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* TITLE: Victorious
* AUTHOR: Redbyrd
* EMAIL: redbyrd (at) mindspring (dot) com
* RATING: G
* CATEGORY: drama, action
* SUMMARY: In his heart of hearts, Teal'c didn't believe the Goa'uld would ever be defeated. So how was he going to escape from a game that made his secret fears reality? Tag for Avatar
* SPOILERS: Avatar
* AUTHOR'S NOTE: I thought this was a very clever episode- and I loved the message.
* WARNINGS: none
* DISCLAIMER:
The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.
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The room faded around him, and Teal'c found himself slightly reclining. His muscles trembled continuously with fatigue, and he could taste salt on his lips.
"Is it finished?" someone asked. The voice was Daniel Jackson's.
"Yeah, you did it," Colonel Carter's light soprano confirmed.
Teal'c managed to open his eyes. Even his eyelids were tired. He saw the screens die as Carter turned them off. O'Neill came up to him, looking worried. "O'Neill," Teal'c said. He could barely believe that this wasn't another scenario in the game. That an Anubis drone wouldn't come bursting through the door or O'Neill's eyes start to glow. But he was too exhausted to move.
"Hey," O'Neill patted him on the shoulder, a gesture reserved for extremities of life and death. His hands were warm.
Teal'c finally started to believe it might be real. "We have won," he said.
"Well, it's what we do," O'Neill said lightly
The nightmare images flashed before his eyes. The self-destruct counting down, O'Neill lying very still on the floor. Teal'c managed a shallow nod and faint smile.
O'Neill gave him a rather concerned look. "You gonna get up any time soon, T?"
Daniel Jackson had climbed out of his chair and was looking on.
"Certainly," Teal'c said. There was a pause and he mustered his remaining strength to stand. As he stepped out of the chair, his knees turned to water, and the edges of the room started to gray.
"Whoa!" O'Neill and Daniel Jackson both lunged for him. He could feel their grips slowing his inexorable slide to the floor before everything went dark.
#
When Teal'c opened his eyes, it could only have been a few minutes later because the gurney was still sitting beside his bed in the infirmary. Dr. Carmichael was attaching the sensors for the heart monitor, and O'Neill, Daniel Jackson and Colonel Carter were all standing at the end of the bed.
"Those will not be required," Teal'c told the doctor.
"Those certainly will be required," Carmichael replied firmly. "Teal'c, your heart stopped once in the chair. At the very least we're going to monitor you for twenty four hours."
His heart stopped? That must be why he his chest was sore. Teal'c decided not to argue. The mattress felt unusually soft and comfortable. He would soon have to close his eyes and sleep. Even after two years, the sensation of sleep was not completely familiar. While he often considered it an irritating necessity, right now it seemed desirable, even pleasurable.
As Carmichael moved away, his friends came up. "Colonel Carter," he said.
"What is it, Teal'c?" Carter asked, moving up beside the bed. Daniel and O'Neill stood on the other side.
"I do not understand why the game would not let me finish. I tried the exit code, several times," Teal'c asked. He still felt a nagging worry that he might still be inside. There had been nothing as comfortable as this in the game scenario, but he still remembered returning from the Keeper's planet all those years ago, only to find himself still trapped in the artificial reality.
"The game," O'Neill said, "is going to have a real failsafe put in before anybody else gets in one of those things!"
"The computer was constructing its scenario based on your own ideas about how difficult fighting off a Goa'uld invasion would be," Carter explained. "As best we can tell, you felt that realistically, there would be no easy escape route."
"The game believed I would not stop," Teal'c slowly repeated what Daniel Jackson had told him in the game. But that wasn't right, was it? The game set its difficulty based on how hard Teal'c thought the task was.
"Basically," Daniel said. "I guess because you knew there were no easy escape routes from an attack, the game wouldn't let you use the one that was supposed to be there.
"But you won in the end," O'Neill said. "That's what counts."
"Not I, O'Neill," Teal'c said, suddenly understanding the problem. Suddenly seeing the solution. Finally believing he was home. In scenario after scenario, one or more of his friends had been dead or goa'ulded. Until the last one. He'd even said it himself when he got out. "I did not win. We won. In my heart I did not believe that I alone could defeat the Goa'uld." He looked around at his friends' faces, more familiar than his own, and smiled. His Tau'ri family. "But SG-1 can."
*end