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When Push Comes to Shove
Part 1 of 1
Synopsis:  DFR "Dark and Alone" challenge response.  Daniel's clumsiness gets the team in trouble offworld.  When he suddenly finds himself injured and all on his own, can he save the SGC and rescue the rest of his team?

When Push Comes to Shove

"When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace."
— Anton Pavlov Chekhov, Letter to Maxim Gorky

"Move it, Daniel!"

Thanks, Jack, like I wasn't already!

Pumping my arms and legs furiously, I retrace our earlier path through the woods, though we weren't moving nearly so quickly then as we are now. Suddenly, my foot lands on a rock which decides to slide under me, and it's a desperate struggle to keep my balance and not tumble to the ground in a heap of uncoordinated archaeologist.

There's a hiss of over-heated air just past my ear and a tree trunk explodes, sending splinters everywhere. That would have been my head if I hadn't almost fallen, so maybe being clumsy does have its uses!

It didn't earlier, though. After we almost bumped into a Jaffa patrol making its way down the path from the temple to the village, Teal'c led us along the upper edge of the ravine so we could slip past them. Yours truly decided to give everyone a demonstration of why he was always the last kid picked for sports teams in gym class and tripped over his own two feet. The subsequent clatter of dislodged gravel and accidental "oof!" alerted the Jaffa to our presence, thus sparking our current marathon.

If we make it out of this alive, Jack will probably shoot me himself. Actually, I'm not sure which is worse: him shooting me for being such a clutz or taking it upon himself to reacquaint me with his idea of physical conditioning. I swear I barely survived the first time, and it's pretty obvious I didn't retain much of it anyway. But I suppose if he wants to waste his time on an exercise in futility, the least I can do is indulge him... especially since he puts up with me and my clumsiness on a daily basis.

Okay, daydreaming while running for your life is not conducive to keeping said life intact, Jackson!

On the other hand, maybe I did get something out of the last training session. We've been maintaining our madcap pace for about ten minutes and I don't even have a stitch in my side. Not that I want one, mind you... far from it. The point is, I'm in a whole lot better shape than I think I've ever been in my life, all because I get to run so often.

And here I thought I'd never be motivated enough for regular work-outs.

"Dial it up!" Jack shouts, and I know he's talking to me. When staff blasts start flying, it's better to leave the shooting up to the professionals. Colonel O'Neill and Captain-Doctor Carter are both way better shots than I'll ever be, so I'm more than happy to let them cover my tail—my "six", as Jack would say—while I get the honor of preparing the way for our return through the 'Gate to safety.

I slam on the proverbial brakes, just barely managing to keep from colliding with the DHD. It's a darn good thing I've finally got the address for home memorized, since I have to dial so quickly some times. Auriga, Cetus, Centaurus, Cancer, Scutum, and Eridanus, then do a quick hunt for the goblet-shaped symbol I found earlier... there it is. Okay, push the big red button and... voila! The way home has been opened.

No it hasn't, Jackson, you have to send the iris code first!

I fumble for the sleeve of my jacket, trying to push it out of the way so I can get to the GDO strapped to my wrist. Calling the remotes "garage door openers" was Jack's brilliant idea, and when Sam started to suggest something else, he pointed out that the two of us got to name the "dial home device" with our telephone analogy, so he should get to name something, too.

"Daniel, get down!" Sam shouts, and I instinctively turn toward the shout and drop to the ground.

See Jack? I really do know how to duck.

Suddenly, there's a tremendous push at my back, and I'm flying across the clearing. When I slam into a boulder that's kind enough to stop me—but not nearly so nice as to give me a soft landing—spots swim in front of my eyes. There's a roaring in my ears that finally lessens enough for me to hear Jack yelling for me to get through the 'Gate. Now.

Sure thing, Jack, just give me a second to find out if my head's still attached to the rest of me, will you? Ow, yes it is. Okay, moving now.

I somehow manage to get turned over and onto my knees, only to come face-to-face with what's left of the DHD. It's a good thing somebody decided to push me out of the way, but the staff blast that was aimed at my back took out the DHD instead, leaving a gaping, sparking hole where the glowing red dome should be. The 'Gate's still active, thank goodness, so as soon as I can get my feet underneath me, I'll be heading right toward it.

Oh crap, that hurts. No complaining, Jackson, just get moving.

Somehow, I manage to scramble to my feet, though I'm not entirely certain how. I don't really care at this point, though, 'cause it means I'm mobile and heading in the right direction. Just as I reach the steps up to the shimmering portal, though, I realize that I never finished transmitting the iris code. Then there's another push at my backside and I'm tumbling into the blue, sucked through the wormhole.

It's going to be an abrupt stop at the other end. Sorry guys.

A slap of cool air greets me on the other side, then it's tail-end-over-tea-kettle as I bounce gracelessly down the hard metal ramp.

