Fic: Minor Characters I: Odd Man Out (4/19)
Title: Minor Characters I: Odd Man Out (4/19)
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: action/adventure
Summary: Everyone knows SG1... but what about the other teams on the roster? Here's one of them. Meet Major Thomas Moore, Captain Laura Greenspan, Lieutenant Maureen Reece and Master Sergeant Simon DeLisle - also known as SG10 - and accompany them on the mission that made them a team.
A/N: It's been ages, I know. But yeah... work and stuff and everything. And I promise, after this chapter there will be some actual plot. Really.
( Odd Man Out 1/19 )
( Odd Man Out 2/19 )
( Odd Man Out 3/19 )
Chapter Four
Reece
I know what they think. I know that Major Moore thinks I’m a complete failure as soldier, I know that Laura thinks that somewhere inside me there is a soldier waiting just to be called out, and I know that Dee thinks I’m a nice girl, even for a Marine. I can see it in the Major’s eyes when he’s giving his account of what happened on P4X-639 and throwing sideway glances at me. His gray eyes tell me very clearly that he thinks what happened was at least partly my fault. And I can’t even blame him because he’s right.
I should have noticed that guy with the knife creeping up behind me. But I let myself fall for one of the oldest tricks in history; the “Look, there’s a monster with three heads to your left!”-trick. All right, so that wasn’t exactly what that treacherous bastard of a local told me but you get the picture, right? Right. I got it the same moment I felt a blade protruding my left shoulder.
I can’t quite remember what came then but the crude mess of memories in my head tells me that all hell broke lose as the Major fired at my attacker with his P90, Laura rushed through the crossfire toward me and Dee started methodically firing into the dark forest. And after that there is only blackness until I woke up yesterday in the infirmary of the SGC. You see, I am the failure Major Moore sees in me.
“Lieutenant Reece?” It’s General O’Neill’s voice that cuts short my string of thoughts. Damn it, been drifting off at a debriefing again.
“Errr… yes, sir?” The Major looks at me, contempt at my inability to stay focused on a meeting very clear in his eyes.
“General O’Neill asked you if you had anything to add.” Why should I? He laid out how I failed. Anything I would have said would just appear as a feeble attempt to play it down. Nobody would believe me anyway.
“No, sir. Nothing to add, sir.” O’Neill cocks an eyebrow.
“You sure, Lieutenant? Captain Greenspan contradicts the Major’s judgment of how you handled the situation. As does the Sergeant. I’d be very interested in your judgment.” Why does he have to do that? Isn’t it enough that Major Moore told him I’m a failure? Why do I have to embarrass myself again in front of the whole team?
“I’m… I have to agree with Major Moore, sir. My failure was that I didn’t pay enough attention to my surroundings, and that I let myself have my attention diverted by a trick that was even age-old at the time the Goa’uld came about.” Dear me, the only thing missing now is “I’m a disgrace to the Corps, sir”, but I’m sure Major Moore will add that gladly to his written mission report.
Instead of asking again, O’Neill just raises his eyebrow again and says, “Right. Just don’t get stabbed on your next mission, Reece. Does anyone else want to add anything?” Everyone is shaking their heads. “All right. Dismissed. No… wait. Everyone but Major Moore is dismissed. And everyone is on down time for the rest of the week.” Great. Four days of research time. There’s this absolutely exciting… “And when I say down time, I mean down time. No research, for anyone of you. No germs for you, Greenspan, no hieroglyphs for you, Reece, and no C4 for you, DeLisle. If I see anyone of you in any of the SGC’s facilities that are not for recreational uses I’ll ban you from the lab-section until the end of down time personally. Am I understood?” Laura looks like she’s going to strangle the General, and Dee looks like he just had a very clear idea of who he is blowing up next. And me, I have a string of curses in at least ten different languages the length of the Mississippi River going through my head.
But all of us just nod and say “Yes, sir,” in unison.
He waves us out, and when we are in the corridor again, Laura says, “Bloody bastard of a…” but I cut her off, saying, “Capt… Laura, he’s still the base commander, I don’t think it would be wise to…”
She knits her eyebrows in a frown, then suddenly smiles and answers, “Oh, I wasn’t talking about the General.”
