See part one for the disclaimer and story notes.
Part Two
"All right kids, it's time to go, now!" The voice fuzzed abruptly through the radio.
Both Sam and Daniel looked up from the slick rain covered hull from the wreckage of the goau'ld tel'tak. Sam had been deeply engrossed with her investigation of the ship for the past four hours, and during the entire time the rain had not stopped. Sam reached for her radio, her rain poncho crackling with the movement. "Sir?"
"But we're not done!" Daniel told Sam.
"Flash flood near the gate. Drop everything and run Captain, we don't have much time."
"Yes sir." Her hand dropped from the radio and she made a beeline for one of the exposed consoles on the inside of the ship. Her boots splashed in newly formed puddles as the rainwater pooled in all the depressions. "Daniel, help me get the storage crystal out. We're leaving everything else."
He rushed over, and crouched down beside her.
"Okay, I need you to hold onto this," she shoved a pale yellow crystal into his hands and then slipped her head under the console. She switched the configuration of several smaller crystals on the inside of the console, and it changed shape, opening a new compartment. She grabbed the yellow crystal out of his hands.
"My journal, my books…" He told her. They were all still back in the cave, further up the valley. She shoved in the crystal and then reached deep into the innards of the console.
"No time. From what I can see, this ship looks like it belonged to Heru'ur. The information on the data crystal could be invaluable."
Some wire-like things that were half pulled out of the console and still connected to the innards of the console were shoved into his hands. Sam plugged something in and lights flashed. He had no idea what was going on.
"Yes!" Sam muttered. She smiled widely, rain running down her face. In her hands was a melon sized oblong red crystal. "Let's go Daniel."
They ran as fast as they could in the continual rain. The entire landscape was water soaked and slippery. It didn't help that they were partway up a rather steep valley. The gate lay at the bottom, near but frustratingly inaccessible.
As the grade steepened they both began slipping more than running. They both skid downwards in a sideways gait, trying to keep their footing. Mud squished beneath Sam's boots, the ground sliding beneath her feet before she could balance.
Daniel slipped abruptly, but within a second was on his feet again, his right side coated in dark mud.
"Carter! Daniel! Where the hell are you?" They heard Jack's voice echoing out of Sam's radio.
Sam clung to the crystal, worried more about loosing her footing because the crystal could break than her own well being. From what little she'd had the time to see, this was incredible intel on all of Heru'ur's military operations, not to mention what he knew about his rivals.
"We're on our way, sir." She shouted into his radio.
"ETA?"
"Fifteen." She hoped. It was truly difficult to say given the water and mud. She could see the gate, a tiny grey arc peeking out from behind a large fir tree.
"The river's gonna reach the gate any second now. Hurry."
The route directly ahead became almost vertical in steepness. Sam diverted to their right, seeing the rocky terrain with a far more gentle incline, and no intervening trees.
Sam slipped forwards, loosing her footing. She pushed herself to the side with as much momentum as she could, forcing her shoulder to take the brunt of the impact, the crystal still safe in her arms. Daniel came up beside her and grabbed her other arm, helping her get back up to her feet, her entire side heavy with chilled mud. That was going to hurt in a few hours.
"Thanks." she muttered.
They reached the rocks, and despite the smaller incline, Sam realized immediately that it had been a bad plan. The rock, rough when dry, had proving excellent footing. Now that it was rain covered, it was slippery like ice.
She and Daniel slowed their pace out of necessity.
Sam glimpsed the gate from beyond the trees. They were closer. Behind her, she heard a thud and a groan. Swerving her head, she saw Daniel slightly up the hill from her, on the ground clutching his leg. Shit.
She rushed up to him and crouched down. "Daniel, where are you hurt?"
"Ankle." he said from ground teeth.
"Anywhere else?"
He shook his head.
"Okay, come on, let's get you up." There was no time to look at the ankle. They could do that once they were home. With her right arm she grabbed one of his arms and wrapped it around her shoulders. She held the crystal in the crook of her left arm.
The moment Daniel tried to put weight on his foot, he cried out, part gasp, part scream. He balanced against Sam, his breathing carefully controlled and muttering in a foreign language.
"Carter?" Colonel O'Neill's voice filtered through the rain. "How far are you?"
"Sir, Daniel's hurt his ankle. It's going to take us awhile to get back to the gate."
There was a pause before the he replied. "No time. The gate's already flooding – you guys need to stay on higher ground. Teal'c and I are heading back to the SGC before the gate's blocked."
"Sir?"
"Just hang tight for a few days until the water recedes. We'll be in touch, see you soon."
Through the trees, Sam was able to see the unstable vortex of the activating wormhole flare outwards. And then it was just her and Daniel.
They watched the river level rise meter by meter up the base of the stargate, safe from the vantage point of the top of a tall hill, nearly one kilometre away. From their perspective the gate looked like a single upright doughnut.
First the DHD was submerged, while the gate itself stood like an arch over the rushing water. Then, the swollen river flowed over top of the stargate, removing it entirely from their view. It took less than a quarter of an hour to watch the water creep up and eventually overtake the ring.
The bloated stream now seemed more like a river. It was dark and mud coloured, with bits of trees being rushed along the top, bobbing up and down.
Sam moved to stand up, stiff from crouching.
They were both wet straight through to the skin, the pounding rain rolling off of their stringing cold hair. Daniel leaned against Sam, keeping most of his weight off of his right ankle.
