Carter scrambles up to her hands and knees and blindly shouts, "Dad?" a little too close to Jack's ear. He rolls over onto his back and moans.
"Hold on," Jacob calls.
The ship swoops, and jolts from weapons fire. Carter's on her feet already, dragging Jack off the rings. "Hey, take it easy!" he says.
"You have to ring up those Jaffa," she tells her father.
"The ones that were about to kill you?"
"No, the dead ones. It's Sul'kesh, Dad."
"Sam, I don't think -- "
"Dad, please. I don't want Baal to bring them back."
Jacob just grumbles.
Jack finds himself in the corner, by the airlock. Carter strips off her jacket and drops it on his chest. "I'm touched, Carter," he says.
"You okay for a minute?" she asks.
He waves a hand at her and balls up the jacket under his head. "Go, go." He's expending most of his energy on not puking, anyway.
Carter disappears, and the rings whoosh. Jack so does not want to see that cargo.
"That might not have been too precise," Jacob says. "Can we go now?"
All Carter says is, "Dad," in an irritated tone Jack recognizes. She slides into the copilot's seat.
More swooping. More shooting. Jack turns his head and sees clouds through the viewscreen, between Carter and Jacob. The clouds give way to the bright light of the planet's upper atmosphere, then to blackness, and stars. Finally he feels the jolt of a hyperspace jump.
Holy crap. They're going to live.
There's a moment of silence while they all process this new information. Jack lets out a breath and realizes that watching the mutating stars outside is not a smart thing to do.
"Where are we going?" Carter asks.
"At the moment, a few systems over. I'll plot a course for home from there."
"Jack needs a doctor, Dad."
"So does she," Jack says from the floor. They both ignore him.
"Can we find a closer gate?" Carter asks.
Jacob pauses before responding. "I'll see what we can do," he says. "Selmak's already working on it."
"Thank you." She turns and squints at the ring room. Her face is still blotchy. "I hope you have a zat."
Jacob hands it over, and Jack watches her go. She's moving in slow motion again, like she did in the cell. A few moments after she enters the other chamber, she says, "Oh, my God. One of them is alive."
"What?" Jack and Jacob both ask together.
Jack hears her rearranging bodies. He crawls across the floor so he can see what she's up to. "Sam?"
"I don't think he'll last very long, even with the symbiote," she says, kneeling by her new patient. "God."
The guy is off to the side, unconscious and breathing in loud, shallow rasps. He's also missing both feet. The rest are still on the rings; one of Sul'kesh's arms has been chopped off between the collarbone and the shoulder. Jack doesn't count body parts on the other two. "Not precise," he says.
"Best I could do, Jack," Jacob says.
"I know, I know. Sorry."
Carter stares at the nearly-dead Jaffa, and Jack knows she's deciding if she should disintegrate him with the others.
She removes the Jaffa's armor, tearing his clothing so she can see the chest. The burn looks like charcoal and extends to the top of the symbiote pouch. Even if he does survive, he's still a Jaffa; he won't be too happy without fully functional legs.
"Um," Carter says, grimacing. She looks at Jack, then back at the pouch. Then she rolls up her sleeve, holds her breath, pushes one hand inside.
"Oh, ew," Jack says.
"Dammit." She sinks back on her heels, wiping her hand on the Jaffa's tunic.
"Dead?" Jack asks.
"Dead." She looks at him again. "Go lie down, Jack." He doesn't, and she starts to move around the room, taking off armor and jewelry.
"Personal effects?" he asks, confused.
"Maybe Teal'c can get these to their families somehow. At least then they'll know." Jack thinks of Sul'kesh's wife and daughter. He wonders if the daughter's husband is out fighting somewhere for Baal, too.
Carter piles it all in the far corner of the ring room, then comes back to grab the zat from the floor. For a few seconds she just stands, staring at the last Jaffa and swallowing hard. Jack's afraid she might fall over.
"You want me to do it?" he asks softly.
"No. It's okay. Go lie down." Her eyes are pleading now, like she doesn't want him to witness what she's about to do. So he follows her order.
The ship falls out of hyperspace. "Dad?"
"We're just going to calculate another quick trip. Wait a minute."
The zat fires in the other room. Three, then three, then two, and the ship jumps again, and one final shot.
