For notes, warnings and disclaimers see chapter 1

Chapter 5: Killing Words
(Sam's POV)

Okay, so I have to admit that I had never really considered things from that perspective, I had never really stopped to think what my reaction to the incident we were confronted with when we first arrived in P3X-797 would have been without Turghan and the truth is that Janet is right, I would still have tried to stop it.

"Okay, so you may have a point there," I admit.

"You've been really worried that someone was going to connect the dots on that one sooner or later, haven't you?" asks Janet with a knowing smile.

"A little," I say, just wanting this conversation to be over with but fearing that it is anything but. From the way this whole evening has played out I suspect that Janet had been looking for a chance to ambush me for a while and that means that she is not likely to let go any time soon.

"You know you don't need to stay in high alert mode any more, don't you?"

"I know... it's just that I'm having a hard time believing it," I say, shrugging my shoulders.

"Well, it's been a long time," she reminds me.

"Believe me, I know."

"That bad, uh?" she asks.

"Define 'that'," I challenge, not quite knowing what else to say. Even I know that as far as delaying tactics go, that one is pretty childish but right now I have to at least try to rebuild my defenses after the way in which Janet has been pounding on them.

"Sam..." she growls.

"Well, it's been no picnic, if that's what you are asking, but at the same time I don't want to over-dramatize it. Yes, it's been hard and there have been some difficult moments but it hasn't been all bad. I mean, in spite of everything these past few months have been some of the best of my life. The stargate is..." I trail off, not quite knowing how to put it into words.

"So as far as you are concerned the rewards make it all worth while, in spite of the pain?"

"Exactly... that's what I've been trying to get you to understand."

"Believe me, I understand it, that's not the point. The point is that you still seem to think that you have to make a choice here and you don't."

"A choice?" I ask, not quite knowing what she's trying to say.

"Either you admit that everything is not perfect and let someone help you deal with this mess or you keep going through the stargate," she explains. "You can keep your job and still get the support you need, no one is going to think any less of you if you admit that you are having a hard time trying to come to terms with this."

"I know that and that's not it."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not that I'm pretending everything is perfect, it's just that you keep trying to blow things out of proportion. I've been working with Daniel and..."

"Working with Daniel?" Janet interrupts me, looking somewhat puzzled, and I realize that I just said too much. The truth is that we have been bending the rules a little and that is not something we wanted Janet to hear about... especially because the rules we've been bending are her rules. The problem is that, seeing how I've already said too much, I'm not sure I'll be able to fix this one.

"On those guidelines for other teams," I explain, trying to divert her attention, "and that's helped me understand what happened in Simarka a little better."

"Understand it how?" she asks, and I have to struggle to keep the relief off my face when I realize that she's not focusing on the fact that I haven't been getting the ridiculous number of hours of sleep a night she's been insisting on.

"It's just that I was seeing the whole incident from my perspective and in a way that was making things worse. You see, at first I didn't even realize that part of the problem were my own expectations."

"WHAT!"

"It's just that it's helped me realize that I was not taking Turghan's own culture into account when I thought back to the whole thing. Yes, the way he treated me was unacceptable from my perspective, it was something I never really thought I'd ever have to face but the bottom line is that it was also wrong of me to expect his behavior to conform to modern earth parameters. Let's face it 'consent' is a relatively modern concept even here on earth and the stargate was buried a very long time ago. That is something I should have realized before I went through the gate for the first time but I didn't. I guess in a way you could say that I wasn't really expecting alien cultures to be alien and that was my mistake. I had tacitly assumed that my own values would be universal somehow and that was a pretty dumb assumption. That's something Daniel and I have talked about a couple of times and I think he's managed to explain it a lot better than I ever could. He said that it was all a matter of perspective, that I was raped by Turghan but Turghan never raped me. It took me a while to figure out what he was trying to say with that but I think I understand it now."

"What do you mean?"

"In a way the one who hurt me the most wasn't Turghan, it was me. What he did to me... he never really expected it to be quite so devastating. Sure, he wasn't exactly trying to show me a good time or anything like that but at the same time I have come to accept that part of the problem had to do with my own background, it had to do with how I expected to be treated in the first place. Back in Simarka Nya seemed to think that being beaten and abused was normal and the idea that she could be so accepting of such treatment enraged me, but the truth is that because of that acceptance she probably would have been able to shrug something like what Turghan did to me off as something 'normal'. What I have to do is to learn to separate the physical trauma from the psychological one and..."

"In other words you are rationalizing this whole thing to kingdom come and you think that that makes it all right?" asks Janet, cutting right into my attempt at an explanation.

"No, that's not it, not at all. It's just that..." I begin but then I stop, not quite knowing how to phrase things. Daniel is so much better than I am when it comes to putting things into words.

"What?"

"I don't know... I mean, I do know but I'm just not sure I can explain it," I say, still struggling to find the right words.

"Try it, Sam," growls Janet and I can see she's not happy.

"I'm not denying or minimizing what Turghan did to me but at the same time Daniel's helped me separate what Turghan did to me from what I was doing to myself. There's nothing I can do to change what he did, I have to accept that, but the truth is that what he did do was just a small part of the problem, the bulk of it came from the weight I was giving to what he did. It wasn't Turghan who hurt me, it was me."

"Are you saying that you think this was your fault somehow?" asks Janet, sounding more than a little horrified.

"No, of course not," I say, growing increasingly frustrated.

"Then I'm afraid I'm not sure I'm following you."

"And that's pretty much why I said that I wasn't sure how to explain any of this. Look, what he did was bad, very bad, I'm not denying that, but at the same time I was the one who turned it from bad to unacceptable, I was the one who turned it into a crime. I was the one who was making me his victim and that was downright stupid of me."

"It may have been 'downright stupid' of you but you are not going to get me to believe that you can brush it off so easily," she warns me.

"Believe me, easy is not one word I would use to describe any of this, and I'm not trying to brush it off, but at the same time I am trying to put it in perspective because the truth is that if I intend to keep on going through the gate then I have to accept that my own values are not universal."

"It's so good to know you are not hyper-rationalizing this," says Janet, rather sarcastically.

"I'm not hyper-rationalizing it, I'm just trying to understand!"

"That's the whole point, Sam!"

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"What I'm trying to get you to see is that this has nothing to do with understanding. You don't have to validate or deny your feelings based on rational explanations... they are feelings," she reminds me.

"I know that."

"Really?"

"Yes," I growl.

"And you are saying that you can separate yourself from your own cultural background enough to understand and accept that different cultures have different traditions, perceptions and expectations and that you understand that it is not your place to impose your values on those cultures? Are you saying that you are willing to accept that when you are there, their values apply to you and that you are fine with that?"

"Yes," I confirm.

"Fine, then if that is so, why did you try to interfere back when you first encountered the touched? Why couldn't you just stand back and watch that girl being raped?" asks Janet, effectively turning my own words against me.