After a week Sam was more than ready to admit defeat. Hell, she'd been ready after only a few days but had, at the urging of everyone, continued to run her simulations and had even gated to another planet to study a DHD more fully so she could try even more simulations.
She wondered how the colonel had spent the last seven days? For how many days did he make the trek back to the gate? Was he still going, hoping the SGC would make contact? Or had he worked out that going home through the gate wasn't an option? Had he finally figured out that Astarte was interested in him? Had he succumbed to her interest?
When the heat of pain stabbed through her at that thought she realized that as angry and as hurt as she was, she couldn't deny she still had strong feelings for him. After a week of trying everything she could think of to bring him home, there was no getting around the fact that her feelings for him were just as strong as ever. But that didn't mean that she wasn't still feeling betrayed over his dalliance with Laira or hurt over the things he'd said to her during his undercover mission, but she was finally ready to admit that she could feel the betrayal, the hurt, and the affection – for that all she was willing to cop to at the moment – at the same time.
Her feelings were complicated and tangled up inside her. The trust she'd had in him she'd thought was absolute had turned out to be fairly easily shaken when he'd lied to her about the mission. Intellectually she knew he couldn't tell her – wasn't supposed to tell her – but it didn't stop the feeling that he should have. They were a team, after all, and she'd elevated that team in her own heart to a place of superiority. Not to mention he was her commanding officer and a man she thought of as a friend.
And she'd admit the Laira thing hurt not only because he'd turned away from her in the midst of her explaining just how she'd managed to get him home, and not just because it was clear that he'd entered into some kind of relationship with the woman, but because of the speed at which it had happened. She'd always had a bit of a fantasy that she wasn't alone in her feelings for him and to be slapped in the face with the truth had hurt in a way she wasn't prepared for.
Sam shook her head to dispel the line of thought that always seemed to occur when she thought about her commanding officer these days and checked her watch. It was nearly time for the meeting with the General during which she'd have to surrender her search for methods to bring him home. It was time to start considering alternative methods and she wasn't sure how, exactly, that was going to go over.
She collected the sheaf of papers that was her data and made her way to the briefing room. Daniel and Teal'c were already there, sitting in their usual spots. She looked at her chair and found that the colonel's was conspicuous in its emptiness. It made her gut clench that she'd failed so spectacularly.
"You don't look like you had a eureka moment," Daniel commented as she took her seat.
"I didn't."
"You look as if you have not had enough sleep, Major Carter," Teal'c said.
It took everything she had not to snap at the man who truly didn't deserve it. He wasn't being unkind. If anything it was his way of showing concern. "I'm fine, Teal'c."
"Perhaps you would enjoy a cup of coffee," he said and got up to make her one before she could even respond.
She smiled at that. "Thanks."
Teal'c made her cup of coffee and was sliding it across the table to her when the General walked into the room. Sam made to stand but he waved her back down and she sank into the chair gratefully. Okay, maybe she was a little tired.
"Tell us what you've found, Major."
She took a deep breath. "It's impossible to know if the gate, the DHD or both are damaged, but I would say there's a high probability that the DHD is or the colonel would have tried to dial home."
"Unless the gate was fused?" General Hammond asked for clarification.
"That's right. But we can't know the state of the gate or the DHD without putting eyes on them. And since gating to the planet isn't an option – which leads me to believe that the gate really must be fused – the only way to assess the situation would be to travel to the planet by ship."
"But we don't really care about the gate, do we?" Daniel asked.
"No, we don't," Sam agreed. She squared her shoulders and looked at the General. "I think it's time we start researching alternative methods of getting Colonel O'Neill home," Sam said.
"Alternative methods? What did you have in mind, Major?" General Hammond wanted to know.
"We're going to have to retrieve him by ship."
"We don't exactly have one of those lying around," Daniel pointed out.
"We'll have to ask for help from one of our allies."
"The Asgard?" Daniel suggested, no doubt because that would be the quickest method. Not to mention, "Jack did just help them retrieve a bunch of their stolen technology. Maybe they're feeling a reciprocal generosity."
"Our relationship with the Asgard is shaky at best, currently," General Hammond pointed out. "Colonel O'Neill went a long way towards mending fences, but there's no guarantee they'd be feeling particularly helpful at the moment. Furthermore, they're fighting their own war. I can't imagine they'd be willing to take time out from defending their galaxy to play taxi."
"I was actually thinking that we should ask the Tok'ra," Sam suggested. "After the rescue mission we pulled off earlier this year maybe they're the ones who will be feeling generous."
"Generous is not a word I would use to describe the Tok'ra," Daniel said. "Besides, we were rescuing your father."
"And Selmak," Sam reminded him.
"How long would the trip take in the Tel'tak?" Daniel asked.
"I'm not sure. I'd have to calculate it."
"I'm surprised you haven't done that already, Major," the General said, not without a note a humor in his voice.
