Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (12 page)

.t was strange, Daniel thought, that he was having the time of his
life right now, trapped on an alien planet with the threat of death
hanging over him. But for the first time in a long time, he was feeling
useful. He had puzzles to solve, things to care about, someplace to be
and people to belong to. He'd had that on Abydos, for a while. Not
so much before. Losing it - and Sha're - had been the hardest things
he'd ever endured.

Dan'yel. In unguarded moments, he could still hear her voice, as if
she was just behind him, out of sight, and when he slept he woke up
believing her warmth was curled next to him. Until reality came into
hard, clear, cold focus. Empty bed, empty soul, empty life.

He'd felt useless ever since. This felt... better, being here. Doing
this.

Crazy as that was, under the circumstances.

Captain Carter was tugging at her neckband again. He knew how
she felt; he kept catching himself pulling on his own, trying to loosen
it, trying to find the hidden catch to take it off. When she saw him
watching her she gave a guilty little smile. "Itches," she explained. He
nodded. "Want something to eat?"

"Sure."

She dug out supplies, and inspected an NIRE package with a slight,
undeniably cute frown between her eyebrows. "Country Captain
Chicken. Apart from the obvious jokes, that just doesn't seem very
appetizing." She held it out to Daniel, who shook his head. "I'll save
it for the Colonel. He'll probably get a kick out of it..."

She made it half a question. Daniel saw her looking toward O'Neill,
but Jack's chin was down on his chest, his olive-drab baseball cap
pulled down low, his arms folded over his chest, foot elevated to bring
down the swelling. Fast asleep. Jack had put on a good front, but it
had been pretty obvious to anybody who knew him that his ankle had
been bad enough to sideline any of the rest of them.

"Jack? Yeah. Probably."

"I'm just thinking, you know him better than I do."

Daniel paused in the act of reaching for a package labeled JAMBALAYA. "I do?"

"Sure." Captain Carter's shoulders raised and lowered in a toocareful shrug. "You were on the Abydos mission together. You've
logged more time."

"Well... yes. That doesn't mean I know him. I mean, I like him,
and I respect him, but so far as knowing him... it's not that easy.
Jack's not exactly the type to open up."

"You aren't either," Carter observed.

Daniel felt his eyebrows go up. "And you are?"

"Sure." She ripped open a package - not the Country Captain
Chicken, whatever that was - and sorted through the contents. "I
grew up a military brat, my father's an Air Force General, I kissed my
first boy at 14, and I like fast cars."

"That's it?"

"The highlights." She grinned at him. "I always meant to be an
astronaut, until I found out about the Stargate, and then I couldn't
think of anything else. End of story. Trust me, I'm not that complicated."

"Captain - Doctor - "

She gave him a sidelong look out of those blue eyes that he couldn't
quite think of as military. "Sam. Please."

"Okay. Sam. But only if you quit calling me Dr. Jackson."

"Deal."

"Sam, you obviously think I have some kind of inside track with
Jack, but that's just not true. Believe me, the fact that I've known him
a little longer doesn't mean he listens to me any more than you...
just the opposite. Jack and I, we see things from opposite sides. That
helps, sometimes. And sometimes it doesn't." He shrugged and fiddled with the MRE, pulled the heating tab and waited for the entree
to cook. "He respects you. He may not seem like it sometimes, but
believe me, Jack's good at reading people. If he let you on the team,
then he trusts you."

"Nice to know." Her smile was sudden and genuine. "Do you?"

He felt his eyebrows pull higher. "You're kidding, right? I've seen you under fire. The question is, do you trust me?"

Her smile switched off, leaving him feeling oddly cold. "I'd trust
you better if I didn't understand you so well."

"I'm not sure I - "

"You didn't wait before you bounced out there to talk to a bunch
of strangers," she said. "Daniel, if Alsiros had pulled out a knife and
stabbed you, we wouldn't have been able to do a damn thing except
bury you, and maybe with company. You need to value your life a
little higher. I do. So does the colonel."

