Title: "With Sword and Salt" Pt 1
Author: marzipan77
Category: Pre-slash/Slash
Pairing: Jack/Daniel
Rating: Rated R just in case Jack gets frisky or Kinsey gets violent
Summary: Tag for Season 4 Episode “Small Victories.” Cum gladio et sale – “with sword and salt” – the salary of a soldier in Roman times, and the origin of the word salary.
Written for the 2011 Stargate Legends Screencap Challenge
Disclaimer: Not mine.


Part 1

Jack’s weapon was hot in his hands; spent brass littering the floor of the sub and the damn bugs just kept on coming. He gritted his teeth and fired, mind ticking off the options for escape and finding … none. He flicked a piercing gaze at Teal’c and saw the solemn comprehension on the warrior’s face. Time was up. They’d saved the world – again – but there’d be no miraculous escape this time. No alien intervention. No magical healing. He backed slowly along the narrow corridor, the clicking of mechanical feet echoing from the sub’s metal bulkheads all around him.

“Prepare to blow this thing,” he muttered bitterly into the mike. The anchor cable had snapped, the sub was heading out to sea, a time bomb of replicators waiting to go off when they got to land. And, frankly, he’d rather go out with a big ass bang than screaming in a corner while the bugs ate him up bite by bite.

Daniel’s voice in his ear was desperate, tenacious, and stubborn in a way that Jack would sorely miss. He couldn’t help a quick smile. Daniel’s appendix had ruptured at just the right time – nearly killing the guy while keeping him from this deathly hell hole. He nodded to himself. Carter and Daniel – the brain trust of the SGC. At least they would survive. He and Teal’c? The brawn. Eh, they’d always known they’d go down fighting. Teal’c would no doubt call it ‘the way of the warrior’ or some other crap; Jack just recognized the inevitable cost of a violent life.

Now if he could just convince his soft-hearted and hard-headed teammate. The man who fought for naked white guys who couldn’t speak and annoying fat men who only lived in their brains. ‘Never Say Die’ – at least not for long – ‘Jackson’. Jack tore the helmet from his head and snarled directly into the camera’s lens.

“Listen to me. We are not getting out of here. Mission accomplished. Blow it!” Do it, Daniel. He spared another moment to try to communicate everything from ‘Good-bye,’ to ‘Dammit, Daniel, follow my order, just this one time!’ to … something infinitely deeper with one glance.

“Jack!”

Yeah, Danny, I get you, but we don’t have time for this.

“Daniel, please! Before I get eaten alive by these God damn bugs!” Oh, hell, Daniel would never be able to do it – and Jack realized that he could not add this last act to his friend’s already over-burdened conscience. “Davis, give the order!”

He dropped his helmet, muscles tightened to steel cords in his neck as he turned to fire into the massive swarm of bugs. He looked up – Teal’c’s dark eyes were calm.

Daniel couldn’t move, couldn’t think – Jack wanted him to … Jack expected him to … He watched the bugs surround them, saw every movement, watched the bullets break against wave after wave of replicators. God, no wonder Thor and his people were so desperate, too busy with their own survival against these things to help Earth when it called. They were relentless, unstoppable, like a tsunami of destruction.

He felt Paul’s tension beside him, the phone pressed to his ear. The skipper of the Dallas was shouting – Daniel could hear his voice leaking around the spot where the receiver was jammed against the major’s skin – demanding the order, the okay to fire. But Daniel knew that, no matter what Jack said, no matter what threats came over the phone lines, Paul would never give the order without Daniel’s okay. He wouldn’t order Jack O’Neill’s death while Daniel, Jack’s best friend and the only member of SG-1 present, sat and watched. He glanced around, sweat pouring down his back - none of them would. The pain in his gut felt like hot pokers.

