Confidence

By BadgerGater

Episode: None

Season: None

Spoilers: None

Category: hurt/comfort, drama

Pairing: None; absolutely gen

Summary: He has confidence his team will be back to help him

Rating: Older kids

Warnings: A bit of strong language,

Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate, and I acknowledge the power of those who do. No copyright infringement intended. No money exchanged hands, only time was lost.

Author’s pledge: This fic, like all Badgergater fics, is accurately and honestly labeled as to pairing and content.

Author's Note: For everyone who will keep Jack alive--

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Jack O'Neill knew they would come back for him.

It wasn’t a question.

It was neither a hope nor a wish.

There was no maybe about it.

It was fact, truth, reality, rock solid certainty.

His team would be back.

He’d trained them and taught them. He'd served as their leader and their friend.

He had led them by word and by deed.

He had instilled in them the credo, leave no one behind.

And they had listened.

They would return for him.

He held onto that knowledge, cherishing it, using it to drive back the pain, wielding it like Arthur’s mighty Excalibre, holding the enemy at bay, the enemy that was pain, despair and defeat.

His team would be back. He could hold on until then, even if it took them a long time to return. Sometimes it did happen that way. Sometimes they had obstacles to overcome: the terrain, the enemy, faulty equipment, even the SGC’s own rules, or Hammond’s orders.

But they would be back. It was as certain as death and taxes.

Bad analogy, Jack, he told himself.

He shifted in his chains, the slight movement causing bone to grate agonizingly against bone. He gasped, stifling a moan, which only made his broken ribs hurt all the more.

Damn. If only breathing wasn’t so important. Or painful.

He’d had broken ribs before. He could handle it.

He could endure, until his team came back for him.

He tried to sit up a bit straighter, to ease the cramping of his shoulders and lessen the pressure on his raw wrists, but that only re-ignited the fiery wave of agony in his lower back. Damned Jaffa had kicked him, right in the kidneys.

Sooo not fun.

Jaffa bastards.

But he could handle it, because his team would be back for him.

That fact was comforting knowledge, warming him like a thick, cozy quilt on a cold winter night. He wrapped that certainty around himself, using it to ward off the damp chill of cold, unforgiving stone.

He wasn’t sure how many days had passed. Down here, in the dark where he resided, it was impossible to tell night from day. Hell, he wasn’t even sure how long a day would be on this godforsaken, ugly hunk of worthless rock. He could guess, though, because it seemed logical to him that good ol’ Wally would come in once a day.

Wally had been to visit him three times. The snakehead strolled in, in typical overdone Gould style, looking down his nose at his captive, probably holding his nose, too, Jack thought, knowing how filthy he was. Wally sneered at him, asking questions Jack couldn’t and wouldn’t answer. Furious, Wally and his wacko underlings inflicted a bit more damage and created a few more bruises, but they were careful.

Wally obviously knew dead men reveal no secrets.

His aim wasn’t to kill, it was to inflict pain.

On most planets, they called it torture.

Here, on Wally’s World, it was probably SOP.

But he could survive, because his team would come back for him.

Jack knew he could hold out until they did.

/--------\

He wasn’t hungry anymore.

He knew that was a bad sign, but nevertheless, it was a welcome one; one less bit of misery to plague him.

The first couple days had been hard, though. Wally’s goons had brought in a plate of food and set it near his feet. They were quite careful to make sure it was just out of his reach, but right where he could see it and smell it.

That almost drove him nuts. Eventually, the rats, or the Wally World equivalent of an Earth rat, a small, furless, toothy, slimy and thoroughly repellent rodent, showed up and devoured the stuff. Jack watched them feast, and it provided a bit of a diversion.

But the hunger was gone now. Yesterday, maybe the day before, his stomach had quit aching, shrunken away to nothing, he assumed.

His thirst still troubled him, though. His mouth was bone dry, his tongue feeling thick, his throat desert-like. Even his eyes were gritty. But the certainty that his team would return for him, it was as refreshing as a cup of cold clear water. He bathed in the confidence that they would not leave him behind.

If only he could wipe the dirt and the blood from his face. Funny, of all the discomforts, of all the truly painful things his body was subject to, the fact that his face itched bothered him the most. He tried to twist his neck around, reaching toward his pinioned arms, but they were pulled up and out, out of his reach.

Damn.

/--------\

He must have dozed off because this time he hadn’t heard them coming.

A slap in the face woke him.

"Show proper respect to Lord Wallada," demanded one of the Jaffa.

Jack would have laughed, if he’d had the energy. "I’d stand up in your honor, but," he moved his hands the mere fractions he could, rattling the chains. "Guess I can’t at the moment." A gloved hand smacked him in the face. Why oh why oh why did his mouth have do that, opening before he’d engaged his brain, before he could remind himself that anything he said was only going to make things worse?

Because, he answered himself, that’s who you are, Jack O’Neill, and you can’t help yourself. Snark will be the death of you.

He wondered if that was what it would say on his death certificate: cause of death, snarkiness.

The thought made him smile.

