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1. Daniel
As soon as the whooping and hollering faded behind them, Daniel’s legs decided they weren’t interested in carrying him anymore and he collapsed into a heap on the forest floor. He couldn’t see that well in the dark clearing (especially since his glasses had gotten lost at some point) but he heard at least one other body slide to the ground, and what sounded like at least one, hopefully two sets of footsteps. His heart was still hammering in his throat hard enough to make him nauseous, and he felt like something was vaguely wrong with his left side but did not feel like examining that feeling right now.
“SG-1, sound off if you’re not dead,” Jack’s voice called out of the dark.
A chorus of moans (Daniel), groans (Sam), and one singular, “I am alive, Colonel O’Neill” made its way through the darkness.
“Sweet. Let me just–” A beam of light shone directly into Daniel’s dark-adapted eyes, making him flinch back and cover his face. “Sorry, sorry.” The flashlight was redirected towards the forest floor. “Carter, status report.”
“Could be a lot better, sir,” Sam said, strangled. “Burned pretty bad, I think. Gonna spend some quality time in medical when we get home.”
Burned. Right. The Greek fire. The locals had shown them jars of goop, the exact recipe supposedly passed down since their ancestors arrived on this planet, that they said burned and clung and stayed aflame even on top of water. To Daniel’s eye it seemed like Greek fire, possibly the original recipe that had been lost centuries ago, and Daniel had been dying to get a sample of it right up until the locals started hurling it at them.
“Let’s focus on getting out of here first,” Jack said. He crouched down beside Sam. Seeing her burned leg, he whistled through his teeth.
“That’s the good news. None of them followed us past the city border, so if our luck holds all that stands between us and home is a long walk. Through the forest. In the dark.” Sam sounded about as thrilled with that prospect as Daniel was.
“One step at a time, Captain,” Jack said, rummaging through the kit. He popped a sublingual morphine tablet out of its blister packaging and placed it in Sam’s hand. She obediently put it under her tongue. “Let’s get your pain under control first. I need you walking.”
Pain, that was right. Now that Jack mentioned it, the wrongness started to resolve itself into a fiery pain throughout Daniel’s left side. Daniel didn’t want to look down to see the damage. He felt lightheaded enough as it was.
Jack straightened up. “Teal’c, status report?”
“I have been burned as well but will heal rapidly, Colonel O’Neill. My Goa’uld symbiote–”
Jack waved him off. “Yeah, yeah, makes you immune to flaming jello or whatever. Daniel?”
Daniel opened his mouth to respond, but a weak “Ow…” was all he managed. His chest felt tight and Jack’s face swam more than a little in front of him.
The beam of light from the flashlight traced down Daniel’s body, thankfully missing his eyes this time. “Oh, hell Daniel,” Jack said, wincing sympathetically. “Carter? I need you over here.”
“Coming, sir!” Sam’s face appeared in his field of view. She produced a set of trauma shears and got to work cutting off the tattered remains of Daniel’s T-shirt to expose the entire burn. She gave a sympathetic wince before going for a roll of what looked to Daniel like fancy medical plastic wrap. “Once I get this covered we need to get moving. He’s going to dehydrate fast with that and we left most of our safe water supply back at the village.”
“Roger. Here, Daniel.” Jack popped two more tablets out of their blister packaging. “Once those kick in, you’re on your feet.”
“Jack, you’re burned too,” Daniel pointed out. There were burns pockmarked across Jack’s chest, leaving scattered holes in his shirt through which already blistering skin was visible. They looked angry and red and painful.
Something passed over Jack’s face that Daniel couldn’t identify. “I’m fine. These are the last two, and you need them more than me if we’re gonna get you home, because I am not carrying you.”
Daniel opened his mouth to argue, but Jack all but shoved the pills into his hand. Daniel put them in his mouth.
“Teal’c, help me get him up.” Jack’s voice sounded far away. Daniel’s head swam as two strong sets of arms hooked under his armpits and pulled him to his feet.
