Memories of the Heart by Betty Bokor
Sam/Daniel. A mission goes horribly wrong while Sam's life is changed forever. Spoilers: All seasons, including 10 to the end.
Disclaimer: The Stargate original characters belong to MGM/Showtime, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Film Corp. This was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt at copyright infringement has been made.
Memories of the Heart
Chapter 28
A. N. Remember the spoilers. This has a very big spoiler about Atlantis last episode.
When the next morning SG-1 got together with Sam, their faces clearly showed their feelings. They silently got into the Conference Room and sat around the table. There were a few other members of the S.G.C. with them. Jack had flown overnight and was sitting at the table with an expression of impatience. Jennifer was ready to take notes. Walter was documenting the meeting.
Cameron was the first to summarize what he had learned from the documents he had received. "Okay. I read the seven first months of notes. For those who were not here yesterday, the Odjods kept a thorough account of everything they did to him and his reactions. They also had detailed notes about the places where they held the prisoners, in order to modify the settings according to their efficiency." There was a general murmur of disapproval and he continued. "During these first months, Daniel was regularly held in a prison, guarded by heavily armed guards. The weapons seem similar to what Goa'ulds use. There's a list here of the weapons provided to each guard. I think the list speaks for itself."
He gave a piece of paper to Sam and, after examining it for a few seconds, she passed it around.
"The purpose of this prison," Cameron continued, "was to hold those who were selected to participate in the war games. The idea seems to be to group warriors according to their race or their planets of origin ─they only had Daniel from here, so he was in a group with other humans─ and make them face it each other in battle. They always had two groups battling, with the same number of soldiers and similar weapons." Jack looked at him and Cameron added immediately, "The weapons were very primitive or simply ineffective to face the ones from the guards." Jack seemed satisfied with the answer. "Those warriors with better survival rates would be used in further experiments to decide where to look for slaves who would help them create an invincible army to… Guess what?" he asked with heavy sarcasm, "Dominate the galaxy."
Everybody at the table seemed disgusted or just simply tired of the same thing.
"Good thing the Furlings took care of the problem," Jack said.
His remark was met with general approval.
"What does it say about Daniel? Sam asked.
"It looks like he did extremely well, compared to most the other humans. At the beginning they made notes about his fighting skills-"
"We taught him well," Jack said with pride.
Sam smiled and Teal'c lowered his head in agreement.
"And then they started noticing other things. It looks like after every battle ─they approximately had one a week─ all the survivors who were uninjured, or those with wounds that could heal, were sent to a river to get cleaned up and then they were put in solitary confinement for the rest of the week, until it was time to battle again. The day before combat, they were checked up and some potent medicine used on them if they had not healed enough to go to war. Those who had no hope of getting back to battle were executed." He stopped again because everybody seemed appalled.
"What did they notice about Daniel?" Vala wanted to know.
"They saw that his smaller wounds were healing without leaving any scar. It started around two months after he got there. It explains here that every three fights the prisoners were taken to the medical labs to see whose physiology withstood better the conditions of the fights and the prison. In the first four labs Daniel did well, but after that he did a lot better. His small wounds were completely healed and the major ones had fared far better than in the other prisoners. At the beginning they thought it was his physiology; later on they realized he had a hand on it. He was healing himself. Daniel confirms it later."
Nobody made a comment, but Cameron gave them a moment to process the information.
"He says so in the notes. There are notes here that were added by the Furlings. It looks like comments Daniel made when they were trying to help him deal… with it."
"What do they say?" Sam asked.
"At least for the first month, Daniel thought he could hear or see us looking for him… somehow, in his mind."
"While we were still on Astrada," Teal'c reminded them.
Cameron nodded. "Then he lost us, when we abandoned the search."
Jack mumbled something heavy in regret.
"After that he concentrated in dealing with the pain. He started playing with something he remembered from the time after the Kelowna thing. It looks like when he was lying there, with all the heavy sedatives, his mind ─or something─ was out of his body having a talk with Oma Desala and, then with you Jack, right?"
They all looked at Jack.
"Yeah, he wanted me to stop Jacob from healing him. He knew he wouldn't heal him enough to go back to what it was before. He didn't want that. He wanted to see if he could do more the other way."
Sam and Teal'c looked at him with disbelief. He had never explained it that clearly.
Jack shrugged his shoulders.
"Well," Cameron continued, "he tried that. He started separating his mind from his body to not feel the pain. It helped him a lot." He made an expressive pause, "and then he started seeing Sam."
Everyone in the room, except Teal'c and Jack, looked at her with surprise.
"Yeah, I saw him. He couldn't say much, or he didn't want to, but we believed he had ascended, like when Jack and Teal'c had seen him before," Sam explained. "He never was there for too long and then he disappeared in the air as if he'd never been there. I didn't think I should make it public," she finally added as an apology.
"They thought I was cuckoo when I finally told;" Jack backed her up. "And Teal'c didn't say it either."
"It says here that making contact with you gave him hope. It doesn't explain much more about it. And that's all I have."
Cameron put his papers down and Vala said, "Now, it's my turn. Okay… Daniel stayed two more months on that prison and then he was sent to a farm. During the warm months some prisoners worked on procuring food for everybody. They had fields with crops and some kind of cattle. They worked the prisoners to death. They made them all sleep in one huge room. It was always noisy and hot, according to Daniel. He missed the prison, but not the fights. He was happy he didn't have to kill anymore." She paused. "He tried to communicate with Sam many times, but there was no way to do it with all the people around. It looks like he only got to do it after you had your baby."
Sam worried.
"The note is not very clear, but the Furlings think Sam somehow half-connected from this side."
"How's that possible?" Cameron asked.
Before Sam could say anything, Vala tried an explanation. "Well, I remember I asked her what was the baby's name and Sam said Daniel and it looks like she thought of him while he was thinking of us and… they connected!" she finished happily.
Sam agreed, "Yes, that has to be it."
"So, does he know about the kid?" Jack asked.
"He did. He said Sam was very happy and he was, too," Vala added, still gleeful. Then, she changed her tone. "After that, he started planning how to escape out of there with other guys. There was a huge fence or hedge around the farm. The guards were always transported by air, but the prisoners had no way to get to the ships. They always left as soon as their cargo was out. Daniel and the others just wanted to jump the fence and get out of there. They planned lots of details, about the guards, their shifts, their weapons, the weather… I don't know. They were very serious."
"We know they didn't make it," Paul said somberly.
"I didn't get to read that far. That must be Teal'c's section."
"Indeed."
"I think we should take a short break," Sam suggested. "We need some more coffee and I need some water."
Walter immediately stood up to take care of the requests.
Jack smiled. "So, Danny-boy is back… Yeah!" he made a gesture of triumph and the others smiled, too. "Wait until he sees we have Atlantis parked right out of San Francisco and that the Program is going to be public very soon."
Sam smiled widely. "We'll have to pull him out of Atlantis. If we're not careful, we'll lose him in there. He'll refuse to come to this side of the world."
"Good! He deserves it. He can choose what he wants to do," Jack said.
"Maybe he wants to get out of here and not see this base again," Paul added.
"I doubt it," Cameron said.
"If we know Daniel well, he'll never leave this, not even after all he went through," Vala said.
"No, he won't," Sam said and they all nodded in agreement.