You Don't Know What You've Got...
by
DeniseColonel Jack O'Neill hopped off the gurney, absently lifting the cottonball out of the crook of his elbow, checking to see if the bleeding had stopped. Seeing a bare drop of blood he tossed the soiled bit of cotton into a waste basket and shrugged on his fatigue shirt.
"I hear you got a happy ending this time," Dr. Janet Fraiser said, making a few notes in his chart.
"Yeah doc. No body count for a change," he replied wryly, remembering the look on Hammond's face when they returned from their last mission and he'd tallied up the green clad figures on the ramp...and come up short.
"Makes a nice change."
"And all of you came back in one piece...for once," she teased, a smile on her face.
"Well since you spent 48 hours straight making sure none of us caught a Goa'uld on 888, figured it was the least we could do," he threw over his shoulder as he walked to the door.
"Colonel," she called. Jack turned, absently buttoning his shirt. "Feel free to make injury-less returns the rule rather than the exception," she ordered gently. He merely tossed her a wave and proceeded into the corridor.
As he made his way down the hall, the events of the last 20+ hours played relentlessly through his brain.
He flinched internally as he flashed back to the frustration and despair he'd felt when he realized their good deed was going to all be for naught. They'd worked so hard, spend so many weeks trying to save the Enkarens, only to condemn them to death.
By transporting the Enkarens to a new world, a new home, they'd unwittingly perpetrated the cruelest trick of all...they'd given them a month of hope, a month of joy and an illusion of a future, only to take it all away again.
His 'hosts' in Iraq used to do that.
It's true, you really don't miss something if you're not used to having it. People without electricity are content with candles and lamps...until they see a light bulb for the first time. Drawing water from a well is fine...until your first experience with a tap. Typewriters are great...until you use a computer.
You really don't miss something until it's gone.
He and his fellow prisoners would spend days on end locked into a stuffy communal cell, usually taken out only for a beating or something...else. They'd gotten used to the boredom, the forced inactivity. They were hardly fed enough to survive. Once he'd returned home, it'd been months before he could eat more than a Happy Meal at McDonalds and not feel totally stuffed. He'd gotten so used to starving, his stomach had shrunk, his body had forgotten what it was like to eat on a regular basis.
They'd barely had enough water to maintain their bodies in the desert climate so bathing was...unheard of. Everyone grew accustomed to the dirt, dried sweat, caked blood and lice. Filthy was normal. It was seen as a perverted badge of honor. The dirtier you were, the longer you had survived. But every so often the guards would change things. They'd grab one or two of them, drag them outside, hand them a bar of soap and let them bathe. Then you were shoved back into your stiff, stinking clothes, and you noticed just how dirty they were. You noticed just how bad everyone else smelled. How much you liked being clean. How good it felt not to have your skin crawl. You dreamed about cool running water, about showers.
And you'd do just about anything to feel that way again.
That little tactic broke more men than any beating ever did.
When he'd looked into Hedrezar's sightless eyes, seen the fear on Nikka's face as she and Eliam clutched her swollen belly, he'd felt like one of those cruel jailers from a decade before. He'd given them hope, a new life, a future, only to take it all away.
And he HAD to do something...anything about it.
He'd seen the looks on his team's faces as he made his choice. Known he was pushing the envelope of trust and loyalty they'd developed over the years. And for a while, he hadn't cared. The ends would justify the means.
He knew his career would be over the second he returned home. Hammond may cut him a lot of slack...but not this much. He was going beyond bending orders...he was crushing them into little tiny pieces, maybe declaring war on an alien ship in the process...all in the name of a few thousand displaced Enkarens.
It took Daniel, placing himself in mortal jeopardy...again, to make him stop and think. It was Daniel who reasoned with Lotan, Daniel who came up with a solution everyone could live with...literally.
Why hadn't he thought of it? It was so obvious, quite frankly the best of both worlds. The Enkarens would be returning to their lost home-world, the Gad-Meers would be populating a brand new planet. Everybody would live. No death. No destruction. No war.
Was he so set in his ways that blowing stuff up was the only solution he could find? Who held an election and nominated him god? Since when did he have the right to choose one race over another? It hadn't been a fast and furious fire fight...his decision had been cold, calculated, planned.
Still deep in thought, he walked into his dark office. He snapped on the desk lamp, sat down, and began to half-heartedly dig through his inbox. Damn, he hated paperwork.
His peripheral vision caught a movement in the corner of the room and his head snapped up, his body tensing in anticipation of an attack.
He relaxed as he recognized his team mate Major Samantha Carter detaching herself from the shadowy recesses of the room and stepping forward, her shoes squeaking slightly on the concrete floor. In the dim light of the single bulb lamp he could see she had already exchanged her fatigues for jeans and a T-shirt.
Without a word she pulled a folder from under the jacket folded over her arm and dropped it on his desk.
"Carter?" he asked as he opened the folder, squinting at the neatly printed schematics contained within. "What's this?" He hadn't asked for anything, had he?
"Schematics for the Naquadah reactor, along with instructions for how to create the feedback loop," she said quietly, putting on the jacket.
Jack shook his head, more than a little confused. "So?" She knew he and schematics didn't get along. Hell he had a hard time programming his VCR. That's why he had her, so he didn't have to struggle through this...stuff.
"Sir, with all due...respect, the next time you want to turn one of my inventions into a vehicle for mass murder...you can do it yourself," she stated quietly, evenly, as she turned and left his office.
The quiet click of the door closing sounding like a bullet in the stillness of the room.
Jack sat there, staring at the neat lines on the paper, the carefully typed instructions of which wire to cross where. Each numbered and diagrammed. It was spelled out so clearly he bet a kid could do it.
"Maybe not a happy ending after all Doc," he whispered into the silence.
fin