Tolgarth – Part 1 – The Beginning

By Arrietty


Prologue

The light flickered up the walls from the naked flame of the torches set deep in their sconces. Though there were many torches, there weren’t enough of them to clearly illuminate the high vaulted ceiling. The steady tramp of the booted feet echoed through the different corridors that led off from the main hall. Eight Jaffa strode purposefully up the centre towards the dais set high up the many wide steps at one end of the hall. On the dais was a large ornate silver throne. Three black and grey velvet cushions had been haphazardly tossed onto the empty seat, the high, curved back preventing them from spilling to the floor. The approaching Jaffa climbed the wide steps of the dais, taking their assigned positions around the throne, one either side, two behind and one at each corner. A loud stamp of many feet reverberated through the great hall as more Jaffa came to attention. They had arrived silently through the numerous corridors leading into the main hall. They now stood, like statues, in long lines, against the walls.

“Jaffa! Kree!” announced one of the guards.

Just then a man sailed into the chamber. He was tall, over six feet, dressed in a large black cloak, with a fitted hood that concealed his hair. Underneath the cloak, he wore dark grey trousers, black boots and a grey shirt; over the shirt was a black leather jerkin. Silver was inlaid in an intricate design throughout the jerkin. His face was hidden behind a black mask with silver inlay, the design giving the wearer, an evil malevolence. He strode haughtily up the stairs onto the dais swirling his cloak around as he sat down. As he looked intently out over the hall, the glow shining from his eyes was evident to all who had the courage to meet his gaze.


Part One

“Chevron 7 encoded and locked,” announced the technician as the wormhole burst into life.

“We are getting a signal from the Tok’ra, Sir.”

“Open the iris, Sergeant,” barked the general.

A solitary man walked smoothly down the gate ramp.

General Hammond quickly moved downstairs to the gate room. Joining Hammond in the gate room were the members of SG-1, Colonel Jack O’Neill, Major Samantha Carter, Teal’c and Jonas Quinn.

“Hello, George,” the man said.

The general answered, “What’s happening, Jacob?”

“Hi, Dad,” Sam Carter said with a smile as she moved forward to give her father a big hug.

“Hello, Sam.” He smiled softly at his daughter and then turned to General Hammond with a more serious look. “We need your help.”

~^~

All were seated around the briefing room table as Selmac, Jacob Carter’s symbiote, explained the reason why their help was needed.

“Four days ago, we found a new outpost for the Tok’ra. Eighteen Tok’ra were sent ahead to get the tunnels ready for the remaining members of our cell to arrive. When we arrived two days ago, the tunnels were completed, but there were no signs of seventeen of the Tok’ra. We found one, Renod, you know him by his host’s name Heath. I’m sorry, he lived only long enough to tell us that a Goa’uld, Tolgarth, had taken the missing Tok'ra as prisoners.”

There was an audible gasp in the room, everyone turned around and looked with surprise at the source, it had come from Teal’c. Teal’c, who very rarely showed any sign of emotion, looked shocked.

“I see you have heard of Tolgarth, Teal’c,” said Selmac.

Teal’c silently bowed his head once at Selmac. The others in the room gave him some puzzled looks before turning back to Selmac/Jacob for an explanation. Jacob took over from Selmac and continued.

“Tolgarth is a minor Goa’uld, he is not yet one of the System Lords, but very evil. People do not survive his capture; he uses torture just for the fun of it. He always wears a mask, because he treats his host’s so abominably. After about six months they go stark raving mad, then they are no use to him.”

“Couldn’t he just take over the mad host and then have the body without any resistance?” Jonas asked.

“No,” replied Jacob. “He likes to torture his host, once the host is insane, he wants new material.”

“What do you want us for?” O’Neill asked in a suspicious tone. By now he was beginning to see where this was going and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Soon after we arrived at our new outpost, we were raided. Though we managed to escape, many of the Tok’ra were injured. We only have two other operatives who are available at the moment; the others are on important undercover missions. We are hesitant to bring them back. We need a search and rescue team, we were hoping that you could help us out with extra people. The Tok’ra that have been captured have visited the SGC, so this threat from Tolgarth will affect you as well.”

General Hammond pondered this for a while and then looked at O’Neill, who had been very busy studying the table top while resting his head on his hands. General Hammond returned his attention to Jacob.

“I can’t order any of my people to go, but I will take volunteers.”

He then looked at O’Neill again. In fact everyone in the room looked at O’Neill. He raised his head, then slowly looked around at his team and gave a similar speech as his CO.

“Hey look, I can’t order any of my team to go, but I’ll be in, Jacob.”

Looking at the rest of his team, they each turned to O’Neill and nodded in agreement.

General Hammond looked pleased, as he said. “Well it looks like you have a go, Colonel.” Turning to Jacob, Hammond asked, “Jacob can you give us any more information on Tolgarth?”
“No we cannot, but we do have a Tok’ra operative within Tolgarth’s Jaffa ranks, he has been there three weeks. But unfortunately we haven’t heard from him in the last two weeks,” Jacob informed them.
O’Neill quickly commentated. “It sounds like he may have been compromised; it most probably was him who gave away the plans for the new Tok’ra outpost.”
Selmac, Jacob’s symbiote quickly took over, he had taken umbrage at O’Neill’s suggestion that a Tok’ra would betray his people. Selmac stood up and brought his hands down on the table with a loud slap, making everyone in the briefing room jump physically with surprise. Fortunately Jacob was able to calm him down before he said anything that would cause discord. Jacob thought to himself that it was very unusual for him to be calming down Selmac and not the other way around. Jacob very quietly sat down, looked pointedly at O’Neill and very carefully gave a small shake of his head at O’Neill’s questioning gaze.
Jacob then very carefully continued speaking. “In four hours it will be dead of night on Tolgarth’s planet, here are the co-ordinates.” He carefully handed over a small piece of folded paper to Sam. “The plan is, under the cover of darkness, go in and blow up the outlying buildings. Hopefully the diversion will enable us to rescue the imprisoned Tok’ra and escape.”

~^~

After gating to Tolgarth’s planet, now designated PX-157. SG-1, Jacob and two Tok’ra, Telan and Kenar quickly scanned the surrounding foliage just in case any Jaffa were guarding the Stargate. They were surprised at the absence of any guards near the gate. The rescue team quickly established a rendezvous point and then moved silently through the forest towards Tolgarth’s fortress. It took at least two hours before they reached the outlying buildings. They set a number of charges throughout them, timed to detonate simultaneously.

Placing a further charge against a wooden door set into the fortress’ solid stonewall. They hung back and took shelter, waiting for O’Neill to detonate the explosives.

The sound of the different explosions, echoed around the hills that surrounded the fortress. Moving quickly they crept through the smoking ruined door into Tolgarth’s domain.

O’Neill lead the way through the dark tunnels, it was like a warren inside the walls of the fortress. Following the sound of the Jaffa calling out to one another they silently moved through the corridors. Soon they came to a stairwell.

“Telan is this the way to the dungeons? O’Neill asked.

“Yes I believe so.”

“Right, you take point.” O’Neill motioned Carter to follow.

Without realising it, Telan set off a trip wire with his boot. Klaxons reverberated around the building. A cry was taken up from the Jaffa as they pounded their way down the halls towards SG-1 and the Tok’ra.

Carter quickly flattened herself against the wall and pushed Telan up above her on the stairs.

“Quick get back into the tunnels, we can defend better from there,” O’Neill told the Tok’ra.

The leading Jaffa was at the foot of the stairs, saw the movement of Kenar and fired his Staff weapon at him. After being hit in the knee, Kenar fell back against Telan. They both lost their balance and started to tumble down the staircase.

“Carter, watch out!” yelled O’Neill.

But it was too late as they knocked into Carter; they took her with them to the bottom of the long spiral staircase.

After repelling the Jaffa guards with weapon fire, they started down the dimly lit staircase after their fallen comrades, but about half way down they heard some voices coming from a locked room to their right. Stopping their descent, Teal’c and Jonas managed to open the dungeon door; inside they found the missing Tok’ra. Five were dead including the undercover operative and four were badly injured, but the remaining Tok’ra seemed unharmed. Meanwhile, O’Neill and Jacob went on down to the bottom of the staircase to retrieve Carter, Telan and Kenar, but when they got there, there were no sign of them.

“Jacob where could they have gone?” O’Neill asked while peering down one of the two passages leading off from where they were.

“I really don’t know, Jack, we should split up, because they could have gone down either one of these passages.”

“OK, Jacob, I’ll take the left and you take the right one, if you don’t find them, make your way to the rendezvous point and wait there for the rest of the team.”

Nodding once in agreement to O’Neill, Jacob moved off down the right hand passageway. He carefully crept along the wall, the torches sputtered as they burnt. He still couldn’t understand how with all of this technology, the Goa’uld always seemed to insist on still using things from the dark ages. The ground was dry and seemed to be made of hard packed soil, so his shoes made no sound as he stealthily moved along. He began to move faster as the passageway started an incline. Jacob had been walking along these passageways for a long time; it was well after daybreak. As he turned a corner he could see a faint light, he wondered if it was a way out. Starting to slow down again he cautiously moved towards the opening.

~^~

Jack O’Neill was beginning to doubt the wisdom of separating with Jacob, they couldn’t use radios down in the passageways, not only because of the noise, but because there was something in the soil that prevented them from working. He clutched his P90 firmly and moved quickly, trying to keep to the shadows. After a while, he came across an empty unguarded room. There were no windows inside the room, but there were some old dirty blankets and a couple of buckets, it smelt awful. From experience he could see from the sparse objects and familiar smell, that this was a holding cell for some unfortunate prisoner. Holding his hand over his mouth and nose, “Phew, I’m outta here,” he muttered under his breath.
More wary now he continued on down the passageway. The torches were becoming more frequent now and he could see more clearly. The floor instead of being hard packed earth was now metal flooring, painted a grey colour. He noticed that the walls were black with intricate silver inlaid patterns, which shone eerily in the torchlight. O’Neill peered closely at the wall just under one of the torches; the pattern looked suspiciously like writing.
“Where are you Daniel when I need you?” O’Neill whispered quietly under his breath, but the writing didn’t look Goa’uld, in fact it could just be décor for all he knew. While he moved away from the wall, he heard the click and whine of a zat’nik’atel. With his P90 drawn ready, he spun around to face his attacker, but his body was enveloped in streaks of bright blue light before he had a chance to fire. O’Neill collapsed with a groan and shuddered into unconsciousness.

~^~

“Colonel!”

“Ow! Stop it.” Someone was slapping him on his face. Maybe if he opened his eyes it would stop.

“Ah, Carter!” ‘There, see it stopped.’ “What on earth are you doing, Carter?”

Carter frowned at her CO, sat back on her heels and said, “Nice to see you too, sir! Look we have to get out of here now, before they come back. No time to explain, but I think I’ve found a way to get out of here.”

“Hey, great, where are Telan and Kenar?”

Carter looked down at the ground, then up at O’Neill. “They didn’t make it.”

Colonel O’Neill quickly put up his hand to quieten Carter; he could hear booted feet coming down towards their cell.

The door to their cell opened, a Jaffa stood in the doorway and glowered at them. Neither O’Neill nor Carter was sure if he was first prime or not. He had the mark of a first prime, but instead of being gold, it was silver.

The Jaffa spoke in Goa’uld to them, indicating with his hand that they come with him.

O’Neill carefully stood up, his head was hurting, and he noticed that Carter grimaced as she stood and she also was taking small breaths, her arms were clutched around her rib cage. ‘Oh that’s all we need.’ He groaned to himself, ‘Carter with busted ribs.’ He tried to get close to Carter, but they were placed under armed guard and marched along the passage, there were three Jaffa in between Carter and himself.

O’Neill tried to keep track of where they were going, but the twists and turns of the passages were complicated. His head still hurt and his vision was blurred, so he just had to hope that Carter had managed to remember where they had gone.

Soon they came to a large hall. The hall was huge; the walls were very high, made out of grey stone, blackened over time by the smoke from the torches. Over each doorway an arch sat out proud against the wall, each one rose high up to the ceiling curving towards the middle into a point. Even though the Goa’uld had used antiquated lighting, the hall was warm, there was a faint breeze coming from somewhere. O’Neill wondered if maybe there was under floor heating, or even air conditioning. Unbeknownst to him, his thoughts were running along the same lines as Jacob, at the incongruity of the Goa’uld’s choice of mixing technology with the more simple way of life. While all of this was whizzing through O’Neill’s very sore head, they were marched up to the end of the hall. They were made to stand before the Goa’uld Tolgarth.

The purpose of the design of the mask was to be as intimidating as possible and from the point of view of both O’Neill and Carter it worked. Tolgarth stood up from his throne and stalked down the steps towards O’Neill and Carter. He stood on the bottom steps.

“Kneel before your god!” Tolgarth’s double voice boomed out.

Carter immediately braced herself and waited for her CO’s sarcastic reply and then the blow. Tolgarth’s eyes glowed; he stepped forward closer to them and stared at Carter intensely.

“You, you have had a symbiote in you, why are you still alive?” As Carter was wondering how on earth Tolgarth knew that, he slowly reached out his hand with a hand device on it and blasted her halfway down the large hall. After Sam slid to a stop, she lay silent not moving.

Through all of this O’Neill had not understood much as Tolgarth was speaking in Goa’uld. He did understand the ‘kneel before your god’ bit, but not what had been said to Carter.

When Tolgarth had blasted Carter with the hand device, O’Neill quickly moved towards where she had fallen, he had only taken a few steps before he was knocked to the ground unconscious, with a staff weapon.

~^~

Tolgarth – Part 2 - Despair

By Arrietty


As O’Neill became conscious, he noticed a familiar smell, he wasn’t sure where he had smelt it before, but it wasn’t very pleasant. He groggily opened his eyes; the room was dimly lit by one sputtering torch, fixed to the side of a wall by a bracket. O’Neill quickly scanned the small room, he recognized it immediately, it was the cell he had come across earlier. He realised that he now had become that very ‘unfortunate person’.

There was no sign of Carter, he wasn’t sure if that was good news or not, she had been given a big hit from the hand-device and he was pretty sure that she was severely injured if not worse. O’Neill quickly dismissed that thought from his head. He knew if he was going to get out of here alive and also rescue Carter, he had to keep his emotions in check and keep a clear head. He carefully stood up and feeling dizzy, staggered to the door of the cell. Unsuccessfully he tried the handle. “Well you never know,” he muttered to himself. O’Neill carefully turned around and leant his back against the door and then slowly slid down onto the floor as everything went black once more.

~^~

Carter felt a tremendous amount of pain as the force of the hand device slammed into her body. She lay on the floor stunned, winded and unable to move. Slowly, her breathing became easier, but her body hurt. If her ribs weren’t broken before, they were now, plus some. Every time she drew a breath in or out, sharp pains wracked her chest and back. More pain shot through her body as two Jaffa came forward and roughly pulled her up by her arms and shoulders.

They dragged her through the long passageways into a dark room. They roughly clamped shackles onto her wrists then pulling her arms above her head and attached her by a chain to a large ring set into the low ceiling. Carter found it hard to stand as her toes only just reached the floor, but as soon as she rested her weight onto her wrists, pain shot through her body from the strain. She also found that she was extremely thirsty and desperately wanted a drink of water. Carter didn’t have any idea where Colonel O’Neill was, she remembered hearing the sickening thud of the shaft of a staff weapon hitting flesh, but didn’t know how badly he was hurt.

Major Carter waited in the dark, wondering if she was going to lose consciousness, she knew that if that happened she could die as the pressure on her broken ribs would maybe puncture her lungs. Sam began to wonder what was going to happen to her next, she found she didn’t have long to wait. Two Jaffa came in carrying torches and placed them into brackets set into the walls. There were now four torches, two set up either side of her as far as she could see, there wasn’t anything else in the room except a large machine, cylindrical in shape, set in front of her. It looked like an old fashioned cannon, but instead of black, the surface colour had a blue silvery sheen to it.

“Jaffa, Kree,” was announced from outside the room; the door opened and in stalked Tolgarth. He walked menacingly up to Major Carter and demanded.

“Why are you still alive? What Goa’uld was in you?”

Carter stared straight at him and looked into his eyes, just before they glowed she noticed that they were hazel in colour, she wondered briefly about the poor man/host that was suffering under Tolgarth and how long he had been a prisoner of this Goa’uld.

“I ask again, what Goa’uld was in you?” Tolgarth reached up his hand and grabbed her jaw in a painful grip.

Again Carter just ignored him, trying not to cry out with the pain. She had realised that Tolgarth did not know who she was and she did not want him to know. There was a large price on her head, so hopefully if she kept quiet and didn’t speak, he wouldn’t recognise that she was from Earth.

Tolgarth snorted, and then said, “You will regret not answering me Tau’ri.” But it was too late, he already knew who she was.

He turned and spoke to his Jaffa, Carter had known enough of Goa’uld to understand most of what Tolgarth had been saying and unfortunately she knew enough Goa’uld to understand what he was ordering his Jaffa to do to her.

~^~

Colonel O’Neill was jolted awake by a muted scream coming from another part of Tolgarth’s castle. He stood up and immediately regretted the movement as the dizziness seemed to be still there, but fortunately not as bad as before. Then he heard it again, a scream, it was louder this time, or maybe it seemed louder as now he was awake. The next time he heard the scream he knew whom it was coming from. Major Carter. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not, but each time he heard her cry out, the scream seemed more anguished and desperate. In spite of all of his training and self will, O’Neill found himself beginning to shake, his heart began to pound and his palms were sweating. He found himself once again, having to sit down. He felt helpless; he had no idea what they were doing to her. The only consolation he had was that maybe the others would hear her and get her out of there.

After a while it suddenly went quiet. O’Neill immediately stood up; the dizziness seemed to have gone. Adrenalin began to pump through his system as he heard the distinctive tramp of booted feet on the hard packed dirt corridor. They were coming for him, maybe he would see Carter now, part of him wanted to see her, but another part didn’t want to know.

The door to his cell clanked open. O’Neill had been waiting for them, using one of the metal buckets; he brought it down hard on the startled unprotected head of the leading Jaffa. With a groan the Jaffa collapsed onto the ground, before the other Jaffa had a chance to react, O’Neill had decked him with a right hook from his fist. Instantly O’Neill grabbed one of the fallen staff weapons and raced down the corridor towards where he had heard Carter. Uncharacteristically blinded by the fear of what may have happened to her, he raced around a corner and ran right smack into six Jaffa. O’Neill managed to knock down two Jaffa, before he was again knocked unconscious.

~^~

Jacob started to run on up the slope towards the light, he could hear Jaffa guards shouting behind him, there were so many corridors in this building it was hard to work out where the sounds were coming from. As he reached the outside he knew that Sam hadn’t come this way, there weren’t any footprints on the dust on the ground outside the entrance of the tunnel. Both he and Selmac weren’t sure what to do, should they go back into the maze, or carry on to the rendezvous point? They decided to carry on to the rendezvous point; it took them only two hours before they reached the place where they had agreed to meet if separated. As they arrived they could hear voices, so they cautiously crept up to where they could hear the voices coming from. Jacob/Selmac were very relieved to see that the voices belonged to Teal’c, Jonas and some of the missing Tok’ra.

“Hello! It’s only me. Where are the others?” Jacob asked as he stepped into the clearing.

Jonas turned around to face Jacob. “We thought they were with you, where’s Colonel O’Neill, Sam and the other Tok’ra?”

“I do not know Jonas, when Jack and I got down to the bottom of the staircase Telan, Kenar and Sam weren’t there. We split up to see if we could find them, I’m afraid that Tolgarth may have captured them.”

One of the Tok’ra stepped forward to Jacob/Selmac; he had been tending four of the Tok’ra who lay injured on the ground. “Selmac, we must get these men back home, or they will die, they need medical attention, their injuries are too severe for their symbiotes to heal them.”

Reluctantly Jacob nodded and agreed they had to be taken back. He turned to Teal’c and Jonas. “Will you help us carry them back? We will come back for the others.”

Teal’c and Jonas looked at each other; they didn’t want to leave half their team behind, recalling what O’Neill had always said. ‘We don’t leave anyone behind.’ But common sense took over and they decided that the best thing to do was to go back and get reinforcements as the two of them alone would not be able to overpower Tolgarth’s large army.

As they collected their gear, they wondered if they were making the correct decision. If they had known what was happening to Sam at that moment they would never have left.

~^~

O’Neill felt decidedly groggy, he found he was having difficulty in breathing, something was fastened across his mouth and his nose was partially blocked from a blood nose. He could also feel blood dripping down his face from his forehead. As he opened his eyes he took in his surroundings, everything looked fuzzy, he was propped up between two Jaffa and his hands were manacled together in front of him. Standing outside a door, he could hear a muffled voice coming from within the room. Suddenly the door burst open and a very angry Tolgarth stormed out of the room. He slammed the door behind him and stared at O’Neill. He spoke to one of the Jaffa, who then reached across and tore off the gag that covered O’Neill’s mouth. Tolgarth leant forward and spoke very quietly to Jack O’Neill in Goa’uld. Jack’s response was laced with sarcasm.

“Hey, how do you shave in the morning with that on?”

Tolgarth laughed. “Maybe you would like to find out Tau'ri,” he gloated speaking English.

“You, Tau'ri will give me the coordinates to your gate and the way in through your defences. Where are the others, the ones that were with you; the Tok’ra? You will give me their location.”

“I don’t think so buddy,” he gave a caustic reply.

Tolgarth backhanded O’Neill across the face. “Insolence will not get you anywhere, Tau’ri.”

Tolgarth gave an order to his Jaffa; the gag was fixed back onto O’Neill’s now bruised and bloodied mouth.

The door to the room was opened and the Jaffa dragged a resisting colonel into the room. It was dark; there were only a few torches on the walls. Before he had a chance to have a good look around, they roughly grabbed hold of his wrists and pulled his arms up towards the ceiling. The Jaffa then fastened O’Neill’s manacles to one of the many large metal rings set into the ceiling of the cell. O’Neill noticed that he could stand with his feet flat on the floor.

Tolgarth stood in the room and laughed. “You will tell me Tau’ri, I will be back and then you will tell me everything.” With that he laughed again and walked out of the room, the Jaffa going with him.

By now the fuzziness of O’Neill’s eyesight had begun to clear. He looked directly ahead of him, there was a large silver cylindrical object sitting on the floor, it looked a bit like a cannon. O’Neill thought of Carter, she would know what it was surely. He twisted himself around and looked over to his left, someone was hanging beside him…it was Carter. She was obviously unconscious as her head hung down over her chest, her breathing sounded wet and laboured. But at least she was breathing; as his eyes began to adjust to the light he noticed the blood that covered her uniform. O’Neill tried to get Carter’s attention, but he couldn’t make any sound, the gag that covered his mouth, seemed to soak up any noise that he would be able to make. He then tried to swing his body over to her, maybe touch Carter with his feet, but she was placed too far away to reach her.

O’Neill wasn’t certain how long it was before Carter began to stir, but he was sure it was nearly an hour since he had been left in the room. During that time he had been trying to ascertain what injuries Carter had. But it was very hard to see in the dim light, he thought that one of her lungs had been punctured, and also it looked like she had been whipped. Carter was wearing a black T-shirt; their jackets had been removed along with any weapons. The T-shirt looked like there were cuts along her stomach and when he twisted around and pulled back, he could see a lot more blood and cuts across her back. They must have hurt her bad. Anger was building up in O’Neill, he desperately wanted to help Carter and get her out of here. He also would like to get hold of Tolgarth and physically show him what he thought of him, preferably with a powerful weapon, but his bare hands would suffice.

Carter moaned and slowly raised her head. Shakily she pulled her feet up under her and stood up as straight as she could. Her hands and arms were now numb, unfortunately the rest of her wasn’t, the pain washed over her in waves. Carter let out another moan and opened her eyes; she looked directly up at Colonel O’Neill. She quickly scanned the room for anyone else and then spoke to O’Neill.

“Sir?” Her voice sounded raspy, from lack of water and the screaming. “Colonel, are you all right?” Her vision was still a little unclear and her head ached. O’Neill furiously nodded his head, once again unable to make any sound.

As Carter’s vision cleared she spoke urgently to her Commanding Officer.

“He wants to know how to get through the iris.”

The door opened with a clank and then a bang, four Jaffa marched in with Tolgarth behind them. Tolgarth walked up to O’Neill and painfully ripped the gag from his mouth. “I see you have reacquainted yourselves. You will now tell me what I want to know, or you too will suffer the same as your friend here.” O’Neill kept quiet, his eyes slid across to Carter, she looked terrified. ‘What did they do to her?’ he thought.

It didn’t take long for him to find out.

