Author's Notes: Written for the Halloween challenge at the Gengate. Thanks, Carrie, you keep me writing!

"Chevron 1 locked."

The announcement from the control room came as SG-1 walked through the blast doors into the gate room. It was business as usual in the room that housed the gate as the technicians went about their jobs, seemingly oblivious to the wonder that was the Stargate. Which was wonder itself to Captain Samantha Carter. How people could take the amazing device for granted was beyond her.

"Chevron 2 locked."

She stood at the foot of the ramp watching as the gate dialed. It was a miracle of technology and she never tired of seeing it work. She knew she might never understand completely how and why it worked, but it thrilled her to know that she'd get to spend her life trying to figure it out.

"Chevron 3 locked."

She couldn't believe that she was part of the team that walked through the gate regularly to explore far distant worlds, make discoveries and bring them home. What would her dad say, she wondered, if he knew? She could hear the disappointment in his voice every time she talked to him and told him that she was still analyzing `deep space telemetry' at Cheyenne Mountain. It had always been his dream, and hers too, that she be an astronaut, that's what she'd worked for all her life. She wished she could tell him that she'd achieved something so much greater than that dream. But the Stargate program was classified, she had to keep her secrets, even if it meant disappointing her father.

"Chevron 4 locked."

Surreptitiously she glanced over at her teammates. Daniel stood beside her watching the gate as intensely as she. He shared her love for exploration, for learning new things, and if it weren't for his quest to find Sha're she thought he would be happily content to spend his life studying the worlds they found on the other side of the gate.

They had connected from the moment they met on Abydos in a way that she had never connected with anyone before. Sure she'd met people who were her equal mentally, but she'd never met anyone who challenged her, who didn't take `you can't do that' for an answer. It frightened her and exhilarated her at the same time.

"Chevron 5 locked."

The Jaffa Teal'c was a different matter entirely. He looked human, but she had to keep reminding herself that he was an alien. She felt that they could trust him, but she didn't always trust her feelings. She was trained to look at hard facts and numbers and to deduce results from that. Facts said that once someone betrayed their beliefs of a lifetime, they could never be trusted again. No matter that they seemed sincerely committed to their cause, no matter that he had absolutely saved their lives on Chulak. Sam found herself wanting to like and admire him, but she couldn't know his reasons for abandoning his life and joining them in their fight against Apophis, so she held herself back, not ready to trust her instincts.

"Chevron 6 locked."

Colonel O'Neill on the other hand seemed to have completely accepted him, and that bothered her just a little. That he would accept this man as part of their team, a man who was alien to their world, when he didn't seem as willing to accept her. He would fix her with that inscrutable glance and she felt like a teenager again, standing inspection under her father's watchful eye. She didn't know what he wanted from her. It was clear that he didn't like scientists, he'd told her as much the first time they met. She was determined to gain his acceptance; she just wasn't sure how.

"Chevron 7 locked."

Finally the last chevron locked into place and the gate whooshed open with an explosive wave before settling into its calm, blue pool.

"Telemetry indicates breathable atmosphere on the other side of the gate and a moderate temperature. SG-1 you have a go," General Hammond announced from his place in the control room.

Sam felt her excitement, barely held in check before, soar. She supposed that someday it could become routine, to walk up the ramp and through the gate, but not today. Her pulse quickened as she followed Colonel O'Neill's sure steps up the ramp. She gripped her weapon tightly in advance of the wild rushing sensation she got as she stepped through the gate, and, despite herself, sucked in a huge breath as she stepped forward and felt herself taken by the gate.

She stumbled a little as she passed through the gate on the other side, which was a distinct improvement over her first trips through. She would have been incredibly embarrassed at being thrown head over heels out of the gate on Chulak if the entire team hadn't also arrived in the same fashion. She paused, quickly assessing the planet for danger. At the same time she took in the position of her teammates.

The planet was sunny and green just like the pictures they'd received that morning from the MALP. There hadn't been much to see from that initial contact, but they hadn't seen enough planets on the other side of the gate to know if that was unusual or not. A green grassy plain spread out around them. It was dotted with flowers of every size and hue, creating a rainbow across the glade. In the distance they could see trees forming a natural barrier to keep them from seeing what lay beyond.

