N/A: I swear this story is not dead. I won't let it go until it lets go of me, and that won't be until it's done. I am, however, and unfortunately, a very slow writer.

Question: Should I make the chapters shorter?

Fact: I've decided to try to find a music theme for each chapter. Let me know how it works. I'll put a Spotify/Youtube playlist up somewhere, maybe.

Chapter theme: Devotchka - How it ends

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Chapter 21

Daniel was lingering outside Noli's room, not quite sure what to do with himself, when Jack and Sam came stomping down the hallway. They hurried past him and into the room before he had a chance to ask what was going on.

"Hey Daniel, give us a hand here", shouted Jack.

"It's ok, we've got it" countered Sam. They came back out wheeling Noli's bed between them.

"What are you doing?" said Daniel, a little disturbed before he realised they were finally taking action of some sort. He joined the march towards the elevators.

"I have an idea", said. Sam. "It was something the Colonel said. Well, actually, it was something she said." She nodded in Noli's direction. "Where would you be completely surrounded by an absolute minimum of anything at all?" Sam had that enthusiastic tone of discovery that was annoying when you didn't know what she was talking about and she wouldn't just come out and say it.

"A vacuum", said Daniel mechanically and then flinched. "You're going to put her in a vacuum?"

"Yeah!"

Every questionable aspect of this slipped through Daniel's mind and across his face before he managed to blurt out: "How?"

"We're borrowing an alkesh from Teal'cs buddies to use the ring transporter", answered Jack.

There was a surreal pause in their rush when they stopped and waited at the elevator. After a few seconds Jack remembered to push the button. Sam begun explaining.

"We figured a space walk would relieve her of most of the impressions. At the very least it should buy us time, and if we're lucky, the problem will fix itself when her brain's not on constant overload. She'll still have the suit, but if there's not other matter around... And of course we can't secure her to anything or she'll have the whole ship to feel and not just the suit, so it'll be a free dive... But it shouldn't be a problem. As long as she doesn't move around too much when we let her go."

The elevator door opened and they pulled the bed inside. The door closed and they waited.

"Oh, right." Jack pushed the button.

Daniel looked at Noli. She seemed to have resigned under the weight of the impressions pouring over her, only the occational twitch of her features revealing she was everything but at peace. They were going to set her adrift in space. Cold, mercyless space. If anything were to go wrong...

"Get her out of these damn restraints", he muttered and started undoing the cuff around her right wrist. A bruising was beginning to appear on the skin underneath from her tugging and pulling. The blue and purple stood in such clear contrast to the blood-drained white of her skin that it almost looked as if floating above it, and very out of place. His instinct was to run his thumb gently across it, to examine it, but he kept himself from touching her. Sam and Jack quietly undid her left hand and her feet - the same bruising was forming there.

Noli suddenly took a slow, deep breath and directed her half-closed eyes to her right, although not straight at Daniel. She raised her hand and held it over his chest.

"Sch... Calm down, you'll give yourself a heart attack." She spoke quietly, just above a whisper, and softly sluring as if she was afraid of her tongue touching her teeth. Her hand fell gently back onto the bed, hesitating just before it landed. Sam leaned over her.

"Noli?"

"If it didn't hurt so much... this would be kinda cool." The misplaced humour in Noli's hoarse voice went straight into a lump in Sam's stomach.

"Hold on a little longer, we think we found a way to help you."

"There are, um...birds fighting over an apple core on the roof", whispered Noli and closed her eyes. The corner of her mouth pulled up in a dubious smile that quickly faded. Sam looked up at Jack and they exchanged a look of understanding. Time was running out. This better work, and work fast.

