A/N: Holy cow! This is the largest response I've gotten for a story. I WAS going to wait until next week Wednesday to update, but watching the email notifications come in has motivated me to write/edit this story faster! Thank you to those who reviewed and followed.
Warnings: I like cliffhangers. Also, there's some blood and nausea in this chapter. If that bothers you, start scrolling really fast when the two of them reach the cliffside, then stop when you reach the next little 'o-O-o-O-o' thingy. If you don't like blood and injury, well, you might want to skip the next few chapters altogether.
ILR: Yes, I completely agree, but YOU try convincing him to use a crutch! The man simply wouldn't cooperate or listen to reason. I finally got him to accept Carter's help, but that was only after it got so bad he couldn't argue with me anymore. Don't worry though, since I'm the All Powerful Writer, I get to decide what he does in the end. He may have won this battle, but not to worry, he WILL have a crutch in the coming chapters. The two of them are going to need a little more whump first though, something I'm happy to provide.
Onwards!
He was back in basic training. A loud voice shouted in his ear, as buckets of water were dumped over him. He tried to snap awake, but the mental fog was hard to push past.
A stabbing pain in his lower leg woke him the rest of the way. Carter's face hovered over his, yanking on his arm. The tent was soaked, and he realized he was lying in a puddle of water.
"Carter? Wha..."
"You have to come with me!" She yelled.
Carter pulled him to his feet in one smooth motion, also shouldering her soaked pack from the corner of the tent. She yanked his arm up and ducked under it, with a hand around his waist.
All shreds of grogginess aside, he stumbled with her away from their camp.
"Where are we going?" He yelled.
She pointed to a steep wall in front of them. "There's a cave about 15 feet up. We're going to have to climb!"
His knees buckled, and she yanked hard on his belt to keep him upright. "Come on, Colonel! You have to keep moving!"
He got his feet under him again and stumbled on. When they reached the bottom of the cliff face, Carter stopped to let him rest. He leaned heavily against a nearby rock, his leg shooting pain.
Carter suddenly groaned and doubled over, clutching her stomach. Jack's head snapped up, his own pain instantly forgotten.
"Carter?"
"I'm fine, sir. Just…give me a moment."
A minute passed, but she didn't straighten. As Jack looked closely, he saw dark liquid seeping between her fingers. Her BDU pants were already stained with something that wasn't rain water.
"Carter? What's wrong?"
She began to sway on her feet, overcome with a wave of dizziness. Studying her face intently, Jack quickly reached out and grabbed her belt. She steadied herself against a nearby rock. Sam coughed once, and spit on the ground.
"I'm gonna be sick," she choked out.
He didn't have time to react before her shoulders heaved and she vomited on her bare feet.
She stood there with the rain pounding down on her back, as she willed her stomach to settle. She dug her palm into the rock, using the sensation to make the world stop spinning.
"Carter. Talk to me. Are you okay?"
No. She was not okay. In what world was losing the contents of one's stomach a prerequisite for being "okay"?
Sam raised her head to look at him, and tried to string words together into a coherent answer, but found she was unable to complete that simple task.
The ground lurched under her feet, and she automatically corrected to stay upright, except the ground wasn't actually moving.
Her knees buckled suddenly and Jack had to yank on her shirt collar to keep her from falling into the mess she'd made.
He pulled her closer to where he was standing, tilting her chin up so he could see her face. She had her eyes closed, face pale, her body trembling with cold and nausea. He had a feeling she wasn't done being sick yet.
"Sorry sir," She whispered, barely audible over the pounding rain.
"Nothin' to be sorry about Carter, now what the hell happened to you?"
She raised a trembling hand to her face and pushed the dripping hair out of her eyes.
"I-I'm n-not sure," She forced out through the shivers that suddenly wracked her body.
Jackd gently pressed his hand to her stomach. She gritted her teeth and suppressed a sharp cry of pain as she squirmed away from his gentle touch. His palm came away bloody.
"Do you remember what happened?"
She opened her mouth to answer but clamped it shut as another wave of nausea slammed into her.
"Sir…" she groaned through gritted teeth.
"Carter!"
"I have to…"
"…fill me in on what's going on here," Jack finished for her.
She squirmed away from him, clumsy hands batting away his grip.
"Easy there," Jack urged, gripping her tighter, thinking she was about to collapse.
She leaned to the side and got sick again.
He rubbed her back until she was done.
Finally, Carter straightened, her face even paler than before.
"Carter. Did you hit your head?"
He bent to check her pupils.
"I'm fine," She said, willing her voice not to tremble.
She pulled away from Jack, standing on shaky legs.
Sam picked up her heavy pack from the ground, and shouldered it. She was determined to get them to shelter- and he couldn't get there without her help. She had no choice but to carry on, rebelling body aside.
She looked up at the rocks above her. It was going to be a painful climb.
A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she leaned up against the cool rock wall for a moment while she gathered her strength.
"Carter."
She didn't move.
She felt him move over to her, the sound of his gait indicating that he was trying to minimize his injury.
"You need to be sick again before we climb?"
She shook her head weakly.
"Was that a 'no' or a 'I don't know'?"
She looked up at him.
"I'm okay," She said, swallowing hard. She didn't have any other choice.
o-O-o-O-o
He started up first, Carter following along at his side, ready to provide a hand should he slip. They climbed for several minutes, his leg protesting loudly.
