Chapter 25
An hour's walking distance from the gate a forest of tall shrubbery and coniferous trees met the grassy plains where low mountains rose to house the caves. After a quick survey, inside and out, Jack cleared the scientist for getting started and a frantic traffic in and out of the caves commenced, a small group of people climbing around, getting dusty and tugging on large rocks. Another group was assembling the equipment to have anything of interest x-rayed on a patch of flat, sandy ground about 50 meters from the rock wall.
The team started setting up camp near the treeline while Daniel submerged himself in work, sitting on the ground like a holy man in the midst of rocks and boulders that he had his staff bring him. He pulled his suncap, the one Noli said was so ugly, down low to shield his eyes from the bright sun and spent his time brushing dust from carved writing, tracing lines with his fingers, making notes.
Teal'c watched from his position in the shade and hoped the wall Daniel was literally building up around himself was not mirrored inside of him. Daniel Jackson was a sensitive person, and Noli Brennan's illness had affected him greatly. More than one would expect, in fact. Daniel had not spoken his concerns, but Teal'c could sense they were greater than the ones he usually expressed when someone close to him was ill or in jeopardy, and he feared Daniel's reaction was making him close his heart and turn into one of the rocks he was studying in order to protect himself from pain.
Upon leaving the base, he had asked about Noli's condition. Sam had told him with a small sigh that nothing had changed since the day before. He felt this to be no cause of alarm, but he knew Daniel was impatient and would wish for Noli to make a full recovery as soon as possible – preferably yesterday.
He looked over to where Sam was pounding tent poles into the ground and saw her send a glance over to their friend. She then looked up at him, and they exchanged a troubled look. She too had noticed Daniel's unusually buttoned up mood. Teal'c shot a glance at Jack who was leaning casually against a tall tree trunk, resting his P-90 on the ground. He didn't look too bothered with anything. In fact, he was looking a little too relaxed.
"O'Neill!" Teal'cs sharp growl made the head of his team leader violently jerk up.
"What?" Jack tried to look as if he hadn't been asleep, but the smirk on Sam's lips revealed it wasn't working. He blinked and put on an annoyed face.
"You can't blame a guy for resting his eyes just a second. In this delightful sun." He gestured unspecifically at the surroundings. "After a long night", he added, too low for Sam to hear. Tealc's spiked hearing caught it however, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Jack usually slept like a baby all through the night, no matter what – there would be something extraordinary disturbing his peace if he were to lie sleepless long enough to feel the effects the next day. Perhaps Daniel wasn't the only one with a lingering feeling of concern for the unconscious scientist back home.
The team of technicians assembling the machinery had packed up and gone back to the base as soon as they were done. Come nightfall, the last of Daniel's archaeologists took their leave as well and the team was left to fend for themselves as they watched over the site.
With no lights of civilization to brighten the night sky the the landscape around them went velvety black as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. Scarce clouds were creating empty patches in the spray of stars emerging on the dark vault above.
After a short but lively discussion regarding whose turn it was to make dinner Sam had sat down in the limelight outside her designated tent to heat up some rations. Usually, to save time and conserve energy, they would set up a smaller camp and bunk up two and two. But as the climate on this planet was agreeable – it was spring or early summer, Sam thought, a nice temperature and not much wind – and there was no tight schedule to keep to they had splurged on three tents: one for her, one for Teal'c who tended to crowd out the person sharing his personal space, and one for Jack and Daniel. They had set them up in a slight half circle, with the wall of the forest as a backdrop, and now a fire was burning in the middle of the site. It was more for ambiance than heat and lighting, and now the flickering orange light of the flames spread softly across the ground, the tents and scattered equipment, and lit the faces of Jack and Daniel from underneath. They had found a broken log in the woods and dragged it into camp; Daniel was sitting on the log and Jack was sitting on a rock across from him. They were both silently watching the fire dance and crackle in front of them. Little glowing flakes of ashes were rising up with the smoke and burning out, disappearing in the air before landing somewhere else.
Sam tapped a spoon on the side of a tin pot and got up. Multiple ingredient cooking, also a splurge. There would be dish-washing. She walked over to the fire and sat down.