—
Sam was right; they did indeed get to spend some quality time in medical, some more willingly than others. Daniel, for one, was more than happy to be lying down in a soft bed and not being dragged through a forest in the middle of the night. Jack, not so much. He loudly objected to being confined to a cot, to being stuck with an IV, to being asked to sit still so his antibiotic infusion could finish. Every time Dr. Frasier’s back was turned he was up and getting in the way of the medical staff.
Daniel felt like he was watching this happen from a thousand miles away. The world spun unpleasantly and he couldn’t quite sit up without feeling nauseous; painkillers in general had never really agreed with him, and he was torn between wishing the drugs would wear off and not wanting to feel the burn in his side.
Through his drugged haze, Daniel heard a shout. “Jesus, Doc, are you trying to torture me?” Jack hissed.
“Jack,” Dr. Frasier said, gently admonishing. At some point while Daniel was drifting, she’d gotten Jack laying flat on the bed, shirt off, and started dabbing at his burns. “I know it hurts, but if we don’t clean and dress these they will get infected, and I promise you that will hurt a hell of a lot worse. Stop moving!”
Daniel had been almost all the way out of it when Dr. Frasier had cleaned his burns. He had a vague memory of some kind of pain, but, drugged to the gills, he had not cared much. He still didn’t feel like caring much about anything, but even heavy duty painkillers weren’t enough to completely shut down his brain, much as he might like them to.
Idly, Daniel wondered why Jack wasn’t drugged to the gills. Sam had seemed to be, and her burns turned out to be a lot less extensive than Jack’s were. She had been a model patient while her burns were being dressed and was now sleeping on one of the cots, curtains drawn.
It wasn’t like Jack was the type to turn down help for the sake of being macho. He was the self-sacrificing type, so at least giving the last of the pain meds to Daniel made sense. Daniel’s mind drifted back to that forest clearing, to Jack pushing the last two tabs of morphine into his hand. He’d seemed even more antsy than usual. Probably the pain.
Daniel’s mind, as it so often did, caught on one detail. One tablet given to Sam, two to Daniel. There were four tabs of morphine in a med kit; Daniel was almost certain of it. There would have been one more, enough for Jack. It didn’t make sense for the tabs to be dispensed in threes when the blister packs came in squares of four and when there were four people on a gate team.
“Jack?” Daniel said, interrupting him in the middle of complaining to Dr. Frasier.
“Yeah, Danny?” Jack looked over at him, immediately concerned. “You alright?” It was that same look he’d given Daniel a hundred times before, the look that had at first made Daniel bristle but now just made him feel taken care of. It was Jack looking after his people, and Daniel was slowly getting used to being looked after.
Daniel tried to construct the question he was trying to ask. Why didn’t Jack take the fourth tablet? Was there a fourth tablet? Why did he have to be in pain when Daniel and Sam didn’t?
It was hard to figure out what to ask and how to ask it when he felt so unmoored. Unbidden, a vivid memory came to him; a dark supply room, shelves toppled all around him, a gun in his hand, feeling just as out of his mind but this time with withdrawal from the sarcophagus instead of industrial grade painkillers. Jack was crouched in front of him, looking at Daniel like Daniel hadn’t just been trying to kill him, looking at him like he was a person when he couldn’t have felt less like one. “I know what this is,” he’d said. “I know what it's like.”
Maybe Jack understood a little better than Daniel had thought. Maybe there was a reason he’d held the morphine tablets like they were going to jump up and bite him, why he pushed them into Daniel’s hand the moment he could and lied about there not being an extra, why he was the only one Dr. Frasier hadn’t drugged before treating. Jack didn’t talk about his past much and what he did share was invariably traumatic. It made a strange kind of sense that he might have had trouble with substances at some point.
Jack was still watching, uncharacteristically patient. He was always patient with them when they were injured or sick. “Never mind,” Daniel said, closing his eyes. Jack had taken care of the team and gotten them back safe. Anything else was his business.