There was a path that led away from the Stargate, it continued for as far as the eye could see before it disappeared into the hazy horizon.

Her teammates were doing what they did best. Daniel was examining the DHD, ascertaining the address home and writing it quickly in a little pad he kept in his pocket. At the same time he snuck wide-eyed glances around him. Privately, she didn't think that there was anything on this planet to interest even him, who could be fascinated by the smallest details. She was a little disappointed at the lack of anything exotic or alien about the place. It could be a park in Colorado Springs, or anyplace USA. Somehow she'd expected... something different. The colonel and Teal'c were scouting the perimeter of the clearing they stood in, looking for signs of imminent, or not so imminent, danger.

To her eye, it looked like nothing and no one had been to this place in quite awhile. While the path before them was cleared of rock and was smooth with some kind of paved surface, it was cracked and worn from time. Grass was growing between the cracks, even the occasional flower had made its home in the pitted path, dotting it with reds and blues and yellows. Nature had also encroached on the gate itself, with grass growing all the way up to the steps of the gate and vines had begun to twine around the bottom of the DHD.

Even though the place looked long abandoned, there was a feeling nudging at the back of her brain. Sam frowned and pulled out an instrument from one of her pockets. She turned it on and began to scan the countryside.

Seeing her movement, the colonel called out quietly, "Captain?"

She didn't answer as she continued to scan, not liking the results she was getting at all. She turned the little instrument off, then back on again; still there was nothing, and she twisted another dial. Finally in frustration, she smacked it on the side and it emitted a wounded squeal as if astonished that she could treat it in such a fashion. It really didn't do any good except that it made her feel a little better.

"Nice scientific technique there, Captain," was the colonel's sardonic comment. "What's up?"

"It's not working," she told him with an aggrieved huff. She moved down to his side so he could see the recalcitrant instrument for himself. He looked at it and shrugged.

"I'm not certain what it's supposed to be doing anyway, Carter," he told her. "You're the science geek remember?"

"Sam?" Daniel flanked her on the other side, his expression mirroring the concern he felt at her frustration.

"I tested this right before we left," she shook the recalcitrant instrument again. "It's supposed to measure electromagnetic waves and give us some idea of the technological level of a planet's inhabitants, but here there's nothing."

Daniel opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. His expressive face betrayed that what she'd said meant nothing to him. The colonel's eyes outright glazed over.

"Maybe there's nothing here to measure?" Daniel suggested after a pause.

She shrugged, unwilling to admit that she didn't know why the thing wasn't working. The colonel already had a bad enough opinion of her, she didn't want to actively contribute to that assessment.

"Well, the MALP was working," the colonel pointed out, "it sent us back our original telemetry. See if it's still working, and check out some of the rest of our equipment."

"Yes, sir," she answered doing her best to hide her surprise, but he saw it anyway.

"Surprised that this military mind could think of something besides blowing things up?" He raised a brow, challenging her to admit it.

"No, sir," she answered immediately and went about the job quickly before he could say anything else. She knelt down beside the MALP and began methodically checking it and some of the other equipment they had brought with them.

But she had been surprised that he had thought of it before her. Then she was a little surprised at herself for jumping to such quick conclusions about him. She'd been able to outthink most of the people around her for so long that she wasn't used to people who were as smart or smarter than her. She didn't like to admit it, but the colonel and Daniel, even Teal'c might just be that.

Not necessarily in her own area of expertise, but here in the field she was definitely at the disadvantage. She would never have thought of sending a Kleenex box to find out if Daniel Jackson was still alive on Abydos, but now that she thought about it, it was a brilliant tactic to find out if he was still alive and well. For his part, no one but Daniel would know what the box meant, so if there were enemies on the other side of the gate, the message would never have been answered, and General Hammond would have had a valuable clue as to who held the gate on Abydos.

She bent over the instruments while the rest of her team waited impatiently. She clicked on monitors and toggled dials, all with the same result. She shaded her eyes as she looked up at the colonel.

"Nothing's working, sir."

On impulse, she glanced down at her watch only to find that it, too, had stopped working. The second hand was frozen just as it was sweeping past the hour hand. It had stopped working as they stepped through the gate at 1200.

