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PART ELEVEN: Endless Night
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Two weeks after they arrived on Chulak…
Teal'c entered the slave tent with exhaustion easily visible in his eyes. In every shade of purple in his ever bruise and every welt, there was pain hidden. He was alone now. Bra'tac, he knew, was alive but it had been 5 days since he last saw him. He might as well have been alone.
He lied down on the firm dirt that made his floor, his bed, his life from now on. He knew there was no escape from this but he didn't lose hope. Then he came back from his labors and found Jack had passed on while he was away. His hope died with his friend.
He thought back to that day. 12 days ago, and still no time to mourn. Jack had been hit with what seemed like a staff blast. He'd called for him but it was already too late. They had aimed for him, especially at him. There was nothing they could do. Before a single weapon could be raised, they were surrounded by enemy Jaffa.
He had surrendered only to save O'Neill. Had they fought, they might have escaped but Jack's body would have been left behind. It did him no good. After they took the three to the slave camp, Jack shortly bled to death. He'd made him promise to save Sam, save themselves.
"Tell her… Tell her I'm sorry I wasted so much time…" Jack had whispered moments before his body gave way, choking on his own blood.
Their captors had dragged his body away like he was garbage, leaving Teal'c to ponder of the mistakes of his past… the things left unsaid, the errors left uncorrected… the drifting thoughts of a man with nothing left to live for.
They weren't even on Chulak anymore. No one knew where they were. No one would come after a pair of suicidal fugitives.
A voice called his name from the entrance to the tent and for a moment he thought it was Jack but the moment went away. "Master Bra'tac!" he yelled gleefully when he saw the tattered old man before him. He quickly got up to greet him.
"They moved me to the southern mines," he said. "They do not seem to care about station."
"Do you believe as I do?"
"This mine is a front. This Goa'uld has no intention of obtaining the fruits of these workers' labor."
"It is a death camp, Teal'c. They will work us till we die…"
"Then we must escape."
"I see no way. Outside here, there is only desert for months. You saw. The Chappa'ai is reachable only by ship."
"Then we must find a ship. I still have one final message to deliver."
Bra'tac knew he meant Jack and bowed his head in agreement. When he left, Teal'c was left all alone again to his thoughts. He began to plan their way up to the palace at the top of the hill, how they could get past the guards without weapons, how they could find a ship once inside…
It had always seemed so simple with Jack there, so feasible. Now it didn't really matter whether they survived. They had no real cause. No one would miss him, he thought. His son had grown up practically without him. His wife, dead. His mentor, soon to join her. And for a moment, he wished he could join them too.
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Adrienne ran through the corridors of Level 28 in her dreams, a trail of blood following her. Even as she walked them through the day, she saw the blood everywhere.
They had isolated Dionysus in his own quarantine room. He looked around 20 now, nearly a full man. Adrienne had stopped growing around her mid-20s so they feared he'd be at full power soon, even if they had no idea what that meant. Daniel had kept the truth to himself about Adrienne's involvement in the killings, and with Dionysus but that was more for his own self-denial.
He and Ree would sit in the control room every night, every chance they got really, with a cup of coffee and their feet propped up on the consoles. It would be quiet sometimes. Others, she would tell him tales of growing up in the base and with Mother, nothing too crucial to time but the dearest of her memories.
"It's always the simple things we treasure, you know. Like Washington DC in the winter or sitting on the dock at Dad's cabin and looking out into nowhere. It's the thoughts we think and the way we feel at certain times because of certain things. 20/20 hindsight is the foundation of appreciation… and regret," she'd told him one day in May.
Sam's birthday had already passed but no one celebrated anything. Without SG-1 and without regular operations for off-world teams, the SGC seemed dead. Everyone knew of Sam's illness and they'd all given up hope. Daniel would walk through the hallways and hear people speaking of her as if she was already dead. It hurt him to admit that sometimes he thought like that as well.
Since she slept most of the day thanks to her pain medications, he would come and sit by her with his papers and it was a much kinder quiet than in his stuffy office. Adrienne fell asleep on the bed next to Sam and even though they thought she slept, Sam could feel their presence there and a smile came to her through every shuffling of papers or covers.
It was extremely comforting.
