By Badgergater

Season: 8

Episode: Gemini

Spoilers: Gemini, small one for Prometheus Unbound; any episode with the Replicators including Small Victories and Unnatural Selection

Category: Sequel, drama; missing scene following Gemini

Pairing: None

Summary: What we should have gotten instead of that phony, feel-good ending to Gemini-- General O’Neill acts like a general and has a talk with a certain Lieutenant Colonel about what happened with Repli-Carter

***Warning: This fic may offend some readers (notably Carter fans, or anyone who doesn't believe that a Lt. Col. should be held responsible for her actions). See author's note below for further explanation ***

Rating: PG; a couple of four letter words leak out of Jack’s brain

Disclaimer: I don’t own Stargate or anything connected with it, recognize the power and authority of those who do, this isn't for money… Not to be posted without the author's permission.

Author’s Pledge: All Badgergater fics are clearly and honestly labeled; read or not at your pleasure, but be assured this and all my other fics are accurately labeled as to content and category; I do not need to suck in the unwary reader by trying to disguise the content, rating or category of this or any other fic.

Author’s Note: **I did not like the ending of the episode, and the all too familiar, 'nothing is your fault' attitude expressed in the final scene. For me, it wasn't realistic: if Carter is a Lt. Col., then she needs to not only take command, but take responsibility for her own actions.**

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"Sir? You asked to see me?" Lt. Col. Samantha Carter paused in the doorway to the office of the commander of the SGC.

Brigadier General Jack O’Neill raised his gaze from the papers he was reading. "Carter, come on in and shut the door, would you?" He set aside the mission report, glad to be done with it, but not so happy over the reason for the interruption.

"Sir."

"At ease, Colonel." He waved at a chair. "Have a seat."

"Thank you, Sir." She perched on the edge of the chair, looking tense.

O’Neill leaned back in his chair, the new one he’d had to order since General Hammond had commandeered his old one. Well, actually, it had been Hammond’s first… Never mind, he told himself, focus on the job at hand, a job he didn’t want to do. He stood, and Carter jumped to her feet.

"Relax, Colonel. My backside is numb from sitting." O’Neill stretched to his full height, flexing his shoulders and back, stepping around the desk, his mind racing. He’d given a lot of thought to this conversation, a whole lot of thought, and even now that it was at hand, he didn’t know how he was going to handle it.

It was the worst part of his job, worse even than being stuck behind the desk rather than out in the field. He’d much rather be facing an angry Goa’uld, a whole squad of Jaffa, even a gaggle of Replicators. Those he knew exactly how to handle.

But this?

He needed to be candid, yet subtle.

He needed to be authoritative, yet respectful.

He needed to be honest, yet fair.

He needed to be firm, yet not rough.

He needed to treat her like a subordinate officer, not a teammate and a friend.

And he needed to remember that Carter, brilliant though she was, was far from perfect, which she’d proven all too well. Despite her overwhelming scientific brilliance, her knowledge of tactics, her capacity to think in ways he knew he and most of humanity never could, she’d committed some grave errors, errors that could have been disastrous to the SGC, hell, to the entire planet.

He wanted Carter to be perfect, he wanted her to succeed, he wanted his confidence in her to be justified, but the truth was, this time, his confidence as SGC commander had been as badly shaken as hers.

But, to be honest, this whole thing had made him realize, when it came down to it, that he didn't have as much confidence in her as he'd thought he had. Otherwise, he wouldn't have asked Teal'c if he thought Carter could handle the situation. And he wouldn't have been so careful about doing it behind her back.

Bottom line, the real Carter had made a huge mistake, and worst of all, she apparently didn’t even realize it.

Yet.

Pointing her failures out to her in a way that made her mistakes perfectly clear, yet not destroying her shaky confidence, took a subtle hand walking a very fine line. Maybe too subtle and too fine for him, he admitted. He’d spent the months since she’d been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel building up her confidence. And now he was going to tear it down. Not completely, he hoped. He needed this conversation to be a learning experience for Carter, not the book learning she excelled at, but a type of learning that quite obviously didn't come easily to her.

"Sir?" She was staring at him, eyes wide.

He was glad to see she was clad in more appropriate attire for this meeting, not one of the sleeveless t-shirts she’d taken to wearing lately. Although maybe she had one of those on under the long sleeved green BDU shirt she wore. Still, as long as she kept it covered up, it was okay. He wasn’t one to stand on formality, hell, look at the way he was dressed, but even he could see there were limits.

