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waldos_writingsTitle: From the Unofficial Reports of Colonel Jack O'Neill - Enemy Within
Posted on or about: August 11, 2000
Rating: PG
Pairing: Jack/Daniel, eventually
Word Count: 1641
Summary: "If anyone ever knew I was doing this, I would have them taken out and shot." Jack takes a page from Daniel.
Okay... so much for the idea that I’m not going to keep one of these damn diary things.
Doctor Tavish - all around nice gal and base shrink - thinks it’s a good idea for a while. And if I learned anything from my last go around with shrinks after Abydos, it’s that it’s easier to comply and get it over with than to argue and have to do it anyway.
General Hammond thinks I’m having a hard time dealing with Kawalsky’s death, thinks revisiting the shrink will help. And well... he’s right - about the first part anyway. To a degree.
The SGC is hardly the first place where I’ve lost men under my command. But it’s the first time I’ve really had to watch one suffer before it happened. And it’s the first time I’ve given an order that directly led to his death.
I’ve ordered men into combat, into covert ops situations where we knew that some of our boys wouldn’t be coming home. But the trigger was actually pulled by the enemy. And as lame as this sounds, that is something of a comfort. Yeah, I put them in front of the bullet, but I didn’t write their name on it. Or some stupid metaphor like that. Daniel’s the guy for fancy language - a bunch of them in fact - I’m just a dumb soldier. A dumb soldier who pulled the proverbial trigger. I told Teal’c to hold his head in the event horizon ... and I ordered Davis to shut the gate down. I literally chopped the back of his head off.
Teal’c told me later that he 'instantly went slack and fell over, dead'. Jaffa’s have a strange way of telling someone, “He didn’t feel any pain,” but I got it.
It is astounding the number of ways people have tried to tell me that this isn’t my fault. Daniel tried to tell me that I actually did him a favor. Kawalsky told us that he wanted to wake up as himself or not at all. Daniel says I was just ... granting his wish. I damn near hit the man. I mean, he didn’t put it that way, but I just wasn’t in the mood for sympathy. No matter how well phrased.
You know, I really didn’t need two crises at once. Dividing my attention between a friend who’s dying because there’s a Goa’uld inside of him and a friend who’s being sent to die - because there’s a Goa’uld inside of him - really sucked.
I’m not used to death-bed vigils. Like I said, I’ve lost my share of men, but most of them never made it back to a bed. Sometimes we’d have a chance for a few parting words - ‘tell my wife I love her’ sorts of things - but sitting there and watching Charlie get ready to die, facing the idea that he might not come out of that surgery with a hell of a lot more calm than I felt...
I feel like I should have said something... more. He laughed at my joke about the stereo, but I still kind of felt it was inappropriate. What do you say to a friend when you know there’s nothing you can do to make him less scared or take away the pain or stop him from dying?
All I could do was hold his hand and let him know that I wasn’t going to give up on him.
And then, when we thought it was all over - but of course it’s never over, is it? - I had to be the one to give the order.
God that sucked!
Daniel tried to help. Both of us. I know he and Kawalsky were getting to be pretty good friends. Kawalsky doesn’t have the knee-jerk reaction to scientists in general, like I do. Kawalsky *didn’t* have... Damn that’s going to be hard to get used to.
Anyway, I wasn’t always sure who Daniel was trying to give his support to. It seemed like anytime I had to go down and give Kawalsky bad news, Daniel was there. Standing behind me and helping me say the hard words. I was glad, though, that he wasn’t around when General Hammond badgered that damn thing into talking to us. Daniel doesn’t need to know what could be happening to Sha’re. As it is he’s having nightmares. I don’t know how I know that. It’s not like he wakes up screaming or anything... but there’s something about the way he looks even more hungover in the mornings now than he did when he first came back that makes me think so. And he seems to avoid going to bed. I got up at 2:30 last night to get some water and his light was on. I knocked on my way back through the house and he was still completely dressed. So I know it wasn’t a matter of waking up in the middle of the night like I had. He said something about getting a particularly tricky conditional verb tense sorted out (like that meant something to me) before he’d be able to get any sleep. And to put it succinctly: I don’t believe him. But it’s not like I know him well enough to push it.
When he heard about what happened in the Gateroom he came flying into the infirmary. By then the doc had all ready pronounced Kawalsky and I was leaning on a wall staring at his body. Daniel tripped over his own feet trying to come around a corner too fast and almost ran into me. I grabbed his arm to keep him from falling and once he’d recovered his balance, he twisted his arm so that he could put his hand on my arm. And we just stood there for a while. For once in his life Daniel seemed to have understood the value of not saying anything.
And I was glad to not have to be standing there alone.
I know I’ve been more than just a little snippish lately and Daniel’s been catching the brunt of it. He’s even more quiet at home now than he was. I try and catch myself and apologize, but sometimes I don’t even realize what I’m doing until wraps his arms around himself and turns away so I can’t see his face. Then I want to kick myself.
