15
They had just returned from having the bloods taken when Jon called Jack, Sam went to call the security office to turn off the shield as Jack stepped into the small closet. He was back within the minute and the shield was reactivated.
Mark looked at the young man who walked in curiously. He would have been able to spot that he was an O'Neill. Even though the face was so unlined and smooth and the hair was a medium brown, the eyes in his face showed his true age. He walked into the room, his eyes sweeping it once and Mark would bet he could describe everything that he saw, down to how many spots Marks tie had.
He slumped into a chair and put his feet on the desk, Jack looked at him irritated but didn’t say anything.
Sam walked in from Dixons office, Jon jumped to his feet "Carter" he said and Mark at last believed that this WAS Jack O'Neill, the way he spoke his sisters name was exactly the same.
"You've grown" she said looking the youth up and down
"Yeah well, won't reach the lofty heights of this one for another year" he said, "late bloomer" he winked at her and grabbed her around the waist and planted a kiss on her!
Jack jumped to his feet "HEY!" he said
"Keep your blood pressure down old man" he grinned hugely. "I understand he finally knocked you up… wasn't sure he had it in him" Jack was turning purple, Sam smiled at the antics of the young man.
"Stop winding him up Jon" she said, pushing him back to the chair he had come out of, he slumped back down and picked up a pen off the desk and started dismantling it.
"Have a job for you, if you can spare the time from your snake hunt?" Jack said, Jon shrugged and glanced at Mark, he moved his head sideways in a typical O'Neill mannerism, "Oh, sorry, Jon, Mark Carter, Mark, Jon"
"Carter, as in…?"
"Yeah, he works here now"
"Thought Jacob said you hated the service?" the youths eyes pierced into him as if reading his soul.
"Yeah well, some things can change your mind"
"Sorry to hear about dad" he said softly to the Carter siblings. They nodded their heads.
"Snakes are getting thin on the ground at the moment, I finished up one so I could come here, and I don't have a lead on my next yet"
"That make 31?" Jack said
"36" he clarified "37 probably but I was in a rush, the snake is definitely dead, but the man may live"
"So," his mind seemed as incapable of keeping on one subject as his hands were on being still "Job?"
"Got a choice, we have several people who need guarding, depending who you talk to."
"Go on…" he said picking up another pen.
"We need bodyguards for Sam and the kids, I was going to offer you a choice but as you can't keep your hands to yourself I think you should guard the kids" he grinned, "they have shields so that you don't have to worry about Thor or anyone beaming them up, in fact we all have them, he reached into his pocket and drew out another St. Christopher bracelet, he tossed it to the younger man, who caught it automatically.
"Thor says your genes need protecting almost as much as ours, there's always a chance that you will meet someone with an ancient gene either as a dominant or recessive and decide to breed, Carter will explain how to use it"
He slipped it on his wrist, accepting what he had been told without comment or look.
"Kids?" he said and Jack got to his feet, Mark stayed at the table and watched them leave.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He spent the rest of the day thinking about the younger version of Jack O'Neill, the person not that long out of childhood, who had calmly admitted to killing 36 or 37 people in cold blood. Mark knew that being in the forces could mean people got killed and they killed in return, but the way that youth calmly counted how many he had assassinated, and how no one in the room seemed to be bothered by the fact troubled Mark enormously.
Later he asked his sister if he could talk to her privately, she took him to her lab and closed the door. She reached up and pulled the plug on the security camera, something he would never have thought of doing.
"Jon is troubling you?" He should have known that she would know what was bothering him, though he was the elder by a couple of years she had always been the one to look after HIM!
"It's just… How many people have you killed in your time in the AF?"
She closed her eyes, he wondered if it was because she didn’t want to tell him, or because there were that many she didn't know. "Mark… you have to understand what we do is keeping the whole earth safe, the people Jon is killing are trying to actually sell earth out, and several of them were responsible for killing whole planets of Jaffa, millions of innocents!" he had grown up hearing the greater good speech, he wasn't sure he could hear it again from her.
"You didn't answer the question" he pointed out
"I can't answer" she said, "I can tell you that I have never killed anyone who was not trying to kill me, but if you want numbers, I can't tell. I have been fighting this war for over 9 years Mark, I've blown up ships full of people, I even blew a fleet up once! Face to face there have been…lots."
"How can you do it though? How can you live with it? Are you as hard as he is?"
"Jack…Jon is a special case Mark, he is good at what he does, but he never just kills for pleasure, he always has orders and the men he is taking out would have our children as slaves!"
"But he is so… cold"
"He isn't really, I know, I sleep next to him, Jack has not had a single night without a nightmare since we met, and that included the nights we slept off-world."
Mark paused, maybe he had gone overboard, he needed a break, he had been working without a day off for 10 full months now. Maybe it was about time he had a vacation, but how could he take a holiday with the current situation?
He left the mountain early and drove home in time to pick up his children, and the young Dixons.
He lay in bed that night, Jane had fallen to sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow, but he could not put to rest his unease about everything.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He woke the next morning slightly more at ease… he had had a very strange dream, a youth was running around 1920s Germany killing Hitler, over and over. Every time he succeeded, another one appeared. He got the message his subconscious was sending him, he now knew enough about the Goa'uld and the Trust to know it would be worse than the Holocaust if they were allowed to gather power unchecked.
He went to work in a better frame of mind, it was Janes day off again and she offered to help the O'Neill nurses at the house. Sam was expected on base for interviewing tutors, and Jack was going to be in DC all day in meetings.
Dixon had just finished a blow by blow of why the ref sucked so bad in the match he had taped when he was on duty a few days ago when Jon knocked on the door.
"Dave… got a spare Asgard transporter stone?" he asked
"Sorry no, why?" Dixon replied
"Damn, need a car then, I stoned here and need to get down to the house." Dixon gave him a slip and told him to help himself to the pool cars "The old guy didn't tell me where the house was so I take it it's my old place?"
"Yeah Jack… Jon, sorry, it's the old place, just not the old house." The younger man gave him a puzzled look and then left the room.
"What did the old house look like?" Mark asked him,
"Same as yours" Dixon answered, and then went back to the important question of whether the ref was blind or just stupid!
15 minutes later a petrified security guard rang the General to tell him someone had hotwired General O'Neills truck and had driven it off base! Dixon called Jack to call Jon about it, he was NOT going to get into an argument with either Jack O'Neill!
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