"Hey", she said. Jack gave her a nod. She passed the pot around and received an approving noise from Daniel, who had forgotten he was hungry.
"Teal'c! Dinner time", shouted Jack. Within a few seconds the large man silently appeared from somewhere among the trees, not breaking a twig. He smoothly lowered himself to a seat on the ground next to Jack and allowed himself to be served a plate of stew.
"'S good", munched Jack. Sam's lips stretched out in a quick smile. No one felt the need to say anything more and for a while there was only the sound of sporks scraping against plates and crackling from the fire. When he had cleaned his plate, Daniel sat thoughtfully looking down on it. Teal'c studied him through his lashes for a while and then asked:
"Are you not well, Daniel Jackson?"
Daniel's face followed his eyebrows up.
"Hm?"
Teal'c's face remained inexpressive as always.
"Your behavior today has been... uncharacteristic."
Sam crooked the corner of her mouth at his words. There was no one to use indifference to cover up keen interest quite like Teal'c. Daniel straightened up a bit and looked around at them.
"What?"
"I think what Teal'c means to say is that you don't seem as thrilled about all these findings as you'd normally be", said Sam.
"We usually can't get you to shut up", Jack added, helping himself to the remains in the cooking pot. Daniel did have a habit of falling into excited rambling after a day of excavating; developing theories, telling anecdotes, explaining myths. But not today. Daniel shrugged and spoke with uncharacteristic uncertainty.
"Yeah, well. It would have been more fun if... Not that I'm not enjoying myself, I mean it's incredibly... interesting..." He fell silent for a moment, then added: "By the way, Jack, I don't think I'm the only one feeling crappy about Noli getting sick."
Teal'c turned his gaze to Jack.
"This is true. You have also been disconcerted, O'Neill."
Jack looked offended. "You seem a little out of it yourself, Teal'c" he mumbled. Damn, he thought, how could they tell? Jack hated to have his vigor questioned, but there was no denying that the big guy was right - he just didn't want to talk about it. And the fact that Teal'c, the pillar stone, did seem ever so slightly out of it, just added to the discomfort.
"I guess we're all a little tired today, guys", Sam said, trying to add some sense of diplomacy to Teal'c's straightforward accusations.
Teal'c looked regally straight ahead for a second or two. Then he reached into one of his breast pockets and pulled out an envelope. From another pocket he fished out a pen. The others followed his movements closely.
"What've you got there, T?" asked Jack with his chin in the air, careful not to sound too interested. Teal'c opened the envelope and took out the contents, studied it for a second and then passed it to Jack. Jack took it, looked at it and then passed it to Sam. Sam stared at it for a second, let out a surprised chuckle and passed it on to Daniel. Daniel held it between his fingers and studied it in silence.
It was a get-well card. The background was bright red, and on it was a cute, comic-like drawing of a little girl lying in bed. She had the covers pulled up underneath her chin and a thermometer sticking out of her mouth, and an unhappy look on her face. Above her, printed in big golden letters, it said: "Get well soon, Peanut!"
"Teal'c, you're a genius", mumbled Daniel.
Sam smiled. "It's perfect", she said. Teal'c looked pleased.
"I already took the liberty of expressing our wishes for her recovery on the inside. I understand it is tradition." Daniel opened the card. Inside, sturdy black letters spelled "We impatiently await your recovery." He let a smile slip across his face. "You got that pen?"
Teal'c handed it to him and he signed the card "Shekarim". He passed the things over to Sam and she bit the pen before deciding to go with the frequently used "Cookie". She rose and gave the card and pen to Jack, who shot sideways glances at his company before he huddled up and signed the card with "The old Pumpkin". He closed it before handing it back to Teal'c. Teal'c carefully scribbled "Hot Chocolate" at the bottom, put the card back in its envelope and put it in his pocket.
The atmosphere around the camp felt considerably lighter. Daniel seemed to have regained some of his usual energy, but was still looking thoughtfully into the flames of the little fire.
"Sam", he said. "Yesterday when you came to get... Peanut." He tried the name out and it sat well on his tongue. It was right, it was her, she was darling little Peanut. He smiled to himself before he continued. "You said something about how you thought of the vacuum, that it was something she said?"
Sam recalled the moment. "Right. Yeah, you know that thing she says when she think someone's complaining too much?"
