Plant Food
by
Jackjunkie
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Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its
characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom,
MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is
for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright
infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story
are the property of the authors. This story may not be posted anywhere
without the consent of the authors.
Plant Food
Aliens are always poking me full of holes. The only mitigating factor is that before now they'd at least held it down to one at a time – an orb spike in the shoulder, an arrow in the arm. So having my entire body turned into a pincushion all at once is a new experience. But hey, that's what we're exploring the universe for, right?
Still, plant food is not exactly the fate I envisioned to cap off my Gate-hopping, planet-saving, snake-kicking career. Nothing like being used as fertilizer to give a whole new meaning to the words 'full of shit'.
There I was minding my own business when the damn thing snuck up behind me and ambushed me. One minute I was walking through a peaceful field, the next I was flat on my back on the ground encased in a cage of spikes, needle-sharp edges pinning me into a barbed prison.
Somehow my face remained untouched. The stalks balancing their points against my shoulders were apparently hindered from bending in farther towards my head, surrounding me there but leaving me a little breathing space. If one of those things had pierced an eye – don't go there, O'Neill.
My slight shudder prompted the deadly thorns to move closer, pricking ominously against my skin.
Freezing, I made a tactical assessment of the situation and proceeded with the most strategic course of action under the circumstances – I yelled bloody murder at the top of my lungs for my team.
They were close by and came running on the double.
"Jack!"
"Sir!"
"O'Neill."
Check, check, check. SG-1 all present and accounted for, including one very uncomfortable porcupine of a colonel.
"Are you all right?" Daniel hovered at my shoulder, peering anxiously through the quills.
"Dammit, do I look all right?"
"Uhh, point taken." He shrugged deprecatingly over his attempt to lighten my predicament.
I'm second to none in my appreciation of a well-timed smartass remark, but it seemed like the time for a little less talk and a lot more action.
"Sir, it appears to be some species of indigenous carnivorous flora. It must have an extensive root system to support such a large growth." When she took hold of a leaf to examine it more closely, the brambles tightened their grip infinitesimally.
"Aagh! Carter, if you're trying to tell me I'm on the dinner menu for a honkin' big Venus flytrap, I figured that out for myself. Just get me out of here."
"Right, sir." She pulled out her knife. "We'll cut you loose in a jiff."
At the first hack of her blade, the plant convulsed. I gotta say this for Carter's reflexes, the movement froze her instantly in place. Either that, or it was my bloodcurdling shout.
Ya know, I never was a fan of acupuncture, and now I know for sure it's something I never want to try. Been there, done that, shredded the tee-shirt.
Thorns pierced my skin. Tiny needle pricks all over my body, any one of which would've been bearable by itself, combined into a stinging torture. I braced against the sensation of being impaled on all sides. My muscles trembling, I gulped breath in heaving gasps.
Daniel's soothing tone penetrated my pained fog. "Easy, Jack, it's stopped."
Fighting to slow my ragged breathing, I took stock. Daniel was right. The plant had closed its teeth on me just enough to barely penetrate and then stopped, savoring the taste of its colonel skin appetizer like some weird veggie's revenge for all those potato skins I'd devoured in snacks of the past. Running my tongue gingerly over dry lips, I gathered enough breath to speak.
"Belay that… action, Major."
"Yes, sir." Sheathing her knife, Carter looked carefully over the single spike she'd cut from my leg. "The plant must be touch sensitive. If we continue, it could shut further with every stroke. We wouldn't be able to cut enough to get you out of there before…"
"I get the picture."
Teal'c paced alongside the vegetation, his lip curling in distaste as he surveyed it. "My staff weapon may prove to be of use here, Major Carter. If I shoot the roots, it may kill the creature, or at least shock it into loosening its hold, enabling us to then free O'Neill."
"Whoa, is that such a good idea? What if it has the same effect?" Daniel sounded as nervous at the suggestion as I felt.