For several moments, neither spoke. They simply shivered in counterpoint.
"So, how long until the river goes down?" Daniel asked.
Sam shook her head. "I'm hardly an environmental scientist, and even if I was, I don't think we have enough data on this planet to know. It could be days, it could be months."
Daniel considered this. "Uh...months?"
"Yeah, maybe this place has a flood season. Or maybe this is just a freak occurrence."
Daniel sighed with a staccato as he continued to shiver. He didn't fail to notice that Sam was vibrating just as much. They were both too cold and miserable to engage in speculation over the nature of this planet's hydrology – a field neither of them was very familiar with. "At least Jack and Teal'c got home all right."
Sam gave a shuddering nod.
"Well, it doesn't matter how long it takes for the stargate to be uncovered if we both freeze to death today." Sam said.
Wordlessly they hobbled back several dozen meters to the shallow cave which contained all of their packs and supplies. It was barely two meters deep. Daniel leaned on her shoulder, limping off of his twisted right ankle. She couldn't be too annoyed with him. He was probably a lot more miserable than she was.
She made him sit down under a slightly over crop along a rocky wall which was a least slightly protected against the chilly rainfall.
Pulling out the tent from her pack as quickly as she could with numb trembling fingers, she erected it directly underneath the overhang of the most stable and driest of the shallow cave walls. Hopefully that would give them some additional protection from the rain and wind.
Daniel watched, sitting along the cave wall, his glasses foggy.
Once she was finished they shuffled inside.
They both quietly concentrated on becoming warm and dry for the next following hours. The sun was obscured by thick low clouds, masking the passing time. Only a gradual dimming of the ambient light hinted at a sunset.
They had long since changes into dry clothing, but Daniel could still feel dried mud clinging to his hair and skin. His ankle was throbbing. The tent itself was small, and there was only enough room for both of them to lie entirely prone, with a small strip of area for supplies at their feet. While awake, Daniel found that they had to watch for stray elbows and knees while stretching and changing position.
He watched Sam preparing two MRE packages on the sterno. Given that they had four people's supplies for five days, Sam had estimated that they could stretch the remaining food out for a month or more.
God, he hoped it wouldn't come to that though.
He absent-mindedly took the warm package when she handed it to him. It didn't matter that his feet were still damp and his entire body chilled. The MRE was still disgusting. Like rubber salty chicken. That glowed yellow.
Frustration settled into Daniel's bones. He chewed his food with violence, making his jaw ache. It seemed like every time he stepped through the gate he was seized by some kind of distraction or another, pushing and pulling him is chaotic courses. He needed to be looking for Sha're, yet now he was trapped on an uninhabited planet for the near foreseeable future.
Daniel turned his attention to Sam.
She sat with he back to one side wall of the cave, the last light shining though the tarp wall casting her features in an unnatural shadowed green. She looked lost. Daniel was surprised at the thought, but upon further inspection, it was the only way to describe her appearance.
Her face was closed; her legs were pulled up slightly and her shoulders slouched forwards, she looked so small.
He wanted to ask her if she was alright but he knew that would only keep her from saying anything. He really wanted to ask her about Jolinar, but he couldn't even figure out a way to phrase that question.
"Are you cold?" He asked instead.
She shook her head, even though he could see the goose flesh along her lower arms.
He shifted his swollen ankle, which he had raised up on his pack, a painful reminded of why they were both here.
He ran his fingers across his brow. "Hey, I'm sorry about slowing you down on the way back. It's my fault we're stuck."
Sam sighed. "No, it's all right."
There was an awkward silence. Daniel felt strange because with Sam there was never an awkward silence. When they had met, it felt like they we're picking up mid conversation and had known each other their entire lives- longer even.
"I hope I haven't made you miss anything important."
He noticed that Sam considered her reply, and he could tell she was going to tell him a lie.
"I was supposed to spend some time with my Dad." She confessed. "It's fine though, he'll understand."
Daniel wasn't sure which part of the statement was a lie, but he knew it was there.
"He's air force, right?" He remembered Jack saying something.
"Yeah, a General, but he's retired."
They went back to silence.
As predicted, Sam began to feel the effects of her tumble almost immediately. By evening she was impossibly stiff, and rotating her right shoulder induced nothing short of fiery agony. She didn't even want to imagine what kind of pain Daniel was in with his ankle. He'd taken an extra dose of ibuprofen, but she was fairly certain by the tight expression on his face that he needed something stronger.
Sam prepared her sleeping bag, the sound of heavy rainfall and wind in concert with the slipping sounds of artificially made cloth and zippers. Daniel had been lost in his thoughts for most of the day, and she didn't exactly feel like sharing her own.
She wanted to hurt something, or run until she collapsed, or maybe even cry. Her father had actually wanted to meet her for dinner and stay for a few days in Colorado Springs. To catch up. Now she was trapped here, for who knew how long and he could be dead by the time she got back to earth.
It took all her energy to restrain herself. Keep herself calm and collected. Even if there was nothing she could do about being trapped here. Especially because there was nothing to be done. It was a waste of energy to worry and let herself be upset about things she couldn't control.
Lashing out at her apathetic environment would serve no purpose. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
The words came out before she could consider them.
"My father is dying of cancer." She turned to her side and told Daniel. "That's why he came to see me."
Daniel met here eyes. His voice sounded so remorseful. "Oh god Sam, I'm so sorry."
As she settled in for sleep, Sam wondered why she told him that.