Poor bastards. Then again, they died free, as Teal'c would say. Jack mentions this to Carter as she comes back to the cockpit. She nods absently and kneels beside him.
"How is it?" she asks, touching his thigh.
"It's broken. And burned. And broken."
Carter frowns at his ankle, which is now turned at a revolting angle. "I'll find something to bandage the burns." She lays a hand on his forehead. "Do you want to move back to the other room?"
"No. Room spinning."
"How is he, Sam?"
She looks over her shoulder. "His fever's still rising and he's in a lot of pain. I think he'll be okay if we get antibiotics into him soon enough."
It occurs to Jack that there must have been a healing device stowed somewhere on the other ship. Oh, well.
"There are supplies here somewhere," Jacob says gently. "Think you could tally them?"
"Yeah," she says. "In a minute." She squeezes Jack's hand. Jack squeezes back.
*
Carter finds blankets, some spare tunics and robes, and what are probably emergency rations -- water jugs, and more of that dark, flat thing. It looks like his grandmother's crispbread when she left it in the oven too long, and it tastes a lot worse. Jack manages three bites before handing it back.
She wraps it up without complaint, but she does make him swallow one of the last two Advil. "Sul'kesh gave Dad some stew. Can you handle that?"
"Ugh," he says. "No."
"You warm enough?"
He's got two blankets underneath him, and two on top. "I'm hot, Carter."
She gives him her most indulgent look and says, "Okay." Then she picks up Jacob's field knife and starts starts slicing long strips of Jaffawear.
He rubs her knee, trying not to look at the knife -- or at the metal bar that's going to be his splint. She scavenged it from one of the escape pods. "Seriously, how's the head?"
"It hurts," she admits. "A lot. But I'll be fine."
"You should lie down, too. You still feel sick?" She has a pinched look around her eyes, and big circles, and Jack doesn't like the shade of her skin. He thinks the light is still bothering her.
"A little. We'll get this done, and then I have to talk to Dad, okay? Then I'll sleep." She lays out the strips in neat rows, and leaves the knife under a pile of linen, out of Jack's sight.
"Jacob?" Jack calls across the cockpit. "Make sure she gets some rest, willya?"
Jacob chuckles, and Carter smooths down Jack's hair. "Ready?"
"No," he grumps.
"Okay, Dad," she says as she unties Jack's boot. Jack sucks in a breath and grits his teeth. "I need your help to set it now."
*
Jack doesn't remember passing out, or being moved into the ring room. The burns still burn, but the ankle feels marginally better now that it's splinted, and the nausea has let up some since they stopped the fancy flying.
He listens for what woke him, hears a shuffle and boots coming off. Then the blankets he's kicked down by his feet slide back up over his shoulders. "Sam?" he asks groggily.
"Shove over."
He inches to his left, carefully.
"You need to keep the blankets on, Jack."
"It's roasting in here, Carter."
"Will you quit arguing with me?" But her voice is playful. Sweet.
"Probably not," he admits. "You find a gate?"
Carter groans in something approaching pleasure as she lies down. "Oh, that feels good," she says. And then, "Selmak knows of one about twenty hours away."
Jack thinks about this. There's a catch in there, but it takes him a while to find it. "Knows, or knew?"
She pauses. "Knew. But he's sure of one maybe twelve hours beyond that." She turns onto her side, to face him, and rests her hand on his stomach. "How're you feeling?"
"I feel like crap, Carter."
She laughs a little. "I'd forgotten how impossible you are when you're sick," she says.
"Hey, all this could be yours."
He can almost make out her smile in the dim light. "Already is, I think."
And then he fesses up. "I don't feel as much like crap as I did before."
"A ringing endorsement of my field medic skills."
Jack grunts.
"Try to sleep," she says, folding an arm under her head.
"I was asleep." But he rolls a little closer, ignoring his ribs, and drops his nose in her hair even though it's as filthy as his own. "You stink, Carter."
"Yep," she says. "Twenty hours."
"Twenty hours is nothing." Hell, they were locked up for almost sixty. "You know," he says into her hair, "falling for you was damned inconvenient."
"Tell me about it," she says, and then, "Sleep. That's an order."
*
Carter peers over Jacob's shoulder at what Selmak believes is an Asgard-protected planet. The Tok'ra haven't been paying attention to this part of the galaxy for a while, Jacob explains.