But lying here imitating a dartboard was losing its appeal. "Carter? What's your scientific opinion?"
She looked worried as she thought it over, but finally nodded. "It could work. There's no way to be sure except by trial and error."
"Right." I took a calming breath, trying to obliterate the pain pattern dotting my body. "Go for it, Teal'c."
"Stand back," he instructed Daniel and Carter. Taking careful aim, he blasted a stream of energy into the ground at the plant's base.
"Aagh!" I jerked, arching upward as the spines drove deeper into my skin. Streaks of fiery pain shot from each thorn, winding and twisting their way through my body, colliding and intensifying before breaking off to spread the torment to fresh ground. No matter how I writhed, there was no escape from the trap sealing me in place.
"Jack! Jack, it's okay, he stopped, they quit moving, you're okay, hang in there, easy, easy…"
Gradually Daniel's words slipped through the sensory block resulting from my total focus on fighting the pain. As I lay panting for breath, regrouping from the shock of the pain's assault, distancing myself to a place where I could maintain, I slowly became aware of gentle fingers stroking my tightly curled fist. Somehow Daniel had reached a hand through the thorny barrier.
The contact was grounding, comforting, and my hand relaxed under the rare gesture from a man so uncomfortable with touch. Daniel wouldn't let his habitual hesitancy to reach out stop him from thinking of his friend's needs first. My main need, though, was to keep my team safe, and he shouldn't have taken such a risk. "Careful." I turned my hand cautiously and gave his fingers a grateful squeeze.
I saw him wince, and for the first time I noticed the stripe of red smeared along his forefinger.
"Dammit, Daniel."
"Sorry, I reacted kind of fast when I spotted a breach that looked clear and didn't take into account the way the plant was moving. It pricked me, but it's nothing. I'll make sure not to touch it again."
"Do that. Don't want you caught, too." I rubbed my thumb lightly across his scratch, then with a slight shooing motion urged him to back off.
"I'm fine," he reassured me but withdrew his hand through the small gap in the brambles without disturbing the plant further.
With a deep breath, I drew enough control to speak. "Report, Major."
"The staff weapon had the same effect as the knife, Colonel. I'm afraid we don't dare attempt any further maneuvers against the plant as long as it's holding you imprisoned."
"Why?" I ground out.
"Why? Why what, Jack? Why don't we dare… oh, why is it holding you? I think we established it wants to eat you." Daniel made a face as he looked anxiously up at Carter from his kneeling position by my side.
"Why… wait?" If the thing wanted filet of colonel for dinner, why didn't it chomp down and be done with it? Not that I was in any hurry, mind you.
"I don't know, sir. We're not familiar with its habits." Carter frowned, unhappy as usual when confronting a question she didn't know the answer to. "It may digest its food gradually. It could conceivably be drinking your blood slowly through the spines like straws. Perhaps it ate recently and isn't hungry, but always captures any prey that happens by and holds onto er, it until the next feeding time. It could be any number of reasons."
"So it's saving me for dessert. Sweet."
"That is unacceptable, O'Neill. We will discover a way to vanquish this… bush."
"Yeah, Teal'c, but how?" Standing, Daniel waved a hand at the surroundings. "We don't know enough about this planet and the biology of the life here to guess how it'll react to anything."
"Then we must not guess, Daniel Jackson. We must study this and devise a solution."
"Teal'c's right." Carter turned over the hacked off thorn she held. "I need to take this back to the SGC and analyze it. If we can learn its properties, maybe we can figure out a way to free the colonel without triggering its closing response."
"We can't leave Jack here like this." Daniel got that mulish set to his mouth that means nothing short of an earthquake will move him from his chosen stance, and even the earthquake had better have a damn good argument.
"I can go back to base myself."
"Not alone." My objection cut across Carter's proposal. "Too dangerous… bloodsucking weed might have hungry relatives. Take Teal'c."
