-------------------------------------------------------------------
PART EIGHT: Moments of Happiness, Shattered…
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sam opened her eyes to the bright lights of a familiar infirmary. Prometheus. She felt the calm of relief over her but when she realized she could do nothing to remember anything after the planet, she sat up quickly and looked at the bed beside her.
Jack laid there resting comfortably, but her heart could not stop itself from jumping through her skin. She ripped the IV off her arm and the monitors from her chest and ran to his side.
"Jack? Jack, are you ok?" Sam whispered, kneeling desperately beside his bed. He woke up reluctantly and looked at her questioningly as he realized where he was.
"Carter? What the hell's going on? Where are we?" he asked, looking at her with concern.
"We're in Prometheus, I think. Do you mind?" she asked, attempting to examine his chest wound.
"Whoa Carter, I know I said I'd take you fishing but this is hardly the place."
She rolled her eyes and smiled as she examined his chest. "So that's your idea of fishing? Well if I'd known sooner, I might have accepted."
He raised an eyebrow. "Who are you and what have you done with Sam?"
She found herself giggling and cleared her throat to make it stop. "Damn it, Colonel, I saw you fall. I saw the blast hit you. Not that I'm not happy to see you, but why aren't you dead?"
He patted the bed beside his right thigh and she got up off her knees and sat up beside him on the edge. Her hospital gown was opened in the back but she didn't care. She felt her eyes tear up but ignored it. She was so tired and her arm hurt from where the needle once rested.
It was quiet for a while, the silence of the med deck not eerie or awkward but simply silent. He smiled at her kindly, the military bravado left back on that planet. His hand met hers on the hospital linen. His began to caress her arm with his gentle hand until she leaned in at his touch and kissed him.
It was the sweetest kiss she'd ever had. It wasn't messy or uncomfortable, slobbery or awkward. But when she realized her station once more, she backed off. He was a Colonel. She was a Major. And there was nothing they could do for now.
They hadn't been under alien influence or heavily medicated or any other little excuse they might have used it the past. He looked at her with worrisome eyes. Not hurt but worrisome. It hit her hard to pull away, more so that he felt no remorse.
"I'm sorry. I… I shouldn't have done that," she apologized, looking down at her fidgety hands.
"Sam, I-" but Daniel and Adrienne had come into the room and his attention was drawn elsewhere. Sam realized her dress was wide open in the back and ran to sit on her own bed as if she'd been caught in her room with a boy.
"Hey you're up! How are you feeling?" Daniel asked enthusiastically, a huge smile across his face but Sam knew it was because of Adrienne. Jack had no idea but narrowed his eyes at the sight of his jolliness.
"We're good, Daniel. We're alive… surprisingly."
"Teal'c came in just in time. Beamed you out just before they hit," Adrienne said.
"Where is the old goat?" Jack asked with his usual smile. "He's so getting Star Wars for his birthday."
Everyone laughed but Adrienne refused to let anything but worry leave her eyes. Sam noticed but Jack was already into a conversation with Daniel about some sort of cheese. Sam got up from her bed, holding onto the back so she didn't flash anyone, and walked over to Adrienne.
They walked off to the changing room where Adrienne waited outside and leaned against the door as Sam put on some fatigues. "Ree, what's going on? What really happened back there?" said Sam, her voice full of concern.
"The most important predicament right now is when you are going to tell Dad you're dying."
Sam inhaled sharply. Adrienne sensed it and regretted her forwardness. "He already knows," Sam answered after a quiet moment. "I told him after he got shot."
"Oh Sam, I'm sorry. I hadn't read that."
"Read that?"
"Uh yeah… I can sort of read your mind."
"Feelings, right? Daniel told me."
"Er… no. I can see into your mind. Just yours."
It didn't really reassure Sam that she was the only one she could read. "Just me? Why not Colonel O'Neill? I would have thought-"
"Since genetically-speaking I'm his clone?"
"Are you? His clone, I mean."
"You of all people know I can't tell you that, Sam."
"Sam? See that's what I don't understand: how can you stand there and call Colonel O'Neill Dad while the woman that gave birth to you gets the 'Sam'? I'm hurt."
Adrienne smiled. She would have laughed but it hurt to do so. "You're not my mother yet. Jack… Jack's always been my Dad, even if I never met him."
Sam came out of the room and whispered shyly into her daughter's ear, "Uh… Ree… Were we… Did Colonel O'Neill and I ever…"
"Like bunnies, my dear. Like bunnies…"
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Two Months Later --- April 2004
"I'm not doing it," Jack said. "There's no way in hell."
