Stargate SG-1 fic: Last Chance

[jennickels]

Title: Last Chance
pairing: Sam/Jack
rated: G
warnings: none
spoilers: none

 

Sam woke up some time later. It was hard to tell in the dark, windowless hold. Outside the wind howled against the hull, the ship rocking lightly. She shivered, pulling herself tighter against the colonel in a pointless attempt to pool their nonexistent body heat.

"Deja vu," he mumbled, still half asleep. Sam raised her head up to look at him. He cracked open one eye, a slight smirk on his face. "I have a feeling we've done this before."

Sam screwed up her face in confusion. "Spending the night together?"

He chuckled. "Freezing to death. It's not as bad this time around. Not half as painful."

"A broken hand instead of a broken leg."

"No broken ribs."

Sam couldn't help but smile, tears of exhaustion pressing out of the corners of her eyes. She lowered her head back to his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his steady breathing, his heart beating softly in the background. His broken hand twitched on her shoulder, the other fiddled with the edge of the blanket wrapped tightly around them.

After a moment he groaned softly. "This is nice and all... but I gotta pee."

Unable to contain the slew of giggles she buried her face into his shirt. She could feel him laughing under her. Slowly she moved over so he could extract his arm from under her. He rolled the shoulder wincing from the stiffness then gently shook out his hand. Sam looked away feeling suddenly guilty for his pain but the colonel said nothing. Not that he ever would.

"We should get up and start moving anyway, before hypothermia sets in."

"How about we fire the heat up in here a little," he called from the bathroom. Almost nothing else worked on the ship but the plumbing kept pumping water. Sam wondered how the systems interacted that they had no heat but the hot water had yet to run out. She frowned at the thought as she dug through her pack looking for her toiletries.

The colonel returned a few minutes later, his hair tussled, shirt untucked and a sleepy grin on his face. Sam shook her head at him. He could be such a kid sometimes. But that was part of his charm. She jumped up at that thought, excusing herself to the bathroom. Now was not the time to be thinking of her commanding officer as charming or adorable in the morning. Adorable? Where the hell did that come from? She mentally slapped herself and when that didn't do the trick she connected her actual hand with her chilled cheek.

"Get a grip, Carter," she mumbled to herself as she cleaned up. When she was done she took a few minutes to steady herself. Sleeping next to the colonel wasn't a new thing. They often shared a tent on overnight missions, although Daniel and Teal'c were usually near-by if not in the tent with them. But sleeping that close... that didn't happen often. And it was always as a last resort to save their lives. Like in Antarctica. She tried not to think of that. It was one adventure she'd rather forget. They had come so close to dying. Literally moments away. She didn't want to link that event with their current predicament no matter how bad things were looking at the moment.

"You fall in there?" the colonel yelled from the other room when she didn't return in what she assumed he thought was a reasonable amount of time. She rolled her eyes at her reflection in the huge mirror that covered an entire wall of the room. Damn Goa'uld and their egos.

Back in the cargo hold the colonel had picked up the contents of the first aid kit and set out an MRE for her. She picked it up and followed the sound of him mumbling and cursing under his breath. He was in the back of the hold, his hands inside a control panel.

"Sir? I wouldn't-" she started to say as she saw what he was about to do.

A flash and the colonel fell back, his finger going in his mouth again. "Owe," he muttered around it.

Sam just shook her head. She couldn't believe a man nearing the fifty year mark could look so much like an overgrown ten year old. He looked up at her, a sheepish grin spreading across his face. She sighed and squatted down next to him.

"You have to change the green and yellow crystals first before trying to divert the heat from the engines," she told him and she manipulated the innards of the panel. "I don't think there's much power getting to this console, though. There seems to be a leak or divergence somewhere." She sat back on her heals as the crystals lit up, if only slightly. They both stared and waited but they didn't grow any brighter. They didn't go out either so that was something. Sam shrugged at the expectant look on his face. "I was thinking we might be able to pull power from whatever is keeping the water in the bathroom hot. It has to be coming from somewhere."

"Or if push comes to shove we could take a nice hot bath."

Her eyes rolled involuntarily, something that was becoming a habit when she was around him. He didn't seem to notice. Sam tore open her MRE and activated the heating element. Her hands instantly warmed, sending a pleasing shiver up and down her spine. Under normal circumstance she would never hold on to the MRE while it heated but she was so cold that all it did was give her a tingle when normally her hands would be burning. The colonel was staring longingly at her hands... or the MRE. She couldn't tell but she noticed he didn't have one of his own.

"You should eat something, sir. It will keep your metabolism up and keep you warm."

