nanda’s lament

PG-13. Gen teamfic, angst. Late S3, one minor spoiler. This is my SG-1 Team Ficathon story for eve11, who wanted ‘Official SciFi Cliche #786– “Aliens made them read each others’ minds.” What happens if the team gets a little too close for comfort? Would they function better? Worse? Take it, run with it, show me something new ;).’ and didn’t want Seasons 8, 9, or 10. Thanks: Julie and Karen.

Disclaimer: These people do not belong to me and I am not making any money off them.

The pain was burning, then sharp, then dull, and sharp again as something cracked. God, a leg: it was somebody’s leg. Daniel couldn’t tell whose anymore.

No, no, please stop, please! the voice in Daniel’s head sobbed, and he felt answering flinches from Jack and Teal’c. Sam, then. It was Sam this time, and it always got worse when it was Sam. Their captors had assumed her three teammates would be more protective of their female, so they rained down more and harder and longer blows, each reverberating through every nerve of four bodies. Sam hated them for it, Daniel knew, and they hated themselves and each other for it, too.

He curled up on his side in the corner, his knees to his chest, his fists pressed into his eye sockets. There was another crack, and a no no no oh god no from someone who wasn’t Sam. Somebody else was sobbing, too, maybe two somebodies, and Daniel might have been one of them: he couldn’t tell.

A searing heat flashed through his skull, and convulsions of nausea tinged with humiliation, and suddenly part of his mind went black. Sam had passed out, mercifully for all four of them. Daniel heard a groan from another corner of the cell and he cringed, clenching his jaw to try to keep the sound away. They had so many voices in their heads — four panicked, throbbing voices in their heads — that physical noise in their ears actually hurt.

The blackness passed into disturbing dream-like imagery, and that was how Daniel knew Sam was still alive. He saw their captors, the sight of the rack as they were dragged to it, an attack on Earth, a nightmare picture of Daniel, Teal’c, Jack, and then Sam’s father, with the glowing eyes of a Goa’uld, not a Tok’ra.

They’d take her to the sarcophagus next, dump her back in the cell, and drag someone else away. There was never a set order. It could be any of them.

Daniel felt nothing from her as the sarcophagus sewed her bones back together. He, Jack, and Teal’c tried to quiet their minds out of respect for each other, but it took more than they had left, and Daniel had never been good at it, anyway. His brain was a constant assault of thoughts and emotions and regrets, Daniel’s recent loss of Sha’re melding with Jack’s grief for his son and Teal’c’s for his father, heavy waves of guilt and shame from all three of them, that they should be both the cause and the recipients of each other’s suffering, that no corners of consciousness were their own anymore. There were traces of memories and tightly-held secrets and sexual fantasies, so chaotic that Daniel could no longer recognize which came from him and which didn’t, and always, always an overlay of fear.

Time sped up, and stretched out.

None of them noticed the cell door open until they felt an aching sting in the top of one spine, then in another, then in Daniel’s. He didn’t react: it was more of whatever they used to make all of SG-1’s minds melt together, and there was nothing he or any of them could do to stop it. They had tried, in the beginning.

Sam was thrown back into the cell, and as she huddled immediately in her corner, they took Jack.

Daniel squinted his eyes open to look at Sam, then quickly shut them again. Silence and physical distance were the only defenses they had left, the only shred of privacy they could claim.

In the beginning, they could still look at each other. They’d slept huddled together for warmth and comfort, they’d whispered escape plans and assurances that a team from the SGC would find them soon. Teal’c had demonstrated Jaffa meditation techniques to help them erect barriers between their minds. In the beginning, they’d tried to figure out how the injections worked to cause this. Nanites, Sam had said, entering the spinal fluid, and colonizing the brain. The others felt her confidence, and believed her.

Teal’c had stopped counting days at 32, Jack at 43.

No you fuckers! came across before the pain hit again. Daniel’s chest burned, and he held his hands over his mouth to keep from screaming. They were using the branding iron on Jack, and Jack was crying, helplessly. A rib cracked, and a sharp laugh echoed through Jack’s ears.

When Jack was finally shut in the sarcophagus, Daniel bit his hand and curled up tight, convinced that he’d be next, barely aware that Teal’c was just as sure and just as scared that it would be him. It was neither: it was Sam, again.

Time stretched, and sped up, and a thigh was sliced open: Sam’s, it had to be Sam’s, and one of her lungs was pierced. She gasped for breath, couldn’t even cry out when her cheek burned and burned, when her knee was smashed, when the pain radiated as no further blows came. She fought to suck in air and finally opened her eyes and Daniel saw nothing but an empty room. He felt hot, desperate tears and thought they might be coming from all four of them. They’d each been left like this before, praying for the end through hours full of cracked limbs and open wounds and hypersensitive eyes. Daniel wept, and he prayed.

Daniel jumped as someone’s ears picked up a quick, high-pitched whine, and then he heard his name. Sound hurt. He turned away from it, covering his ears. He thought he heard his name again, in a voice he didn’t recognize, and it was his title Dr. Jackson and none of his teammates would call him that even if they were desperate enough to speak.

Something touched his leg. Daniel kicked and scrambled back as far as he could against the wall. Shock and fear burrowed into his brain from elsewhere: the others were fighting back, too.

The prick in his arm was sharper than the ones in his spine, and Daniel felt Sam wonder what that meant, whether these nanites were different, whether they’d all suffer more because of it. Then panic collapsed inward, toward darkness, and Daniel knew they were dying. Somebody thought thank god as they all gave in, gratefully.

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