2. Sam
Sam didn’t consider herself superstitious, and after all the time she’d spent exploring other planets she liked to think she was extremely open-minded when it came to unusual architectural choices. From the System Lords’ ominous overuse of gold leaf to the grey, brutalist stylings of the Tollan, she had seen enough to feel mostly unaffected by most alien structures.
Still, as her eyes traced the black pillars sprouting in precisely-spaced rows among the forest, she couldn’t help but remember what she’d learned of nuclear semiotics, the messages intended to warn people away from nuclear waste disposal sites. This place is not a place of honor, these pillars seemed to say. Anyone would be unsettled.
“Fascinating! The pillars had to have been built when these trees were still small.”
Well, almost anyone. Daniel, from somewhere off to her right, continued, “Look how the roots are growing around the base here! But they don’t even look dusty. You’d expect something to at least scratch them if they’ve been here long enough for a tree of this size to grow in. No birds on this planet, so the lack of excrement makes sense at least. Unless they’re new and something caused unusually rapid tree growth?”
No birds. He was right. The unnatural silence of the forest certainly wasn’t helping to ease her apprehension. Normally Sam would have been next to Daniel with her own equipment, but at the moment she felt very reluctant to take her hands off of her gun. “I don’t know, Daniel. This place gives me the creeps.”
“Amen to that,” said Colonel O’Neill from over her right shoulder. Sam was happy to have him defending her flank just now. Even though they hadn’t come into contact with a single other lifeform since arriving on this planet, it felt like any second something would jump out from behind one of those glossy, strangely pristine black pillars and attack.
Daniel, predictably, was not paying attention to anything but the archeological find at hand. Undaunted, he circled the pillar, speaking his observations on the pillars aloud into his camcorder. Sam glanced over and caught a glimpse of Teal’c standing at his back, plainly keeping watch over their archeologist. Good.
Then, Daniel reached out to run a finger down the mirror-polished surface of a pillar and several things seemed to happen at once. Sam heard a whistling sound and felt movement in the air as something flew past her cheek, barely missing her left ear. She heard the Colonel bark, “Get down!” and felt his not inconsiderable weight collide with her front, knocking the wind out of her as he tackled her to the ground just in time for a volley of black darts to streak through the air overhead.
One second ticked by. Then two. Nothing. No battle cries of approaching combatants, no more darts in the air. Still no birdsong. Jack started to lift his head.
“Wait, sir!” Sam said, and he dropped back down into an awkward approximation of a plank over her. She felt his breath brush against her cheek.
“Take your time, Carter,” he said, voice strained. “This is perfectly comfortable. Don’t mind me.”
Ignoring him, Sam reached out and grasped one of the branches that littered the ground, then carefully extended it upwards, over Jack’s shoulder. As soon as the tip of the branch reached about three feet off the ground another volley of darts whistled through the air, knocking it out of her hand.
The radio crackled to life. “Jack? Sam?” Daniel’s voice.
Reaching around to her hip, Jack hit the button on Sam’s radio. “We’re here, Daniel,” said Jack. “Kind of pinned down at the moment. Where are you and T?”
“We’re clear, Teal’c pulled me past the edge and the darts stopped as soon as I was over the boundary. We think this is some kind of trap, and I can only guess it was supposed to protect the temple at the center. I think I can get it to turn off, I just need to figure out the set of runes we found by the gate. It, uh, it might take a bit.”
“Take your time, Daniel, it’s not like Sam and me are trapped in a death forest or anything,” Jack said, tone more than a little sarcastic. “You just had to touch the damn thing, didn’t you?”
“At least we know what those pillars are for now!” Daniel did not sound particularly concerned about their situation, which was about what Sam would have expected. Not a master of empathy, their Daniel.
“Just figure it out.” Jack clicked the radio off and let out a groan. “Carter, is it safe for me to get off you?”
“As long as you stay low, I think so, sir,” Sam answered. “It seems to trigger for things higher than about three feet.”
