![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: The Long Pause Between
Pairing: Sam/Cameron (SG-1)
Rating/Warning: PG
Wordcount: 2,827
Spoilers: None
Your name:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Your recipient:meeshyickle
Request details: offworld, banter, angsty (as angsty as you like.... the more the better but its obviously up to you!)
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sg_rarepairings. Thanks be to shutthef_up for the awesome and awesomely *fast* beta.
Cameron had run straight through the ‘gate and was out the other side, before he realised he wasn’t actually in the SGC.
“What the fu-“ he started to say, but Sam was pelting past him, yelling for him to “Keep running goddamit!” and a projectile clipping his ear reminded Cameron of why they were running in the first place.
He raised his P-90 and let off a short burst before following on Sam’s heels.
000
“You mind if I start swearing?” Cameron asked and Sam looked up from her pack, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know why you always ask. Jack used to swear a blue streak and he never pre-warned us.”
“I’m not Jack,” Cameron said in a low voice and Sam’s head whipped around, a frown marring her features.
“Oh no, Cameron. I didn’t mean…” but she tapered off when Cameron couldn’t hold off anymore and busted out laughing.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe you fell for that. I got Daniel last week and he bet me ten bucks you’d just tell me to suck it up and call me a girl’s name.”
“You’re an asshole, Cathy,” Sam said completely deadpan, but she was fighting off her own grin, especially when Cameron slapped a hand to his mouth and said in a high falsetto,
“Such language Miss Carter. My grandmother always told me that good girls didn’t swear.”
Sam looked at him steadily for a beat before turning her face back to her pack, hands digging deeper. “I’m not a good girl,” she said simply.
“I have to… ah… perimeter,” Cameron said in a strangled voice and stalked away.
000
“Malfunction you think?” Cameron prodded, watching Sam hunker over her laptop, grimacing because while she had three more batteries, she was going to have to be sparing in her use of them just in case she needed the laptop later. Cameron asking if he could play solitaire hadn’t improved her mood.
“If we could get near the gate maybe I could tell you,” Sam sighed, rubbing the heel of her palm into one eye.
“You know, I’d just like to know if Daniel and Teal’c made it through okay,” Cameron added, picking at the patch on his arm. “This ever happened before?”
“You mean the Event Horizon collapsing while I was running at it?” Sam asked incredulously and Cameron nodded. “Well, yes, we have lost connection before but there’re loads of reasons it could have happened.”
“And you need to get to the ‘gate to see if it was on this end,” Cameron snapped his fingers and Sam gave him the look, the ‘I’m going to kill you if you keep talking’ look. Cameron watched her scratch idly at her leg and frowned. “You hurt?”
“I’m not the one with the makeshift piercing,” Sam huffed, tugging her ear and Cameron’s fingers found his own ear and the big piece of gauze Sam had taped over the top.
“You think I can still model?” he asked and Sam snorted.
He figured he’d have to try and look at Sam’s leg while she was sleeping because she’d just deflected his question. He’d learned quickly that every member of SG-1 would tell him they were fine, even if they were humping along on stumps and had their intestines spilling out if they were offworld and stranded/taken prisoner/forced to attend some political ceremony. They would only admit how hurt they were once back and safe in the SGC.
Cameron had learned to look for warning signs. Furtive looks, concealed limps and the best indicator of all, deflecting if he asked them straight out.
It was never a good sign.
000
“You know, there are better ways to get into my pants, Mitchell,” Sam grumbled and Cameron froze, hands hovering over where he’d just ripped a rather large hole in Sam’s BDU pants. “You didn’t think maybe with us stranded here indefinitely I was going need these?”
“Sorry, that occurred to me right at the moment I was ripping,” Cameron offered with a wry grin and Sam rolled her eyes, using one booted foot to push him away while she sat up to inspect the damage. “I told you I only got winged, how about taking my word for it?”
“Because I know you people,” Cameron grunted, moving towards their makeshift fire and stirring through the coals to give his hands something to do. “Teal’c walked for three hours on a broken ankle and Daniel had cracked ribs the last time we were out and I only heard about it when we got back to the SGC.”