A chill swept through her. The sunny planet seemed to take on a sinister cast. Nothing had changed, it was as though she were seeing it through a different lens now. The sun was too bright and the colors were almost lurid, hurting her eyes. Sam felt her stomach lurch and she had to concentrate to keep her stomach contents where they belonged and not at the ground at her feet.

"Captain?" The colonel's calm voice brought her back to herself and the landscape around her slid back to normal.

"Colonel?" She blinked up at him, afraid he'd said something and she missed it.

"Do we stay or do we scrub the mission?"

For a moment she gaped up at him, speechless. He was asking her? She began the task of repacking the useless equipment to give herself a moment to think. Was this some sort of test to see how she would react in adverse conditions?

If she said, "hell, yes, let's go back through the gate now, this place is giving me a major case of the wiggins," was the colonel going to ask for some sort of scientific evidence to back up her `feelings?' Wasn't that why she was on the team? To give a voice of reason and provide scientific reasoning for him? How could she tell him that it was her feeling that they should leave now at top speed? How did she back that up?

"I don't have anything definite, Colonel," she said with a shrug. "I think the fact that none of our equipment is working should tell us something. I recommend that we pack up and go home. There will be plenty of planets for us to explore."

Lame, lame, lame. It sounded lame even to her ears. They were in the business of exploration. Running home every time they ran into a roadblock wasn't going to help them find technology in their war against the Goa'uld, and it wasn't going to help them find allies. All she had was a feeling that they should leave at the fastest possible speed.

"But we're here now," Daniel protested. "Surely it wouldn't hurt anything if we just looked around a little bit?" He appealed, bouncing eagerly. Obviously he felt nothing amiss about the planet.

"It's true," the colonel said slowly, "we are here now." He was watching her as he spoke.

Was she supposed to challenge him? There was no way she was going to do that without a whole lot more evidence than her feelings.

"There doesn't appear to be anything waiting to shoot at us, which is a welcome change from our recent history. It's a nice day. Why don't we take a little look around? We can go home just as well in a couple of hours as we can now. Everyone game?"

The colonel surveyed the group. Of course Daniel said yes. He fairly vibrated at the prospect of exploring a new planet. Teal'c also nodded a yes.

"It would seem an error to waste this opportunity to explore," he observed. Sam was a little disappointed. She had somehow thought if anyone could feel the alienness of the planet they stood on, it would be him.

Now they were all looking at her. The colonel's brow rose in question, she glanced from one to the other of them. The colonel's face unreadable, Daniel's eager, Teal'cs... well he just seemed willing to accept whatever she said. She gulped. It was her last chance. If she was going to say no, now was the time. She took one last look at the gate and then back at the vista that awaited them, green and beautiful, there was nothing there to threaten them. So, then why was her heart beating wildly and it was becoming more difficult to breathe?

"Yes," she said reluctantly, "let's look around. But only for a few hours," she amended when Daniel gave a triumphant chuff. "If we don't find anything we'll turn around and go home."

The colonel grinned at her in that inscrutable way she hated, she could never tell what he was thinking. He could be finding fault with every decision she made and she wouldn't know until she was reassigned back at D.C. far away from the SGC and the Stargate program. She didn't know what she'd do if that happened. After walking on alien worlds, experiencing life as part of SG-1 she didn't think she could go back to a normal life again.

"Well, kids," the colonel said, "shall we take a walk and see what's down the yellow brick road?"

Carter shoved her useless instrument back into a vest pocket, secured her weapon and followed the rest of her team as they headed down the well-worn path leading away from the Stargate.

"I do not believe that this path is yellow or brick, O'Neill," Teal'c observed in a puzzled voice as they walked.

Sam trudged behind them as Daniel and the colonel tried to explain to an alien from another planet and culture about Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. It would have been funny if only she could shake the feeling of danger that was settling in around her. She let their talk wash over them as she tried to figure out the puzzle that the planet afforded.

"Where is this place `over the rainbow?' and how did Dorothy and her little dog get there?" she heard Teal'c inquire.

She couldn't just dismiss that their equipment had stopped working. The MALP had obviously been working when it came through the gate. It transmitted data back to them and pictures of the planet.

