Summary: The Wienerdog Fic Challenge: 1. Sam and Jack must hold hands. 2. They must be on a mission.
Rating: PG
A/N: Thanks to Karen for the multiple beta-ings.
Other Wienerdog fics: Too Many Geeks by Nanda and Beyond the Yellow Brick Road by Karen T.
As always, feedback is much appreciated.
"Eighty-three bottles of beer on the wall, eighty-three bottles of beer... "
I'm going to kill him, Sam decided with finality, one hand touching something particularly slimy on the cave wall she was using to lean against as she walked. She flinched, moved her hand along quickly, and then went back to plotting her CO's murder, her eyes carefully trained on the ground where she was walking.
Truthfully, she'd been thinking about it for a while now – pretty much since he'd reached 'ninety-one bottles of beer on the wall' - and it had become apparent that this was not a joke. She should have known that when the Colonel started something, he always intended to finish it. And, frankly, she wasn't sure her sanity could take it.
Something cold and wet landed on the back of her neck and slid down the collar of her shirt. She shivered.
Goddamn she hated this place.
The Colonel, on the other hand, seemed to be unreasonably – if not *freakishly* - chipper. Considering.
"Eighty-three bottles of beer on the wall, eighty-three bottles of beer... " Suddenly stopping, he half turned and grabbed her free hand, which had been waving in the air behind him for balance reasons. "There's a loose rock here," he said, his voice bouncing off the walls around them. The flashlight he was carrying was aimed down onto the rock beneath their feet and she could see one particular stone was worn away, cracks surrounding it. His boot reached out and prodded it, and it emitted an ominous grinding noise. "Watch out." He squeezed her hand in a friendly fashion and released it once again. "Where was I? Oh, yeah - You take one down, pass it around...."
Death it was, then.
So far, she'd come up with three options. One, a swift kick to his right side and he would topple over – helped by his heavy pack - and plunge down... and down... and down.... They were pretty certain that the cavern running directly down to their left was a fairly deep drop, and she was sure it would probably kill him. In a swift but terrifying way.
"Eighty-two bottles of beer on the wall, eighty-two bottles of beer..."
He, of course, totally deserved it.
".... you take one down, pass it around...."
Absolutely deserved it.
Option two was, Sam decided, less imaginative and somewhat more difficult to explain when she got home.
She could simply shoot him.
"Eighty-one bottles of beer on the wall - whoa, Carter," he grabbed her hand again, then let go, "*huge* hole here - eighty-one bottles of beer..."
It would be satisfying but it would be pretty cowardly, all in all. He was walking in front of her and she would therefore be shooting him in the back which wasn't particularly just.
Still....
".... you take one down, pass it around, eeeeeigh-ty bottles of beer on the wall...."
Hammond, knowing the Colonel as he did, would probably understand her reasoning. He had, after all, once described Colonel O'Neill as 'deliberately irritating' to her, which she thought was particularly apt.
"Carter, I can *feel* you glaring at me."
Well, if he turned around and used that flashlight where she could actually *see it*, he'd see her glaring too. And that, she had it on good authority, was far more frightening. "With all due respect, sir, I'm finding it hard to concentrate with you singing."
"You call that singing?" he said, acknowledging that his singing voice was... less than wonderful.
Sam ground her teeth together and narrowed her eyes at his head, which – thanks to the flashlight he was using *very badly* in front of him – was haloed with a somewhat ironic heavenly glow. "I was being tactful."
"Su-ure."
She rolled her eyes.
"Don't roll your eyes at me, Carter."
Oh for...
The other option was to take a running jump, tackle him to the ground and throttle him to death. Then, at least, he would have a fighting chance. They were fairly equal in hand-to-hand combat but she was counting on his age and the element of surprise to give her an advantage.
"I don't know why you're taking this so seriously, Major," he chastised, sounding amused.
Sam's mouth *literally* dropped open as she edged forward behind him, one foot tentatively patting the ground in front of her as she ascertained that there was something solid to stand on. She'd had an incident further back where she'd dropped down about a foot into a hole (oh, how he had *laughed* and *laughed*...), which had the inevitable conclusion of sending her flashlight to a dark and probably watery end. She wasn't willing to let it happen again. A broken ankle would not help their situation in the least.
"Sir, we're *lost*!" she exclaimed.
"We're not lost..."
"We're lost and we're inside the 'approximately three-hundred mile long cavernous tunnels'." Daniel had been *very* thorough with his information.
"I tell you, we're not *lost*!"
"Cavernous tunnels that Daniel said the ancestors of this planet used to torture people with because they dumped them here and then *left* them and they starved to death..."
"We're not lost..."
"Sir! Come *on*. We're *lost*."
"Carter." Colonel O'Neill spun around on his heel (well, okay, he carefully turned around, making sure he was holding on to solid rock as he did so), swiveling the flashlight so that his face was illuminated eerily. "We're. Not. Lost," he said, his eyebrows raised in emphasis.
