Title: Loyalty and Obedience
Author: Flatkatsi
Email: flatkatsi@optusnet.com.au
Status: Complete
Category: Vignette, Angst
Pairings: None
Spoilers: Abyss, Zero Hour
Season: 8
Rating: PG
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.