"Who are you? Where are you from? What do you really want? What God do you serve?"

Jack had heard the questions so many times, he could have repeated them, one by one, in perfect order. "We told you. We told you, we're from Earth. We told you, we're looking for friends and allies. We told you, we serve no gould, none at all." He gave the same answers to the same questions, and they answered with the same disbelieving response, followed by kicks and blows to whatever portions of his anatomy they could reach.

Same old, same old.

It was getting really old.

He was ready for his team to come back for him. Any time now would be good. Right now would be really good.

He knew SG-1 had escaped. He’d been on his team’s six, and they’d gotten all the way to the Stargate, Daniel dialing up the DHD and Carter sending the GDO code. He’d waved them on and they’d run up the stairs toward the gate, dodging the native's primitive projectiles aimed at them.

Twelve stairs.

Why couldn’t it have been ten, huh?

He’d stumbled on the eleventh one when a sling-shot powered rock had hit him square in the back, driving him to his knees.

Even as he fell, he saw Carter and Daniel dive into the blue puddle of the wormhole. Teal’c was just a step behind them. The big guy had tried to stop, Jack had seen him plant a foot and attempt to halt, but his momentum had carried him forward into the wormhole, and away.

Jack had scrambled up onto his hands and knees, crawling forward toward the gate. He’d have made it, too, except for the second well-aimed rock, the one that hit him in the side of the head and turned his world totally black.

/--------\

He woke up, how much later he didn’t know, lying on cold hard stone. He opened one eye, the other was not working, too swollen and crusted with blood. All he could see were boots, the boots of Wally’s goons, and stone.

"He awakens, my Lord," said a voice from behind him.

Another pair of boots suddenly appeared in his limited field of view.

"So it lives."

Jack raised his head, trying hard to ignore the way that slight movement caused the ground and trees and sky and boots to swoop and swirl and do loop de loops. "It does."

Wally waved a hand and suddenly, rough hands grabbed his arms, pulling him up off the floor and onto his knees.

Once again the world spun sickeningly and he’d have crashed back to the floor if the rough hands hadn’t continued to prop him upright.

"So. Now you will tell me, who are you?

"I told you already. O’Neill, two Ls."

"O’Neill, that is not a name…" the snakehead scoffed.

"It is on *my* world, which is better than this one in oh so many ways."

Wally laughed in the standard over-the-top Gould way. "Where are you from?"

"I told you, Earth."

"I have not heard of such a place as Earth."

"Well, then, if you don’t know about it, I guess it can’t exist, huh, Wally."

A hand from behind cuffed him. The blow drove him back to the floor, his head ringing, feeling like it was about to shatter into a million tiny pieces. He lay there, gasping weakly, until a hand fastened itself in his hair and dragged him up onto his knees once more.

He was gonna have to cut his hair, he thought idly, as the floor and walls swapped places and his stomach lurched alarmingly. And next trip off world, he was gonna wear knee pads.

"What do you really want here?" Wally demanded.

"Nothin’ you’ve got."

"Then why did you come here?"

"I’m writing a book on the worst pig sties of the universe. Which this may very well be, by the way. You should be proud- not."

Wally ignored his words. "What God do you serve?"

"None."

"That is a lie. All humans serve the gods. What God do you serve?"

"None," he repeated stubbornly.

The boot exploded against his unprotected kidneys with brutal force, driving him to the floor once more. He lay still a moment, then drew up his legs, pushing himself up off the hard stone.

"What God do you serve?"

"None."

The blow came from in front this time, but his vision was too blurry to see it coming. There was nothing but a flash of sudden movement, then the impact, hard leather connecting with unprotected ribs. He went down again, but the blows didn’t stop. They were raining down on him from all directions now, pummeling his stomach, battering his kidneys, and driving into his ribs. He tried to curl in on himself, to protect his body as the blows went on and on.

"Jaffa, Kree!"

He barely heard the order, muffled as it was by the sound of his own harsh breathing.

Once again, he was pulled up to his knees. Too dizzy and shaky to stay there, he slumped back to the floor.

"Get up," a voice snarled from behind him as another kick landed on his thigh, starting another bruise.

"I guess you've never heard that you’re not supposed to kick a man when he’s down?" he gasped.

It earned him another, harder kick in the same thigh, initiating another bruise.

He was given no time to rest or pull himself together. Rough hands hauled him to his knees and held him there.

"What God do you serve?" Wally demanded once more.

"Homer."

"I have never heard of this Homer. Tell me more."

"Homer, Lord and Master of Springfield."

"There is no Springfield in my kingdom."

"Springfield's far, far away. In the land of Illinois."

"So, this Ill-anoy is a God as well?"

"Oh, yeah. Very godly god. Only Minnesota is a bigger god."

"Mini Sota? That is no God. You spout nonsense. You are a blasphemer," Wally bent down low, snarling into his face. "Do you think you can play me for a fool?"

Jack smiled. "Takes one to know one."

The sound of the slap echoed through the room, the big ring on the royal hand gouging across his cheek. He felt the warmth of blood trickling slowly down his skin.