"We will make haste, O'Neill."
"Good. Don't know when dinnertime is around here."
"We'll double time it, sir. Daniel."
"I'll manage, Sam. Go on, before it's too late to help Jack."
I watched Carter and Teal'c jog away toward the Stargate. "It's just you and me, Dannyboy." I grimaced at my thorny prison. "And Audrey P2X-816 here."
"Audrey?" Daniel looked blankly at the plant, which really didn't bear much resemblance to the one in the movie except when it came to appetite.
"Didn't you ever see 'Little Shop of Horrors'?"
"Must o' missed that one."
"We should rent it sometime. Not before your next dentist appointment, though."
"Uh huh. Jack, you probably shouldn't talk. Save your strength." Daniel settled down on the ground next to me, anxious concern puckering his forehead.
"You talk then."
"Let me get this straight." Blue eyes flickered in surprise as a hand moved to adjust his glasses, as though he could make sure he'd heard correctly by clearing his vision. "You're asking me to talk?"
"What?" Okay, so maybe I usually did tend to make kind of the opposite suggestion, but then I didn't usually need to be distracted from being popped full of holes slowly leaking blood – my blood. This was a hell of a way to try the new body-piercing fad. My energy was split between holding the pain at bay and constantly fighting the impulse to move, which every muscle was screaming at me was the thing to do yeahsureyoubetcha, only that was one argument I was as determined as a stubborn archaeologist not to lose. I needed a focus, even if it involved archaeo-speak in minute detail on the exact type of clay found in a fragment of a pot that some poor slob who'd kicked the bucket before they invented buckets used to piss in. "Tell me about those petro-whatsis that got you so excited in the cave we found."
"Petroglyphs. Actually they were fascinating, both in their composition and their meaning..." And he was off.
The words were a wash of sound, soothing by its presence. I wasn't alone. In my world which had narrowed down to pulsing points of pain and the effort of will over my rebellious body, Daniel stood by me as always, forging his way past my defensive cocoon as he had reached through the barricade of thorns. His familiar companionship was a renewing source of strength and support. He drew me out of myself, and I followed the paths where his voice led, concentrating on what he was saying so for a time I might forget what I was enduring.
I think he lost himself in what he was saying as well, as his passion for the subject displaced some of his worry. He described the drawings he'd studied, turning the crude images into a picture of a vibrant society. You'd think he knew the people personally, the way he spoke of their work and beliefs, their cares and joys, the assorted pieces of their everyday life like the sports they played – they had the poor taste to go in for something that looked more like bowling than hockey – and the pottery they cooked in – see, I knew pots were going to figure into it somewhere, they always do – and the clothes they wore.
"The feathers ornamenting the headdresses look very large and soft, similar to ostrich plumes. I didn't see any representations of the birds themselves so I don't know if they looked like the Earth species. There's no indication as to whether they were wild or domesticated. The people might have simply gathered stray feathers, or they could've raised or hunted the birds for a variety of uses including food. Ostrich meat is very good."
"You've eaten ostrich?" I didn't know why I should be surprised. I remembered Daniel smacking his lips over that Abydonian lizard Kasuf served us. "I suppose you're going to tell me it tastes like chicken."
Daniel smiled at the old joke. "No, it's red meat; tastes more like beef actually."
I licked dry lips. "If only we had a line on where the local herd hangs out, maybe we could get Audrey to make a menu substitution."
"I don't know about that." Daniel shrugged and gave a lopsided grin. "I'd say a Jack kebab in the, er, bush is worth more than some ostrich kebabs on the wing."
"Oh God, don't make me laugh." He was right. Damn plant had me skewered just like a shish kebab on a grill. Worn down by the sheer exhaustion of holding still, I groaned as I felt a couple of tears of held-back laughter mixed with weary pain slide down my face. Carter had better get back soon with an answer if I was going to stick around to see the SGC cavalry pull another rescue out of their helmets.