"The wicked witch of the west? Was she a system lord?"

Sam smiled. The colonel and Daniel had their work cut out for them.

So there had to be some sort of energy field that made their equipment stop working after they arrived. Something that had gone undetected with their initial readings. Something that knew they had arrived and shut down their electronics. Something like that spoke of intelligence...

Out of the corner of her eye, Sam thought she saw something. She stopped and swung her weapon in that direction, but there was nothing there, just the green grass and sunny sky that was PY9-833. She turned back to find that her companions had stopped and were now looking at her.

"Carter? Is there a problem?" the colonel asked.

"I thought I saw something. But there's nothing there now."

"Something? Can you be more specific? Friendly? Hostile? Flying monkey?"

He was making fun of her, she could see the laughter in his eyes. No, she corrected herself, he was using humor to put her at ease. It was like a revelation to her and the world around her shifted again at this new insight into her CO.

"I can't be sure, sir," she answered slowly. She took a chance, "It felt hostile."

No one scoffed at her and told her that feelings were unscientific. No one demanded that she present better proof of her findings.

The colonel did ask, "Felt hostile?" But there was no ridicule in his voice, there was just a need for more information.

"I don't know how to explain it, sir," she said, "I've just been getting weird vibes from this place since we got here."

"And you only now told us about it?" Now there was a steely edge to his voice.

Carter rushed to explain herself, "Sir, I just didn't have any solid evidence to back it up. I couldn't tell you I had a feeling."

"Carter, just for the record, in the future, I want to know about feelings, feminine instinct and gut reactions. I trust those things a lot more than I do that equipment you're so fond of."

"Yes, sir."

"Alright, Teal'c? Daniel? You feel anything off about this place?"

Both of their gazes shifted inward as they both considered his question. After due consideration, they both shook their heads in the negative.

"Really, Jack," Daniel said, "it just seems like a nice place. A little deserted and worn around the edges, but nothing to be afraid of. I've been on digs that were scarier than this."

"I would concur, DanielJackson, I get no `weird vibes' but if Captain Carter says there is something wrong here, than I think we should investigate."

It warmed her that he said it, that he gave some weight to her words.

And Daniel nodded thoughtfully, "I think you're right, Teal'c. If Sam is feeling something we're not, that could be indicative of something, too, couldn't it?"

"Yes," she said, excited that he understood, "something or someone here is targeting us. They have advanced enough technology that they could just turn off our equipment..."

"Whoa, Carter," the colonel held up a hand and she worked hard to keep the rest of the words from tumbling out of her mouth. "We get it. There might be bad guys here. Why don't you and Daniel hang out here, get some soil samples or something and Teal'c and I'll do some recon?"

Teal'c nodded and the two men moved off into the grass, almost moving as one. Soon they were heading into the thicket of trees and were lost to sight.

"So, uhm... Sam," Daniel said, obviously at a loss as to what he was supposed to do in the situation. "Soil samples?"

She smiled at him, grateful that he didn't quiz her more, that he was just willing to support her.

"I didn't bring my case, but we can find out a lot about a planet by doing some testing of the soil."

She pulled out some bottles that she'd tucked into a pocket, just in case, and handed them to him. Kneeling, she began to pull up some plant samples to tuck into a bag and put it carefully into her pocket, zipping it before she turned back to Daniel to get the bottles. It took her a moment to realize that he was gone.

"Daniel?" she called uncertainly. There was nowhere he could have gone, he'd just been there, but now he wasn't. She stood and swung around in a circle to view the area, still no Daniel. She keyed her radio, wondering if he'd found her company not exciting enough and somehow followed the colonel and Teal'c.

"Colonel O'Neill? Come in please."

She waited a few moments but there was no answering call. They couldn't have gone far enough to be out of radio range, unless.... Then it hit her. If none of their equipment worked, why did they assume that the radios were going to work?

"God, I'm so stupid," she muttered to herself.

And she might have been so stupid, but she didn't think the colonel or Teal'c - the leader of an entire army of jaffa warriors, would be so stupid. She was beginning to suspect that something was affecting them as well as their equipment. She surveyed the landscape again with a critical eye. Was any of it real? How was she to know?

