Bravado

By Badgergater

Rating: PG

Season: Seven, because Daniel is back

Spoilers: Minor one for Abyss

Category: Hurt/Comfort

Warnings: Violence, and Jack’s mouth, of course

Rating: PG

Summary: A mission goes awry when aliens are waiting on the other side of the 'gate

Pairing: None

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of

Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions; all the

powers that be, not me; This story is for entertainment purposes only and no

money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement intended. The story is the

property of the author and may not be posted without the author's consent.

-----------------

He’d stepped through the Stargate literally hundreds of times. Although he didn’t understand the science of it, and quite frankly neither wanted nor needed to know, Jack O'Neill did know what to expect. Each sensation was familiar… the invigorating adrenaline rush, the sudden intense cold, and the momentarily disorienting but slightly tingly feeling of being spit out of the wormhole into a new place. Experience had shown him that this multi-billion mile trip he and his team were making would be as ordinary as stepping through his own front door.

This time it wasn’t to be.

With a final waving salute to General George Hammond, commander of the SGC, Colonel Jack O’Neill stepped unwaveringly into the shimmering blue, and out into hell.

There was the predictable flash of numbing cold as he strode into the wormhole, brief moments spent between places, not on Earth, not yet there, not whole, and yet, existing. Carter probably had some fancy-schmancy explanation, twelve-letter words in scientific mumbo-jumbo that no one without multiple PhDs would understand, he thought.

Jack emerged, as he expected from the MALP video he’d studied, onto a stone platform in front of a Stargate set into a lush green valley dotted with huge boulders.

Except, despite the way they looked, they weren’t all naturally occurring rock formations.

O’Neill’s size 11 Air Force issue boots landed on the stone platform at the same moment as a projectile whistled through the air past his ear.

His second indication that all was not well on planet P7D-088 was the sight of Major Samantha Carter, who had preceded him through the wormhole, down on the ground.

His third indication, as if he needed one, was a blow to his shoulder, like a sucker punch delivered out of the clear air.

It took a moment before he realized what had happened, before the familiar feeling registered in his brain, before the impact matured from shocked numbness to a searing, penetrating pain that enveloped his shoulder.

His disbelieving eyes swept to his shoulder, and the spurting drops of red.

Blood.

He’d been shot.

There’d been no sound, no gunfire, just lead, or its equivalent, slicing through the air and into his flesh.

“Sir?” he heard her mumble. “Colonel….”

The others… Oh God, no, Daniel and Teal’c were just steps behind him.

Even as the pain washed through him in a nauseating wave and more bullets whistled over his head, the Colonel frantically twisted back toward the gate in a futile bid to save the others. “Down, down, down,” he screamed hoarsely.

It was too late.

Even as they stepped out of the blue pool of the wormhole, the other members of SG-1 had no chance to register the shouted warning before more projectiles tore through the air and into them.

Jack flinched as he saw the bullets hit his friends, saw blood fly from Daniel’s thigh, saw Teal’c hit once in the chest even as the Jaffa spun and tried to shove Jackson down. O’Neill saw the second bullet take Teal’c in the back, and then the alien crashed to the ground beside his teammates.

“Stay down!” Jack ordered as Daniel thrashed, hands reaching to grip his bleeding leg, more blood trickling from a gash on his forehead where he’d hit the gate platform.

O’Neill, biting his lip, used his one good arm to push himself forward toward his teammates. Unexpectedly, the shooting stopped.

Jack raised his P-90, his gaze ranging over the jumble of rocks that radiated outward from the gate.

No enemy was visible.

He blinked, working to focus, still looking, still finding nothing, no one to defend his people against, no one to take his anger out on.

In the sudden silence, Jack could hear Carter’s harsh breathing, reassuring him that she was still alive. Daniel was moaning. Teal’c was frighteningly motionless.

Carter raised her head, looking at her CO. There was blood on the side of her shirt, a couple of inches above her waist, under her right arm. She was alert enough she’d already reached toward her backpack, pulling a dressing out of her first aid supplies. Nodding at her, he turned back to the others. Staying low, he crawled up the steps toward Daniel. Jack grabbed bandages from his own pocket, and shoved one under Daniel’s hands. “Hold that,” he ordered harshly, and Daniel blinked and nodded and complied.

