Stargate Horizons

CHAPTER SEVEN

When Sam again awoke, it was not Daniel who was at her bedside, but the colonel.

"Good day, Major," he greeted with a smile.  "Welcome home."

"Thank you, sir.  It's good to be home."

"In case you're wondering where Daniel is, the doc banned him from the infirmary until he got some more sleep."

"Janet told me that he'd been through a lot since the Prometheus disappeared.  What happened, sir?"

"Oh, that could take a while, Carter."

"I doubt that I'll be going anywhere any time soon, sir."

Jack nodded.  "All right, you asked for it.  You want me to put your bed up?"

"Yes, please."

Jack raised the head of the bed so that Sam was in a semi-seated position.

"Okay, where do I start.  First of all, Jacob and Anise came calling."

"Uh oh.  Anise, huh?"

"Yeah.  Those were my sentiments, too, when I saw her."

"I'm assuming it was about Daniel's psychic abilities."

"Oh, yeah.  Anise wanted to put him under a microscope and figure out how they could artificially reproduce in other humans what Daniel could do.  Daniel basically told her to go fly a kite, though he was a lot more polite about it."

"What about my dad?"

"He was passing on the wishes of the Tok'ra to use Daniel's skills on missions."

Sam smiled.  "And let me guess, sir.  You told him to go fly a kite."

"Yep.  But Daniel said yes."

Sam stared at him in surprise.  "He did?"

"He agreed to go on missions if they were really important and there was no other way for the mission to succeed.  He made it clear that he had the final say in what missions he would and would not accept."

Sam shook her head.  "After what happened at the Goa'uld summit, I'm surprised that Daniel would want anything to do with a Tok'ra mission."

"No more surprised than I was, Carter."

"I'm assuming that you tried to talk him out of it."

"Oh, you bet I did.  You can probably guess how much success I had."

"None?"

"Bingo.  When Daniel's made up his mind about something, an exploding Naquadah generator couldn't budge him."

Sam smiled.  "How well I know that."

"Well, we were just wrapping up that meeting when Daniel suddenly sensed that you guys were in trouble.  From what we learned from Colonel Ronson, Daniel's sixth sense kicked in just about the time that you guys entered the cloud and the crew all got taken captive.  By the way, do you have any idea why the aliens left you onboard?"

"No, sir.  Perhaps it was because I was unconscious at the time."  A thought occurred to Sam.  "Unless. . . ."

"What?"

Sam shook her head.  "Nothing, sir."  For a moment, she had toyed with the idea that the cloud entities had somehow shielded her from the alien ship's sensors in order to protect her, but that was pretty unlikely.  "Please go on."

"Well, after that, Daniel kept trying to find you.  He was able to pick up some things, but not enough to pinpoint exactly where you were.  He did know that you were alone, though."

Sam nodded.  "I sensed him, sir.  I could feel him reaching out to me."

"Well, it all got put on hold when Jacob told us that the Tok'ra had a little problem.  There was this erupting volcano that was threatening two of their operatives and several hundred humans.  Guess what Daniel did."

"Volunteered to help?"

"You're two for two, Major.  The DHD was out of commission, as was the ship the Tok'ra came in, so everyone was trapped on the planet.  Hammond had agreed to loan the Tok'ra a Naquadah generator to power up the gate, but Daniel didn't think that there would be enough time to dial the gate by hand.  He volunteered to go and dial it himself."

"But he'd never done it before.  How could he be sure. . . ." Sam saw the look on Jack's face.  "He tested himself on our gate."

"You are batting a thousand, Carter.  Daniel dialed it up pretty as you please.  Really impressed the control room staff."

"So, all of you went to the planet?"

"Uh huh, along with SG-6, some medical personnel, and Siler, who brought along the generator.  And that's when things got hot, both figuratively and literally.  Daniel once worked on a dig at Pompeii and some other city that Vesuvius wiped out, so he knew what might happen and warned us about it.  But I gotta tell you, Carter.  I'd rather deal with an attacking Goa'uld mothership than one of those pyroclassic flow things."

"Pyroclastic, sir."

"You know all about them, too?" Jack asked in irritation.

"Well, no, sir, but I know what they are.  Didn't you ever see the movie Dante's Peak?"