Jack couldn't have explained how he knew that Carter was about to pass out. Any sound she may have made was surely lost in the storm. He went from climbing the slippery rock to grabbing onto Carter's jacket in an instant.
She went limp in his grasp immediately, and he was forced to abandon his climb to hold on to her. He was tempted to wrestle her out of the pack to make the climb easier, but he knew the supplies in it were vital if he was going to patch up either of them.
"Carter!" He yelled. She didn't move. He patted her face, trying to get her to open her eyes. Just as he was about to resign himself to carrying her and the pack up the mountain, her eyes flew open.
"Carter, you have to climb," He urged her. He needed both his hands. She nodded, looking like she was about to throw up again. Jack shoved her up in front of him so he could catch her if she fell again.
Who would catch him?
They climbed. Carter faltered two more times, just on the verge of losing consciousness.
Jack was exhausted, hurting, and dizzy. It was the thought of an injured Carter alone that kept him going.
o-O-o-O-o
Jack pushed Carter up the last bit of hillside, onto the flat plateau in front of the cave entrance. Hauling himself up next to her, he found there was just enough room to comfortably stand on the edge before entering. Carter was lying on her stomach, moaning quietly. He rolled her onto her back and drug her into the cave, his splinted leg screaming at him to stop. Exhausted, wet, and breathing heavily, he collapsed beside her. There was no time to rest, however. Carter might be bleeding out while he sat around like a wuss tending his broken leg.
Reaching into his vest, he turned on his emergency lantern, illuminating the small cave.
He rolled Carter over, and she whimpered softly. Her jacket was soaked in blood, and he realized her pants were too. He unbuttoned her torn SG jacket and lifted her undershirt, to reveal a gash starting just below her ribcage, curving to her left around the navel, and extending below her belt.
He reached to undo her pants, but she pushed his hands away with a snarl, dazed and obviously unsure of his intentions.
"It's okay Carter. I need to take a look at your wound," Jack said in his command voice.
"I'm fine," She bit out. "It looks worse than it is..."
"And it looks pretty damn bad, Carter. Move your hands," He said in a gentler tone this time.
He lifted the minimum amount of clothing required- completely saturated in her blood. He removed his tac vest and tossed it into the corner. The wound thankfully didn't extend any further down her abdomen, stopping just below her navel. It bled freely, a dark stain had already started to pool beneath her.
"Damn," Jack muttered under his breath. He reached for the med kit for some gauze, wincing as he jared his leg. He wiped away the blood to reveal the layers of fat and muscle pulling away from the gash, and at the lowest part of the injury, intestines poking through.
"You're definitely not fine," He informed Carter, as he pressed hard on her wound to try and stop the flow of blood. She yelped in pain, but quickly tried to muffle her agony by biting down hard on her lip.
After five minutes, he had used more than half the gauze in the kit. O'Neill limped over to the pack and dug out one of her extra shirts. It was soaking wet, but would have to do, at least until he got the bleeding stopped.
He packed the wound and then put more pressure on it. Carter's chest heaved as she tried not to scream.
"Stay with me. Can you tell me your name?"
She groaned.
"Major… Samantha… Carter… US Air… Force."
"Keep going."
"Service… number… 539-12-76"
"Good. That's good. Can you tell me where we are?"
As soon as he said it, he realized he didn't know where they were. Carter seemed to get it though.
"Off… world," She panted.
"Good. I'm gonna look you over, try to stay with me okay?"
Jack knew Carter would use her dying breath to say 'I'm fine' so he knew he needed to check for other injuries.
He started at her head and felt down her neck and shoulders, gently pressing bones and tissue to check for anything abnormal. Her skin was chilled, pale, and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. A bad combination.
He felt down her sternum, trying to be as respectful as possible. He circled her ribs with both hands and asked her to take a deep breath, checking for any pain or ominous crunching sounds. He skipped touching her abdomen- he'd deal with that in a minute, and quickly checked her lower limbs for tenderness. Finding nothing else immediately wrong with her, he checked the bleeding again. It had not stopped, his pressure dressing barely making a dent. He sighed, knowing what he had to do.
"I'm going to stitch you up," He warned Carter, whose head only rolled to the side in response.
"You…need to…clean the wound," Carter slurred, fading fast.
"I will," Jack assured her, reaching into the med kit for a morphine auto-injector.
Popping off the cap, he pressed it into her thigh until it clicked, then waited a moment for her body to relax into the warmth of the good drugs.
Jack wrestled a pair of too-small blue gloves onto his hands, then grabbed their canteen of clean water. He poured some alcohol from the med kit on his hands, prayed that the morphine would cover his next action, then poured the water over her wound.
Carter's whole body stiffened, and her eyes went wild with pain. A guttural moan escaped her as she arched back in agony. She flailed a hand out, grasping at thin air, before latching onto his forearm. He soothed her as best he could without ruining his clean gloves.
His stomach turned at the sight of her in so much pain- that he caused. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as his stomach twisted uncomfortably. He was never good at this medical stuff. After a minute Carter gasped, "I'd be great if I could pass out,"
Jack cracked a smile.
"Yeah, I was kinda hoping that'd do it," He muttered under his breath.
Slowly, her body relaxed again, the morphine taking over that the pain stimulus lessened.
"I'm ready," she said quietly, her eyes slipping closed.
A/N: I warned you. Remember, reviews help me work faster. :) Thanks for reading!
