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The medics were insistent, but she remained inflexible until the colonel muttered "I could use the backup, Carter."
"Yes, sir." Sam was glad to turn her back for the minute it took to climb into the helicopter and tuck herself back among the equipment. Back into the real world, where medics risked their lives and sweated their hearts out to save strangers and support their families. Going to her friend, her trusted physician, who would listen to the colonel demanding bullet-proof sleeves and cursing Maybourne, whether he did it or not, at the same time as she planned an exhaustively thorough series of tests to make sure Sam had not suffered any enduring physical or mental effects, worried about a Goa'uld loose on Earth, and even spared a concerned thought for the poor damned fool of a host.
Sam grabbed panic by the throat and shoved it under as the stretcher was pushed up beside her, cutting off escape. Casually, without looking at her, the colonel dropped his good arm across her knees where she crouched and she took it just below the elbow in a hard grip. He yelped as a big black woman with a no-nonsense air shifted him onto his side, facing Sam, to get a better look at his wound. Her musical voice had laughter bubbling just under the surface. "Hush, boy, you scare the horses off their treadmill and we won't get off the ground." She was quick and skilled and his hand loosened from Sam's knee as the temporary dressing was completed.
Taking a deep breath, Sam relaxed her own clutch and let the hand lie lightly on his arm as she put the other on his shoulder, like connecting the second terminal, completing a circuit of reassurance.
"You need anything, ma'am?"
"No, thank you." The muscles around Sam's mouth relaxed a little and the woman smiled back as brightly as if she had really managed to smile herself.
"Do you know the old guy?"
"Colonel?" Unsurprised by the non sequitur Sam leaned sideways to bring one ear close to his mouth in the noisy cabin.
"He said you were taken by ninjas."
"Oh . . . panhandling in the parking lot?"
"Yeah. He called you feisty."
"Oh no! Oh, my, no one will ever dissuade him about ninjas now." She was laughing helplessly, as she hadn't expected to do for a long time.
"No giggling, Major."
"Oh no, never," she gasped, but continued to stifle sudden snorts of amusement at intervals as he told her about the National Geographics and Maybourne.
Janet was on the plane that met them at an unfamiliar airfield, and took her in a brief fierce hug before checking out the colonel. Sam felt herself snapping into place among the Air Force personnel and left him to her with a quick "Good luck!" when she was called forward to speak with General Hammond on the radio.
The general met the plane and questioned the colonel patiently on the way to the base, accustomed to the effects of painkillers and sedatives on attention span and organisation of reports. He waited in the infirmary while Sam was checked over with post-mission thoroughness, including an MRI, given the presence of a goa'uld in the vicinity while she was imprisoned. The news that the others were back was phoned down just as Janet finished with her and she accompanied the general to the briefing room where they pulled together the best analysis they could of the last few days with Daniel and Teal'c. Dr. Fraiser joined them to report that the colonel was out of surgery and expected to recover without incident, agreeing that the general and Sam could make a very brief visit before he was settled for the night.
As Hammond left them to do what he could to put in motion a search for the Goa'uld in Adrian Conrad's body, Maybourne, and whoever else might have been involved, Sam pulled herself slowly to her feet, aching all over, with her body crying for sleep that her mind was unwilling to give it.
Daniel had come around the table and stood close enough to catch her if her balance failed. "If you'd like a ride home, I'll wait."
"Janet wants to keep an eye on me at her place tonight - breakfast with Cassie. If you could take me home tomorrow, I could just come back in with her?"
Daniel embraced her gently and said, "Tomorrow," decidedly. He squeezed her shoulders and ducked his head as he turned reluctantly away. Sam let her hand run down his arm, their fingers pressing for a moment before their opposite directions separated them.
In the infirmary, Colonel O'Neill was wide awake and obsessed with his grievance against Maybourne. He managed to put it aside long enough to listen to the general's description of the measures he had taken and make a few suggestions, but returned again to what Sam realised with amusement was a sense of personal betrayal, possibly, as she pointed out, unjustified. Maybourne could hardly have been expected to wait around at risk of arrest, which was reason enough for his absence. He had helped to get Hammond back in charge and now had had much to do with saving her life; there weren't many things that he would balk at, but that he would ally himself with a Goa'uld seemed improbable to the point of fantasy.