“You think I’d really be a bull-headed moron like those two?” Sam asked, undoing her pants and lowering one side so Cameron got a view of hip and the top of her thigh, along with the edge of a white square of bandage. “See?”
“So, the whole asking you thing would’ve worked out better,” Cameron nodded and then had to duck when a boot was flung at his head.
000
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sam huffed the next morning when she rolled out of her sleeping bag and to her feet. “You stitched my pants while I was asleep?”
“I felt bad about the whole-“
“Molesting me in my sleep thing so you did it again?” Sam asked incredulously, but she sounded less angry than amazed.
“I fix my own messes,” Cameron offered with the lopsided grin he’d been told was his most winning. Sam merely put her hands on her hips and blew the hair out of her face looking truly exasperated. “It’s colder today, don’t you feel it?” Cameron asked, trying to change the subject.
“Yeah, I did, but mostly I knew it was going to be colder today.”
“How, pray tell?” Cameron asked and the exasperated look deepened on Sam’s face and Cameron realised that he had missed something.
“The reason we could only stay on this planet for three days even though Daniel wanted to camp here for weeks? Ring any bells?”
Cameron leaned over to his pack and undid it, hunting for one of his powerbars. “That’s something I should know, right?”
“How is it you can reel off obscure facts from every previous mission SG-1 has ever been on but you don’t recall something pertinent from the mission you’re on?”
“Born lucky?” Cameron offered but knew his cheekiness was going to get him nothing but perhaps a groin injury when Sam’s expression moved past casually exasperated and veered into furious territory.
“This planet experiences an extremely severe winter and our calculations had them moving into the worst of it in a matter of days.”
“No wonder the locals were crabby.”
“Cameron, we need to get back to the ‘gate.”
000
Lying on their bellies on a hilltop overlooking the ‘gate, Cameron and Sam saw what they’d been dreading.
“Son of a bitch!” Cameron groaned. “Crabby and persistent.”
“They know we have to come back here and they probably know we’d try before the worst of the weather hits.”
“What did we do that was so bad?”
“What did we do?” Sam asked, staring at Cameron, who flushed.
“Oh yeah, that.”
“Daniel told you-“
“I know.”
“He said-“
“I know okay? I know!” Cameron sighed, thumping his forehead on the ground. “She was crying! How many times do I have to say that?”
“She was the ‘do not touch on pain of death’ Chieftain’s daughter.”
“Who’d fallen over and skinned her knee right in front of me and oh, did I forget to mention the crying?”
Sam looked at Cameron and her expression softened. “You’re just a big softie,” Sam accused and Cameron leaned toward her, shoulder up against hers.
“Don’t spread it around. I have this whole fear thing going on with the newbies at the SGC that I find very satisfying and manly.”
Sam pressed her forehead into Cameron’s shoulder for a second, huffing a laugh, before she turned her gaze back to the ‘gate. “We need a distraction,” she said, voice thoughtful.
“If you’re suggesting I streak, I told you I would only do that the once.”
“I have an idea.”
“Did I ever mention that I love your brain?”
000
“Do you really think they’re going to run towards the explosions?” Cameron asked, watching as Sam slowly backed up to their place on the hilltop overlooking the gate, feeding a long spool of wire carefully behind her. He thanked whatever providence or previous mission it was that caused Sam to pack explosives and remote detonators even when they were travelling to a reportedly friendly planet.
“I don’t care if they run away,” Sam said, lowering herself next to Cameron. “Either direction is going to take them away from the ‘gate.” Sam threaded the end of her wire carefully into the detonator and then snapped it closed, resting a thumb over the trigger.
“Ready to run?” she asked and Cameron nodded, moving up onto his haunches.
“Three, two,” Sam counted and depressed the trigger.
Cameron would never get tired of the way Sam never actually said one.
000
“How close?” Cameron asked, grimacing. Sam was elbow-deep in the DHD and he knew his repeated requests for progress reports wasn’t helping her cause. Ten minutes had passed since they’d hit the bottom of the hill and Cam figured their time was running out.
“I can’t find anything wrong with it,” Sam snapped, sounding frustrated but Cameron knew it wasn’t directed at him. Repeated dialling attempts had resulted in nothing but frustration and a horrible grinding noise.
“Maybe it’s the gate itself,” Cameron offered, feeling horribly useless.