Incoming archaeologist, look out below!

I slam into the uncaring concrete and see stars before everything goes black.

I can't be sure how long the room stays dark, but when the lights finally come back up, I realize that my glasses are gone. I'm also cold where I'm pressed against the floor and on fire everywhere else. Most strangely of all, everything seems to be very quiet.

Why isn't Jack bawling me out for being such a complete clutz?

It's too quiet.

Then it occurs to me that I never sent the iris code, so I should have been splattered like a bug on a windshield. I'm almost completely certain this is neither Heaven nor Hell, and since I wasn't raised a Catholic like Jack and Sam were, I don't believe in Purgatory, either. That leaves me with two options: either I'm hallucinating everything and haven't yet hit the wrong side of the shield and become the proverbial dust in the wind, or something's terribly wrong at the SGC and the iris was never activated in the first place.

I think I'll be optimistic today and go for number two. Things are bad when I consider the complete absence of SG personnel on-base to be the optimistic option, but I've never been picky. Arrogant, self-righteous, stubborn, hot-headed, and—of course—clumsy, but not picky. You can't be picky unless life gives you choices, and sometimes those choices aren't really "choices".

Oh, but here's a choice. I can either lie here with my face embedded in the floor, or I can try to get up and go see what the problem is. Although the former is terribly tempting, the latter is the right thing to do, and Jack would never let me live down not making an effort to do the right thing.

Jack? Oh crap, where's the rest of the team?

I manage to lift my head—an action which causes rather unpleasant feelings to tap-dance down my spine like the Riverdance crew wearing spike-heels. No glasses means blurry vision past about ten feet, but it's enough to see that the room is empty.

Not empty empty, since the 'Gate and ramp and even that great big machine-gun-on-a-tripod thing are still there. There are just no people. Nobody but me.

That's so far beyond odd, it's scary.

I can't see into the control room from where I'm lying right now, but I'd guess if the 'Gate room is empty, it is too. Something is seriously, seriously wrong, then, since I can't imagine any reason good enough for all these soldiers who pride themselves on their commitment to duty to suddenly abandon their posts.

That's right, Jackson, just get your hands under yourself and push off the floor... not that quickly. That's better. Okay, knees next. Good. Now crawl over to a wall and use it to get yourself the rest of the way upright.

Okay, bad idea, just stick with crawling for now. Remember, hands first, then knees. There you go. Now move it!

It's funny how my inner voice sounds so much like Jack... or maybe Jack just sounds an awful lot like my inner voice. Whichever it is, it doesn't really matter, because the sound of something that resembles Jack's voice yelling in my ear is sufficient impetus to get moving.

Darn, the door is shut. What about the other one? Nope. Thank goodness for small favors! But what's that over there?

Jack will probably kill me. Oooh, shiny! And off goes the archaeologist again, forgetting what he's supposed to be doing. Well, thank you, Jack, but I haven't quite forgotten... I'm just making a detour.

The weird little black box with all the blinking lights means nothing to me. There isn't even any writing on it to give any indicator of its purpose, so I figure it's probably something in Sam's department. Maybe it's some kind of diagnostic tool one of the techs was using when whatever happened happened, and it got left behind in the process.

Just as I'm about ready to set it back down on the ground, it slips in my hands. I make a quick effort to try to catch it, feel something collapse under my finger, then the whole thing slams into the concrete and the lights go out. I feel a pang of sympathy for the poor box: pretty much the same thing happened to me not long ago, too, only I got pushed, not dropped.

Okay, I'll confess to breaking one of her toys after Sam gets back. I can only hope that she does get back, because if she and Jack and Teal'c aren't here now and the 'Gate's off, then that means they didn't get through before it shut down on their side, too. With the DHD smashed, that's going to make it hard for them to get back on their own.

No it won't, silly, they can dial manually like they did back on Ernest's planet. All they need to do is wait for a good storm and... Crap, they were under fire from Jaffa when somebody pushed me through the 'Gate. Okay, what I'm going to do, then, is find out what's happened here. If I can round up General Hammond and some of the people in Sam's department, maybe they can put together some sort of portable power generator that will have enough juice to get the 'Gate dialed. Just because the DHD's busted on that side, doesn't mean that we can't dial it up from this side and send through supplies and maybe even reinforcements.

Excellent deduction, Jackson. Now didn't you have somewhere to be?

Yes, and I'm moving that way now, see? Move the hands, move the knees... coordination learned when I was only six months old. A little early to be crawling, I know, but I was always ahead of my age. Okay, so maybe I still haven't mastered the art of walking, but no one's perfect.

Hello, open door. Not much of anywhere to go to the right, but do I want to hang an immediate left after I crawl through here and try to get up the stairs into the control room? Okay, my back says stairs are a bad idea, and I'm inclined to agree with it. The elevator's a much better plan anyway.