Adrienne sat across from him in the mess hall, her eyes narrowed. "Her birthday's coming up in a few days. I think she'd really like it."
"Er… over my dead body," he responded dismissingly.
"That can be arranged, buddy," she joked in her own playful tone.
He pushed his plate of oatmeal aside slowly and leaned in, narrowing his eyes to hers. "Ok fine. Half an hour."
"No… 2 hours and a midnight stroll."
"One hour, a walk through the beach, and a picnic."
"Why would you go for a walk through the beach and a picnic? Why not just have a picnic at the beach?"
"And what… make a sandwich with actual sand? Picnics are meant to be had at parks and in the middle of nowhere so you can run around naked and nobody can see."
Adrienne raised not one but both eyebrows. "I didn't need that image thank you."
"Yes well you had it coming. How about… one hour at the museum, a midnight swim at the lake, and… a homemade dinner?"
Adrienne gave a chipper nod with the usual Carter hundred-watt smile. "Just don't share the juicy details this time, please. It's creepy enough."
"How's Daniel doin'?"
"He'll deal. Don't worry. I'm not."
"Hmm. I think you should talk to him. It really hit him."
"He'll be fine."
"Ree… Talk to him. I mean it. He's been shlupping around like an idiot all week."
She looked tired and apologetic. Her hair had begun to turn red in certain places almost like sparse highlights and her eyes had turned to a golden honey/green. It had begun to worry him, this change. He knew she worried too. Her mind drifted during meetings, during missions…
"I'm going to pay Sam a visit. She in her lab?" he asked her.
"Yeah she's been working all day." He smiled and went to get up when she crossed her arms and looked over at the Jell-O in the back. "You might want to take her something since she hasn't left the lab since yesterday."
"Probably right," he said. "What's she working on anyway?"
She sighed. "A way to be rid of me," she said and looked away.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hey," Jack mumbled, entering Sam's lab with two ice cream glasses full of Jell-O, one green and one blue. The blue one had already been begun and he had a spoon in his mouth, presumably because he couldn't have gotten down the hallway without food. Beer would just be inappropriate… considering it was 12:30 in the afternoon, not that he wasn't tempted.
As soon as she saw him, she knew the story. "What no beer?" she asked, pulling the spoon from his mouth and putting it back in the blue Jell-O.
"Hammond's got this whole Prohibition thing going on. I think he put it in just for me, 'cause I could swear I saw a few bottles of scotch in his desk. I think they were the type you hijack from dirty motel minibars that charge by the hour," Jack joked.
Sam laughed heartily, refusing to hold back a single giggle or chuckle as she once did. "And how would you know what dirty motel minibar scotch bottles look like?" she said with a bright smile.
"Uh… recon?" he said, feeding her a bit of Jell-O which she ate with great satisfaction and gratitude. Two days locked in a stuffy lab can make a girl hungry.
Her smile slowly started to fade and her eyes shifted around as if the world was melting before her and she had to catch it or lose it forever. She reached for the table and grabbed thin air, slipping down the side of the table.
Jack ran to catch her but she was already on the ground. Her body began to shake as if in seizures and blood was leaking from her ear and mouth.
"Sam! Sam, wake up! Hold on. Just hold on!" he yelled. He ran to the phone on the wall and called the infirmary. "Yeah, infirmary? Major Carter just collapsed in her lab. She's in seizures and I can't move her. Get Frasier down her NOW!"
And he went back to the floor behind her, resting her head in his arms and holding onto her for dear life as the seizures slowly subsided.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrienne was walking down the hallway on the way to Dionysus' room but all she could think of was Daniel. She'd ruined so much for him. She hadn't meant to but there it was. She couldn't return his feelings. She couldn't even tell him why he felt that way. For she knew that it would be impossible for him to love her otherwise. After all, who could love someone that was more thing than human?
She was a few doors away from Dionysus when she felt her hand shake uncontrollably. She looked down but there was nothing there. Her hand was steady as always but her nerves were shot. The sensation alone was enough to make her wince and stop to breathe.
She forced herself to reach Dionysus' door but his hand was already on the knob and it was already opening by the time she reached for it.
"Something's wrong," she said, stumbling into the doorway.
"I know." His small face was stern and serious. He moved aside and she stumbled to the bed, sitting on the edge. "It's Samantha."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel was in his office looking over some translations of the writings on the walls of Dionysus' palace when Jack came in with a face lost in itself. Shocked even.
"What's going on?" Daniel asked.
Jack didn't answer right away. He refused to look up from the floor, from oblivion.
"She's sick."