“Could be but I’d have to run a full diagnostic and I have to assume we just don’t have that kind of time.” Sam had moved back and was now sitting cross-legged beside the DHD, laptop on her knees.
Cameron caught movement out of the corner of his eye and swung toward it, P-90 coming up in an arc. Something caught the bottom of his shirt as it whizzed by and Sam let out a curse. “We got company,” Cameron called behind himself.
“I noticed,” Sam said, coming to her feet, holding her laptop with a smashed screen.
“Goddamit!” Cameron breathed, circling back and joining Sam behind the DHD, mindful of getting pinned down. There was a line of trees behind the ‘gate and Cameron figured running was their best chance before they got surrounded.
Sam had seemed to read his mind because she dropped the now useless laptop and moved, hunched low so the DHD would cover her at least most of the way. Cameron followed, jogging backwards, weapon held up. A hard projectile clipped his cheek and Cameron swore, stumbling a step but righting himself just as he reached the treeline. He put his hand up to his face and his fingers came away bloody.
“I’m really starting to hate those guys,” he grumbled as he followed Sam’s path through the forest.
000
“Stop squirming.”
“Stop digging your fingers into my face.”
“The rock shattered when it hit you and there’re pieces left in your cheek. I’m sorry but I have to dig it out with my fingers because I didn’t pack any tweezers.”
“You packed explosives but not tweezers?” Cameron asked wryly, raising an eyebrow and making Sam’s scowl of concentration deepen.
“I’m a complicated woman,” she said.
000
Cameron watched a circle of locals playing something that suspiciously looked like poker while three more actually leaned against the Stargate. “I think they’re as bored as we are,” he remarked as he hustled backwards on his belly to where Sam was sitting with her back propped against a tree, handing her their field glasses.
The weather had been dipping rapidly over the last day and Sam and Cameron were both wearing every piece of clothing they’d brought through the gate, which was two uniforms apiece plus an extra undershirt that Sam had and Cameron had called her a boy scout over.
“We can only hope that the weather gets bad enough that they’ll give up and go home,” Sam shrugged, her expression tight.
“I don’t know. The Chieftain was pretty pissed,” Cameron mused, removing his cap to scrub through his hair and grimacing at the gritty feel. He desperately longed for a shower but it was now cold enough that he was willing to forgo it for being grubby rather than trying to bathe in the great outdoors. “Even if they leave the ‘gate, we can’t exactly…” Cameron made a helpless gesture.
“No, but we can be where our people will find us,” Sam said, laying flat and scrambling past Cameron to take her turn on the ridge.
Cameron watched Sam move, wondering whether she was trying to convince him or herself.
000
Cameron woke himself up with a sneeze and Sam was there, crouched by his head. “You’ve got a fever,” she said in a low voice, cool hand brushing across his temple.
“I got stranded offworld and all I got was this lousy cold, eh?” Cameron quipped, sitting up in his sleeping bag a little to accept the proffered cup of coffee.
“It’s the last of it,” she warned as she handed it over, leaning away to let out a sneeze of her own. When she turned back her cheeks were bright and her nose pink. Cameron swallowed half the coffee and then handed the cup back, Sam accepting with a grateful smile.
“I hate this planet,” Cameron sighed, watching as Sam zipped their sleeping bags together, creating one larger bag. He raised his eyebrows and she looked back at him, stern expression only broken by a cough.
000
“The SGC would have tried dialling here by now, right?”
“They would’ve as soon as Daniel and Teal’c came through without us,” Sam nodded, taking her boots off and hissing in relief. She held one of them upside down and dirt and a few sizable pebbles fell free. Cameron had already pushed his way into the makeshift double sleeping bag.
“And they’d keep trying,” Cameron prompted as Sam shook her other boot free of debris and then peeled off her socks.
“Yes, every hour for the first twenty four or as the mission schedule allows and then periodically after that.”
“When do they class it as a dead ‘gate and us MIA?” Cameron asked and Sam grinned, a flash of white teeth in a grubby face.
“If Teal’c and Daniel have anything to do with it, not for years,” she said and Cameron chuckled.
“So how long before we decide that the regs no longer apply?” Cameron asked, resting his head back on his crossed arms.