Day before yesterday I got so involved in my own pity party that I didn’t bother to go drag him out of his lab at the end of the day. I remember sitting at my desk thinking ‘if he wants to be a geek, let him be a geek, I don’t feel like putting up with his sympathetic crap tonight anyway.’ Now, how cold is that? This is a guy who I’d wager understands loss as well as any military man I’ve ever met and I couldn’t be ‘bothered’ to accept his compassion.
I was pretty miserable that whole night. The house was too quiet again, and I knew I’d hurt his feelings by leaving him on the base. I didn’t sleep worth shit - and all of that was trying to catch up to me at the funeral yesterday. I was glad I didn’t have to say anything because I felt like I’d tried to swallow a baseball.
I wanted to apologize to Daniel after the funeral, but I couldn’t find him for a while. When I did, he was in the mess with Carter and Teal’c and I wasn’t going to... have a scene in the mess hall. So I just slapped him on the shoulder and told him the train was leaving and if he wanted to be on it he better grab his gear and head topside.
I think he was shocked, because he didn’t say anything at first . Didn’t even give me the standard argument. Just told me he’d see me outside in ten minutes. I never did apologize. I guess I’m doing that ‘guy thing’ Sara would accuse me of during the divorce proceedings. Ignoring something, not apologizing if I could possibly get away with it, until enough distance was between me and it that it wouldn’t do any good to apologize. I should probably try and stop that.
Teal’c’s on the team now. Which is cool. At least one of our resident civilians seems to be willing to learn US Military protocol. I’ve been trying to acclimate him to our world and our culture - mostly our language and the fact that we mean maybe a third of what we say literally - and it’s actually been fun. But I’m not telling Daniel that. He’ll just try and get me to start learning about other cultures and stuff and... well, I only like it when I have the upper hand. When I’m the one laughing at the dumb mistakes and misunderstandings. The laugher not the laughee.
I called Marlin and told him to expect Teal’c before our next mission. Also told him to schedule him and Daniel for different training times. He wanted to know why and I gave him my best Officer Voice, “Because I said so, dammit” and hung up on him. I just don’t think he needs to know that I don’t think Daniel will want to have Teal’c around watching him miss the target. Daniel’s used to being ahead of the learning curve. And yet he has, like, almost no self-confidence. Let him be embarrassed with as small an audience as possible.
We’re scheduled to ship out to P3A-575 in about half an hour and I haven’t told Carter or Daniel that we got Teal’c put on the team. I want to see their faces when he shows up in the gate room in fatigues and field gear.
Speaking of which, guess I better gear up before I read this over and burn it.
Posted on or about: August 11, 2000
Rating: PG
Pairing: Jack/Daniel, eventually
Word Count: 1641
Summary: "If anyone ever knew I was doing this, I would have them taken out and shot." Jack takes a page from Daniel.
Okay... so much for the idea that I’m not going to keep one of these damn diary things.
Doctor Tavish - all around nice gal and base shrink - thinks it’s a good idea for a while. And if I learned anything from my last go around with shrinks after Abydos, it’s that it’s easier to comply and get it over with than to argue and have to do it anyway.
General Hammond thinks I’m having a hard time dealing with Kawalsky’s death, thinks revisiting the shrink will help. And well... he’s right - about the first part anyway. To a degree.
The SGC is hardly the first place where I’ve lost men under my command. But it’s the first time I’ve really had to watch one suffer before it happened. And it’s the first time I’ve given an order that directly led to his death.
I’ve ordered men into combat, into covert ops situations where we knew that some of our boys wouldn’t be coming home. But the trigger was actually pulled by the enemy. And as lame as this sounds, that is something of a comfort. Yeah, I put them in front of the bullet, but I didn’t write their name on it. Or some stupid metaphor like that. Daniel’s the guy for fancy language - a bunch of them in fact - I’m just a dumb soldier. A dumb soldier who pulled the proverbial trigger. I told Teal’c to hold his head in the event horizon ... and I ordered Davis to shut the gate down. I literally chopped the back of his head off.
Teal’c told me later that he 'instantly went slack and fell over, dead'. Jaffa’s have a strange way of telling someone, “He didn’t feel any pain,” but I got it.
It is astounding the number of ways people have tried to tell me that this isn’t my fault. Daniel tried to tell me that I actually did him a favor. Kawalsky told us that he wanted to wake up as himself or not at all. Daniel says I was just ... granting his wish. I damn near hit the man. I mean, he didn’t put it that way, but I just wasn’t in the mood for sympathy. No matter how well phrased.
You know, I really didn’t need two crises at once. Dividing my attention between a friend who’s dying because there’s a Goa’uld inside of him and a friend who’s being sent to die - because there’s a Goa’uld inside of him - really sucked.
I’m not used to death-bed vigils. Like I said, I’ve lost my share of men, but most of them never made it back to a bed. Sometimes we’d have a chance for a few parting words - ‘tell my wife I love her’ sorts of things - but sitting there and watching Charlie get ready to die, facing the idea that he might not come out of that surgery with a hell of a lot more calm than I felt...