"It depends on the specific Tel'tak," she said and could feel herself blushing because she would have, for sure, calculated how long it would take to get to Colonel O'Neill if she'd been able to. "The Tok'ra don't always have access to ships in the best working order."
"Well, that's neither here nor there until we know whether or not the Tok'ra are willing to help," General Hammond pointed out.
"Permission to contact the Tok'ra, sir?" Sam asked.
"Yes, Major. And I think we should do that now."
Sam felt both relieved that the General was so willing to take this step and nervous that the Tok'ra would say no. But she'd have a while to quell those butterflies as once they made contact it would take time, maybe hours, maybe days, for the Tok'ra to reply.
In the control room, the slight conversation stopped with the General walked in with SG-1 in tow. "Walter," General Hammond said, "dial up the Tok'ra. We've got a request."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Jack huddled in the corner of his cell. He'd lost track of the days already but he knew there had been memories. More than one. He almost wished he could go back to that memory of Scotty's death as it would have been a hell of a lot easier than the memories he'd been living through. He'd relived many of his worst memories already, moments when he'd tortured himself over decisions made – like when his command decisions resulted in loss of life, or when, during war time, he'd had to choose between the lives of two children, who to save – or lived through horrific things – like the parachuting accident that was more psychologically damaging than physically, or the time he'd watched a woman and her baby be gunned down by overzealous friendly fire in a war torn country. He'd hallucinated brand new hells he hadn't yet had to endure where the people he cared about were tortured before his very eyes and there was nothing he could do about it.
He waited for the newest assault, his brain clawing its way through the Blood as he learned to resist the effects that pulled him under. He could fight it, yes, but he'd yet to beat it. He tried to stand, but he was as weak as a newborn foal and just as wobbly. He settled for traversing the cell on his hands and knees. In the other corner was a bit of a bed and he wanted to be lying down when the next one hit, it made the coming out of it easier if he didn't have to hold himself up.
He collapsed onto the bed and his stomach roiled. Memories ago he'd stuck his fingers down his throat after the Blood had been forced on him, but it didn't seem to matter that he'd thrown up the drug – it was too fast acting. It didn't seem to matter what he tried, eventually the drug would take him over.
It always started the same. First came the feeling of ants under his skin. Resisting the urge to scratch was difficult as his fingers fought for the privilege. He could feel his skin crawling and it made him gnash his teeth.
Then came the ache of his muscles like he'd been slammed into the ground repeatedly, and he wondered if what happened to him in the memories had physical manifestations, but there was that one memory where he'd hit the ground over and over again as he was hauled up and punched then dropped and kicked in the ribs. It had hurt when it was happening. Unlike the memory of Scotty's death, he hadn't gotten to enjoy that particular feature from the sidelines.
Soon, he could feel the edges of his mind start to blur. His eyes slipped closed. There was a bang. And when he opened them, he was standing in the hallway in his parents' house in Chicago. The one he'd grown up in. The one that Scotty had died in front of. He reached out to touch the textured wallpaper, no longer surprised by how real everything felt. He felt tall, but he noticed his hands were younger, so not a bystander in this one, either. He touched his chest, it felt hard and unmuscled. He was a teenager.
He took a cautious step down the hall. He had no idea whether he was in a memory or a hallucination, but he did remember one horrific event that took place upstairs in his parents' house when he was fifteen. He hadn't been home at the time, so if this was that then it was as much hallucination as memory.
From the landing of the staircase he called down the stairs, "Mom?", his teenage voice cracking. But there was no answer and no sounds coming from below. He turned towards the one closed door in the hallway and took a step in that direction. It took everything he had to take that step and the next one and the next one. It felt like someone had their hands on his shoulders and was pushing him backwards. And he wanted to relent, he really did. But there was a compulsion, too, to open that closed door and to see what was behind it.
Jack knew whatever he would see would be an amalgamation of what he'd always thought and what he'd seen as an adult. He reached the door and squared himself in front of it. He took a few deep breaths and tried to prepare for what was behind the door. His mother had never really talked about it, but in his mind he'd always seen the scene one way. He wondered if his imagination would match the hallucination or if the drugs would just make it worse.
While he tried to work up the courage to reach for the door handle he thought it was strange that he knew, even as he was in the dream or hallucination what it was, and yet, he still reacted to what was happening, he couldn't not feel the emotions or the physical pain and he hated his brain for playing such games with him.
He made himself focus on this moment, tried to steel himself for whatever he was about to see. The whorls in the wood of the door caught his attention and he studied them for long moments which helped put off the inevitable. His hands felt asleep, with pins and needles, so he shook them and then he reached for the handle and turned.