"Must have missed that one, and, after what we went through on that planet, I don't think that I'm going to be putting it on my 'must see' list any time soon.  The first of those flow things stopped just short of us, but the second one came barreling down right at us.  We just barely managed to get everyone through the gate in time."  He gave her a little smile.  "Oh, but I'm forgetting to tell you the best part of our little adventure.  Just a few minutes after we got to the planet, there was a huge earthquake, which cracked the base that the Stargate was mounted on.  The gate fell right toward us," he paused for dramatic effect, "and Daniel caught it."

Sam's eyes widened hugely, her jaw dropping open in an expression of utter shock.  "He . . . he . . . caught it?"  Her voice was hushed.

"Yep, all sixty-four thousand pounds of it."

Sam's gaze slid away to stare unseeingly across the room.  "That's . . . that's. . . .  My God, that's . . . wow.  I mean . . . wow."

"Carter, are you related to Lieutenant Washington?" Jack asked, referring to the young man who'd had a similar reaction to Daniel blowing up an Al'Kesh.

Sam gave herself a little shake and looked at Jack.  "You don't understand, sir.  It's not just the weight."

"It isn't?"

"The Stargate was falling, Colonel, and Daniel caught it.  This means that you have to factor in kinetic energy and impact force.  Now, I don't know how far the gate fell before Daniel stopped it, but just the fact that he was able to stop the fall of something that weighed that much is absolutely extraordinary.  Of course, one end of the Stargate still being on the ground reduces the figures, but, even so. . . .  What did the gravity feel like on that planet?  Did you feel heavier, lighter, or about the same as on Earth?"

Jack thought about it.  "I wasn't really paying all that much attention, but I think I felt slightly heavier."

"Then the Stargate would have weighed even more than sixty-four thousand pounds since the gravity was higher than here on Earth."  Sam shook her head.  "Like I said, sir.  Wow."  A thought suddenly hit her.  "Colonel, using his abilities to that extent . . . was Daniel okay?"

"Not hardly.  He was in excruciating pain, Carter, and he couldn't let it down even after everyone was clear because it would have been face down."

"And you couldn't have dialed out."

"Exactly.  He had to lift it back up and lower it onto its back.  But it was too much weight for him.  A bunch of us grabbed hold and helped him, but, by the time the gate was on the ground, Daniel was on the verge of passing out.  I really thought he was going to.  He looked like death warmed over.  And then he ended up having to dial the gate because we ran out of time.  When we made it to the Alpha Site, he couldn't even stand up by himself, but, like an idiot, he slept for all of three hours, then spent the next twenty-four hours helping and getting to know the refugees, figuring out what planet we could take them to, talking to a bunch of Jaffa who were just about ready to get on their knees and worship him, and then relocating the refugees."

"I'm surprised that Janet let him get away with that."

"Oh, she wouldn't have if she'd known.  You see, when we gated out from that volcanic planet, some of that pyro flow followed us through.  It was all over the Stargate and DHD.  It took the rest of the day and all night for it to cool enough that we could safely brush off the gate and the DHD and dial out.  The SGC had to send over some guys to clean things up, then we gated the people who were more badly injured to Earth.  Daniel refused to leave, probably because he knew that once the doc got hold of him, she wouldn't let him return.  So, he just kept working until after we'd gotten all those hundreds of refugees relocated and set up in their new home."

Sam shook her head, thinking that Daniel had to be one of the most pig-headed men in the galaxy.  "I can imagine that Janet was not happy about all of that."

"That would be a big no.  I didn't see the blowup myself, but, from what I heard, Daniel is lucky that he's still got an ass to sit on.  And he still didn't want to go to bed."

"Why not?  I'd have thought that he would have been exhausted."

"Oh, he was, Carter."  Jack looked at her intently.  "But finding you was a lot more important to him.  After all that time that had passed, he was worried sick.  He insisted on doing the psychic stuff once more to check on you.  Afterwards, he did go to sleep, but he couldn't have gotten more than a couple of hours when he had another one of those dreams.  He saw that the gasses of that cloud were corroding the hull of the Prometheus and that there would be a hull breach if something wasn't done."