Daniel had almost forgotten his presence, the Jaffa was sitting so
silently, but Teal'c looked over and said, "As do I, Daniel Jackson."

"Hey, wait a minute, guys, I'm not helpless, you know...."

"You're a civilian," Carter cut across his protest. "The three of us
are trained for situations like this, you're not. From now on, wait until
we give you the all-clear, okay? We don't want to lose you."

Teal'c inclined his head a bare degree, then turned his attention
back to the outside. Daniel felt his throat close under the grip of
something he barely understood - frustration, grief, fierce and aching
relief.

We don't want to lose you. All his life, he'd been waiting for someone to say that to him, to give him a sense of belonging. Throwing
himself out in front had always been a way of life, not a choice - get
noticed, get attention, get people to cooperate. It was going to be
tough to undo the habit.

He looked down, stirred his jambalaya, and spooned up a quick
mouthful to cover his emotion, then murmured, "I'll work on it.
Thanks."

He felt her hand settle on his shoulder briefly, squeeze, and retreat
again. She devoted herself to the MIRE, and they retreated to the safety
of mundane topics, like the merits of Disks, Chocolate, With Crisped
Rice, over Disks, Chocolate, With Peanut Butter.

He was dozing before he could think to ask about when he was
supposed to wake up to take a turn at watch. Just before he tipped
over into true, dark sleep, he felt the remembered tactile sensation of
Sha're's soft black hair dragging over his chest, and her warm weight
settling in his arms.

In sleep, he could still have her for his dreams. For twilight, wak ing dreams.

And for nightmares.

"You don't sleep. "

Sha're settles on the sand next to him, pulling her robes closer
against the night's chill, and draws her knees in close to her chest.
He gives her an absent smile and puts his arm around her Overhead,
the moon pours pale light and turns the desert sands to a dry, frozen
sparkle.

"You miss it, 11 she says. "Your home. Your people. Your rituals."

"Only some, " he replies, and rests his chin on top of her scented
dark hair. "Coffee. Showers. Kleenex. "Although he hasn't sneezed in
weeks now, as his body adjusts to the new climate. "Okay, and toilet
paper I miss toilet paper I really miss toilet paper. "

She laughs. Her English is good, getting better all the time, but
some things still strike her as ridiculous. He's had a very hard time
explaining toilet paper Throwing anything away is a foreign concept
to theAbydonians.

"I made you chal " she says. "You say it is like coffee. "

It's hot, dark, and it keeps him awake. That mostly qualifies. "Yes.
Like coffee. " He smoothes her hair back and admires the ivory curve
of her face in the moonlight. Share? "

"Yes? "

"Why did you... " He can't even put it into words, but she knows,
and smiles.

"You were different, " she says. "And you were favored of the
gods. "

"Not sure I like that. "

She makes a frustrated gesture. "Not the false gods. The real ones.
They mark you. "

He isn't sure he likes that either The ancient gods rarely marked
anyone that they didn'tplan to play with. Punish. Destroy.

He kisses her hair her forehead, moves his lips slowly down to
touch hers.

"Dan'yel, " she whispers in his ear and puts her arms around his
neck.

Close, so close to forgetting...

There is something wrong with him. Something black and thick
inside him, like dread, like hunger and when he pulls away, he sees
that there is something wrong with Share, too.

Her face is different. The lines are the same, but what lives inside
it, what looks out of those eyes, is not his beloved.

Her eyesflash white in the moonlight, brighter than should be possible.

"Worship me, " she says, and smiles with Sha're's lips.

He feels oddly remote as he asks, "Who are you? "

"I am moon and fire and the loss of self. I am the death at the end,
when the stag can run no more. I am the bursting heart and the flying
arrow, the hart and the hare and the spear "

She kisses him fiercely, and they are Sha're's lips, Sha're's hands
on him, and he can't resist her.