"How do you measure time, Daniel?" she asked, her feet resting atop the console and a mug of java firmly in her hands as she snuggled close.
"As we all do."
"I'm not 'we'. I'm not one of you. How do you measure time?" she insisted.
"Ree, you are one of us. You just never admitted it to yourself."
"You, perhaps. You are no longer truly human yourself. But I was never to begin with."
"What does this have to do with how we measure time?"
"I don't measure it. I see it."
"I wondered that… how you see, I mean. One of your advancements?"
"You wonder about all of them."
"Will you enlighten me, then?"
She sighed and began, "I have 9 senses. The five basics – all numbed or enhanced – and 4 others that let me use those senses to see other worlds. I see time, taste emotion, dance with the dead, and move through the borders of existence."
"Very poetic, but what does it mean."
"Exactly what I said. It's not poetic, dear. It's what I do when people aren't looking and what I see when people don't."
"See I always figured your private life involved whips and some form of leather handcuffs and nighties… not dead people and- and time and emotions. Come on! Dish out the goods. What can you do?" he joked with a funny face.
She laughed. But didn't answer.
The nights would go on like this, him taunting the answers out of her with extreme charm and her scoffing off his lame attempts.
And then Adrienne would awaken in tremors and screams. Every night, like clockwork.
"Ree! Wake up! You're just dreaming!" Daniel would shake her awake but she would try to deny their existence.
One night, Ree refused to wake up and Daniel was getting worried. He thought he'd let her sleep until she started to scream but it was hours and she still hadn't woken up. He poked her to see if she was still alive and she said distantly as in the daze of the dreaming, "Oh why must I be so voluptuous?"
He laughed and returned to his papers now spread over the consoles. He'd found more on Dionysus. Not a lot of it was good, so he kept it to himself. Somehow he figured she knew.
She turned in her sleep, her knee moving up and down as if she wished to run away in real life as well. He went to hold her hand, wake her up before she began to scream but she refused to wake.
Hours later, she still not woke. Daniel worried but as long as she was moving and twitching erratically, she was still alive. The technicians came back to their stations and found them still there. Daniel asked to stay and they reluctantly went off for a long coffee break.
Another hour later, she was still asleep. He got up and tried to wake her as people started to busily disperse around them but nothing, so he got desperate and carried her through the crowds of scattered souls of the hallways and back to her room. But he was still not satisfied.
So he ran down to the infirmary and tried to find Janet.
"Janet! Janet, please. I need your help," he pleaded, slightly out of breath.
"Oh God, Daniel what is it now?" she responded with a tired and annoyed tone.
"It's--"
"Let me guess. Adrienne?" she interrupted.
"Yes! She won't wake up!" Suddenly he realized how ridiculous he sounded at first.
"Is she breathing?" Janet said, still disregarding the situation a bit.
"Yea and she's moving around a bit but she won't wake up," he said as he followed her around as she checked on all the other patients.
And then they got to Sam's and Janet still didn't take the situation seriously. But she looked over at her friend lying immobile on the bed. Daniel noticed the melancholy look on the good doctor's face and he realized what she meant.
"You're right…" he said. "There are more important things to do. But please. She's been waking up every night in tremors and she's been having nightmares and now I'm scared, Janet. Please… for me."
She wasn't sure what had struck her most: Knowing that a patient was sick but choosing not to do anything about it, that Daniel knew her nightly activities, or that this woman was taking away all that she ever cared about. She was ruining everything. If she hadn't come, Sam would out on some mission, Jack wouldn't have run off with Teal'c on a suicidal crusade, and Daniel… well she refused to admit how she felt about Daniel.
"Alright. For you."
Adrienne was in a cold sweat on her bed in her dark, dark room, curled up sheet-less, when they arrived. Janet had brought along two nurses who began to stretch out her body face up on the bed.
"Is she going to be all right?" Daniel asked, standing helpless by the foot of the bed.
Janet checked Adrienne's eyes with a penlight but they were unresponsive. "Daniel, I don't know what to do. I don't think there's anything I can do. I can't sedate her. I can't run any blood tests. I can't…"
"I get it," he said. "If you had some more of her blood, do you think you'd be able to figure out what's wrong with her?"
