OMG, I am so sorry it's taken so long to resolve this cliffhanger, but first my life got really busy and I had no time at all to write, and then I was on restriction for like 3 weeks... GAH! Horrible.

Anyway, here it is!

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Emergency

The sound alone was completely horrible. A low whine started somewhere when the energy swirl first sprang out from the Gate, but as it impacted against walls and worked its way across the Gateroom, it began developing more towards a rumble.

But the moment it touched the window, it was a full-blown BOOM.

At Jameson's shout, Daniel flung himself towards the floor, reflexively covering his head and neck with his arms. But the minute he struck the ground, he realized that Vala's wheelchair, two feet away, was not out of the path of the debris soaring towards them. Rocking back and forth, Vala was trying viciously to tip her chair over so it might shield her, but was having no luck. The seconds seemed to draw out to minutes as Daniel stretched himself out as far as he could, and pushed as hard as he could against the wheelchair.

It wobbled, but he gave a sharp shove and it began to fall.

Shards of the thick security glass flew across the room in every direction, ripping through anything stood in its path.

But with his arms outstretched to push the wheelchair, Daniel's head and neck were no longer covered or protected. He felt sharp, burning line of pain across the back of his neck as the point of a glass shard cut through the skin there. He didn't even have the pained shout out of his mouth before another one tore across his right forearm and then his left, followed by one that skimmed across his back.

His eyes closed against the pain, as the one in his back stopped to embed itself in his shoulder.

They abruptly flew open again at the familiar, blood-curdling shriek from beside him. In that instant after hearing the sound and before he registered what it was he saw before him, the memories flooded his mind.

Her charred body leaning against his, still warm in his arms. The tears that he wouldn't allow to fall.

Her blood seeping through her clothes and his, onto his skin. Her coughing in his ear as she tried to choke out her last words.

But after that moment of absolute terror and panic passed, he finally saw what it was he'd been staring at. Three pieces of glass had punctured the back of Vala's wheelchair and had stuck themselves into her side.

Not even taking the time to notice whether or not the glass had stopped raining down, or if the swirl of energy had stopped, Daniel was on his feet and standing over Vala. He would not let her die again.

Laying on the floor behind her chair, body still halfway curled in a sitting-like position, Vala's eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and her breathing was a tad erratic. Hair had fallen across her face and Daniel reached down to push it back.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Oh, yes, Daniel, I'm just fantastic!" Vala snapped. "No, of course not! Look at me! I've got glass sticking out of my side! How do you think I am!"

"Stupid question," Daniel muttered to himself. He changed position so he could survey the rest of Vala's position. "Well, other than that glass, are you fine? No glass elsewhere?"

"No glass elsewhere," she tautly affirmed. Then she looked up at Daniel's face, and he saw that her eyes blazed with anger. "The pieces still sticking out of my side are enough for me! Could you get them out! Like NOW?"

"I'm probably not the best person to do that," Daniel replied. He turned, looking over the rest of the group.

On the far side of the room, Jameson, Sam, and Harriman were curled under the control console. The sergeant was completely covered by the jutting control board, but both women were only partially protected. As they slowly uncurled, Daniel saw that a haphazard rows of long glass shards protruded from Jameson's back and arms (some looked deeply lodged in her cast), and Sam's legs. The colonel appeared mostly unaffected as she slowly stood, only hissing lightly in pain, but when Sam sat up, she gasped and wrapped her hands around one thigh.

Apparently not noticing, Jameson just turned to look down at the Gateroom.

"Still on, but calm," she announced.

Daniel's eyes continued to sweep around the room and settled on the last occupant: a tech laying flat on the ground, unmoving, a particularly long and nasty-looking piece of glass protruding from the center of his back. Harriman scrambled to his feet, and was by the fallen man's side quicker than Daniel would have thought possible. The sergeant opened his mouth to speak the man's name, but he was cut off by Jameson's flat voice.

"Leave him. He's dead."

Throwing a disbelieving glance over his shoulder at the colonel, Harriman reached down and checked the man's pulse. He looked back up to Jameson and nodded.

Drawing a long pocketknife from out, the colonel flipped it open and pressed along the line of glass shards, cutting it open as though it were nothing as she began to give orders. "I don't like staying here unguarded," she said. "We're moving down to the armory. Now."

"Um, hello, Marla? GLASS!" Vala yelled, pointing a finger at the shards in her side.

"We can play doctor once we're safely locked in the armory," Jameson replied. "The cuts are probably going to bleed very badly when the glass is removed, and we have nothing to clot it with here. We'll pick up one of the emergency med packs on the way." She closed her knife and pushed on her cast until it split along the cut she'd created, then pulled it off. She flexed her hand momentarily, then used it to draw out a pistol from a concealed holster just above her waist. "Jackson, get Vala back up in her wheelchair," she ordered. Her eyes flicked to Sam. "Carter, can you walk?"

Sam pulled herself up using the control panel, and abruptly fell back against it. "That would be a no," she said through gritted teeth.

Jameson nodded towards Daniel. "After you get Vala upright, then come help Carter. Harriman, you push the wheelchair.