Lieutenant Baker stood rigidly behind Siler, another phone gripped tightly in one hand. His mouth was open, shouting something about orders, about the Pentagon, but Daniel couldn’t hear him. The sounds in the warehouse spilled together to create a wordless din, cymbals clanging sharp and thunderous, meaningless noise inside his head. All he could see was Jack’s stark white face, all he could hear was the click of metal feet and the explosion of round after round crackling in his headset. And Jack’s voice.

Siler finally grimaced and shoved the angry lieutenant back with one absent-minded brush of his hand, the master sergeant’s eyes still glued to the screen before him.

They were all waiting for Daniel. Waiting for him to see the inevitable, to snap off the last strand of hope, to finally become the blank-faced soldier that Jack and Sam and the general had always wanted him to be. To turn Daniel Jackson into a man who could make the big decisions, who could leave a man to die, who could order his friends’ destruction for the common good. And, suddenly, he couldn’t breathe.

“Okay – okay.”

Was that his voice? Did he … he blinked hard, jaw clenched. He had to see, had to watch, it was the right thing to do. To see Jack’s death … Teal’c’s death … to see what his words had brought to reality.

“Fire on target.” Paul’s voice was carefully controlled.

“No! Major Davis, I have new orders!”

Daniel didn’t look up at Baker’s renewed shout.

“Dallas is firing torpedoes.” Siler – stoic, dour. How much did that cost him, Daniel wondered. “Eight seconds to impact.”

Jack and Teal’c were moving closer together, still firing, still fighting. Of course. They’d never stop – and they expected Daniel to understand. He locked his gaze on the grainy images before him. Every motion, every nuance, every quirk of a lip or turn of the head – he had to remember it all. He’d have to tell the general how they died. Tell Sam. Remind them all that they’d died heroes. He stared, never letting his eyes blur with tears. Remind himself every single day of what he’d lost.

“Blackbird attempting evasive maneuvers.”

He didn’t know whether to cheer to groan. Death was coming to his friends either way.

Siler must have done something because Baker had been dragged away. In fact, it seemed to be just the three of them, now. Paul, Siler, and Daniel. He frowned, his face aching, holding back the grief – three witnesses to this … this horror.

“Torpedoes still on target. Two seconds.”

Two seconds. A lifetime. It didn’t matter – it was never enough time to say what needed to be said, what Daniel could never say before, what Jack would never want to hear.

“Direct hit.”

He watched as Jack and Teal’c were thrown to the floor of the sub by the impact, weapons flying. The replicators might have shivered, once, but then … oh God. Daniel met Jack’s fierce glare through the camera in his helmet, saw the realization behind those brown eyes that Daniel, his friend, would witness his last moments, would hear his final, dying screams. And he saw the inherent protectiveness in the man, his teammate, the leader of SG-1, as Jack reached for the camera with both hands, clearly intent on shutting it off.

Daniel couldn’t look away.

And then, his eyes widened. A familiar beam of light, that sound echoing strangely over the distance between them. Asgard beams – it was Asgard beams!

He saw the sub explode on the monitor, watched the image blacken, tiny pieces floating gently in the current. He knew it was impossible. But, so many impossible things had happened, they’d seen so much, returned from the dead, survived the explosion of a Goa’uld mothership, been back and forth in time.

“They’re okay,” he stammered, eyes suddenly dry, a dark veil creeping along the edges of his vision.

“What?” Paul, next to him, looked up. He’d missed it, head in his hands. The major’s eyes searched Daniel’s face and then the dark monitors before him.

Daniel gestured at the screen, his throat closed over bile that he held back by sheer will-power. “They’re … they’re …” He swallowed, shaking his head. “They’re okay!” He pointed upward, his smile out of control.

“Dallas confirms the Blackbird has been destroyed.”

“They’re okay,” Daniel whispered, relief and exhaustion pressing him down into his chair as Davis accepted his assurance, smacked him on the back, releasing his own tension. He looked across the table and saw Siler nod before darkness crashed him to the earth.

End Pt 1
Link to Part 2