Then it happened again, that blur just in her peripheral vision. She swung around, half expecting Daniel to miraculously appear. But again there was nothing there. She was beginning to become seriously freaked and she needed to find her team.

"Colonel O'Neill," she called. "Daniel?"

She waited and there was no response, just the eerie quiet of the planet. It was then that she realized the planet had no `normal' sounds, there was no sound of the wind through the grass, or birdcalls, no sounds of nature at all.

She breathed slowly, working to calm her wildly beating heart. There had to be a logical explanation. The facts were that her team had to be near by. She had to depend on that, she refused to think otherwise. She just had to find them, that was all.

She could track them. She wasn't an expert in tracking, but it shouldn't be difficult. She studied the ground where she had been kneeling, identifying the indentions in the dirt that were her knees. Next to her were footprints that could only be Daniel's. It made her feel better to find solid evidence of her teammate. She could see where he had moved around her and into the grass at the side of the path.

Daniel had left her alone, but why? They were in an unknown place with an unknown presence. There was no way any of them should be alone. And Daniel just didn't seem to be the sort of person that would just leave her there alone. If he was, the colonel would have his hide and he'd be off the team.

She stood, dusting off her knees absently. She moved her weapon around where she had better access to it. She took a step to follow Daniel's prints when she wasn't alone anymore. Once more there was that blur of movement in the corner of her eye. She whirled with her gun at the ready to confront whatever was there...

She was prepared for anything, except for what she found. Standing in the grass just off the path was a little girl. She smiled at Sam, her little face beaming with pleasure. Sam blinked at the apparition, but it didn't waver.

In fact it waved and called out to her, "I'm so happy to see you here."

Her voice was sweet and high, like every little girl Sam had ever known. Wearing a bright yellow blouse with matching shorts, her red hair was tied into pigtails with a yellow ribbon.

When Sam didn't speak, she skipped over, stopping just short of the path, standing in the flowers that lined the path on either side, like a border. "Don't you want to play with me?" she asked with a pout. "I made the nasty boys go away so we could play. Come on, pick flowers with me."

"You made the boys go away?" Sam asked slowly. She took a step or two toward the little girl, but she kept her weapon handy, too. "Why would you do that?"

The little girl smiled at Sam again, and she could see that the sprite was missing a tooth. "Boys aren't nice, they never want to play. Come on, we can have such a good time together." She held out a small hand to Sam, her eyes eager with anticipation.

At a loss of what else to say, Sam held her hand out, saying simply, "I'm Sam."

The little girl grasped her hand, tugging it insistently. The child was much stronger than she looked, her tug jerked Sam off balance and she stumbled forward. One foot left the path, plunging into the grass.

It was worse than stepping through the gate, Sam felt like she was pushing through something, some sort of invisible barrier that made her skin tingle and itch.

The world shifted around her and Sam saw the planet as it really was - a darkly malevolent place, the sky was grey and threatening, the sun a sickly yellow in the sky. The plain was no longer covered in grass and flowers, but in razor-sharp rocks. There were openings where gaseous odors were belching into the air, the smell made her stomach twist and rebel.

She saw the rest of her team then. The colonel and Teal'c wandered in the distance among the rocks, following a will-o-the-wisp of their own, oblivious to all around them. Daniel squatted a few feet from her, intent on something in front of him.

Sam stood with one foot on the path and one foot off. Clasping her hand, the little girl was also gone. In her place was a creature from Sam's worst nightmares - twisted and gnarled, the creature had pointed teeth and clawed fingers. The fingers that curled around her hand bit deeply into flesh. Sam winced as her blood dripped to the ground beneath. The ground seemed to hiss as it drank it down.

"Come play with me, Sam," the thing hissed at her.

What did the creature want with them? Sam's mind was racing trying to find answers that wouldn't get them all killed. It had technology that could control their instruments and to a certain extant their minds. How far did its control extend?

Affecting a smile of her own, Sam forced herself to not pull her hand away, hoping that this... thing wouldn't know that she could see beneath its clever disguise.

"Why don't you bring my friends back?" She tried to sound bright, even through the pain of the claws biting into her flesh. "We could play together," she said as persuasively as she could manage. "You'd like them."