“Cameron,” Sam chided, a note of warning in her tone. She’d been peeling her jacket off but now stopped and shrugged it back on, hugging it closed around her chest. “We’ve talked about this.”
“I know. I get it, I do. It’s just, we’re stranded-“
“For a whole seventy-two hours so far.”
“Yeah, and I just wanted to know what kind of timeframe I was looking at.”
“Do you get doing something like that would be like giving up hope for me? Like acknowledging that we were never going to see home again?”
“So, not for a while then?” Cameron asked lightly, reaching forward and tugging on Sam’s big toe. Her expression had been serious, eyes dark, but she smiled again at Cameron’s small gesture of reassurance.
000
Cameron was thinking five more minutes when his radio buzzed in his ear but jolted awake a few moments later when reality pushed its way into his sleep-fuzzed mind and reminded him where he was.
“…am…an you… us?”
“Hello? Repeat, you’re breaking up!” Cameron called into the radio, Sam rolling over and pushing sleep-tousled hair out of her face.
“…chell? Is that ..ou?”
“Say again,” Cameron requested.
“I said Mitchell, is that you?”
“Jackson! Where the hell are you?” Cameron asked, Sam beaming beside him.
“Is Sam okay?” Daniel demanded and Cameron smirked.
“She’s fine. Where are you?”
“By the ‘gate with SG-23 and a bunch of pissed off locals that-“ Daniel broke off as the sounds of a scuffle and yelling could be heard in the background. “I’m getting the distinct impression they still want to kill you.” Sam had rolled out of the sleeping bag and was pulling on her socks and grinned when she heard Daniel’s comment.
“We’re up on the ridge. We’ll be down to you in a few. Can you make sure there’s no one around to take pot-shots at us because I think I’ve been hit by enough rocks to last me a lifetime.”
“I can’t make any guarantees,” Daniel warned and there was definitely a grin in his voice.
“We’re going home,” Cameron said as he clicked off and Sam paused in putting her jacket on to look at him for a beat.
“Did you ever doubt it?” she asked, reaching down to retrieve Cameron’s boots and hold them out to him.
Pairing: Sam/Cameron (SG-1)
Rating/Warning: PG
Wordcount: 2,827
Spoilers: None
Your name:
kellifer_ficYour recipient:
meeshyickleRequest details: offworld, banter, angsty (as angsty as you like.... the more the better but its obviously up to you!)
Notes: Written for
sg_rarepairings. Thanks be to shutthef_up for the awesome and awesomely *fast* beta.Cameron had run straight through the ‘gate and was out the other side, before he realised he wasn’t actually in the SGC.
“What the fu-“ he started to say, but Sam was pelting past him, yelling for him to “Keep running goddamit!” and a projectile clipping his ear reminded Cameron of why they were running in the first place.
He raised his P-90 and let off a short burst before following on Sam’s heels.
“You mind if I start swearing?” Cameron asked and Sam looked up from her pack, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know why you always ask. Jack used to swear a blue streak and he never pre-warned us.”
“I’m not Jack,” Cameron said in a low voice and Sam’s head whipped around, a frown marring her features.
“Oh no, Cameron. I didn’t mean…” but she tapered off when Cameron couldn’t hold off anymore and busted out laughing.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe you fell for that. I got Daniel last week and he bet me ten bucks you’d just tell me to suck it up and call me a girl’s name.”
“You’re an asshole, Cathy,” Sam said completely deadpan, but she was fighting off her own grin, especially when Cameron slapped a hand to his mouth and said in a high falsetto,
“Such language Miss Carter. My grandmother always told me that good girls didn’t swear.”
Sam looked at him steadily for a beat before turning her face back to her pack, hands digging deeper. “I’m not a good girl,” she said simply.
“I have to… ah… perimeter,” Cameron said in a strangled voice and stalked away.
“Malfunction you think?” Cameron prodded, watching Sam hunker over her laptop, grimacing because while she had three more batteries, she was going to have to be sparing in her use of them just in case she needed the laptop later. Cameron asking if he could play solitaire hadn’t improved her mood.
“If we could get near the gate maybe I could tell you,” Sam sighed, rubbing the heel of her palm into one eye.
