A/N - This was written immediately in the hours following the first airing of Heroes pt. 2. If you haven't seen Heroes 1&2 go to and look in S7.
Give me release
witness me
I am outside
give me peace
She sat at the bar in the cozy kitchen sipping her Coke slowly. She wasn't really thirsty, but it was something to do. Anything to keep herself busy. She peered into the cup and watched the little carbon dioxide bubbles rise to the top, attach themselves along the sides, fizzle and pop. You could always find a can of Coca Cola in the refrigerator, but God help you if you tried to bring Pepsi into this house. They'd always been a Coke versus Pepsi family.
Family. Now there was a funny word. It carried with it so much weight. There were expectations, traditions, hopes and dreams, and most of all feelings of connection attached to that word, to that notion. It was something that everyone seemed to have, and if you didn't have one you wanted one. Just the promise of having a family inspired daydreams of holidays spent together and someone with whom to share the events in your life.
After all, there are a lot of events in a girl's life! For starters, some girls have a cotillion or a coming out. She even had some Latina friends who had something wonderful called a Quinceañera. The pictures they'd shown her of their über-birthday parties with ball gowns and tiaras were breathtakingly beautiful. She'd marveled that families could spend such money on the celebration of just one birthday. But her mother had explained to her it wasn't about one birthday. It was really about celebrating the girl becoming a woman. Mothers seemed to get really jazzed about that whole thing, she thought. Sometimes she had watched her mom observing her and she wondered if she'd been reliving her childhood through her. Then there were things like graduation, marriage, the birth of children: things that her mom was supposed to be there for.
Her mom. Now that was a funny word, too. Well, two words actually, but who's counting?
I'm counting...
She'd had two of them; moms that is. She was sure beyond doubt that they'd both loved her. And yet here she was without a mother at all. It was a…fascinating…thing to consider. Irony wasn't just something she'd learned about in her high school literature course. She continued to observe her drink, detached from her constant thoughts.
There were people milling about in the other room. Mostly there were people from the base at Cheyenne Mountain and a few from the Academy where Janet kept an office even though she was rarely there. They were pretending to go on about the canapés and pâté. Her mom had never really liked that sort of stuff. She preferred Buffalo wings and cheese dip. She liked the occasional beer. Cassie knew she even kept some liquor in the house. She'd seen her come in from work with her hair all fried and the most worn look on her face and drink the hard stuff straight up, usually after those shifts where she'd ended up staying for a day or two…or more. She never had champagne and caviar, which some nitwit had brought. It was silly. The hushed chatter about her was even more annoying than the ridiculous hors d'ourves. She nearly grinned to herself at her thoughts. "Nitwit" was her favorite classification for idiot right now. It was something she'd picked up from her mom without realizing it. While these distracted thoughts flitted through her mind, her near-pleasure at the humor of her words was punctured by the words of others in the other room.
"She seems to be holding up well."
"I wonder how she's going to cope with this."
"Poor child, she's got to be devastated."
The one that irritated her the most was Sam. Instead of coming to her, instead of asking, she made some assumption about how she was feeling and that had been the end of it. She heard Colonel O'Neill walk into the dining room and ask, "How's Cassie?"
"You know…she's a strong kid. She's been through a lot. I'm sure she'll figure a way through this, too." And then Sam had walked off. Being in the other room, Cassie couldn't see the distant emptiness in Sam's eyes. She couldn't read the tell-tail signs of overload on the weary Major's face. She only heard the robotic tone of her voice: so cold and vacant. The Colonel recognized Sam's words as meaningless in that moment. He could tell that Sam had no idea how Cassie was doing because she didn't even know how she was doing. When he'd approached Cassie earlier to ask her himself, she'd shut him down with a flat-sounding "Fine," which had prompted him to ask Carter. Now it was pretty obvious to him.
But for Cassie it was utterly annoying. No one had really said anything to her except how sorry they were. They would look at her and sometimes she could swear she saw fear in their eyes, like "Oh no, what if I say the wrong thing?!" So they wouldn't say anything at all except how terribly sorry they were, and sorry was pretty useless. She wanted something real, but at the same time she had to admit she was scared that someone would say something real to her. What if it happened? Somebody had to feel something besides sorry!
Cassie studied the bubbles in her Coke listening to the stilted awkward conversation going on all through the house: all the holding back…all the not really saying anything. All that fear of the truth started to make Cassie feel like she couldn't breathe. It finally became too much and she slammed the plastic cup on the counter, spilling most of what was left in the cup, then stormed outside for some air and silence. She didn't see Daniel standing in the hallway watching her.
"Hello?"
"Is this Cassandra Fraiser?"
