TITLE: Failure of Perfection

AUTHOR: Terri D. Thomas

STATUS: Complete

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to Kat for the quick beta and to Kelly for making the comment that gave birth to this plot bunny.

E-MAIL: topekaksterri@prodigy.net

CATEGORY: missing scene/tag

SPOILERS: "Solitudes"

SEASON: Season one

RATING: PG

WARNINGS: Heavy spoilers for "Solitudes"

SUMMARY: Daniel helps Sam deals with a crisis of confidence.

ARCHIVE: Heliopolis and any others who want it.

DISCLAIMER: Nobody is mine in this piece. Bummer.

Failure of Perfection

(An epilogue for "Solitudes")

By Terri D. Thomas

\\"Colonel? It's an ice planet." Her voice sounded weak and defeated, even to her own ears. "It's all there is as far as the eye can see. Not a chance."\\

There was no hope. They were alone. They were going to die on a lifeless planet, covered in ice. She could feel the numbing ache of the frigid cold right down to her soul.

The helplessness was overwhelming.

Sam Carter jerked awake from the light doze. The glare of the overhead light caused her to scrunch her eyes closed. The motion irritated the already sore scrape on her cheek.

"You okay?" a gentle voice asked.

Sam's eyes drifted to the source. She gave a half-hearted smile to Daniel Jackson. "Uh. . .yeah," she swallowed. "Just a dream."

She felt Daniel's hand touch hers. "How do you feel?"

"Tired. . .very tired."

He nodded. "Jack regained consciousness about fifteen minutes ago. Frazier says he's going to be okay."

Sam closed her eyes again, saying a silent prayer of thanks. "He was in so much pain," she whispered. "I tried to help him, but. . .," her words trailed off.

"You did everything right, Sam. Frazier says that if you hadn't done what you did to keep him warm, he would have never made it."

Sam felt the tears welling up in her eyes. She fought to keep them at bay, but lost the battle as a single tear flowed down onto her cheek. The tear burned as it rolled over the cut.

Daniel's hand gripped hers more firmly, as if the increased pressure could reassure her. "Sam? You okay?"

"Uh. . .yeah. . .," she answered. However her tone said otherwise. Daniel frowned, but said nothing. She swallowed back the remaining tears. "How long do I have to stay here?"

"You have a nice collection of contusions, cuts and scrapes, a knee that's swollen to almost twice its size, but nothing more serious," Janet Frazier answered, approaching from behind Daniel. "I'd like to keep you here overnight, but I don't think there will be any reason to keep you any longer than that as long as you keep the leg elevated."

"And the Colonel?"

"Well, he's a different story." She cast a quick glance to the figure in the bed next to Sam's. "I think he'll be here for at least the next week."

"He's not going to be happy about that," Daniel commented.

"That's the nice part about being the doctor around here. His happiness has no impact on me." She gave the two a mischievous smile, then she became serious. "You get some rest." She motioned for Daniel to leave the injured woman's side.

As the two left, Sam allowed her gaze to slide over to the Colonel in the next bed. "I'm sorry, Sir," she whispered. "I should've known."

Daniel's words echoed in her mind. "You did everything right," he had said. God, he had no idea how wrong he was. She had broken the first rule of good scientific analysis and it had almost cost her the life of her commander. Her anguished thoughts followed her into fitful sleep.

***

True to her word, Dr. Janet Frazier released Sam the next morning on the condition that she stay on base for further observation. She also ordered the woman to rest so that the swollen knee could be properly elevated. Expecting Sam to argue, Janet was surprised when she received only a quiet nod from the woman. "You do feel okay, right?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Janet. I'm just tired."

Sam grabbed the crutches that Janet had given her and turned away, leaving the infirmary. She had only taken a few steps when Daniel's voice called to her from behind.

"Are you hungry?"

Sam shook her head, but stopped her hobbling walk long enough to allow the young man to catch up. "I'm going to my lab."

"Lab? You think that's a good idea? You were just released from medical and you should be taking it easy with that leg."

"I have some work to catch up on."

"Work? What work?"

She stopped walking and shot a frustrated look at the man. "It's nothing, Daniel. It's just something that I have to do."

She hobbled away from the archeologist, not caring whether he followed or not.

The footsteps at Daniel's door caused him to redirect his attention from the manuscript he had been reading. "Hey, Teal'c."

"Am I disturbing you?" the large Jaffa asked.

"Nah. I'm just trying to catch up on some projects now that Jack and Sam are back."

"Should you not be resting?" the man asked. "You did not sleep during the time we were searching for them."

"I slept pretty well last night. I don't feel a hundred percent, but I'm okay. You?"

"I am. . .fine," Teal'c answered.

Daniel stared at the man for a moment, waiting for the Jaffa to do or say something more. "Did you need something? Is there something wrong?"

"I am concerned about Captain Carter."

"Why? Did she relapse?" Daniel asked, clearly concerned.

"Physically she appears the same. However, she seems. . .preoccupied, I believe you would say."

Daniel nodded. "Yeah, I noticed that earlier. I thought it was just the trauma of everything catching up to her."

"She is working very diligently."

"She is? She's supposed to be resting. Did she say what she's doing?"

"She would not. It is something that she seemed unwilling to discuss."

Daniel closed the folder and pushed himself from his chair. "Maybe she'll talk to me."

"That was my hope," Teal'c nodded and then stepped aside to let the smaller man pass.

Sam muttered to herself. "There has to be a way. There just has to." The pounding in her head kept interrupting her thought process. She rubbed her eyes, trying to rub out the pain. The headache was throbbing with the pain in her knee. However, every time she tried to sit and rest, her thoughts would gnaw away at her and she'd find herself leaning over her desk, scanning every detail of the plans.

