Setting: Between Threads and Avalon, before SG-1 gets split up. Slightly AU because Janet. I refuse to write a fic in which the doctor is not Janet. Otherwise canon. Can follow Red Sky at Night but is not a sequel.
Pairings: Sam/Jack recently established. Possible hints of Daniel/Janet later.
Summary: A routine mission turns sinister for SG-1 while, back at the SGC, Jack awaits an important decision.
Disclaimer: If I owned anything would I be writing fanfic? Yeah, didn't think so. SG-11 (except Lorne, of course) belong to Eisette, who has kindly leant them to me. I guess I do actually own Opis and the Ampelou, but that's it.
A/N: Yes, I suck at updating. Can I blame severe writers' block and the fact that Sky aren't showing SG-1 right now so I have no inspiration? No? I just suck? Yeah, thought so. But hey, here's a chapter! It's a little trippy, but I worked my arse off on this, so I hope you like it. Also, I apologise for any lesbian vibes Opis gives off. I don't even know what that's about.
Chapter 6
"You will pay dearly for killing your god..." Opis' breath came out in ragged gasps as she spoke her manic words, and Sam was disgusted to feel it on her face. She could see the bright flush on the goa'uld's pale visage, and the frantic gleam in her eyes. The vines around Sam's arms cut into her skin, blood welling up around them as she struggled to break free. She was nearly screaming out in pain and frustration as Opis spat her final revelation.
"And for neglecting to kill his queen!"
A final thick tendril crept around Sam's neck, choking and stinging simultaneously as Opis looked on with inhuman glee, and she sunk foggily into the dark.
-/-/-
Anders had been waiting just within the tree line, it seemed, and Jack saw him running back out towards the well the second he felt the tremor, signalling down the path for Lorne to stay. In the time it took him to cross the 30 feet between them, Jack was already surrounded by the creatures a few metres away in all directions.
"Jack! Look out!" Anders was reaching for his gun, but a well-aimed vine shot from of the closest alien to whip it out of his hands. There was no time for Anders to reach for his knife, before another vine from the same creature knocked him to the floor, unconscious.
"No!" Jack yelled, turning to take in all the creatures advancing cautiously towards him. Unlike Charlie, he'd made no attempt to defend himself, and the aliens seemed to be waiting until he did to attack, only slithering forward whilst he told himself not to reach for his gun. The vines at the bottom of the creature's long bodies (which had no feet or legs) seemed to propel them forward by gripping the earth beneath them, like roots, and were thicker, yet paler in colour, than the rest of the vines that made up their limbs and bodies.
Slowly, Jack raised his hands. From the corner of his eye he could see two the creatures wrapping Anders in their arm-vines, until he was totally cocooned and suspended between them. At his movement, the creatures stopped simultaneously, and Jack could see their strange golden eyes focusing on him. The vines seemed to calm, moving a little more slowly as they twisted and writhed on their bodies. He cleared his throat, and a few of them twitched. Hastily, he raised his hands over his head, palms as visible as possible, fingers spread wide.
"I come in peace." The cliché had no effect other than making Jack aware of how uncertain he sounded right now. He tried again, aiming for a little more confidence in his voice.
"Take me to your leader."
For a split-second, he could have sworn he felt the air humming around him. Then the creature directly in front of him stepped – no, slithered – a little closer, close enough that Jack had to tip his head up slightly to look at its 'face'. This one was taller than the others, he noticed, at about 6'6'' – though none of them were any shorter than he was. It leant in as if to study his face, and it was only the special forces training in him that stopped him from flinching.
The soft, alien voice that now filtered into his head did, however, cause him to raise an eyebrow.
"Ampelou will take you to Opis. Pleasssse, sleep human."
The sight of a thin vine, no wider than a piece of twine, extending slowly towards his face, caused him to step backwards. The creature stopped, the frail green strand halting, suspended in mid-air a few inches from his cheek. Jack spoke again, a hint of worry tingeing his voice, emphasising his words with hands still raised above his head as he focused on the tip of the vine in front of him, which seemed to be covered in hundreds of tiny, barbed hairs.
