Serpents and Doves

Prisoners

I know what it is to be a woman in Hadante.

God knows what would have happened to Carter if it hadn't been for Linnaea's protection.

Much more than Daniel, for all his 'geekiness', Carter was vulnerable in Hadante. A woman - relatively young and certainly easy on the eyes - in a mixed-sex prison is better off with her throat cut.

In spite of what she did us, I'm grateful to Linnaea for giving Carter that immunity. Our efforts wouldn't have counted for much, otherwise.

It grates with Carter, I'm sure. After that whole episode with Turgid the Mongolian chieftain who decided he had a taste for blondes, she's been a bit prickly about being 'the girl' and 'needing protection' and all that stuff. Of course, her being female was what saved the SGC and Earth from Hathor, so I figure it evens out.

Of course, to Sam, requiring Linnaea's protection just adds insult to injury.

It makes a man wonder what the hell her previous commanders put her through to do this to her. Huh. Guess I don't need to wonder, I know what kind of treatment she got from previous commanders. Shit treatment. The armed forces are still a masochistic place for a woman to work and when a woman's got brainpower equivalent to the rest of your team put together and is a looker to boot, she's gonna take a lot of crap.

We've been lucky here, at least. Sure, we all have our little prejudices…prejudii? Daniel would know that one. Anyway, there are still a few of the 'women don't belong in frontline units' people around - and they briefly got louder after the thing with Turban…Turgid? Well, they got louder after that mission - luckily Hammond knows a good officer when he sees one and didn't listen to the rabble-rousers. I got to keep the blonde brainiac on my team, which suits me fine. Put she and Daniel together and the two of them gabble on like a couple of turkeys. They'll also find a solution for just about any problem our team gets into. I could do without the technobabble - but I can't do without my life.

Sam wasn't in the best of moods about Hadante and Linnaea - especially since whatever Linnaea did to the system she did good. There isn't any record of the planet she went to since she had the system set up to erase her destination as soon as the wormhole closed behind her.

'All debts have now been paid', my ass!

We get her off that hole of a prison planet, using her little glowy plants and she offers us some of the chemical formulae of her miracle herbology, then turns around and knifes us in the back. God only knows where she is out in the galaxy now. Carter estimates she was out for at least fifteen minutes, which meant the 'nice little old lady' had free-range access to our computer system - and all the data in it. Wonderful.

So, like I said, Carter's been in the bitch-queen of all moods since then.

Daniel bearded the lioness in her den and came back smarting after Carter snapped at him - which shows exactly how bad a mood she's in. I can't remember Carter ever snapping at anyone before and Daniel can usually take just about anything on the chin.

Anyway, Daniel knew she didn't mean it, but he was wary of going back for round two, so to speak. Guess who got the job? All part of being a good commander. Yeah, right. I told Teal'c to come in and sweep up the remains if I wasn't back in an hour. The big guy responded with, "You have nothing to fear, O'Neill. Major Carter holds a great deal of respect for you and would never harm you."

In spite of a year serving alongside Carter, Teal'c still has a lot to learn about Earth women.

She was in the control room (where else?), sitting at the computers doing a systems check or something like that. I don't get it. There are technicians to do that sort of thing, so the technical expert on the Stargate doesn't need to do it - but Sam loves it. Go figure.

I tapped her on the shoulder, "Carter?"

"Sir?"

"Mind if I have a word?"

"Sir…the systems diagnostics…"

"Sergeant…" I squinted, "…Davis can take care of it. That's what he's being paid for."

"But sir…"

"Carter."

Her shoulders slumped and she nodded at Davis to take over her work. She also instructed him on exactly what to do. Can anyone say 'control freak'?

"Sir?"

"Let's go up to the briefing room, Captain."

She looked like someone on their way to be executed, choosing to stand when I indicated the chairs. The first words out of her mouth confirmed what I thought: she blamed herself for the whole sorry mess.

"I should have seen it coming, sir. She was too good to be true."

I sighed. And here I thought I had the monopoly on self-flagellation. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and, in the process, nearly bought the farm, too. It's not a nice state of mind - even if her guilt is more intellectual than emotional.

