| |
Loyalty and Obedience
Status: Complete
Category: Vignette, Angst
Pairings: None
Spoilers: Abyss, Zero Hour
Season: 8
Content Level: 13+
Content Warnings: Slight language
File Size: 33kb
Archive: Jackfic, Incoming Wormhole
Summary: Jack still has issues with Ba'al. Ya think!
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 author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without
the consent of the author.
Author's Note: This wasn't the fic that I thought I would write about Jack and Ba'al
meeting again. This just sort of happened. I had other plans, but some sort of entity
must have taken me over. Sorry. Unbeta'd as well - oh dear!
Loyalty and Obedience
I was sitting, reading those personnel files, when it hit me with all the subtlety of a
sledgehammer across the back of the head.
They knew. They had to. The call to come to the Gate Room. Their determined faces
as Reynolds had spoken.
Hell - they knew. That was what I saw in their eyes, the looks that I had taken on face
value. Written on all those eager countenances - the young and not so young faces
staring me in the eye with what I took to be support and trust.
I had left that room feeling proud. Proud of them and proud to lead them. I had been
invigorated, the tiredness of the hours without sleep dropping from me as I turned
back to my duties, knowing they were behind me one hundred percent, whatever my
decision.
But it hadn't been support I had seen in all those eyes staring back at me across that
empty space. No. I had been wrong, and I wondered why it had taken so long for me
to understand.
Not support.
Pity.
They knew.
If I ever found out who let it slip I would rip their heart out through their throat and
feed it back to them in pieces.
I didn't need their pity. Didn't want it. Back then the Doc had tried to talk to me. Told
me to let it all out. Talk about it.
What was to talk about?
I died.
Get over it.
I did.
Now they look at me differently, as if I'm going to break like fine china if roughly
handled. What did they think I would do? Go running off after my team like some sort
of demented Boy Scout? Fall down in a heap, crying that I couldn't cope?
Shit no.
These stars weren't on my shoulders because they had fallen out of my eyes. They
were there because I had survived.
I didn't need their pity. Never asked for it.
What I needed was their loyalty.
Ba'al had made me stronger with every cut, with every blow, with every burn, and
with every death. Each one had tempered the steel around my heart. The sight of his
smirking face on the ramp hadn't worried me. There was nothing he could do that
would ever touch my soul again. Nothing. I hadn't begged for my own life. I sure as
hell wasn't going to beg for anyone else's.
General Jack O'Neill didn't come down in the last shower. I wasn't in this job
because the President felt sorry for me.
I was here because I could do what I had to do, and if that meant people dying, then
so be it.
I had done it often enough.
The End
|