“Got it.” Slowly, Jack rolled into a kneeling position, making sure to stay no higher than a low crouch. Once he was up, Sam worked her way into a crouch of her own. She took a mental inventory of the situation; they still had their weapons, and the forest around them seemed just as empty and just as oddly silent as it had been before. No rustle in the underbrush, no sign that the excitement had alerted anyone or anything else to their presence.
Only then did she look over at Jack and see a few inches of black dart protruding from just above his right clavicle. “Sir!”
“Flesh wound, Carter,” Jack said. His fingers ghosted over the shaft and he winced.
Sam fumbled for the first aid kit on her belt. “Sit down, sir,” she said, and was surprised when he complied. It must have hurt badly. Before touching the dart, Sam popped a sublingual morphine out of its blister pack and held it out to him.
“No thanks. It’s not that bad,” Jack said, pushing her hand away.
Sam looked at him, disbelieving. His face was pale (hopefully because of the shock rather than blood loss). The dart’s shaft was at least a centimeter in diameter and it had to be at least a few inches deep in his chest. The darts she could see on the ground around them were tipped with wicked-looking barbs, and she could only imagine how it tore with every movement. “Sir?”
Jack set his jaw. “Carter, we’re in the middle of a spooky-ass forest, and it seems like this spot isn’t as ancient and abandoned as we thought. Who exactly do you think is going to watch your back while we wait for Danny and Teal’c to turn these damn things off?”
He had a point. Sam didn’t love the idea of being the only alert pair of eyes in this place. Still, she gestured again towards his chest. “Are you going to be able to hold still while I bolster that?” she asked. “I don’t want you twitching at the wrong moment and damaging something vital. Sir.”
Jack nodded, gritting his teeth. “Just do it, Carter.”
Sam pulled the roll of gauze out of the first aid kit and, using one hand to stabilize the dart, started wrapping it in a bulky dressing to keep the dart in place until it could be safely removed. To Jack’s credit, he kept still as a statue; not even swearing when, while tearing the tape, her hand slipped and jostled the dart. His hand was on his gun the whole time. “Not the prettiest, but it’ll hold,” she said, sitting back on her heels.
The radio crackled to life again. “Okay, I think I’ve got it. No– wait– yeah, I’ve definitely got it. You should be good.”
This time, it was Sam who picked up the radio. “Good, because we’re going back to the gate. Now.”
–
An hour or so later Daniel was dialing the address for Earth. Jack had made the last stretch of the hike leaning on Teal’c, but he stepped through the gate on his own. He even insisted on walking down the ramp unassisted until Janet caught up with him and coerced him onto a stretcher.
“Whatever that is has to be sitting right up against your subclavian artery. You’re incredibly lucky it hasn’t been punctured already, and if it does we might not have enough blood on base to keep you alive, so lie still!” Janet ordered.
“I’m fine. Just tell your people to take it easy around the corners," Jack grumbled. Janet gave him a hard look and he immediately aborted his attempt at sitting up. Jack might have been stubborn, but he was not a fool.
“I will sedate you if you give me too much trouble. Don’t try me,” Janet said sternly. Jack rolled his eyes.
The sounds of Jack and Janet arguing faded into the background, almost pleasant in their familiarity. Sam updated Hammond and agreed to a debrief in an hour. Daniel and Teal’c peeled off, Daniel to his lab to immediately start translating the runes he’d been able to catch on video (and probably to complain that Sam hadn’t let him look through the temple before leaving) and Teal’c to get cleaned up.
Sam herself caught up with Janet and Jack in the med bay. Janet was already carefully cutting away the bandages Sam had wrapped around the dart, pointedly ignoring his many complaints and dramatic winces as she went.
Or maybe not so dramatic. Sam’s fond smile melted off her face as she suddenly realized that Jack had never gotten any pain medication at all. Janet wouldn’t have given him any since she would have rightly assumed that he had been dosed in the field. No matter how gentle Janet was being, his chest had to hurt like absolute hell.
