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1. Jack
If she started anything, she wouldn’t be able to stop. So she didn’t.
2. Daniel
They were stuck in that palace detoxing from the Light for 17 days. The first few days the gradual step down wasn’t even noticeable. Base sent over files for her to work on, new research to catch up on, and she put her feet up and read.
By the fourth day, the withdrawal symptoms were back. Janet had them maxed out on Tylenol—all she would give them—and they were all edgy and depressed enough that their sharp corners kept cutting each other. Jack and Daniel’s spats were getting more and more cutting. If she tried to separate them, Jack would mess with whatever she was doing until she couldn’t concentrate, or Daniel would want to talk through some philosophical debate she wouldn’t have any patience for right now.
She tried to teach the kid they had found there, Loren, some hand-to-hand, more out of a desire to burn off some energy than any honest interest in his welfare. Interest in anybody’s welfare was sapped away by the long ugly detoxing. But the kid, like teenagers everywhere, reacted to the physicality of sparring with enough embarrassment to keep him in hiding a few days.
Jack, who was bunking in the room next to Loren, made a few off color comments about how the kid was spending his time alone in his room. It made Sam think.
Low neurotransmitters in the brain were making them depressed. Ice cream through the gate once a week wasn’t cutting it for dopamine.
Maybe it was time for something other than philosophy with Daniel. She would promise not to make a “cunning linguist” joke.
3. T’ealc
He rescued her so many times. If their luck had been anything other than it was, he would have died, over and over again, putting the team above his own safety. She knew without question he would put her life ahead of his own. But if he put her safety over the rest of the team’s, she would never forgive him. So she wouldn’t tempt fate that way.
4. General Hammond
It wasn’t much of a plan. Stuck in 1969, with nothing to convince Lieutenant Hammond to free them beyond a note in his own handwriting. Sam thought she could be persuasive, if that’s what it took.
5. Rodney McKay
He was exactly the kind of arrogant, misogynistic jerk that made her blood boil. It was the same kind of arrogance that also made her want to ride him hard and leave scratches bleeding across his chest.
Maybe if she gave in, he could make her stop thinking about Daniel, about whether “ascended” and “dead” really meant anything different, if only for a few minutes.
1. And one she did
Vala doesn’t expect more of her than she can handle, or less of her for her flaws. She’s just there, steady at the strangest times. Sam can wake up in the morning with no regrets and no expectations. So she does.