The thing cocked its head as it considered her words. Sam hurried on, desperately trying to decide how best to convince it that it needed her friends.

"They know the best games. You'd like the games my friends can play."

Oh, yeah, this thing would like the games her friends would play. She just needed to make sure they were safe before she acted. Sam waited with held breath until at last the creature smiled at her. It was a ghastly smile that showed its row upon row of sharp, pointy teeth. A line from a fairy tale came to her, "the better to eat you with, my dear." This thing could give the big bad wolf a run for his money, she decided.

"I don't know," the thing's pout was ghastly and accentuated its teeth even more. "I thought we could play for awhile."

Then the creature's gaze seemed to sharpen. It looked from her to Daniel and back again. Did it know she could see through its deception? Her answer came when the creature curled its gnarled finger at Daniel.

"Maybe we will play with them first."

It curled its fingers into a fist. Without warning, Daniel crumbled to the ground. He appeared to be choking. He clawed at unseen fingers around his throat.

As Sam watched, the creature looked at her with a malevolent leer, making sure she was watching.

It tightened its fist even more. Daniel writhed, trying to pry away unseen fingers. Somehow the claws were digging into Daniel's skin even though they weren't physically touching him. The blood flowed down Daniel's neck as he turned blue, gasping for breath.

"After we're done with this one, then we'll play with them." Sam followed its gaze to the colonel and Teal'c.

Terrible fury swept through her. "I won't let you hurt my friends," she told the creature with deadly calm. She jerked her hand free of its hold as she swung her weapon around, firing a short burst into the creature. She was actually surprised when blood appeared where the bullets hit it.

The creature seemed to be surprised, too.

It had just enough time to look down, placing a clawed finger in the hole where blood was seeping out of its body before it fell over into a heap. There was a ripple in the air that spread out from where it lay sweeping over the rocky plain.

The false image of a beautiful planet was gone and all that remained was the ruined and wasted countryside. Daniel's body relaxed from its terrible struggle and after a moment he uncurled. Sam hurried to him, helping him to sit.

He tried to say her name, she clearly saw the "Sam?" but no sound came out.

Sam tried the radio again. She needed her team back together and they needed to get back to Earth. She was relieved when first the colonel and then Teal'c responded, assuring her they were well and on their way back to their position.

Despite his own wounds, Daniel spied her bloody wrist. "Are you alright?" he asked, this time making himself heard although his voice was raspy and dry.

"I'm fine," she assured him as she fumbled through her pockets seeking first aid supplies. They needed to get him home, get them both home and checked out. There was no telling what alien toxins where in the creature's venomous grip.

The colonel and Teal'c arrived quickly. The colonel took over the first aid, Teal'c stood keeping guard. Sam saw the flash of guilt in the colonel's eyes when he saw the bruises already forming on Daniel's neck, the slashes on his neck and the puncture wounds on Sam's wrist.

"Sir," she told him urgently, "this isn't your fault."

"I'm in command here," his touch was gentler than she had expected. "I'd like to know whose fault it was."

"Maybe mine," she answered, holding the gauze as he bandaged Daniel's neck. "I should have told you how I felt about the place from the beginning, you might have changed your mind about us going any farther."

"Carter," he turned to her. Instead of anger, there was a gentleness in his eyes, "we're a team. And we've got to be able to trust one another with everything."

Their companions were silent as he continued. It was clear that they all had doubts and questions about whether they belonged on SG-1.

"I admit we're a pretty strange assortment, but we all bring strengths to the mix, something different. And I happen to think we're going to become a pretty damned good team. We just have to take the time to get to know one another... And trust one another." He paused as he smoothed the gauze on Daniel's neck, taping it into place. He sat back on his heels to survey his handiwork. He must have decided that it would do, as he turned back to her. "I know I gave you grief about being a scientist. And I still don't trust scientists, they put too much reliance in readings and tests. But I trust you and I trust your feelings, Don't ever forget that."

She groped for words, at last simply saying, "I won't, sir. Thank you, sir."

He smiled at her then, "No, thank you, Carter, I think you saved us this time."