It had to have hurt like hell for a while now. A wave of guilt rushed through Sam as she thought about Jack trudging through that forest for more than an hour in agony, all because Sam hadn’t thought to offer pain meds again on the way back, not even when Teal’c was back with them and it had become abundantly clear that they were very much alone on that planet.
Of course Jack wouldn’t say anything because that would have been a little too close to admitting weakness, and she hadn’t thought to say anything in the gate room, so now he was enduring a painful examination without even a milligram of morphine on board. What kind of team member am I?
Well, she could make up for it now. “Colonel O’Neill didn’t get pain meds in the field, so he needs some,” she said with an apologetic look at Jack. Feeling the need to defend herself, she continued, “Our initial position wasn’t defensible so he declined, but I should have offered again. I’m sorry, sir. That was my mistake.”
To Sam’s surprise, Janet didn’t immediately jump up to get pain meds. Instead, a look passed between her and Jack that Sam couldn’t quite parse. After all their time in the field Sam was usually an expert in Jack’s looks; now, she almost felt left out.
“Did he get antibiotics?” Janet asked.
“No,” Sam confirmed.
Janet turned to the closest nurse, a man who had to be at least a full foot taller than her. “Get me two 16 gauge IV’s and start a liter of normal saline and two grams of Ancef.” The nurse nodded and started preparing the equipment, and Janet went back to her careful manipulation of the dart.
Maybe Janet had misheard her, or misunderstood. “He really should get pain meds–“ Sam started again.
Janet cut her off. “Thank you, Sam, I’ve got it.” Her tone made it clear that there would be no further argument.
“I’m alright, Carter,” Jack said, with a smile that was more than a little strained. Sam looked over the dart penetrating his shoulder, the surrounding skin red and angry but not yet bleeding again. He was trying to act tough, but the pallor of his face and the fact that he was actually laying still without being scolded gave him away. “You just go on and debrief with the general, make sure Daniel talks about something other than the damn runes. I’ll catch up.”
After one more hard look at Jack, Sam reluctantly turned and made her way out of the med bay. Janet was on top of it, she told herself. She would make sure Jack was taken care of, even if he insisted on being stubborn.
3. Teal’c
The first thought Teal’c had when he saw the orb sprout spikes and skewer his friend through the chest, pinning to the base wall as though he were one of Daniel Jackson’s artifacts, was that it should have been him instead. Teal’c had the benefit of a symbiote to aid his body with healing and fighting off infection, Colonel O’Neill did not. Teal’c was a trained Jaffa warrior with decades of exposure to various alien weaponry, Colonel O’Neill was not.
Most of all, he had to admit, Teal’c just hated to see his friend in pain.
After a lot of back and forth and what seemed to Teal’c like aimless running about, one of the techs had finally managed to set up a ladder at the correct height for Colonel O’Neill to sit on. Taking his weight off of the spear seemed to ease the pain only slightly. His breath came in shallow gasps and his skin was pale with a sheen of sweat. There was nothing Teal’c could do but stand beside him, so there he stayed. As he often did, he would have to trust Captain Carter and Daniel Jackson and Doctor Frasier to find them a solution.
Various staff bustled in and out of the room, giving updates or checking vitals. Teal’c had long ago lost track of whether they were medical staff or airmen. Their corner of the gate room had been rigged into a makeshift med bay with wires attached to Colonel O’Neill’s chest and finger and a bag of fluids dripping through a tube into his arm. Doctor Frasier had come through with antibiotics at intervals, had given him calm and businesslike updates on the situation on the base and, at his request, the others who had been infected.
The waiting was agonizing. While there had been plenty of times where there was nothing for Teal’c to do but wait, depending on his team to find a solution, he’d never had to do so while watching his greatest friend slowly dying. Teal’c had seen too much death to pretend not to know it when he saw it, and while he still had hope that his team would somehow save the day, the fact remained that Colonel O’Neill was dying.
