AN: This one is a little bit shorter but it is my favorite so far of all the chapters I have written in this. Warnings still in effect.
Thanks again for the reviews from all the chapters, but the last one especially. I know this is not an easy story and it may feel at times like its dragging. Sorry if you feel that way. I learned a long time ago to not fight my muse. She writes what she wants and if I try to fight it, we are all going to be waiting a very long time for the next chapter. So thanks with hanging with it or for choosing to no longer read. Either is okay.
***SG1***SG1***
Shuffling papers, Colonel Nelson glanced briefly at his watch. They had been at it for hours and everyone was getting tired. They needed to wrap up with O'Neill so they could complete the other interviews and have a recommendation by the deadline. Pushing back his own need for a break, he looked up towards Jack. "Once you obtained the additional weapons and GDO, you attempted to find Major Hitch and Captain Shelby." A nod from O'Neill confirmed the statement.
"We heard a couple of guys talking about taking them something to eat," Jack reiterated his earlier statement. "We followed."
"Were you both armed?" French asked, a slightly curious tone to his words.
Jack shifted, a flicker of something undefined passing his features.
"Colonel?" French pressed, waiting for an answer. He ran assessing eyes over Jack. Deliberating laying down his pen, he smiled tightly. "Yesterday, you laid out a scenario asking us what we would do if we had been in a situation like you experienced on PX9-493." Eyes narrowing, he tapped the paper. "Two of us, three guns," a slight shake of head indicated confusion. "I sure as hell would make sure every member of my team was armed so they could defend themselves and cover my back."
A tick in Jack's jaw told him he had scored a hit.
"The only reason I would not do that was if that soldier was in some way a liability to the success of the mission. Was Major Carter a liability?"
"No," the barked adamant denial was immediate. Clearing his throat, Jack looked up. "I gave Carter one of the guns from the office."
A frown creased French's forehead. "Major Carter was unarmed when she came through the Gate."
O'Neill looked away and licked his lips. "She wasn't a liability," he reiterated deliberately.
"Then what was she?"
The quietly asked question from Nelson brought Jack's eyes to him.
Blowing out a breath, Jack closed his eyes and sighed. When he opened them, he began to speak, his voice low. "Look, she was a mess. Hell, I was mess," he added, dry sarcasm tinging his self assessment. "The drug and the rape," he paused, a wince passed over his face at the word, "she was..." Another shake of his head. "She was jumpy, nervous, hell, terrified of everything and everyone," he confessed. "At one point, we had to dive into a room to avoid some men coming by. When they passed, I looked back to see if she was ready and..." Jack's jaw tensed, his hands gripped each other tightly. A breath escaped. "She was sitting on the floor, absolutely calm, staring at that damn gun as if it was the answer to everything." The words were bathed in dark finality.
"You thought she was going to kill herself." Nelson's voice was gentle.
"More likely do something to get herself killed," Jack ground out, looking away.
"So you disarmed her," French said.
Jack acknowledged the statement. "She wasn't happy about it."
"How did she react?"
A sad smile pulled on his face, part pride, part misery. "She's an Air Force officer in a combat situation. How do you think she reacted." There was no question in the comment.
"She fought back."
"With everything she had left in her," Jack said, wincing at the memory of the blows she landed and his reaction to the challenge. Immediate, intense, the instinctive bodily response to the feel of her body against his. Dropping his head to hide anything he might inadvertently reveal, he finally said, "I pinned her down."
"What happened then? Surely that fed into her fears," French pushed.
A sharp snort went with Jack's wry acknowledgement. "It didn't do her any good."
"You'd kill anyone who had challenged you until now," Nelson said, his eyes assessing. "What stopped you this time?"
Swallowing, Jack forced his hands to separate. "Recognized she wasn't a threat anymore," he threw out hoping they'd buy it.
"How?" Nelson pressed. "According to the everything you have told us so far, you were acting almost purely on instinct and training. Your training would dictate that you eliminate this potential threat immediately."
"And my instinct said not to," Jack snapped back.
"Why?"
Jerking his head away, Jack bit back the painful, brutal truth that he wanted to yell to seal his fate and end the charade. Because he was too busy fighting off the urge to rip off all of her clothes and do exactly what he had killed others for doing. Because the feel of her beneath him had almost erased every other thought or consideration. Because for some unknown reason, for some almost impossible chance of salvation awarded to him at that moment, he had held onto his battered soul just enough to hear the sobbing cries for him to stop, to let her go, to kill her like he had promised to do. A shudder ran through his frame. "She stopped fighting."