It is as he thought, they used a whip. The pain was a searing burning pain, across his back and front. Every so often, both Carter and himself were asked how to get pass Earth’s defences and the whereabouts of the Tok’ra. When neither of them answered, the Jaffa continued the torture. Soon O’Neill’s vision was turning red, blackening around the edges. He knew that he would soon lose consciousness, but he knew he could not let that happen as they may then start back on Carter. He was certain that she would not live through anymore of this. Just before he passed out they stopped. No more questions. No more beating. O’Neill slowly raised his head and looked directly at Tolgarth. O’Neill was angry, angry that someone could have done anything remotely like this to him and especially to Carter. With defiance he spoke to Tolgarth.

“You are wasting your time.”

Tolgarth just laughed. “I haven’t finished yet Tau’ri; this is nothing, just a few scratches.”

O’Neill looked over at Carter, she had tears in her eyes, and this shocked him as he hadn’t seen weakness like this in Carter before. He began to wonder what was in store for him; he knew it had to be something terrible, because of Carter’s reaction.

One of the Jaffa moved over to the gun shaped machine in the middle of the room and flipped a switch, the machine started to hum as it warmed up. O’Neill noticed that it was pointing at Carter, the Jaffa then slowly as it seemed to be heavy, moved it around, so it was pointing at O’Neill.

Tolgarth laughed. “Set it on the middle setting.”

Jack watched as the Jaffa moved a dial round, obviously they were starting him a lot higher than what they had used on Sam. Tolgarth laughed again. Then a force hit him, the pain was unbearable and he had never felt anything like it before, all the wounds from before screamed with increased pain. At first O’Neill had screwed up his eyes with the pain, but slowly he opened them. Through the pain he saw a blue light, fire out of the gun and wash over him just like a zat’nik’atel, his body jerked with the excruciating pain. Unlike the zat’nik’atel he didn’t lose consciousness, he would have liked to have though and then maybe the pain would stop. Tolgarth reached forwards to the machine and slowly turned the dial around. He was increasing the level of power. O’Neill could hear someone screaming he couldn’t work out who that was, at first he thought it was Carter, then he realised that it was himself.

The torture went on for quite a while. When it stopped, O’Neill hung by his wrists from the ceiling, with his head fallen forward onto his chest. Blood from his previous wounds was running down his back and soaking into his trousers. He was still conscious, but his breathing was laboured.

Tolgarth walked up to O’Neill and grabbed a fistful of his hair. As he yanked back his head, he stared straight into his face and demanded. “Tell me what I want to know, or one of you will die. As you now know, I have the means to make death a very painful one and it will be slow.” Tolgarth released O’Neill’s head and moved over to Carter. Major Carter was only just able to stand, with the loss of blood and the reduced amount of oxygen; she was getting weaker every moment. Tolgarth just stood there looking at Carter. He abruptly turned away from her and started to walk out of the room as he got to the door, he turned back to look at them and said. “You have until I return to decide who will die and who will live.” The door slammed behind him after he exited the room.

“Hey… Carter…I think he…is slightly annoyed,” gasped out O’Neill.

“Sir…are you all right?”

“Could be better Carter… what about you…did they…use that…thing on you?”

“Yes…Sir, we…have to come to a decision…it has to be me. I’m dying anyway…I …have internal injuries…that I don’t think even Janet…could fix.”

“No, Carter that will not happen, you heard him…it is a very painful way to die. I will not let that happen to you.”

“With respect…Sir…I…disagree…in my current condition…I couldn’t fight my way out of a paper bag…let alone…escape…and get away…you can…and…at…least…one… of…us…will…live.”

Through this entire last sentence Carter was having more difficulty breathing and her words were interspersed with her choking on her blood that was blocking her lungs. O’Neill knew that Carter was making sense, but he couldn’t let her suffer from that machine again. He also didn’t believe a word of what Tolgarth said and he was sure that the best thing for them would be that they were both dead. As Carter said she was dying anyway, though a horrible way to die, not as bad as what the machine could do.

O’Neill pulled rank on Carter. “You have no choice in this matter, Major.”

“Hah! Time is up Tau'ri, so who is it going to be?” Tolgarth demanded from the opened doorway.

O’Neill turned his head away from Carter and looked directly at Tolgarth. “Me.”

“Ah good Tau’ri, that is good, you will last longer, my fun would be over too quickly with her.”

Tolgarth turned to his Jaffa and gave them an order; by this time Carter seemed to have lost consciousness as she sagged in her restraints. The Jaffa moved over and unlocked her cuffs and dropped her down onto the ground. No sound came from her, except for the thud as her body hit the floor of the cell. Jack was relieved that she was not aware of what was happening. He stood firm and steady waiting for the machine to fire into him. Tolgarth moved over to the machine.

“One last time Tau’ri and you will live, where are the Tok’ra and tell me the defences of your planet?”

Jack defiantly stared back at Tolgarth, not speaking a word. A Jaffa moved forward and unlocked Jack’s handcuffs. He nearly fell over as his arms collapsed down to his sides, but one of the guards grabbed hold of him. The blood started rushing into his arms and hands, the pain was bad, but he knew it wasn’t as bad as it was going to get. With regret he looked over at the crumpled form of Sam, he hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye. Then as he heard the Goa’uld Tolgarth laugh (he was getting really sick of that laugh) he looked up at Tolgarth and with defiance took up his stance and waited to die.

Carter was feeling numb; the pain seemed to have gone away as she lay on the ground she seemed to not be able to move. She knew what was going to happen to the colonel and she had to stop it. Carter slowly dragged herself up onto her hands and knees; no one was watching her while she did this, as all eyes were on O’Neill. Carter wasn’t sure how she managed it, but she was standing, she staggered over to face Tolgarth and stood in between the gun and O’Neill.

“NO!” She shouted. ”You will kill me instead.”

“Sam, no,” came a quiet but firm voice from behind her, she carefully turned around and faced Colonel O’Neill.

“Sir, I can’t let you die.” By now tears were beginning to roll down her face.

“As you can’t seem to decide, you both shall die.” A triumphant voice boomed from behind the gun.

Tolgarth pressed down on the lever and blue light shot out of the gun, it hit into Carter’s back, slamming her into O’Neill. Both of them hit the far wall with a resounding smack. As the blue lightening washed over them, they were pinned together by the powerful force against the wall. Over the crackling electricity, you could barely hear their cries as they slowly sank down the wall to the ground.

The Goa’uld was all but hopping up and down with glee; he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much for a very long time. When he was sure that they were both dead, he switched off the machine. He walked over to the bodies. The blue light was still running up and down the bodies, their arms were clasped around each other. Their faces still showed the pain that they had endured as they had died. Tolgarth snorted and turned around with a flourish and strutted out of the room, leaving the Jaffa to clear away the bodies.

Tolgarth Part 3 - Hope

By Arrietty


After Jacob, the Tok’ra and the rest of SG-1 had made it back to the SGC, it hadn’t taken Doctor Fraiser long to sort out the wounded. All four Tok’ra were now in a stable condition receiving treatment for their injuries.

In the briefing room, General Hammond was patiently listening to the remainder of SG-1 and Jacob as they explained the circumstances of losing Colonel O’Neill, Major Carter, Telan and Kenar and also of their joint decision of leaving them behind.

General Hammond didn’t take long to decide to mount a rescue mission for Colonel O’Neill, Major Carter and the remaining two Tok’ra.

“SG-9 will go. Major McDonald will lead this mission. Is that understood SG-1?” He looked pointedly at Teal’c and Jonas. He didn’t want them going off on a tangent. “You have a go. Be ready in one hour. Dismissed.”

As Jonas and Teal’c left the room, General Hammond slowly got up to leave, but Jacob called him back.

“George, I don’t hold much hope for them. The surviving Tok’ra that we rescued said that Tolgarth is ruthless. I think you should change all the codes. I need to send word to our Tok’ra base to move. Apparently Tolgarth has a new torture device that supersedes anything that the Goa’uld have used before.”

General Hammond turned a grim face towards Jacob. “Don’t you think I should be sending more of my people to get them out?”

“I’m not sure, George, but I just thought you should know that maybe we will be too late.”

“Jacob, this is your daughter we are talking about. Don’t you hold any hope at all?”

Jacob sat there, looked down at the table and sighed. “I have a little. I always have hope, but from what my fellow Tok’ra have told me,” he looked up at Hammond, “I just don’t know anymore.”

General Hammond nodded to Jacob, got up from the table and quickly walked out of the room.

As General Hammond sat down at the desk in his office, he knew that he had to make a tough decision. He sat there for a while just staring into space, thinking. Fifty minutes later he had come to a decision. He quickly walked through to the gate room. When he arrived there, SG-9, Teal’c, Jonas and Jacob were standing ready to go. The seventh chevron had just locked on the Stargate and they were waiting for General Hammond to give the order to go ahead. Hammond stopped at the door, took a deep breath and then walked into the gate room.

“Stand down SG-9, SG-1, the mission is aborted,” he announced.

Jacob froze. He wasn’t surprised at the General’s decision. To a certain degree he agreed with the decision, however much it hurt him to know that he wouldn’t have the help to get Sam out of there. Both Teal’c and Jonas started to protest, but stopped in mid-sentence as General Hammond held up his hand to silence them. “Until we have further Intel, this mission is not to proceed. Teal’c, Jonas, it’s not likely that we can risk further lives in retrieving them. From what I have heard the three of you will not be able to rescue them in time. In fact it most probably is too late already.

Then Jacob announced that he would go alone.

“I am still going, George. Even if it is just to find out what has happened to them.”

Jacob quickly turned away from the others and walked up to the Stargate. Just as he stepped through the event horizon, he heard the heavy clump of booted feet running up behind him. Both Teal’c and Jonas wasted no time in coming to a joint decision. They had only come back to Earth, because they thought they would return to Tolgarth’s planet. As far as they were concerned they had no choice. They would not leave Jack and Sam behind.

~^~

{The sky was clear blue. There was a slight warm breeze that made the skirt of her pale blue dress billow out and swirl around her legs. Sam wasn’t sure where she was, but she was climbing up a small rocky pathway. Her brown open sandals were making slight footprints in the dry dusty ground. At one place she had to reach out with her hands so she could keep her balance. Sam had never felt so good. She was warm. The sun felt good on her skin and the breeze was blowing through her hair. Even though she was walking uphill she hadn’t even broken out in a sweat.

As she reached the top of the rise in front of her, she looked down onto a meadow. It was beautiful. As far as she could see there were flowers of all colours, which were swaying in the breeze. Sam quickly began to climb down to the meadow. She couldn’t wait to walk in amongst the flowers, to breathe in the fragrance that had tantalised her as it had wafted up to her on the brow of the hill. As Sam walked through the flowers, she bent down to drink in the fragrance. Very carefully she began to pick some of the flowers. Soon her arms were full of long, full-headed blooms. She was so engrossed in what she was doing at first that she didn’t see the figure in the distance walking purposefully towards her. When she did notice, a feeling of hope washed through her and she felt no fear. She stood still as this blue clad figure came closer to where she waited .}

~^~

Sam felt stiff and sore. ‘Where is that noise coming from?’ She wondered. There was a rumble and a crackling sound. She wasn’t sure whether she should open her eyes. She was lying face down on something warm, it felt like a body and much to her relief she could hear a heartbeat. Sam wriggled around a bit and opened her eyes, it was dark and as she started to get up, she banged her head on something above her. It felt like she and this other person were in a long box. There wasn’t much room to move at all. Then the rumbling sound came again and blue light crackled around them. She quickly looked down to see who was in there with her. Though she wasn’t surprised, she was still relieved to see it was Colonel O’Neill.

“Colonel. Colonel. Wake up.” Sam started tapping him on the side of the face. She didn’t like what was going on inside the box they were in as the blue light was growing in its intensity and the rumbling noise was increasing. She wasn’t sure, but she thought they were inside a sarcophagus. “Please, sir. You’ve got to wake up, come on.” By now she had started to slap him harder. O’Neill woke up with a start, tried to sit up and slammed Carter into the top of the sarcophagus. All round it was a very painful awakening.

“Ouch!…Quick, we’ve got to get out of here. I don’t think it is safe.”

O’Neill stared at Carter in the eerily blue light. “You’re alive, I thought you were dead, in fact, I thought we were both dead.”

“With respect, sir. If we don’t get out of here soon, I think we will be again.”

O’Neill wasted no time. He reached up past Carter and grabbed hold of the edges of the opening of the sarcophagus. With his fingers he started to slide the doors apart. By this time the sarcophagus had started to shake and was making noises that they had never heard come from a sarcophagus before. The doors made a grinding noise as O’Neill pried them apart. Soon he had made a big enough opening for them to climb out. O’Neill quickly crouched at one end of the sarcophagus and gave Carter his hand to lean on as she climbed out. After climbing down, Carter leant on the side of the sarcophagus as she was still feeling weak, while O’Neill quickly jumped down beside her. As they both left the side of the sarcophagus, blue light shot out from it and flowed down over both of them and they collapsed onto the ground.

They didn’t lose consciousness and O’Neill quickly grabbed hold of Carter’s hand and hauled her to her feet. The rumbling noise was increasing as they fled from the room. Just as they turned the corner a large explosion blew out the room they had just left. The wall surrounding them in the tunnel started to collapse. Not sure where to go, O'Neill still holding Carter’s hand, raced down the tunnel, looking for an exit.

They noticed they were running on hard packed earth and began to hope that maybe they would be able to escape. O’Neill didn’t want to make the same mistake again and run into a group of Jaffa. They slowed their pace to a fast walk. Slowly the ground began to rise and Carter and O’Neill could see a faint light at the end of the tunnel. They were unaware that they were following the same path that Jacob had taken only a few days before.

As soon as they were outside, they moved into the trees to find shelter and to work out what had been happening. O’Neill quickly looked at Carter, taking in the blood on her T-shirt and her white tired face. The bruises had gone from her face and her eye wasn’t swollen closed anymore from the beating she had received. Carter was watching him, doing the same thing as he was, checking that he was okay. She tentively reached forward with both her hands and lifted his T-shirt away from his stomach. It was clear, no marks and cuts.

“Oh, the good ol’ sarcophagus,” O’Neill said with a small grin, “are you all right, Sam?”

Sam nodded. “I’m still a bit sore, but I’m alive.” She reached up and touched his face gently and with a minute smile said. “Are you all right, sir?”

He grinned back at her and nodded. “Hey, what do you reckon? Do you think we have annoyed old snakehead? We blew up his sarcophagus!”

Carter was still smiling at O’Neill, but when he said that, she laughed. O’Neill still had a burning anger inside him, but he was pleased to hear Carter laughing again. He had thought he’d never hear that laugh again. The last sound he had heard from her was screaming, as they died in each other arms. Shaking his head to dispel those images from his mind, he stood up.

“Come on, Carter. We need to get to the rendezvous point.”

Walking side by side, they walked quickly and warily towards the specified place. They were on the lookout for any Jaffa that may be lurking in amongst the trees. It took them nearly two hours to reach their destination. They couldn’t believe their eyes when they got there. Seated on the ground were Jacob and Jonas, they were discussing plans on how to enter the Castle. Teal’c stood on the other side of them looking into the forest for any enemies.

“Watcha doing?” O’Neill announced as they stepped into the small clearing.

Immediately, Jacob and Jonas leapt to their feet and rushed over to O’Neill and Carter.

“Sam, are you all right?” asked a very worried father.

“Yes, I’m fine, Dad.” Sam reached up and wrapped her arms around her father and squeezed tight. After all that she had gone through, part of her wanted to cry. She felt safe as her dad held her in his firm grasp. O’Neill hovered nearby. ‘Jack looks a wreck,’ thought Jacob.

“Hey, Jacob, Teal’c.” Nodding to Jonas. “Jonas. We need to get out of here. We aren’t Tolgarth’s favourite people at the moment. We blew up his sarcophagus.” With this final comment, a smug look crossed over O’Neill’s face.

“Where are Telan and Kenar?”

O’Neill slowly shook his head at Jacob. Jacob acknowledged him with a nod.

“Actually,” said Jacob, “we are in a bit of trouble. General Hammond has locked out all of our codes. We will have to go somewhere else first.”

O’Neill nodded in approval at this. As it turned out, they needn’t have worried, as both Carter and O’Neill had not revealed anything to Tolgarth. Jacob plus SG-1 moved quickly and silently through the forest, making good time. Jonas couldn’t get over the fact that though Jack and Sam’s clothes were saturated in dried blood, they seemed to be all right. He wondered what they had gone through. From what he had heard from the injured Tok’ra, Jack and Sam would have suffered terribly.

Without warning, they were surprised by an attack. Jacob was hit in the arm by a staff weapon blast, knocking him to the ground. Sam quickly bent down and helped her father up. With Teal’c, Jonas and O’Neill covering them with weapon fire, they quickly raced into the covering of the trees. Soon after, the others followed them. They had seemed to manage to lose the pursuing Jaffa. It wasn’t long before they arrived at the Stargate. O’Neill was very suspicious that the Stargate was not guarded, but they managed to dial out to a safe planet unmolested. They safely moved through the Stargate to the other side.

Carter immediately dialled up Earth’s address, waited until the seventh chevron locked, then sent through their code. After this they sat down and waited. It wasn’t long before the gate started up again and the whoosh of the Stargate settled into the event horizon. A MALP trundled through the gate. Jonas walked up to it and waved into the camera.

By this time, O’Neill had become very quiet. He was sitting by himself brooding. It was the only word that came to her mind, as Sam watched him. She knew what he had gone through, what they had gone through and she could see that he was beginning to stew about it. She had been waiting for him to bawl her out for disobeying orders, but this new O’Neill, the silent quiet one, was beginning to worry her. She had to admit that she was feeling weird too. She hadn’t even given herself time to come to terms with the torture and death she had received at the hands of Tolgarth. So she put her worry to the back of her mind and stood up to dial Earth’s address, so they could go home.

Tolgarth – Part 4 – The Blue Light

By Arrietty



The sound of the klaxons reverberated around the base.

“Incoming wormhole, sir,” announced Sergeant Harriman to General Hammond.

“Is it SG-1?”

“Yes, sir. It is SG-1.”

General Hammond let out a small sigh of relief. He really had wondered this time if he had lost SG-1 for good. It was so good to see them on the screen, after they had sent the MALP through.

“Open the iris.”

“Yes, sir.”

As the iris ground open, everyone found themselves holding their breath. A medical team had already been called to the gate room. SG-1 had been gone far too long for anyone not to be hurt.

But amazingly all of SG-1 plus Jacob came through the Stargate still walking. Jacob was obviously hurt as he was clutching his arm. But what seemed to confuse the medical staff the most was that both Colonel O'Neill’s and Major Carter’s clothes were covered in blood, but they seemed to be okay. In fact, Colonel O’Neill kept silently batting away the hands of Dr. Fraiser as she was making a preliminary examination.

“Good to have you home SG-1 and, Jacob good to see you too,” said General Hammond. “Please, off to the infirmary. By the looks of you, de-briefing will have to be in three hours.”

Carter stepped forward and stood in front of the General. “Actually, sir. It isn’t as bad as it looks. Dad is the only one who is hurt and Selmac has everything under control.”

“Whose blood is this then?” Hammond waved his hand generally in between O’Neill and Carter.

O’Neill gave a grimace. “It’s ours, sir, but you know, Goold’s (pronouncing the name incorrectly) have these Sarcophagi things, that sort of take care of fatal injuries.”

“Still, go and get checked out, colonel.”

“Yes, sir.”

General Hammond couldn’t quite decide whether he wanted to know or not what had happened to his team. Pushing it to the back of his mind, he walked off towards his office. He would just have to wait and see.

~^~

“Look, Janet, I’m okay. I just want a shower and get out of these clothes.”

“Sam, I know you say you are all right, but there is a lot of blood on here and you don’t hear Colonel O’Neill complaining, do you?”

Just as Janet finished speaking, there was a raised voice coming from one of the nurses.

“Colonel, I have to check your injuries.”

“But I haven’t got any injuries!” shouted back the colonel.

Immediately, Janet stormed out through the curtain surrounding Sam’s bed. Sam decided that she wanted to see this. Janet was not happy and watching Janet at work trying to subdue a miscreant patient was always entertaining, especially when it was the colonel.

The scene that awaited Sam was Colonel O’Neill standing by an examination table. He still had his black T-shirt on and Sam could see healthy skin showing through the blood soaked slits in his T-shirt. At this stage, Janet was getting pretty mad with him and Sam could see that Colonel O’Neill was just about at the end of his tether.

“LOOK!” Colonel O’Neill shouted. He grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt and pulled it up to show them his stomach.

“See. No blood. No cuts. No holes. I’m fine – I want a shower.”

With that he stormed off towards the door pushing past Janet on his way. As O’Neill stalked past Sam, she held her hand out to stop him. She knew he was being unreasonable, but she understood what he was going through and she wanted him to know that. As her hand came in contact with his arm, the whole room went black. This overwhelming feeling of anger and exasperation washed over her. Very quickly the blackness faded and she could see the room again. Sam looked down at her hand on the Colonel’s arm. Blue light, just like the zat’nik’atel was running up and down both of their arms. It was the same blue light that had flowed over them in the sarcophagus. A tingling sensation was running all through her body. Once again, emotions washed over her that weren’t her own. Sam quickly looked up at Colonel O'Neill. The expression on his face was full of shock, which was mirrored by hers. Sam could see into his mind. Both the colonel and the major quickly pulled their arms away from each other, but just as they did, a blue fire bolt shot out from them and struck a piece of machinery setting it alight. There was a fizzing sound. Then a large bang and the piece of hospital equipment exploded, showering patients and staff with bits of debris.

Klaxons started off in the building, followed by a fire alarm. Apart from these noises no one said a word. Everyone was shocked into silence. SF’s stormed into the infirmary with their rifles ready to repel any attacking force.

Sam looked nervously at Jack. He was still looking at her with a shocked expression on his face. He then quickly looked away and his face was closed of all expression. Any fires that had sprung up were quickly put out. No one seemed to be hurt.

“Colonel! What is going on here?” General Hammond had walked into the room to see what was happening.

“I’m not sure, sir,” he answered.

Dr. Fraiser came up to Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter and said, “You two, back to your cubicles and keep away from each other. You are a bit expensive to have around here.”

Neither Jack nor Sam said a word as they moved quickly back to their cubicles and waited for their examination.

~^~

Two and a half hours later in the de-briefing room, all of SG-1 were sitting around the table waiting for General Hammond. Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter were conspicuously sitting as far away from each other as possible.

“Well people,” announced General Hammond as he came into the briefing room and sat down at the head of the table. “Do we have any explanations of what happened in the infirmary?” He frowned, looked up at the other end of the table and demanded, “Colonel O’Neill what are you doing down there? Get up here in your usual seat please.”

O’Neill raised his eyebrows in surprise and then grimaced at the others and muttered under his breath, “Well you can’t blame me, you heard him.” He sat down beside Major Carter in his usual seat. He was very careful to not get too close to Major Carter in the process.

Irritated by the Colonel’s obvious bad behaviour, the General asked again, “Well, what happened?” He looked pointedly at Colonel O’Neill.

Just as O’Neill opened his mouth to say he didn’t know, Dr. Fraiser walked into the briefing room holding two large folders, one a lot thicker than the other.

“I think I can help with this a little, General Hammond,” answered Dr. Fraiser.

Dr. Fraiser then proceeded to give her medical report.

“Jacob has gone back with the Tok’ra, his arm has healed now. Both Teal’c and Jonas have a few minor cuts and bruises. Now Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter are fine. There is nothing wrong with them, well visible anyway.”

“What do you mean by visible?” Carter asked.

Dr. Fraiser moved over to a backlit screen, which had been moved into the briefing room earlier. She placed two medical scans onto the screen and switched on the light to the screen.

“These are scans of Colonel O’Neill’s and Major Carter’s brain. The one on the left is the colonel’s. Both of these were taken at the last full medical two months ago. You can see on both of these scans this black mass…here,” pointing with her finger at the screen. “This is the part of the brain that humans do not use. No one is sure why that is, though there are theories that we won’t go into now.”

Dr. Fraiser took down Major Carter’s scan and then put another up in its place. “Now this is a scan that I took one hour ago of Colonel O’Neill’s brain, do you see here?” Dr. Fraiser pointed to a white uneven shape in the middle of the black mass. The white shape was quite large as it was a quarter of an inch in diameter. By now all of SG-1 and General Hammond had risen out of their seats and had moved towards the screen to take a closer look. Dr. Fraiser then took out another transparency and removed the two-month-old scan and placed another up. “This is the scan I took today of Major Carter’s brain. See you have the same white shape as Colonel O’Neill and in the same place as his.”

“Hey, it’s happening again,” yelled Jonas.

Dr. Fraiser immediately switched off the screen and moved back away from it.