Except I don't have my access card, which is usually given back to us by the quartermaster when we check in our guns. "Weapons," the voice that sounds like Jack reminds me, "we don't call 'em 'guns'."

Guns, weapons, whatever. My pistol's still in its holster, and nobody's come to trade my access card for it. Stairs it is.

Well, you can count this off of my list of fun things to do on a Tuesday afternoon. I think it's still Tuesday, anyway, but it's so hard to tell when you've been offworld for several hours, then come back to Earth nearly thirty stories underground. Well, there's always your watch, you idiot.

Yep, still Tuesday... only it's late, late Tuesday night, almost Wednesday morning.

What does that have to do with getting up these stupid stairs? Grab the rail, Jackson. Very good, now pull!

Ow. Let's try that again, shall we? Rail, pull, much better. And hey, what do you know? I'm actually upright and standing on my own two feet! Well, most of me is leaned on this rail, but I do have both feet planted on the floor. Okay, now one at a time, pick up the right one, set it down on the bottom step. Good, now move the left one up there too... Excellent, rinse and repeat.

Wow, I bet this is what Sir Hillary felt like after reaching the top of Mt. Everest! Victory is mine, I have overcome the odds!

Gee, Jackson, you managed to climb a very short set of stairs. Way to go, genius. Now where do you want to go from here?

Oh, joy, up again. That really is the only option, since I still don't have my access card. Thankfully, it's not that far to lurch across the stairwell to grab the opposite wall. I then use the control console across the front of the room to steady myself as I slowly cross to the spiral staircase on the other side.

The good news is, I have the necessary rhythm worked out already. Pull, step, step. Lean against the rail and pant, then do it all again. It's a whole lot farther to get up these stairs than it was the first ones, but I'm nothing if not stubborn.

Ta da! See, I made it to the top of these stairs, too! Now I just have to figure out the next step, because the main armory is still one more floor up from here. The general's office is just across the room, and if I can somehow walk the enormous distance between me and it, I can see if Hammond's inside or maybe use a phone.

Come to think of it, there were phones down in the control room. Idiot.

Oh, well, I'm up here anyway... better make the best of it! One foot in front of another Jackson... no, not like that! Crap. Okay, back on the floor again. But hey, I'm really good at crawling now, right?

I'll just blame it on gravity. There's some kind of really funny gravity experiment going on that just won't let me stay upright. Maybe I should ask Sam to make sure her department doesn't run these kinds of experiments when I'm trying to find out where everyone's gone.

Suddenly, there's the sound of an opening door and footsteps and boy does General Hammond sound pissed! He didn't even sound this upset when he "welcomed" me back to Earth from Abydos, and that was even before Jack told me he was really a teddy bear beneath the starched blue uniform. Boy, hasn't the general proven it, too! I could have hugged him when he backed me up over scientific exploration through the 'Gate. Actually, I think if Makepeace and the SG-3 Marines hadn't been present, I might have anyway.

I settle against the wall just outside his office and listen, wanting to know what's got the kindly general so riled. I don't think it has anything to do with me, but just in case it does, I don't want to put myself out as a target, you know?

"—Does not mean you gentlemen can just take over this facility as-you-please."

A take-over? Under Cheyenne Mountain?

"You have heard our demands, General," replies an unfamiliar voice. "Contact your superiors and tell them we are willing to negotiate. Make one false move—" there was a brief pause "—and this whole facility will be destroyed. Refuse to comply, and we will all go together when the timer expires."

"My superiors will never negotiate," Hammond answers. "My people and I are willing to send you back through the Stargate to the planet of your choice—"

"That isn't good enough!"

"It's the only thing we have to offer, gentlemen."

Gentlemen... plural. So Hammond's in there with at least two guys who are making ridiculous demands of some kind and are... threatening to destroy the base? What'd they do, set the base auto-destruct? Well, that sucks, and will make it awfully hard to rescue Jack, Sam, and Teal'c if this place blows up. Can't have that.

Think, Jackson. Think! You're a horrible fighter on a good day, and today is certainly not a good day. Trying to take these guys on by yourself is bad idea, but maybe you can distract 'em enough Hammond can do something clever. He's a general, after all, and had to have earned his stars. Well, wouldn't have to have earned them in combat, but there's enough—what did Jack call it?—salad on his chest to prove he's seen action a time or two.

Oh, here's an idea! Yanking my radio out of my vest pocket, I give it a kiss for good luck and pitch it across the room. It's a lousy throw, but it does make a satisfying racket when it bounces off the conference table.

"What was that?"

That was me, buddy, but you don't need to know that. Not yet, anyway. You're about to find out... now!

As soon as the first booted foot appears in the doorway, I'm leaping across to trip him up with my body. The foot connects, then the bad guy goes tumbling down, down...