***SG1***SG1***
Tapping the folder in her hand against her leg, Tiffany stood just inside the doorway and watched one Major Samantha Carter in the bed across the room. It felt like she was looking at a reflection of herself so many years ago.
"Ready?" Janet said, stopping beside her. Getting a nod, she led her further into the room. "Sam, I want you to meet Doctor Tiffany Rogers. She'll be conducting your psych evaluation and determining your next course of treatment."
"Doctor," Sam greeted her respectfully, but with no warmth.
"And you must be Teal'c," Tiffany said, acknowledging the large man on the other side of the bed. "I am very pleased to meet you. Doctor Jackson has told me so much about both of you."
A bow answered her greeting. "He has spoken highly of you as well. He was quite impressed with your credentials."
The statement made her pause. Somehow, she wasn't sure he was speaking about the doctorate she held. His next statement confirmed it.
"O'Neill has spoken very little of his time in Iran but it was, as he has said, no picnic."
A smile twitched slightly on her lips. In that simple statement, he had relayed to Major Carter so many things. Blue eyes darted toward her, reassessing, reevaluating her potential worth. "I'd have to agree with him on that."
"You were in the military?"
Pulling a nearby stool closer, she eased herself down. "Fifteen years, Air Force. Made it to Major before I decided that it was time to do something else."
"Getting into people's head?" Sam's question was surly, challenging, derisive.
Another smile pulled on Tiffany's lips. Another mirror had just been held up. "No, helping them get out of their own," she said simply, unfazed by the accusation.
A question flickered over Sam's face. Seeing it, Janet looked up to Teal'c and received a slight nod in exchange. "Sam, you okay here? I need Teal'c for a bit. It's time for his annual check up."
Blue eyes darted between her two safety nets and then back to the newcomer. She paused a moment before nodding. "Not long, okay?"
Bowing his head, he assured, "I will be close."
***SG1***SG1***
"When you found SG10, what happened?"
"We took out the guy with the food tray. He had a key to the room they were in. We opened the door, they came out, we left."
"No opposition?"
Shaking his head, Jack sat back. "Nothing that we couldn't handle." A questioning look had him adding, "Two inside, three on way to the gate."
Glancing sideways at Nelson, French read the silent message for him to continue. "When Major Hitch was here, he seemed hesitant to speak about Major Carter. Do you have any idea what may be causing him to act like that?"
Carter's attempts to escape from him, pressing her against the wall to subdue her, her resistance and pleas to not to be taken into the room flashed in his mind. He had to keep a grip on her to keep her from running in flight the remainder of the time. "No." The word was flat, final. It drew raised eyebrows and a moment of silence before the next statement.
"When you came through the Stargate, video shows you shielding Major Carter and you refused to let anyone near either of you."
Jack's eyes narrowed at the statement. He waited to see where this was going.
"She was clinging to your back and Airmen in the room indicated you were yelling for them to drop their weapons, you and the Major were going to leave, and that you'd kill anyone that got in your way."
Looking around, Jack shifted in his chair. "There isn't much difference between the SGC and that place, looks-wise," he stated..
"So you thought you were still on the planet?"
A frown pulled on Jack's forehead. "Could be," Jack acquiesced. Flashes of Sam pressed to his back, an overwhelming need to protect her pulsing through him, flashing lights, and armed men advancing popped into his head. "I wasn't really thinking much at that point."
"I see," Colonel French said, watching O'Neill's face. Reading nothing unexpected in it, he scanned the report. Major Hitch had stumbled through with Captain Shelby and it has been another two minutes before O'Neill and Carter had followed. It had been SG10's IDC code used. "Do you remember dialing the gate?" Shaking his head, Jack told them he didn't. Tom made a note to ask Major Hitch who had completed this as Colonel Nelson took over the questioning.
"What do you remember about the infirmary?"
Jack shook his head, dipping it for a moment before speaking. "I remember flashes of the gate room and then Carter screaming, a man leaning over her. And," he drew out the word, "then him on the ground, others yelling, tackling me."
"You don't remember killing Lieutenant Faber?"
Sad eyes lifted to the other men. "No." A sad ironic smile tugged on the side of his mouth. He had killed so many in his career - their faces, the places, the sounds, smells, his thoughts, feelings, movements - all combining into a macabre scrapbook in his mind. Yet, the only one that truly mattered, the one that would define if there was any redeeming quality left or if he'd finally succumbed to the soulless killer that lurked in him, he had no memory of committing. "Doesn't change anything," he stated lowly, self loathing evident in his tone. "He's dead, I killed him, and there's not a damn thing that anyone can do to change those facts."
***SG1***SG1***
AN2: And another shell just cracked. Now collecting hugs for one Colonel.