Inadvertently while looking at the screen, Colonel O’Neill’s hand had brushed against Major Carter’s hand, setting off the blue light, but this time there was a sound of crackling. Everyone else had jumped back away from them as blue streaks of light were running up and down all over the colonel and the major. Immediately, they both pulled away from each other with the same shocked looks on their faces.

Dr. Fraiser quickly started asking questions. “Does it hurt? What does it feel like? What has caused this?”

Carter looked across at Colonel O’Neill and hesitated. She then started to answer the questions the best she could. By the look on Colonel O’Neill’s face, she knew she wasn’t going to get any help from that quarter.

“No, it doesn’t hurt. I get a tingling sensation all through me and to what caused this I’m not sure. The weapon that was used to kill us fired a blue light, maybe it is the residue from that.”

“Now that did hurt,” put in Colonel O’Neill. “Can we go now? I’d like to get some sleep.”

General Hammond had noticed that Colonel O’Neill was behaving a little strangely, uncooperative and surly. The uncooperative bit he was used to, but the surliness had him puzzled. He had to put it down to the fact that he would be suffering from the effects of being tortured and killed. “No, Colonel, I still need to hear your reports,” Hammond replied firmly, but kindly.

Colonel O’Neill sat back down in his seat with a sigh, put his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. He mumbled from this position, “Carter you can start.”

An hour later as they were moving through the door to go their separate ways, Dr. Fraiser cornered both Major Carter and Colonel O’Neill. “Now, as General Hammond said you can’t leave the base, I’d like to see you both, first thing tomorrow morning. But please, keep away from my equipment.”

Sam looked questioningly at Jack. He totally ignored her and walked off towards the sleeping quarters. With everything they had gone through, she couldn’t understand his behaviour at all. He was ignoring her.

Sam slowly followed behind O’Neill, until she came to her quarters. She was very tired and was having trouble in keeping her eyes open. At first, after she had lain down, she thought she would have trouble sleeping, because of what had happened to her was still rushing through her mind. Soon her thoughts turned to Colonel O'Neill. Neither of them had mentioned what had happened to them when they had touched and the blue light had travelled through them. Sam wondered if O’Neill could sense what she was feeling, like she could sense what he was feeling at the time. With those thoughts spinning around in her head, she fell into a deep troubled sleep.


~^~

The sky was clear blue. There was a slight warm breeze that made the skirt of her pale blue dress billow out and swirl around her bare legs. Sam wasn’t sure where she was, but it seemed so familiar. She was climbing up a small rocky pathway. Her brown open sandals were making slight footprints in the dry dusty ground. At one place she had to reach out with her hands because she knew that if she didn’t, she could lose her balance. Sam felt good. She was warm and the sun felt good on her skin. She soon reached the top of the small hill. Over the rise she saw a meadow full of flowers, all the colours of the rainbow. Once again she felt as though this was all familiar. Had she been here before? She wasn’t sure. The flowers were swaying in the breeze and the fragrance wafted up to where she was standing. Sam started to climb down amongst the flowers. They were beautiful and the fragrance grew stronger as she disturbed the stems while she walked through them. There were so many, she wasn’t sure where to look first. Sam wasn’t sure why she looked up, but when she did a feeling of hope and security flowed through her. Approaching her from a distance was a man. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a pale blue denim shirt, but he was too far away for her to see his face. He was purposefully striding through the flowers towards her. Sam began to have a feeling of anticipation soon this man would reach her. She had no idea who he was, though something about him looked familiar.


~^~

There was a loud thudding noise on her door. It sounded like someone was kicking it. Sam woke up with a start, immediately forgetting her dream. She groggily climbed out of bed and opened her door. Standing there with a big grin on his face was Jonas. He had a tray in his hands and on it was breakfast.

“Good morning, Sam! Thought you would like breakfast in bed this morning, or should I say afternoon? You’ve slept twenty hours straight. Janet would like to see you in the infirmary, as soon as possible. Teal’c has gone to get the colonel. He’s braver than me.” With that last comment, Jonas put down Sam’s breakfast tray with a smirk.

“See you later, Sam,” Jonas said with a smile as he turned around and left her room.

Through all of this one sided conversation, Sam was still trying to come to grips with the fact that she had slept for so long and also that she was trying hard to wake up. What had happened to her the previous few days washed over her. She began to feel dizzy and weak. Soon she realised it most probably wasn’t just the fact of the memories, but that she was very hungry and thirsty.

Sitting carefully on the edge of the bed, Sam pulled the tray closer and began to eat. On the tray was a flower in a vase. She was thinking that was very thoughtful and kind of Jonas, but something bugged her about the flower though. Then she remembered her dream, not all of it, just all the flowers in the meadow. She could vividly remember the fragrance of the flowers as she had bent down to pick them. She could also remember that something was going to happen; she didn’t know what, but something good. Slowly the dream began to elude her. She shook her head to clear it and carried on eating her breakfast, dream forgotten.

Jack had been startled awake by Teal’c, as he bent over him shaking him by the shoulder.

“O’Neill, you need to awaken and take sustenance. Dr. Fraiser wishes to see you in the infirmary soon.”

O’Neill sat up quickly and promptly regretted it. He was still a bit fuzzy in the head and the room was spinning a bit. Soon the room seemed to settle down and Teal’c passed a tray to O’Neill. “Here, you need to eat, O’Neill.” On the tray was a cooked breakfast, plus toast, coffee and fruit juice.

“Hey, no flower in a vase, Teal’c?” O’Neill joked, wondering to himself. ‘Why on earth did I ask that?’

Teal’c, relieved by O’Neill’s obvious good humour, replied, “Jonas prepared these trays. I will ask him when I see him, why there was no flower.”

O’Neill started to reply to Teal’c, but stopped when he realised that Teal’c had misunderstood him on purpose. So he just gave Teal’c a lopsided grin and started to tuck into his meal. It had been a long time since he had eaten. The previous day he had been too tired to even think about eating anything.

~^~

An hour later, Major Carter and Colonel O’Neill were being checked over by Dr. Fraiser. She had already given both of them brain scans to see if there were any changes and as far as she could see, there had been no change since yesterday.

“Well, you both seem well. A bit dehydrated and you need feeding up, but apart from that you seem fine. I would like you both to come into this room to see if the blue light has worn off or not. We have cleared the room of equipment.”

Both Carter and O’Neill began to extremely uncomfortable. Sam began to feel an uncontrollable fear take her over. She wasn’t sure where it had come from or why it was there. She tried to convince herself that it was only Colonel O’Neill, they were friends and she could cope with this. She nervously took a quick look at O’Neill, his face had closed off and she could see he wasn’t going to cooperate with Janet at all over this. Sam turned to her CO and spoke very quietly to him.

“Sir, the effects may have worn off. We will never know unless we try this and we can’t go home or off world until this is sorted,” she reasoned.

O’Neill turned to her. His eyes had lost the soft brown colour they had turned dark brown to an almost black colour. Sam took an involuntary step back. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to know what was going on in his mind at the moment.

“Colonel O’Neill?” questioned Dr. Fraiser. “Can you please come this way?”

Without saying a word, O’Neill strode into the room, with Sam following behind. General Hammond had arrived. Dr. Fraiser had requested that he was present during this experiment, just in case anything went wrong. Everyone else had left the infirmary. General Hammond and Dr. Fraiser stood at the observation window and waited.

Colonel O’Neill stopped in the centre of the room and then spun around to face Major Carter. He held out his right hand towards her, the steely look was still in his eyes. With growing fear and trepidation Carter stretched out her left hand. As their hands touched the feeling of anger and despair washed over her again. She could barely cope with the emotions. She was frightened. All the memories of what she had gone through travelled through her body. With a cry, she broke off the contact with O’Neill and backed away from him in fear.

~^~

Since Teal’c had woken him up this morning, Colonel O’Neill had been trying to control his anger. He couldn’t rid himself of the pain and memories of the torture he and Sam had received. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see Sam’s broken body hanging from the ceiling and he couldn’t stop the memory of her screams as she died. Part of him blamed Sam for this, if she had done as she was told, she wouldn’t have suffered so. So not knowing where or whom to direct his anger, sadly he directed it at the one person he shouldn’t have, Sam. And now she knew. The look of pure terror on her face as she looked at him, while she was backing away, gave him a shock. Jack knew he had to do something or he would never be able to repair the damage that he had done. Without a thought to their audience, he reached across and grabbed Sam around the shoulders and pulled her close. He could feel her fear turn into confusion, as he tried his hardest to ask her for her forgiveness through his thoughts. He felt her relax as she reached around him and hugged him tight. A feeling of security washed over him and something else that disturbed him a little. They both became aware of the tingling sensation flowing through them and the blue light that flowed around them. Slowly the blue light began to dissipate as they began to calm down. The severe crackling that had been evident before had stopped. It appeared the more anger and fear that they felt, the worse the visual effect manifested itself. Slowly O’Neill moved back away from Carter. By now there were only a few quiet blue flickering lines moving up and down their bodies. They let go of each other’s hands. Suddenly they both remembered that they had an audience. Sam quickly scrubbed the tears from her face, before she turned around to face Dr. Fraiser and General Hammond.

General Hammond looked straight at Colonel O’Neill, gave him a quiet nod and left the infirmary. Sam came out of the room first and waited for Janet to speak.

“Well it looks like it’s still there, but with not such devastating effects. I still want you two to keep away from my medical equipment though.” Dr. Fraiser turned away too and walked into her office to write up her findings.

O’Neill wryly thought about the comment of Dr. Fraiser’s, ‘not having such devastating effect’, little did she know, just how close he had come to doing irreparable harm to his friendship with Sam.

“Come on Carter, let’s go and get some lunch. I’m starving and you must be hungry too.”


~^~


Several days later, SG-1 were in the commissary eating a meal together. Fortunately, there hadn’t been any instances of exploding machinery or blue light flying around the SGC. Both O’Neill and Carter had been very careful to keep away from each other. They were sitting at opposite corners of the small dining table. They couldn’t get any further away from each other, unless they sat at separate tables. All it needed was an accidental brush of hands or arms and a firework show would start. After what had happened with the medical equipment, they weren’t sure whether other people were going to be safe around them. Dr. Fraiser was no closer in finding a cure for them. There had been no change according to their brain scans.

O’Neill was beginning to get fidgety as he wanted to get on with his job. Both Carter and O’Neill were restricted to base and even Carter was loath to go anywhere near her lab, just in case. What if she started flashing blue light all over the place on her own? Not that it had happened yet. She just had to be extra careful. Though she was beginning to think that maybe she would be okay as long as Colonel O’Neill kept away from her lab. Leaning forward towards O'Neill, she quietly informed him of her decision.

“Sir. After lunch I’ll be going to my lab.”

“So.”

“Well, sir, you won’t go anywhere near there will you? I mean there is a lot of expensive equipment and experiments in there, things I’ve been working on for months.”

O’Neill gave her one of his crooked grins, raised an eyebrow and said, “At least you’ve got something to keep you busy…and you know what I do when I get bored.”

“No, sir. You are not coming anywhere near my lab while I’m there. We can’t risk it.”

O’Neill leaned back on his chair balancing it on two legs, smirked at Teal’c and then grinned back at Carter.

Major Carter stood up with a resigned look on her face. He had been winding her up and it had worked. Annoyed, she started to walk around the table to put her plate and tray back up onto the counter. As she passed O’Neill, his chair had gone back too far and he started to fall back onto the floor. Without thinking Carter grabbed O’Neill on his shoulder with one hand, while precariously balancing her tray with the other. Carter was so annoyed with O’Neill and his silly antics that she was tempted to just let him drop onto the ground. She heard the crackling before she even saw the blue light. The annoyance she felt inside seemed to grow with the blue light. Without warning a blue fire bolt shot out from them both and struck an unsuspecting airman as he wandered into the commissary. O’Neill crashed to the ground as Carter let go of him along with her tray. As Sam let him fall, she rushed over to the airman, ordering a nearby lieutenant to call a medic. As she reached the airman, two SF’s drew their weapons and aimed them at her, ordering her to stop. Realising that they meant what they said, she stopped in mid stride and stood quietly and watched as medics reached the fallen airman. One of the SF’s shifted position and aimed his weapon to Carter’s right.

“Whoa! I’m not going anywhere,” said Colonel O’Neill not far behind Carter.

Janet rushed into the commissary, took in the scene before her and worked out immediately what had happened. She turned to the SF’s and said, “You can stand down. They are all right.”

Reluctantly the SF’s lowered their weapons as Janet tended to the downed airman, who by this time was groggily sitting up.

“Wow,” he said. “That is one mighty Zat gun. Haven’t had a hit that powerful before.”

Dr. Fraiser started to ask him questions. “What did it feel like? Are you in any pain? Where does it hurt?”

The airman peeled off his answers in quick succession. “Like a souped up zat. Yes and all over.”

“You’ll do, but I want you to report to the infirmary to check you out, just to make sure.” Helping him up, she led him out of the commissary. She turned to Carter and O’Neill before she went through the doorway. “And I want you two there as well, although preferably…one at a time.”

Carter turned to O’Neill. “I think you should go first, sir. You look like you’ve banged the back of your head.”

“Ya think!” Gingerly touching the back of his head with his fingers, O’Neill walked off behind Dr. Fraiser and the poor airman.

Carter with an audible sigh followed slowly after him. Once out in the corridor, she turned in the opposite direction of the infirmary towards her lab. She was getting really tired of this and worried too because now, someone had been hurt. She realised that the fact that she was annoyed with O’Neill had sparked the fire bolt to leap from them. If they stayed calm and didn’t get worked up about anything everything seemed to be okay.

When Carter arrived at her lab, Siler was rummaging through her notes on her desk. “What are you looking for, Siler?”

“Oh, Major, are you well enough to help?” Carter nodded quickly. “Well the Stargate’s iris has jammed open. We can’t get it shut.”

Immediately, Carter started running off to the gate room. Siler wasn’t far behind. It didn’t take Carter long to work out the problem. Fortunately, it was fixable. Unfortunately it would take several hours in the gate room to fix the problem. Carter had informed General Hammond of the situation and several SF’s were on permanent guard in the gate room, as Carter and her team furiously worked on the iris.

Four hours later, Carter was just finishing off adjusting the last few electronic components. She was tired and she still hadn’t caught up with sleep and rest from when she was a prisoner of Tolgarth. General Hammond and Colonel O’Neill were watching from the observation booth.

“Not long now, sirs,” Carter called out to Hammond and O’Neill.

Just as she finished speaking, the Stargate started to rotate.

“Unauthorised incoming wormhole, sir,” announced the sergeant from the consol.

O’Neill immediately leant forward into the microphone and spoke to Carter. “Carter get out of there now.”

“I’m nearly done. I can get the iris closed.”

Just as the Stargate had finished its dialling sequence, several Jaffa burst through the event horizon, blasting at everyone in their path. Unnoticed, Carter started to activate the iris manually. She was successful. The comforting grinding sound of the iris closed behind one of the Jaffa coming through. He spun around to hear the sickening thud of matter splattering up against the iris. The Jaffa realised that this was now a suicide mission and there would be no going back. All of his fellow warriors were lying dead on the ramp leading up to the Stargate. He turned back towards the Tau’ri warriors. He noticed the blond woman at the bottom of the ramp with some machinery. Realising correctly that it was she who had brought his downfall, he aimed his staff weapon at her and fired. The blast hit her square on her back between her shoulder blades. With a cry she crumpled to the ground. That was the last sight he saw as several bullets hit his body as all the SF’s fired at him just a few seconds too late.

As soon as the Stargate had started to rotate, O’Neill knew that Carter would be in danger. He tried to get her out of there, but she insisted on staying. When the Jaffa shot at Carter, with a cry of “Sam,” he raced down into the gate room. His heart was pounding when he reached Carter. He checked her wound and then turned her over. She was still breathing, but only in small gasps. Her eyes were glazed over, he wasn’t even sure if she knew he was there. O’Neill could hear the crackling sound and he could see the blue light running up and down Carter and himself. He cried out in anguish as he felt her life essence slipping away. Then everything went black as he sank down beside her into unconsciousness at the bottom of the ramp.

General Hammond was watching from the observation booth. Blue fire bolts had started to erupt from Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter, striking one of the SF’s. General Hammond ordered all personnel out of the gate room. By this time Colonel O’Neill had collapsed beside Major Carter. General Hammond could barely see them for the bright blue light that spread out from their bodies. He was not sure what was going to happen next, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He ordered the blast doors closed to the gate room. Dr. Fraiser had come up into the observation room and was closely watching the monitors. Slowly each monitor went dead as the cameras in the gate room were extinguished. All they could do was listen to the sound of the rumbling and charge of electricity that was being released in the gate room. The noise was deafening. Both Hammond and Fraiser held barely any hope for Colonel O'Neill. Dr. Fraiser had already ascertained that Major Carter was dead. There was no way she could have survived that blast from the staff weapon.

Suddenly, it went quiet. General Hammond ordered the blast doors open and Dr. Fraiser and her team raced down to the gate room. The gate room looked untouched. There weren’t any scorch marks, except from the staff weapon blasts released by the attacking Jaffa. Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter lay beside each other at the base of the ramp, not moving. It took a few seconds for General Hammond to realise that there was no sign of the dead Jaffa. ‘Where have they gone?’ he wondered.

Dr. Fraiser reached down to feel Colonel O’Neill’s pulse. With relief she felt a good, strong, steady beat. Sadly she turned to Sam, her friend. She felt for her pulse too and much to her surprise she could feel a strong, steady pulse. She quickly turned Sam over to check her wound. Apart from a great gaping hole in her uniform, her skin was unmarked and there was no sign of a wound. Dr. Fraiser also noticed that Colonel O’Neill was still gripping Sam’s arm, but there was no evidence of the blue light or residue of it. Quickly ordering these two to be taken to the infirmary, she announced to General Hammond.

“They are alive, unconscious, but alive.” It was a puzzle that she was going to have to work out.


~^~


The sky was clear blue. There was a slight warm breeze that made the skirt of her pale blue dress billow out and swirl around her legs. Sam wasn’t sure where she was, but she was climbing up a small rocky pathway. Her brown open sandals were making slight footprints in the dry dusty ground. She stopped to get her breath. She was sure she had been here before, but she couldn’t quite remember when. She bent down with her hands on the ground, as she didn’t want to lose her balance. Sam felt good. She was warm and the sun felt good on her skin. The gentle breeze was blowing through her short hair. She began to hurry, because she knew just beyond the small rise was something special.

As she reached the top of the rise she looked down to a meadow. It was full of swaying flowers of all colours and with a spring in her step she ran down to the meadow, laughing all the way. The fragrance of the flowers was intoxicating. She knelt down and buried her face into the flowers and breathed their scent in. From where she was kneeling she looked up. Coming towards her was a man. He was wearing faded dark blue jeans and a denim shirt and he walked straight and tall. As he walked purposefully towards her, she could see his hair was silver grey. She couldn’t quite see his face though. So she stood up and started to walk slowly towards him. The way he walked made him look familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him. Then she saw his eyes, soft, kind, brown eyes. She knew who this was. He was her soul mate. As they drew closer together, she reached out her hand to his. As her hand slid into the dry warm palm of his, she knew now whom she had been waiting for.

Tolgarth - Part 5 - Mystery

By Arrietty


Sam couldn’t believe it. Someone was sticking something sharp into the back of her hand, which had woken her up. She was beginning to get fed up with this. The last time she had had this dream she had been rudely woken up. Suddenly with realisation she sat up. She remembered the Jaffa shooting her. She also remembered Colonel O’Neill coming into the gate room and lifting her up off the floor. Totally ignoring the nurse who had been trying to install a drip into her hand, Sam quickly scanned the infirmary. Just over on her right, Colonel O’Neill was tossing from side to side on the hospital bed. He too shot up quickly into a sitting position, calling out Sam’s name. Sam climbed off the bed and padded across to O’Neill. She grabbed hold of his shoulders and thus totally ignored Janet’s orders, of not getting anywhere near O’Neill while in the infirmary.

“Jack, I’m here.”

He quickly opened his eyes, reached up and caught hold of her and pulled her into a quick hug. As he released her, they noticed that there wasn’t any sign of blue light or crackling. Finally it was over and they were back to normal. By now Janet had seen them together and rushed over to make sure all of the machinery was switched off. But when she got there, she too realised that there was no danger to her equipment.

“Looks like you’ve got it out of your system.” Janet sighed with relief as she ushered Sam back to her bed.


~^~


Teal’c was sitting in the middle of the floor of his room and had just finished kel’no’reem. He decided now would be a very good time to get something to eat. Maybe afterwards he would go down to the gym and work out, as he was finding the inactivity very boring. Teal’c was glad that O’Neill and Major Carter were back to normal. Maybe now they would be able to go off world soon.

Teal’c carefully extinguished the candles in the room. While he was doing this he went over the conversation they had had in the briefing room the previous day. General Hammond, Dr. Fraiser and SG-1 were discussing the situation that had occurred in the Gate room.

O’Neill was sitting silently doodling on a pad of paper. Major Carter was sitting beside him and she seemed very tense, while she was warily listening to Dr. Fraiser talk.

Dr. Fraiser had more brain scans up on the screen. There were two and they were of O’Neill and Major Carter.

“As you can see, the small white mass in this part of the brain has increased in size; it is now one inch in diameter. As before, they are identical to each other in size.”

At this Major Carter let out a small giggle and looked at O’Neill. O’Neill completely ignored her and just carried on doodling on his notepad. Major Carter frowned and then looked around at Jonas to see if he had noticed, but he was still looking at Dr. Fraiser.

Dr. Fraiser continued speaking. “Major Carter and I have come up with a theory. With the combination of the ‘death gun’ and sarcophagus, we think the healing properties of the sarcophagus were installed into both the colonel and Major Carter. When Major Carter was injured by the staff weapon, the residual power from the sarcophagus healed her.”

O’Neill stopped doodling and looked up and Dr. Fraiser. “This healing power thing, do we still have it or have we used it up?”

“We don’t really know, Colonel. I wouldn’t like to put it to the test, but we are relatively certain that it has gone. The only sign that there was anything left are on these scans. All other visual signs have gone. There is no longer any evidence of the blue light that we had observed before.”

Teal’c let out a small sigh. He wasn’t fully satisfied with the findings and it was frustrating. Without the death gun to study, they were unable to really work out what had happened. He just had to accept that and be pleased that O’Neill and Major Carter were all right. Maybe in the future they would come up with some answers. Until then he decided he was going to keep a very close eye on O’Neill and Major Carter. Because through all of this they had been acting rather strangely and there had been some unexplained occurrences.

~^~

Two days later, SG-1 were suited up and waiting in the gate room to go off world. This was their first mission since Tolgarth had taken Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter prisoners. The MALP had been sent through and as far as they could tell this was an uninhabited planet with the possibility of naquadah deposits. There had been no sign of people or of dwellings.

General Hammond wished SG-1 good luck. As they started up the ramp towards the gate, for a second, Teal’c thought he saw both O’Neill and Major Carter at exactly the same time hesitate half way up. It was so slight, he wondered if he had just imagined it.

Soon they were stepping through to the other side. The planet was warm, dry and very dusty and there weren’t many trees. O’Neill signalled Teal’c to go point, leading them towards some large rocks in the distance. Teal’c immediately complied. Jonas followed and then Carter and O’Neill took up the rear position. Every so often Teal’c turned and observed O’Neill and Major Carter. After a while he noticed that they were walking beside each other. Both were keeping a watchful eye out for any hostiles.

When they arrived at the large rock formations, O’Neill ordered them to stop. O’Neill stood silently for a while and looked at the rock formations. Just as he turned around, Carter spoke to O’Neill.

“Yes, sir, I’ll get onto it right away.”

Teal’c was surprised, because instead of starting to unpack their supplies, she bent down, lifted up her pack containing all the technical equipment. Then she started to walk towards the rock formations and disappeared around behind one of them.

O’Neill turned to Jonas. “Come on, Jonas. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll finish,” and then proceeded to unload the gear.

Teal’c moved over towards where Major Carter had gone and climbed up the side of one of the smaller rocks. Standing up he raised his hand and shielded his eyes from the sun. He gazed out towards an outcrop of trees, which were in the distance. Every so often he looked down to where Major Carter was taking readings and collecting samples to take back to analyse.

Before they had left the base, they had made the decision to stay on the planet for twenty-four hours before returning to the SGC. They wanted to make the most of this visit.

The following day they had broken camp and had started back towards the Stargate. Thankfully there had been no untoward instances. Though Teal’c was still pondering on what had happened the night before. Soon after he had woken Major Carter for her watch, O’Neill had woken up, obviously from a nightmare; he had called out Sam’s name in distress. Major Carter had immediately gone over to him and touched him on the shoulder. She had told him that it was all right and then he had gone straight back to sleep without saying a word.


