Word
Count: 395
Rating:
PG
Category:
Angst.
Story Status:
Complete
Summary:
Set Season 4, after 'Miller's Crossing'. The questions burned
inside of
her, forcing her to ask against her better judgement...
Written for the SGA_flashfic
Burning Up challenge - sga_flashfic contains gen, ship and slash fics.
Beta:
Thank you to Jayne Perry for the beta-reading.
Burning
By Leesa Perrie
The questions burned inside of her, forcing her to ask against her
better judgement.
“Is it true?”
He couldn’t face her, eyes down and staring at the
laptop’s screen, his defence against her gaze.
“It is, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he answered, throat on fire, burning as he
tried to hold his emotions inside.
“Why?”
“She would have died and I…I had
nothing.” Shame
coloured his answer, his face flushing with heat at being forced to
admit it, especially to her.
“I’m surprised, and yet I shouldn’t
be.” She
studied him closely, knowing that he had changed since the first time
she’d met him; the memory burned onto her brain and hard to
forget.
“I had no other option. She would have
died,” he
repeated, trying to concentrate on his work while her eyes caused fiery
holes in his façade.
“And Sheppard…”
“Stopped me.”
“And then…”
“Nothing. You read the report. He was
showing Wallace the lab…”
“I read the report,” she agreed.
“Didn’t believe a word of it.”
He looked at her then, worry and fear alight in his eyes.
“You won’t…”
“I would have done what he did, if it had been a member of my
team.” And she would have, she knows that now,
having
questioned herself and seen the darkness hiding deep inside.
“Wallace agreed,” he said, pushing, explaining,
anger
simmering. “He volunteered. Wanted to
make things
right.” Close to flashpoint, he dared her to disagree and let
the
fire pour out.
“Yeah.” She believed that he believed
that. Needed
to, or else it would eat at him, burn him up inside. And she
didn’t doubt it was true; that Wallace had agreed, after
Sheppard
had given him the facts, no doubt tailored to inspire guilt, maybe even
despair.
She would have done the same for any of her team; Daniel, Cam,
Teal’c, Vala, Jack. Would have done more if needed,
and she
had no doubt that Sheppard would have gone further if he’d
had
to. Like Rodney, who had offered himself, who had been locked
out
of his lab to stop him, who had tried to enter using Bill’s
card…
She’d read all the reports; read between the lines.
How far would she go to save a team-mate, a friend?
The answer burned through her, stronger than the questions that started
this had.
She would do whatever it would take.
Whatever.
The End