He sighed, fighting back the urge to perch on the edge of the desk and just talk candidly. Those casual conversations of the past, his informal attitude with SG-1, were likely part of the problem, he’d decided, a problem he’d inadvertently created through his friendship with the people on his former team. So this time, knowing that it was important to keep the expanse of his desk, the big, heavy, wooden, solid symbol of his authority, between them, Jack retreated to his chair. The move called attention to the distance that now stood between him and his former teammate. Usually, it was something he didn’t want to do; emphasizing that gap was painful and awkward, but this time, he needed it.

Time to be the hard-ass *General* O’Neill, he ordered himself.

Jack started slowly, choosing his words carefully. Criticize without destroying was the plan of the day, but he absolutely had to get his point across, for his sake as well as hers. She was too important to this command to fail like this. "Colonel Carter, the other day, in your lab, I think I might have left you with the wrong impression."

She blinked, but said nothing.

"I said it wasn’t your fault." He saw the subtle shift of expression, her eyes tightening in worry. "I should have been more clear, and I want you to understand exactly where I’m coming from regarding your activities during the incident with the Replicators. First of all, you are not responsible for what your Replicater-clone-copy-thingy did."

She relaxed. "I know that, Sir."

"Good. But," he added forcefully, "you *are responsible for your own actions in response to that thing."

"Sir?"

Deliberately he chose to use her title. "Lieutenant Colonel, what is the SGC policy on Replicators?"

"I don’t believe we have a formal policy…"

He cut her off. "I know that no one’s taken the time to write it down. So just give me a rundown in your own words."

"Well, Sir, they are highly advanced alien-created techno-creatures…"

"Whose aim is to?"

"Reproduce at all costs, consuming the materials of the cultures they encounter, assimilating both the raw materials and the technology to improve their own race…"

"To what purpose?"

"To continue reproducing."

He nodded. "Do they like us?"

"Sir?" She was puzzled.

"Do they like us?" He wasn’t aware that his hand movements were punctuating the key words of each question. "Do they want to be friends with us? Share our aims or goals? Want to be our allies? Our buddies? Our pals?"

"No, Sir."

"So the Replicators are our enemies."

"Yes, Sir."

"And if someone were to bring one back here to this base, anywhere on the planet in fact, do we have a way to contain it? A cell, a cage, a box, that would hold it?"

"Well, Sir, in the past we were unable to detain them. But since you created the disrupter, I haven’t tried…."

"So the answer is, at this moment, no," he cut her off.

"There’s a possibility I could compensate…"

"But at the moment, the answer is no."

"Correct, Sir, no."

"So would it be safe to bring one here?"

"Well, we could…"

"I don’t want theory, Lieutenant Colonel, I want fact."

"Then the answer is no, but…"

"There are no buts here, Lieutenant Colonel." He bypassed the obvious joke, being in full commander mode, and he could tell from the look on her face that she realized it. "We are dealing with absolutes, dealing with the safety of this base and this planet."

"Yes, Sir. I know that."

"Do you?" The question hung in the air between them. He pointed to the papers he’d so recently placed on his desk. "According to your report, you wanted to bring one onto this base, a very advanced, human appearing Replicator."

"Sir, we had the disrupter then."

"Carter," he let a little of his frustration leak into his tone, "do the Replicators change?"

"Of course, Sir, they change every time they encounter and devour a new civilization."

"So they change constantly. Strategies that worked against them once don't work the second time, like your 'dumb' plan to blow up my ship…"

"That's true, General."

"So it's safe to say that one constant of the Replicators is their ability to change?"

"Absolutely, Sir."

"Then on what basis did you decide to trust that Replicator-copy of yourself?"

"Sir, we’d been working together, sharing…"

"You and that Replicator-clone whatever," he waved a hand in the air.

"Yes, Sir. She was helping…"

"Helping whom?"

Carter looked puzzled.

"Helping whom?" he repeated. "Us? The Replicators? Itself?"

"I’m not sure what you’re asking, General."

"I’m asking you what you thought it was doing."

"I thought she was helping us."

"But it was?" he prompted.

"She was helping herself," Carter acknowledged.

"But you *thought* it was helping us. Why?"

"Because…" Carter paused.

Jack waited. "I’m waiting, Lieutenant Colonel."

"Because," she stammered. "Because it was what I would do."

"Are you a Replicator?"

"No."

"Then why would you *assume* that an alien… thing would think and act like you?"

"She was made as a copy of me."

"A *non*-human copy of you. Yes, it would have your memories and your knowledge, which incidentally makes it extremely dangerous."

"I know that, Sir," she snapped."

"Then why didn’t you act on that?"

Once again, silence hung heavy.