Shaking now, feeling cold and disoriented, but ordering his body to keep going anyway, O’Neill turned to Teal’c. The Jaffa was still, blood welling steadily from an ugly hole in his back. Even as Jack applied a pressure bandage, Teal’c didn’t move or make a sound. With trembling fingers, O’Neill felt for a pulse, and sighed in relief when he found one, weak and thready, but there. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, T,” he whispered as he pulled another dressing out of his vest, wishing the Jaffa still had his symbiote. Junior would make quick work of this, but Junior was gone. Gently rolling the injured man over onto his back, Jack bandaged the other wound.

His hands were covered in blood, his own, Teal’c’s, Daniel’s, but he didn’t have time to think about that, not now, he had to think about a way to keep his teammates alive and get them home.

Which wasn’t going to happen because just then he saw the natives step out from behind the boulders, some sort of unfamiliar metal devices, but quite obviously weapons, held in their hands, pointed at SG-1. Their faces, only vaguely human, were cold and hard, stern and unforgiving, Jack thought, flashing back a dozen years to the faces of the men who’d captured him, back on his own planet, men who saw him only as an enemy.

As these people did, to have shot them down without warning, without reason.

When the mostly-human-looking-but-definitely-not-human natives moved closer, sharp, guttural sounds spewed forth from the mouth of one of the men. Jack recognized them as orders, even if he didn’t understand the words.

Daniel, pale but sitting up now, tried to talk to them. “We’re peaceful travelers…”

The weapons swung quickly to point at Daniel. Undeterred, he started again. “Please, don’t hurt us anymore. We aren't here to harm you…”

The alien faces didn’t soften. The leader barked out more harsh, grating sounds. The weapons made clicking noises that set Jack’s hair on end. He was sure the sound was that of safeties coming off, of weapons being cocked… deadly, at any rate.

“Easy, Daniel,” he said quietly.

Another native, dressed in blue, came running up from behind the others.

The leader, never taking his eyes off the downed members of SG-1, made more sounds. The latecomer nodded, taking something out of its pack, another metal thing, advancing toward Teal’c. Jack, still sitting beside the fallen Jaffa, tried to push his uncooperative body between the native and his friend.

The native leader made more noises, his weapon raised and pointed at O’Neill’s head.

The latecomer continued to approach, making odd little growling noises in its throat.

“Stay back you son of a bitch,” Jack tried to sound tough, but realized his voice was only a weak, rasping whisper. The alien kept coming, reaching out the device toward Teal’c.

One-armed, Jack tried to raise his weapon. “Leave us alone.”

So focused on the natives in front of him, O’Neill never saw the alien come up behind him.

A sudden unexpected jab in the shoulder, and he spun, awkwardly, nearly toppling over as something small and sharp touched the skin near his neck.

Fiery pain shot outward, and he toppled to the ground, senseless.

His last thought, as he fell, was that this was definitely starting out to be a very bad day.

--------

Jack came to somewhere else.

Lying still, keeping his breathing even despite the way his body hurt, he forced himself to think before he moved, to catalog what he knew and what he didn’t know before he opened his eyes and revealed that he was now awake.

All of them had been shot.

Without warning, without provocation.

That’s what had happened.

And now?

He was no longer outdoors, there was no feel of moving air, no smell of the outdoors, of trees and plants; no sun on his face. Of course, since he could have been unconscious for hours, or even days, it might be night.

But his well-attuned senses told him that he was inside somewhere.

He could hear someone else in the room with him, though he couldn’t yet tell who, or if it was friend or foe.

His boots were gone, he could feel that his toes and feet were bare. His shirt was missing too.

The familiar feel of the cotton of his trousers assured him he wasn’t naked but the comforting weight of his weapons was absent from his hip and chest.

For a moment, his brain flashed back to that confused and painful awakening in Hathor’s fake SGC.