As time wore on, Colonel O’Neill’s already shallow breathing became shallower still, his pulse thready and weak when Teal’c rested a hand on his wrist. His eyes were open less often and for shorter stretches, and he didn’t seem to have the energy to speak much at all, let alone make his typical wisecracks. It should have been me.
“Teal’c, would you give us a moment?” Doctor Janet Frasier was a petite woman, but she carried herself with as much authority as any Jaffa warrior. Still, Colonel O’Neill was his commander, and Teal’c did not step aside until Colonel O’Neill met his eye and gave him a nod.
“I will be within reach if you have need of me, Colonel O’Neill.” Teal’c took up a position by the entrance to the gate room.
Doctor Frasier stood on a stepstool beside the ladder. She spoke in a soft, low voice, but in the uncharacteristic quiet of the gate room Teal’c could still easily make out her words. “Jack, I need to be frank with you.”
“I would appreciate it, doctor.” Colonel O’Neill’s voice was barely audible and it shook as his body was wracked by chills. Teal’c ached to return to him, but maintained his position at the door.
The doctor’s tone was businesslike, but her hand came to rest on the Colonel’s knee in a familiar, almost familial way. One could see stretching between them years of a closer bond than most doctors and patients ever had, built as much during endless banal pre- and post-mission physicals as from the many times she had saved his life. “Jack, your vitals don’t look good. We are doing everything we can to support you, but I am worried that you may not survive this. I know you normally don’t accept pain medications, but if there ever was a time for them, this is it.”
“No.” Colonel O’Neill’s voice was louder than it had been in hours, loud enough that at least two airmen turned to look.
Doctor Frasier nodded, her hand not leaving his knee. “I hear you, and I won’t give you any medications that you don’t consent to, but I need you to understand that your situation does not look good. It is very likely that you will die. No one would fault you for wanting to be comfortable.”
Colonel O’Neill nodded slightly. He didn’t seem to have the strength to turn his head to look at her. “I understand. If I’m going to die, I’ll do it on my terms. I’m not going there again.”
Doctor Frasier squeezed his knee once, then let her hand drop. “Understood.”
As she walked away, Teal’c approached his friend once more. Unlike Doctor Frasier, he didn’t understand, but also unlike Doctor Frasier, he didn’t need to. He offered a hand, and after a moment’s hesitation Jack gripped it tight. He said no more for some time.
4. Jack
He told Sarah it was food poisoning. He could almost convince himself she actually believed him, the same way he could almost convince himself his CO believed he’d failed his random drug tests last month and the month before because he just really liked poppyseed bagels.
The first time, back in Vietnam when Nixon said he needed a clean drug test to get home, he really had convinced himself that he was puking his guts out and sweating in the infirmary because of bad rations. It definitely wasn’t because he had to cut himself off the china white to pass the drug test. He didn’t have that kind of problem. Some guys might, but it was just something he was using to pass the time.
The doctor at the VA back home had agreed with him, had even given him some pain pills to help with an old bullet wound in his thigh that still hurt from time to time. The doc gave him refills too, and even though his leg really wasn’t so bad anymore they helped with the transition back to civilian life.
When his prescription that was meant to last a month was gone in a week, he started to suspect that he might have some kind of problem. If only knowing there was a problem was enough to fix it. Fix him.
A gentle voice through the bathroom door. Sarah. “Jack? Are you okay in there?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice little more than a croak, his throat raw from vomiting. “Stay out there. I don’t want you catching what I’ve got.” She hesitated in front of the door, but eventually he heard footsteps retreating down the hall and the sound of their bedroom door swinging shut.
He slumped to the bathroom floor, shaking and sweating, every muscle and joint screaming, his heart feeling like it was beating out of his chest. He knew all the symptoms to expect. He knew this wouldn’t kill him; just make him wish he was dead.
He’d been through this before; once in Vietnam, once when through a spate of bad luck he hadn’t been able to get anything for a while, at least another two times like this; shaking and sweating on the floors of different but ultimately very similar bathrooms and swearing to every higher power he could think of that he’d never use again if he could just get through this withdrawal.