The look on the colonel's face told Sam that something had happened.  "What is it, sir?" she asked, almost afraid to know.

"The Tok'ra hadn't been able to send a ship to go look for you because they were all on missions.  Daniel got this idea that. . . ."  He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes catching Sam's.  "He was going to give himself to the Tok'ra, Sam," he told her, his voice low and intense.  "He was going to make a deal with them that, if they sent a ship right away, pulled one off a mission, he would work for them on whatever missions they pleased."

Sam's breath drew in sharply.  Daniel was going to make that kind of sacrifice for her?

"I. . . ."  Sam shook her head, tears stinging her eyes.  "I wouldn't have wanted him to do that."

"I know.  I probably should have told him that when we argued about it.  I didn't think about it at the time.  I was too furious."

"So, what happened?"

There was a slight pause.  "We yelled and screamed at each other, then there was a little . . . accident.  That's how Daniel cut his hand, on some broken glass.  While he was getting stitched up, the Tok'ra told us that they had a ship available and were on their way.  They checked that gas cloud thing, but their sensors couldn't detect you inside it for some reason."

"They couldn't?  There must be something about the gas or the entities themselves that rendered us invisible to the ship's sensors."  Sam again wondered if "Grace" had something to do with her not being taken prisoner with the rest of the crew.

"Since then, Daniel's gotten a little sleep here and there, but he refused to go home until you were safe and back on Earth.  The doc's just about frothing at the mouth.  I'm surprised that she hasn't stuck a needle in his ass loaded with a truckload of sedatives."

Sam smiled. "She told me to ask him to go home tonight."

"Oh, he's going home all right," Jack stated firmly.  "You can bet your paycheck on that, even if I have to club him over the head and throw him in the trunk of my car.  I probably wouldn't have to club him, though.  I bet the doc would give me something to spike his water with.  She's not a wuss like the guys who were at the Alpha Site.  Can you believe that they didn't want to mess with someone who probably broke the galactic psychic weightlifting record by bench pressing a Stargate?"

"Technically, it wasn't bench pressing since I was not lying down," said a voice on the other side of the half-drawn curtain.  Jack cringed at the realization that he'd been overheard by the subject of their conversation.

Daniel came into view.  "It was a lot more like a deadlift," he finished.  He then looked at the bed's occupant.  "Hello, Sam."

Trying not to smile for the sake of the colonel, the major returned the greeting.

"I suppose that Jack has been regaling you with our adventures over the past few days."

"Yes, he has.  Sounds like I missed all the fun."

"Oh, I think you were having more than enough 'fun' of your own, Carter," Jack responded.  He stood up.  "Apparently, it's time for a changing of the guard, so I will leave you in Daniel's company.  I'll see you later."

Jack began to walk away but was halted by Daniel's voice.

"Oh, Jack.  I assume that you've decided that the whole shoving me in the trunk of your car thing would not be a very good idea now," he said, a single eyebrow cocked.

Jack gave him a glare and stomped off, muttering something about telekinetic archeologists being an even bigger pain in the ass.

Sam started laughing, which made Daniel do the same.  He sat in the chair vacated by Jack.  Sam's laughter faded away as she looked at him.

"He told me about what you were planning on doing, Daniel," she said, "how you were going to give yourself in trade to the Tok'ra."

Daniel's gaze dropped to the floor.

"Daniel, I would never have wanted you to do that for me, not ever, no matter what."

Daniel looked at her.  "I just wanted to bring you home, Sam, to make sure you were safe."

"I know, Daniel, and I can't tell you how much it means to me that you would be willing to do something like that.  But you have to promise me that, if there is ever another situation like this, you will not do anything like that."

Daniel did not reply for a while.  Knowing that Sam would accept only one answer, he nodded.  "All right.  I promise.  But, Sam, you need to know that, if I'd done it, I wouldn't have regretted it if it ended up saving you.  I'd have done the same thing if it had been Jack or Teal'c on that ship."

Sam smiled at him.  "I know, Daniel.  I'm just very happy that it didn't come to that.  So, did you get some sleep?  Colonel O'Neill said that you were under orders not to set foot in the infirmary until you got some rest."