Jack got to his feet, and she started to follow, but he waved her back to her seat as he paced to the front of his office. Looking out through the window into the briefing room, and the glimpse it provided of the gateroom below, he took a deep breath. Turning back to her, he asked once again. "Lieutenant Colonel Carter, you made an assumption, a very dangerous assumption, an assumption that could have gotten the alpha site, this base and this entire civilization destroyed. You gave that thing entrance to your mind," he tapped the side of his head. "You gave it access to the base computers. You let it learn everything about us…"

"S…"

"Let me finish. I sent you out there because I believed you could do the job, that you could put aside your own emotional reaction and deal with the dilemma at hand. That you could use that brilliant mind of yours to think through the problem. That you could see the whole picture, not be blinded by what was there on the surface, or be taken in by the dazzling scientific possibilities that *machine represented." He paused. "Carter, you were sucked in because you let your own personal beliefs, your own personal fascination with techno-gizmos, override your duty as an officer."

"I thought…"

He silenced her with a glare. ""Carter, when you are in command of a mission, when the fate of the world is in your hands, you don't do what you want, you do what you have to do. You have to put aside your fascination with science and deal with the whole picture, the *whole* picture." O'Neill sighed and took a deep breath. "You trusted where trust was not warranted. You took the *word* of an alien creature. You let it into your head…"

"Sir, we were in *her* mind."

"How do you know that?"

"I saw inside her."

"And how do you know that at the same time that thing didn’t see inside *your* brain?" The general waited while he saw her contemplating the question. "When we encountered those, those damn things the first time, how much did you remember?"

"Not much," she admitted.

"Basically nothing. That’s what was in your report, my report, Teal’c’s report and Jonas’s report, correct? The Replicators were in our heads, and we were left with only vague recollections of what they did or learned in there. Am I right?" He didn’t mention the other remnants of the whole gross hand-in-the-head thing, like the agonizing headaches.

"Yes, Sir."

"So while you were *aware of being in its mind, how could you know that it *wasn’t in yours?" He waited for her answer. And waited. "Colonel Carter?"

"I didn’t have a way to know," she answered at last, very quietly.

"So you trusted that enemy." Carter was staring at the floor, looking stricken, but Jack went on. "And it got what it wanted, and all we can do now is wait until it decides to come back and bite us in the ass."

"Sir, I…"

"You what?"

"I didn’t consider… I mean, I was sure…"

"No, Lieutenant Colonel, you weren’t sure. You *guessed. Tell me this, that thing said that Fifth had found a way to stop the disrupter weapon, correct?"

"Yes, Sir."

"What proof did it offer?"

"None."

"You are a scientist, Carter. Facts. Data. Proof… they’re important to you, aren’t they?"

"I took her word, Sir."

"You took *its* word, Carter." He stalked back across the office and flopped into his shiny new chair. "You accepted its explanations for a lot of things. You bought that thing’s story hook, line and sinker. You *trusted* it."

"Because *I’m* trustworthy, Sir."

"Tell that to Fifth." He saw her flinch, but bored in anyway. "You proved to Fifth that you were *not* always honest. That you could lie, prevaricate, fib, whatever you want to call it, to accomplish your mission." He leaned forward, forearms resting on his desk. "Carter, there’s more to being an officer than ‘yes, sir-ing’ and quoting the regs. You are a brilliant scientist, I’ve told you that many times before, and I’ve meant every word of it. But you also need an… edge," he struggled for words to describe the indefinable something that separated the officers who could command at the highest levels from those who couldn’t, just like he’d struggled to accept she was turning out to be the latter and not the former. "A healthy skepticism, a feel for when to trust and when not to, a… I don’t know, there’s no real word for it. An ability to read the situation critically, a sixth sense, gut instinct, but always, *always* with a cynical, critical, there's-a-bad-guy-behind-every-bush eye." he stopped and shook his head. "This has turned into one hell of a mess."

"I know that Sir. I’ve been working on a modification to the disrupter…"

"Good, because from now on, that’s your number one assignment. Use whatever personnel you need from the science staff. Call on anyone outside the SGC, even outside the military. The Pentagon and the President have agreed that this is vital enough that we can call in anyone who might be able to help. We need a way to stop that monster we’ve created."

She caught the nuance. "We, Sir?"

He sighed once more. "We, Carter, because I’m your CO, and the buck stops right here at my desk. I let you talk me out of doing what I wanted to do at the beginning, and that’s my mistake in this morass. If we'd have blown that thing to hell right at the get-go… So yes, part of the blame falls on my shoulders. Correcting your mistakes, Lieutenant Colonel, starts with acknowledging that they exist."

He looked at her, waiting, and finally she nodded.

"Good, then. Dismissed."

-----------------The End--------------