"How about I come without being vine-whipped? I'm not gonna hurt you, I just want to retrieve my people."
"Ampelou will not harm. Ampelou only make sleep. Opis will explain."
"Opis?"
Its golden eyes were still fixed on his, unblinking and unmoving.
"Leader."
"Oh." Jack could think of nothing else to say, now that he was surrounded by alien plant creatures who, he was pretty sure, were about to stun him, despite his best efforts to convince them otherwise.
"Sleep now. Ampelou will not harm humans."
The light sting of the tendril across his face was almost instantaneous, and he just managed to wonder if they had meant to include Sam and Daniel in that promise before he floated into a warm, dreamless sleep.
-/-/-
Daniel was drowning in an aureate ocean of memories, liquid gold filling his lungs as a deluge of gilded images engulfed him.
The first time he'd kissed Sha're, tender in his attempt to reassure this beautiful stranger, and the pressure on his lips as she tentatively responded... Their last kiss before she was taken by Apophis, her passionate embrace the polar opposite of their first, her arms around his neck, fingers tangled in his hair... Now she was walking towards him with that smile reserved just for him – the smile that let him know that she absolutely loved him, which always prompted an imitation of itself on his own face. She was blurry, shimmering in the shining fluid, but he didn't mind – not when her hand reached to caress his face, dissolving the pressure in his lungs that made him gasp for air that wasn't within reach.
"My Daniel..." He was in their tent and she was shimmering still, but the way her lips curved at his confused blink was comfortingly familiar, and she spoke in the same soft tone she always had done. "You are safe now, my Daniel. I rescued you... But who will rescue Samantha?"
The moment her eyes had glowed and he'd realised she wasn't there any more... Jolinar, in Sam's body, telling him she knew where Sha're was... each memory rippled away before he could focus fully on it, taken on a current of amber and replaced by another, equally traumatic one as his dead wife still floated before his eyes.
"You're dead. I know you're dead, Sha're. Teal'c..." The pain of his own wife, smothered by a parasite wrapped around her brain-stem, torturing him. The even worse pain of his best friend blasting her away, killing her abruptly and painfully with a staff blast.
With that heart-wrenching realisation, he was torn from her touch into the golden currents and more images. The agony of radiation blistering his skin, choking his organs, as his friends watched his suffering in helpless despair... The memory trickled away again before the pain could stop, and now, as he tried to scream out through the molten gold in his throat. Replicarter's sword-arm forming as he watched, powerless to stop her from plunging it straight through him, tearing through bone, organ, and flesh alike.
"What do you want from me?" The words tore from his lips and he could hear his anguished shout clearly, though he knew he was still drowning in a sea of golden despair as more and more memories taunted him with pain and loss as he balled his fists around shifting scenes, thrashing to escape this endless amber. A soft voice answered in reply, distorted by the gilt fluid filling his ears but still recognisable.
"Daniel?" And now Janet appeared in front of him, more realistic than the blurred memories – even Sha're - but still made ethereal by the way the water seemed to move away from her, like she wasn't even touching it. "Daniel, I need you to focus on me." She was wearing her BDUs, he noticed, and one of the caps – which always looked adorable on her. He tried to focus, even though he knew she wasn't real, because maybe if he focused she wouldn't go away and leave him with the other images. She smiled as their eyes met, and the water swirled around her but didn't wash her away.
"That's it, Daniel. You're safe now. But I need you to do something for me." At that, he screwed his eyes shut, willing more memories to flash her away.
"You're not real, Janet. You're just a trick."
She slapped him. It felt real enough. Now the blurriness was fading, the images sharpening. He was by the 'gate on the Ampelou planet, Janet knelt over him, fingers on his pulse point.
"Daniel! I need you to focus. I'm real, I promise." Her concern seemed real too, as did the softness of her hand, now cupping the side of his face in a way that might not be deemed wholly appropriate.