"Yes, who is this?"
"This is Marshal Randal, Attorney at Law. I handled your mother's estate."
"Estate? She didn't have any estate. Just a house and a car and some stuff."
"No, dear, what that means is that she had assets, or possessions that were of value. In the state of Colorado it is necessary to prepare a Last Will and Testament in order to assure that your assets and property will be handled according to your wishes in the event that you….die." He cleared his throat. There was something about the way his voice was pinched that sounded to Cassie as though he were talking to a 10-year-old instead of an 18-year-old. "Do you understand?"
"Okay, she had a will. What do you want with me?" Cassie really didn't feel like talking on the phone.
"You are the primary beneficiary of the estate, Cassandra. Do you understand what that means?"
"I get whatever she left me in her will." The more they talked the less she wanted to talk. Her mother wasn't even in the ground yet and they were divvying up her stuff. Cassie's throat felt dry. She walked with the cordless phone into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of Coke without ice, then drank deeply relishing the burn of it in her raw throat.
"It means that the basic contents of her will, all her assets, you know, the things that she owns, were left to you. There are formalities and procedures to follow. That is why I'm calling. There is some paperwork to be signed and filed. But I was instructed that if something were to happen that you were to be made aware…that I call you and tell you…that your mother made sure that you have the house and the car so that you wouldn't worry about where you'd end up in all this. There's some other stuff like a life insurance policy for you. Do you know what one of those is?"
"Money," she answered him dryly.
"Of course. Well, there are some stipulations…you know, rules…as to how the money is to be used, but we can go over all that when you come to my office. When would be a good time for you to come in and go over this information with me and sign the papers?"
"I guess I'll come Friday. I'll be busy the rest of the week burying my mother. How does Friday at 10 AM sound?" She didn't really know where the spiteful sarcastic tone was coming from, but she couldn't help herself. Conducting business with the specter of her mother's death lingering over her like a shadow cast by the florescent light of the kitchen seemed like a slimy thing to do.
"That will be fine, Cassandra. I'll see you then. "
"Yeah, sure." She turned off the phone as hard as she could. It was really hard to slam down the receiver of a cordless phone. It worked by pressing a talk button. You could only press that button so hard before you jammed your finger and it really sent no particular message because the person on the other end didn't know you'd jabbed the phone hard enough to put a hole in it. But she was generally disgruntled and whether or not Mr. Randal, Esq. got the point, she was going to jab, slam, grump, and flop in all the ways her mom had fussed about when she'd gotten pissy in the past. When she was alive anyway.
"Who was that on the phone?" Sam walked softly into the kitchen still in her robe. The days off were necessary and someone had to stay with Cassie, but she was finding that without work to keep her focused she was having a hard time getting out of her bathrobe. She started to pour herself a cup of coffee.
"None of your business." Cassie practically spat the words at her.
Sam set the carafe down on the counter and looked up, somewhat shocked at Cassie's hateful tone. The young woman was standing there glaring at Sam in a way that sent chills down her spine. "I was just curious, Cass. I wasn't trying to pry." She tried to ease the tension between them.
Cassie turned and walked out of the room without another word. Sam leaned with both hands against the counter and hung her head. Her staying here was supposed to be helping Cassie, but instead it only seemed to be making things worse.
In this white wave
I am sinking
in this silence
in this white wave
in this silence
I believe
The funeral was, as they say, lovely. The Air Force had taken care of all the arrangements, for which Cassie was grateful. When the day came for the ceremonies, life settled into a series of actions. As long as she kept moving she was good.
At the graveside people were saying things she couldn't hear. Their lips were moving, but the sound passed through her. She had woven for herself a careful kind of silence that fit snugly. There were many people in their crisp dress uniforms. Despite having been told the American tradition was to wear black, she'd worn the green dress her mom had bought her the week before. When Janet had handed it to her she'd rolled her eyes because it wasn't the one she'd had her heart set on. Her mind took her to that day when her mom had handed her the bag:
"Cassie, I know it isn't the one you wanted most, but I simply could not afford that one right now. Besides, this one is beautiful on you and I think you've got a great pair of shoes to go with it." With a knowing smile and flip of wavy brown hair, her patient-'till-the-last mother dropped the bag containing the dress on the counter. Disappointed, Cassie snatched the bag up, took it to her room, and tossed the dress, bag and all, in the bottom of her closet.
Cassie regretted it. It really was a pretty dress. It fit her perfectly and it matched the killer shoes she'd bought with her own money. Somehow wearing it was her way of saying thanks despite missing her first chance to do so. It was a physical act of love she could manage. One more thing she could do with her hands or her body that wouldn't threaten her ever-so-thinly constructed veil of silence.