Fantastic.
"You sure it's safe for Selmak, Dad?"
Jacob shrugs. "If it isn't, I'll shove you two through and make it home by ship. But we've never heard of one of those things anywhere but Cimmeria."
She accepts that, but Jack can tell she's still nervous. Hell, Jack's nervous. Nearly a day off that rock and his adrenaline keeps spiking.
He'd gotten bored of his floor, and struggled into the copilot's chair even though it makes his ankle throb and his guts churn, and even though he can't look out the viewscreen too much. Carter objected, but half-heartedly; she knows how restless he gets. And they'll be home soon, anyway. And he earned a couple extra points by being a good boy, and wrapping a blanket around his shoulders.
She looks over at him, and smiles an encouraging smile.
The inhabitants aren't too advanced -- "Just the way the Asgard like them," Jacob said; Jack will have to ask him about that when he feels less like spewing his guts all over the ship -- and the stargate is a few klicks from the nearest village. They'll leave the ship here, cloaked. Jacob can come back for it later.
"I think you should ring us down, Dad. Jack shouldn't be walking."
"I can walk, Carter."
"Sure you can."
Jacob grins. "Why don't we leave everything you gathered from the Jaffa here? George can send a team to get them."
"I can walk, Jacob!"
Carter says, "Jack," and Jacob grins some more.
The beam deposits them in front of the gate. Jack fights to stay upright, leaning on her, but the ground undulates and he sits down on the steps, hard.
"Oh, fuck." Yeah, he couldn't have walked.
"Just a couple more minutes," Carter says as her father jogs toward them. She holds Jack's shoulder tightly. In her other hand is the little machine that nearly got them all killed.
Jacob dials while Carter helps Jack get out of the way of the wormhole. Jack's never felt sick going through the gate until today.
The four sergeants guarding the Alpha Site gate stare at them, P-90s raised. "Colonel O'Neill? Doctor Carter?"
Jack's in the middle, barely standing, with a Carter propping him up on each side. "Take me to your leader," he says.
*
It's the middle of the night on Earth. Fraiser is home asleep, and everyone in the infirmary has agreed to wait until morning to decide whether to reset Jack's ankle. They know she'll want to see it. But they shoot a bunch of stuff into his IV line -- antibiotics, some painkiller, something for the nausea because his head's not floating so much now -- while a nurse disinfects and wraps his burns.
Jacob comes back just as the nurse is finishing. "George asked if I was the one who shot you," he says.
"I'm not entirely convinced you weren't," Jack says, earning a smile from Carter, who's in the chair by his bed. She's downed some pills, too, and been ordered to undergo an MRI and a vision exam, but nobody seems determined to make her undergo them right this minute. Maybe that's the real difference between being on SG-1 and being a civilian.
The nurse tapes the last bandage, and Carter thanks her by name. The equipment tray rattles away.
Jacob grips Carter's hand. "I gotta go, kiddo," he says. With his free hand he digs the handheld computer out of his uniform, and passes it to her. "Obviously Selmak and I have some things to deal with back at the ranch. It might be a while."
She nods. "I know. Be careful, okay?"
"I will. And I'll come help you with the stabilizer as soon as I can. Try not to blow any planets up while I'm gone."
"I'll try."
Jacob turns to Jack's cot, frowning with what looks like indecision. "Jack?" he says finally. "If you hurt her I will shoot you."
"Oh, I believe you, believe me." Then he has to think about that, because it doesn't make much sense. But he figures Jacob got it, anyway.
"What if I hurt him, Dad?" Jack looks at Carter -- that didn't sound too great -- but she's smiling.
"Then I might have to shoot you, too." Jacob leans down to kiss the top of her head. "Be safe. I'll see you soon." Then he turns, and he's gone.
Carter tips back against the wall. Jack wiggles his toes just to make sure he can. His brain is clouding up; he'll be out soon. And for once he doesn't have a complaint about that.
"Carter?"
She turns to him, blinking. "Hmm?"
"Has it ever occurred to you that our lives are odd?"
"The thought has crossed my mind."
He holds out a hand, and she takes it. His fingertips skirt the gauze on her wrist; the infirmary is starting to blur around the edges. "I want to go home, Sam," he says.
***
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