Author: otter
Summary: Sam has always been an early riser.
SG-1 | Gen | PG-13 | Jan 2005 
Sam has always been an early riser, and she thinks that there's a magic in the pre-dawn hours, when the world is still and quiet and even the sun hasn't rolled itself out of bed yet. When she was younger, early morning meant rare time spent with her father, sitting on stools at the kitchen counter and working on math problems while he flipped through folders that were marked CLASSIFIED on the front. He would always leave early -- to go to the Pentagon, to catch a plane, to do things he'd never tell her about -- and she would cook breakfast for her mom and Mark, do the dishes from the night before, take out the trash, put together some lunches.
Time felt stretched in the mornings, like living in a black hole. And if she kept herself busy enough, she wouldn't have to sit around and worry that her mom was getting worse, and her dad might never come home.
Those concerns are far behind her now, but she carries the habits with her anyway. This morning, she got up early to clean out the fridge, water the plants, lock up the house. She drove to work early so she'd have plenty of time to check her pack, double-check the equipment, review the mission files, maybe tinker in the lab for a bit until their departure time drew nearer.
She thinks that the earlier you get things done, the faster you can move on to the next thing.
Today, she has destroyed an entire civilization, and it isn't even noon yet.
Daniel has his little folding shovel in his hand, but he isn't using it. It just dangles from his fingers, small and hopeless, like trying to empty the Pacific with nothing but a teaspoon. Teal'c's fingers are curled tight around his staff weapon, but there is no target to shoot, unless he wants to aim for the little blond human to his right.
She kind of wishes he would.
Daniel says, "Maybe we should call back to the SGC... ask them for a backhoe." He swings the shovel and it hits his pantleg, a quiet *whump, whump, whump* like far-away explosions.
"There are too many," she says. "Preliminary survey indicates three million, at least."
Daniel says, "Oh." The shovel keeps swinging. "Well, I don't actually know anything about their customs, either. Maybe they don't bury their dead, anyway." He sounds curiously detached, considering that there's a twisted corpse just a few feet away and its eyes are huge and staring right at him.
Behind her, Dr. Sandusci and his team are packing up, piling equipment cases and neatly bundled tents onto a pair of all-terrain carts for transport back to the SGC. He's already delivered the bad news, and now his people do their jobs silently, but for the occasional jingle of tent stakes and the flapping of canvas.
The whole world is quiet, like mourning, except for the whump-whump-whump of Daniel's shovel against his pants. Sam reaches out a hand to cover his, stilling the motion, and everything is absolutely quiet. Like the grave, she thinks, quiet like being dead and buried and smothered in muffling earth.
It only lasts a moment, and then a bird calls out from somewhere, and Daniel says, "You know, when the Spaniards and the English and everybody else went out to colonize the New World, they ended up killing the natives mostly with disease. Considering we're dealing with whole other planets, it's sort of miraculous that this kind of thing doesn't happen to us more often."
Sam says, "Shut up, Daniel," but she can't snarl it like she wants to; it comes out more like a plea.
Daniel folds up his shovel, straps it to his pack, and says, "Yeah, sorry." He doesn't sound very sorry; he doesn't sound like much of anything, really. He doesn't even hang his head when he turns around and walks back toward the Gate, and when he has to step over a fallen body on his way, he doesn't give it a second glance.
She thinks sometimes that when the Ancients put him together again, they might've left some pieces out.
Teal'c puts a heavy hand on her shoulder, but he takes it away quickly, and then he's turning to leave, too. "I will report our status to General O'Neill," he says, before he walks away.
There's an itch in the back of her throat, and she fights the urge to cough. She rubs at her neck instead, and thinks about what it might be like to rub until she bleeds, or just to carve that itch out with her combat knife.
She turns around instead, and follows the rest of her team back toward the Stargate. She has plenty left to do, and it's barely midday.
the end