“You know, I’d just like to know if Daniel and Teal’c made it through okay,” Cameron added, picking at the patch on his arm. “This ever happened before?”
“You mean the Event Horizon collapsing while I was running at it?” Sam asked incredulously and Cameron nodded. “Well, yes, we have lost connection before but there’re loads of reasons it could have happened.”
“And you need to get to the ‘gate to see if it was on this end,” Cameron snapped his fingers and Sam gave him the look, the ‘I’m going to kill you if you keep talking’ look. Cameron watched her scratch idly at her leg and frowned. “You hurt?”
“I’m not the one with the makeshift piercing,” Sam huffed, tugging her ear and Cameron’s fingers found his own ear and the big piece of gauze Sam had taped over the top.
“You think I can still model?” he asked and Sam snorted.
He figured he’d have to try and look at Sam’s leg while she was sleeping because she’d just deflected his question. He’d learned quickly that every member of SG-1 would tell him they were fine, even if they were humping along on stumps and had their intestines spilling out if they were offworld and stranded/taken prisoner/forced to attend some political ceremony. They would only admit how hurt they were once back and safe in the SGC.
Cameron had learned to look for warning signs. Furtive looks, concealed limps and the best indicator of all, deflecting if he asked them straight out.
It was never a good sign.
“You know, there are better ways to get into my pants, Mitchell,” Sam grumbled and Cameron froze, hands hovering over where he’d just ripped a rather large hole in Sam’s BDU pants. “You didn’t think maybe with us stranded here indefinitely I was going need these?”
“Sorry, that occurred to me right at the moment I was ripping,” Cameron offered with a wry grin and Sam rolled her eyes, using one booted foot to push him away while she sat up to inspect the damage. “I told you I only got winged, how about taking my word for it?”
“Because I know you people,” Cameron grunted, moving towards their makeshift fire and stirring through the coals to give his hands something to do. “Teal’c walked for three hours on a broken ankle and Daniel had cracked ribs the last time we were out and I only heard about it when we got back to the SGC.”
“You think I’d really be a bull-headed moron like those two?” Sam asked, undoing her pants and lowering one side so Cameron got a view of hip and the top of her thigh, along with the edge of a white square of bandage. “See?”
“So, the whole asking you thing would’ve worked out better,” Cameron nodded and then had to duck when a boot was flung at his head.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sam huffed the next morning when she rolled out of her sleeping bag and to her feet. “You stitched my pants while I was asleep?”
“I felt bad about the whole-“
“Molesting me in my sleep thing so you did it again?” Sam asked incredulously, but she sounded less angry than amazed.
“I fix my own messes,” Cameron offered with the lopsided grin he’d been told was his most winning. Sam merely put her hands on her hips and blew the hair out of her face looking truly exasperated. “It’s colder today, don’t you feel it?” Cameron asked, trying to change the subject.
“Yeah, I did, but mostly I knew it was going to be colder today.”
“How, pray tell?” Cameron asked and the exasperated look deepened on Sam’s face and Cameron realised that he had missed something.
“The reason we could only stay on this planet for three days even though Daniel wanted to camp here for weeks? Ring any bells?”
Cameron leaned over to his pack and undid it, hunting for one of his powerbars. “That’s something I should know, right?”
“How is it you can reel off obscure facts from every previous mission SG-1 has ever been on but you don’t recall something pertinent from the mission you’re on?”
“Born lucky?” Cameron offered but knew his cheekiness was going to get him nothing but perhaps a groin injury when Sam’s expression moved past casually exasperated and veered into furious territory.
“This planet experiences an extremely severe winter and our calculations had them moving into the worst of it in a matter of days.”
“No wonder the locals were crabby.”
“Cameron, we need to get back to the ‘gate.”
Lying on their bellies on a hilltop overlooking the ‘gate, Cameron and Sam saw what they’d been dreading.
“Son of a bitch!” Cameron groaned. “Crabby and persistent.”
“They know we have to come back here and they probably know we’d try before the worst of the weather hits.”
“What did we do that was so bad?”
“What did we do?” Sam asked, staring at Cameron, who flushed.
“Oh yeah, that.”
“Daniel told you-“
“I know.”