Daniel nodded, and carefully sat Vala's wheelchair upright from where he'd tipped it over moments earlier. He held one hand against Vala so she wasn't harmed any further, and when he had the chair sitting upright, he noticed that she was staring at it. Blushing, he turned and coincidentally gave Vala a good look at his scraped back, and the shard of glass firmly lodged in his shoulder.

"Daniel, you have glass in your shoulder!" she said. "You shouldn't be supporting Sam."

Before Daniel could say anything, Jameson cut in. "I don't think Harriman can, so Jackson has to."

"Why can't you?" Vala snapped back.

Jameson's eyes narrowed, and Daniel suddenly wished that Vala had just kept her mouth shut for once.

"Reason one, Empress Mal Doran," she bit out as she turned around. "There's far more glass in my back and shoulders than there is in Jackson's." Vala's eyes did widen at the sight of the pointed shards protruding from the colonel's torn shirt, but quickly returned to normal size as Jameson turned again. "Reason two, I'm going to follow along behind and try and close the blast doors as best I can. Reason three, I'm in charge and you all do what I say."

The room was silent for a long moment.

"Good," Jameson said. "Now, let's move."

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Twenty minutes later, the injured group was limping down the last stretch of hallway towards their destination, their way lit by only a small emergency flashlight. Closing the last blast door before the armory, Jameson raised a hand for the rest of the group to wait against one wall quietly. Which they did.

The handgun she'd been carrying this entire time switched hands, and the colonel held it ready in her left hand.

She passed the rest of the group, heading towards the bend in the hallway that led to the armory and keeping very close to the wall. Finally reaching the corner, she began to poke her head around it, but apparently decided against it.

"Skinner?" she called. "You in there?"

After a tense moment, a question instead of a reply drifted out in a sharp feminine tone. "Is that you, Colonel Jameson?"

"It's me, Skinner," the colonel responded, relief obvious in her voice. "And because I know what position you're in, lower your guns and come help us. We're all—" She paused and threw a glance over her shoulder at Harriman. "—almost all," she corrected herself, "injured. Pretty badly too."

"Yes, ma'am," came the joint reply from Skinner, Oliander and Thrace as Daniel heard the sound of boots connecting with the floor and gun safeties being clicked on.

Thrace added, "We heard the explosion all the way down here, Colonel, and suspected the worst."

A moment later, the new SG-6 appeared around the corner, and immediately set to helping. Skinner and Oliander came to support Sam, relieving Daniel. Thrace took the emergency med-kit from Vala's lap, and carefully carried it as the group rounded the corner.

"I assume you closed all the blast doors on your way down?" Jameson asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Skinner answered promptly. "We managed to lock them all before the power went out too."

"Good."

Finally, the rag-tag group entered the relative safety of the armory.

A row of crates had been stacked up like a barricade about ten feet into the room, and Daniel didn't doubt that as Jameson had said, SG-6 had been sitting there, guns raised towards the doorway. They were definitely—whether she would admit it or not—Jameson's team. Behind the barrier, several emergency lights were set up so that the room was only dim, instead of completely dark.

"Now then," Vala said, as Harriman put her wheelchair by a wall behind the barricade, "who's going to 'play doctor' and get this blasted glass out of me?"

"Oliander had medical training," Jameson spoke up. She gave the man a pointed look. "Lieutenant, you've got your work cut out for you. And, if I might, I have a suggestion for the order in which you deal with your patients: Carter, Vala, then Jackson."

Oliander nodded, then frowned as he realized Jameson hadn't mentioned herself. "Ma'am? What about you?"

"Don't worry about me, Oliander," Jameson responded, turning around. "Just deal with them."

The lieutenant gave another firm nod. "Yes ma'am." Still halfway supporting Sam, Oliander lead her back to a corner behind the barricade where crates had been cleared away from a five-foot wide area. Slowly, he and Skinner lowered the lieutenant colonel down onto the floor in a halfway-sitting position, so that her back was propped against a crate.

Sam hissed with the pain, and Oliander whispered something to her that Daniel couldn't hear.

Thrace brought over the medical kit, and Oliander opened it. Daniel turned away, unable to watch. And it happened that as he turned, his eyes landed on Jameson, standing in an opposite corner of the room.

She had carefully worked her bloody BDU jacket off of her injured arms, and slowly slipped it off of her shoulders, letting it puddle on the floor behind her. This left her wearing a black undershirt that left her muscular arms completely bare. She turned slightly as she began plucking glass shards out of her left forearm and Daniel noticed tattoos across both of her upper arms.

"Don't stare," she said without looking up, startling Daniel. "It's rude. And because I know you're wondering, I've had them for twenty something years. Since my college days."

He pretended not to know what she was talking about, and cleared his throat. "Ja—Marla," he quickly corrected himself, "should you really be doing that yourself? And with a not-completely healed hand?"

She raised an eyebrow, most likely at the use of her first name. "I'm fine, Daniel. My wounds are none of your concern." Practically contorting her arm, she reached around to her own shoulders and began pulling out the lengthy shards there. She gave a soft grunt of pain as she yanked the first one out, causing the cut to slowly leak a trickle of blood down the back of her shirt.