“Then who…”
“I think, the Captain meant Major Moore,” Dee cuts in and Laura nods.
“Oh,” is all I can say and both of them chuckle lightly at me. What private joke did I miss this time, huh?
Laura is leading us to the mess hall as she explains it to me, “He’s been way too harsh on you. No, I don’t want to hear it. You made a mistake any of us could have made. None of us would have had the ears sharp enough to hear that guy coming over the prattling of that fake guide. We would all have fallen for it.”
I shake my head and say a little too obstinate for my own taste, “The Major wouldn’t.”
A little, sad smile flies over Laura’s face before she answers in her usual casual way, “Maureen, Tom’s had three years of Black Ops training and routine. He was on missions which reports will be classified for at least another ten years, even for us. You can’t compare yourself to that.” All right, I knew that in the end everyone would think me a failure. I’m not very far away from the point I’ll all tell them how sick I am of them having to tell me over and over again.
Come to think of it, this is the point where I’m sick of it. “I know that, all right? You don’t have to tell me over and over again how much of a failure I am. Major Moore said enough back there in the briefing room. I know I’ll never be the soldier the team needs me to be. It’s not my fault, I got here, all right? I got ordered here. I was just a replacement, I’m not meant to be a permanent member. I can put in a request for an immediate transfer if that’s what you want. And maybe I don’t have to do that, maybe it’s what O’Neill wanted to talk about with the Major.”
Dear me…I’m not… usually I’m not the kind of people that tend to go off on an little thing, and… Christ, this is so embarrassing. Laura and Dee are standing there and staring and… and then Laura says very quietly, “Are you done, Maureen?”
Oh good God, now there will be insubordination added to my file as well. “I… I’m sorry, I just… I have to…” And I do the only thing seeming possible right now. I try to run.
Well, try to being the operative word here, because Laura’s hand on my shoulder very firmly stops me and turns me around. “Why haven’t you told us how you feel about the way Tom treats you?”
Ack, she’s in her concerned-friend-mode. Combine that with the fact that she takes her duty as our team medic very serious, and there’s practically no way to escape her. “I… didn’t… I thought…” I look at Dee for help but he seems as interested as Laura. I should have known. Dee has taken it upon himself to be some kind of older brother for me. But dammit, I don’t need a concerned friend or an older brother.
“Come on, I think we need to go somewhere a little more private.”, Laura says, and in an instant I’m her and Dee’s captive. She’s changed the direction of the walk from cafeteria to… her base quarters, obviously. There’s one thing you have to admire about Laura: she’s truly an officer, a natural leader. She gives orders, people follow. As easy as this.
And Dee… well, Dee would follow her even without orders. Everyone with just a little observation skill can see that he’s head over heels for her. It’s in the way he looks at her when he thinks no one else is watching or in the way he tries to make her laugh constantly or in the way… All right, you got my meaning, right? Anyway, he could do worse, I suppose.
I think he just has to make the right move at the right time and at the right place and Laura would be all over him. As we walk towards her quarters, she’s fiddling with her hair and giving Dee smiles and everything. I’d bet a month’s salary on the fact that she has it as bad as Dee. I wonder if the Major has seen any of that. And how he’d react if he knew what goes through the heads of both of them.
“Come in, both of you.” She opens a door and gestures for us to get in. Ever the gentleman and NCO, Dee tells me to go in first and then follows. Laura is the last and as she closes the doors, she tells us to sit at the bed. I take a look around and I hope it doesn’t look like prying but I always thought that people’s rooms show a bit of how they are, too.
Laura seems to be a real family girl, because there are a lot of pictures of her with a some men or boys that must be the brothers she told us about when we were on a mission. And she appears to be a very sporting person, seeing as there are some medals on the wall.
“Alright, Maureen, now tell us. Why didn’t you say anything about the way Tom treated you for the last three months?” Ack. Psychiatrist voice again. Dammit, Laura, your call sign is “Germs”, not “Shrink” or “Nuts”, you’re a virologist. I look at Dee, and he gestures me to go on, saying, “You know what I think about you. You won’t change that by talking about one of my superiors. And you know I wouldn’t give away anything of this to him.”