~^~


Major Carter was walking down the corridor in the SGC. Her mind was working over the latest findings regarding the naquadah deposits they had collected on their last mission. She was tired and her head hurt. She also had found that she had been having trouble sleeping. Often her dreams were filled with Tolgarth and what had happened to them both while on Tolgarth’s planet. It was beginning to get to her. She had tried to talk to Janet about it, but all Janet wanted to do was run more tests and Sam was getting tired of those too.

Without thinking Sam had started to walk towards where Daniel’s office was. It wasn’t until she got there, that she realised what she was doing. She knew then that was whom she wanted to talk too. She always could talk things over with Daniel. She missed him, now more than ever. Naquadah deposits forgotten, Sam walked off towards the elevator and got in. When the elevator had stopped, she opened the door and cautiously looked out. She didn’t want anyone to see where she was going. Sam carefully walked along the corridor until she came to a door. The words Storeroom 16 were painted on it. Carefully she opened the door and slipped in through the opening. Closing the door behind her, she felt for the light switches and switched one of them on. The storeroom wasn’t very large, but large enough. When Daniel Jackson had died/ascended, they weren’t quite sure what to do with his things. So Colonel O’Neill had convinced General Hammond that they would store all of his things on the base. That way there wasn’t any chance of NID or burglars getting hold of anything. Of course Jonas had most of Daniel’s research materials and some of his journals, but his more personal items were in this room.

Sam was pleased to be alone. She started walking carefully through the boxes. She bent down to one of them and opened it, as she looked at the contents she remembered helping Teal’c pack this one. All of a sudden an overwhelming feeling of loss washed over her and she sat down on the floor and leant against the box. Tears began to flow down her face as she laid her head onto her knees and let her emotions take control.

~^~

Teal’c couldn’t find Major Carter. He had tried her lab, the infirmary and the commissary, but she was nowhere to be found. Major Carter had lent him a book and there were parts of the book he didn’t understand and he wanted to ask her what they meant. He spotted O’Neill dressed in civilian clothes waiting by the elevator.

“O’Neill, are you going home?”

“Yes, Teal’c. General Hammond has given us some down time. I haven’t been home for a couple of weeks. I’ve got three days, so I thought I would do some fishing.” A look of alarm flitted across Teal’c’s face. “Hey, don’t worry big guy. I need to go alone. I’m not going to ask you to come.”

With relief, Teal’c asked, “Do you know where Major Carter is, O’Neill?”

“No, sorry. I haven’t seen her since breakfast. Oh, if you see her, can you tell her that General Hammond wants a word with her?” Just then the doors to the elevator opened. As O’Neill stepped through the doorway, he turned to Teal’c. “If you are looking for Carter, try the storage area.” With that comment the doors closed and Teal’c was left standing in the corridor alone.

Teal’c was walking along the corridor outside the storage area. All the doors were closed and there was no sign of Major Carter. Behind him he heard the squeak of a door opening. He turned around and saw Major Carter stepping out of the storage room that housed all of Daniel Jackson’s possessions.

“Major Carter, good, I’ve found you.” Startled, Carter looked up at Teal’c.

“How did you find me?”

Thinking of O’Neill, he remembered the message. “I was asked to tell you that General Hammond wants to see you.”

“Yes, I know. Thank you, Teal’c.” Sam frowned then shook her head dispelling the thought, before continuing to speak. “What did you want to see me about, Teal’c?”

Teal’c thought she sounded tired and he felt he knew her well enough to see that she had been crying. Not wishing to pry, he answered her question. “This book, Major Carter, I do not understand this page.” Opening the book to the page that had raised his curiosity, he then handed it to her to read.

She laughed and with a smile explained what cotton candy was. “When things have calmed down a bit, Teal’c, I’ll take you to a fair and you can taste it for yourself.”


~^~

Sam was standing at the top of the rise. The sky was clear blue and the sun warmed her skin. She knew where she was. She was looking down onto a meadow. It was filled with flowers all different colours and the blooms were swaying in the breeze. Sam had been here before and this was her safe place. She quickly descended down to the meadow. The fragrance of the flowers filled her senses. She felt so free. The stems of the flowers touched her bare legs and made a swishing noise as the skirt of her summer dress brushed against the flower heads. She bent down and started to pick the flowers. Soon her arms were full of blooms. Sam buried her face into the flowers and drank in the fragrance. She looked up and there he was. She knew who he was. He was Jack and he was coming towards her. Flowers momentarily forgotten, she started walking towards him.

~^~

The shrill sound of the telephone rang in her ear. With a groan Sam rolled over and reached for the phone. As Sam slammed down the phone, she swore. It was a wrong number. The last few weeks she had still been having nightmares and this was the first time that she had gone all night without one. It was strange as the good dream always seemed to end at the same point. When she had talked about the nightmares to Janet, she hadn’t mentioned this dream to her, because it was too private.

With a sigh, she climbed out of bed and started to get ready for work. They were planning for another mission. They were hoping to go to a new planet tomorrow and hopefully they would get to see some action. She had noticed that recently Colonel O’Neill was getting fidgety and even Teal’c looked a little bored.

~^~

“Unauthorised Incoming Wormhole,” the technician announced over the sound system.

General Hammond hurried into the observation room. “Is there a code, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir. It is SG-1.”

“Open the iris.”

“Yes, sir.”

The iris slid open revealing the blue surface of the event horizon. Three people staggered through. Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter were supporting Jonas Quinn, as he was obviously hurt. Behind them Teal’c was backing through the Stargate watching for anyone following them through.

As soon as Teal’c had reached the ramp he shouted, “Close the iris!”

As the iris slid closed, they could hear the splat of the energy signature as it hit the iris, just before the Stargate shut down.

“Medic to the gate room.” General Hammond was walking into the gate room. “Welcome back people. What happened?”

O’Neill and Major Carter had set Jonas down on the ground, while Dr. Fraiser was checking over his injuries.

O’Neill stood up and replied to General Hammond, “We stumbled across some Jaffa and they recognised us. I don’t think they like us very much.”

“From which Goa’uld were the Jaffa?”

Both O’Neill and Carter looked decidedly uncomfortable with the question. O’Neill took in a deep breath before he started to answer, but before he had a chance to reply, Teal’c spoke.

“They were Jaffa in the service of Tolgarth.”

General Hammond looked grim. ’Of all the people to skirmish with, Tolgarth was not what he wanted any of his teams to mess with. Especially SG-1.’ “I wonder what he is doing off his planet? It’s a bit far away from his home.”

“This is what I thought too, General Hammond.”

“All right, Teal’c. Thank you. All of you report to the infirmary and I’ll see you in two hours, for debriefing.”

Dr. Fraiser had taken Jonas to the infirmary. She didn’t seem unduly worried and it looked like Jonas had only received a light wound. Not bad enough to put him in danger, but enough to incapacitate SG-1 once again.

It was several days later. Dr. Fraiser had just released Jonas from the infirmary and now she was talking to Sam. Sam was still having trouble sleeping. Her nightmares had increased, especially after the run in with Tolgarth. Sam still hadn’t told Janet about her good dream. Anyway that didn’t happen very often, she could almost count how many of those she had had on one hand. But she was talking about the nightmares.

“Janet, they always seem to include Colonel O'Neill. He’s either being tortured or dying and sometimes it is me that is being hurt. There is one nightmare, where Colonel O’Neill isn’t in. I am in combat. There are soldiers all around me and they are dying. I am injured and I can’t get to them to save them.” Sam sat there thoughtful for a while and then looked up at Janet. “Oh, I’ve remembered more.” She hesitated for a moment before continuing. “I really don’t want to talk about it.” With that Sam stood up and started to leave Janet’s office. As she got to the doorway, Sam let out a cry and clutched her hand. Janet jumped up off her chair and quickly took hold of Sam’s arm and led her over to the light. She quickly studied Sam’s hand.

“What’s wrong? Where does it hurt?”

“Janet, it’s okay now. It felt like someone had run a knife across the back of my hand. It doesn’t hurt at all, see?” Sam held up her hand and waggled her fingers and she gave Janet a reassuring smile. “Hey, you are going to be too late to take Cassie to her concert, if you don’t leave now.”

“Oh yes, thank you, Sam. Are you sure you are all right?”

“Yes, truly I’m fine. Must have just been a twinge.”

Janet removed her white coat and left for the lockers to change into her civilian clothes. Sam followed Janet out and wandered off towards her lab, as she had a little more work to do before she went home.

~^~

The following day, Teal’c and Jonas were just finishing off some translating work. It had taken them a long time. Though Jonas was good, he still lacked some of Daniel Jackson’s expertise. Even though Teal’c enjoyed Jonas’ company, he still missed Daniel Jackson a great deal.

“Hey, you two.” O’Neill was standing at the doorway with a big grin on his face. “Guess what, they have apple pie in the commissary.”

Both Teal’c and Jonas quickly got up from their seats. O’Neill had introduced Teal’c to apple pie soon after he had joined the Tau’ri. This was one earth custom that he really enjoyed. It didn’t happen very often and for some reason there was never enough to go around everyone at the SGC. In turn, Teal’c had introduced the dessert to Jonas and he was just as interested as Teal’c. So with great anticipation they hurried off to the commissary.

As they walked in through the door of the commissary, Teal’c and Jonas let out audible groans as it looked like SG-3, SG-6 and SG-9 had beaten them to it. They were quite sure that there wouldn’t be any desert left for them. Teal’c could see Major Carter sitting at a table over the far end of the room. She was facing away from them and she was sitting alone. O’Neill didn’t seem too bothered with what had happened; he just shrugged his shoulders and started to get his dinner. It was as they thought, all the apple pie had gone. O’Neill didn’t even ask the server if there was any more; he just walked over to the desert table and helped himself to a glass of bright blue Jell-O. He spied Carter sitting over the far end of the room and started making his way towards her. Teal’c and Jonas were annoyed as they had repeatedly asked the server about the apple pie without any positive results. Eventually they gave up. Both deciding that they didn’t really want any desert, they made their way over to where O’Neill and Carter were sitting.

Teal’c and Jonas sat down beside each other opposite Carter and O’Neill. As they put down their plates, they noticed a large desert bowl sitting in front of Carter. In it was a large helping of apple pie and they could see powdered sugar sprinkled over the top. Sitting on top of this slice of heaven, was a double helping of whipped cream. ‘When has Major Carter ever indulged in high calorie foods before...ahh yes…Tok’ra armbands.’ Teal’c questioned and answered himself in one thought.

Major Carter had just finished her dinner when they sat down. She had moved her plate to the side and was perusing some notes. She looked up at Jonas and Teal’c, smiled, then nodded at them and carried on with her papers. Teal’c and Jonas started eating their dinners. Every so often they glanced over at Major Carter, hoping she would take pity on one of them and offer her pie to them. Through all of this, Colonel O’Neill was quietly eating his dinner with a small smile on his face. Major Carter let out a sigh, put her papers down and looked up at Jonas and Teal’c. They had stopped eating and they were looking at her with hopeful gazes. Carter looked down at her space on the table and noticed that there wasn’t much room. She reached forward lifted up her bowl of apple pie with one hand and with the other reached across the table, took hold of O’Neill’s Jell-O and promptly swapped them over. O’Neill looked up at Carter, gave her a smile, turned and looked at Teal’c and Jonas and with a smug expression carried on eating his dinner.

“Oh sorry, Carter.” O’Neill reached across to the Jell-O, removed the fork out of the glass and replaced it with a spoon. Teal’c and Jonas by this time were sitting with surprised looks on their faces. They then both slumped their shoulders down in surrender and proceeded to finish their dinners.

Half an hour later, Jonas and Carter had left the table and Teal’c was sitting watching O’Neill polish off the last of his apple pie. Teal’c had stayed half hoping that O’Neill might just share his desert with him. He watched as the last spoonful disappeared. O’Neill sat back with a self-satisfied expression on his face and looked back at Teal’c.

“All’s fair in love and war, Teal’c.”

O’Neill then started to get up from the table. He stacked his plates and then picked them up with one hand. It was then that Teal’c noticed that O’Neill’s other hand was bandaged.

“What did you do to your hand, O’Neill?”

“I sliced it open on the edge of some ducting. I was helping Siler move some things. Dr. Warner said not to worry, just a few stitches. It should be OK by the time we go on our next mission.”

O’Neill moved away from the table and took his dirty dishes up to the servery and left the commissary. Teal’c sat at the table for a long time, thinking. After a while he got up from the table. He thought it was about time he had a chat with Dr. Fraiser. The coincidences were getting too frequent to be mere coincidence.


~^~

Teal'c and Dr. Fraiser had spent many hours discussing Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter. They had decided that they needed to share their thoughts with General Hammond and the rest of SG-1. Between them, they had come up with a few theories. One being a lot stronger than the others and the only people who could confirm this were Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter.

Dr. Fraiser had called everyone to the briefing room. She once again had the screen up on the wall. O’Neill and Carter looked at it nervously as they came into the room as they weren’t quite sure where this was going. Dr. Fraiser started the ball rolling with the statement.

“Teal’c and I think we may have come up with the reason why Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter have these anomalies in their brain scans. These are routine scans that we have been taking since Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter came back from Tolgarth’s planet. These are the latest scans, which I took yesterday. As you can see the white shape here has increased in size. Once again both scans are identical in size.”

During this speech Teal’c carefully watched O'Neill’s and Major Carter’s reaction. They both tensed up and shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Almost confirming what Dr. Fraiser and Teal’c thought had happened to them.

Dr. Fraiser finishing her speech turned to Teal’c and nodded at him to continue.

“O’Neill, Major Carter, when you were in the sarcophagus, who went first?”

O’Neill looked at Carter. He nodded at her to answer Teal’c.

“Well, we aren’t really sure as we were both dead at the time. I suppose it must have been the colonel, as he was on the bottom.”

Teal’c leant forward. “You mean you were put in together? That is forbidden.”

Teal’c glanced over to Janet. They both now had their theory confirmed.

“I can see why. We blew the thing up.”

“Yes, you are right, O'Neill. That is why the sarcophagus blew up, but it doesn’t explain the healing properties that you retained.”

“So how do you know that Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter being in the sarcophagus at the same time is what caused the explosion? What about the death gun?” asked General Hammond.

“Though it is forbidden, I have heard of this happening once before, a long time ago.”

Dr. Fraiser came over and sat down next to Jonas. She knew the story was going to be a fairly long one and she also wanted to see the colonel’s and Sam’s reaction to the story.

“A long time ago, on a distant planet lived a Jaffa. This Jaffa had many sons and he was proud of them. He was first prime to his god and he was very loyal. His youngest son was four years old, who was full of mischief and always chattering and he had a best friend. This friend was the only daughter of another Jaffa, who was also the prime’s cousin and they were neighbours. The daughter was also four years old and they had grown up together. They had a special bond, as they had been born on the same day. One day a tragedy happened. The two children had been playing in a disused house. Everyone knew that it was unsafe and both children knew that they were not allowed to play there. The roof collapsed killing them both instantly. The first prime was in a quandary. He had the use of the sarcophagus for only a short time, while his god had left it in his care since he was away and the Goa’uld would be returning shortly. The first prime knew that there was only enough time for one child to be saved. He as first prime had the privilege of using the sarcophagus for his son, but he had many sons and his cousin had only his daughter. In the end they decided to place both children into the sarcophagus together. As you know from experience the sarcophagus exploded, destroying it.”

Sam was leaning forward and with a worried voice asked, “Surely not with the children inside?”

“No, fortunately the first prime managed to lift the children to safety first. After the explosion he quickly handed the children over to his cousin, and asked him and his wife to care for them both: ‘take my son as your own, as my life is now over.’ The cousin did as he said and took the children home and brought them both up as his.

When the Goa’uld returned, he executed the first prime and all of his family. Though the two children were safe, they never were the same again. For many years neither of them spoke. It wasn’t until they were about ten years old that their parents found out why. They were telepathic. They talked to each other with their minds.”

Janet was watching both Colonel O’Neill and Sam. They sat there with identical looks on their faces. They were obviously shocked, but Janet wasn’t sure whether they had quite realised the full implications yet.

“Are you saying this is what has happened to us? We don’t talk to each other in our heads, do we, Carter?”

Janet spoke up. “Well actually if you think about it, you do seem to finish off each other’s sentences a lot. And there is the instance of the cut hand.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Colonel, you cut your hand according to the records at 1630 hours. At this time Sam had severe pains in her hand that quickly went away. I know, because I was with her when it happened.”

O’Neill sharply looked around at Carter. “Yes, I agree.” He was speaking to Carter.

Carter looked up at O’Neill. “I didn’t say anything, sir.”

“Yes, you did. I heard you. You said: ‘Oh no, this doesn’t sound good.’”

“No, I didn’t…I thought it.”

O’Neill quickly scanned the other faces in the room. “Jonas, you heard her, didn’t you?”

“No, Colonel, I did not.”

He carried on desperately around the room. Each one in turn shook their heads.

“Think about it, O'Neill. What about the apple pie?”

“What’s apple pie got to do with it?”

“How did Major Carter know, that you would want apple pie. In fact, how did she even know that you were on base, as you had just arrived back? You also knew she wouldn’t want to eat Jell-O with a fork. And how did you know that Major Carter was in the storage area. You said yourself that you hadn’t seen her since that morning. When I found Major Carter, she knew that General Hammond wanted to speak to her. Also on missions I have noticed Major Carter obey silent orders. She has replied to you when you hadn’t even spoken yet, like you just did now.”

Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter were feeling exceedingly uncomfortable. General Hammond was sitting silently. He wasn’t sure what to say first.

“Colonel O’Neill, Major Carter, have you been aware of this?”

“No, sir.” They both replied in unison, almost too quickly to convince everyone in the room, including themselves.

Turning to Dr. Fraiser, he then asked his next question. “What repercussions can we expect from this?”

“Honestly, sir, I don’t know. I would like to run some tests and see how much this is affecting them.”

At this comment, O’Neill and Carter groaned. More tests. They still hadn’t got over the last barrage of tests they had been subjected to.

“Teal’c” asked O’Neill. “What happened to the children? And how do you know about this?”

“I know about this, because the children were my parents.”

Everyone, including Janet, were stunned. They certainly hadn’t expected this outcome. O’Neill and Carter were beginning to get more and more uncomfortable. They both needed to get away from the briefing room and discuss this on their own.


~^~

“You’ve got to admit it, sir. Before the incident in the gate room, when the blue light was showing, there was a connection.”

O’Neill shifted uncomfortably in his seat. They were both in his office, he at his desk and Carter sitting opposite him. O’Neill slowly nodded his head.

“Oh crap!” and then rested his head into his hands.

“I heard you. You just said ‘Oh crap!’ And your mouth didn’t move, just like mine isn’t moving now.”

O’Neill looked up with a start.

“Carter, we’ve got to find a way to reverse this.”

“I don’t think it can be done, unless one of us dies. Do you get a lot of headaches, because I seem to be getting a lot recently?”

“No, I don’t usually, but my head has been hurting a lot. Maybe it’s that white mass thing that the scans picked up.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. One of the theories of the unused part of the brain is that it maybe has telepathic properties.”

“Well, looks like we confirm that theory.”

“Sir, I was thinking. As the white mass increased in size, maybe our telepathic abilities increased.”

“I’m sure I never heard you in my head. Well, not until now that is.”

“I was wondering about that too, sir. When you spoke to me just then in your head, it sounded to me like you were speaking out loud. That must be why we missed it.”

O'Neill screwed up his face in frustration and rubbed his hands across his face.

“So, since the time in the gate room, we have been communicating our thoughts without realising it.”

Carter, without smiling nodded in agreement to O'Neill.

“Sir, I have a question for you. A few weeks ago, when Janet was talking to us about the scans and the size of the mass being the same. Did you say ‘See, Carter’s brain isn’t bigger than mine,’ out loud?”

O’Neill looked up in surprise. “Yeah, I remember thinking that, but no, I didn’t say it. Looks like you heard it though.”

“You realise, sir, this is going to come in very useful when we have to maintain radio silence.”


~^~


Over the next few weeks, Major Carter and Colonel O’Neill were subjected to all kinds of experiments. It started with them sending messages to each other from different rooms, then one off base while another on base. Then Major Carter was sent off world with Teal’c and Jonas to read out a message to Colonel O’Neill, who then had to repeat it to Dr. Fraiser.

“I am not saying that! Dr. Fraiser, this time you have gone too far.”

Colonel O’Neill, Dr. Fraiser and General Hammond were sitting in the briefing room. Teal’c, Jonas Quinn and Major Carter had been sent off world with a sealed envelope that Dr. Fraiser had prepared. They wanted to see just how long the distance was before O'Neill’s and Carter’s connection was broken. By the reaction of Colonel O'Neill, Janet was pretty sure that the connection was still very strong.

“Do I have to order you to do this, Colonel, or is the connection broken between Major Carter and yourself?”

“No, sir, you don’t have to order me to do this. The connection is not broken. In fact, Carter thinks this is all very funny and would like to be a fly on the wall of the briefing room.” With a big sigh, he spoke again. “The message says ‘I, Colonel Jack O'Neill, thinks Dr. Fraiser is a very nice Doctor and is always kind to her patients. And I promise to do as she tells me.’ Happy now, Janet?” He looked pointedly at Dr. Fraiser.

General Hammond tried hard not to smile. It wasn’t very often that someone managed to get one over Colonel O’Neill.

“Can I go now, sir?”

“Yes, Colonel. Dismissed.”

Jack left the briefing room.

“Dr. Fraiser, you do realise that what the colonel and the major are capable of doing, will help us in the fight against the Goa’uld more effectively?”

Dr. Fraiser slowly nodded her head. “I just hope that Colonel O’Neill doesn’t send Major Carter around the bend first.”

Tolgarth - Part 6 - Loss

By Arrietty


O'Neill sat at his desk for a long time after Carter had left. He was finding this really hard to accept. Not only had they gone through a terrible ordeal in the gate room, but now they had to contend with this ability to communicate wherever they were. Leaning forward, he rested his head in his hands. He began to think back to the last few weeks, while they had had this ability. ’Did I know?’ he asked himself. ’This is going to make it so hard, I don’t know if I can hide my feelings any longer.' Then he sat bolt upright. Suddenly realising that Carter might be able to hear him. “Carter, are you listening?”

”Yes, sir.”

”How long?”

”About three seconds, sir.”

”What did I say?”

”Sir?”

”What did I just say?

”You asked me if I was listening?”

”Sir?”

”Yeah.”

”Did you want something, sir?”

”What?”

”Were you about to tell me something?”

”Me, no nothing…nothing.”

”Okay, sir…Have a good night.”

“Yeah, you too, Carter.”

With a big sigh of relief, ’maybe we can’t hear each other’s private thoughts.’ O’Neill leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Once again his mind began to drift back over the past few weeks, going over what had happened.

He remembered back to when he was in the sarcophagus. He knew he couldn’t feel Carter’s emotions then. Thinking really hard he tried to work out when he first noticed them. First of all, he only could feel her emotions when they touched, but that was before Carter had died in the gate room. Then he remembered, after they were zatted by the sarcophagus when he pulled Carter up off the floor. That must have been the beginning, but he was still suffering from the after affects of Tolgarth’s torture. He had thought all those emotions were his. It wasn’t until Carter had grabbed hold of his arm in the infirmary, when he had seen into her soul…it had scared him. No one ever knew what he was really feeling. He had always made sure of that. With a sigh, he leaned forward in his chair and rested his head onto one hand.

“This is going to be difficult.”

O'Neill looked up with a start. “Carter? Is that you?”

“Sir?”

“You spoke.”

“Did I? Sorry, sir, didn’t mean to.”

“That’s ok, Carter.”

O'Neill ran his hands through his short hair in frustration. ‘Yes, it is going to be very difficult’, he thought to himself.

Suddenly a memory came unbidden into his mind. On the day that Janet had them testing the effects of the blue light. He remembered seeing the raw emotions of Carter. It wasn’t just forgiveness or security she had felt for him, there had been more. Something that he knew was going to cause a lot of difficulty for both of them, now they had these abilities. ’At least we can’t see into each other’s emotions anymore,’ he thought with relief.


~^~

It took quite a while for Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter to come to terms with ‘think talk’, as they liked to call it. At first it was a bit of a novelty, O’Neill always knew where Carter was and vice versa. If O’Neill wanted a report on how any of Carter’s projects were progressing, he just had to ask. But after a while, they both began to find it irritating. Carter could be right in the middle of a difficult problem and O’Neill would interrupt, making Carter lose her train of thought.

