Familiar Ground
By BadgerGater
E-mail: [email protected]
Category: Missing Scene, epilogue to New Ground
Season/Sequel: late Three
Spoilers: New Ground
Rating: PG
Warnings: Nasty alien guy hurts our Colonel
Summary: Jack's thoughts during and after New Ground
Disclaimer: 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 elsewhere without the author's consent.
Author’s note:
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Just once, he'd like to wake up not hurting.
Didn't happen often anymore, not even on his best days.
The past 24-plus hours would sure as hell not be considered one of his better days, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Jack O'Neill levered himself up on one elbow to peer at the clock. Four freaking a.m. and he was wide awake. Not that he wasn't tired, exhausted in fact, but his aching body was protesting the last 24 hours of ill treatment in ways it had never protested when he'd abused it back in his 20s or even his 30s.
Getting old, older he corrected himself, was hell.
Four a.m., hmm. More than eight hours since he'd crashed all but insensate onto his couch after getting home from another of the all-in-a-days-work intergalactic adventures his life was filled with. Of course, this adventure, like far too many in his military career, had also been filled with military fanatics bent on rearranging his body parts in most uncomfortable fashion.
Funny, didn't matter what planet you were on, fanatics were still fanatics. Power was power. Hatred was hatred. War was war. Hurt was hurt.
How's that for a cultural observation, eh, Daniel? he wondered.
Jack stumbled from his bed, barely able to straighten, okay, to be truthful not quite getting all the way upright due to the vigorous protests from his back and the accompanying ache in his knees that made him groan. He staggered to the bathroom, not bothering to turn on the light. Enough glow from the streetlight down the way illuminated the familiar room allowing him to find the bottle of pills Doc had sent home with him. The ones he'd told her he didn't need. She'd smiled in that knowing way, and tucked them into his pocket, bless her.
He'd told her he didn't need them, pride dictated that, but he'd taken two the minute he'd gotten into his house. Fallen asleep on the couch before he'd even had time to make himself supper.
Hours later, in the dark, he'd staggered up to his bed and hoped it's king-sized comfort would ease the tightness in his back and take away the throbbing in his knees, the left one especially.
Hadn't worked.
He'd slept finally, fitfully, and now, he hurt too much to sleep more.
Wonder if I can take four now? he contemplated the pill bottle silently, and rejected the notion, remembering Doc's warning.
Swallowing a pair of capsules, washing them down with the water from the glass by the sink that tasted of minty toothpaste, he found his way back to the bed.
The pills did their work. His body's aches and pains gradually eased and finally, he drifted back into a deep sleep.
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It was nice to awaken with his head lying on his own soft pillow, and not awaken like he had what, three times, or was it four, on that stinking planet?
Bedrosia was *so* not going to rate a spot on his top ten list of great vacation sites in the galaxy.
Nope.
Not as long as that Ryebread guy was there.
Bastard.
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The first time he'd been knocked out on that planet was only minutes after they'd arrived, when he'd found himself and his team, except for Teal'c thank God, surrounded by that force field thingy. It had swept in on them, and when it hit he'd felt the jolt, like an electrical shock that burned along every muscle and vein and nerve, and he hoped he hadn't actually screamed aloud, because he sure as hell had wanted to.
Jack hadn't awakened to anything better.
Lying on the ground, face in the dirt, the dust tickling his nose. Trying not to move, not to change his breathing pattern, as he lay, eyes still closed, listening, hoping to figure out what the hell had happened. As memory slowly returned, he'd soon realized the news was bad, all bad.
He hurt like hell, every cell in his body. Carter could probably tell him how many million, billion cells there were in his body, and each one was screaming out in complaint at the jolt it had received. Bad start, and it just went downhill from there. It hadn't taken him long to figure out he was lying on the ground with his hands tied behind his back. He hated that, always had, bad memories associated with long hours bound helplessly, on his knees...
Shit. Don't go there, flyboy, he ordered himself. Iraq was a long time ago and remembering that shit isn't going to do you or anyone else any good so park that dark thought in the back of your head where it belongs and think about here. Now. Today. This moment.
This was sooo not fun.
