strong hands grasping him. They untied the rope and set him gently to the ground. Sam had climbed down first, but... Surely it wasn't just Sam? Daniel thought there were more than one pair of hands... He looked, and saw several people in SG-uniforms, but he couldn't recognize them in the dim light, not when they were so blurred...
He did recognize Teal'c. Teal'c was here as well. Teal'c had won. All was well. If he could just get enough air.
He heard a thud from behind--not someone falling? Jack couldn't have fallen down--he was all right, wasn't he? Yes, there was Jack's voice--Jack talking to Teal'c.
Someone was prodding at Daniel's side now, which really didn't feel good. Sam had done the same thing earlier... Why wouldn't they just leave him be? Then, he felt a needle sting his arm, and slowly, the pain began to feel less overwhelming, he didn't mind the people poking at him...
He was asleep, he had to be. They had finally let him go to sleep, to some good dream where he could breathe easier and nothing hurt anymore.
Daniel woke up to the bright light filtering through his closed eyelids, and the warmth it brought with it. The ground was swinging, or he was--anyway, it made him feel a bit nauseous. He wasn't feeling all that good, just in general. His side felt awful again, and the air was hot and humid, and so thick... Not to mention that his nose was itchy, and he was too tired to lift his hand.
He opened his eyes, and found he was strapped to a stretcher, two people carrying him through the rainforest. There was green light all around. It was morning in the rainforest. The rainforest, where... Oh no, the dinosaurs... The ritual... But no, they had escaped. They had escaped the dinosaurs.
Sam was walking by his side. She looked really tired... The last Daniel could remember, it had been night. If it was morning, they'd been walking for a long time... No wonder she was so tired. She didn't notice he was awake... Conscious... sort of.
He closed his eyes, and probably fell asleep again, because the next thing he knew was the familiar, wonderful sound of someone dialing the DHD, and the whoosh of the opening gate. The sound of going home.
Jack frowned at the huge dinosaur skeleton in front of him. It filled half the hall, and its teeth and claws were really impressive.
"Ours was bigger," he noted to his three team mates.
Looking at them now, it wasn't easy to guess which one of them had had the close encounter with the larger, living version of this tyrannical dino.
Jack was still walking with crutches, and his leg was still achy. Fraiser had given him a long and furious lecture on how broken legs weren't supposed to be walked on. But she hadn't been there. Jack had hardly had much choice at the time. He'd slept through half that lecture anyway.
They turned away from the skeleton and headed to the next room. Daniel was walking on his own two feet again, after weeks of bed rest. He'd been very sick there, for a while, and they'd all been terribly worried. Fraiser had diagnosed him not only with broken ribs and bruises all over his side, but also a bruised lung. That was the nasty thing which had kept him from breathing properly, and had lead to pneumonia, nearly killing him. Now, he almost looked healthier than Jack. Just a bit pale and tired. He did still seem wary of his side.
Teal'c--Teal'c was just--Jack couldn't help feeling a bit envious of him. He'd told them all about the race, about how he'd been running like mad in the maze with dinos fighting each other all around him, and finally fighting and winning a few himself. He'd come through with dino scratches all over him. Now, there wasn't a trace of them left. Maybe there just had to be at least something good about having a snake in one's gut.
Since Sam had come through uninjured, she'd probably had the hardest time of them all, with the rest of the team stuck in the infirmary. She'd had to divide her time between sitting by each of them. Of course, it hadn't taken long before Teal'c had joined her, and then Jack, and then it'd been the three of them by Daniel's bed. Every day, until late night, when Fraiser had driven them away.
SG-1 stepped into another gallery. This one had smaller dinosaurs in it. Teal'c immediately picked one of them, pointing a finger at it.
"That is a Deinonychus. It bears a great likeness to the small predators who ruled the culture."
They walked closer to get a better look. Jack didn't really see a great likeness to the mean scaly Goa'uldosaurs. This was just a pile of really old bones. Even though it'd been set in a hunting pose, it was too small to look very menacing. On the other hand, most of the time, they'd seen many of the things at a time. That had made them way more scary. Actually, the only dino they'd seen all alone had been...
"So, this is Barney?" Jack asked.
"No, just a less-evolved form of a dinosaur similar to him," Carter corrected.
"And his name really wasn't Barney, you know, it was-" Daniel added, and suddenly let out a dinosaurian growl. Several other people turned to stare at him. He just smiled at them sheepishly.
"Barney was great. I hope he's doing all right, with that riot and all," Jack said thoughtfully.
"I'm sure he did. Besides, we'll find out," Daniel replied.
"What makes you think that?"
"Well, we'll go back, of course, one of these days. I promised him we would."
"Oh, that was what all the growling and the parting kiss were about!"
Carter and Teal'c had turned to stare at Daniel too, Teal'c with his trademark raised eyebrow, and Carter with a smirk.
Daniel shrugged at them. "Well, we don't really even know whether Barney was a girl or a boy..."
(The End)
Author's End Note: That's it--the end, but maybe not forever... I've really grown quite fond of my Goa'uldosaurian culture, and the dinos--of course, Barney, in particular. I'd really like to visit them again some day. Not right away, though.
I can imagine the end might be a bit different from what someone could've expected. When I first started writing this, I decided that I'd do it that way. That I'd skip the "hanging around and angsting in the infirmary" -part. This was about SG-1's adventures in Dinoland, not SGC-ER (like my previous story half-unintentionally ended up). Hope you fellow whumping fans weren't too disappointed. Please, do write a review anyway. :-)