He didn't see it at first, in fact, it wasn't until he could see the reflection in the mirror that he knew, for sure, what day it was. Bile rose up in the back of his throat when all he could yet see was a splatter of red up the flowered wallpaper. He tried to pull himself together, he may be in his fifteen year old body, but in his life he'd seen worse than this. He'd done worse than this.
Jack pushed the door open the rest of the way. He could see a booted foot on the floor turned at an angle that suggested complete relaxation. Even though he knew, he still asked the question. "Dad?"
No response.
He stepped around the door, his eyes closed, not yet prepared to see it in its entirety. He breathed in through his mouth and gagged on the taste of pennies. How had his mother had done this all those years ago? How she'd not lost it completely. Jack bit his lip then slowly opened his eyes.
What he saw was straight out of his teenage imagination and lacked the more salient details experience had taught him. There was blood and brain splattered against the walls, his father's body slumped over and the shotgun leaning against his chest. In ways, it was worse than it would have been, in others far worse than reality would have allowed. Teenage Jack breathed shallowly through his mouth and tried to avoid vomiting despite the overwhelming taste of death in his mouth.
The onslaught of emotion was instantaneous and as real as the day he'd come home to find the coroner's van backed up to his front door. He remembered it the way it really happened as he stood there trying not to look too hard. He remembered slipping past the truck into the house and thundering up the stairs when he caught sight of his mother's dress on the landing. He remembered her sobbing and he remembered how he pulled her into his inadequate arms. He remembered how the body was carried out on a stretcher with a white sheet over it, the white sheet already soaking up the red. He remembered the precarious angle of the body as the coroner and his assistant walked down the stairs.
And even though he could remember the way it really happened, this way, with Jack finding his father, felt as real as that ever had, surreal as its very nature.
He choked back a sob and turned his back on the sight. It might have been a memory, it might have been a body, but it was his father. And no amount of years distance could prepare him for the reality of seeing it. It didn't seem to matter that it wasn't real at all. His brain couldn't differentiate between fact and fiction, between real and make-believe. He felt every inch Colonel O'Neill and yet also felt young and unseasoned as he dealt with the reality of his father's choice to take his own life in such a gruesome way. In such a way that his family would have to deal with it.
Not coincidentally, they'd moved soon after the actual event, Jack and his mother, because she refused to use that bathroom and it was the only one in the house. They stayed at first with his grandmother and then moved into a small apartment in the city.
Still rooted to the spot Jack felt everything as strongly as he had as a kid, the sadness, the anger. From the hallucination he felt the nausea and the instant sort of grief that was sharp and unwieldy. He must have stood there, eyes closed and, to his surprise, leaking tears for long moments, so long that the Blood of Sokar began to release its hold on him.
The first thing Jack noticed was the lack of pennies in air. The next thing he noticed was the feeling of his bed underneath him even though he could still see the scene in front of him like it was burned on the backs of his eyelids. Slowly, the visual faded away, but the feelings didn't. Jack lay on his little bed and curled up into a ball against the assailment of the emotions – both old and real and new to the hallucination.
He remembered how much he loved his father and how shocking it had been when he'd committed suicide. As far as Jack knew his mother had never known why it had happened either. That made it worse in so many ways, because they never knew if there was something they could have done to prevent it. He remembered how his mother was never the same after that, how the warm and loving woman he'd grown up with had turned cold and bitter even to her only son. The emotions were strong and life-long and now so very close to the surface that he felt them all with a cutting clarity that downed him.
Still his mind muddled through the cotton batting that was the Blood of Sokar, hovering between real and safe and make-believe and in danger, between old memories and new. He was as stuck in that bathroom as he was on his bed. It made him feel weak and helpless which was almost worse than the grief. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and hoped that this was as bad as it was going to get. He doubted it, though.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Sam was shocked when the Tok'ra dialed Earth the very same day. She knew it was a possibility, but Earth was never very high on their priority list. As Sam watched the event horizon for incoming travelers, she wondered who the Tok'ra would send to speak on their behalf.
She wondered if it might be Martouf and she hoped it wouldn't be. The man's obvious interest in her made her uncomfortable, especially in the wake of her feelings for Colonel O'Neill. Because of her history with Jolinar, when she was with Martouf, feelings for another man felt like a betrayal and she just couldn't handle that particular can of worms at the moment.
She was relieved when two strangers stepped through the gate. "General Hammond," came the low, symbiote's voice from one of the men as his eyes scanned the room and settled on the General as the apparent leader, "I am Ushad and this is Amah. You have requested the assistance of the Tok'ra?"
General Hammond stepped forward to greet the men at the base of the ramp. "I have. I think this is something better discussed in the briefing room." The General led Ushad, Amah, Sam, Daniel and Teal'c into the briefing room and waited until the guests were seated to seat himself.
"I'll get right to it, gentleman," the General started, palms pressed flat onto the table, a serious look in his eye. "One of our men, whom you might be familiar with, Colonel O'Neill, has been stranded off world and he is not retrievable by gate."