They both look at me expectantly again, and Laura comes to sit beside me, putting a hand on my shoulder, squeezing lightly, saying, “I know you were trained to keep quiet about pain or irritation, be it physical or psychic. And to follow and respect your commanding officer, no matter what. We were trained the same way. But this is different, Maureen. We are a team, highly dependent on each other. And because we are such a small team, if there’s something wrong with one of us, the rest is affected as well. Come on, both me and Dee have seen Tom being unnecessary hard on you at times, but we never did anything because you put on your “Brave little Marine”-face and shut us all out, giving as the impression that none of this affected you. Now, stop being a brave little Marine and be Maureen.” I swallow. And suddenly a dam inside me breaks, and I start spilling it out. And dammit, I’m starting to cry.
“I… I don’t belong to the team, I don’t belong here. I was supposed to be transferred to the Pentagon and work as a translator for them, and then suddenly my CO comes to me and hands me the orders to Cheyenne Mountain and I think “Cheyenne Mountain? Where the hell is that?” and I get shipped off to here and then I see that it’s an Air Force base and… and then all those introduction talks and the top secret stuff and… You see, I never believed in those UFO sightings and in Area 51 and all that stuff and suddenly I’m told that I’m part of a Covert Ops team that retrieves artifacts and prisoners from foreign planets and hunts down rogue soldiers and all this stuff. And… and then the Major who doesn’t ever set his foot on the wrong path, and you as a brilliant doctor and a poster girl soldier and Dee with his explosives… and all I can do is talk. I… I only wanted to get my Masters degree and probably my doctorate in languages and work for the Pentagon and then start working as a civilian again. I never wanted anything of this.”
Suddenly I feel Laura’s arms encircle me and pulling me into her embrace. “Hey… It’s okay, Maureen. I understand. I really do.” I want to say something but I choke on my tears. I never wanted them to know all of this. Now they will think I was a fool for signing up for the Marines, naively thinking I would be a translator in uniform but not a soldier. I pry myself lose from Laura’s embrace.
“I know you think I’m an idiot. But I’m not. Really, I… I knew I would have to deploy at some point, to Afghanistan or Iraq or Yugoslavia. I was okay with that. Really. But not… not with the kind of missions we have to deal with. I’m not a born soldier like you or the Major. I still tremble before pulling the trigger, every damn time, I have to do it. I just try to do my duty, but I just… I don’t…”
Dee, who is sitting on my other side, puts his hand on my shoulder. “We know, Lieutenant. You’ve just been through OSC, no one expects you to have the reflexes and the routine of a veteran soldier.”
“Maybe you don’t expect me to have it, but the Major sure does,” I reply a little bitterly.
Laura sighs. “Yes, he does. But having the most combat experience from all of us doesn’t make him infallible. I’ve known him for all my life, and he’s always been like that, expecting everything he knows and is capable of from others, no regard to how old or how experienced they are. Really, he is a great guy, but he can be a bit thick at times. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.” She grins, and somehow it’s infecting because a little grin is crossing my face as well.
“It’s just… I… I have the feeling that I will never be a real part of the team. You are a biology genius, and Dee is a wizard with explosives, and the Major is… well, the Major, but me… I’m… I’m just good at talking. I’m not even a good shooter or good at infiltrating or… I just… I feel so inadequate, so useless.”
Laura smiles. “You aren’t. Remember that mission where we had to get SG4 out of trouble? It was your skill with languages and diplomacy and your observation skills that saved our hides in the end. If you hadn’t kept playing the innocent girl and had kept that woman talking we would have never been able to sneak past her and break into the cells. We wouldn’t even have found them.”
Good grief, yes, I remember that mission. I can still feel the drops of sweat running down my spine and go my hands wet and the muscles in my back knit tight because of all the apprehension and tension I felt. “Yes, well, we remember that one. But the Major doesn’t.” Laura smirks, and Dee snorts.
“Then we’ll have to remind him,” she deadpans, and I have to laugh in spite of myself.
“I somehow have the feeling he won’t listen to that,” I retort half-heartedly and Dee claps my back.
“Oh, we have our ways…” and he winks at Laura. Geez, people, get a room!
Anyway, Laura just smiles and says, “Yes, but not now. We are on downtime and I think it’s some time for some team quality time. What are your plans for the evening, guys?” And with that it’s settled. Team quality time, alright.
~*~
TBC in Chapter Five.