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She's so tired.
Sometimes she imagines she hears voices, or the metallic scrape of shovels on rock.
The sounds of a long overdue rescue.
Her will fails her and her head falls to her chest. She cries out at the pain in her shattered left arm. The sound of her voice is stolen by the heavy air, bundled up and taken away before it can echo off the stone walls.
Sam presses her back against the damp wall of the cave. The wall presses back, sharp and cold, insisting that she stay awake just a little longer. Colonel O'Neill groans in his sleep. Sam reaches a hand out to comfort him and who is she kidding? He's not sleeping. He hasn't been conscious since the world came tumbling down around them. She slides her fingers along his hairline to his ear. The blood there is tacky and drying. There doesn't seem to be any more of it and Sam wants to believe that's a good thing.
The disorienting blackness is making it difficult to breathe. She tries unsuccessfully to keep thoughts of limited oxygen at bay. There are worse ways to die, if that's what it comes down to.
Water.
She thinks she can hear water moving behind the walls. It's a familiar, pleasant sound, and if she listens long enough, it might carry her away from this place. She wonders if it too is trapped or if it's moving steadily toward some distant freedom.
"Carter?"
Sam almost screams at the sound of his voice. "I'm right here, sir." She should say more but she doesn't because she's starting to think they're going to die here in the darkness and she's not sure she can keep that out of her voice.
The air moves around her as Colonel O'Neill attempts to sit, or stand. Maybe he's just trying to roll over, she can't really tell. She puts her good arm out to protect herself when he bumps into her leg. "Sorry," he mumbles, and he doesn't sound entirely coherent. His hand slides up the side of her leg and he shuffles into the space next to her a moment later. "I feel like I got hit by a bus," he says.
Sam forgets for a moment that he was better off when he was unconscious and she lets his voice roll over her. It's almost as comforting as the sounds of digging that might never come. It's been far too long and there's really no reason to think anyone else is in a better situation than the two of them. She reaches over and puts her hand on his leg. He covers it with his own and squeezes her fingers. "That bad?" He asks.
"I think it might be," is all she says.
And they wait.
*****
The sound of the water grows louder as the minutes slip by, and Sam finally falls asleep. The pain is left behind in the dark cave while her mind moves on and her body rests.
It's cold in her dreams.
She's turning a shower knob. It spins freely, rotating more than it should, and still the water is cold. She shivers and the water grows colder, becoming ice that stings her skin and chatters against the tiles. The sound echoes through her head. It hurts and she tries to cover her ears. Her left arm snaps off and shatters on the tile floor. Sam screams and the dream goes dark.
It takes her a moment to realize that she's awake.
"Carter?" She can hear the concern through the confusion.
"Are we dead yet?" She asks. It's not quite a joke.
"No, I don't think so." He sounds better, like maybe he managed to hold on to enough blood to keep things running smoothly. "I've been thinking about looking for a way out of here."
Of course he has. What other option do they have? She wants to tell him not to bother, that they should just save their energy. For what, she doesn't know. It doesn't matter anyway because what she says is, "That would be great."
His clothes rustle in the darkness. They sound impatient. "I can't find my flashlight," he finally says. "Do you still have yours?"
She does. She has his too. Somehow she'd managed to hold on to all of their gear, stashing it beside her in a fit of self-preservation. Then the situation had degraded enough to render it all useless. She'd already scanned the cavern as best as she could. There isn't anything to see but she'll let him discover that for himself.
"Yeah," she says. Sam reaches between her knees and grabs one of the flashlights. Her movements are slow and guarded, her breathing unsteady.
"Are you okay?"
"No," she tells him. "My arm is broken."
"Bad?"
She thinks her arm is broken in two places, which is bad, but as far as she can tell, all of the bones are still inside, which is good. Still, it hurts in a way that makes her useless, which, again, is bad. "Yes," she finally says.
The admission hurts almost as much as the injury. Waiting for someone else to rescue her has never been Sam's style. Her only consolation is the fact that they'll probably be dead long before they're found and nobody will know.
The silence is a beat too long. Then he just says, "Okay," and pretends she owns up to her injuries every day. She can hear him fumbling with the flashlight. Sam isn't sure if it's due to his head injury or the disorienting darkness. "Cover your eyes," he tells her.
She does. She can still see the light through her hand and counts to twenty before opening her eyes. It's still excruciatingly bright. After a moment, she can see Colonel O'Neill sitting next to her. He's still covering his eyes. His BDU top is soaked in blood, all his. Sam wonders how far he'll get and if she'll be able to find him in the darkness when things go bad as she expects them to.
She watches as he scans around with the light. She verifies that there is still no way out before he starts to crawl away from her. Watching the light bounce off the rock walls makes her nauseous. Her stomach churns and she closes her eyes. The water is still running in the walls. It sounds closer now and it's running, and running, and running...
