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TuesdayMuseday Prompt Picture Archive - 28th October 2025
~ ~ S 💔 J ~ ~
~ ~ S 💔 J ~ ~
More Than I'm Supposed To...
Major Sam Carter
I could feel it.
Death.
Creeping. Slithering. The bony fingers of the Grim Reaper clawing its way through my body one cell at a time.
At first – after Nirrti's manipulations – and the initial wave of excruciating agony but before the creeping tendrils of icy dread began their daunting march through my bloodstream, I studied my worsening condition with scientific wonder. Pacing the length of the cell, cataloguing each feeling, each spike of pain, each muscular spasm, each crawling sensation and each wave of freezing heat with academic precision to create a hypothesis about my modified state ignoring the Colonel’s pain-etched voice ordering me to stop the running commentary.
I couldn’t stop. The merging collision of my cells as they warped and changed, turning me into something else was simply too fascinating. Too unusual. A never-before-seen phenomenon that would captivate any scientist. The notebook from my top pocket accepted my scribbles from different hypotheses to equations that normally had no scientific application to the human body until my pen ran dry and the Colonel refused to give me his.
By the time they came for Jonas, I had broken out with an uncontrollable fever which forced my core temperature the escalate well past the safe zone. The Colonel’s demands that they fix the damage their goddess had caused ended with a gruff threatening refusal as they hauled Jonas away.
Watching the Colonel heckle our captors with a white-knuckled grip on the bars forced the scientist to step back, take a breath and released the woman who could see her friends wavering strength crumbling before her eyes.
He needed me. Even though he would never admit it.
Evanov was looking worse. He barely even made a noise anymore and neither of us were prepared to give verbality to our pending fates. So we used the same approach as always.
We ignored it.
I eased myself onto the small cot and leaned against the bars. At some point I watched my hand unconsciously reach for him, so I put them behind me. Always the pragmatic officer. The Colonel joined me, and we engaged in some pointless chatter about an event that we were powerless to stop. When the next wave of pain hit, I forced down the scream while gripping the bars at my back until the Colonel’s keen eye glazed over me with a ‘What?’ that I answered with my standard ‘Nothing. I’m fine.’
As always, it was lie. And as always, he knew I was hiding my worsening condition.
At length he shuffled sideways, closing minuscule gap between us.
In that moment, everything beyond the ardent ebbing pain of my cells being ripped asunder dulled. The thump thump thump of my elevated heartrate thundering in my ears slowed. The barred wall at my back no longer felt unyieldingly hard, the straw filled mattress was less scratchy and the dank coldness of the underground cells didn’t feel as frigid as the blood flowing through my vessels.
His order for me to rest was all the permission I needed to be Sam rather than Major Carter. My eyes dipped as I laid my head on his shoulder and dreamed of better times.
When Evanov gasped his final watery address and melted behind us, I looked at Jack to find an unmasked expression of terror before he stared down at the floor to collect himself.
He coaxed me back into my lean to position against him. Less than a minute later, he wrapped his arm around me, his hand settling on my hip, fingers curling around my side. Out of surprise, my eyes found his. The heat of my skin through my uniform clouded his irises with more concern than had already been there. The brushing of his lips on my hair felt good and I wondered why I let him pull away. When he fixed his eyes back on me, I ran my hand along my abdomen and linked our fingers. The grasp was desperate and apologetic as I melted into his embrace a lot more than I should.
Time seemed to ebb and flow with the audible rushing of liquid doom in my body.
When my eyes opened, I was lying on the small cot with a new pain in my sternum and Jack was once again at the bars. Immediately, I knew what had caused that pain and my heart hurt for the man who had to break my body to keep me alive. The creaking shriek of our prison opening and Jack's demands combined into a din that I couldn’t decipher. But one look from him was all I needed to know that he still held onto his desperate hope.
It was the forcefield all over again. Except this time, no amount of defiance would save my life. He looked back at me one final time and I knew that I would be gone before he came back. So, with tired pained eyes, I begged him to let me go.
The defiance in his eyes diminished in worry as he absorbed my message. Then his jaw sharpened with raw determination, and he turned back to our captors with a demand that I knew they wouldn’t grant.
‘Goodbye Jack.’ The voice in my head whispered as my eyes closed and the sound of rushing water overpowered every other thought.
~ ~ S 💔 J ~ ~
Colonel Jack O'Neill
Sam was dying. And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to save her other than be here. Beavis and Butthead were so ridiculously enamoured with their so-called goddess that they refused to listen to reason and believed she was their saviour.
Naivety seemed to be a commonality in the galaxy.
The sound of Sam’s words in that laboured broken voice as she catalogued how she was feeling pierced my heart. I wanted her to stop. I needed her to stop. In the end, it was an empty pen that forced the monologue and the mindless pacing to cease.