Daniel assumed Adrienne and figured she'd be alright so he didn't seem so worried right away. "Don't worry she'll be fine."
Then Jack looked up and Daniel saw the bags of worry and exhaustion under his eyes. "No Daniel. Sammy's dying," he whispered. "She's dying."
And he sat on the stool across from him. Daniel couldn't respond. He didn't think it serious till Jack said, "She's been dying for a while."
Daniel felt the blood hide from his face, leaving him pale and mindless, not a thought for miles. "Does Frasier know? What happened?"
"Yea, Frasier knows. She's known for a month. They're not sure what it is, or they won't tell me, but it's killing her pretty slowly."
"How… How long does she have?" Daniel asked, choking on his words, dreading the answer.
"Two months…"
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The news had gotten to Daniel. Even after Jack left, he felt the presence of a broken man still lingering over him. He had always known about Jack and Sam. Who didn't?
All the times she'd been possessed by an alien being or he'd been lost on some forgotten planet in the corner of a distant galaxy… she'd never forgotten about him. He'd never given up.
And Daniel knew. They all knew.
So when he heard the words come out of Jack's mouth so helplessly, he wondered what had changed. Why had he given up so easily? They hadn't mentioned how the Tok'ra could help. They could get a symbiote in her and take it out after she'd healed. They could see if Adrienne could help.
Then the thought hit him: How long has Adrienne known?
And what's worse, how could she not have done something? She had to know the cure. She had to know they'd figure it out sooner or later if Sam would eventually live to give birth to her. Why hadn't she helped?
Anger reached him and his pale exterior turned to a heated pink. Before he knew it, he was on his way to her room in a blind fury through SGC hallways. She wasn't in her room; she wasn't in Teal'c's, not in the mess hall, not in the command room.
Then he went to Dionysus' room and pushed the door in breathlessly. She sat on the bed, with the boy in her arms. A light surrounded them, like a glow that blinded him for a moment. When he saw again, Dionysus was no longer a mere boy. He was a teenager, standing a mere meter away from him and looking on him as if he were an intruder.
Daniel stood struck, his fury turned to worry. "What have you done to her?" he asked but it came out more like a loud demand.
The boy smiled almost sinisterly and Daniel went around him to Adrienne who had collapsed sideways onto the bed. He called her name, begging her to open her eyes but she refused. She could hear him, she could move, but she was gone.
So he lifted her up effortlessly from the bed and in a rush of adrenaline, ran her up a floor to the infirmary, putting her on the bed beside her mother.
Sam had been intubated, put on an IV, and had machines monitoring her every heartbeat. It was tragic. He felt caught in-between mother and daughter, trying to decipher which one was worse.
He followed his heart to Adrienne, who had begun to push the nurses aside. He tried to help hold her down but she just kept saying she was fine, that she just needed to be left alone.
Tell them to step back, Daniel, please, he heard in his head. I don't want them to get hurt!
She sounded so desperate, as she looked at him finally with tearful eyes, two nurses holding her down. Her eyes were slowly turning gold, pushing away the blue. Not the gold of Goa'ulds. The gold of gods.
"Get back!" he yelled and let her go. The nurses looked at him puzzled but let her go slowly. She calmed down and looked up at the roof on the bed. Her eyes were completely gold now but they still refused to glow. As long as they didn't, he felt safe around her.
But that's when she began to convulse. Her chest rose up above the bed though her head remained anchored to the bed. The light began to leave her slowly in visible waves of gold powder-dust.
He went through the rings to touch her but when he did, a sense of fire reached his hand and he retracted. The rings of light were warm as well.
Through the door, Dionysus came in, blonde and innocent-looking. Daniel looked at him through menacing eyes. He ran to him with the incentive to punch him but saw a boy and held back.
"What did you do to her!" he asked, shaking the boy's shoulders. He didn't fight back but his face showed steady.
"Daniel, step back," Janet came up behind him and pulled him back.
Dionysus walked calmly to an unconscious Adrienne as if it were a stroll through the park and said, "Tell me, Daniel: Why are you so sure it was me?" and looked back to Sam on the next bed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To be continued in PART NINE:
--How far had Jack and Sam gotten before she collapsed?
--Had her imminent death been the cause of their forwardness?
--Is there a cure?
--Is Sam killing Adrienne, or is Adrienne killing Sam?
--Why did Dionysus age just as Adrienne collapse?
--Is he literally sucking the life from her?
--Will Sam ever get her midnight stroll?
--Or… Will Jack find the cure?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
UP NEXT: Jack attempts to find a cure to Sam's illness by going on a killing rampage with Teal'c to find her a symbiote.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEW!