Penance
Janet and Jack have an understanding. Penance must be paid. She knew that if she reported it Jack would be out of a job, out of the SGC and out of options. She didn't think that he would survive without his team. Oh he'd keep on breathing all right but she knew the contents of his living will. She knew that losing SG1 would be like keeping a brain dead man on life support and that he was adamant that not be done for him. The chest rises and falls but no one is home.
So every once in a while she adds to the list on a small piece of paper buried in the thick medical file where no one would think to look. She knows that if his team saw this they would be horrified. Upset by the ritualistic need to punish himself for the perceived failure.
Nem.
Jolinar.
Netu.
Each event in the lives of SG1 are marked in a single straight line across the upper thigh of the man who takes these failures to heart. Three lines had appeared after Daniel found himself in the thrall of Shyla and the sarcophagus. The crystal boy who had looked so much like Charlie, and the Reetou boy who had taken that name. It seemed to Janet that those two were thicker lines, an indication that the sharp straight blade he used cut deeper into his flesh.
Resse.
The Unas.
SG-10 and Frank Cromwell.
The Gadmeer and the Enkarans and the choice he made to destroy his best friend to save them.
Janet looks down at the fresh neat scab and the five bright pink, barely healed lines above it. It's been a rough year for SG-1. After more than six years together Jack's thighs are like a ladder of agonizing memory. Every hurt his team suffered, every time one of them didn't come home safely, they're written on his skin. She sees him run the heels of his hands up and down the top of his legs while he's waiting for one of his teammates to wake up after a stay in the infirmary. To others it's just another tick of a man who is too energized to ever sit still, but to her she knows he's feeling each ridge and remembering each time he has failed.
Janet quietly cleans and puts antiseptic cream over the newest line placing a bright white bandage to protect it during the mission they're about to go on. She hopes and prays that after this mission he doesn't have cause to add another tally to his personal list of failures.
People talk about the burden of command but none knows that burden nor take it as seriously as Jack O'Neill. And Janet Fraiser has a little list to prove it.