It hadn’t taken them long to differentiate their thinking patterns. They could both close off their private thoughts and even their surface thoughts. It wasn’t unless they specifically spoke to each other in ‘think talk’, that they were able to hear each other. They also couldn’t read each other’s minds, of which they were both very thankful. What was the most annoying thing was the fact that the entire base assumed they were each other’s answering service. They were expected to pass along messages and divulge each other’s location at any given moment.

After a while they managed to come to a compromise. First of all, unless it was General Hammond asking, they refused to pass messages on to each other. Secondly, Carter tried to convince O’Neill to leave her alone when she was in her lab, of which she was not very successful. And thirdly, they tried to leave this ‘think talk’ at the base. This third one they found the hardest. Carter would suddenly come up with an idea that she wanted to talk over with O’Neill and instead of waiting until the following day, she would like to discuss it there and then. During the first few weeks, they had discovered something else. They always knew when the other one was asleep, as it went quiet. It’s not that they could hear each other thinking, but it was more like a background noise that you only noticed if you really concentrated.

When they were off world, they still used the radios because they were trying to be very careful not to exclude Jonas and Teal’c too much. They weren’t the only ones trying to come to terms with this new development in their team.

Fortunately, through this time the system lords seemed to have kept very quiet. The Tok’ra had managed to establish themselves on several different worlds without any interference from the system lords. O’Neill was very suspicious of the unnatural quiet. He was relatively sure that something was brewing.

~^~

The sky was clear blue. There was a slight warm breeze that made the skirt of her pale blue dress billow out and swirl around her bare legs. Sam knew exactly where she was going. She started to speed up her walking, as she was anxious to reach the brow of the hill. She knew that once she had reached it she would see the beautiful meadow of flowers. When Sam stood on the hill and looked down onto the meadow, she wasn’t disappointed. The summer flowers were as beautiful as she remembered.

Quickly she made her way down to the blooms. The fragrance intoxicated her. She bent down and started to pick the flowers. It was hard to know which ones to choose, as they were all lovely. Small insects were buzzing around the delicate flowers. Sam stood there for a while and watched them, fascinated by their antics. She looked up. There he was and he was walking towards her. Flowers forgotten, Sam started making her way through the flowers. This time she wanted to reach him and nothing was going to stop her. She knew who this was. Her destiny. The one person she could trust with her life. Finally they reached each other. Jack held out his hands to Sam. Suddenly he leaned forward and grabbed her round the waist, lifted her up off the ground and swung her around him in a circle. As he placed her feet on the ground he reached down to kiss her.

~^~

Sam wasn’t sure whom to blame this time. It was the middle of the night. Something had woken her and she had no idea who or what it was. She automatically listened to see if the colonel was awake, but it was silent. “He must be asleep.” She muttered to herself. Climbing out of bed Sam decided to get herself a drink, maybe some camomile tea. Hopefully then she would be able to get back to sleep. Pulling on her dressing gown against the cold, she padded out to the kitchen. She switched on the light and put the kettle on to boil. Looking out at the night sky, she decided that she would like to see the stars. So she reached across to the light switch and turned it off. After a while her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could see the stars. It always amazed her that these stars were the ones that she had visited on her travels as they were so far away.

“Don’t move.” A hand had come around and clamped over her mouth and Sam could feel the cold metal of a knife, touching her neck.

“Do as I say and I will let you live.”

Sam immediately relaxed her body. If she could lull this man into a false sense of security, she could overpower him.

“I don’t think so, Major Carter.”

’Oh no. He knows who I am and what I am capable of doing,’ she thought to herself.

The assailant released his hand over her mouth and pulled her hands back behind her. Before she realised what was happening she felt the cold steel of the handcuffs against her wrists. ’I’m moving too slowly. What is happening? I’m trained to get out of situations like this!’ Just as she finally decided to act, she felt the muzzle of a gun placed against her head. The assailant roughly dragged her over to the lounge and threw her down into one of the chairs. That’s when she noticed that there was more than one man in her house. ’Quick, think. How am I going to get out of this?’ she asked herself.

“What do you want with me?”

“Shut up! We wait. You will find out when he comes.”

Sam sat there for a while. One of the men had tied her feet together while the other held his gun on her. She was certainly in a no win situation. She listened for Jack, but he was still asleep and neither of them had tried to wake each other up with ‘think talk’ before. She tried yelling in her head as loud as she could, but it didn’t work. Sam tried a different method. She gathered herself up and threw herself at one of the men. They reacted in exactly the way she thought they would. The one with the gun hit her across the face. Stars exploded in her head and for a moment everything went black. She thought she had overdone it. If she were rendered unconscious, she would never be able to contact Jack then.

“Whoa! Sam what’s happening? Are you all right?"

“Colonel, listen very carefully.”

She then proceeded to tell him her situation, who and how many were in her home and also, that they were waiting for someone.

By the time she had finished telling him everything she could think of that would help he was in his truck and half way to her house. Jack called up the SF’s at the base. They most probably would get there too late, but it would be good to have some back up.

“Sir, the lights are out.”

“Are you okay? Are you injured?”

“Yes, I’m fine, just a bit sore. It was the only way I could think of to wake you up.”

”Well, it worked.”

O’Neill stealthily crept up to the back door of Sam’s house. Fortunately, he had keys to her house, just as he had had keys to Daniel’s. With what they had to deal with from day to day, it was a precaution that they couldn’t ignore. Sam guided Jack through the door by telling him exactly where the men were and where they were facing.

“Carter, I want you to distract them. Be noisy, so they won’t hear me.”

Sam immediately started to ask them what they wanted. When they ignored her, she started to shout at them to leave. They were so focused on keeping her quiet they didn’t hear or see Jack come up behind them. With two swift blows to the back of their necks, they were both lying unconscious on the floor. Immediately, Jack searched them, finding another set of handcuffs and some more rope. He then made sure they wouldn’t be any trouble by tying them up.

He had found a set of keys for the cuffs when he had searched them. He moved over to Sam and released her. Reaching over he put the lamp on beside her. Quickly he checked her injuries and without thinking he pulled her into an embrace. Neither of them said a word to each other as they held each other tight. When they broke apart Sam looked at Jack. He was looking at her just the way he had in her dream. Her heart began to pound; time seemed to stand still as she looked into his eyes. As he started to lean towards her, he reached up with his hand, resting it on her cheek. Unasked feelings flooded through Sam; relief, worry and tenderness. It felt just like it did before when the blue light affected them, but more so. Just at that moment, light from a moving vehicle flashed across his face. She quickly stood up and moved away from Jack. The SF’s had arrived. Jack hesitated a moment, then stood up and went to the door and let them in, switching the lights on in the process.

“What took you so long? They are in here. We need to take them back to base to find out what they were up to.”

Turning around to Sam. “Major Carter, you had better come too. You need to see Dr. Fraiser.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sam slowly walked into her bedroom to get dressed. As she came out, she noticed that the colonel wasn’t dressed properly. He had his jacket on with no shirt, tracksuit pants and boots without any socks. The journey back to the base was very quiet. The intruders had gone with the SF’s and Sam was travelling with Jack in his truck. The atmosphere in the vehicle was very uncomfortable. Sam didn’t know what to say, they had nearly crossed the line. She realised that for the next few days, things were going to be very awkward between them.

O'Neill spent to whole journey back to base kicking himself. ’What on Earth got into me?” he asked himself unsuccessfully. He wasn’t sure who he was angry at the most: himself, for putting Carter in the difficult situation, or angry with Carter for taking them out of the situation.

The following day, they hadn’t found out much from the intruders. All they said was that they had heard Major Carter had something of value. That they were to enter her house and hold her hostage until their employer arrived. They had no idea who he was or what he wanted. As far as the authorities could ascertain, that was all they were ever going to find out. Afterwards it was suggested that Major Carter should stay on base for a while until they found out more. They had their suspicions that NID were involved, but until they had more Intel, they would just make the necessary precautions.


~^~


Teal’c was first to be aware that things were beginning to deteriorate between O’Neill and Carter, when he had walked into Carter’s lab and had heard them arguing. It wasn’t their normal way of arguing, because it was quite heated. Teal’c had never heard Major Carter talk to O’Neill like that before. She was on the verge of insubordination. Teal’c was surprised that O’Neill hadn’t pulled rank and put her up on a charge. But as soon as Teal’c entered the lab, they stopped talking.

“What do you want, Teal’c?” O’Neill asked brusquely.

“I was wondering what film we were going to view tonight, O’Neill. But I see you are busy. I will converse with you later.” Teal’c turned around and started to walk out through the door. Before he went through he looked back at O’Neill and Major Carter. It was obvious by their body language that they had resumed arguing, but not out loud.

~^~

Three days later, Sam was totally fed up with Colonel O’Neill. She had specifically informed him, that she was going to finish off the calibration of the latest piece of technology she had been putting together. She knew they were meant to be having down time, but she really needed to get this finished. It was delicate work. She needed a steady hand and to be able to put all of her concentration into this. And he, Colonel Jack O’Neill decided to go and play ice hockey with some of his buddies. Why couldn’t he just go fishing? The worse she would have to contend with, would perhaps, be a fishhook in the finger. Not being slammed into the side of the rink every ten minutes and whacked around the legs with a hockey stick. All right, so she wouldn’t have the bruises or the lasting pain the colonel would get, but it still hurt initially and it ruined her concentration. After the fifth time she felt the force of being slammed into the side of the rink, she gave up. She decided to go and find Janet and see if she could come up with something that might stop the colonel.

“Janet, are you busy?”

“Oh, hi, Sam. No, I’m free for a moment. Hey, you look awful. What’s wrong?”

“The colonel is playing ice hockey again. I’m sure he just does it to annoy me.” With that comment, Sam doubled over in pain. She slowly straightened up, ran for the toilet and promptly threw-up. “Serve him right… I hope he’s broken some ribs,” Sam gasped and then leaned back against the wall and looked at Janet.

“Is he all right? Do I need to go down there?”

“Hang on, I’ll ask him.”

“Colonel, what on earth are you doing? Are you all right? Janet wants to know.”

“Well at the moment I’m lying flat on my back, while paramedics prod and poke me. As to knowing if I’m all right? At this time I have no idea, as everything feels numb.”

“Well you are lucky, because I certainly don’t feel numb. Shall I come and get you?”

“Yep! Try Memorial Hospital. They seem to think I need an ambulance for some reason.”

By this time, Sam had come out of the bathroom area and had washed her face and hands.

“Janet you had better bring your bag. We have to make a visit to the Memorial Hospital.”

Janet groaned, took off her coat and reached for her bag. Not that she would need it as the colonel should have been patched up by the time she got there.

As Sam and Janet drove out of the gate, Sam tried to find out more from the colonel.

“Colonel. Colonel? What is happening? Jack will you answer me please?”

Sam looked worriedly at Janet. “He’s not answering me, but he’s conscious. I can sense it.”

“Keep trying him, Sam. Maybe he’s talking with the doctors and can’t talk with you right now.”

Sam nodded and continued to keep trying to contact the colonel. All signs of pain had gone now. She was worried. It wasn’t the first time that the colonel had ignored her, but he hadn’t done it when he knew that they were concerned about him. Finally she smiled; he had spoken back to her. The smile didn’t last long on her face though.

“Janet, we have to get there fast. The hospital wants to do a brain scan on the colonel and then they will find the white mass.”

Janet immediately reached for her cell phone and rang the hospital. After a few conversations with different members of staff, she was able to stop the scan from going ahead before they arrived.

“Tell the colonel what’s happening, will you?”

When they arrived at the hospital, Sam led the way, as she knew exactly where O’Neill was. As they walked into his room, they saw that he was sitting on the side of a hospital bed with his shirt off. He had been strapped up around his chest with bandages and he had a black eye, which was beginning to close up. Sam could see the bruising beginning to show below the bandages across his abdomen. Snorting to herself, she could see the reason why she vomited.

“Well, sir. With respect, serves you right!” With that said, she walked straight back out of the room.

Janet moved over to the colonel and without saying a word proceeded to examine him. When she had finished, she stood back. “You are lucky that I know a few people here, or you will have ended up being the latest unexplained experiment. Come on, you can sign out and we’ll take you back to the base.”

~^~

Several hours later back at the base, Janet was having a quiet word with O’Neill.

“Well your scan came back OK, no permanent damage. What is it with you and Sam? You knew she needed to get her work done and apart from that, when you do something that hurts you, it hurts Sam as well.”

O’Neill shifted uncomfortably on the bed.

“Okay, lecture over. You will be in here for two days. Those ribs don’t need to be jostled around. No!” She held her hand up. “You promised to do as I said,” referring to her trick with the note. “No arguments, you will stay here until I say so.” As Janet walked away she thought to herself, ‘Maybe Sam will be able to get her work done now.’


~^~


Three weeks later, Sam was discussing her nightmares with Janet again. They had got worse in the last three weeks. She was also finding that her headaches had increased.

“I’ve tried asking the colonel about the headaches, but he just shrugs his shoulders and walks away. As for the nightmares, I haven’t even approached him with those. I know he suffers from them too, because it is obvious when we are off world.” Sam sat dejectedly for a while. Janet stayed quiet and waited for Sam to continue. “Do you think the headaches are connected?”

“You know I can’t discuss the colonel’s medical condition with you. It is confidential.”

“Well, Janet, if he won’t talk to me about it and you can’t talk to me about it, I will give you permission to talk to him about my headaches. Maybe that will help. Will it Janet?”

Janet gave a small smile, handed Sam some more painkillers and told her to go and get some rest.


~^~

Sam was standing in a hallway of a house. The walls of the hallway were made of a light coloured timber. It was mid summer and warm. She had never been here before. There were pictures on the walls and a skateboard leaning up against the staircase. A woman came out of one of the rooms and walked right past Sam. She looked familiar, but Sam couldn’t quite place her. The woman hadn’t seen her standing there, which Sam thought was strange. The woman went to the front door, as she pulled it open, she went outside, leaving the door open. A young boy came rushing through the door. He raced past Sam and shot up the staircase. Sam frowned. The boy looked familiar too, but she couldn’t work out where she had seen him before. Soon after, Sam heard a shot come from upstairs. Uncharacteristically shocked, Sam stood still. Just then a man came in through the door. It was Jack. He was a lot younger and his hair was still brown. Sara his wife followed him closely. They ran up the stairs calling out to their son. Sam couldn’t move. She wanted to follow them, even though she knew what she would find. The next thing she knew she was standing in the bedroom. Jack had lifted up his son, yelling at Sara to call 911. Sam turned her head away as she didn’t want to watch this tragedy. She looked over to her right and she looked straight into Jack’s eyes. Not the Jack of several years ago, but the Jack of today. He had been crying. He took one menacing step towards her. “How dare you? What are you doing here? This has nothing to do with you! This is my private hell!” All the time he was walking towards her, she was frightened. Sam started to back away as she didn’t like the look in Jack’s eyes. Now this would be a very good time to wake up.

~^~

Sam sat bolt upright. She could feel the tears on her cheeks and she quickly wiped them away. She thought over what had just happened and she realised that she had been living one of Jack’s nightmares. Maybe that is what she had been doing all the time, the nightmares weren’t hers, they were his. Sam quickly checked to see if Jack was awake. When she realised that he was, she decided to leave him alone. If he wanted to talk to her, he would. Sam didn’t really want to talk to him anyway at the moment. He had really scared her.

The following day Sam was busy working in her lab, when the call came through to attend an emergency meeting in the briefing room. She hadn’t managed to speak to the colonel yet and when she had tried to ‘think talk’ he had ignored her. With a small amount of trepidation she walked to the briefing room. She was surprised at the colonel’s reaction when she walked in. He acknowledged her with a small nod. But she wasn’t surprised at what followed, because after that nod he completely ignored her. Sam sat down next to O’Neill and looked at General Hammond.

“Good, you are here, Major. We have just heard from SG-9 and SG-4. The two teams are in serious trouble. They were overdue, so we sent a MALP through. We had a few moments of communication before it was destroyed. They are being attacked by an unknown force of Jaffa and are trapped. In one hour, SG-4 will launch an offensive on the Stargate. This will be our window for you to go through the gate. SG-9 are trapped inside a building, eight miles from the Stargate. SG-4 are concealed near the Stargate, but haven’t attempted to get through as they didn’t want to leave SG-9 behind.”

“Do they have any idea at all who we will be dealing with?”

“No, Colonel, what I’ve told you is all the information I have. Be ready at 1055 hours in the gate room. Dismissed.”

Before Sam got a chance to speak to the colonel, he had risen from the table and walked out of the door. Sam looked across the table at Teal’c. He had been watching her. Teal’c bowed his head in acknowledgement and followed the colonel.

SG-1 were standing ready in the gate room. Dead on 1100 hours General Hammond gave them the go ahead. They walked purposefully up the ramp through the Stargate. As soon as they reached the other side, they could see five Jaffa lying on the ground. Sam immediately recognised the insignia on their foreheads. The Jaffa belonged to Tolgarth. She glanced quickly at O’Neill “Uh Oh!” He nodded back in agreement; he had seen the marks too. Moving swiftly they joined SG-4 in the trees. Two of them were injured badly.

“Major Keating. I want you to send your injured men back through the gate. The rest of you come with us. Major McDonald needs our help.”

Soon, SG-1 and half of SG-4 were silently moving through the forest towards where SG-9 were holed up. As they approached, they could hear the sound of weapon fire and blast weapons in full battle. O’Neill directed Teal’c, Carter and Jonas around the back of the building that SG-9 were in. Major Keating, his lieutenant and O’Neill came around from the front. Because O’Neill was communicating with Carter all through this, they were able to attack exactly at the same time taking the Jaffa totally by surprise. O’Neill burst through the door of the building. They found SG-9, but Major McDonald and Lt. Grogan were injured.

“Quick, we won’t be able to hold them off for long. You,” pointing to Lieutenant Andrews, “come with me.”

“Carter, get everyone out of here and send Teal’c down. I’ll need him.”

“He can’t, sir. He’s injured. Nothing too serious though.”

“OK, get going. We will be right behind you.”

Carter could hear the sound of weapons firing and then she saw SG-9 and SG-4 come racing around the side of the building. The others supported the two men. She knew that Lieutenant Andrews was with the colonel. So Carter and Jonas supporting Teal’c between them, started back towards the Stargate.

When they arrived at the Stargate, they could see the death gliders come swooping down firing at them. Carter quickly dialled the coordinates to Earth. ‘Where on earth has Tolgarth managed to get death gliders from and why is he away from his planet?’ She thought it was very strange. Soon everyone had gone through the gate except Teal’c and herself. They crouched down by the DHD and waited for Colonel O'Neill. She knew he wasn’t far away. She looked across at Teal’c and noticed that he was already beginning to heal. She never ceased to be amazed at how quickly the symbiote could heal him.

“Not long now, they are nearly here. They are just behind that ridge.” As Carter started to stand up, she doubled over in pain and let out a cry. After a few seconds she looked up at Teal’c with horror in her eyes. “They’ve been hit. I’ve got to go back for them. You need to stay here, Teal’c.

Teal’c nodded. “I will keep the Stargate open, Major Carter.”

“Thank you.”

Sam immediately got up from her crouched position and ran back towards the ridge. Zig zagging across the uneven terrain; she hoped that the death gliders wouldn’t be able to hit her.

As she reached the ridge, she bent down and lay on the ground. Inching along slowly, she carefully looked over the top. The death gliders had left the ground pock marked with craters; she could see Lieutenant Andrews lying beside the nearest one to her. She couldn’t see the colonel though. Carefully, she slid down the side of the ridge. She didn’t want to draw any attention to herself and put them into further danger. Eventually, she reached Lieutenant Andrews. It was obvious that he was dead. Just to make sure she checked his pulse. Finding no pulse, she pulled off his dog tags and placed them in one of her pockets.

“Sir, where are you? I can’t see you.”

“I’m not sure, Carter. I can’t see you either.”

Sam slowly stood up and searched the area. Then she saw Jack about fifty yards away. Some rocks and dirt half buried him. Quickly she ran over to him. Sam didn’t like the look of him. His face was ashen in colour and his breathing was laboured. She quickly cleared the debris away from Jack’s legs. He was lying on the ground with his hands clutched to his abdomen; blood was oozing through his fingers.

“Hi, sir, what have you been doing to yourself?”

Pulling his hands away, she grabbed some field dressings and started to pack the wound. As she lifted away his jacket, she saw the extent of his injuries and it didn’t look good.

The front of his chest was bleeding and blood was coming from his abdominal area far too fast. She had to stop the bleeding. Just then a blast from a death glider hit the ground just above them. Sam quickly laid herself over Jack to stop all the dust and debris from hitting him. When the small stones and dust had settled, she leaned back. Jack’s blood had started to pool on the ground beside him and she could feel it soaking into the knees of her pants.

“Sam, get out of here. Leave me. You can’t do anything for me.”

“No, sir, I will not leave you. Remember, we don’t leave anyone behind.”

Pulling out more field dressings, she replaced the old blood soaked ones. She knew this was futile but she had to try.

“Sam?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For being such an idiot.”

“It’s all right, all is forgiven.”

Sam had placed her hands on the wound to try and staunch the flow of blood, but it wasn’t working. Sam was holding all her emotions in, but it was hard. She could feel them rising up through her. Jack reached out his right hand and grabbed hold of Sam’s jacket and pulled her towards him.

“Leave me.” His voice was strained.

Sam reached up her hand and touched his face.

“No. I won’t.”

As she held his face in her hand, she could feel Jack’s emotions. With this final surge of external emotion, she was unable to hold hers at bay any longer.

“I can’t, I love you too much, Jack.” She knew this was the right thing to say, before Jack even spoke to her.

“I love you too, Sam,” Jack replied very weakly.

Bending down, Sam kissed him. Jack’s hand caught hold of the back of her neck and held her there. A great feeling of anguish filled her inside. Up until that moment, she hadn’t felt any of Jack’s pain, except when he was first hit. Now the full force of the excruciating pain hit her as Jack let all of his emotions flow out to her. She knew then, just how much this man really loved her. As quickly as the pain had come it went. Sam could feel his hand sliding down her shoulder as she felt the essence of Jack fading. It was silent, like when he was asleep, but he wasn’t. Moving back away from him, she studied his face. His eyes were closed and he looked at peace. Scrubbing the tears away, she left blood and dirt smeared over her face. Sam then carefully bent down, lifted Jack’s head and removed his dog tags. Clutching them tightly in her fist she slowly stood up, not caring if the death gliders saw her. Taking the dog tags, she carefully placed them over her head and tucked them into her shirt.

All this time everything had been silent to her. She couldn’t hear the bombing and the firing from the death gliders. Then the crackle of her radio broke through the silence. It was Teal’c.

“Major Carter, O’Neill, come in.”

“Here, Teal’c.”

“The Jaffa forces are increasing and they are coming your way. You must hurry.”

“On my way, Teal’c.”

Sam took one last look at Jack and then started running, dodging the weapon fire. The tears were pouring down her face and she couldn’t stop them. She couldn’t believe that he was gone. She hadn’t run far, when a large explosion landed behind her, throwing her to the ground. Looking behind her as she got up, she could see that if she hadn’t left when Teal’c contacted her, she could have been caught in the explosion. Sam ran up to the Stargate yelling at him to go through.

“Where are O’Neill and Lieutenant Andrews?”

Sam shook her head at Teal’c and motioned him to go through the gate. Teal’c started back towards where Sam had just run from. Reaching out with her hand, she caught hold of Teal’c’s arm to stop him.

“They are dead. The colonel and the lieutenant are dead.”

Without wasting anymore time, Teal’c spun around and pushing Carter in front of him ran through the gate.

“Close the iris,” yelled Carter as they arrived at the SGC.

Just then, a staff weapon blast followed them through the Stargate and hit Teal’c on the shoulder sending him careering into Carter and they both fell crashing down the ramp.

~^~

In the infirmary, Dr. Fraiser was having trouble controlling her emotions. Sam was covered in blood lying on a hospital gurney. The nurses were furiously cutting her clothes off to find out where she was injured. Dr. Warner was looking after an unconscious Teal’c, but otherwise he looked like he was going to be all right. Dr. Fraiser could see the large contusion on Sam’s forehead and had already started to see to that, but the quantity of blood was what worried her. It was all down the front of her jacket and had soaked into her trousers. After Sam’s clothes had been removed, she felt an almost overwhelming relief to see it wasn’t Sam’s blood. There wasn’t any sign of an injury, only the bump on the head.

“Doctor! Look at this.” One of the nurses held up the two sets of dog tags. They were covered in blood.

“Whose are they?” With a feeling of dread, Janet reached over and took the dog tags from the nurse. Wiping each one on a cloth, she then started to read them. The first one was Sam’s the second was Colonel O’Neill’s. Janet looked down at Sam’s face and saw the tearstains smeared over her face. She now knew whose blood this was on Sam’s uniform.