"Sam?" Daniel's voice intruded upon her thoughts, quiet, but firm.

She lifted her gaze. "Hi." She saw that the archeologist held two coffee cups in his hands.

"You're working awfully hard for someone who was given orders to rest."

"I had some things I wanted to look into."

Daniel approached and set one cup down on her desk. "I brought you some tea. I was told that it'll help you rest. Not that I'd have first hand experience with that."

She grinned and moved the cup to the side. "Thanks."

"So, whatcha working on?" he asked nonchalantly.

Sam's smile disappeared. "It's nothing."

He moved closer to the table. "Those are the schematics for the UAV, right?"

She glanced up at the man and then back down at the drawing. "Yeah."

Daniel frowned. "You're working on the UAV? Why?"

Sam closed her eyes and shook her head. "It's nothing."

Daniel reached out his hand and covered hers. "What's going on?"

"I said it's nothing," she bit back.

Daniel sighed. "It's obvious that something's bothering you. What's going on? And what does the UAV have to do with it?"

"I'm just. . .just trying to make some modifications."

"Why?"

"Because. . .," she started and then stopped.

"Because why?" Daniel prodded.

"Because the Colonel almost died," she whispered.

"What? What are you talking about."

"I screwed up, Daniel."

Daniel shook his head. "You've lost me."

Sam sighed and yanked the drawing off of the desk. "Never mind." She turned away from the man and hobbled to the other side of the small office. "I don't really feel like talking right now, okay?"

"No, it's not okay. Something's wrong, Sam. I've never seen you act like this before." He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Please, Sam, what's wrong?"

She turned away, crumpled up the paper in her hand and threw it to the floor. "I'm a scientist. I should've known better."

"Known what?" He turned the woman around to face him. "What should you have known?"

She diverted her eyes from his gaze. "I thought that we were. . .that we. . .." She stopped and took a deep breath. Daniel reached out for her face and lifted her chin until her eyes met his once again. She closed her eyes and a tear leaked out the corner. "I thought we were on an ice planet. It never even occurred to me that we were on Earth."

Daniel's hand dropped from her face and his eyes widened in amazement. "There's no way you could've known. It took all of us days to figure out what had happened, and we had the benefit of technology at our fingertips."

Sam shook her head and turned away again. "It's more than that. I climbed up to the top to see where we were. All I could see was ice and snow and cold. I assumed we were on an ice planet."

"So?"

Sam turned to face him, eyes showing a mixture of anger and embarrassment. "So, I jumped to conclusions. I made a full determination about our plight based upon my seeing, what? . . .A few miles of terrain surrounding our area? What kind of scientist does that?"

Daniel let her finish her tirade. When she quieted, he pointed to the crumpled up paper on the floor. "Is that why you're working on the UAV?"

"Well, yeah. I thought that maybe. . .maybe I could come up with a way to make it portable so that we could take it with us on missions. . .so that. . .," she halted her words again.

"So that you wouldn't make the same mistake again?" Daniel concluded.

Sam nodded silently.

"Look, I'm a scientist, too, Sam. Part of our job is to make educated guesses about circumstances based upon the observations we have made from our surroundings. That's what you were doing. That's all we can do."

"But it's not right. Don't you see. Every time we've going through the Stargate we see a few miles around it and then decide that we know everything we need to know about the planet we're on. And guess what. . .we don't know squat."

"We do the best we can."

"Well, it's not enough. . .," she retorted and then turned away again. "It wasn't enough."

Daniel put his hand on her shoulder again. "Sam, what more could you have done? You were in the middle of Antarctica. There was no way that you could have gone for help, even if you had known where you were."

"But I would've known. . .it would have made a difference to me."

"And you might be dead. If you had known where you were, you might have tried going for help. . .and you would have died." He paused for a moment letting the words sink in, then he took a deep breath and continued. "And Jack would have died too."

Sam closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. "I just felt. . .so. . .so. . .," she responded quietly.

"Helpless?"

She nodded. "I didn't know what to do. . .and then when I saw where we were I didn't have any hope at all."

Daniel nodded. "You know what I think?"

She shrugged, but didn't answer. He continued. "I think that part of the problem is that you always expect to be able to find answers. That if you work hard enough, if you're smart enough and diligent enough, you'll be rewarded with the truth."

Sam didn't respond. Daniel continued. "It doesn't work that way. I found that out the hard way." She glanced up at that. "All we can do is analyze what we find and hope that we come close to the right conclusion. We aren't all-knowing, no matter how much we would like for that to be the case."

Sam bit her lip and turned away again. "It hurts because there was so much at stake." Daniel turned her back to face him. "You thought you were the only hope that the Colonel had. You thought you were alone."

She nodded, but still said nothing. "You were never alone, Sam. We were all working night and day to find you two." He pointed to the discarded plans. "And whether you like it or not, you can't plan for every contingency. Sometimes things are going to go wrong. . .sometimes there isn't going to be a right answer. Sometimes there are just going to be a lot of really bad options, and you're going to have to settle on the one that is the least of the evils."

Silence filled the room as Sam let the words sink in. Slowly she slid to the floor, with her injured knee outstretched and the other bent, her arms resting on top. When she finally spoke, her voice was whisper soft. "I was so scared." Daniel didn't reply. "He was in so much pain and nothing I did could help. And then when I saw where we were, I knew that we were going to die, that I had failed him." She paused again, then continued. "After everything he has done for me, I wasn't going to be able to help him." She was quiet for a moment. Daniel moved onto the floor next to her. She leaned against him wearily. "I never, ever want to feel that way again."

He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. "I know." For a long while the two sat on the floor, both lost in thought.

End