Then they came for Jonas, and my demands fell on deaf ears once again. When I turned around, she looked up at me with dying eyes. The tired gesture of her fingers beckoned me over to her side. It was a small thing, and I wondered if she even realised. So, I went to her and slid into place closing the gap until we touched shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip.
She breathed out, and I ordered her to rest.
When her head found my shoulder, I tried to see it a friends’ only gesture. I tried to tell myself that she didn’t mean the world to me. Then the cell behind us drowned in Evanov and I knew that the fear I saw in Sam’s eyes was reflected in mine. That my arm’s length tactics and isolationist behaviour had done little to harden my heart. She was and always would be more than just my subordinate.
I needed to be better. I needed to double down and be the Colonel.
I needed… God, I didn’t know what I needed.
As usual, Teal’c’s eyes reflected his disapproval. His message was clear. Be there for her now. Don’t be her commander. Be her friend. So, I steeled myself and put my arm around her, hand on her hip and fingers splayed to impart some modicum of comfort.
The heat came off her in waves, and not the right kind of heat. The sickly smell of her perspiration was thick with ammonia and tasted like death which meant that whatever that snake-head bitch did to her was forcing her body to metabolise muscle.
Before I realised what was happening, my fingers were entwined with hers as she folded herself impossibly close. Closer than she had been in a long time. Closer than my brain told me was safe for my sanity, but not close enough for my heart.
A heart that I sternly told to ‘back off’ and ‘shut up’ because maintaining my tough façade was the only way I was going to get through the loss of this woman.
“S-s-so-rry, S-sir.” She stuttered with a broken voice on the tail end of a rough gasp. I was about to reply that she didn’t need to be sorry when her body convulsed with a heavy pained groan. Her head rolled on my shoulder and arms tugged themselves across her midsection. She convulsed again but this time it didn’t stop.
And suddenly those demands to my softer side evaporated.
“Carter!” The panic in my voice alerted Teal’c as I carefully laid her spasmodic body on the straw lined ground. Except he couldn’t do anything through the bars of his adjoining cell.
“Carter.” I said again with one hand on her head as she thrashed and cried, the sweat coming off her in beaded rivulets, and my other hand holding hers, silently telling her that I was here.
Suddenly her back arched and she stopped moving after one final cry, her head rolling to the side. Then her hand went limp and slid out of mine leaving a pool of water behind. I didn’t need to check her breathing or her pulse to know what had just happened.
“Oh, no you don’t, Major. You are not dying on me now!” I told her with an order in my tone that I knew I couldn’t technically give her.
She didn’t answer.
“Teal’c!”
I didn’t say anything further, my silent order ‘keep her airway open’ was implacable as I leaned on her sternum with a wing and a prayer knowing my knees would complain. I didn’t care, because if I got through this with Sam alive and a cortisone injection then that was better than my other option.
A tap on my shoulder signalled that I had reached thirty, which was good because in my panicked rush, I had forgotten to start counting. Two breaths later and I began round two, cursing the aches in my body from sitting dormant in this musty cell for hours.
Round three came and went with no change. Then the fourth and the fifth.
When I reached the sixth set of compressions, I could feel the tears welling in my eyes chiefly because the salt was making them itch. Teal’c held her airway open while I breathed for her, only to begin again despite my fatigue. I didn’t know how long I had been going.
“C’mon Sam. Please.” The begging tone of my voice just made it all so much worse because that tone had not been used since that heartrending bang had taken everything from me.
“O’Neill.” My friend said with a hand on my shoulder, but I couldn’t accept that this was it. I couldn’t accept that I was going to lose her.
“No.”
“O’Neill, you must.”
“NO!” The single syllable word sounding just as desperate as it had the last time that the tell-tale crunch of fractured ribs reached my ears. “Daniel! You bastard, save her.” I cried out hoping he was here.
He wasn’t.
“Jack.” Teal’c said calmly for the first time ever.
It was either his plea or the sheer exhaustion, but I stopped, my hands finding her face and sweat-laced hair. Leaning down, I gave her one last kiss and begged for forgiveness that would never be granted.
Then she shuddered to life with a groaning cry. And although I wanted to drag her into my arms, kneeling over her on the unforgiving pavement combined with my body dumping its load of adrenaline forced me onto my ass.
Once I recovered, I lifted her back onto the cot then crossed the small cell.
Less than twenty minutes later, Nirrti was dead, Sam was fixed, and I had a new reason for keeping myself protected. Images of past missions involving respirators and near drowning combined with her genetic manipulation filled my head and heart with more of the same terror that losing Daniel caused. And although I needed her more than I was supposed to, I knew that I couldn’t be her commander and her friend.
I needed that line.
Or I wouldn’t survive her death.