Daniel hadn't noticed until then, but now he felt what Noli meant: his heart really was racing. It should feel stranger, he thought, to have someone literally see straight into one's heart. He looked down on Noli's face. A tear was slowly making its way through her dark lashes and trickled down her temple and the feeling in his gut made it painfully obvious: It wasn't strange to have her so aware of his heart because she belonged there anyway. Over these past few months Noli had gone far beyond being a co-worker; she had become one of his best friends. His strange, quirky, beautiful friend who felt like home every time he stepped into his... her... whatever, the office. Whether she talked to him or not didn't matter, the silence was as comfortable as the conversation. Always kind - she would gladly laugh at him or express dissatisfaction as she saw fit, but she never made him feel bad. Rather the opposite. The warmth in her eyes, her hand on his shoulder or tousling his hair, the inside jokes - little things that all added to the friendly atmosphere between them. She would unabashedly try to annoy him, lean on him and read over his shoulder or throw balled up paper at him when she was bored, but she seemed to sense the moments before he actually became irritated and give up just in time. Or get him over on her side, make him laugh and drag him off to the comissary or out to the pub. There was no way of imagining everyday life without Noli.

Finally the elevator stopped and the doors slid open. Outside Teal'c was already waiting, towering silently with the space suit in its bag. He saw no need to ask about Noli's condition - with a glance he could see for himself it was critical.

"Is everything ready?" asked Sam, a little breathless from sheer stress.

"It is. We are in luck that Bra'tac should be in such close proximity. He is ready to bring us aboard."

"Alright, let's get going. Teal'c, you wanna...?" Jack gestured for Teal'c to pick Noli up. He knew Daniel well enough to see precisely how stressed out he was at the moment and didn't want to make him cause Noli any more pain. He told himself it was unnecessary to put the extra strain on his knees by doing it himself, although in his mind he knew he was just as reluctant to add to Noli's suffering as Daniel. Teal'c, he knew, would have no problem doing what was necessary even if Noli would hate him for a couple of minutes.

Teal'c handed over the bag to Jack and eased his hands in under Nolis knees and neck. At the contact she opened her eyes and pushed air out through her nose as if something had suddenly burned her. Teal'c lifted her up with ease and held her steadily against the wall of his chest and the group started moving towards the spot selected for their pick-up. Noli kept exhaling in sharp puffs that were soon accompanied by weak moans. It took less than a minute to get into position but in that time Teal'cs expression turned from grim to grimmer, and when he notified Bra'tac they were ready to come aboard Jack thought he heard a slight hint of human stress on his voice.

In the ring room of the ship they were met by Bra'tac. He greeted them and waited for Teal'c to set Noli down before embracing him. He then turned to the miserable woman on the floor, who had stopped moaning when Teal'c let go but started lightly cramping instead.

"I had been hoping to meet your new friend during more preferable circumstances. She does not look well."

"Indeed she does not."

"Yeah. Well, hopefully there'll be more opportunities after this is over." Jack stood with his hands on his hips and waited for Sam. She had pulled the suit out of its bag and was removing everything that wasn't absolutely necessary from it. Daniel was standing next to her, holding the large helmet and grinding his teeth.

"Ok", Sam sighed when she was done and looked at Jack. "Let's do this fast." Jack let out a breath and crouched down on Noli's other side. He exchanged a look with Sam, and then they each grabbed a bruised ankle and quickly started pulling the suit onto Noli's legs. Jack could feel her muscles contract in protest during the short moment he held on to her, but within seconds they had her bottom half dressed. They moved on to slip her arms into the arms of the suit. They were seizing up in cramps and they had to struggle to force them in, but determination prevailed. Teal'c stepped in, bent down and held her under the arms and picked her up so that Sam could close the suit in the back. Noli's legs were doing very little to help and Teal'c was left supporting her entire wriggling weight, holding her out a bit from his own body to avoid unnecessary contact.

"Daniel." Sam waved for the helmet. Daniel helped her attach it and Teal'c carefully laid Noli back on the floor.

"Alright, let's do this", said Jack. He, Sam and Teal'c moved away from the circle of the transporter. Daniel hesitated, looking to find one last moment of eyecontact before withdrawing and leaving his friend to be set afloat alone in space. In his mind he saw images of drifting, out of reach, being lost. Dying. Alone.

Bra'tac pressed a combination of buttons on the control panel and the large rings shot up around Noli, covering her in cold white light - they fell down, and she was gone, floating in the emptyness underneath the ship.

