604 Frozen
Jack was burning up with fever and looming over him was the woman who they had found frozen. She smiled at him. She felt a deep kinship with him, a connection. This man was important. As she went to place her hand on his chest he stopped her.
"Save the others first." he asked of her. "Save the women."
She hesitated, a questioning look.
"Please" he pleaded.
He needed the others, well, Carter, to live.
The woman complied, but when she attempted to return to heal O'Neill she was spent. Not just spent but totally drained of her life force. She felt as though she had failed, failed to save him. He was kin, he was of her people, of her blood. He was essential to this world's survival. That's why she had been left behind and she failed.
Janet made no bones about it, she had done everything in her power and yet he was dying.
The Tok'ra were called and they could not heal him.
They offered one recourse, the one thing they all knew he hated. The one thing that could save him and he would definitely reject.
Hammond turned to Major Carter, the one person O'Neill could never say no to. She asked him, she begged him and he acquiesced. Carter, even though she couldn't admit it to herself, she needed him to live.
None of them could imagine the cost.
His chest hurt, as if a constricting band wrapped around him. It took all his strength and concentration just to breathe. He couldn't get any air. Wasn't he just in Antarctica, why was he so hot? He thought maybe he was back in the infirmary but he couldn't be sure of anything. He had a blinding headache as well. He wanted to lift his hand but he couldn't. Was he in restraints?
Was someone talking to him, was it Carter? He strained to open his eyes, to see her. He couldn't understand and when he did, it was incomprehensible what she was asking.
She knew him, didn't she?
She knew he hated the very thought of a symbiote.
She pleaded with him and he gave in.
She was smarter than him, she must know what's best.
He hated it but he acquiesced.
He heard another voice, distant, not Sam, and all it said was "Sorry."
"But if you only knew, deep down, what pains are fated to fill your cup before you reach that shore, you'd stay right here..."
The Odyssey - Homer