Now a twoshot. I've had this written for a while but never got around to posting it here. Sorry!

Cleanup Crew Part 2
The Mess You Leave Behind

She flicked an errant speck of dust off of her uniform. She checked to make sure that every medal and ribbon was on right. It wasn't a colossal undertaking- in her line of work, you didn't get a lot of medals. She adjusted her skirt- God damn, she hated skirts.

It was about a year prior when she knew she was screwed. A common trope among science fiction was that a space battle was an amazing light show when viewed from the planet below. She witnessed firsthand that it was more than just a trope. Later, she learned that three Lucian Alliance Ha'tak had engaged the Earth starships George S. Hammond and Odyssey, but the primary thought going through her head was that the walls were about to come crumbling down.

The old excuse of a meteor shower hadn't worked. As the days ticked by, disclosure seemed inevitable. No amount of killing, of silencing, of destroying records, would keep things under wraps. The job was over. Mission failed. The whole world was about to be blown wide open.

She ran. She knew how to be quiet, how to disappear. She had a couple hundred in an offshore bank account. Despite assurances to the contrary, they all knew what could happen. They became the hunted, and when the hunter came, the hunted scattered. Long before the feelers went out, she had deserted her post and was hiding on an island in the Caribbean.

It hadn't worked. She didn't know whether the government had somehow tracked her down using their advanced technology, whether there was a betrayal somewhere down the line, or if she just screwed up. It didn't matter. Before she knew it, she was on a military transport back Stateside.

As she stepped into the "courtroom"- really just a rearranged conference room- she knew it would be the last battle she fought. She knew that the proceeding was just a formality. The President had already signed off on her death warrant. Although they weren't going to go public- no, that would be too ironic- the cameras were rolling and the records were being kept. If anyone ever asked, they would let the whole world know that they did the right thing. She laughed a harsh laugh. The right thing. If they were smart, she would have just disappeared in the middle of the night.

They began calling her out one her past crimes, but the opening of the trial flew in one ear and out the other. She saw only faces, and heard different voices. As the men and women she had killed- their faces, names, personalities, relationships, careers, idiosyncrasies- flashed through her mind, she realized bitterly what had happened to her predecessor. He couldn't pull the trigger. Now she was wondering if she'd be able to.

"What do you have to say in your defence?" the judge asked, glaring at her and snapping her out of her thoughts.

"I was just following orders, sir." Bitterly, she realizing that the corrupt jackass who gave out those orders was probably getting away with having his career destroyed. Death for those that pull the trigger, a more civilized form of punishment for the ones that give the orders.

One of the prosecution, none other than the famed Lieutenant General Jack O'Neill, sighed. "You know that's not a defence, Colonel."

"Yes, sir." The rest of the trial flew by in a daze, and again she could not shake the faces from her mind. A small part of her noted that she was facing her demons before she died. Did she fear death? No, not anymore. It was a part of life, especially her life. She'd become numb to the concept. But all her work, all her sacrifices, all she had done for them, and now they were putting her on trial.

"Colonel Alyssa Jane Mason, you have been found guilty and sentenced to death. Do you have any words you would like to say in your defence, for the record?"

"Yes, sir, I do."

She took a deep breath and continued. "I'm sure that if it were not for the actions of myself, my team, and our predecessors, we would not be standing here today. I couldn't say whether the circumstances would be better or worse, but they'd be different.

"Were our methods extreme? Absolutely. Did we go too far? Probably. Was it necessary? Definitely. Doctor Jackson, you once mentioned that you couldn't imagine what the world would be like post-disclosure. General Carter, you once replied, when prompted about disclosure, and I quote, 'I try not to think about it'. Disclosure always was inevitable.

"The chances of a secret getting out are proportional to the square of the number of people who know it. If one person decided they had enough, the whole program would have been blown wide open. If one person was captured and interrogated by the wrong people, the whole program would have been blown wide open. If one person went on a drinking binge and started babbling, the whole program would have been blown wide open.

"People can't be trusted. Through deliberate action, coercion, or accident, anyone can give away information. Despite what you may have thought, the SGC is not a perfect organization. There's a lot of anger. A lot of resentment. It's not stable. It's a powder keg waiting to explode. All it needs is someone to toss in a match. We threw out the matches, soaked the powder.

"I fought for your future. Now I'm going to die for it. Thank you, sirs and ma'ams. That is all."