She watched as a drop of water landed on his forehead, trailed down into his left eyebrow and disappeared. For some reason, this depressed her.
Her shoulders slumped and she glared at him in defeat. "With respect..."
This time he was the one who rolled his eyes. "Oh, don't start that again. You're in a mood and nothing you're saying is said with any level of respect."
Crap. "That's not true!" The problem with their relationship nowadays was that she was never exactly sure where she stood. Sometimes he could be annoyingly informal, and then sometimes he'd switch back into Colonel mode abruptly and she'd be left hanging.
"Carter, would you *like* me to start singing again?"
Clearly, this was informal mode. "Not especially..."
"Well, then. Look, we're not lost. Lost is when people don't know where you are. *Everyone* knows where we are."
He had a point.
"So it's dark and it's... raining...," he wiped his eyebrow, "...raining inside... that's fine. We've got rain gear. We've got rations. We have a flashlight. We can even light a fire if you want." He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, gave it a squeeze, much like he'd done earlier with her hand. "We just have to stay put."
Sam narrowed her eyes and resisted shrugging his hand off. "Stay put? We haven't done that part yet."
"No, but that's because... " He waved his hands and, therefore, the flashlight around. She watched the beam of light hit the dark and mysterious corners of the tunnel, showing patches of moss and stone glistening with green slime. "I'm looking for the right place to stay put."
"The right place?" Sam repeated dubiously.
Sure, to keep as comfortable as possible, finding the 'right place' would be a sensible decision to make but...
She glanced around. Black, black, black. Grey. Dark grey. Black. Some more grey. Something... sort of pointy hanging from the ceiling directly above her. A stalactite. Which was dripping.
Lovely.
"Sir, I don't think the quality of the environment is going to improve," she pointed out.
The Colonel sighed and scratched his head with the edge of the flashlight. "I was hoping..."
She smiled for the first time in what felt like hours. "This ledge is pretty wide. Wider than some of the other places. Why don't we stay here?"
Colonel O'Neill shrugged. "If you like. Though, not here." He looked up at the stalactite, pointing his flashlight and illuminating the slightly green and definitely slimy rock formation. "That thing is just too creepy."
"Okay. Wait, give me a moment. I want to..." She pulled out the piece of chalk they'd be using to mark their way – somewhat unsuccessfully, obviously – and drew a large cross on a patch of dry rock.
"Very nice, Carter."
"Thank you, sir," she replied, dryly.
They moved on.
He'd obviously taken her words to heart because there was no more singing. Occasionally, he stopped to point out a dangerous crack in their path or a dip. He'd take her hand, lead her over, the flashlight waving on the stone beneath their feet. Then he'd release her hand and they'd carry on again, searching out the perfect place to sit down and wait for their rescue.
"Here?" he suggested, flashing the light into a slight enclave. He moved the flashlight up and down. "Doesn't look wet, does it?"
She reached out to brush her fingers across the back slabs of rock. "It isn't."
"I guess it's as good a place as any." The Colonel reached up and tried his radio again, shaking his head when all he got was static. "The next time Daniel suggests we split up, tell him to go screw himself."
Sam unclipped her pack and slowly lowered it down onto the ground by her feet. "I'll remember to do just that, sir," she said, dryly.
He eased himself down, wincing slightly as he did so. Sam followed until they were seated shoulder to shoulder and she watched him stretch out his knee slowly. The Colonel treated all problems with his health much the same way as he treated everything that had a negative impact on his life – he ignored them. And commenting on them... well, you never got very far.
Therefore, while she could tell his knee was giving him grief, pointing that out to him wasn't going to get her anywhere and she'd much rather have him in a good mood while they waited for their rescuers.
If there were going to *be* any rescuers.
On that mournful thought, she pulled out a ration and broke it in half. After some consideration, she broke it in half again and tucked the rest away into her pack. She munched on it thoughtfully, listening to the sound of water splashing onto rocks around her.
Automatically, Sam's mind started sifting through the various ways she could try and get some help. She knew that they were technically supposed to sit down and wait for rescue. Wandering around would only get them more lost – it had been a point Daniel had emphasized. The whole trick of these tunnels was that there were many circular routes. If you kept on walking you would get increasingly disorientated.
Still, that didn't mean she couldn't think of ways to increase their chances of a swift recovery. Sitting down and doing nothing had never been her style – no matter what the situation.
"I don't know, the quiet is kind of soothing," the Colonel said, as if they'd been having a conversation "Admittedly, it would be more soothing if I didn't need to take a leak."
Instinctively, she snorted with laughter. "Thanks, sir."
The Colonel shrugged, jostling her companionably. "No problem. How much water have you got?"
She shook her bottle. "Nearly a full bottle."
"Good."
"You think we'll be down here a long time?"
