Undercurrents: Damned Distasteful Things

(Cor-Ai)

In the end, the only thing they had to do for Teal'c was wash all that paint off his body. Exactly what all the white and yellow lines indicated, Jack had no idea, but it reminded him of those diagrams in butchers shops about how a cow or a pig got carved up and which part became which cut of meat.

Jack shuddered.

Thinking about Teal'c's body marked out like a beast for carving - and the reasons for those actions - only brought back other memories.

Memories of things he'd done that he'd rather forget.

His history wasn't all honour and glory.

He'd intimated as much as he faced General Hammond and challenged the lines of responsibility for actions past and present.

The Captain had given him a few odd glances as he paced, waiting for the news to take back to Cartego. His revelation of a less-than-righteous past had surprised her - he'd sensed that as they went back through the gate. In the subsequent action of trying to prevent another slaughter of the Cartegans, her concerns had turned elsewhere, but when they walked back through the gate again, he felt her gaze on him, thoughtful and measuring.

Both Carter and Daniel had a skewed view of him and what he'd done in the service of the United States Air Force. The Captain had a better idea than Jackson, but even she would never have dreamed what her commanding officer had done in the line of duty.

Fourteen men lay dead where they'd fallen, dark blood pooling thickly under their prone bodies.

The scent of blood lingered in the air, tangy thickness spreading through the complex as the industrial strength air-conditioners pushed oxygen through their pipes. Jack could see the stiff nausea of his team-mates as they moved through the building, slim figures that moved as sure and fastidious as cats.

Their mission was accomplished. The men manning this research site were dead.

The 'test subjects' of the site were also dead - shot by the American ops team once their medical condition was made clear. None of them would make it out of the complex, let alone down the mountain and across the border to the pickup point.

One of them had lifted its head to look Jack in the eyes as he raised his gun.

And the pleading in the dark eyes threatened to ruin his carefully-held composure even as his finger tightened on the trigger.

No living thing should have eyes that hollow.

He was shaking. Shaking with the force of the memory of murder. His commander had called it 'mercy'.

But even 'mercy' could be murder - on both the living and the dead.

God, he hadn't thought of that mission in years.

The tinkle-splatter of the shower water continued beyond the locker room, and Jack didn't hear it as he scraped his hands through his hair, and stared down at the cement rendering on the floor.

There were a dozen other memories, blood, ice, fire, death. None of them were pleasant.

I have been ordered to do some damned distasteful things. I will not allow them to execute my friend.

Jack knew exactly where Teal'c was coming from. He understood Teal'c as the Pentagon didn't. He was no saint. He never had been.

To live with himself, he suppressed the memories, refusing to look at them, consider them. Nothing he'd done could be changed - it could only be forgiven or forgotten.

Forgiving himself was frequently beyond him. So Jack strove to forget.

Events like this only reminded him of all the sins weighing heavily on his soul. Yes, some of the responsibility went to those who ordered the deaths to be carried out, but the shame and the guilt was carried firmly on the shoulders of those who executed those orders. And you never lost it. Never.

Oh, it ceased to hurt after a while, ceased to eat at your soul - you had to find a way to shut the beast up, or else it would be forever hungering after you. Still, it waited for those moments of weakness when a wound opened and then leaped...

He'd been ordered to do damned distasteful things, but there were other memories that weighed down on him. Actions that had required no orders at all.

The inside of the brothel was warmer than the streets of Istanbul.

He opened his hand to look at the wad of small square packages that his team leader had thrust into his hand amidst the laughter of the other guys. "You're gonna need these, Jack." He was the youngest and newest on the team - the rookie, wet behind the ears. He'd carried himself well during this last mission - even the team leader had said so.

But in this...

Jack had a young wife back home, but it had been long months since he'd seen her and the memories of her touch were distant and faded. Around him, the other men of his team were 'talking' to the women of the brothel in a language that needed no words. Only he was standing here, gaping like an idiot at the woman who regarded him with knowing gazes.

There was a touch on his shoulder and a curvaceous young woman smiled up at him and spoke in heavily accented English. "Your first time?" Her eyes twinkled behind the veil of her lashes.

"Uh..."