"Well, you can't very well be our great leader if you're very injured," Daniel retorted.

"I'll be fine," Jameson repeated. "I was going to get the cast off tomorrow anyways. And the glass," she pulled another piece out with a sharper grunt than before, "has to come out anyway." She yanked the final piece of glass from her back, and turned to stare flatly at Daniel.

He opened his mouth to say something, then abruptly lost his nerve. His eyes dropped from Jameson down to the floor.

Jameson raised an eyebrow. "If you have something to say, Jackson, say it."

After a momentary struggle, he looked back up and met Jameson's emerald stare. "You don't have to do this," he said quietly.

The colonel's eyes narrowed. "I don't have to do what, Jackson?"

"This whole tough routine," he answered immediately. "You act like you're Superman or something. I know you want to prove that you're still capable of doing things after your injuries and everything, but you don't have to. Nobody thinks any less of you for what happened when you were rescuing Vala, Marla."

She looked startled by his words, and quickly turned away. "You don't understand, Jackson."

He carefully laid a hand on her shoulder. "I understand more than you know." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "I know what you lost, Marla. I know how you feel."

She shrugged his hand off, and barely glanced at him over her shoulder. "You don't understand," she repeated. "This has nothing to do with that."

"It—" Daniel started.

"Doctor Jackson," Oliander interrupted. "I can treat you now."

Daniel was tempted to say, "Just a minute," and continue his conversation with Marla, but when he looked to her, the look in her eyes told him not to. She was practically begging him to just leave her alone.

He remembered going through the same thing, when friends' comfort just never seemed to be enough.

So he did what Jameson wanted, and turned and walked away. Sitting down by Oliander, Daniel grunted in pain as the lieutenant pulled the torn clothing away from Daniel's shoulder. Then, unexpectedly, he poured something cold and stinging over Daniel's scratched back.

He immediately leapt back to his feet.

"OW!" he and Vala yelled simultaneously.

He threw a look at her only to notice that she was rubbing her good hand against her back in the same places where his hurt. Right. The bond.

"Doctor Jackson?" Oliander inquired.

Settling back down, Daniel opened his mouth to say something in reply, but was cut off.

"Do not think you are safe," a familiarly flat-toned voice said from nowhere in particular. "You cannot run, and you cannot hide, Marla Jameson. Do not cower like a child. Meet your fate."

Every eye turned to the woman addressed. She stood stiff and still, staring out towards the pair of doors that stood between them and the Gateroom, where the Prior was probably waiting for her. Then, quickly, she pivoted and found a box labeled C4.

"What are you doing!" Vala was the first to exclaim.

Jameson glanced over her shoulder very briefly at Vala as she opened the box and removed several of the explosive charges. "Going to meet my doom, most likely," she answered flatly.

Skinner immediately leapt to her feet and moved to help her CO without argument. She took all but a couple of the explosives from Jameson, and began attaching them to the first blast door.

"Marla… why?" Vala asked.

Jameson gave no answer as she made her way back across the room to stand with the rest of them behind the barricade, shoving the two remaining C4 charges into her pockets. Meanwhile, Skinner attached the C4 in a straight line across the edges of the door that separated them from the embarkation room. After setting it, she too hurried to stand beside the barricade.

A tense moment later, there was a loud bang and the heavy door clanged to the floor.

Skinner, Oliander and Thrace started to rise, but Jameson gestured for them to remain.

"I'm going alone," she said firmly.

"Ma'am!" Thrace protested.

"You three need to stay here and protect them," she responded, gesturing at the injured ones. Removing it from her concealed holster, Marla offered her handgun to Thrace. The scientist begrudgingly traded her his P-90 for it. Standing, Jameson clicked the safety off. "And when I said stay here, it was an order."

With that, she turned and ran around the barricade, over the fallen blast door and out of sight.

You can't order me.

Before Daniel could even wonder where the thought had come from, Vala took off after Jameson. Reflexively, he bolted to his feet and ran after her. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered how in the world Vala could push herself so fast with only one arm.

As he rounded the barricade, he saw through the open doorway into the next room. Several scorched bodies littered the floor near the other open doorway, burned beyond recognition.

The Gateroom security team.

His foot caught on something, and as he fell towards the floor, Daniel realized that it wasn't the floor at all, but the fallen blast door.

Time seemed to slow as he saw that beyond the other doorway, a Prior stood at the bottom of the Gate's ramp, the tip of his staff glowing brightly. Marla's P-90 was already trained on him, even though it would do her no good. And Vala furiously wheeled herself through the doorway and out towards the standoff. And inexplicably, the blast door began to slide closed between her and Daniel.

"NO!" Daniel yelled.

Then his legs connected solidly with the cold, unrelenting metal and all he could think of was the pain. The rest of his body likewise struck the metal and the pain rapidly spread. Finally, his head fell to it with a thud, and his world went dark.

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I know! Another cliffie! I'll run and hide before you all throw rotten fruit and veggies at me!