“He said-“
“I know okay? I know!” Cameron sighed, thumping his forehead on the ground. “She was crying! How many times do I have to say that?”
“She was the ‘do not touch on pain of death’ Chieftain’s daughter.”
“Who’d fallen over and skinned her knee right in front of me and oh, did I forget to mention the crying?”
Sam looked at Cameron and her expression softened. “You’re just a big softie,” Sam accused and Cameron leaned toward her, shoulder up against hers.
“Don’t spread it around. I have this whole fear thing going on with the newbies at the SGC that I find very satisfying and manly.”
Sam pressed her forehead into Cameron’s shoulder for a second, huffing a laugh, before she turned her gaze back to the ‘gate. “We need a distraction,” she said, voice thoughtful.
“If you’re suggesting I streak, I told you I would only do that the once.”
“I have an idea.”
“Did I ever mention that I love your brain?”
“Do you really think they’re going to run towards the explosions?” Cameron asked, watching as Sam slowly backed up to their place on the hilltop overlooking the gate, feeding a long spool of wire carefully behind her. He thanked whatever providence or previous mission it was that caused Sam to pack explosives and remote detonators even when they were travelling to a reportedly friendly planet.
“I don’t care if they run away,” Sam said, lowering herself next to Cameron. “Either direction is going to take them away from the ‘gate.” Sam threaded the end of her wire carefully into the detonator and then snapped it closed, resting a thumb over the trigger.
“Ready to run?” she asked and Cameron nodded, moving up onto his haunches.
“Three, two,” Sam counted and depressed the trigger.
Cameron would never get tired of the way Sam never actually said one.
“How close?” Cameron asked, grimacing. Sam was elbow-deep in the DHD and he knew his repeated requests for progress reports wasn’t helping her cause. Ten minutes had passed since they’d hit the bottom of the hill and Cam figured their time was running out.
“I can’t find anything wrong with it,” Sam snapped, sounding frustrated but Cameron knew it wasn’t directed at him. Repeated dialling attempts had resulted in nothing but frustration and a horrible grinding noise.
“Maybe it’s the gate itself,” Cameron offered, feeling horribly useless.
“Could be but I’d have to run a full diagnostic and I have to assume we just don’t have that kind of time.” Sam had moved back and was now sitting cross-legged beside the DHD, laptop on her knees.
Cameron caught movement out of the corner of his eye and swung toward it, P-90 coming up in an arc. Something caught the bottom of his shirt as it whizzed by and Sam let out a curse. “We got company,” Cameron called behind himself.
“I noticed,” Sam said, coming to her feet, holding her laptop with a smashed screen.
“Goddamit!” Cameron breathed, circling back and joining Sam behind the DHD, mindful of getting pinned down. There was a line of trees behind the ‘gate and Cameron figured running was their best chance before they got surrounded.
Sam had seemed to read his mind because she dropped the now useless laptop and moved, hunched low so the DHD would cover her at least most of the way. Cameron followed, jogging backwards, weapon held up. A hard projectile clipped his cheek and Cameron swore, stumbling a step but righting himself just as he reached the treeline. He put his hand up to his face and his fingers came away bloody.
“I’m really starting to hate those guys,” he grumbled as he followed Sam’s path through the forest.
“Stop squirming.”
“Stop digging your fingers into my face.”
“The rock shattered when it hit you and there’re pieces left in your cheek. I’m sorry but I have to dig it out with my fingers because I didn’t pack any tweezers.”
“You packed explosives but not tweezers?” Cameron asked wryly, raising an eyebrow and making Sam’s scowl of concentration deepen.
“I’m a complicated woman,” she said.
Cameron watched a circle of locals playing something that suspiciously looked like poker while three more actually leaned against the Stargate. “I think they’re as bored as we are,” he remarked as he hustled backwards on his belly to where Sam was sitting with her back propped against a tree, handing her their field glasses.
The weather had been dipping rapidly over the last day and Sam and Cameron were both wearing every piece of clothing they’d brought through the gate, which was two uniforms apiece plus an extra undershirt that Sam had and Cameron had called her a boy scout over.
“We can only hope that the weather gets bad enough that they’ll give up and go home,” Sam shrugged, her expression tight.