Daniel thought about it. "Oh, ah... 'You don't like the smell of dead plants, get the hell out of my greenhouse.'"
Sam wrinkled her forehead. "No, it's..."
"'If you dislike bleeding, do not stand in front of my dart board.'" Teal'c filled in.
"'If you don't like death and mayhem, why are you handing me this gun?'" suggested Jack.
"No! 'If you don't like to get wet, don't dwell in the tub'..." Sam let her hand fall down on her lap.
"Ah. That one."
There was a moment of silence.
"How was she doing with that, by the way? The death and mayhem", asked Daniel.
"Weapons training? Good, good... Average development. She could fire in one general direction alright. I don't think firearms are her weapons of choice though", answered Jack, who had spent a few hours with Noli at the firing range.
"Well we all knew that. Noli's not really the fighter type, is she."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that. I've never seen anyone fling a knife quite like the Nut. Except maybe Teal'c."
Sam and Daniel stared at Jack.
"What? She never showed you that trick where she does that... ?" He flicked his wrist and made a swishing sound. His colleagues seemed baffled by this new information about their friend, and he feigned a mild surprise to hide that he was just a little bit smug to be the only one privy to it up until now. He understood the difficulties Sam and Daniel must be having at the moment, trying to imagine Noli handling any kind of weapons. He'd been surprised enough himself when he had seen her use a knife the first time, in the beginning of her training. She had gotten sick of missing the target and quickly pulled the knife from her belt, and suddenly it was stuck dead center in the plywood, vibrating from the impact.
It didn't quite fit, they agreed. The image popping up in Daniel's head was of Noli tossing a hunting knife hard across the office, driving it into a rare copy of "Egyptian myths" in the bookshelf and saying something like "Man, I was aiming for the ceiling". Not that she was clumsy, in spite of all the self derogatory expressions she used he'd been fairly assured of that a long time ago. It was just that he couldn't picture her doing damage to anything on purpose.
The fire burned down and they sat watching the last dying glow in the charcoal that remained. Sam stood up and stretched with her arms over her head. Jack caught a glimpse of the strip of skin showing above her waistline as her army green t-shirt pulled up. He ignored it and looked away, as always.
"I'm going to bed. Are you guys gonna stay out here all night or what?" she yawned.
"Nah", said Jack and allowed himself a discrete tongue-in-cheek remark; "Join you in a minute."
"Yeah, you wish", mumbled Sam with a smirk as she turned around and crawled into her tent.
It was cool within the thin fabric walls, and a weak shine from the lantern hanging outside was softly diverged through the material and left just enough light to see by. The soft murmur of voices coming from outside seemed more distant when she had closed the zipper of the entrance and she was thankful for being alone for the first time all day. Her sleeping bag was already rolled out on the ground and she plopped down on it, landing mercifully softly on the self-inflated mattress underneath. She started untying her laces, but stopped halfway down the right boot as she was struck by an unwelcome thought. She took a deep breath, let it out and fell down flat on her back. The top of the tent disappeared beyond the scarce light and she stared into the dark, putting words on another one of the disturbing feelings that came over her sometimes.
"I wish you wish", she said to herself and immediately winced as she realized the walls around her weren't much towards keeping sound out. She bit her lip and listened for the voices outside. There was a moment of unnerving silence before Daniel spoke.
"Sam, did you say something?"
"No", she called and ground her teeth. She heard Jack comment on Daniel "hearing things" and then the sounds of men moving around, sizzling from drowning ashes and zippers being pulled as they went to get some sleep in the neighbouring tents. There was a while of shuffling as BDU's were pulled off, boots thrown in different directions, complaining over Jack making a mess and general tossing and turning inside the sleeping bags before silence finally fell over the camp. Sam lay awake in the dark, half indulging in, half fighting off the fantasies in her head. The fact that her commanding officer was lying without his clothes on a mere few meters from her was, although the situation itself occurred more than often, giving rise to certain images in her mind. She wondered if he slept in his boxers or kept his t-shirt on, imagined the warmth from his body filling her sleeping bag, and she ached with all her heart for him to come over and unzip the opening and crawl inside while praying that he wouldn't. And she knew he wouldn't.