When the general bade the colonel good night she lingered as Janet came in to look him over and inject him, over protests, with a soporific. Unable to find the right words, Sam leaned forward, her stiffening bruises causing the intended peck on the cheek to land instead on the very tip of his nose. Embarassed, she murmured "Thanks again, sir," and bolted for the door, but his voice, already blurring with sleep stopped her there.
"You're supposed to rub it, Carter!"
"I'll keep that in mind, sir," she said as she turned back and was rewarded with a rare full, open smile. His eyes closed and his restless hands relaxed. She listened to his breathing for a while; then seeing that Janet was occupied with some final tasks she headed for the control room.
All the expected arrivals and departures were over for the day and the only sign of life was a pair of feet projecting out from under one of the stations - not Siler's or a couple of others she might have recognised on sight. Sitting down she called up the recent logs, determined to fill in the gap of her absence, but soon found herself paging past events unseeing as her mind tried to match the daily minutia with what had been happening to her at the time. Sighing, she backed up, determined to miss nothing. Small sounds distracted her: an electrical snap and mild swearing from the technician, revealed by her voice as female, and distant movements.
She was grateful to feel Teal'c's presence with the quietly approaching footsteps. He came directly up behind her, laid his hands on her shoulders and said, "Sam."
Startled and warmed by the atypical form of address she leaned back against him, feeling Junior squirm and then subside under her head's pressure. After only a few days in captivity, she wondered anew how her friend endured the permanent trap of his dependence on the symbiont, and as her hands automatically returned the work station to standby mode, a rush of tears flooded her cheeks. Teal'c drew her up from the chair and she turned blindly into his arms, gasping as her grief for him, for lost friends and hopeless prisoners shook her.
After a time she noticed he was stroking her hair, whispering words in his own language that were incomprehensibly comforting. She felt small, yet secure, and a half-remembered poem seemed to speak in her mother's voice: "She that was so proud and wild, Flippant, arrogant and free, She that had no need of me, Is a little lonely child, Lost in hell,---Persephone, Take her head upon your knee; Say to her, 'My dear, my dear, It is not so dreadful here.' "
The tap of high heels approaching was as distinctive as a goa'uld. Turning without leaving the protective embrace she noticed her friends' exchange of glances and was humbled by their open delight in her return. "Cassandra should have been in bed the last half-hour, but somehow I doubt she will be before we get home," Janet said.
"Young humans require their sleep," Teal'c announced, with an expression that reminded Sam that both Cassandra's mothers (although she didn't claim that status aloud she had never stopped feeling it) must seem almost as young to him as the child did.
"Excuse me, ma'ams, sir!" The young technician rolling out from under the computer had landed almost at their feet.
"May I assist you, Sergeant Tomita?" Her eyes widened as she took Teal'c's hand and rose, and Sam guessed it was the first time the recent recruit had actually interacted with an alien. She thanked him with a natural dignity, respectful, but not overawed, and Teal'c inclined his head in approval.
They left her to her solitary watch as Janet handed Sam her wallet and other recovered possesions and shepherded her into the corridor. Seeing the date on a display they passed reminded Sam the moon was full that night, and suddenly she longed to be out and under it. She hit the elevator button hard, as anxious as if the short wait might extend to a day or a season. Without words Janet touched her hand and Sam took a deep breath, promising herself the moon, or real clouds or fog at least to shroud it, in the free air.
The door swished aside and she believed in elevators again. Teal'c accompanied them to the surface and Janet took her home.
End
Author's note:
Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, was abducted by Hades while she was gathering flowers. Because she made the mistake of eating while in the Underworld she was doomed to remain there, but her mother, goddess of the harvest, turned the world cold and barren until the other gods persuaded Hades and Demeter to make a bargain that Persephone would spend half the year with each of them. Demeter continued thereafter to bring winter each year in grief for her daughter's captivity. In ancient Greek mythology all souls travel to the Underworld, which has different areas for those deemed worthy of reward or punishment, and the American poet Edna St.Vincent Millay imagined Persephone as the comforter of a lost friend.
The accent in Persephone is on the second syllable and the final "e" is pronounced.