He suddenly jumped to his feet, his knee popping in protest of the quick movement. He tried not to grimace but Sam saw it anyway. "Yeah, I'm not that hungry. I think I'll go check on the cockpit."

Sam followed him across the room. "Sir, really, you should eat."

"Carter, drop it." His voice was back in command mode, his earlier levity gone. Sam froze. Something wasn't right.

"Sir?"

The colonel sighed, rubbing at his forehead with his left hand. After a moment of eerie silence he seemed to come to a decision. "There isn't any more food," he told her quietly.

"What?"

"That's it. What you have in your hand is all we have left."

Sam looked down at the uneaten MRE of what was supposed to be a meatloaf meal. She frowned. "That's not right. I packed the food myself. We had enough for two meals a day for four days for both of us. A full day to P3X-212 then two days to the Tok'ra plus an extra day just in case. That's sixteen meals."

The colonel looked at her with a sad expression she didn't like. She felt every hair on her neck stand up but her mind wouldn't stop processing the numbers. She continued to rattle them off trying to keep up with her thoughts.

"We each ate three on the way to P3X-212. Then we started rationing. We shared those two the first day, then we each had one the next day. Then we shared the two yesterday. That's twelve plus this one. There should be three left."

He looked away, staring into the dark corner of the cargo hold. "I'm not hungry, Carter," he said plainly.

"But..." Sam couldn't let it go. It was as if there was something there, something important on the edge of her perception that she couldn't quite see. She grabbed her bag and started to rummage through it. She dumped the contents onto the pallet but there wasn't much there. Just her change of pants, some socks and underwear, her brush, a physics magazine and three energy bars. She pulled the colonel's bag into her lap but it was just as empty. "I don't understand. Where-"

She was so intent on the puzzle that she hadn't noticed the colonel approach. He squatted down in front of her, his hands sliding onto hers.

"Carter, there's no more food."

"But how? There should be more." She felt a tinge of panic that she couldn't explain. What difference did it make if they had three MREs or none. They would just starve to death a couple days earlier. If they didn't freeze to death first.

He took a deep breath and Sam realized he was hiding something. She studied his face, the youthful grin from earlier replaced by a haggard, worn look. His eyes were still blood shot and he had an awful amount of stubble on his face. He licked his lips and took another deep breath. "How long have we been here?" he asked, softly.

Carter frowned. What kind of question was that? "Three days."

The colonel shook his head. He got up and paced in front of her, his unwrapped hand alternating between pressing the bridge of his nose and rubbing the back of his neck. He suddenly stopped, facing away from her. "We've been here over five days. Almost six, I think. It's hard to tell."

Sam shook her head. "No," Sam said stubbornly, "it's been three. Today is the fourth." Right? She glanced down at her watch, it hadn't worked since she woke up making the days even harder to keep track of. "Three days," she mumbled, her head starting to hurt and her stomach rumbling in displeasure at the disruption in eating.

They were both quiet for a long time, Sam sitting on the pallet, her uneaten MRE next to her; the colonel standing a few feet away looking off into the distance, keeping his face from her. Finally Sam had all she could take. She got up and faced him, needing to understand what he was hiding and why. "Sir?" she simply asked.

He ran his hands through his hair. "You hit your head pretty hard in the crash."

Her hand flew up to the huge bump on the back of her head. "I remember."

"Yeah, only you didn't wake up right away. You..." He paused, taking a few steps away and then back. A nervous habit Sam recognized all too well. "You were pretty banged up. The bulkhead collapsed on you and it took me a couple hours to pry you out. You were unconscious for two days. Two and a half if you include the day we crashed."

Sam felt her head shaking in abject disbelief. There was no way it had been that long. She clearly remembered the attack and trying to land the crippled ship. Then she got tossed around and woke up a little later to a relieved looking colonel. She spent that day just sitting on the floor, the colonel never far away. Hovering, one might say. When her head stopped throbbing she had gone to work on the main console. She had spent two full days trying to get it to work, ending with the colonel throwing his little tantrum the night before. She looked up at him. He just stared at her, waiting for her to... what? Understand, come to terms, remember?

She pressed her fingers to her temples. Parts of her body she didn't even know were injured started to hurt. "Five days?" Her voice was weak and cracked. The colonel just nodded. "And there's no food left." It wasn't a question.

Neither said anything else for a long time. They didn't have to. The unspoken culmination of their predicament hung in the air: no one was coming for them. Sam sucked in a slow, shuttering breath at the realization.

"Yeah," the colonel said softly before pushing past her; the blast of frigid air as the door opened hitting her like a thousand little knives.

chapter 6