"Indeed she did," Teal'c agreed with his assessment. He nudged the dead alien with the toe of his boot. "I have never seen a being of this sort before. It may have been hundreds of years since this planet was visited by the system lords."

The thing didn't look so scary now that it was dead. She wondered if there were more of them around.

"This... creature, I suspect that its been clouding our minds since we walked through the gate. It made us see exactly what it wanted us to see. Colonel, I think we need to get out of here."

"I agree with that assessment, Captain. Daniel, can you walk?"

Daniel turned a little greyer, but he held out a hand to Sam, "What's my alternative? Being carried?"

"I would be honored to carry you, DanielJackson, if you did not think you could make the return trek to the Stargate."

Sam could see that Teal'c wasn't teasing Daniel, his offer was in earnest.

Daniel stood with Sam's help and only swayed against her a little. "Uhm... No, thanks, Teal'c, but I'll keep that offer in mind."

The jaffa gave a little nod of his head.

Sam kept a firm hold of Daniel as they trudged back to the gate. She could feel his firm resolve to make it through the gate under his own power. For his part Teal'c would stop and turn from time to time whenever he sensed that Daniel was faltering. It worked every time and Daniel was still upright and walking mostly under his own power when the Stargate finally came in sight.

Sam kept watch around them and she could see the colonel and Teal'c doing the same. What if there more of the creatures that had attacked them? Would they allow SG-1 to leave? Her skin crawled at the thought and she urged Daniel to walk a little faster.

She didn't realize this time that she was holding her breath until she walked through the gate and emerged into the gateroom back at the SGC. It was then that the adrenaline that had kept her going left her body and she felt herself and Daniel falling.

Fortunately the colonel and Teal'c were there to catch them and support them the rest of the way down the ramp. And so SG-1 returned from their first official off world mission a little broken and bloody, but on their feet.

Sam and Daniel were whisked away in a flurry to the infirmary where every test that Dr. Warner could think of was performed and then made up some of his own for good measure. It was some time before the two were left alone. They were supposed to be sleeping.

But Sam found that, despite the doctor's sedatives, sleep was elusive.

The creature on the planet troubled her. It seemed to have targeted her specifically, perhaps thinking her a defenseless female. She was reminded of the fairy tales she'd heard as a child that told of something dark and dangerous lurking in the shadows. It waited there for unsuspecting travelers to step off the path. It hadn't counted on a female who could take care of herself. A woman who was prepared to fight to defend herself and her team if she had to.

"Sam?" Daniel's raspy voice caught her attention.

"Daniel? Aren't you supposed to be asleep?"

"Aren't you?" was his tart rejoinder.

She couldn't help it, maybe it was the drugs, but a decidedly unmilitary giggle escaped her lips. "Guess you got me there."

"You know it wasn't your fault either, you know."

There was silence as she took in his words. In trying to absolve the colonel of his guilt, she had done nothing for her own. "If I'd just spoke up sooner, said something...," she began.

"You said yourself that that... thing was affecting our minds, I think it was undermining our confidence in ourselves..."

"You didn't seem to be having any problems."

"But I wasn't called on to do anything. In fact, as I recall, the only useful thing I did was get myself attacked and had to be rescued by you," he pointed out in an amused tone.

He was amused? She levered herself on one arm and looked across the bed to find that he'd turned so that he was facing her. He was smiling at her.

"Thanks for that, by the way."

She shrugged, "It was the least I could do."

"No," he insisted. "You overcame whatever hold that thing had on us and you killed it and got us out of there."

"You would have done it if you could."

"And that's the point, Sam. We're a team now, we take care of each other. Next time it might be my turn to save the day, or the colonel's or Teal'c's. But we can't play games of whose fault it is. That'll tear us apart more surely than Apophis and his armies," his voice shook a little over the hated name.

"You're pretty smart for an archaeologist, you know that?"

"Just some things I've learned in my life," he said with a half-shrug.

From his tone she could tell that there was more to that story, but his voice was almost gone and his eyes were fluttering shut. Before she could speak again, he was asleep.

She fell back against her pillows, closing her eyes. She let the drugs do their job and felt herself drift into sleep. She had time to hear his story later, because they were teammates... and friends. They had all the time in the world.