Across the room, someone yelled, "Don't be a prude, Jack! You just escaped death. Ya gotta embrace life!"

He flushed and looked back at the woman, apologetic. "I've never... I mean, I have, but not..."

She took his hand, the faint scents of musky rose and patchouli stirring the air. Her fingers were soft and smooth and warm in his palm, and her smile was sensuous, "Then we will 'take it easy', yes?"

It was the first time he'd 'gone along' with the guys on his mission team.

It wasn't the last.

And sometimes he wondered about himself - about the kind of man who could kill a man whose eyes begged for mercy; about the kind of man who could carefully not think about the prostitute he fucked for physical gratification after a mission was accomplished, while his wife and young son waited for him to come home.

Teal'c was kindred - he knew how it felt to have guilt on your soul - professional and personal. Teal'c understood as Jack would never expect Carter or Daniel to understand.

And with the enthusiasm and energy of his two younger, fresher team-mates, Jack was grateful a thousand times for the solid sense and experience of his alien friend. When Daniel or Carter protested one of his orders, he didn't feel like quite such a hard-boiled colonel when Teal'c backed him up with the quiet practicality that the Jaffa had shown in all his interactions with the SGC.

It would, of course, be Teal'c who found him. Daniel was a firm believer in long showers - the result of spending a year on Abydos where the dust got everywhere.

"O'Neill."

It would, of course, be Teal'c who paused as he took in his friend's demeanour. Daniel would have glanced, pondered, then decided it was none of his business and taken himself off elsewhere.

"You are troubled."

He glanced up for a moment, meeting his friend's concerned gaze. "Yeah." He focused back on the floor again and didn't say anything more.

It would, of course, be Teal'c who initiated a conversation that was obliquely rather than directly related to Jack's thoughts. Daniel would have asked the kind of questions that left no room for hedging and Jack would have told the younger man to shut up and mind his own business.

"I must thank you, O'Neill."

That got his attention. "Why?"

Teal'c sat down on the bench opposite. "Because you would not abandon me today although you knew of my guilt."

"Oh." He dredged up a smile from somewhere deep inside. "I don't give up on my friends."

"Yet you do not hold the same standards when it comes to yourself."

When Teal'c knew he was right, he rarely bothered to ask questions.

Sometimes it was a real pain in the ass.

"Teal'c..."

"I am sorry to have reminded you of what I was, O'Neill." The apology, such as it was, was not contrite. Teal'c continued. "But the past cannot be changed. What I have done is part of what caused me to turn from the Goa'uld and join with you against them."

"So?" Jack decided to play dumb.

"You also have done things of which you are not proud, and if the chance was given for you to make reparation, you would have done so - even if the cost were your life." This time, the pause was measured and deliberate. "And you would have scorned our attempts to persuade you otherwise."

"And your point is...?" He was already playing dumb, why not add moody to it?

"If you doubt yourself, then you must also doubt me."

"I don't doubt you."

"Yet you doubt yourself."

Jack didn't say anything. He knew better than to try to fool Teal'c - mostly because the man wouldn't take any of the niceties that Jack fed Daniel or Carter when he wanted space. And Teal'c wasn't stupid. He was just very, very quiet.

He was also very, very unexpected when he chose to be.

"Nothing will change your past or mine, O'Neill."

The unspoken rider kept going in Jack's head, even when Teal'c stopped speaking. We may choose who we will be in the future.

When Jack made no comment or movement, the big man did not belabour the point, he merely stood up and began to get dressed.

And Jack remained where he was.

Thinking.

Thinking about the past he couldn't change - Charlie's death, separation from Sara, the men he'd killed, the things he'd done...

Thinking about where SG-1 and the SGC was going tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.

Thinking about where Jack was going tomorrow and the day after, and the day after.

As he'd told the General, he'd done damned distasteful things in his time serving in the US Air Force.

He would never do that to himself - and the people he cared about - again.

He swore that silently to himself as he stood and began to strip for his shower.

What was done was done. He couldn't revive the men he had killed, complete the missions he'd screwed up, take back his infidelities, or retract his words.

But he would do his best to make sure that he never found himself in that position again.

No more lies. No more deaths in the dark.

Never again.

*