"Okay." He was just too damned exhausted to say anything else, so he waited for her to speak, unsure if he believed her or not, but glad of the relief from drowning in amber memories. She smiled a little, but the worry was still evident in her face.
"Daniel, I need you to tell me something. It's very important, and I don't have time to explain. You just have to trust me, okay?" Her thumb was stroking his cheek now, and he leant into the familiar comfort, aching beyond compare but oddly relaxed.
"Okay." The slight nod sent splinters of pain into his head, and he dropped it back into Janet's touch. She frowned, speaking quickly but gently still.
"Who does Sam care about most in the world? Who would she die to save, Daniel?"
He frowned, but she smiled and nodded, both hands now somehow cradling his head as she looked down at him. "This is important, Daniel. I need to know." That bossy tone was very Janet, and he was too tired to argue. She'd started to blur again, too. "Daniel, you need to stay awake. You have to tell me!"
"Janet, you know it's Jack..."
Then Janet's face swirled away again, the scene around him vanishing into the yellowed depths, and a part of Daniel seemed to lurch painfully at the realisation that she was never there at all. And now he was alone, drowning like before – although without the memories, thankfully – sucking water into his lungs on instinct, and thrashing to reach a surface he couldn't see... before he faded into blackness now, sleeping within a dream.
-/-/-
The sting of the vines in her flesh, now around her waist and legs as well as her neck and arms, securing her to the wall, was the first thing Sam noticed as she drifted out of the now-familiar haze of the ampelou's sedative. The stalks coiled round her limbs stuck with blood as she tested them, attempting to move her arm a fraction – only succeeding in causing more pain, as the fibres shifted by the smallest amount over raw flesh.
Her eyes were still shut – an instinct picked up after one too many captures; never let the enemy know you're awake until you're ready. Even if the thick, rigid vine around her neck had permitted any freedom, she wouldn't have dared open them to see the blood she suspected was now dripping anew down into her hands, or the remains of her BDU jacket sleeves – now probably shredded by countless tiny filaments.
A gentle splashing from in front of her face was now audible over the roaring of blood in her eyes, and, now certain the pain had rendered her fully conscious, she dared to open her eyes a little.
Opis was watching her intently from the other side of a smooth wooden font of the same wood the chairs in the main chamber had been made from – or, more likely, grown from. The source of the splashing appeared to be the goa'uld woman's fingers trailing through the viscous amber liquid in the font that stood about the height of her hips, and, as Sam's eyes flicked back to her, Opis withdrew her hand. She was smiling almost tranquilly in contrast to her earlier mania, but that look of malice lurking in her her light brown eyes was unchanged. Sam noticed that her hands seemed completely dry -the fluid simply flowing off them- before all her attention switched to Opis, who had begun to move towards her slowly; her green silk clothing moving almost independently of the sway of her hips, like a field of grass in the wind.
Sam found that she could speak through lips and mouth still dry from the tranquilliser.
"Where's Daniel?" Though it was never wise to trust a goa'uld, they usually liked to tell you when they'd killed one of your friends, or to threaten you with it in exchange for information. Unless they were Ba'al. You couldn't trust anything that guy said.
Opis laughed – if she ever got out of this hell-hole, that sound would haunt Sam's nightmares for weeks after this mission; even if she was safe and curled up next to a sleeping Jack, Sam was sure she'd be plagued with memories of past traumas for hours before sleep finally crept over her.
The deposed 'goddess' drew closer to Sam, so close that the Colonel could smell the honey on her breath, before replying.
"With your little 'rescue party', I'm afraid." The honeyed voice matched her breath as she all but pressed herself against Sam to whisper in the Colonel's ear. "It seems the shol'va brought reinforcements this time... another of your 'teams', plus one more so-called 'warrior'."
Sam's tiny intake of breath wasn't missed by the goa'uld, who continued with a smile, confirming Sam's terrible suspicions.
"That's right, Colonel Carter; I have O'Neill."