His shoulder throbbed with pain, and that was what finally caused him to reveal that he was awake. Probably what had awakened him initially, come to think of it. There was something on, no… wait… not on but *in* his shoulder, near or on the wound. Something that hurt.

A lot.

And suddenly, his body exploded in searing agony.

He couldn’t hide his consciousness now, couldn’t bite back the curse and groan as pain blossomed outward from his shoulder, like he was suddenly on fire.

Pain.

His eyes flew open, his torso lifting and twisting, his right arm reaching for the source of the pain on his upper left side as he sat up, bending forward with a low moan rippling from his throat.

Pain.

There was something that resembled a plastic tube sticking into the wound, a clear tube filled with a liquid that was dripping molten fire into the x-shaped slit around the neat round hole the alien bullet had made.

Pain.

He reached across and ripped at the device, gagging as bile rose in his throat with the surging wave of pain-induced nausea.

Pain.

Sweat rolled off his skin, making his fingers slick, keeping him from getting a substantial grip on the slippery smooth plastic.

Pain.

Desperately, he tore at the thing once more, knowing he had to get if off, his body shuddering with the effort.

Pain.

Wrapping trembling fingers around the plastic, closing his eyes in concentration, teeth bared in a fierce grimace, he pulled.

Pain.

He felt the thing tear away, felt flesh and skin stuck to it and come away with it, felt awareness slipping away as the agony surged to overwhelming proportions.

Pain.

Though he tried not to make a sound, he couldn’t stop the moan, just like he couldn’t stop something wet rolling down his face. Jack told himself it was sweat, not tears.

Pain.

Not now, Jack, not now. Hold on.

Pain.

Awash with agony, he pushed back at the billowing wall of blackness, forcing it away, much as he wanted to embrace the numbing nothingness it promised.

Pain.

Focus on the pain.

Stay awake, damn you, he ordered himself.

Pain.

Bent over at the waist, rocking back and force with the intensity of the agony, eyes closed, his right hand clenched into a fist that pounded against his thigh. He’d have bruises, inconsequential to the damage done to his shoulder.

Pain.

He sank weakly backward, to lie flat on the bed once more.

The burning slowed and stopped, replaced by an agony equally intense but different. He could feel the blood welling out of the wound now, rolling down his chill bare skin. But the blood didn’t burn, didn’t eat away at him like acid.

Shuddering at the memory of Ba’al’s cruelty, shivering now with the reaction as the adrenaline flow diminished and died away, he pushed himself up onto one elbow, his arm shaking with the effort.

The light was glaringly bright, reflecting off the cold, silvered metal of the room and its contents.

Nothing but cold, alien, perfection.

Except…

Over there.

Teal’c.

The Jaffa was lying on a table, like the one Jack himself knew he was on, tubes of colored liquid, like what had been threaded into his own wound, inserted into the Jaffa’s injuries.

Beyond Teal’c there were two more tables. Daniel lay on the first one, eyes closed, more of those damn tubes stuck into his body. Carter was on the final bed, impaled as well. The blood soaked field dressings they’d put in place during the first frantic moments on the planet were gone, exposing the reddened, angry looking flesh around their wounds.

“Bastards,” he snarled. With a supreme effort, O’Neill swung his legs off to the side, toward the floor. Bracing himself with his good arm, he slid down, letting his legs take his weight.

His limbs failed to support him. Jack slumped to the floor in an ungainly, undignified heap, muttering curses at the pulsing pain that robbed him of his breath and his strength. God, he wanted to stay there, stay down, because the pain was back with a vengeance, screaming at him to quit moving around, to sit still, to stop aggravating the agony.

He wanted to stop.

He couldn’t stop.

He had to get up.

He had to get to the others.

Getting one hand onto the table above him, he gripped the edge and hauled himself upward. Awkwardly managing to get his feet under himself, Jack got to his knees, then, with one more supreme effort, raised himself to his feet, his knees shaking. Somehow he managed to lock them, swaying, but staying upright, breathing in short, shallow gasps.

He waited for the room to stop spinning, for the dizziness to pass.

Finally, body under a modicum of control, he took a step, still leaning heavily against the bed. There, see, he could do it, he assured himself.