"Mine, " she whispers, and the word breathes warm over his skin.
"There is no beauty so complete as in its destruction. "

He has a knife in his hand, and he knows what she wants him to
do.

"Dan'yel, " she says, and her Goa'uld eyes flash again, ordering.
"My love."

And he strikes.

Out in the city, someone screamed. It was a long distance off but
very clear as it hovered and shivered thinly in the night air. It sent a
pure bolt of adrenaline down Samantha Carter's back and catapulted
her to a fast, fluid crouch next to Teal'c at the door. He had gone still,
listening. When the cry faded into silence, Carter let her breath out
slowly and looked over her shoulder at Daniel and the colonel, but
they were still sleeping. Good. They were exhausted. Daniel hadn't
let on, but that crack on the head hadn't done him any good, and the
colonel... damn. She couldn't believe he was walking. She'd have
been crawling, if moving at all.

"Captain Carter," Teal'c said. "I will stand watch. You should
sleep."

He didn't even look at her as he said it - no flicker of attention off
what was going on, or not going on, outside the doorway. She felt
amazingly small next to the Jaffa. Colonel O'Neill was a tall, strong man, and he filled a room, no doubt about it, and when she stood next
to him she felt included, as if his strength attached itself to hers and
multiplied it. Daniel... he was bigger than he looked, and civilian or
not, she knew there was a core of endurance to him that would put
some gung-ho Marines to shame.

But Teal'c was something else. He was like a mountain, alone and
imposing, and when she was next to him there was no sense of being
with him, only beside him, like standing next to the Sphinx in Egypt.

But it felt safe, next to him. Very, very safe.

"I wish we knew what was happening out there," she said. "And I
wish we could help them."

"It would be dangerous to leave this shelter," he said. She felt that,
too, a strong sense of something out there moving, but just at the
comer of their vision. "The scream came from the direction in which
Alsiros took his party."

"Damn." Those young kids...

"Do you believe that some enemy hunts this place?"

"All I know is that those people back there didn't decide to commit
suicide by dismembering themselves."

Teal'c cast a look at her, fast and unreadable, and she felt that gap
again, dark and unbridgeable. She actually understood Daniel a hell
of a lot more than she did Teal'c. The colonel had forged an instant
bond with the Jaffa, and Daniel seemed to have reached some sense
of comfort with him, but she sensed that it might take more time with
her. Then again, if she'd been serving Apophis for a hundred years,
enduring who-knew-what at the hands of the Goa'uld, she might have
been a little careful with her trust, too.

"I will watch through the night," he said.

"No need, Teal'c. I'll take a shift."

"I do not require sleep as humans do. You should rest."

She was thrown. "You don't sleep?" For some reason, that was
odder and more off-putting than the idea of the larval Goa'uld stirring
in that pouch in his stomach. "You must rest sometime."

He didn't elaborate, his focus entirely on the outside. It was looking a little less murky out there; she risked sticking her head out to see
that there was a large white moon rising, larger than Earth's satellite.
Nearly full. It put a silver hush over everything, a silken weight that felt somehow ominous.

"Sleep, Captain Carter," Teal'c said again. "I will wake you at first
light."

She wasn't sure she could sleep, but now that she thought about
it, her muscles were aching and craving oblivion even if her mind
wasn't ready. She went back to the stove, turned it to a lower setting,
and finally braced herself in a comer of the room, MP5 at the ready,
to close her eyes.

I won't be able to relax, she thought, and then exhaustion washed
over her in a black tide, carrying her away into moonlit silence.

Running, always running. Feet pounding, back aching, sweat dripping cold down his spine, and the moonlight, silver moonlight freezing everything in cold silence. The city looks like a pillaged corpse,
but it is a living thing, hungry and waiting. There are hiding places
but they are filled, with others desperate to conceal themselves, and
the hunters, behind, are running too, fanning out to flush their prey
out of shadows. Some fight when they are caught, but one thing is
sure: they all scream.