The familiar weight of his weapons was gone, even the little knife he kept tucked into the inside of his boot. Without opening his eyes he knew too that his radio, the GDO, even his sunglasses were gone. These people had been thorough, he'd give them that.
Someone waved something in front of his nose, something bitter and nasty like smelling salts, and involuntarily, his body overriding every command to be still, he jerked, sucking in a great gulping mouthful of air in a vain attempt to clear his lungs.
"He's awake." said a voice above him. "Get up," it ordered.
Experimentally, Jack cracked open one eye to find himself staring at a boot, a dusty leather-ish boot about a half an inch from his chin.
The boot moved and deposited itself in his ribcage.
"Oooph!"
"Get up!"
Hands grabbed his arms, yanking him unceremoniously to his knees.
"Hey!" he objected loudly. "Get your hands off me."
Something cold and metallic touched his hand for a bare instant before he felt as well as heard the crackle of electrical discharge. Agony arced through his flesh from hand to shoulder and spiked directly into the center of his brain. "Ahhhh!"
"You were *not* given permission to speak." The man in front of him, wearing a uniform of some sort, dragged him a few feet, leaving him on his knees beside equally stunned looking Daniel and Sam.
Defying the soldier guy's order, Jack asked, "You guys okay?"
They nodded, said nothing. Ah, he thought, guess they've already met Sparky. Or they're simply smart enough to figure out silence is the best policy just by watching me get all the nerves in my right arm turned to toast, O'Neill thought with a grimace.
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He didn't like being held like this. Not just because having your hands tied tightly behind your back has a nasty tendency to cut off the circulation to said hands; an equally nasty liklihood of turning one's shoulders into the source of excruciating muscle spasms that leap from shoulders to neck and right on up into one's brain; and not even just because kneeling for any length of time over about 64 seconds turned his knees from dull aching into agonized throbbing. Okay, he had no way to know if it was true in this particular society, but kneeling on the ground with your hands tied behind your back and a guy with a large weapon standing behind you inexorably drew his mind to the ugly image of field executions.
Nope, Jack O'Neill didn't like this picture, this place, this mission or this day, not one bit.
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Soon after, he met Ryetoast. Military guy, no sense of humor. No sense of honor or justice or fair play, either. The guy had seen right past Jack's attempts to take even a modicum of control of the situation, and blunted the Colonel's moves to focus the attention on himself. Instead, he'd zeroed in on Daniel. After he'd let that ice woman spear them all with that icepick sized needle, that is. I will never again complain about Doc Fraiser's needles, O'Neill had promised himself.
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And after all that, good old Rigel had just turned and walked away. "Hey!" Jack shouted, and this time the guard didn't hit him with the bug zapper end of those oversized cattle prods, nope, he just used the butt end against the back of his skull.
Results were the same of course. The Colonel crumpled to the ground, out cold before he hit the dirt.
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O'Neill's second awakening on P2X-416 wasn't any more pleasant than the first. Pain in his head joined the pain in his knees as he drifted out of the blackness and back into something even uglier-- lying on the ground with his now numb hands still tied tightly behind his back. Once they'd seen he was awake, O'Neill had again been forced to assume the kneeling position, and wait.
And wait.
He knew it was all part of the game, but that didn't make it any easier. Or less painful.
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After endless hours, or so it had seemed to his creaking joints, they'd finally been dragged to their feet and thrown into a cell of sorts in one of the newly erected buildings. Jack had paced the confined area, fruitlessly examining every inch of the thin but tough material that enclosed them. He wasn't finding any possible avenue for escape, but he knew Teal'c was out there.
He hadn't had to tell the others to keep quiet, to say nothing about their teammate. He'd made silent eye contact with both Carter and Daniel, reassuring himself that they were okay physically and that they were prepared mentally, as prepared as anyone could hope to be.
He wasn't sure he was prepared. This was one nightmare he'd lived before and he didn't relish living it again. Jack O'Neill knew the evil that lay hidden beneath the surface of rational looking and sounding fanatics like Ryewhiskey out there.
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Finally, they'd all been marched into the other tent, shoved down into little metal cages, and left there.