Jack rested his forehead on his knees, breathing through another wave of nausea. One shot. His CO had given him one more shot for a clean drug test or he’d be out, and that was not an option. He had to do this. This had to be the last time.
—
“Get the hell away from me with that, Carter!” Jack barked loudly enough that it echoed off the stone walls of the cave where they’d taken shelter. Sam froze, still holding the syringe she’d taken out of the first aid kit. “That’s an order, goddamnit.”
“But sir,” she said, glancing uncertainly at his leg. “That has got to be incredibly painful.”
Jack felt Teal’c’s hand on his back, helping to ease him into a more comfortable sitting position. He leaned back with a grateful groan, then chanced a look down at his leg and immediately regretted it; his BDUs were more red than green and he saw the unmistakable white gleam of bone through a tear in the fabric. His vision swam slightly and he turned his gaze back towards the grey rock ceiling. “It’s not so bad,” he lied.
“I can see your femur,” Daniel commented helpfully.
“Yes, thank you Daniel, I’m aware.” Jack let his eyes fall shut and breathed through another wave of pain. It was that bone deep, throbbing ache that turned his stomach and made him woozy. He willed himself to stay conscious, in no small part because he had the distinct feeling that Sam would go ahead and give him the morphine anyway if he passed out. Teal’c squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll take a Tylenol if you have any.”
“I don’t understand why you won’t let me give you the morphine. We’re just waiting on med evac. We’re in a defensible location and Teal’c and I can watch your back. Just let us help you.” He was surprised to hear that she sounded genuinely upset, almost choked up. Maybe he shouldn’t have been; Sam cared about her team and they loved her for it. And god, he was hurting. Even after all this time a part of him wanted to give in and let her give him the morphine, let the pain wash away on a warm tide while he waited for evac. It sounded easy, too easy. And that was exactly the problem.
After twenty years of practice, shutting down that train of thought was a lot easier than it had been the first hundred times. Not again.
Jack sighed heavily. “Sit down, Carter.”
“Sir–“
“I can make that an order if you want.” After a long moment, she reluctantly sat down on the damp floor, still holding that damn first aid kit like a security blanket. Without her hovering over him, he could let his muscles unclench a bit. He leaned against Teal’c’s shoulder with a sigh, and Teal’c wrapped an arm around his shoulders to better support him, bearing his weight without moving an inch. God, it was good to have a friend who was built like a brick shithouse. “The answer is no. I’m fine.”
“Even when there was a spear through your chest for many hours, you would not accept medication to treat your pain,” Teal’c observed, tone neutral, and try as he might, Jack couldn’t detect any judgement or disapproval, only observation. Acceptance. “Even on the brink of death.”
“You didn’t?” Sam said. Her voice was oddly small. Sometimes Jack forgot how young she was. She’d seen more than her fair share of combat, sure, and visited countless alien worlds and taken down a Goa’uld mothership with him, but she was still just so young. How old had she been when he’d shipped out for Vietnam? Three years old? Four?
He sighed. “I didn’t want to have to talk about this with you.”
“Talk about what, sir?” Her eyes searched his face with no sign of understanding.
Jack turned his gaze to Daniel. “Daniel, you remember the sarcophagus?”
Daniel nodded, shifting uncomfortably. Good, Jack thought, that made two of them, because he personally would rather curl up and die than broach this topic. “You remember how I said I knew what your withdrawal felt like?”
“I do,” Daniel said carefully.
“Well, I wasn’t blowing smoke up your ass. I’ve had withdrawals before and they pretty much suck.” He heaved a big breath, reached for the last scrap of his courage, and continued. “My first deployment was to Vietnam. Things were cheap.” Sensing his team’s lack of comprehension, he clarified, “To be perfectly clear, heroin was cheap. A doc at the VA once told me that one in five guys was addicted during their deployment and that about tracks.”