“I don’t know. The Chieftain was pretty pissed,” Cameron mused, removing his cap to scrub through his hair and grimacing at the gritty feel. He desperately longed for a shower but it was now cold enough that he was willing to forgo it for being grubby rather than trying to bathe in the great outdoors. “Even if they leave the ‘gate, we can’t exactly…” Cameron made a helpless gesture.
“No, but we can be where our people will find us,” Sam said, laying flat and scrambling past Cameron to take her turn on the ridge.
Cameron watched Sam move, wondering whether she was trying to convince him or herself.
Cameron woke himself up with a sneeze and Sam was there, crouched by his head. “You’ve got a fever,” she said in a low voice, cool hand brushing across his temple.
“I got stranded offworld and all I got was this lousy cold, eh?” Cameron quipped, sitting up in his sleeping bag a little to accept the proffered cup of coffee.
“It’s the last of it,” she warned as she handed it over, leaning away to let out a sneeze of her own. When she turned back her cheeks were bright and her nose pink. Cameron swallowed half the coffee and then handed the cup back, Sam accepting with a grateful smile.
“I hate this planet,” Cameron sighed, watching as Sam zipped their sleeping bags together, creating one larger bag. He raised his eyebrows and she looked back at him, stern expression only broken by a cough.
“The SGC would have tried dialling here by now, right?”
“They would’ve as soon as Daniel and Teal’c came through without us,” Sam nodded, taking her boots off and hissing in relief. She held one of them upside down and dirt and a few sizable pebbles fell free. Cameron had already pushed his way into the makeshift double sleeping bag.
“And they’d keep trying,” Cameron prompted as Sam shook her other boot free of debris and then peeled off her socks.
“Yes, every hour for the first twenty four or as the mission schedule allows and then periodically after that.”
“When do they class it as a dead ‘gate and us MIA?” Cameron asked and Sam grinned, a flash of white teeth in a grubby face.
“If Teal’c and Daniel have anything to do with it, not for years,” she said and Cameron chuckled.
“So how long before we decide that the regs no longer apply?” Cameron asked, resting his head back on his crossed arms.
“Cameron,” Sam chided, a note of warning in her tone. She’d been peeling her jacket off but now stopped and shrugged it back on, hugging it closed around her chest. “We’ve talked about this.”
“I know. I get it, I do. It’s just, we’re stranded-“
“For a whole seventy-two hours so far.”
“Yeah, and I just wanted to know what kind of timeframe I was looking at.”
“Do you get doing something like that would be like giving up hope for me? Like acknowledging that we were never going to see home again?”
“So, not for a while then?” Cameron asked lightly, reaching forward and tugging on Sam’s big toe. Her expression had been serious, eyes dark, but she smiled again at Cameron’s small gesture of reassurance.
Cameron was thinking five more minutes when his radio buzzed in his ear but jolted awake a few moments later when reality pushed its way into his sleep-fuzzed mind and reminded him where he was.
“…am…an you… us?”
“Hello? Repeat, you’re breaking up!” Cameron called into the radio, Sam rolling over and pushing sleep-tousled hair out of her face.
“…chell? Is that ..ou?”
“Say again,” Cameron requested.
“I said Mitchell, is that you?”
“Jackson! Where the hell are you?” Cameron asked, Sam beaming beside him.
“Is Sam okay?” Daniel demanded and Cameron smirked.
“She’s fine. Where are you?”
“By the ‘gate with SG-23 and a bunch of pissed off locals that-“ Daniel broke off as the sounds of a scuffle and yelling could be heard in the background. “I’m getting the distinct impression they still want to kill you.” Sam had rolled out of the sleeping bag and was pulling on her socks and grinned when she heard Daniel’s comment.
“We’re up on the ridge. We’ll be down to you in a few. Can you make sure there’s no one around to take pot-shots at us because I think I’ve been hit by enough rocks to last me a lifetime.”
“I can’t make any guarantees,” Daniel warned and there was definitely a grin in his voice.
“We’re going home,” Cameron said as he clicked off and Sam paused in putting her jacket on to look at him for a beat.
“Did you ever doubt it?” she asked, reaching down to retrieve Cameron’s boots and hold them out to him.
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