Hearts on Barbed Wire
A/N: Stargate: SG-1, Rurouni Kenshin, and Airwolf belong to their respective creators. No infringement intended. Story takes place sometime after "Veritas"; another bit of "Urban Legends".
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First, do no harm.
Eleven AM in the infirmary's a fairly good time to think. My tough cases have been nursed through the night, the SG teams are still out for the day, and unless there's a real emergency, I'm not with Warner in surgery. Good time to sit back at my desk and do paperwork. And think.
General Hammond says the new psychiatrist is coming in tomorrow.
I look over what I've got on one Dr. John Baird, late of California, previously of Texas, and I try not to hope too much. I want a fellow medical professional to talk to. Someone who can sympathize with walking the fine line between confidentiality and what my superior officers need to know to keep us all alive. I want him to be a good guy.
But despite everything, we could get another MacKenzie. And lord only knows what Daniel will do to the next one.
Though that's not exactly fair. Daniel didn't cause MacKenzie's - ahem - little problem.
But I can't shake the feeling Daniel was the ultimate cause, if not the proximal. Or in layman's terms, Daniel didn't do it, but it happened because of Daniel.
And it wasn't Jack. He might shoot another officer, but he wouldn't invoke an ancient Gypsy curse on one.
A curse which, according to some of the stuff Daniel's found for me, couldn't have bit down nearly as hard as it did if MacKenzie hadn't left it the metaphysical equivalent of an open door. By violating his own oaths, first.
Looking at Baird's file, I can't help but think about that. The Hippocratic Oath is the one thing that's supposed to tie all of us in the medical profession together; the solemn promise that all we do is in service of Life and our patients. When we get that final call, we can stand before St. Peter - or whoever we end up with - and say, "This, this horror, this harm, this hurt - this, I did not do."
Which, in a way, ties us a little more to ancient Egypt than I think Jack realizes.
I have not robbed with violence. I have done no murder. I have spoken no lies....
By this time I think I could recite the Negative Confessions.
It was a little scary the first time I walked in on Daniel muttering Egyptian in his sleep. Or should I say not quite in his sleep; he blushed very visibly when I asked him about it later. In fits and starts he finally admitted it was a way of feeling close to both sides of his family, the living and the dead. His parents had read him the Papyrus of Ani like mine read The Wizard of Oz, and Sha'uri's people still declaimed the ancient lines when they offered their own prayers.
Daniel tries very hard to hold to the Negative Confessions. Almost as hard as he tries to hold to the scholar's equivalent of an oath; to present his theories fairly, with evidence, and to never lie or misrepresent his findings.
Which is exactly what General Hammond asked him to do, after Osiris got away from us in Egypt. Lie. Cloud the evidence. Make Steve Raynor believe he hadn't found what, indeed, he had; evidence that Egypt was more ancient and more alien than anyone believed.
Anyone outside the SGC, that is.
I saw Daniel turn pale at that. I think Hammond wrote it off to the lingering aftereffects of the ribbon device.
I knew better.
I also know Daniel hasn't slept very well since.
I tap a pencil eraser on the folder in front of me, thinking about the mind, and the body, and the effects of broken oaths on both.
Psychoneuroimmunology is the scientific term. More bluntly, a mind that hopes, and loves, and wants to live can sometimes pull the body through the most traumatic injuries. While one that's drowning in depression, grief, and the despair of shattered promises can kill the body when medical science says it should have lived. Hokey as it may sound, "dying of grief" is not just a romantic convention. It can and does happen.
Broken oaths. Broken hearts. Broken souls....
I'm lucky. My Hippocratic Oath is on pretty solid ground. As is my other oath, the one I share with most of this base... and a certain white-clad stranger who keeps giving Colonel Jack O'Neill three kinds of fits.
I solemnly swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic....
While Archangel might be the first high-ranking case officer I've ever met, I have run into some shady intelligence types in the past, and the prospect of dealing with Judith Williams on a semi-regular basis was enough reason to poke around in the library for a refresher course. And the simple fact is, while our "black knights" in Intelligence might be allowed to break every other law on the books, they're just as bound by oath to uphold the Constitution as the rest of us.
And Jack knows that. And still considers Archangel a threat. Especially to Daniel. Even though Colonel O'Neill admits the man is honorable....
My pencil slows.
Or maybe... because he thinks the man's honorable.
Michael Archangel is sworn to uphold the Constitution. The same Constitution that makes it illegal for the President to go to war without Congressional vote.
Which is exactly what the SGC's done.
I swallow dryly.
Oath-wise, I'm in the clear. Mostly. Like Sam, like every other soldier on this base, I'm following the lawful orders of my superior officers. I'm keeping people alive.
But as 2IC and CIC of Stargate Command, Colonel O'Neill and General Hammond are supposed to do more than that. They're supposed to ask if their orders are lawful. If their mission, their war, is in accordance with the rulings of Congress and the will of the American people.
The people who don't even know the Goa'uld are out there.
Coffee. I need coffee.
Half a cup of dark nectar later, I sit back down with Baird's folder. Not that I'm looking at it.
The mind affects the body. Oaths can keep you alive when nothing else will. And broken oaths can kill you.
I will aid you, Dr. Fraiser, so much as I can. But I will not join in your war, and I will not teach my skills to those who would; that I will not. Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is used to protect the weak, and the innocent, but only as a sword under the control of no one but the one who wields it.
Kenshin was polite about it, but I've run into enough rock-hard stubbornness to know when to stop pushing. He'll look after people outside the SGC. He'll work with Dr. Takani to give me new ways to put my broken patients back together. But he won't put himself, or his sword, in a situation where he's taking orders from military authority.
If what O'Neill and Sam found is right, he already did that once. And the results were... horrible.
Kaoru hasn't talked about it, those few times we've met, but she's as blazingly honest as Sam in the middle of a lab experiment. I've picked up a lot from what she hasn't said.
Fit that together with what I got out of Jack about his encounters with Kenshin Himura, and I know that Kaoru's beloved, gentle, kendo-teaching husband still has the habits, skills, and cold-blooded ruthlessness of an assassin who gives Teal'c the willies.
And the only thing holding all of that back are his oaths. To protect. To teach. To never again take a life, save in defense of himself or those he cares for.
Break those, and I don't want to think what would happen.
But break a scholar's oaths....
Ask a scholar to lie, and where does he stop?
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A/N: The SGC is, technically, a black operation gone rogue. The President and Joint Chiefs may well be in it up to their eyeballs, but that doesn't make it any less illegal.
As a sworn U.S. intelligence officer, Michael Archangel is perfectly justified, and bound by oath, to try and get the SGC situation "out into the open", by whatever means necessary. Including trying to find out about a situation he hasn't been informed of or directly tasked to investigate. Including working with foreign intelligence officers to gather data, and limit damage. Including suborning and "turning" people inside, and infiltrating the data systems of, the rogue military unit in question.
Is Daniel in trouble? Technically speaking, yes; but then, so is every government whistleblower who's been ordered not to talk.
Are Jack and General Hammond in trouble? Legally, their ground isn't nearly as firm as Dr. Jackson's. "Following orders" isn't enough.
Think about it.