One thing I've learned about commanding a team over the years: if you're close like SG-1, you can't let the issues smoulder. Get them out, scream, rant, rave, yell, bluster, bluff - but don't let it simmer. If they come back they'll do so at the most inconvenient of times - probably when you really don't need them coming back up again.

So it's time to meet this particular demon of failure with my Captain and unmask it for the illusion it is.

"Okay, Carter. Simple question-and-answer time. I'll make it easy for any rocket scientists we happen to have around here but…"

"Astrophysicist, sir."

"Huh?" I knew perfectly well what she was saying, but the exchange helped ease the tension in her. I wasn't there to give her a hard time - I was there to give her a hand up.

"Astrophysicist - not rocket-scientist."

"Whatever." I leaned forward, "Okay, question one. Who's the one trained in Black Ops around here?"

"Uh…you, sir…but…"

"Ah-ah-ah! Next question. Who is the member of SG-1 most likely to shoot first and ask questions later?"

"Well…you, sir…but I…"

"Well done, Captain! Two out of two. Question three: Who's the paranoid one around here?"

"Sir…I should have…"

I leaned over, cutting her off with a confiding whisper: "I'll give you a hint." And I pointed my finger at me.

She smiled. Good to know I can still make a woman laugh, even if I don't get any action these days.

"It's not your fault for not seeing Linnaea for what she was, Carter. She had us fooled. All of us. Even me - and I should have been the one to see it coming. You don't end up on a prison planet for being a nice person."

"We did, sir."

Trust her to come up with a retort for that one. "Okay, bad example. Look, I don't blame you for not seeing it. Neither does Hammond, Daniel, Teal'c, Doc, or anyone on the base who fell afoul of her. She was good at what she did, she took us in. We all got fooled together. Not a nice feeling, but there you have it. It is - and I would really like to emphasise this - not your fault."

If she'd been a schoolkid, she'd have scuffed the floor. As it was, she stared at it like her life depended on it.

"Are we clear on whose fault this whole mess isn't, Sam?"

"Yes, sir."

"You wanna look me in the eye and say that again, Captain?" I asked softly.

She raised her head and gave me the full-force of those baby blues. "Is is no-one's fault that Linnaea fooled us." And maybe she saw more than I wanted, because she added, "Not even yours, sir."

Now how the hell did she know that I'd done my own round of the blame-game for not being the suspicious bastard I usually am? For being willing to make my deal with the devil to get out of Hadante before I had to watch either Sam or Daniel in a position where I couldn't protect them? For not asking how a nice old lady managed to keep a prison full of dangerous men afraid of her?

I have no idea how Carter knew, only that she did.

And I was grateful for the reprieve, even if I didn't entirely believe it myself.

Anyway, it looked like the guilt trip was more or less over, so I let her go back to the computer stuff and even stood and watched for a while until the techs started giving me weird looks. Then I went back up to the briefing room for a coffee. Propping up team-members takes a lot out of you.

As I drank my coffee, I had a good, long think about the situation.

Sam's a smart cookie - the smartest I know - but she's not a liar or a deceiver. There's no guile in her, no deceit. She doesn't quite draw a straight line in the ground from her to her goal - that's Daniel's specialty - but she's very direct and very honest. Is it any wonder she didn't recognise Linnaea's two-faced deception?

I think (and this is really stretching the limits of my perceptions, let me tell you!) Linnaea freaked Sam just a little. She freaked us all, of course - a sweet old lady who turned out to be the 'Destroyer of Worlds'. You could practically hear the capital letters from the way the escapee pronounced the title. But Linnaea freaked Carter a little worse than the rest of us - because the Captain saw facets of herself in the old woman.

Not the bitterness, the vengefulness, or the propensity to destroy worlds; but the brilliance the woman showed in her medical studies and the respect the other prisoners had for her. Of course, Linnaea used fear to inspire their respectfulness rather than actually earning their respect, while Carter just goes about her job - and does it damn well. For which I and many other people on this base are extremely grateful, even if we're not falling at her feet to show her how much we appreciate it.

And the two women are miles apart.

Linnaea was a snake in the grass - not a Goa'uld but still no peaches 'n cream - and we got bitten good.

Carter's a long way from a serpent - thank God. Not quite the innocent, but certainly no deceiver.

And I'd like to keep my 2IC that way, thanks.

*