"Come on, we can monitor her vitals from the control on the bridge", said Sam. They hurried out and gathered behind her as she hunched over a station, staring intently at the screen while bringing the information up.

"There." She straightened. "That's her..." She squinted her eyes. "...uh... Her beta waves. Wow, they're really off. ...Pulse is irregular. Adrenalin, cortisol, everything is sky high."

"Any improvement?" asked Jack cautiously. Sam made a face.

"I don't know, I think it's too early to tell. We'll just have to sit tight." As if she knew what he was thinking, she turned quickly to Daniel.

"Don't worry, she's got life support for at least five hours in there."

Perhaps she was reassuring herself as well. There was no question about the safety, the ship was in position to transport Noli back within a second and she was completely protected by the suit. It was having no idea how long it would take, or whether it was even going to work or not that gnawed in Sam. In her head she was going through what Noli was still left with - plastics, metals, electronics.

Occupying her mind with practical matters had been keeping it from lingering on the notion that one of her best friends was dangerously ill, but when she glanced at Daniel she was reminded of the fact that underneath the surface she was feeling just as bad as he looked. For a second she wondered if that look of contained panic was what he harbored every time any of them was in jeopardy - if so, she was both touched and worried.

Jack and Teal'c were warriors; they knew not to take anything out in advance. Especially death. Staring at a screen full of readings and values seemed unnecessary; there was nothing they could do but wait and if anything should change Sam was sure to call it to their attention. They left the station and moved to the other side of the bridge, engaging in quiet conversation with Bra'tac.

Sam kept staring at Noli expressed as graphs and figures on the screen. Strange, just the other day they had been sitting over breakfast, talking about paint jobs on motorcycles. That's the world Noli belonged in, she was supposed to go merrily about her business at the base, join Sam at the commissary, randomly help with projects, drag her out on girls' night. Be there when they came back from missions like a lifeline to the outside world. Now it was they who had dragged her out into their world, and the result was devastating.

All this was running through Sam's head so vividly the figures she was staring at had turned into a blur. When Daniel suddenly said "There!" she had to blink a couple of times to find her focus again. He was pointing to a shifting number in the corner of the screen indicating Noli's heart rate. Sam held her breath as she watched it slowly alter from the irregularly changing, much too high level it had been on the last five minutes: it was evening out and dropping. After a minute or two, although still changing a bit too much to be considered regular, it kept between normal boundaries. Sam waited, but as it seemed to be staying down she dared say it to herself:

"It's working." She turned to the men huddled at the other side of the room and repeated it a bit louder. "Hey guys. It's working." She turned back to the monitor as an air of cautious hope spread among them.

Daniel had backed away from the screen when he knew things were going in the right direction and was slumped against the wall, resting the back of his head heavily on it with his eyes closed.

Another few minutes of monitoring told Sam Noli must be out of the darkest woods, because her breathing became slow and regular, as did finally her heartbeat. The activity of her synapses, however, was not slowing down at the same rate. But the mere fact that it was measurably slowing at all was enough for her to let go of the gnawing worry and think that everything was going to be alright after all. All they had to do was wait for Noli's body to regain it's own balance, like an excited electron falling back to its natural level around its core. There her former concern was replaced by another - she had no idea what was normal for Noli's EEG. She had a notion of what it should look like with a healthy person, but as Janet had said, with this girl it would probably be a little out of the ordinary. She sank into the chair behind her. No matter what they did they couldn't be sure it was right, when Noli was the only one who could tell them. They wouldn't know if she was alright again, until she actually was. If they brought her back too soon, and it started all over again, then what? Reset the suit and send her back out there, again and again? They couldn't hog Bra'tac's ship forever. Sam sighed and rubbed her eyes. They were tired from the concentrated staring, she was tired from searching for ideas.

"Hey." Jack's hand landed on her shoulder. "We'll just sit tight, right? Couple of hours?"

Sam let her hand fall down in her lap.

"It's just that I don't know if it'll be enough..."

Jack interrupted her. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Carter. You've done enough for now."