"Yes, I got some sleep, a couple of hours.  I didn't want to get any more than that since it looks like I'm going to be going home tonight whether I want to or not, and if I get too much sleep now, I won't be able to fall asleep tonight."

"The colonel's just concerned about you, Daniel."

"I know, and I appreciate the concern.  But Jack in mother hen mode is not a pretty sight to see.  He never used to be quite this . . . forceful about it."

"He watched you die of radiation poisoning, Daniel.  We all did.  Then we were without you for a year.  Since you've returned, we've nearly lost you again, one way or another, three different times.  I think this most recent time, with you having to leave Earth, is what really drove things home for him, especially being followed by all the medical concerns regarding your psychic abilities.  He's afraid that he is going to lose you permanently.  We all are.  Can you really blame him for acting the way he is?"

Daniel stared at the bedcovers.  "No, I guess not."  He lifted his eyes to hers.  "So, what you're saying is that I'm going to have to get used to the mother hen from hell act."

Sam smiled in sympathy.  "Afraid so."

Janet came up to them.  "Daniel, I thought I made it clear to you that you were not to come back here until you got some sleep."

"I did get some sleep," he told her, his tone the tiniest bit petulant.

Janet looked at the clock pointedly.  "Uh huh.  Two or three hours is not what I had in mind."

"Janet, I promise that I will go home tonight and get a full nights' sleep."

"I'm glad to hear it.  I would suggest that you do so now."

"But it's only five o'clock!"

"Which will give you plenty of time to drive home, fix yourself a good, nutritious meal, and get to bed early."

Daniel was all ready to object some more, but the expression on Janet's face told him that he'd be wasting his breath.

"Fine," he muttered.  He turned to the occupant of the bed.  "I think Jack's got some stiff competition, Sam."

The major held back a smile.

"I guess I'll see you in the morning," he told her.  "I think I'm going to go home and have some chicken for dinner since there seems to be an abundance of hens around here."

Sam's smile broke free as Daniel turned and walked away.

"What was that all about?" Janet asked.

"Daniel is bemoaning the fact that everybody is turning into a mother hen over him."

Janet smiled.  "Ah, and I suppose that I'm one of them."

"Yep."

"And Colonel O'Neill?"

"Big time."

Janet sat on the edge of the bed, something she almost never did.  That told Sam that what the doctor had to say was pretty serious.

"Sam, did Daniel tell you how he cut his hand?"

Sam shook her head.  "Colonel O'Neill told me that he cut it on some broken glass when the two of them got into an argument about Daniel volunteering himself to the Tok'ra."

"Then he didn't tell you what happened while they were arguing?"

"Um . . . no.  What happened?"

Janet glanced around the room to see if anyone was within hearing distance.  Seeing that there wasn't she said in a low voice, "Daniel lost control of his abilities, Sam.  He accidentally blew up his computer monitor and threw everything off his desk."

"What?" Sam said in a hushed voice, shocked.

"He was furious at the colonel for trying to prevent him from doing something that might save you.  His mind vented the anger psychically.  I am certain that Daniel's extreme exhaustion played a big part in it, but it still really shook him.  His eyes looked . . . haunted when he came in.  I am almost certain that he was thinking about how easily it could have been Colonel O'Neill who was hit by the outburst.  If that had happened, the colonel could have been seriously injured or even killed."

"My God.  Poor Daniel.  He's probably terrified that it will happen again."

Janet nodded.  "Human beings are not designed to handle that kind of power, Sam, neither physically nor psychologically.  The mental and emotional strain on Daniel must be tremendous.  A weaker person probably wouldn't be able to handle it.  Either it would turn them into someone who enjoys the power and delights in using it on others or they'd be so scared that they would completely withdraw from contact with other people.  So far, Daniel has handled it extraordinarily well, but this latest incident is going to be preying on his mind."

"What should we do?"

"Well, if it was anyone but Daniel, I'd recommend that they talk to a psychiatrist, but Daniel has never fully trusted psychiatrists ever since Doctor MacKenzie mistakenly committed him to Mental Health.  I seriously doubt that he'd open up enough to a professional for it to do any good."

"Maybe we can get him to open up to us, the Colonel, Teal'c and me."

"It's possible.  All you can do is try."

Next Chapter

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