"Carter?" She's lost in the sound of the water and what is Jack doing here? "Carter!" Louder this time. What does he want? Can't he see that she's in the water and it's going to lead her away from this place?
This place?
It all comes back in a rush of cold, damp discomfort.
"Dammit, Carter." His hand squeezes her shoulder.
"I'm awake," she yells, afraid that he'll touch her again.
"Sorry," he says. "I thought you--" He doesn't finish. "I think I found something."
Great, is all she has time to think before the screen fades to black for the last time.
****
This is not, as Colonel O'Neill is fond of saying, her first rodeo and she recognizes the soft beeping of machinery immediately. It's steady and comforting, reassuring her that she'll probably live to see another day.
Her head feels groggy, like she's been sedated for a while and she opens her eyes slowly. Her arm starts to itch as soon as she sees the heavy, impenetrable cast someone has slapped on it. She frowns at it. The next six weeks are not going to be pleasant.
The Colonel is sitting on the bed next to hers watching his feet swing back and forth until he notices her staring at him. He's sporting a nice, new bandage on his head but other than that he seems to be in one piece. "You're awake," he says. He hops gingerly to the floor with only a slight wince and moves to her side.
"I don't really want to be."
His eyes narrow and he gives her a critical once-over before sitting down. Just in case the highly trained doctors missed anything life-threatening. "Nobody likes a slacker, Carter."
A nurse comes in to check her vitals and make some notes in her chart. Sam answers his questions and waits for him to leave before turning back to Colonel O'Neill. "How did we get out?"
She can tell he's already told the story to anyone who would listen before he opens his mouth. "Well, after you refused to help me," he says. "I set out alone, armed with nothing but a flashlight." He pauses, not quite dramatically and Sam is glad for the narcotics in her system.
"And?" She prompts, like he's five years old.
He thinks a moment, then shrugs his shoulders. Again, she sees him as a giant kid in BDUs. "That's all I remember." He looks down at his shoes, possibly for moral support. "I passed out again. Teal'c found us."
"I see."
"But I was very brave." His eyebrows rise to the edge of his bandage.
"Certainly."
He looks at her, suddenly serious. "So were you."
"I thought we were going to die." She'd been sure of it, because they could only get lucky so many times. Dying uselessly in a dark cave had seemed like a fitting end to their impressive run of impossible escapes.
"We were," he says.
"That makes me feel better."
"Yeah. Remind me to get Teal'c some donuts." He leans the chair back against the wall like he's planning on being there for a while. "Carter?" He says, looking at her through half-closed eyes.
The excitement of finding herself alive is wearing off and she wants to sleep again. "Yes?"
"It's good to see you," is all he says.
It's both amusing and serious in the way he tends to be and it can mean as much or as little as she wants to let it. She blames the drugs for her self-indulgence when her hand reaches out and lightly brushes his cheek. "You too, sir," she tells him before closing her eyes.
*********Someone requested a tag because Jack would obviously have to help Sam in the shower. :)******
Jack thought about their brief moment in the infirmary for days. Brooded on it really. Was it just a temporary lapse in judgment brought on by too many good drugs and a concussion or something more? Something like a near-death experience forcing them to reevaluate their commitment to ignoring certain...things.
He tried to go back and talk to her about it several times but Carter was popular and he'd only managed to catch her alone twice. His master plan of sitting around until she spontaneously started telling him everything he wanted to know hadn't panned out. The first time, she was groggy and nonsensical until she fell asleep and started drooling on her pillow. The second time, she'd been awake and lucid but they hadn't gotten out of the awkward looks and stilted conversation phase before Daniel had shown up with cupcakes and who could think with all that chocolate in the room? Certainly not him because he found himself volunteering to take her home when she mentioned she was being kicked out of the infirmary to make room for SG teams 12 and 14 who'd contracted a particularly nasty case of alien flu.
And that's how he found himself in her living room blurting out the words that shocked them both into a prolonged silence. Jack closed his eyes and sighed, hoping she would just tell him to leave and not beat the shit out of him, but Carter surprised him by doing neither. He opened one eye to find her looking at him with a difficult to interpret expression. Amused determination with a side of nervous apprehension. Or something.
Jack thought his head injury was worse than he'd been led to believe when she started talking. "I think maybe you're right," she said. "I could use a little help in the shower." Jack's vision went fuzzy.
"Uh," he replied as eloquently as possible.
"What with this cast and all." She waved the cast around a bit, giving Jack something to focus on. It helped with his thinking. Maybe he hadn't been the only one contemplating the possible shift in their relationship.
"Yes," he said as she took his hand. "I should stay. And help. With stuff." There might be any number of things she would need help with. Tying her shoes. Zipping her zippers. Getting dressed. Getting naked. The possibilities were endless.