"Take him away," Wallada ordered, fury lacing his voice. "We shall see what a few days confined down below shall do for his smart tongue and his surly ways."

/--------\

He was dragged out of the room, one goon holding each arm, towing him. His boots thumped down the stairs, down and down, thump, thump, thump. He tried to watch where he was being taken, but he was too weak to hold his head up, too dizzy to see more than a blur of stones and stairs and feet. Down, down, down, a long ways, he lost count of the number of steps, and then the trip ended abruptly as he was thrown against a wall. His wrists were seized, his arms pulled roughly away from his sides and over his head. Something heavy was fastened to his wrists, locking them in place.

"You’ll prob’ly lose your five pigs rating over this," he muttered, but they didn’t seem to get the insult, he thought sadly.

A door slammed, and darkness enveloped him.

/--------\

He’d been there ever since.

After a bit, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he’d realized there was a dim glow of reflected light, gold and flickering, which meant there had to be a torch of some kind down the hall from his cell.

Jack studied his confines and found nothing but silent, heavy stone walls. He tested the chains that bound him. They were too well anchored to be pulled out of the wall above him, too tight to slip his hands through, and too strong to break. At last, exhausted, he settled down to do the one thing he could do, which was to wait.

His team would return for him. Of that, he was sure.

There was comfort in that knowledge, comfort that fortified his will and kept him going.

/--------\

Part of him wanted his tormenters to return. It wasn’t that he was that much of a masochist, but the boredom of endless hours, alone in the near-total darkness, was about enough to drive a man to madness.

Even the rat-things had deserted him.

The time passed endlessly slowly as he waited. He rested sometimes, but it was hard to sleep, pinned up against the wall, every breath a painful reminder of the peril of his position.

He was tired of playing Survivor: Wally’s World.

Being the only contestant was no fun.

/--------\

He was pretty sure he was dying.

He didn’t hurt, and he knew that was a worse sign than losing his hunger. His body felt numb and sort of cold, detached, like he wasn’t really connected to it anymore. Maybe he was no longer even in it, but just sort of floating above it, looking down at the mess he was. Filthy and bloody, he was a wreck, too exhausted to hold up his head, throat too dry to speak, and muscles too weak to even shift from one uncomfortable position to another.

His team would come back for him, he knew. Maybe they’d only find his dead body, nothing but crumbling, bleached bones wearing dogtags that marked who he was, er, who he had been.

He would hang on.

At least he would try, he promised.

/--------\

He was so far gone he didn’t hear the noise of their arrival, the chatter of gunfire, the snap of staff weapons firing, the shouting, the clatter of booted feet on stone as they searched for him, and the triumphant, "I found him!"

It was all just noise, muffled and distant to his dulled senses.

Something touched his face and he recoiled, mumbling a curse.

"Jack? Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s me, it’s Daniel. Jack?"

Had it been real? Had someone really called his name? He fought to open his eyes, but when he accomplished the monumental task of lifting his weighty lids, the light was far too bright, burning his eyes, and he slammed his eyes shut once again, flinching away.

"Get that light out of his face!" someone ordered in a voice he knew he should recognize but couldn’t past the dull thudding in his ears. He tried to fight his way back up to consciousness, wading doggedly through the drifting layers of obscuring fog, but the effort was too much for him. Still, even if he couldn't quite achieve wakefulness, he liked the sound of the voices. They were quiet and soothing. The touch of their hands was gentle, and he let himself drift.

If this was death, it wasn’t so bad.

Until they unshackled him.

He nearly screamed when they moved his arms. His shoulders had been locked into place for so many days, the muscles were now unable to adjust to a new position. His arms trembled and shook, pain burning along the locked muscles and cramped nerves.

"Sorry, Jack, sorry, but we have to move you. You’ll be okay," the Daniel voice promised over and over. "You’ll be okay, the medic is giving you something for the pain. It’ll be better in a minute."

The voice was right. A tiny sharp pinprick and then warmth and lassitude spread through him like rain soaking into dry earth, sinking deep inside. He wasn’t even scared when he heard someone ask how he was doing and the answer, "it’s bad. He’s barely alive. We’ll be lucky to get him back to the SGC."

Dimly, he felt what they were doing to him, and deep inside his head, where his last remnant of awareness remained, he recognized their actions: starting an IV, washing and bandaging his wounds, wrapping him in a blanket before lifting and carrying him. Up the stairs, jostled by the tight corners, the ride was rough but it was okay because the drugs had hold of him now and nothing hurt anymore.

Suddenly, the movement ceased. "Sir, I’m going to cover your face because the sun is bright," a disembodied voice told him.

He licked his cracked lips and tried to nod but was pretty sure he failed. It didn’t matter, though, because something was laid across his face, and then he started moving again, the swaying motion lulling him.

He felt warm now for the first time since he could remember, maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the sun, maybe it was knowing that his confidence had not been mistaken, that they had come back for him, that they had not forgotten him or abandoned him.

Fact, truth, reality, was that they had had not left him behind.

His confidence had been rewarded.

---Finish---