But to get over to Teal’c, he was going to have to let go of the bed, take a couple of unsupported steps to the wall, then maybe three more steps over to Teal’c.

It seemed like miles, but he gritted his teeth, and stepped away from the bed, managing two stumbling, drunken steps before all but collapsing against the wall.

It was cold and hard, very very smooth, almost slippery. He shivered, his sweat soaked hand sliding on the slick surface, threatening to spill him to the floor again.

Afraid he wouldn’t have the strength to get up, he couldn’t let that happen.

“Teal’c!” he whispered, afraid to make too much noise, trusting to the Jaffa’s exceptional hearing. Even while kel-no-reeming, the alien from Chulak was always alert.

Teal’c didn’t move, only the faint rise and fall of his muscled chest reassuring Jack that the Jaffa was still alive. “Hey, T, come on…” Please, help me out here, buddy, huh? Jack pleaded silently. “Teal’c!” he made the whisper more urgent.

To no avail.

Teal’c remained unmoving,

Which meant Jack would have to move to him.

Damn.

Sliding his feet along the floor, keeping his body braced against the wall, O’Neill forced himself to take a step and another.

Three more wobbling steps, away from the wall, to Teal’c’s bedside.

Seemed like a million times a million miles.

Jack reached out a hand, touching the Jaffa’s shoulder. The ebony skin felt unnaturally cool.

There was no reaction to the contact.

“Teal’c,” he whispered urgently. “Wake up, come on…” This was bad, real bad, there was no response at all.

“Hey,’ c’mon.” He looked over at the others. “Daniel, Carter?” he raised his voice, hoping for an answer but got none.

And then Jack heard something behind him, and tried to turn to see. But his uncooperative legs, still unsteady, tangled and he had to grab onto the side of Teal’c’s bed to catch himself. The movement reawakened the agony in his shoulder, his vision going gray and sparkly for a brief moment.

When he looked up, Jack and his teammates were no longer alone.

A shrieking, wailing call, unlike anything he’d heard before from the aliens, echoed through the room.

One of the natives stood in the doorway, staring at him, mouth open.

Jack went after him… her… it…

Anger and desperation lent him strength, adrenaline fueled his muscles as he lunged at the creature. It spun to flee, but his grasping fingers snagged on the flowing cloth of the sky blue robe the alien wore, pulling the alien off its feet, back toward him.

It was featherlight, he realized with amazement.

Good thing, because he barely had the strength to hold himself upright, much less hold onto it.

And then it spun, trying to escape, clawing at him.

The six-fingered hand, he thought of it as a hand anyway, swept across his face, the long nails/claws at the end of alien fingers slicing through the skin of his cheek.

He flinched, and lost his balance, falling backward, pulling the being down on top of himself as he stifled the scream of agony when his damaged shoulder impacted the wall.

Blackness danced in front of him, broken only by sparkling, too bright pinpoints of light. Barely conscious, O’Neill held tightly onto the thing, grimly clinging instinctively as it bucked and clawed, digging bloody furrows in his bare chest and arms.

Once more, he concentrated on the pain to focus.

He felt more blood trickling down his skin.

With desperate strength, he held on.

This creature could be his hostage, SG-1’s ticket out of this nightmare, back to the gate, and home. That thought gave him the energy to hold on.

Wrapping his one mobile arm around the thing’s long slender neck, he tightened the grip. “Hold still!” he spat through gritted teeth, shaking it.

It ceased its struggles.

He could hear its rapid breathing, with an odd whistling, inhuman note; feel its chest rise and fall in short, rapid movements; from the corner of his own eyes see its eyes frantically darting back and forth.

Alien, yes, but fear was universal.

It understood.

Jack’s mind raced. He held onto one of the enemy, controlled it, for the moment. But how to communicate, make his demands understood?

Hell, how was he going to hold onto it and get up off the floor, in the state he was in?

Before he’d had a chance to think of a plan A, much less a plan B, the situation changed once more.

Sounds from the hallway, and then there were more of the creatures standing in the doorway, two, three, four, five of them, staring in at him. He tried to read their expressions and failed, their alien eyes and faces defying his understanding.