"Maybe but I wouldn't even know what to look for. We don't even know if this isn't supposed to happen. It could just as well be a natural part of her growth or sleep cycle or…"
Daniel closed his eyes and turned away, his arms crossed. Janet felt his pain and his helplessness but mostly she felt the guilt of knowing even if she could, she wouldn't. She could not abide a murderer in her infirmary. For this what she saw: a murderer. After all, Sam wasn't sick before she came, of that she made sure. And Ree was taking her best friend with her down the rabbit hole, leaving her alone to wander through the lost gardens of redemption and solitude.
She was taking Daniel. She was taking the people she took so much pride in caring for. She was taking Janet's life with her. And no one seemed to care.
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And so they dreamed:
"Sam? Mother, is that you?"
"Adrienne? What are you doing here?" Sam asked.
Ree looked around. They were in Sam's house, a dark distorted version of it. She recognized the yellow kitchen, even though she knew she didn't paint it yellow until years later. She realized she was in Sam's dream home, her haven.
"Mom, you're sick. You have to fight it. Please!"
"I'm sick? Don't be silly, Ree. I'm fine, can't you tell?"
"We're in your head, Sam. None of this is real. You have to snap out of it."
Sam moved away from her. She started looking around and saw what she meant.
"Can't you tell?" Ree continued. "This is all a lie, Sam. You don't live here!"
"But I have to wait for him!" she yelled out with a slightly frantic tone.
Ree stood stunned. "Wait for who?" she asked.
"It's whom," Sam corrected. Ree smiled. It was one of Jack's favorite traits. The first time she had corrected Sam, she had begun to cry. She learned the truth of her father on that day, got a little bit closer to figuring out the kind of man he was.
"Exactly," Sam continued at the look on her daughter's face.
"Sam, he's not going to find you. You have to find him. If you wait here, you'll die and you'll never see him again. Is that what you want?"
"I want this, Ree," she said, opening her arms to the large fantasy surrounding them. "I want him here. If I leave here, it means I'll never be able to come back. Reality is so cruel. So wrong. So unwilling to free me from this vision. Waiting for him here is the only thing that keeps me sane!" Sam was yelling. It was cruel.
"Sam, you've got two options: Stay here and wait hopelessly until you die alone, or come back with me and be with him. You don't have to be alone. You don't have to wait. Damned be the world, darling."
Ree saw Sam blink twice in realization and look away. A tear went down her cheek. Sam sniffed and walked over to Ree and hugged her tightly as she began to bawl uncontrollably into her daughter's imaginary shoulder.
"Let us go then."
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Daniel sat beside Adrienne's bed in her dark room, his face hid in his hands. Janet had gotten a page from the infirmary and had run down without saying a word to him, leaving him with only a worried look and a rush of adrenaline.
He felt impatient. He was alone with her and while she was great company otherwise, the futility of the situation was extremely unsettling.
And then she moved. She twitched for a mere moment and then began to emit the powder-light like before. He felt its warmth as it approached him, a yellowish-pink. She moaned a bit like waking from an unstinting sleep.
And her eyes opened slowly, with the curiosity of a child.
"Daniel?" she asked, her voice slightly high-pitched. "Is that you?"
"Yeah, Ree. I'm here, sweetie," he said, moving his hand atop hers.
"Ree? I'm not Ree. And who are you calling sweetie?"
"What?"
"It's me, Danny. It's Sam."
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In a planet far, far away, in a castle too large to have purpose, the door of the sarcophagus slid open.
And from its comfy interior, awakened the body of a weary Air Force Colonel…
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To be continued in PART TWELVE:
Back by popular demand, those perky little questions on plot development.
--How is Teal'c going to escape with just him and Bra'tac to get through the guards?
--Which Goa'uld, if any, controls the slave camp?
--What did they do to Jack's body?
--Is Sam going to Ascend? Or take everyone down with her?
--Will Sleeping Beauty ever truly wake?
--Can't Dionysus help, or be helped?
--And finally… Will Sam ever get a chance to say goodbye?
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SPOILER: A few chapters ahead, the SGC will get taken over by a very surprising character and quite a few people die. But Jack will always be there to stop her.
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REVIEW!
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Coming soon…
"Lost Time" - What can she do when all Sam has left in the world is the unborn reminder of a lost love? (Sequel to "Level 28." Write me a review to get a classified summary.)