“Nurse, take these clothes to the lab. I want an analysis on them to determine whose blood this is. Tell them to look for Colonel O’Neill’s, Major Carter’s and Lieutenant Andrews, ASAP.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

In the briefing room, Dr. Fraiser was talking to General Hammond. “Teal’c is going to be all right as his wounds are being healed by his symbiote. Major Carter has only suffered a head wound and she is still unconscious. We still aren’t sure exactly what has happened to Colonel O’Neill or Lieutenant Andrews, but the tests came back positive. 95% of the blood on Major Carter’s clothes was Colonel O’Neill’s. There is no way he would have survived that amount of blood loss.”

“And the other 5%, whose is that?”

“A mixture of Lieutenant Andrews’, Teal’c’s and Major Carter’s, leaning to most of it being Teal’c’s.”

“Thank you, Doctor. How long will it be before Major Carter will be able to talk to us?”

“I don’t know, sir. She should have come to by now, but she seems to have shut down. This is going to be very hard for her with the telepathic connection; it will be a big loss for her.”

General Hammond watched Dr. Fraiser leave his office. After she closed his door he let out a large sigh. It was full of sadness. He was going to miss Colonel Jack O’Neill very much.

Two hours later, Janet was sitting in her office catching up on her paper work. She had written the reports on the team members of SG-4 and SG-9 that had been injured and she was just waiting on Sam’s and Teal’c’s. She couldn’t even start on Colonel O’Neill’s and Lieutenant Andrews’ until Sam and Teal’c had woken up.

Janet quickly got up from her seat. She had heard a scream. She rushed out into the infirmary and she saw Sam half way out of her bed calling out Jack’s name. Janet rushed up to Sam and caught hold of her arms.

“Sam! You are safe. You are here.” Sam opened her eyes and looked at Janet. “He’s dead. I couldn’t save him.” Tears had started to roll down Sam’s face. Janet reached over and pulled the curtains closed. Then she sat on the bed and hugged Sam tight. “I know, Sam. I know,” she murmured quietly to her friend.

Tolgarth – Part Seven – Moving On

By Arrietty


Major Samantha Carter was sitting in her lab, finishing off a report on the latest analysis findings on the minerals from planet PX 849. She found she needed to keep busy. It had been three weeks since the run in with Tolgarth and his Jaffa. Without the constant use with ‘think talking’ with Jack, the white mass in her brain was slowly decreasing in size. Janet had released her for light duties and soon she would be back on active duty.

Sam felt well rested. In fact she hadn’t felt so good physically for several months. The headaches had stopped and she hadn’t had a single nightmare for three weeks. She hadn’t even dreamt. The last time was when she woke up in the infirmary. Sam had heard Jack calling out her name to save him. He had sounded terrified, but she couldn’t find him. Then, that was it, nothing. It confirmed her thoughts that the nightmares that she had suffered, were actually Jack’s and that she had just been sharing them although she had had similar types of nightmares of her own in the past. It now explained the one dream that had always confused her. It was the one where Jack wasn’t there. She now realised that she must have been in Jack’s shoes as it was totally his dream. With a small sigh, she looked at her watch. It was time to go and see General Hammond. ’I wonder what he wants to see me about.’

Sam walked into General Hammond’s office and stood at attention in front of his desk.

“Major Carter. Please, sit down.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Major Carter. Colonel O’Neill’s wishes were that you would take on the leadership of SG-1 if anything should happen to him. I happen to agree with him.” General Hammond paused for a moment as he watched the realisation of what he had just said come across Major Carter’s face. “There is also something else that you were not aware of. I had put it on hold in light of the recent events. But a promotion had come through for you to be made a Lieutenant Colonel.”

Sam sat there dumbfounded as she was still trying to get over the fact that she would be leading SG-1, let alone a promotion.

“Thank you, sir.”

“I have here three dossiers on three different potential additions to SG-1. I’d like you to look through these and come back to me with your thoughts.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Has Teal’c said anymore of what he wishes to do?”

“No, sir he hasn’t.”

“Dismissed, Lieutenant Colonel Carter.” General Hammond was smiling as he spoke. He watched the smile spread across Colonel Carter’s face when she heard him call her Colonel. It was the first time he had seen her smile since Colonel O’Neill had died.

Sam walked down the corridor of the SGC with the folders clutched in her hand. She couldn’t believe it, because she had assumed another team leader would have been brought in over her head. She was pleased that she was leading the team and also that Jack had thought her capable. She just hoped that the others felt the same. Sam was relatively certain that they would.

Shutting the door to her lab, she sat at her desk and started to study the dossiers. The first one was a Major Trent. She had worked with him before and he was a good soldier. The only thing was that he might find it difficult to listen to her orders as they had been equals up to a few minutes ago. Also, he was slightly sexist in his attitude. Putting the folder aside she opened the next one. This was of a Captain Green. From what Sam could see she was an excellent soldier, but was totally unknown to her. Sam thought it would be nice to have another female on the team, but she couldn’t use that as a reason for her decision. Picking up the last folder, she opened it: Lieutenant Grogan. Sam smiled and was pleased. She had made her decision. Grogan would be on her team. Sam got up from her desk and made her way to General Hammond’s office; she hoped that he would agree with her decision.

Later in General Hammond’s office, Sam had just revealed whom she would like to add to her team.

“Excellent choice, Colonel Carter. He will make a good addition to SG-1. Would you like to tell him yourself?”

“Yes, sir, I would, but I would like to inform the rest of the team first about what is happening.”

“Good idea. Colonel, tell me. What made you choose Lieutenant Grogan?”

“I have no doubts about him, sir and I know from personal experience that I can trust him in combat conditions.”

General Hammond gave a small smile and nodded at Carter.

“Dismissed.”


~^~


“Jonas that is my decision and my decision is final. Grogan is not replacing the colonel. If anything, it is me who is replacing the colonel and Grogan is replacing me.”

Jonas glanced across at Teal’c, but as usual Teal’c was showing no emotion at what had transpired here. Getting up abruptly, Jonas walked out the door.

Sam sat down with a sigh. “This is going to be harder than I thought, Teal’c. I thought everyone would be pleased. You are okay with this, aren’t you, Teal’c?”

“I thought your decision was final, Lieutenant Colonel Carter. Congratulations on your promotion.”

“Thank you, Teal’c,” Sam said, giving him a small smile.

“I think Jonas is taking the loss of O’Neill a lot harder than we have allowed him. He hadn’t known O’Neill long, so I believe we have tended to disregard his feelings.”

“Yes, I think you are right, Teal’c. Can you talk to him? It will come better from you.”

Teal’c nodded his head at Sam and walked out of her lab, but she quickly called him back.

“Teal’c, have you decided what you want to do yet?”

“No. I hadn’t until now. I wish to stay with SG-1. That is, if you will let me serve with you on your team?”

“Of course, Teal’c, I am glad you are staying. And thank you, Teal’c.”

Teal’c nodded his head in respect to Sam and then left her lab.

Sam was still using her lab as her office. General Hammond had offered her Jack’s office to use, but she hadn’t felt comfortable about using it yet. ‘Maybe in time,’ she thought.

Sam was relieved that Teal’c was staying. She had found it very hard with Daniel leaving and then Jack dying. The thought of Teal’c leaving too would have been too much to handle. Teal’c had also been very quiet since he and another team had gone back to the planet where Jack and Lieutenant Andrews had died, to see if they could recover the bodies. They had reported total devastation. The Goa’uld had obliterated everything. She had seen the pictures and the once green land was now a blackened smoking ruin of craters and rocks. When Teal’c had returned he stood for three days in the gate room. Only moving to take a short break for kel’no’reem and use the facilities. Then he would take up his stance beside the ramp looking at the Stargate. It was almost as though the Stargate represented Jack’s coffin and Teal’c was taking up vigil beside it. Janet had tried to get Sam to talk to Teal’c as he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for two days by then. But Sam had refused to help Janet and when Janet had suggested that it was about time Teal’c had moved on, Sam had walked out on her. Since then, Sam had managed to repair her friendship with Janet, but until now she hadn’t been sure that Teal’c was all right. She wasn’t sure that she was all right yet herself. In fact, if she was honest with herself, she knew she would never be all right again. Getting up from her desk, she made her way to tell Lieutenant Grogan that he would be joining SG-1.


~^~


Two days later, SG-1 were off world and working well together. Sam wasn’t sure what Teal’c had said to Jonas, but it had worked. There wasn’t any tension in the team and things seemed to be running smoothly. They had just left a local village that was situated near the Stargate. They had been there before and the people had been kind and welcoming. Sam had found it hard explaining to them about Colonel O’Neill’s death. She realised that this was going to be a regular occurrence for a while. When they arrived back at the Stargate, she stood and watched patiently while Lieutenant Grogan dialled them home. Sam felt a bit weird, because usually, she was the one who dialled them out. There were a lot of things she was going to have to get used to.

As she stepped through to the other side of the Stargate behind her team, she saw her father standing at the bottom of the ramp. Sam felt relieved as she really needed her Dad at the moment. By the look on his face, she realised that General Hammond must have told him. Immediately, she felt the beginning of tears form. Blinking the tears away, she walked down to her Dad. As soon as they were in her lab, Sam locked her door and threw herself into Jacob’s arms. Sobbing she told him everything that had happened on that fateful day. Jacob wasn’t surprised at all. He had known that his daughter and Jack were having trouble keeping their feelings under control and the fact that they had become telepathic had made things considerably worse. Jacob soothed her and said that he understood and that he would be staying a few days this time. He would come home with her for a while and spend some time with her. Sam was grateful; she really needed his company for a while.

“I will ask General Hammond if he will let me have a few days off.”

“It’s already arranged, Sam. As soon as you’ve been checked out at the infirmary, we can go. I’ll have to get changed though.”

Sam smiled up at her dad through her tears. “Thanks, Dad.”

While they were driving through the winter rain to get to her house, Sam thought about her outburst in the lab. This was so unlike her, as she never got this emotional over anything, especially in front of her dad. She had noticed lately, that she had found it very hard to keep the tears at bay. It didn’t take much to set her off crying. She knew if she were going to be able to lead SG-1 successfully, she would need to take better control of her emotions.


~^~


Sam was walking up a small track. The sky was a clear deep blue and a slight breeze moved through her short hair and made the skirt of her summer dress billow out around her bare legs. Her brown open sandals were making slight footprints in the dry dusty ground. Reaching out, she bent down to help herself over a difficult part of the pathway. She knew where she was and where she was going. She started to climb faster, because she had to get to that ridge.

When she reached the top, she looked down. It was just as she remembered. The flowers swayed in the breeze. They were all the colours of the rainbow and the fragrance wafted up to her from the full-headed blooms. Not waiting for a second she rushed down amongst the flowers, looking for him. Where is he? She started to walk through the flowers towards the direction he had come from before. As she walked, she noticed the ground crunched beneath her feet. She looked down to see what she was walking on. It was the flowers. They had withered and had turned black. She reached down and closed her hand over a black bloom. The once beautiful flower crumbled in her hand and a small cloud of dust puffed up through her fingers. In a panic she looked all around her. The flowers were all blackened as though they had been in a fire. Looking down again, Sam noticed that her dress was covered in the black soot from the flowers.

Sam carried on towards the other side of the meadow. When she reached the other side, she came to a large outcrop of rock. Imbedded into the side of the rock was a black wrought-iron gate. She carefully opened it and walked through. Sam was walking down a large corridor. There were torches burning with a naked flame, set into the walls of the corridor. The ground was made up of hard packed earth. The corridor looked familiar to her. It reminded her of Tolgarth’s tunnels in his castle. Finally, she came to the end of the corridor. Across the end of the tunnel, set into the walls on either side, was a large iron cage. The flat bars were about two inches wide and criss-crossed by weaving in and out of each other. The gaps in between were eight inches in diameter. Sam cautiously walked up to the wall of the cage and peered in through one of the gaps. She had found Jack. He was chained up against the far wall and someone was torturing him. He was in tremendous pain, but she couldn’t see who it was doing this to him. Frantically, she looked around the cage wall hoping to find an entrance, but she couldn’t find anything.


~^~


“Hey, Sammie, wake up. It’s all right!”

Sam awakened with a start. Looking at her father and quickly wiping her face, she muttered, “Just a nightmare, Dad. I’m all right. Go back to sleep.”

“Are your sure, Sam? I’ll stay, if you want me to?”

“No, Dad. I’m okay. I have lots of nightmares and I’m used to them.” She gave her Dad a reassuring smile and watched him walk out of her room.

As soon as Jacob had closed her door, Sam leaned back against the headboard of her bed and thought about what had just happened. She was dreaming about when they had been tortured by Tolgarth again. Sam had thought the bad dreams had stopped when Jack had died. She really hoped this wasn’t going to be regular occurrence again.


~^~


Teal’c walked into O’Neill’s old office. Lieutenant Colonel Carter was sitting at the desk going through some papers. She certainly had made an improvement to the place. On the shelf behind her was a large vase of hothouse flowers. A very strong perfume filled the room which was coming from the colourful blooms. Parts of her lab seemed to have found there way into the room, also small bits of machinery were littered across her desk amongst her papers.

“Hello, Teal’c.” Sam looked up with a smile.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Carter.”

“Eh, Teal’c I think we need to do something about my name, don’t you? It’s a bit long. How about you call me Sam, or Carter, I don’t mind which?”

Teal’c bowed his head in acknowledgement.

“General Hammond needs you in the briefing room immediately, Sam.”

She was pleased that he had chosen to call her Sam.

“Thank you, Teal’c. I’m coming.”

Getting up from her desk with a smile, she followed Teal’c out of her office down the corridor towards the elevator.

As Sam and Teal’c walked into the briefing room, Sam was surprised to see her father sitting at the table.

“Dad, hi. I thought you had gone.”

“ Hello, Sam. I will explain in a minute.”

“Okay, Jacob, why have you come back so soon? What’s happening?”

“Well, George, since I saw you two days ago, a lot has happened. You remember when Jack said he thought something was brewing, well he was right. Anubis and the system lords have been systematically attacking our Tok’ra strongholds. Unfortunately, they have been very accurate; many of our people have been taken as prisoners. At the moment no planet that we have used as a back up for refuge, is safe. Tolgarth seems to be in the picture too, I think he must be using that new device that Sam spoke of. It seems a lot to have happened in only two days, but while I was here for the three days, it all seemed to have come to a head. You must be extra cautious with everyone who comes through your Stargate, even with the Tok’ra. We just don’t know who to trust anymore.”

“Dad, where are you going to go when you leave here?”

“I don’t know yet, Sam. It will have to be a planet that we haven’t been to before. The Tok’ra are scattered right across the Universe. We have lost contact with each other. Twenty-four of us are here at the moment and it is something we will have to discuss amongst ourselves.”

“Jacob, you are welcome to stay here as long as you need to, at least until your wounded are healed.”

“Thank you, George, but we need to keep moving. Maybe we can find the others and we can’t help them holed up here.”

“Maybe Colonel Carter can look through our data banks and find some possible planets for you?”

Jacob looked up startled at General Hammond. Closing his eyes and bowing his head he then raised his head again and Selmac spoke.

“General Hammond, that is most generous of you. We will take you up on this offer. Maybe then we will be safe for a while.”


~^~


Jacob’s visit seemed to herald the beginning of a full-scale war. When Jacob was speaking to them, they thought it was something that was only affecting the Tok’ra. But only days afterwards, an uninhabited planet that was being tested for naquadah by an SG team was raided. Two were killed and the other two were unable to be found. They found a dead Jaffa who had been in the service of Tolgarth. They had to assume that the missing team members were prisoners of Tolgarth.

Sam found that she didn’t have time to keep grieving for Jack as she was too busy trying to work out Tolgarth’s next move. Several friendly planets they had known had been raided by Tolgarth’s Jaffa. The Jaffa hadn’t used the Stargate, but had come in ships and attacked from above. The small villages of these planets hadn’t had a chance. Sam was furiously sending out different teams to other planets that hadn’t been hit yet, trying to get the residents to move to a safer place. Often the teams would arrive and they would be too late as the towns and villages would be wiped out. Instead of being mainly an exploration team, SG-1 was becoming a clean up the mess team. Everyone at the SGC was tired. General Hammond hadn’t been home for several weeks now.

SG-1 was all suited up to go to PX-953. They needed to go to this planet to warn the people who lived there. Sam was pretty sure that the two missing scientists that had been taken by Tolgarth were not aware of this planet, but she still didn’t want to take any chances. All the codes had been changed in the computer system. Each team was given a new code when they left, which was changed again the next time they left. They couldn’t take any chances.

When they arrived at the village, it was quite calm. People were quietly going about their work and the children were playing outside their homes. Though as soon as the villagers saw SG-1, they dropped what they were doing and rushed forward to meet them. Sam asked to see the village elders.

SG-1 was seated around a table discussing the problem with the elders of the village. Sam was trying to explain the danger that they might be in.

“But, Samantha, we are safe. The Goa’uld that you speak of, have never bothered us before and they are not likely to. We have nothing of value to them. We are but a small village.”

“I’m sorry, but we believe that you may be in danger. Not because of what you have or are, but because you are known to us. We believe that this Goa’uld will attack you just to get to us. You must pack up your things and move far away from here. The further from the Stargate you are, the better. It will be only for a while, until things calm down. If you would rather, we could find you another planet to move to. There are a number of planets that should be safe.”

Just then they heard some shouting coming from outside the building. They heard the whine of death gliders, swooping over the village. There was a great explosion as one of the houses was destroyed by fire, followed by screams from the villagers. Teal’c, Grogan and Jonas quickly moved out of the building. Sam spoke quickly to the village elders.

“You must come quickly. Gather everyone together. We may make it to the Stargate in time. Don’t worry about bringing your things; we will help you settle into your new home.”

With that said, Sam followed the rest of SG-1 outside. Teal’c and Grogan were already firing at the death gliders as they dive-bombed the village. Jonas had two crying children, one tucked under each arm. Teal’c was firing his staff weapon at the enemy with excellent results. Sam watched as a death glider whined its way through the air with smoke billowing out of the fuselage. It then crashed into some trees. Soon, most of the villagers had been collected together and they started running towards the Stargate. Teal’c led the group and Sam took up the rear making sure that no stragglers were left behind. They were nearly at the Stargate when a blast hit the group of villagers. It landed right in the middle of them, killing many of them instantly. Sam quickly bent down and lifted an injured toddler up into her arms. He was crying and there was no sign of his parents. When Sam arrived at the Stargate, Teal’c had already dialled it up and had gone through to the SGC to warn them of what was happening. Grogan was trying to hurry the villagers through. The death gliders banked around and started to come around for another strike at the group. Fortunately, Sam had just arrived and the last of the villagers had gone through. It just left Jonas, minus the two crying children, which were safely at the SGC, Grogan and herself still carrying the crying boy.

“Come on. Let’s go.” Sam pushed Grogan through the Stargate, waited until Jonas had gone through and quickly ran through after him.

The SGC was in turmoil, when they arrived. The gate room was full of shell shocked injured people. Some were crying. Children were calling out for their parents, parents calling out for their children. It was hard to believe that you could fit fifty people in the gate room, but they seemed to have managed it. Sam didn’t envy Janet today; she knew that she would have her work cut out for her.


~^~


Over the next two months, things got worse. The Asgard had now become involved as the system lords had openly broken the treaty with the Asgard by attacking protected planets. The Asgard certainly had their hands full. The replicators were still causing them trouble, even though not as bad as previously. So the Asgard were stretched very thin. They had the only ships that were large enough to penetrate the hulls of Anubis’ ships. Fortunately, Anubis hadn’t been generous and shared his technology with the other system lords. So the system lords were still vulnerable to the smaller ships that were available.

Throughout this time, Sam had been working on defence shields for Earth. This had been hard to do. When she wasn’t off world with SG-1 or finding new planets for the refugees they would bring back, she was working with her science team on the shields. The Asgard had offered to help her and had sent plans to her. She had found them hard to understand. The technology was way ahead of them, but not impossible to decipher. If only she had more time.

Sam was still having trouble sleeping. The dreams had become more frequent, three or four times a week. Every time she would find Jack, he was being tortured. The previous night the dream was slightly different. When she had looked at her dress, it had been covered in blood. She tried not to think about it, but every so often, like now the memory would come unbidden, flooding her thoughts. Suddenly, she heard the klaxons sounding; there was a breach in the security. Picking up her firearm, she quickly made her way to the gate room. She could hear the sound of rifles firing and staff weapons discharging. By the time she got there, it was all over. There were dead Jaffa lying on the floor of the gate room and several injured SF’s. Janet was bending over someone on the floor. It was Teal’c and he was badly hurt. Quickly, he was whisked off to surgery. Sam seeing that everything was under control, followed behind wanting to know how Teal’c was. It was four and a half hours before Teal’c came out of surgery. Janet looked tired as she came out to speak to a very worried Sam. Jonas and Grogan were hovering in the background as well.

“He’s going to be okay. It was doubtful at the beginning as his symbiote was injured too. But knowing Teal’c’s quick healing, he should be up and around in a few days.”

“Can we see him?”

“Yes, but he is still under the influence of the anaesthetic and he will go into kel’no’reem straight after he awakens. So you most probably won’t be able to speak with him until tomorrow. Don’t stay too long.”

They moved quietly through to where Teal’c was lying. He was hooked up to machines, so his condition could be monitored. Sam stood back and let Jonas and Grogan go first. After they had gone, she pulled up a chair and sat down. Reaching across, she took Teal’c’s hand in her own. She was glad that the others had left as she noticed that her hand was trembling. Leaning forward, Sam whispered to Teal’c.

“Teal’c, I nearly lost you today. You can’t do that to me again. We are the only two left with Daniel and Jack gone. I can’t lose you too.”

She gave Teal’c’s hand a quick squeeze. She stood up, quietly left the infirmary and walked towards the elevator.

Fortunately, she hadn’t met anyone as she walked down the corridor of the storage area. Opening the door to Storeroom 16, she quietly slipped inside. Sam hadn’t been down here since Jack had died. The storage room was a lot more crowded than before. They were waiting for JAG officers to go through his papers and belongings. A lifetime of classified assignments has a way of throwing a wrench into the probate process. So, Sam and Teal’c had rented out Jack’s house fully furnished and had packed up his personal items and stored them down here with Daniel’s things. Sam ran her hand over a large awkward looking package; the telescope was wrapped up in cloth and plastic to keep it clean. Moving over to the boxes, she started sifting through them looking for a particular box. All of Jack’s boxes had O’Neill written on them in her own hand. She found the one she wanted. She had marked it so she would know which one. Opening it, she started to burrow down to the bottom. It was full of his clothes and nearly at the bottom she finally found it. When they had been going through Jack’s things, Sam had come across a denim shirt. She had never seen Jack wear it before. She had found it folded up, tucked right at the back of his cupboard. The shirt was identical to the shirt Jack had worn in her dream. Picking it up, she went over to Daniel’s couch and sat down holding the shirt closely to her. She started to cry. It had been a long time since she had had a good cry. The last time was when she had opened herself up to her father. It seemed like such a long time ago.


~^~


The strong wind whipped through her hair. She shivered as the icy wind blew her dress away from her legs. Sam was cold, very cold. She only had her summer dress on. She was standing in the meadow and all the flowers were just grey dust on the ground. Looking down at her dress, the bloodstains were still there, the only colour in the black and grey dismal landscape. She started to move towards the iron gate. Opening the gate, she carefully walked down the corridor. When she arrived at the cage, she sank down against the wall and tiredly looked through the gap in the bars. When Sam couldn’t see him at first, she began to panic. Then she found him. He was curled up in the foetal position on the floor. There were chains fastened around his wrists and ankles. He was just clothed in his black t-shirt and BDU trousers. There were no boots or socks on his grime covered feet. In fact, all of his skin seemed to have a layer of filth from the dirty cell. Sam could see the red colour of his raw wrists and ankles where the shackles had rubbed them. No one else seemed to be in the cell. Shifting quietly, Sam knelt up onto her knees and sat back onto her heels. She noticed that Jack’s eyes were open. They seemed to be fixed on her, but they showed no sign of life. She could see he was alive as he was breathing, but his eyes looked dead. Sam’s heart began to thump fast with anguish as she sat back down and leaned against the wall while she waited.


~^~


The beeping of her pager woke her up. Looking down at it, she could see that General Hammond wanted her. With a sad sigh, she got up, re-folded Jack’s shirt, placed it neatly back in the box and closed it. She wondered when she would have time to come back here again. Moving quickly, she left the room.


~^~


A week later, Sam was in Janet’s office. She was talking to her about her nightmares as she was getting to the stage that she was afraid to go to sleep. Since being in the storeroom, she had dreamed that same dream every single night. One night she even dreamt it twice.

“Isn’t there anything you can give me for this? A knock out pill, something that will put me so far into a deep sleep, I won’t dream?”

