Disclaimer: Not Witten for Profit. All tags based on episodes of Stargate SG-1, part of the Stargate Franchise.
Episode 1-16 Cor-Ai
Episode Summary: SG-1 gates to a planet where Teal'c has been before. He is put on trial for murder.
O'Neill sat on his couch drinking beer alone. He hadn't had the energy to invite anyone over. He wasn't really in the mood for company. He had told General Hammond that he had done some damn distasteful things for this government. And he couldn't get those particular things out of his head tonight.
He had tried to tell Teal'c he wasn't guilty because he had just been following orders. Wasn't that true of himself as well. He had been following orders. Wasn't the whole theory behind giving orders a way to deflect blame off the individual solider?
He finished his beer and slammed it down on the table. He took another automatically. He had set the whole six pack down in front of him. It was a six pack kind of night. As he opened the next, he thought of the individual people he had been ordered to take out. He thought about the collateral damage. He wondered how many innocent people he had killed when he dropped bombs out of fighters in the gulf.
How many of the soldiers he had killed were just following their own orders? Were only there because they had been ordered to be there, and really didn't care either way about the politics behind the war they were in?
He certainly didn't believe in every mission he had been on. But he was trained not to ask questions. When you're told to go, you go. When you're told to eliminate anyone in your path, you eliminate them.
Was there ever a point on those missions where he had had a choice to kill or not kill, and chosen kill? Had he ever used more force than necessary? He had certainly seen his own men go down in a fire fight and gotten angry. Had his anger urged him on to kill more than he needed too?
He had never killed an innocent person on purpose. He had never killed someone just to shut them up. He had never killed a solider who had surrendered. It would have been easier to do that from time to time, but he had never crossed that line.
If he told himself Teal'c wasn't guilty for the things he had done as first prime, then he wasn't guilty either. So why was it bugging him so much tonight? Had Teal'c's trial just stirred things up in him? Had it been what he said to Hammond? Was it because the current administration hadn't backed Teal'c up?
O'Neill had killed a lot of Jaffa off world. What if the Jaffa one day earned their freedom like Teal'c wanted? What if those free Jaffa put him on trial for killing them.
Maybe he was just sick of killing in general. But what else was he good at?