"Depends if Daniel and Teal'c are as lost as we are. We were supposed to report back to Hammond half an hour ago. If they missed the deadline, Hammond'll send people through, and if we didn't turn up on time, Teal'c and Daniel would have gone back and found reinforcements."
"I still don't understand *how* we got lost." They'd taken precautions, after all – using the same piece of chalk Sam now had in her pocket, they'd marked their way through the caves. When it had become obvious they weren't going to find anything within the allotted time, they'd started to retrace their steps. Only the chalk marks had disappeared.
"The water couldn't have washed the chalk away?"
"Not all of them," Sam said, doubtfully.
"Well, just one washed away would have been enough. It is very wet down here," he sighed, leaning his head back against the rock and aiming the flashlight up at the ceiling over the tunnel. "Mites run up, tights run down."
She frowned, wondering why he was talking gibberish. "What's that?"
"Stalagmites go up." The flashlight sought out some stalagmites across the drop, reaching into the air looking eerily like knobby, wrinkly fingers. "Like mites up your legs. Stalactites go down. Like... tights."
"But tights go up as well. And," Sam continued, knowing *full* well what kind of reaction she was going to get and yet, bizarrely, unable to stop herself, "mites can go back down your legs."
"Oh, for crying out loud, Carter..." he groaned.
Sheepishly, she nibbled on her ration. "Er, sorry."
"I guess I should know by now that you can't help it."
She made a face but didn't deny it, wondering why the drops of water raining down from the ceiling now sounded so loud. She finished off her ration chunk and wiped her fingers on her pants before she stretched out her legs. In the beam of light the Colonel was aiming across the drop, she could see that one of her boots was scratched up to hell and back from her accident earlier. The Colonel's boots, on the other hand, were miraculously perfect. He always seemed to stay perfectly clean, whereas she was guaranteed to find the puddle with the deepest layer of mud or slide down a soggy hillside on her ass.
With things like that, he was lucky.
"Did you use Daniel's shampoo this morning?"
She glanced up at him, dragging her eyes away from the shiny points of his boots. "What?"
He grimaced. "That sounded weird, didn't it?"
Sam grinned. "Kind of."
"Okay."
She shifted her butt, uncomfortable on the cold, solid rock, and relaxed against the wall again. "I did, anyway. I ran out and had to borrow his."
"Well, he blamed me."
Her eyebrows went up. "He did?"
"Yup. Apparently it's some kind of special.... shampoo."
"That would explain the color, I guess..." It had been bright blue but Sam had been too desperate to care. She'd forgotten to bring in a new bottle after her last one had run out.
"Exactly." His hands moved and so too did the flashlight. "Like I'd want to smell like a pine tree, anyway."
"Actually, I'm pretty sure Daniel's is scent-free," she said, pensively.
"Oh?" He paused curiously. "Well, why do you smell like a pine tree, then?"
She turned and looked at him sharply. "Like a pine tree?"
"Yeah. Like one of those air freshener things you have in cars."
Sam just about resisted the urge to sniff herself. Just about. Why, she asked herself, did he bring out the worst in her? Or, rather, the immature in her? "*I* don't think I smell like a pine tree."
The Colonel sniffed, very loudly. "No, I can definitely smell pine."
"I really don't use anything that smells like pine."
She couldn't *believe* they were having this conversation. She couldn't believe she was *continuing* this conversation. Cautiously, Sam sniffed the air and then reluctantly admitted that something did indeed smell like pine. Something nearby.
She lifted her arm and sniffed at the material of her shirt. "It's not me."
The flashlight swiveled around and nearly blinded her. "Crap. Sorry. Are you saying I smell like pine?"
She rolled her eyes. "I don't know. I just know it's not me."
"It's not like smelling like pine is a *bad* thing, Carter," he pointed out, unnecessarily accusingly, Sam decided.
"I'm not *saying* it's a bad thing..." Seven years ago, would she have believed that one day she would be sitting, lost in an expanse of tunnels, arguing over who smelt like pine with her commanding officer? "I'm just saying that I don't smell like pine. Which must mean...."
"It's not me."
"Oh for cr..." She bit down on her words. "Can we change the subject?"
He snorted. "I could always start singing again."
Please, God, *no*. "Maybe silence is the better option."
"Yeah."
It was with relief that she realized he was genuinely agreeing with her. Silence descended but for the faint sound of water dripping down onto the rocks around them and the echo of that sound bouncing off the walls.
Sam checked her watch. They hadn't actually strayed very far away from where they'd gotten lost, which she guessed was a good sign. If most of the chalk marks remained – which was likely – whoever came looking for them would have a good start. The Colonel had been right in that they were long past the scheduled return deadline so there were bound to be people looking for them already. It was just a matter of time.
She leaned back against the rock and closed her eyes.
"Oh – you know what?"
She opened one eye. "Sir?"
"*I* have a pine car freshener."