"What's this?" Daniel's voice held a note of hope mingled with his customary curiosity.
"What?" Hey, nobody can beat me for witty repartee.
"One of the thorns just fell off the branch it was growing from! This one, at ground level near your rifle."
Oh. My P-90 had fallen by my side when I went down. "Busted on the metal." It was a man-eating plant, not a hardware-eating one. If only I'd been wearing a suit of armor, I'd be all set. Maybe those Lancelot and Galahad guys had the right idea after all.
"No, it was back between the rifle and your head, pointing towards the top of your shoulder. It looks like it dried up or dissolved at the part where it fell off, or…" Daniel hesitated as he gazed intently at the fallen thorn. I could practically see his thoughts racing through the possibilities.
I like 'or's'. It's been my experience that 'or's' mean options, and options mean the fat lady hasn't sung yet – my favorite opera cliche. "Or?"
"Or something ate through it. Like acid. But what–? The only liquid here is, uh, your blood… oh, and–"
"And tears," I finished. The tears that just dripped from my face and soaked the spine protruding in towards me.
"The blood's been in contact with thorns all over the plant without any noticeable effect since it attacked you, so it's got to be the tears." The excitement of discovery rang in Daniel's voice as the words tumbled out, running together in their haste to be said.
I hated to rain on his parade, especially since it was all set to march me out of my predicament. "But that doesn't make any sense. Tears aren't acid, they're just water, plain salt water."
"Yes, and water can't be harmful to it, or the rain shower earlier would've killed it, so it must be the salt." Scrambling to his knees, Daniel reached for his pack.
"Salt isn't deadly to plants."
"Not on Earth, but we don't know how it'd interact with alien biochemistry." Frenziedly he rummaged through his supplies, tossing things out willy-nilly before finally upending the pack and dumping the contents onto the ground.
"I'm no scientist, but isn't there salt in blood?" I hang around with enough of 'em to have picked up a thing or three, despite my best efforts to tune out the bits that make my head hurt.
"There must be another component in the blood counteracting it, something that isn't present in salt water, or–" Pulling some MRE's from the heap, he began frantically ripping them open.
Like I said, I'm a big fan of 'or's'. This one was music to my ears, better than the U.S. Air Force Band's rendition of 'Wild Blue Yonder'.
"Pure salt!" Waving the salt packets triumphantly, he tore them open and poured them over Audrey.
Everywhere the salt touched, the thorns withered and snapped. The one drawback was it touched a lot of me, too. Blessed relief at each puncture site was immediately followed by intense stinging.
"Ah. Aagh… Aaaghhh!"
Daniel snatched his hand back like he'd been the one stung. "What? What's wrong? Oh no, salt in the wounds – must hurt like hell. God, Jack, I'm sorry."
"Stop apologizing… and keep sprinkling." I could endure a little more pain to say good riddance to this spiky cage. Just don't expect me to endure it quietly.
Daniel resumed his salting, and before long Audrey was transformed from a lethal man-eater into a toothless old husk. Pushing back the de-fanged brambles, Daniel helped me up. Arms supporting me as he murmured encouragement, he guided me out of my prickly bed of briar roses. As soon as he lowered me to a clear patch of ground, he neatly extracted the few remaining spines still sticking out here and there over my body.
He looked up at my grunt on his pulling out the final spur. Unscrewing a canteen, he offered me a drink.
I swished the welcome water around my mouth before letting it slide down my parched throat.
As I handed back the container, Daniel ran an assessing gaze over me. "We'll head back to base as soon as we can so Janet can check you for infection, but you shouldn't walk in that condition. We need to clean and bandage these wounds before we start."
Nodding tired agreement, I fumbled with my buttons.
Daniel got the first aid kit, then after watching my awkward attempts without comment for all of five seconds he simply moved in and efficiently assisted in removing my clothes.