“No. I’m sorry, Sam. With counselling we could maybe do something, but it will take time. You should have come to me when they first started, not when they were this bad.”

“I thought I could handle them, but now I keep seeing the different scenes over and over, even when I’m awake.”

“You are tired. You need some down time. When was the last time you went home for a rest?”

“When my Dad stayed for a visit.”

“Sam! That was nearly four months ago.”

“I have been home, but not to stay. Just to see to a few things that’s all.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the warning klaxon telling everyone that the Stargate was active.

“Sam, are any teams due back?”

“No. Janet, none of the teams are off world at the moment. I’ve got to go. We’ll finish off this conversation later.”

Sam ran off towards the gate room. As she arrived, she saw her father and several Tok’ra run down the ramp.

“Close the iris,” Jacob barked out towards the control booth.

As the iris closed, Sam walked up to her dad. She hadn’t seen him for a while. He looked tired and he had fresh scratches on his face.

“Boy, that was close. Thanks. Hi, Sam, how are you?”

“I’m fine, Dad. What’s going on?”

“Oh, Tolgarth doesn’t like us much. He decided that we would make good target practice. Hello, George. Look, I need to speak with you and Sam. I have some good news.”

“Okay, Jacob, come to the briefing room.”

“How long will you stay this time, Dad?”

“Sorry, Sam, only a couple of hours. We made this stop over to talk to you, but then we have to move on. Where are the rest of SG-1? This concerns them too.”

“We are here, Jacob. It is good to see you again.” Teal’c, Jonas and Grogan sat down with the others at the table. Jacob turned around so he was facing Sam. Looking directly into her eyes, he spoke quietly, but firmly to her.

“Jack is alive.”

Sam started to shake her head from side to side in disbelief.

“Sam, it’s true. One of the Tok’ra who was taken prisoner escaped. We came across him at the last planet we were on. He was very badly injured, but he asked me to give you a message. He said: ‘Jacob, tell your daughter that Tolgarth has O'Neill. I know, because I’ve seen him.’ That is all he said. He died soon after that. I’m sorry, there isn’t more information.”

“It can’t be, Dad. I watched him die and there was a large explosion behind me. It would have obliterated anything that was there.”

“The Tok’ra, who told me this, would not have lied. I knew him and he knew Jack too. Quick, someone get a glass of water.”

Jacob had been watching Sam throughout this conversation. She had become very white and it looked like she was going to pass out any minute. Jonas quickly passed a glass of water to Jacob who in turn gave it to Sam. Sam sipped the water as she slowly let the information sink in. Everyone else seemed to be talking at once, discussing what had happened and what they were going to do about it. Sam reached across the table, pulled a pad of paper towards her and furiously started to sketch something on it. Janet had come into the briefing room now and was joining in the discussion. Sam realised now why Tolgarth had known about all the planets. He must have got them out of Jack. There is no way he could have held out from the effects of the death gun for any length of time, especially with the use of a sarcophagus.

“I know where he is being held,” Sam announced and then threw her pad of paper into the centre of the table. Looking at Janet and with enthusiasm, she went on to explain. “When the colonel and I had the telepathic abilities, we would often share the same dreams or I should say nightmares. For just over three months I have been having the same dream. Until now, I thought it was residue from when Tolgarth held us captive. But now I don’t think so. We know from scans that the white mass in my brain had been decreasing over time, but it’s still there and I think there may still be a connection between Colonel O’Neill and I. What I have sketched here is the holding cell he is in. I can’t remember seeing any doorway in or out, so we will need to take cutting tools with us. There is one very important point. The ground is hard packed earth, not metal flooring, so it must be deep underground. I am certain that it’s in Tolgarth’s Castle.”

Everyone sat in stunned silence. Jacob cringed within himself, realising the pain that Sam must have suffered through all of this time.

With the news delivered, Jacob gave Sam a small smile. “I have to go now. We were warned of an impending attack on a planet where many of our operatives are stationed. We need to go and try to get them out.” He paused, quietly addressing the group. “I know that this may be hard for you all to accept, but there is the distinct possibility that the torture Jack has sustained, is the source of much of the information that has allowed Tolgarth and the system lords to be so successful in their attacks.”

“Yes. Dad, I totally agree with you. The effects of the death gun, used over all this time would be impossible to resist. We will have to assume that anything that the colonel knows, Tolgarth knows.”

Sam left the briefing room with a small amount of hope inside. Not as much as everyone else, as they hadn’t seen the state he was in like she had. She wondered if the man she knew would be completely destroyed when they found him. For the first time, she welcomed sleep that night. Maybe she could find out more information, because tomorrow they were going to try and rescue Jack from Tolgarth’s castle. Sam was convinced that was where he was being held.


~^~


Sam found herself standing in the middle of the soot-covered meadow. The black clouds built up overhead and the wind blew the dust off the ground and it swirled all around her. She found this dream hard to control. She wanted to get to Jack’s cell quickly, but it seemed to take her ages to get there. After she had closed the iron gate behind her, she cautiously walked down the corridor towards the iron cage. Crouching down outside the bars, she looked in through the square gap. Jack wasn’t lying on the ground; he was sitting up against the far wall. His arms were lying across his drawn up knees and his forehead was resting on his arms.

“Jack! Jack!” His head shot up and with clear eyes he looked directly into Sam’s. “Jack, we’re coming to get you. We are going to get you out of here.”

A look of horror crossed his face. He leaped up. Straining against the chains that held him, he shouted.

“No! Don’t! It’s a trap.”

Sam had been reaching her arm through the gap, trying to touch him, but he was too far away. She only got her arm out in time as a solid metal door came crashing down in front of her. Spinning around, she could hear a distant rumble. She ran as fast as she could down the corridor and through the iron gate. Just as she fell down amongst the ashes of the dead flowers she heard the resounding crash as another solid metal door came down behind her, blocking off any chance of going back to Jack.


~^~


With a start, Sam woke up. She found herself breathing hard, as if she had been running. Remembering the dream, a feeling of anguish passed over her in a wave. Then with determination, she controlled her emotions and started to plan how to rescue Jack from Tolgarth.

Tolgarth - Part 8 - Trapped

By Arrietty


The following day, Sam informed the rest of SG-1 and General Hammond of Jack’s warning and what had happened. She still wanted to go, but thought they had better know what could be in store for them. It didn’t seem to make much difference as they all still wanted to go with her. They would have to be extra cautious, that was all.


~^~


They had decided that only SG-1 would go. As they didn’t want to be seen, they needed a small team to go in. The idea was to sneak in, release Jack and sneak out again. Hopefully, without anyone knowing that they had ever been there. Teal’c had an acetylene torch and a large hacksaw in his pack. Jonas had an extra set of clothes as they weren’t quite sure what state Jack would be in when they found him. Sam and Grogan had spare ammo and emergency supplies, if needed. They weren’t surprised that the Stargate was unguarded. Tolgarth for some reason had never had a guard posted at the Stargate. For all Tolgarth’s recent success, he was still a very stupid Goa’uld. He was arrogant and so full of himself, that he made a lot of mistakes. Not guarding the Stargate was one of them.

Cautiously, they moved through the night towards the large castle. Sam remembered the tunnels that she and Jack had used to escape before. That would be how they would go in.

They had only gone down a short way, when Teal’c had come across the first trip wire. It was made out of material that made it virtually invisible, but not totally as the light from their flashlights glinted off the surface. These trip wires were placed irregularly along the tunnels, all at varying heights. When Sam had been leading, she completely missed one as it went right over her head. Fortunately, Jonas saw it before he blundered into it.

They came to a fork in the tunnel. One corridor was large, with a metal floor and the walls were decorated with silver inlay. The other was a smaller tunnel leading to the torturous depths below. The floor of this tunnel was made up of hard packed earth and there were only a few lit torches placed along the walls. Sam took point, with Teal’c watching their six. They decided to follow the dirt floor passageway as that is what Sam had seen in her dream.

Sam had only gone a little way when she noticed a patterned row set on each side of the wall about six inches above the ground. She wondered if this was the beginning of the decoration that would soon adorn the tunnel, like in the corridor adjacent to this one. Suddenly Sam heard a familiar rumble. Crying out a warning, she spun around and started back up the passageway. But they were too late. A large solid metal door had come crashing down behind them. Turning back they tried to go forward again, only to find their way blocked there too. The naked flames from the torches were extinguished and it went dark. Sam switched on her flashlight and shining it around, she could see a red gas being pumped into the small space. The gas was lighting up the invisible laser lines running across the passageway from the pattern along the base of the walls. They started to cough and then one by one sank slowly to the ground unconscious.

As soon as Teal’c had heard Sam shout out her warning, he had ducked back out of the tunnel. He could hear the tramp of booted feet coming down the tunnel they had just come from, so he quickly shot up the other corridor. Finding a place to hide, he waited.

~^~

Sam slowly returned to consciousness. She felt groggy. Her head felt thick and her stomach nauseous. Slowly, she opened her eyes and found herself in a small room. It was well lit and very similar to the room that she and Jack had been tortured in. Thankfully, there was no sign of the death gun. Jonas and Grogan were still unconscious. They were manacled to one large ring set in the ceiling and were hanging by their wrists with their arms above their heads. Their heads hung low down over their chests.

With some difficulty Sam got to her feet. She was surprised, because there were no restraints on her at all. She quickly went over to the other two and started to wake them up. Jonas groaned, slowly opened his eyes and glared at Sam. He obviously didn’t relish being slapped on the face, even if she was being gentle. Moving quickly over to Grogan she started to wake him.

“Where’s the truck?” he muttered as he came round, “I’m sure I’ve been hit by a truck.”

Sam took one look at his face and stepped back quickly. If he felt anything like she did when she had woken up, she didn’t want to risk wearing Grogan’s breakfast. Fortunately, for everyone, he was okay.

“Where’s Teal’c?” she asked them.

“Ma’am, he ducked down the other tunnel before the gate closed,” Grogan replied.

Sam let out a sigh. “That’s good. Maybe he can find Colonel O’Neill and get us out of here.”

Sam moved over to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. She started to search through her pockets, hoping to find any tool that she could unpick their shackles with. But they had taken everything; they hadn’t even left her with a handkerchief. She started searching the guy’s pockets, just in case something was missed, when they heard the stamp of booted feet outside their door. The door was unlocked and Tolgarth stalked in.

Sam took an involuntary step back. Her heart began to pound and the palms of her hands started to sweat. The unpleasant memory of what this Goa’uld had done to her and Jack came flooding back. Just before his eyes glowed, she glimpsed the black steel colour of his eyes in the shadow of his mask. She realised that Tolgarth had already taken another host.

”Ah, Major Carter, we meet again. Did you miss me?” he asked with a sniggering laugh.

Sam began to feel the rise of bile coming up from her stomach. ’That’s all she needed, throw up over the feet of a Goa’uld. Jack would’ve have found that funny..’ Swallowing hard and in a deceptively strong voice she answered.

“Yes, like a plague.”

Tolgarth laughed again. ‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘his laugh is annoying, Jack was right’.

Tolgarth moved over to Jonas and Grogan. “Hello, Lieutenant Grogan, and Jonas Quinn isn’t it? We haven’t met before, have we?”

Both Jonas and Grogan glared at him, but did not answer.

“What do you want, Tolgarth?” Sam demanded rudely.

Tolgarth spun around and with his right hand fired his hand device at her. Sam was slammed back into the wall and slowly slid down to land on the floor. She lay there trying desperately to get a full breath. Fortunately, it hadn’t been too strong a force and nothing felt broken. Sam slowly stood up and took a defiant stance.

“You know, Major.” Tolgarth waggled his left hand at her as he spoke. Sam seemed mesmerised by the hand as he waved it in front of her face. “That was most rude of you. You didn’t say, please.”

Sam took a step forward, her face full of horror. Reaching up her hand, she grabbed hold of the lower edge of Tolgarth’s mask and ripped it off his head taking the fitted hood with it - revealing the face of Colonel Jack O’Neill beneath it.

Tolgarth let out a roar and then stepped back, he was angry and his eyes glowed. He lifted up his hand with the device and backhanded Sam across the face, knocking her to the ground. Sam lay there motionless. Tolgarth looked down at her with distain and then started to walk away. He stopped, turned and looked directly at her as an evil smile crossed his face.

He turned to Jonas. “Thank you, by the way, for bringing me some spare clothes. Just what I needed.” He bent down and picked up his mask and then with an exaggerated swagger, left the room.

Sam lay there motionless, totally unconscious. Jonas and Grogan tried to revive her by calling her name, but without any success. Now, they fully understood how Tolgarth had managed to know all he knew. They realised that no planet that had ever been visited by SG-1 in the past was safe. He would also know all the secrets of the SGC.

After a while Sam came to. Her cheekbone hurt and she could feel blood trickling down the side of her face. Groaning, she slowly stood up. She felt terrible. She couldn’t believe what had happened. No wonder Tolgarth had known that they were coming, she had told him by telling Jack. Feelings of despair washed over her as she thought of Jack trapped in his own body for such a long time. How were they ever going to get Jack free now? It had been better, when she thought Jack was dead.

Sam staggered over to Lieutenant Grogan and Jonas. She didn’t know what to say to them and they didn’t know what to say either. She sat down beside them on the floor and waited to see what was going to happen next.


~^~


After Teal’c had seen the Jaffa take his team mates away, he started to follow them to see where they were taken. He realised that everything had fallen apart. Sam had been right, there had been a trap and they had fallen right into it. He watched quietly as he saw his team mates taken into a room. After the Jaffa had left, he carefully tried the door, but it was locked. Realising that he was going to be of no help to them for now, he decided to go and find O’Neill. After two hours of unsuccessful searching, he made his way back to where Sam and the others were held. As Teal’c came down the corridor, he heard some guards coming towards him. Quickly, trying the first door he came to, he slipped inside out of sight.

The room was a small chamber. There were a few comfortable chairs and a low table. In the corner, piled up against the wall, were the weapons and packs that belonged to the others. The packs had obviously been gone through as the contents were strewn over the floor. Teal’c quickly knelt down and checked to see if the GDO’s were there amongst the weapons, but they had been taken. This was not good. Standing up, he looked around the rest of the room. He noticed that there was a pile of black and grey clothes sitting on one of the chairs. Teal’c went over, picked them up and looked at them. Seeing what they were, he quickly rolled them up in a bundle and put them into his pack.

As he was going to leave he noticed an object over by the far wall. The strange shaped object had a cloth covering it. Teal’c quickly lifted the cloth. He realised that from Sam’s description that this was the death gun they had talked about. Teal’c swiftly lifted the panel on the side and taking some C-4 from the packs he fitted it under the panel. Punching in some numbers on the detonator, he carefully refitted the panel back in place and covered the death gun with the cloth. This had taken him only a few minutes. After he had done this, he left the room moving very quietly. Now he needed to see if he could free the others.


~^~


When Tolgarth came back into the room, he was wearing BDU’s. Apart from the cold, steel black colour of his eyes and that his hair was a little longer he looked just like Jack. Sam quickly stood up. She cautiously watched to see if his Jaffa would bring in the death gun. She was slightly relieved to see the Jaffa leave Tolgarth alone in the room with them.

“So. Major Carter, you will now tell me the new code, so I can get passed the iris. You will also tell me where Teal’c is. He must be somewhere skulking around here.”

“I have no idea where Teal’c is now a-days and you know what my answer will be about the code.”

“See. I found out something new today. After all this time, he managed to keep it from me.”

“Whom are you talking about?”

“My host. He has been most generous with his information. It took a while, but I got it in the end.”

Sam’s body began to shake. It was hard to hear this evil voice come out of Jack’s body.

Jonas shifted in his restraints, his arms had gone numb a long time ago and his shoulders were beginning to hurt. “What information?”

Turning around to speak to Jonas. “This has nothing to do with you, Jonas Quinn.”

With a malicious smile, he turned back to face Sam, stepping up close to her. “It is to do with you. I think I can kill two birds with one stone.” He reached a hand up towards Sam and then stopped. He laughed. “Oh, this host does know some unusual words. I don’t think I will repeat them in front of a lady.” Reaching up quickly with both hands, he grasped Sam around the neck and started to squeeze. Sam was pushed against the wall and she started to black out from the lack of oxygen.

Sam’s vision was going black and the edges were tinged with red. He was slowly killing her and she couldn’t fight back as her body seemed to have lost all of its strength. Her heart was not in the fight anymore, she found herself giving up. Suddenly, she felt the pressure lift off her throat and she was able to breath. With great gasps she drew air into her starved lungs. Her vision cleared to see Tolgarth sitting on the floor. He was clutching his head in his hands and groaning. She saw a flash of gold as his eyes glowed and he pulled out a knife from his boot. Bringing it up in both his hands he started towards her. Sam was still weak from what he had done to her, so she closed her eyes and waited for the blow.

“Sam! Help me.”

It was Jack’s voice. She quickly opened her eyes. Looking at Tolgarth, she could see him holding the knifepoint towards himself and he was looking directly at her.

“Sam! Help me. He’s too strong.”

Jack’s frightened brown eyes were looking straight at her, pleading with her to help him kill this Goa’uld.

Sam couldn’t kill Jack. She started to shake her head from side to side.

“Please, Sam. I can’t hold on much longer. You have to kill me. Please!” As he spoke the last word his voice broke.

Sam abruptly launched herself at Jack. Grabbing hold of his hands, she plunged the knife into him. Just as the knife reached his chest, light shone up into Jack’s eyes. Tolgarth was back in control. He threw Sam clear across the room hitting her head against the wall, once again knocking her unconscious. Just in the split second that Tolgarth had taken control he had been able to deflect the knife into his shoulder, missing his heart. Swearing, Tolgarth stood up and pulled the knife out and with disgust threw it on the ground.

Turning to the two men. “I don’t need your information; I have enough in here,” pointing to his head. He looked at Sam. “You can wait until I get back.” Tolgarth stormed out of the room in a rage.

Teal’c had watched O’Neill leave the cell from his hiding place. As soon as he heard O’Neill speak with the Goa’uld voice. He realised the seriousness of the situation. ‘No wonder I have been unable to find O’Neill anywhere,’ he thought.

As soon as Tolgarth and his Jaffa had left, Teal’c wasted no time in moving towards the door where the others were trapped. Teal’c tried the door again. Surprisingly, it opened. Moving quickly through the door, he went over to Sam and checked to see if she was all right. Then using his staff weapon, he fired at the chains that held Jonas and Grogan setting them free.

“Boy, are we glad to see you, Teal’c. Tolgarth is using Colonel O’Neill as a host” Jonas said.

“Yes, I am aware of this. What has happened to Colonel Carter? She does not look well.”

“It was amazing. Tolgarth tried to kill her, but the colonel took control and stopped him. He even managed to stab himself in the shoulder.”

Teal’c looked up. He was surprised, because there had not been many hosts who had been able to overpower the Goa’uld, even for a short time.

Lieutenant Grogan pulled Sam up and supported her on one side, while Jonas supported her on the other. Sam started to come around, so they set her down again on the ground. After they had checked her over and given her something to drink, she tried to get up to walk on her own. The world was spinning a little, but after a few moments she was able to stand unassisted.

“Sam?” Jonas queried, “How did you know it was Colonel O’Neill behind the mask?”

Sam answered; her voice was shaky as it rasped in her swollen throat. “I recognised his hands and the one without the device on it had the faint scar from when he sliced it on the ducting. I also knew Tolgarth had a new host as his eyes were a different colour. We must get out of here and stop Tolgarth. I think he’s trying to get into the SGC,” she finished off tiredly.

While Teal’c had been searching for Jack, he had found a safe way to leave the Castle. Leading the way, they quietly moved along the corridors.

The Stargate was still unguarded. They couldn’t understand the thinking behind this oversight. Fortunately, Teal’c still had his GDO, so they were able to dial Earth. When it was clear to go, they stepped through the Stargate. As soon as they arrived in the gate room at the SGC, Sam with a still very husky voice spoke to General Hammond.

“Has Colonel O’Neill arrived?”

“Colonel Carter, yes he has. What happened to you? He said that you were all dead.”

“Lock down the base immediately. Tolgarth is using him as a host.”

Just as she finished speaking, warning klaxons started up through the base. SG-1 quickly moved towards the infirmary where Tolgarth had gone. As they travelled down the corridor, they could hear weapon fire ahead. Then, suddenly, the weapon fire ceased. They rounded the corner and they could see that Tolgarth had raised a force field up around him.

Sam cautiously looked round the corner. She hadn’t been able to keep up with the others because she was still feeling groggy. Moving slowly forward behind the others, so that Tolgarth could not see her, she came up behind Teal’c. Sam bent down and lifted the knife that he kept in his boot and with a quick flick of her wrist sent it spinning into Tolgarth’s thigh straight through the force field. With a yell he collapsed to the ground and the force field dissolved. Moving quickly, Teal’c went forward and removed the device and weapons from Tolgarth’s possession.


~^~


Two hours later, Sam, Teal’c and General Hammond were in a room. One side was divided off with large vertical solid metal bars and behind the bars was Tolgarth - very unhappy goa’uld, who wasn’t being very polite to his captors.

“Tolgarth, we wish to speak with Colonel O’Neill.”

Tolgarth sneered and turned his back on them.

With a quick glance at the others, Hammond left the room, closely followed by Teal’c and Sam. When they got to Hammond’s office, they sat down to discuss the situation.

“Colonel, we contacted the Tok’ra as soon as we could, but they are still in turmoil. They don’t hold out much hope of getting here soon. They can’t contact Jacob either, because he’s on a mission. But they did say that they would come as soon as they were able. I’m sorry, Sam, this is all we can do.”

“What about the Asgard, can they help?”

“They are too busy fighting the system lords and I don’t think they can help us with this.”

Sam felt awful. Her throat felt bruised and sore, her head hurt and she had trouble speaking. She just didn’t know what they could do and she found it hard to think clearly. The only option open to them would be to have to wait and hope the Tok’ra would get here soon. Until then, they would have to be on full alert. It wouldn’t be good if Tolgarth escaped. With Jack’s knowledge he could do untold damage.

Sam desperately needed sleep so she wandered down to her sleeping quarters. Maybe she could think of something when she had rested.


~^~

Sam was standing at the edge of the blackened meadow. She was looking up at the large solid steel door that had come down before. The door was impenetrable. In despair, Sam sank down amongst the ashes and leaned up against the door and waited.


~^~


Four days later, they were no closer at separating Tolgarth from O’Neill. Jonas and Grogan had been looking after him, making sure that he was fed. They had also tried to talk to him along with Sam and Teal’c, but to no avail.

Sam met General Hammond outside the holding cell door. They were going to try and talk to Tolgarth again and maybe manage to get him to let them talk to Jack. They didn’t hold out much hope. Tolgarth had been totally uncooperative. The guard outside let them into the room. Hammond started asking questions.

“What did you think you would achieve by coming here by yourself? You must have known you would eventually get caught.”

Tolgarth turned around and his eyes glowed. “I will not reveal my plans to you.”

“Well let us talk to Colonel O’Neill then.”

“Oh, you want to speak to O'Neill? I’ll let you speak to O’Neill, but he won’t be speaking back though. And before I let you see him, you must realise the longer you keep me here the longer it will last.”

Not knowing to what he was referring to, they watched as Tolgarth lowered his head. Immediately, he fell to the floor writhing in agony. O’Neill was crying out in pain, clutching his head. Sam stepped forward, but Hammond pulled her back, she had got too close to the bars. Just as quickly as it had started, it stopped. Tolgarth stood up from the floor and smiled evilly at Hammond and Sam and then let out a laugh. He promptly turned his back on them, showing them that he was not going to talk to them anymore.

As soon as they were outside, Sam and Hammond quickly discussed what had happened.

“He must be torturing the colonel all the time.”

“I’m not so sure, Colonel Carter. He may have put that on as a show. He does specialise in messing with people’s minds.”

Just then Jonas came walking up with a tray of food. On it was some kind of casserole and a desert bowl of apple pie. Sam looked at it in surprise. “You are feeding him that?”

“Well, I thought maybe Colonel O’Neill might get to taste it.”

Sam nodded and gave him a sad smile. “I wouldn’t bet on it somehow.”

“Anyway, Tolgarth might not even like it. If you want to find out, you’ll have to ask Grogan, he will be collecting the tray.”

Jonas was let into the room while General Hammond and Colonel Carter walked off down the corridor.

~^~

Just over an hour later, Sam was in her office when she heard the alarm bells. Grabbing a zat’nik’atel she rushed out the door. It was quite a distance from her office to where the holding cells were situated. She could hear rapid weapon fire and it didn’t sound good. The scene that awaited Sam when she arrived filled her with horror. Lieutenant Grogan and some SF’s were lying on the ground dead. People were milling around. She overheard a major inform General Hammond that, unfortunately, they had no choice as they had to kill Tolgarth. Sam felt herself begin to shake. She didn’t notice Teal’c come up behind her, until he quickly reached out and grabbed hold of her shoulders to keep her steady.