Ushad and Amah exchanged glances. "And you wish us to mount a rescue mission?"
"Well..." Sam jumped in, "yes."
"Is he in any danger?" Ushad asked.
Sam looked to the General to answer that question. "Not that we are aware of," the General admitted grudgingly.
Amah answered. "You must understand that the Tok'ra are undertaking missions of our own, that we have undercover operatives that require our ability to provide immediate support. We cannot risk their lives simply to retrieve someone whose life isn't threatened."
"You would have said yes if his life was in peril?" Daniel asked as diplomatically as his nearly aghast tone would allow.
"Not necessarily," Ushad answered.
With a new edge to his voice, Daniel asked, "Then why bother asking?" Sam had to admit she was wondering the same thing.
"Doctor Jackson," the General warned and Daniel sat back in his seat with a frown.
"On which planet is he stranded?" Amah asked.
Anticipating this question, Sam had prepared a document with the gate address as well as the planet's coordinates. She slid the paper across the table to the Tok'ra.
"There is a stargate on this planet." Ushad said.
"It's inoperable following a storm. We assume both the DHD and the gate were hit by lightning as we can't dial in and the Colonel apparently can't dial out," Sam answered.
Amah peered at the paper closely, "I am not familiar with this planet's gate address but it appears to be in an area once controlled by Sokar."
"Yes," Daniel said. "We found evidence of his involvement with the planet in their temples. But it appeared he hadn't been to the planet for at least a generation before his death."
"Sokar left a lasting impression on his worlds," Ushad said.
Sam wondered about that. A lasting impression. "What does that mean?"
"It does not necessarily mean anything, Major Carter," Amah said. "But there is a possibility that the people of this planet are Sokar's followers rather than slaves who are relieved to be free from his tyranny."
"The people on the planet were perfectly nice," Daniel said.
"And there did not appear to be any cause for concern," Teal'c agreed.
"For Colonel O'Neill's sake, I hope that is true," Amah said.
"You think, because the planet was once Sokar's, that Colonel O'Neill is in danger?" General Hammond asked.
"I believe it is possible that not all is as it appeared while you were visiting the planet," Amah answered.
Sam's stomach flipped over inside her. They'd all been operating under the assumption that the Colonel was safe. "So now that you know where he is, will you help?"
"As I mentioned before, we are already overextended by our current operations. At this time, we cannot spare a ship to retrieve Colonel O'Neill." Amah said.
"But you just said-"
Ushad cut her off. "We are not unsympathetic."
"You just can't help us."
"Perhaps in the future we will be able to help you undertake a rescue mission."
General Hammond nodded. "We would appreciate the assistance."
Sam shot the General a look. Was he giving up? Just like that. Not that she really thought talking to the Tokr'a anymore than they already had would yield them a different result. If anything it would probably only upset her more as she listened to them say the Colonel may be in danger but that they wouldn't help until maybe some unspecified time in the future.
"We must return to the homeworld."
"My father..." Sam said. "Will you tell him you were here?"
"We will," Ushad agreed.
General Hammond nodded and pushed himself out of his chair wearily. He led the Tok'ra to the control room while SG-1 stayed seated in the briefing room. Once they were alone Daniel looked at Teal'c first then at Sam. "It's a good thing Jack wasn't a part of that conversation. I think he'd have lost his patience with the Tok'ra."
"You mean again?" Sam asked wryly. "I'm not sure I really expected them to say no." And she really hadn't. As she'd turned it over and over in her mind, she'd smoothed the rougher edges of the Tok'ra and had convinced herself that they'd look at it as one good turn following another. She should have remembered that they were phenomenal at looking after themselves first.
"C'mon, Sam, really?"
"Wishful thinking, I know."
"Well, it wasn't a hard no," Daniel offered. "Maybe sometime in the future."
"We should try the Asgard," Sam said, suddenly sure that was the answer.
"Sam, we talked about this," Daniel said gently and she could tell by the way he was backing her down that she was sounding a little frantic.
"Major Carter," Teal'c started, "it would appear that we are... on our own... at this time."
"There's got to be something we can do," she said, and even she could hear the slight pleading tone in her voice.
"We'll get him home, Sam."
"How?"
"I don't know yet, but you'll figure something out."
And there it was. She'd figure something out. It was always down to her, wasn't it? Didn't they know she didn't have it in her to do this all over again so soon? She was still exhausted from the first time. Not to mention still smarting from the all the emotional fallout she'd had recently. How was she supposed to figure something out when she'd already spent a week coming to the conclusion that the only way to get to that planet was to go by ship. Was she supposed to figure out how to build a damned spaceship?!
"Well, if our only option is a ship, I've got a lot of work ahead of me," she said caustically, pushing back from the table.
"I didn't mean you had to build a-" Daniel was saying but she'd already left the room.