“Stay back,” he growled, hoping his tone conveyed the meaning of the words he knew they didn’t understand.

They stared, unmoving.

His hostage lay still.

Mexican standoff.

Long minutes passed while Jack felt his arm wrapped around the alien began to tremble with weakness as the pain weakened his resolve and the exhaustion threatened his control.

“Let us go,” he glared at them, and knew they didn’t understand.

Frustration raced through him.

He needed Daniel’s help.

But Daniel was in no condition to help.

Thanks to these bastards.

God only knew what they’d done to him, and Teal’c and Carter, what was in that shit they were even now pumping into his teammates’ veins.

The creatures were still staring at him, making small, low sounds. And then they parted, and another one of them, the one he remembered from the gate, who’d been their leader, stepped up between the others, pointed something at him, and shot him.

A moment of shock as the projectile tore through the flesh of his thigh.

He knew what was to follow, and within seconds, despair engulfed him in tandem with the pain.

He’d failed.

--------

This time, there was no doubt that it was the pain that woke him.

He was back on the bed, half a dozen aliens gathered around him, their vaguely human faces unreadable as their very in-human hands held him down.

The alien with the blue robe was jamming another one of those tubes into him, into the raw flesh of his wounded leg this time.

He writhed, screaming curses at them as the pain escalated, spiraling upward past agonizing to right on the verge of paralyzing.

Light as their touch was, they held him down.

It went on and on, the pain flooding him from two sources now, the first device in his shoulder, in the first wound, and the second one in the fresh wound in his thigh. At least when Ba’al had tortured him, there’d been an end to the pain. The damned snake had been impatient, killing him quickly.

Most of the time.

But this, this continued, going on forever, until the pain receptors in his body overloaded and his brain couldn’t handle it any more, shutting down like someone had flipped off a switch. He was thrown back into the darkness.

And welcomed it.

------------

Noise.

Familiar noise.

Frightening noise.

Daniel moaned as the sound reverberated through his skull.

Someone was shouting.

Cursing.

Daniel wanted that someone to shut the hell up.

Immediately.

He didn’t.

The noise went on, the hoarse voice grating, something in the sound of it calling Daniel’s wandering attention back to it again and again.

He listened, and realized the noise was angry.

And pain-filled.

And it was Jack.

His eyes flew open, registering the unfamiliar surroundings, the sterile bright metallic sheen of the alien room around him. Sam was lying on the bunk to his left. Turning his head, he could see Teal’c on a bench or bed to his right.

Jack’s raging voice came from further away, further to his right, beyond Teal’c, beyond a ring of alien forms standing beside Jack’s bed.

He couldn’t see what was happening.

He had to see.

He had to intervene.

Somehow.

Because something terrible had to be happening for Jack’s voice to sound like that, raw, distressed, infuriated, and utterly horrified.

Daniel tried to sit up but something light and feathery yet insistent, pressed down on his chest, pushing him back.

Blinking, forcing his eyes to focus in close, he saw the odd-shaped hand, followed the arm upwards until he was looking into the alien face above him, the alien form bent over him.

Heard alien sounds come from the alien mouth.

“What?” he mumbled, his mouth arid and uncooperative.

More alien sounds, vaguely familiar.

Daniel struggled to organize his thoughts, to bring order to the chaos inside his brain.

The being above him made sounds again, urgent sounds.

Sounds that formed words.

Words that he thought he knew.

Sorting them out from among the more than two dozen languages inside his barely awake brain was proving difficult.

Especially with the distraction of Jack’s hoarse shouts in the background.

In a language he definitely knew.

But he had to concentrate, because somehow, Daniel knew that it was vitally important that he understand this creature.

Who was speaking… oh, damn, it was right there, right *there on the edge of his awareness...

…speaking Goa’uld.

Some odd variation of Goa’uld, but definitely Go’auld.

Teal’c would probably understand immediately.

But glancing over, he could see the Jaffa was unconscious.

It was up to him.

Listen, Daniel, hear the words.