“Sam?”

Sam turned around and saw Jack standing in the doorway of the holding cell. He was leaning weakly against the door frame. His face was a white ashen colour and blood was trickling down the side of his mouth. Moving quickly forward, Sam went up to him, closely followed by Teal’c. With relief, Sam could feel no presence of Goa’uld within Jack. Without a thought to anyone in the corridor, she put her arms around him, partly to stop him from falling, partly for comfort. She felt his arms come round her shoulders tightly. Moving his head up beside her head, he whispered into her ear.

“Don’t ever let go of me, Sam, don’t ever let go.”

“No. I won’t, Jack. I promise,” Sam whispered back.

Tolgarth – Part 9 – The Inner Battle


By Arrietty


“No! Absolutely not!” Sam was standing, leaning over the table in the briefing room, shouting at her father. “He’s not ready, especially not for something like this. It’s only been two days.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Carter, sit down. That is an order,” General Hammond said firmly.

“Yes, sir.”

Sam sank down into her chair. She had a very bad feeling about this and everyone else seemed to think it should happen, but she knew he wasn’t ready.

“Look, Sammie. To a certain degree, we agree with you, but we can’t let this opportunity slip through our fingers. At least let us ask Jack and see what he thinks.”

“Ask me what?”

Jack was standing in the doorway.

“Good, Colonel, you are here. Come, take a seat,” Hammond replied.

Jack cautiously came into the room. He was still finding it difficult being in control of his body again and he found that he was nervous of being with a lot of people at once. For him, the briefing room was quite full. General Hammond sat in his usual seat, sitting beside him was Carter and next to her were Jonas and Teal’c. Sitting opposite were Jacob, Dr. Fraiser and two visiting Tok’ra. Sitting in the middle of the table was a large cardboard box with a closed lid. Jack stood behind Sam and shuffled his feet. Jonas quickly stood up and moved to the other side of Teal’c so that Jack could sit down next to Sam.

“So, what do you want to ask me?” Jack could sense Sam’s unease, which was making him feel even more unsettled.

Jacob leaned forward over the table and looked directly at Jack.

“Anubis is meeting with the system lords in two days time. We have become aware that Tolgarth had been invited to the meeting. Is this correct?”

Jack nodded carefully. “Yes, this is correct, but he wasn’t invited to the actual meeting, rather a preliminary meeting with just Anubis. Anubis has been very cautious with Tolgarth. I don’t think Anubis liked dealing with him much.”

“While SG-1 was on Tolgarth’s planet, Teal’c found these and brought them back.” General Hammond pushed the box towards O’Neill.

Sam started to speak, but Hammond cut her off with a warning.

“Lieutenant Colonel Carter!”

Jack looked around at Sam. “Way to go, Carter, Lieutenant Colonel.” He was smiling at her. She was pleased, since he hadn’t smiled much in the last two days and he wasn’t likely to smile a lot in the near future either.

Jacob brought Jack’s attention back to the box with a gesture of his hand. Jack reached forward to open it, but then hesitated. He pulled his hand back and sat back in his chair and placed his hands in his lap.

“Show me.”

Teal’c stood up and pulled the box towards him, opened it and pulled out the garments - they were the clothes that Tolgarth had worn. Sitting on the top of the pile of clothes, were the leather jerkin and mask. Jack suddenly had this overwhelming urge to run from the room. His heart was pounding rapidly and waves of nausea were washing over him. Sliding his hand under the table he gripped Sam’s tightly, trying to draw strength from her. He didn’t dare speak as he was certain that if he opened his mouth he would vomit. His whole body was trembling and he was also quite sure that if he spoke his voice would show that he was afraid.

“Jack, we need you to go to this meeting. Anubis is expecting Tolgarth and you are the only one who could pull it off. You know how he walks and behaves. Also Anubis has met Tolgarth recently hasn’t he?”

Jack nodded his head.

“Dad, won’t Anubis sense that Colonel O’Neill hasn’t a symbiote anymore?”

“Well, this is where I come in. I will be Tolgarth’s personal assistant. If I keep close enough to Jack and we keep far enough away from Anubis, we should be able to fool him. Remember, Sam, the idea is to get the others into the ship, so they can plant explosives.”

Jack tightened his grip on Sam’s hand.

Sam and Jack sat there quietly listening to the plans. Everyone seemed to be having ideas as they worked out what they were going to do. They were all assuming that Jack was going to be involved.

It was Jonas who asked the obvious question, that everyone else but Sam had missed.

“Colonel, will you do it?”

Sam felt Jack take a deep breath. He was breathing very carefully and looking intently at the tabletop. He seemed to be having great difficulty controlling his breathing. The look he gave Sam before he answered was full of fear and trepidation. Looking back at Jonas, he answered in a firm voice.

“Yes, I’ll do it.”

Sam’s shoulders sagged in defeat. She knew that once Jack heard the scenario, he wouldn’t be able to refuse. Her dad was right. It was too good an opportunity to miss.

Jack waited until everyone else had left the room. He was still clasping Sam’s hand under the table, keeping her there beside him. He was still too scared to move as he really thought he was going to throw up and his legs were still shaking.

“Are you sure about this, Jack?”

Looking at Sam, he shook his head from side to side.

After Sam had delivered a very white faced colonel to the infirmary, she went back to her office to think about what had been happening over the last few days.

Jack had explained to them how Tolgarth had escaped. When Lieutenant Grogan had come in to collect the empty tray, Tolgarth had tried to pretend that Jack had taken back control. Obviously, Grogan had been taken in at first, but he soon realised that it was a ploy of Tolgarth’s. But he had got too close to the bars and the Goa’uld symbiote shot out of Jack’s mouth straight into the back of Grogan’s neck. Jack wasn’t sure what Tolgarth was going to do with him when he opened the cell door to get him out. The guard on the door must have heard something, because he interrupted Tolgarth as he came in. That’s when all the shooting started. Jack had made his way out to the corridor and found Sam.

Sam hadn’t found out a lot yet about what had happened while Jack had been host to Tolgarth. Every so often Jack would tell her little pieces of information. Sometimes it was like about Lieutenant Grogan, very matter of fact and report like, but other times he would tell her what he had been feeling, these were the hardest for her to hear about. Sam felt sad about Lieutenant Grogan. She and the others were going to miss him, but every so often a feeling of guilt would come over her as she knew that it could have been Jack lying dead in the morgue, not Grogan. The guilt was there, because she preferred this outcome to what could have so easily have happened.

Sam now knew why she had dreamt that nightmare in the infirmary after Jack had been killed. He had explained to her, that when Tolgarth had been implanted in him, he had cried out to her to save him, but she had never answered him. He had been terrified. After this, for the first three and a half months, Tolgarth had tortured Jack constantly, sifting through his mind, pulling out bits and pieces. Jack never knew from which direction Tolgarth would come from. Tolgarth would bombard Jack with immense pain to distract him so he could pry into his mind. It hadn’t taken Jack long to realise that Tolgarth was a weak Goa’uld and couldn’t control his hosts very well without pain. Every so often, he would get the better of Tolgarth and manage to stop him from hurting other people. Tolgarth was desperate to retrieve the wealth of knowledge that Jack had of the Tau’ri and Tok’ra, but the only way he could keep control, was to bury Jack so deep that Jack couldn’t see or hear what was going on. As far as Tolgarth was concerned it was a no win situation. Bury Jack deep and not have access to his knowledge, or let him nearer the surface and risk him taking back control. That is what had happened when Tolgarth had tried to kill Sam. He wanted Jack to suffer. He wanted him to feel Sam’s throat beneath his fingers as the life was squeezed out of her. But that was Tolgarth’s mistake, Jack had taken control and managed to stop Tolgarth.

There was one piece of information that Jack had told Sam, where she felt like he had only touched the surface, she would have liked to know more. He had said, that when he saw Sam’s face before she had come to the planet, he thought he was dreaming. He had given up trying to fight Tolgarth. He had been buried for so long, that he had no idea how many days, weeks or even months had gone by. He kept on seeing her face, it would come and go, sometimes she was crying, sometimes not. Jack had started to hold on to that, he wanted to see Sam again. So he made a decision and started to fight back and the next time he had seen Sam, was when she had spoken to him to tell him that she was coming. Sam would have liked to know more of how he felt and what had happened through that time, because she knew that he needed to talk about this experience and he wouldn’t speak to anyone else.

Jack was a very different person from what he had been before Tolgarth had got a hold of him. Now he was quiet, reticent and frightened. Little things seemed to fill him with fear, especially loud noisy rooms and people cornering him when they spoke to him. Apart from Sam, he didn’t like being touched. If someone came up to him and touched him on the shoulder, it would startle him and he would break out into a sweat. Sam really didn’t know how on Earth Jack was going to manage to pull off this Tolgarth mission.

~^~

It was twenty-two hours after the meeting in the briefing room. Sam was dressed in a long grey dress that had a tight fitted bodice with a full skirt. The skirt had to be full as she had a knife strapped to her thigh. Around her shoulders was a long black cloak. This was fitted with a veil as they didn’t want to risk that Sam might be recognised by any of the Jaffa. Both the cloak and veil were made out of flimsy material. Sam hoped that the ship wouldn’t be too cold. She would blame Janet if she caught a chill as it was Janet who had brought the outfit into the SGC for Sam to wear. Jonas and Teal’c were with Jack getting dressed. She wondered how Jack was coping wearing those clothes again. Just in the last four or five hours he had seemed to get stronger and be able to cope with things better. He really needed time, something that he didn’t have much of. At least they wouldn’t have to cope with the fear of the death gun as Teal’c had informed them of its destruction.

Jonas interrupted her thoughts as he knocked on the door of her room. When she looked at Jonas’ face, she knew that things weren’t going very well with Jack.

“You had better come, Sam. We’ve done as much as we can to help him.”

When Sam went into the locker room, there wasn’t any sign of Jack. Teal’c looked decidedly worried and the black cloak and mask were sitting on the bench. Teal’c let out a big sigh of relief at the sight of Sam and swiftly left the locker room.

“Jack? Where are you?”

She found him leaning over a toilet bowl retching. He had complained of nausea that morning, but they had put it down to nerves and hoped it would settle. Obviously, the nerves had got control.

Grabbing a paper cup, she half filled it with some cold water and took it to him. He looked awful. The vomiting had stopped, but he was pale and shaking.

“I can’t put it on, Sam. I just can’t.”

Sam looked over at what Jack was staring at. He was staring at the mask.

“Jack, listen to me. You CAN do this. It is only bits of metal and…and…I’m not sure, anyway some kind of polymer. Tolgarth is dead. It’s a costume.”

Jack closed his eyes, took another sip of water and slowly stood up.

“I need your help, Sam. I can’t do this by myself.”

Sam took hold of his hand and led him over to the bench. He was already fully dressed in the clothes, so all that was needed, was for him to put on the cloak and mask. Sam picked up the cloak and firmly fastened it around his shoulders. She bent down and picked up the mask. Looking at it closely she could see that the silver had been inlaid into a light metal, she wondered what type of metal it was. Looking at Jack, she handed the mask to him. Lifting it up, he took in a deep breath and then fitted it over his head. As he brought up the hood and easily clipped it to the mask, Sam found it disturbing that Jack knew exactly how these items fitted together.

“Well, Sam, all I need is the doohickey to make my voice Goa’uldish.”

Sam reached up and fitted the voice ‘doohickey’ under his shirt against his neck where no one would see it. Jack checked it to make sure it was working and quickly switched it off. Sam noticed that he was still trembling slightly, but as she couldn’t see his face, she wasn’t quite sure how he was coping. Even though she knew Jack was under the mask, she still found herself beginning to react adversely to the mask and the enhanced sound of his voice. Taking strength from within herself, Sam remembered that it was Jack and not Tolgarth that stood before her. Very carefully, Jack removed the mask and handed it back to Sam.

“You carry it for me, please? I s’pose you haven’t got a doohickey that could make my eyes glow, have you?”

Sam smiled. She was glad to hear some humour come from Jack. “We could always plug you into a light socket,” she retorted, “But I do have this.” She pulled out a small device hanging off the end of a light silver chain. “This is naquadah. In its purist form and hopefully Anubis will sense this and believe that you still have a symbiote inside you.” Jack carefully took the chain and placed it over his head and put it down under his shirt.

Feeling more in control of her fears, Sam spoke kindly to him. ”Come on, Jack. We have to go, or they will be wondering where we are.” Sam moved off, walking away from him, swirling her cloak behind her.

Jack hesitated as Sam walked away from him. This was the last thing he wanted to do. In fact, he had no idea what he wanted to do. His life had been turned right upside down and just as he started to feel human again, he had to wear this gear again. While he hesitated, he watched Sam float through the door. ’Wow, you’re beautiful, Sam.’ He thought to himself. With this thought in his mind, he managed to unstick his reluctant feet from the floor and follow after her.

When they got to the gate room, everyone was already waiting for them. All the team members were wearing black and grey clothing. It seemed to be Tolgarth’s trademark. Jack was the only one wearing any silver. Going with Jack, were Jacob as his personal assistant and Jonas and Sam as his attendants. Teal’c couldn’t go, as he would be recognized. Jonas had a large bag. In this bag was food that Jacob had brought with him, as it wouldn’t do to turn up with food that you could only get on earth. Also in the bag, was a large specially built tray and enough C-4 and detonators to blow up Anubis’ ship. They would be gating directly onto Anubis’ ship. This is something that Jacob hadn’t accounted for, but fortunately, Jack knew the coordinates that they would need. After the event horizon had settled, they all started to walk forward except for Jack, who seemed frozen to the spot. Jacob leaned forwards towards Jack.

“You can do this, Jack.”

Sam knew going through the gate wasn’t the problem it was putting on that mask again. He had felt trapped before and the memory of his captivity had come flooding back into his mind. He had told her about it on the way to the gate room. With a quick glance at Sam, Jack reached out and took the mask from her. Because they were going directly onto Anubis’ ship, he had to have everything ready, voice enhancer switched on, mask in place and the arrogant manner of Tolgarth. From behind Jack, Sam could see his body trembling. She wished that they could still ‘think talk’ so she would be able to help him through this, but after extensive scans, there was now no sign of the white mass in either of their brains. She did know that this fear was something he had to overcome by himself.

Jack stood there for a moment before he swiftly placed the mask on and clipped the hood into place. He then adjusted his voice and with a very convincing Goa’uld voice, ordered them through the Stargate.

Sam was amazed at how well Jack was able to imitate Tolgarth’s arrogant walk. He swaggered off the steps at the other side of the Stargate. They were now directly on board Anubis’ Mother Ship. Jaffa were waiting for them and then escorted them into another room and left them there. Jack kept up the character of Tolgarth, because there was a very good chance that they were being monitored. Soon, two Jaffa came back to the room and spoke Goa’uld.

“Lord Tolgarth, Anubis is waiting for you. You will follow us.”

“I wish my attendants to go to the kitchens to prepare my meals.”

“Lord Tolgarth, refreshments will be provided for you.”

“I only eat what I bring. And my attendants are the only ones who prepare my meals.”

“As you wish, Lord Tolgarth. They will follow them.” He pointed to two other Jaffa that had been waiting outside the room in the corridor.

Jack and Jacob followed the first two Jaffa. Jacob was keeping very close to Jack, just in case the naquadah necklace didn’t work. They couldn’t risk the Jaffa picking up that Jack had no symbiote. While Sam and Jonas followed the two other Jaffa, that were going in the opposite direction as Jack and Jacob.

Sam and Jonas were left in the kitchens, where Jonas quickly unpacked the food and the tray. He then nodded to Sam and left the kitchens. Sam very quickly started preparing the food, making sure that it looked good on the tray. The tray was large with high sides, almost like a large oval bowl. She couldn’t help smiling at herself remembering when her dad had said she would prepare the food and the guys had made caustic remarks about her cooking and food poisoning. Her dad had flown to her defence and embarrassingly told them what an excellent cook she was. That she had kept him fed for years after his wife had died and he was still alive.

The tray was set. With an effort she lifted it up as it was quite heavy. The reason being, that set into the bottom of the tray was nearly half the C-4 that they needed. As Sam started to walk back towards the room that they had left, she started to make detours all over the ship. Every so often, she would stop put down the tray, lift the food up lying on the false bottom and pull out some C-4 and detonator and place the charge in a concealed place. Sam tried to put the charges against the interior of the outside wall of the ship. Many times she was asked why she was where she was. She would lower her eyes and say in rehearsed Goa’uld.

“I am lost; I am taking these refreshments to my Lord Tolgarth.”

They would direct her in the right direction and as soon as they were out of sight, she would then shoot off somewhere else.

Finally, all of the C-4 was placed and the tray was considerably lighter now. Of which she was very grateful as her arms were getting very tired. With all the directions that she had been given, she knew the way to where Jack was, blindfolded.

~^~

Jonas had shot down to the engine room and to the hanger where the death gliders were kept. He found it easier to stay undetected, for some reason most of the Jaffa weren’t patrolling the ship. Jonas thought the reason was most probably because the Jaffa were making most of the quiet before the remaining system lords arrived.

Just as he set the last charge, a Jaffa discovered him. Fortunately, Jonas managed to miss the blast from the Jaffa’s weapon, as he swivelled around throwing his body straight at the attacking Jaffa. With a loud ‘oouf’ and clank of metal, the Jaffa fell to the ground with Jonas straddling his body. In no time at all, Jonas managed to incapacitate the Jaffa with a blow from his fist. After tying him up, he dragged the unconscious Jaffa around behind some stores. Effectively gagging him, Jonas left him there, hoping no one would find him. Once he had done this, he went up to the room where Jacob and Jack were and waited outside for Sam to arrive.

~^~

Jacob was finding it very difficult to keep close to Jack, without it looking odd. The Jaffa guards walked very fast and after they left the others, four more Jaffa came up behind them and marched with them. Jacob also knew that he couldn’t help Jack in any way, as he was a servant and must not speak unless spoken to first. It was very important over the next couple of hours that they kept Anubis occupied. They didn’t want him wandering around the ship and coming across Sam and Jonas.

Jack walked into the room with an arrogant swagger.

“Anubis,” he acknowledged

“Tolgarth, I assume. Prove it.”

Jacob was alarmed. How was Jack going to prove to Anubis that he was Tolgarth? He was amazed at how simple it was. Jack reached up and removed his mask and hood, putting the mask down on a small table. With a sneer, Jack then sat down on a chair uninvited. Jacob was relieved to see that Jack did not show any fear and he looked just like he would imagine that Tolgarth would look.

“So, Tolgarth, you have information for me, information about the Tau’ri?”

Jack leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers together and in a cocky voice.

“And why should I give you any information?”

“This is why you are here. This is why I gave you ships and Jaffa warriors. You owe me.”

“The Tau’ri, they have a shield over their Stargate. They call it an iris.”

“I already know that. What is it made of?”

Jack paused. “Some kind of metal, my host doesn’t know what kind.”

“I thought you said he was the leader of the Tau’ri.”

“No, he is not the leader of the Tau’ri.”

“You mean to say this host is not Colonel O’Neill,” Anubis said as he quickly leaned forward in his chair.

“Oh, he is Colonel O’Neill, but he isn’t the leader of the Tau’ri.”

The conversation carried along in this vein for an hour. With Jack letting a little information out, just enough to keep Anubis interested, but not enough to put the SGC in jeopardy. After a while the door opened and Sam and Jonas were led into the room. Sam very carefully walked over to Jack and laid the tray down on the small table next to the mask. She was surprised to see the mask removed, but did not show it. Bowing to Jack, she then moved quickly around to stand with Jacob and Jonas behind Jack’s chair. This was Jack’s cue. He reached across and took some food from the tray and started to eat it.

“My food is not good enough for you, Tolgarth?”

“I have a delicate palate.” Reaching across again, he picked up another piece of food. As he leaned back into the chair, he very carefully stuffed down the back of it, a small package that Sam had dropped down behind his back.

Anubis’ first prime entered the room and he bent down and whispered something into Anubis’ ear.

Anubis stood up. “You shall go now, Tolgarth. I want to see you again after the conference. You will come here, but wait until I contact you.” Anubis walked out of the room.

Jack quickly stood up, picked up the mask and fitted it back on. “Right, we’re outta here.”

Moving swiftly, they walked to the Stargate room. When they got there, Sam quickly dialled in the coordinates for a planet that was close by. Waiting for them at the planet was a cargo ship, manned by the Tok’ra and Teal’c. There was no way that they could gate to Earth, as the Jaffa in the gate room would have seen the coordinates. They also needed to be in close proximity so they could detonate the explosives. As soon as they arrived on the planet, they moved towards the cargo ship. The ship took off quickly as they had quite a way to go and they didn’t want to arrive after all the system lords had left. While they were travelling towards the mother ship, they started to get changed. Sam couldn’t wait to get out of her dress and get back into BDU’s. It would be heaps more comfortable and a lot warmer. But she decided to wait for the guys to change first as Jack had already started ripping off his clothes in obvious anger as he stormed off into the back of the ship.

When they arrived near Anubis’ ship, they noticed that most of Goa’uld ships were already there. They counted them off. Jack sat on the floor over against the wall, with his head in his arms not moving. Sam had tried to talk to him, but he had ignored her. He had been behaving like that ever since he had finished getting changed. When Jacob announced that Osiris had arrived, Jack spoke for the first time.

“I hope she’s sitting in that chair when we blow the ship.” Sam knew what he meant as the package he had put down the back of the chair was made up of C-4 and a detonator.

Finally, all the Goa’uld had arrived. Sam walked over to Jack.

“Sir! Sir?”

“Huh?”

Would you like to detonate the bombs?”

Jack looked up at her and he looked tired. He quietly shook his head and laid his head back down on his arms. Sam lifted her thumb and brought it down on the button. They watched on the screen as simultaneous explosions erupted throughout the mother ship. They had done it; the system lords were all dead. Sam put the remote down on the consol and walked off into the back room.

Jacob hadn’t watched the screen when the explosions had gone off, because he had been watching Jack. Jack had been looking at Sam and Jacob had seen the longing in his face. Jack looked tired and burnt out. This last mission had taken a lot out of him. Sam had been right it was too soon after what had happened. Even so, if he had to ask Jack to do it all over again, he would.

Jacob left the room and went to find his daughter. He found her sitting on the floor against the wall. Her legs were straight out in front of her and her head was leaning back against the wall.

“Sammie?”

“Yes, Dad,” she replied tiredly.

Jacob sat down beside her. “Sam, when are you going to tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“That you are leaving the Air Force.”

“How did you know?” she asked surprised.

“I haven’t been your father for this many years to not know you.”

“I’ve had enough, Dad. These last eight months have been like a living nightmare and it’s been even worse for Jack. I don’t know if he is going to survive this. I don’t know if we will survive this.”

“I think Jack is stronger than you think. He will be okay. It’s only been four days since his release from Tolgarth’s control. Time is a great healer.”

Jacob leaned back against the wall and they sat in companionable silence. Sam thought it was strange, she hadn’t felt this close to her father before. Sam found she liked it, she realised that she should make more of an effort to share herself with her Dad.

Jack walked into the room.

“Sam, I need to talk to you.”

Jacob got up from the floor, turned and smiled at Sam. He mouthed, “Tell him”, before he walked out through the door, leaving Jack and Sam to talk.


~^~

Epilogue

Two months later.

It was warm and the sun was shining brightly in the blue cloudless sky. Jack was leading her through some small trees away from the cabin. She looked back towards the jetty and she could still see the fishing pole stuck up against the railing where Jack had left it. She remembered that he had suddenly sprung up off the jetty and grabbed her by the hand.

“Come on, Sam, I want to show you something.”

So she followed him up behind the cabin towards these trees. As they came through the other side of the trees, a warm breeze blew through her hair and making the skirt of her pale blue dress billow out and swirl around her bare legs. Her sandaled feet were leaving slight footprints in the dry dusty ground. Jack bent down and held out his hand to her and helped her over a difficult part of the pathway. They carried on climbing. Sam felt good and she hadn’t felt this happy before. Soon they reached the top of the rise. Sam gasped as she looked out at the scene below her. Still holding Jack’s hand, she ran down amongst the flowers, pulling him along with her. It was the meadow, the meadow from her dreams. The fragrance was just as she remembered it. The only difference was that this was real and Jack was here, standing beside her. Turning to him, she said, “Jack, this was your dream, not mine.”

Picking her up off the ground by her waist, he whirled her around him, laughing the whole time.

“No, Sam, this is our dream.”

He settled her feet gently on the ground, while still holding her he reached down and kissed her.


The End
Or should I say a new beginning.