Freedom
by Bil!
T – Sam, Jack – Angst, Tragedy – Oneshot
Season: Two, some time after In the Line of Duty but definitely before The Tok'ra.
Summary: The Goa'uld laughs at her with her friend's eyes. This time there's no way out.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. The depressing situations I put them in unfortunately are.
WARNING: Character death, murder, career suicide.
A/N: In case what has gone before is not sufficient warning: do not read this story if you want a happy fic. This is not a happy fic.
Sam wrapped herself in the solitude of the mountainside and fixed her eyes on the sky, refusing to look downward, refusing to look at the earth that held only responsibilities and pressures and unrelenting grief. She didn't care if people were looking for her, she didn't care if she was failing in her duty. This was bigger than duty, bigger than other people's demands on her. She stayed out on the mountain all afternoon, watching the sky and painting the exact colour of that blue into her memory with fierce determination. Her eyes stayed dry as she watched the stars come out and traced the familiar patterns of light across the black shawl of night, locating with unthinking accuracy one particular star. She watched it for a very long time.
The decision was never made as a decision, it was simply a knowledge of what the future held. No regret, no fear, only simple acceptance.
The halls of the SGC were quiet when she went back down into the earth to face her future. This late at night there were only the sentries left to look at her with unwanted pity, the weight of their gazes causing her back to straighten and her chin to go up. But she ignored them, focussed on taking one step at a time.
Her feet led her unthinkingly to the armoury and she stared for a long time at the door before she stepped forward and went inside. The SF on duty signed her out a Colt and watched her sidelong. "Going to do a little target practice?"
"Something like that." Her voice sounded harsh and hard in her ears but he didn't seem to notice.
"I'm sorry, Captain," he said as she stalked out. The awkward sympathy she dismissed as unnecessary and unwanted, but the word Captain shivered in her bones. She'd worked for that rank, she'd earned it. Hard work, dedication, determination; a lifetime of work. She'd given everything to her job and her superiors had rewarded her. She'd had plans, dreams, expectations.
That was over now. All over.
Her footsteps sounded too loud in the empty corridor; she winced each time her boots hit the concrete. The gun hanging from her hip felt unnaturally heavy, the smell of the recycled air was stale and sterile. It wasn't supposed to end like this. She could feel the blood pumping through her veins, the tha-thump of life, so fragile and tenacious. Time stretched and flexed around her, speeding up and slowing down; the walk took forever and took no time at all.
The guards outside the cell gave her looks of pity that grated over her skin and made her clench her teeth down on angry words, but they let her in. They let her in and she went in, stood in front of the door and lifted her chin in unconscious fear and defiance. She was there, in front of him, for the first time. She stared through the bars, solid metal gleaming in the artificial light, and defeat tasted sharp and bitter on her tongue.
"Captain Carter. So kind of you to finally come," sneered the Goa'uld wearing Jack O'Neill's face. "I thought perhaps you'd forgotten about us. So much for this vaunted 'friendship' you slaves claim." It looked her over, familiar eyes laced with gold and a malicious gleam that didn't belong in the Colonel's face. "He's begging, you know. Begging so desperately for you to free him. But his struggles only strengthen me, his defiance only increases my hold over him. There's nothing you can do for him, nothing that can save him." The Goa'uld laughed, pleased with its own power. "Nothing."
Sam didn't reply. She had been host to Jolinar, she knew exactly how the experience went. The nightmares still haunted her and even though she tried to forget the memories would never fade. She knew about the terrible helplessness, about the way her body moved under someone else's control, how her mind was an open book to someone else's greedy curiosity. She knew all of it.
After all their adventures, all their close escapes, there was no way out of this one. There would be no last minute rescue, no great reversal of fortune, no lucky escape to freedom. The Colonel was a Goa'uld forever, until death. They had no way to remove the parasite: the only reason Sam had survived was because Jolinar had given its life for her and that required a symbiote willing to sacrifice itself. This Goa'uld would not be willing. There was no escape. Only one chance at freedom.
The gun sat heavy on her hip, weighted down with more than its own mass.
It had to be done; she knew it had to be done. Daniel couldn't do it, not Daniel. Too eager, too idealistic, too full of life. She wouldn't let him do it. Teal'c could have done it, but Teal'c was still unconscious in the infirmary with wounds even his primta was struggling to heal. Sam wished he was there with her, knew he could do it, wished it was him standing in her place. But it was better this way, better that it was her. The Powers That Be needed her; if it had been Teal'c they would have turned him into a guinea pig and he deserved so much more than that. They wouldn't turn her into a guinea pig, so it had to be her. Besides, it was better that it was her, knowing what the Colonel was going through. It had to be her.
The gun fitted into her hand with the ease of long familiarity, reassuringly solid.
There was scorn in the Goa'uld's eyes. "You'll never do it," it told her, mocking her in the Colonel's voice. "You're too pathetic, too weak. Even he knows it. You're not strong enough to kill the host as well. I can see it all here in his thoughts."
She remembered the Colonel's face when the parasite burrowed into his skin, she remembered the fear in his eyes, the horror in the scream that came to his lips but was never sounded. She remembered Jolinar and the aching echoing corridors of her own mind as she chased her own tail around her thoughts and never managed to surface, never managed to find a way back into control. She remembered his fear.
She lifted the gun.
"He cares about you, you know," the Goa'uld crooned, changing tactics. "It's all here, I can see it. He cares about you. Deeply. More than you know."
It was just like being on a target range. An easy shot.
"I know," she said.
The trigger slid back, so easily, so gently. Such a small movement to cause so much noise, to do so much damage. To drill a hole in his forehead and take two lives. To set a man free.
Her last thought before the sentries charged in was that she wished she could have flown one last time. One last time, before she was arrested and taken to a little hole in the ground to spend the rest of her life in a cell, working out solutions to problems she would never actually see.
She was going to miss the sky.
Fin