I feel like I should have said something... more. He laughed at my joke about the stereo, but I still kind of felt it was inappropriate. What do you say to a friend when you know there’s nothing you can do to make him less scared or take away the pain or stop him from dying?
All I could do was hold his hand and let him know that I wasn’t going to give up on him.
And then, when we thought it was all over - but of course it’s never over, is it? - I had to be the one to give the order.
God that sucked!
Daniel tried to help. Both of us. I know he and Kawalsky were getting to be pretty good friends. Kawalsky doesn’t have the knee-jerk reaction to scientists in general, like I do. Kawalsky *didn’t* have... Damn that’s going to be hard to get used to.
Anyway, I wasn’t always sure who Daniel was trying to give his support to. It seemed like anytime I had to go down and give Kawalsky bad news, Daniel was there. Standing behind me and helping me say the hard words. I was glad, though, that he wasn’t around when General Hammond badgered that damn thing into talking to us. Daniel doesn’t need to know what could be happening to Sha’re. As it is he’s having nightmares. I don’t know how I know that. It’s not like he wakes up screaming or anything... but there’s something about the way he looks even more hungover in the mornings now than he did when he first came back that makes me think so. And he seems to avoid going to bed. I got up at 2:30 last night to get some water and his light was on. I knocked on my way back through the house and he was still completely dressed. So I know it wasn’t a matter of waking up in the middle of the night like I had. He said something about getting a particularly tricky conditional verb tense sorted out (like that meant something to me) before he’d be able to get any sleep. And to put it succinctly: I don’t believe him. But it’s not like I know him well enough to push it.
When he heard about what happened in the Gateroom he came flying into the infirmary. By then the doc had all ready pronounced Kawalsky and I was leaning on a wall staring at his body. Daniel tripped over his own feet trying to come around a corner too fast and almost ran into me. I grabbed his arm to keep him from falling and once he’d recovered his balance, he twisted his arm so that he could put his hand on my arm. And we just stood there for a while. For once in his life Daniel seemed to have understood the value of not saying anything.
And I was glad to not have to be standing there alone.
I know I’ve been more than just a little snippish lately and Daniel’s been catching the brunt of it. He’s even more quiet at home now than he was. I try and catch myself and apologize, but sometimes I don’t even realize what I’m doing until wraps his arms around himself and turns away so I can’t see his face. Then I want to kick myself.
Day before yesterday I got so involved in my own pity party that I didn’t bother to go drag him out of his lab at the end of the day. I remember sitting at my desk thinking ‘if he wants to be a geek, let him be a geek, I don’t feel like putting up with his sympathetic crap tonight anyway.’ Now, how cold is that? This is a guy who I’d wager understands loss as well as any military man I’ve ever met and I couldn’t be ‘bothered’ to accept his compassion.
I was pretty miserable that whole night. The house was too quiet again, and I knew I’d hurt his feelings by leaving him on the base. I didn’t sleep worth shit - and all of that was trying to catch up to me at the funeral yesterday. I was glad I didn’t have to say anything because I felt like I’d tried to swallow a baseball.
I wanted to apologize to Daniel after the funeral, but I couldn’t find him for a while. When I did, he was in the mess with Carter and Teal’c and I wasn’t going to... have a scene in the mess hall. So I just slapped him on the shoulder and told him the train was leaving and if he wanted to be on it he better grab his gear and head topside.
I think he was shocked, because he didn’t say anything at first . Didn’t even give me the standard argument. Just told me he’d see me outside in ten minutes. I never did apologize. I guess I’m doing that ‘guy thing’ Sara would accuse me of during the divorce proceedings. Ignoring something, not apologizing if I could possibly get away with it, until enough distance was between me and it that it wouldn’t do any good to apologize. I should probably try and stop that.
Teal’c’s on the team now. Which is cool. At least one of our resident civilians seems to be willing to learn US Military protocol. I’ve been trying to acclimate him to our world and our culture - mostly our language and the fact that we mean maybe a third of what we say literally - and it’s actually been fun. But I’m not telling Daniel that. He’ll just try and get me to start learning about other cultures and stuff and... well, I only like it when I have the upper hand. When I’m the one laughing at the dumb mistakes and misunderstandings. The laugher not the laughee.
I called Marlin and told him to expect Teal’c before our next mission. Also told him to schedule him and Daniel for different training times. He wanted to know why and I gave him my best Officer Voice, “Because I said so, dammit” and hung up on him. I just don’t think he needs to know that I don’t think Daniel will want to have Teal’c around watching him miss the target. Daniel’s used to being ahead of the learning curve. And yet he has, like, almost no self-confidence. Let him be embarrassed with as small an audience as possible.
We’re scheduled to ship out to P3A-575 in about half an hour and I haven’t told Carter or Daniel that we got Teal’c put on the team. I want to see their faces when he shows up in the gate room in fatigues and field gear.
Speaking of which, guess I better gear up before I read this over and burn it.