Son of a gun, that hurts! Or should that be "weapon"? I don't care. My back's on fire again, and it's all I can do to keep from curling up in a pathetic ball on the floor and sobbing like a girl. Not a girl like Sam, mind you—she's tougher than I am—but like a... oh, nevermind, it just hurts!

"Where did he come from?" demands Bad Guy Number One. He starts to say something else, but it just comes out a muffled grunt.

Score one for General Hammond! Uh-oh, Bad Guy Number Two is starting to get to his feet. I guess he was just stunned by his fall but not really hurt... unlike me. I guess I must have really wrenched my back when I got shoved that first time, and the second one just made it worse. My speed bump impression now feels like it might have been the straw that broke this particular camel's back, but I'll make an effort to try to keep BGN2 down, too.

"I warned you, General," BGN1 growls, but whatever he was warning about is lost as I throw myself at his buddy again.

Not the hair! Crap, just let go of my hair, okay? No, not like that. Please don't throw—

For the second time since I got back to Earth, all the lights go out, but this time when they come back up, there's a determined-looking General Hammond leaning over me. "Doctor Jackson?" he asks, concerned.

Whoever this Doctor Jackson guy is, he needs to answer the good general so he'll calm down a bit. He's starting to make me worried the way he's staring down at me. He has a scrape on his forehead from something and a decidedly alien-looking gadget of some kind in his hand. Maybe that's BGN1's gun—weapon—and he grabbed it and took out BGN2 with it, too. Three cheers for the general!

"Doctor Jackson? Daniel?"

Oh, crap. Daniel's me, isn't he? Or I'm him. I'm Doctor Daniel Jackson, and I'm the one who put that look on his face! Uh-oh, this can't be good. "General?"

"Take it easy, son. Where's the rest of your team?"

"At the 'Gate."

"Offworld?"

I try to nod, but the sparks shooting up my spine and across my vision tell me what a bad idea that is. "DHD was hit... dial manually."

"How did you get here?"

"Was pushed," I answer, then everything goes dark again.

Should have paid the electric bill.

When it finally lightens to a fuzzy gray, there's a quiet beeping in one ear and something soft and warm draped over the rest of me. I seem to be lying on my side, which is a bit of a change from where I was sprawled on my back just a little ago. Not a bad change, mind you, since that means my back isn't protesting. I have this really weird floaty feeling like I'm not quite anchored as well as I should be. There are voices drifting along beside me, fading in and out like waves on a beach. Since I can't remember having been to an ocean lately, that seems pretty odd, so I try harder to listen.

"—Shrapnel from the DHD. Then he got shot in the back going through the 'Gate, but he still managed to crawl up to your office?"

"It was the bravest thing I've ever seen. The boy must have been hurting something fierce, but he still managed to trip up one of the two terrorists, which gave me the chance to knock the other one out and take his weapon. He was in real bad shape after the second man threw him across the briefing room, but he woke up long enough to tell me what happened to the rest of you."

"Then Rambo Hammond went after the rest of the bad guys."

There was a brief chuckle. "No one takes over my base, Colonel."

"I'll be sure and tell the Goa'uld that the next time I see them, sir."

I know that voice. "Jack?"

"Well, well, speaking of heroic rescuers." Just as I manage to open my eyes a slit, the colonel appears right in front of my face. "About time you rejoined the living, Danny."

"Not dead." I've done that... twice. Does that make me an expert?

"No, but you had us all worried," he replies. "Doc Fraiser says you'll be fine, though, but don't count on getting out of her clutches anytime soon. You have lots and lots of physical therapy to look forward to, ya know."

"'Kay," I agree. "Get back?" Wow, my voice won't even work properly. I think it might be just as disconnected as the rest of me.

"The power supply for the DHD was still intact," Sam answers. "We were able to dial out manually with it once the Jaffa were taken care of, and got back in time to help the General and some of the freed personnel take out the last group of terrorists. We sent them back to '337 in a hostage exchange for SG-4. Turns out we weren't who they thought we were."

"Wow," I manage. "All in a day's work?"

"Indeed," remarks Teal'c, and for some reason his usual reply sends me into a fit of giggles. Not such a great idea.

"Ow. What about the bomb?"

"Bomb?" Jack asks.

"The invaders claimed to have a bomb set to detonate on a timer or by remote," Hammond informs everyone, "but nothing happened when their leader pressed the kill-switch."

"Well, we found a black box on the floor beside the ramp," chimes in Sam. "If that was the bomb than it was somehow deactivated."

"I dropped it," I admit. "All the little blinky lights went out when it hit the floor."

"You dropped it?"

"Sorry. I'm such a clutz."

Jack laughs and reaches out to ruffle my hair. "Yeah you are, Danny, but I'm glad you're our clutz!"

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