His eyes were open but he kept them fixed on the cave wall. If he didn’t look at his team he wouldn’t have to see the judgement on their faces. He was supposed to be someone they could trust; he had spent the last two decades making himself into that person. He didn’t want them to see who he was back then.
“Most guys got off it when they got back. I didn’t. Not right away.” He didn’t say that it hadn’t always been heroin; it had been the pills he’d gotten from the VA doctor, then sometimes from friends, or from less reputable sources. And yes, sometimes it had been heroin. “It took a good three years after I got back to get clean for the last time. I went through detox on my own at least four times and that wasn’t enough to stop me from getting hooked again whenever I got my hands on something. I can’t have it just once. Something in me likes it too much. So, no. I’d rather be in pain, thanks.”
In the silence that followed, Jack could only hear the sound of his own heavy breathing and water dripping down the cave wall. Teal’c squeezed his shoulder and he was grateful for the contact, though he had no idea if Teal’c understood even a fraction of the gravity of what he’d just confessed. For all he knew, maybe they had no recreational drugs on Chulak, or maybe nobody there was dumb enough to get hooked. No, he reminded himself, that isn’t fair. Just because he was an idiot didn’t mean all folks were; he’d seen too many good people get pulled in by various addictions to buy into the idea that it was always a moral failing.
He was pulled out of his thoughts by Carter fussing around with the first aid kit, pulling out another syringe. He sat fully upright, the sudden movement sending a jolt of agony through his leg intense enough to make him see stars and consider, just briefly, passing out. “For crying out loud, Carter–”
“It’s Ancef,” she cut him off, then, correctly interpreting his uncomprehending look, she clarified, “Antibiotic, sir. Janet would take away my first aid cert if I let you hang around for hours waiting on evac with a complicated fracture and didn’t even administer prophylactic antibiotics.”
He relaxed somewhat and turned his gaze back to the ceiling as she tourniqueted his arm and found a vein for the injection. He hoped to god she wasn’t picturing him with another kind of needle in his arm. She started the timer for the slow push, minimum three minutes. He dug around in his head for some kind of joke, something to break the tension of this excruciatingly awkward moment. Series of moments. Three consecutive, minute-long moments of Carter crouching next to him, breathing his air. At least she looked just as at a loss for what to say as he did.
He was still searching for the right words when Sam withdrew the needle. She carefully deposited the used needle in the sharps container and got to work packing the first aid kit back up. “I’m glad you told me,” she said finally. “Told us.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not,” said Jack. “I would’ve preferred if you never had to see that side of me.”
“For god’s sake, Jack, you’re allowed to be human,” Daniel said. “You all let me back on the team after I got you all stuck working in the mines while I fucked around with the sarcophagus.”
“That’s different. You’re…” Jack trailed off. What was he planning on saying? That it didn’t count because Daniel was young? He was at least a decade older than Jack had been in Vietnam. Because he wasn’t military? “You’re not in command of this team,” he finished lamely.
“Well, I don’t listen to you either way,” Daniel said with a shrug. “And there have been plenty of times you’ve made life or death decisions based on information I brought you.”
“You have accepted me wholeheartedly although I harmed and killed countless innocents in the service of Apophis,” Teal’c said. “It seems to me that you are ready to forgive any failings but your own.”
Jack’s eyes were burning and something seemed to have lodged itself in his throat, which was not good. He swallowed hard, blinking vigorously to clear whatever bit of dust had definitely gotten in his eye because there was no way he was tearing up. “For crying out loud, can we not do the feelings session right now? I’m injured. Daniel can see my femur. Let’s save it for when we’re nice and cozy in the med bay, okay?”
Daniel barely covered up a smile. “Yes sir,” he said with a salute that came off as only slightly mocking. Teal’c squeezed his shoulder in a familiar way and pulled him just a bit closer. Sam leaned back against the wall, keeping one eye on the cave entrance, one hand on her MP-5.
And finally, fucking finally, Jack could relax.