O'Neill had a sinking feeling in his gut. He didn't like this one bit. He'd lifted his foot and experimentally touched the metal of the cage, and even through the tough leather of his boot he'd gotten one hell of a nasty zap. Not quite as bad as a zat, but he'd really rather not get fried like an egg on a hot skillet. The other two just watched silently.
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They'd all sparred with Reebar for hours, one after another. Jack listened to his teammates with a touch of pride as they held their own against the Bedrock fanatic, fighting back the desire to cheer when they managed to confound or annoy the noBedofroses commander.
His team was holding up well, and he began to feel a glimmer of hope.
Until they'd started to use those damn cattle prods on Daniel, for no reason at all. Other than the fact that Reeject seemed to enjoy seeing Daniel cringe. 'Freakin' pervert,' he raged silently. 'I'll make him cringe before this little set to is over and done with. Nobody messes with my team, especially when I can see they're doin' it just to mess with my head.'
'Keep cool, Jack. Don't let Regis see he's getting to you, or it'll be even worse for Carter and Daniel.'
The only good thing about the frantic way his mind was searching for an angle, a tack to take, an advantage of any kind no matter how slight, was that if he kept his brain engaged he could ignore the signals his body was sending him. Mostly. Try taking a pair of 45 year old too often overused and overabused knees and kneel on them for hours, then sit cramped up in a nasty little electrified bug zapper cage, and see how long it is before your body starts screaming for relief.
O'Neill needed every one of those old Special Ops control techniques to keep the pain off his face. He desperately needed to stretch out his legs, cursed his lanky 6'2" frame that was far too big to allow him to stretch. Used the old isometric exercises over and over but they weren't working anymore as his knees' objections to the cramped confines of the cage turned from whispers to shouts, demanding a change of position.
So he gave them one, which was a whole other pain that led to his third rude awakening on this planet, the worst of the lot if truth be told.
Ryejar was on Daniel's case again, and this time he'd picked up a zat. When Daniel failed to answer the SOB's question in the manner he wanted, he'd zatted Carter. She'd flopped to the floor of her cage. And when Daniel still didn't answer the question, Ryeguy zatted O'Neill.
Jack had been zatted enough times before to know it hurt like hell, but this was 10 times worse. Even as he lay helplessly against the box, felt the electricity singing through his tissues and bones, he was dimly aware of what was happening but completely unable to do anything about it. Except moan, silently.
Damn, that hurt. Like, oh hell, like a zat magnified to the power of ten. He could feel the electricity sizzling through his body, feel it vibrating through his bones and boring into his skull.
And then it was over and everything mercifully went black and faded away.
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He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious.
Jack first became aware of pain, of his body still resonating with the power of the electrical charge. His first thought was surprise, that he wasn't dead; then anger; and then fear, not for himself but for the others.
He knew he was lying crumpled against the metal box, knew that the juice was turned off or he'd be dead, his brain fried to ashes, if...
O'Neill didn't know how it had happened, but he was damned glad it had.
Stifling a groan, he slowly moved shaking limbs that trembled with weakness. Somehow, he managed to find the strength to open his eyes and lift his head. Carter was still slumped over but with relief he could see she was breathing. Daniel was sitting up, alert and staring, no, glaring, at more of those Bedraggled SOBs.
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In the end, they held on long enough for Teal'c and the kid, Nyam, to get to them. Jack eagerly grabbed a zat and set to work on their escape.
Usually, he wasn't a vindictive man. Jack O'Neill was military, and he understood the old cliches, that war was hell, and there were no rules, and there sure as hell was no Geneva Convention on a planet where there was no Geneva. But that didn't mean you had to do what had been done to Daniel and Carter and okay, yeah, to him, too.
Jack zatted Bedrosian after Bedrosian with grim satisfaction.
And when he zatted Ryebread, had the SOB down on the ground, rolling in agony of a direct, fully charged zat blast, Jack O'Neill needed every ounce of will power not to pull that trigger the second time. He was a man of war, but he hadn't fallen to Bedrosian standards, not yet. He glared once at the downed commander, a feral smile of triumph gracing his lips, and ran for the gate.
FINIS