Find that place inside yourself where things come together, where leaps of logic are common place, where one plus one equals two and a half. Where the answers reside.

The alien was still talking to him.

He listened.

And heard.

Understood.

Or thought he did.

I’lesh. Help.

“We are helping.”

Then why is Jack fighting? In pain? Angry?

“We are helping… medicine.”

He didn’t get all the words, but he was beginning to understand, to fill in the gaps.

These aliens were trying to help, to give medicine, but somehow, Jack didn’t understand.

The meaning of most of the alien’s words eluded him, too much was hazy, maybe if his head didn’t hurt so much he’d do better, but suddenly he understood.

He had to get to Jack.

Struggling once more to sit up, letting the blue clad alien help him this time, he managed to lift his torso, slide his legs to the floor and leaning on the slender being, shuffle past Teal’c, and toward the place where Jack lay.

His friend looked awful, a wound in his shoulder, another in his thigh. His face was an angry red, crisscrossed by fresh, deep scratches, the brilliant color overshadowing the translucent paleness of the rest of him as he struggled, trying vainly to reach the device laced into the flesh of his shoulder.

The device that was meant to deliver medicine.

To heal.

The man’s voice was raw, hoarse, little more than a whisper now. “Bastards… Get away… Stop damn you…Stop! Get that thing outta me…Let me go!”

“Jack,” Daniel tried to make himself heard over O’Neill’s tirade.

Jack’s head snapped around, his attention swinging from the aliens holding him down to his teammate.

“Daniel?” there was surprise, hope, worry, *pain* in those deep brown eyes. “Don’t let them…”

“They’re trying to help Jack. It’s okay, Don’t fight, let them,” Daniel swayed, kept upright only by the surprisingly strong grip of the alien he was leaning against.

“Help us? They shot you. And me.” He was gasping, sweat rolling down his face, eyes tight. “They shot all of us. Brought us here. Stuck these… these things into our wounds…”

“Medical devices, Jack, healing devices.”

“Healing? That hurt like that?”

Daniel looked down at his own leg. “Mine doesn’t hurt.” He turned to the alien then, asking in hesitant words, hoping they were the right words, hoping the being would understand.

It tilted its head, seeming to listen, and then its expression changed, and words poured out of its mouth.

“Slow, slow… ku’cesh, ku’cesh,” Daniel pleaded.

The being stopped, made slower sounds.

Daniel nodded. “Jack, they gave all of us the same drug. Apparently you’ve had a bad reaction to it, that must be causing the pain, but you needed it, it’s an antidote to a substance on the ‘bullets’ that could have killed us.”

“So they shot us with poison bullets but didn’t mean to kill us?” there was skepticism in O’Neill’s voice, over-riding the pain and the anger.

“Jack, they keep a guard at their gate, to guard against the Go’auld. Only the Gou’ald and their troops have ever come through their gate, these people thought only the Goa’uld *could come through the gate. It was all a mistake, a dreadful mistake…”

---------

A mistake?

Could the aliens be trusted?

He had to trust.

Trust Daniel, that Daniel understood, that he was right.

Pain warred with relief.

He could endure the pain, now that he knew.

Not torture.

Not meaningfully inflicted agony.

Not wanton cruelty.

Accidental.

Shit happened.

Had just happened, to him and his team.

But they’d be all right.

The stuff Doc did, that hurt like hell sometimes, too.

Not like this though.

Never like this.

Someday, he’d tell her.

Then again, maybe not.

Definitely not.

Better that no one know.

Because if he admitted it to anyone, than he’d have to admit it to himself, that he wasn’t invulnerable. That there were cracks in the O’Neill armor. That the bravado was a shell and a sham, and underneath, he was human. He hurt. And sometimes, just sometimes, when he let himself acknowledge the truth of it, deep down inside, there was fear: fear of failure, fear of hurting another innocent, fear of not living up to his own implacable, unachievable standards.

But no one need ever know.

Not now, not ever.

Allowing himself to relax, to stop fighting, now that he knew his team was safe, he gave in, and let the pain win, fading away into the comforting blackness.

----------------------------The End-----------------------------------