There's nothing like being stripped to your skivvies to make a man feel exposed, all defenses down, but Daniel and I have been through so much shit together, on top of what he'd just seen me through, that I didn't even feel the need to make a face-saving wisecrack, which was good since I was too bone-tired to come up with a good one. I can always come up with a bad one. So I merely watched as he retrieved an antiseptic wipe and began to clean the injuries pockmarking my skin.
Calculating I had at least enough energy to manage that, I opened one and began to do the same. Blood was seeping out slowly, but it didn't look like anything we couldn't keep under control.
After I'd cleaned a couple of the punctures, I realized the effort to reach any further was too painful, so I dropped the wipe and sat watching Daniel take care of the rest and proceed to the bandaging. Gradually I slumped forward until I was leaning my head on his shoulder. It felt so good to relax, to allow my muscles a respite from their struggle. Lying down on the cold ground wouldn't be enough. I needed to feel Daniel's warmth flowing into me, reviving me with the human contact, reminding my body that touch didn't have to mean brutal agony, that it could transmit healing comfort. A sigh that was half-groan escaped my lips.
After a brief pat on my back, Daniel continued to work, careful not to dislodge me. I could let down my guard for a short while, confident that Daniel was on watch.
I blinked out of my near doze when he rubbed my back.
"C'mon, Jack, time to get you dressed."
I sat up with a grimace, feeling every twinge and ache coursing through my body. Casting a glance over Daniel's handiwork, I could see that he'd done a good job of patching me up.
As he looked up from his own survey of me, I saw his expression was grim, lips tightly clamped together, a blaze in the blue eyes of what – anger, fear?
I reached out a hand to briefly clasp his upper arm. "Hey, Danny, it's okay. I'm okay. Thanks to you."
"We almost lost you, Jack." He turned away to pick up my clothes.
"Almost is the key word. Chalk up another close call for SG-1. All in a day's work."
He bit his lip as he helped me dress. "I know. Just…" He paused to take a deep breath. "Reaction setting in I guess."
"Yeah." It's never easy being the one sitting on the sidelines watching your teammate – your friend – suffer. I know – I've done it often enough, and I'd far rather be the one in the hot seat like I was today.
I watched the bowed head as he occupied himself with lacing up my boots. "Daniel. Thanks. For hanging around, keeping me company, taking my mind off things." I lightly touched his hair and waited for him to look up and meet my eyes. Grinning, I held his gaze reassuringly. "And especially for coming up with that do-it-yourself weed-killer, Plant Boy. You could teach Martha Stewart a few tricks."
A faint answering grin rewarded my efforts. "I bet I could build a lovely wind chime out of the thorns, and weave the branches into a garden birdbath."
"See, we could start our own TV show – Gracious Alien Living, SG-1 Style."
"Think General Hammond would go for it?"
"Do ostriches have lips?"
"Uhh, no, I don't think they do."
"Well, there ya go then."
With a chuckle, Daniel stuffed the scattered supplies back into his pack.
"Wait. You too." I indicated his finger.
With a roll of his eyes, he tended his own small hurt. "There, all done. How are you feeling?"
A hell of a lot better than when Audrey was chowing down on me. "Peachy."
"Peachy enough to make it to the Gate? Or do you need some time to rest?"
I couldn't wait to shake the dust of this planet from my boots. "Let's get started. It'll be a cakewalk – with a little help."
Smiling, Daniel circled an arm around my waist as I slung an arm across his shoulders. Together we began the trek back to the Stargate.
Trying to ignore the throbbing throughout my body, I became aware of another need clamoring for my attention. "The first order of business after Doc lets me out of her clutches is food. I'm hungry enough to eat commissary meatloaf."
Daniel's eyes widened in alarm. "You don't have to resort to that. Dinner's on me. We'll find a place that serves ostrich burgers."
"Sounds good." I felt a predatory smile curve my lips. "Actually, I've got a craving for a nice, big salad."