She tried standing still at the side of her mother's coffin, but felt the nearness of the truth of it threatening her in an abstract way. She started fidgeting a bit. It was a distracting repetitive movement that wove her protective cocoon ever thicker...anything to keep the galaxy of pain she was hiding from at bay. The fidgeting served its purpose and soon the numbness that set in overcame everything that might insist on being expressed. Some people said a few things. She didn't hear them. She was comfortable in her silence.
Then someone played Taps on a bugle and it pierced her quiescent bubble. It was a sad and solitary sound. The notes would imprint themselves in her memory forever. Someone handed her an American flag folded in a triangle. She clutched it to her chest and felt the coarseness of the weave beneath her fingertips. Her fingers rubbed back and forth across the material relentlessly...weaving.... The sensation of it was mesmerizing. The silence began to return.
Then it was over. They'd buried her mother. She was relieved in a way, but something about the whole thing was still enormously unreal. She felt vaguely irritated about something.
And Daniel kept staring at her.
Sometime during the workday on the day after the funeral Jack decided to find Daniel. Things were definitely not okay with his team member, and he figured he needed to look in to it. SG-1 was on stand-down for two weeks at least, so there was time to deal with things. Daniel was really suffering, and he was doing it in typical Daniel fashion: avoidance.
They were in the line at the commissary when Jack decided it was time to do something about that. Daniel had taken his tray, gone through the line, and somewhere around the coffee dispenser he'd frozen. His hands were shaking and his breath was coming in shallow ragged gasps. Jack squinted his eyes as he mulled over how he'd handle it. He figured he'd intentionally bump into Daniel to shake him out of the spell he seemed caught in. Guarding the still-healing ribs from the snafu that had brought them to this moment, Jack shouldered Daniel a bit as he pretended to fumble with his tray. It succeeded in recalling the troubled doctor from his fugue, but Jack knew that it was only a momentary fix. The symptoms would be suppressed for a little while, yet the cause would not be addressed. And if Daniel didn't address it he'd become not only unbearable, but unstable. Having him back on the team was like breathing – you just did it without thinking. But he knew Daniel wouldn't be able to work if things got worse. So he would have to do something. He did not relish the thought. Janet had been his friend too, and it was more his way to deal with such a loss privately...if at all. But when you are in command, and more importantly when you are a friend, you sometimes have to step out of your comfort zone to do what is best for someone else.
Daniel stammered an apology for holding up the line and grabbed his coffee and a piece of fruit. He went to a table in the corner and devoured them both, seemingly eager to get the hell out of the commissary. Jack watched him and formulated his plan of attack. The direct route with Daniel was best left to absolute last resort. So he thought he'd try a more veiled tactic to start. He got up and approached Daniel.
"Were you able to get those samples from SG-13 analyzed yet?" He tried to look as nonchalant as possible.
Daniel squinted at Jack thinking, "That's sweet, he's worried about me. Pathetic at pretense, but sweet."
"Jack, I'm fine. I don't want to talk about it. The documentary is complete and the guy offered not to use the footage." He paused and looked away before he continued, "I told him to go ahead." There was another pause and just before it became so lengthy a silence that Jack felt the need to speak Daniel made his plea. "Janet died less than a week ago. I just need a few more days...okay?"
So much for the indirect route. "Daniel, you haven't gone home for more than 16 hours total in the last 5 days."
"I have gotten some sleep in my office." Daniel didn't defend himself vigorously because he knew that Jack was justified. Besides, he just didn't want to go there.
"Don't make me order you to go home. If I have to do that you know what comes next." He tried his best to say it without sounding like a hard-ass. He also recognized that that was intrinsically what he was, so he was probably wasting his time trying to be otherwise. But Daniel needed a different sort of handling. Seven years, more or less, working together taught you a thing or two about a man. And Jack wasn't above giving the hard-ass routine a rest from time to time when circumstances called for it.
"Okay, Jack. I'll get some more rest. Anything but MacKenzie." Daniel flashed him a quick playful smile. But underneath the smile he was deadly serious. He would rather chew off his own arm than go see Dr. MacKenzie. He had his good points, but he was, after all, a psychiatrist. There was a limit to his goodness.
Jack turned and left the commissary without pushing Daniel further. He figured that would probably come later. He just hoped Daniel would be smart enough to do what was necessary before it became a real problem. He didn't blame the young archaeologist for being wrecked. There was nothing about the loss of Dr. Janet Fraiser that wasn't an absolute nightmare.
Daniel went back to his lab and pretended to work. Despite his assurances to Jack, he had no intention of going home. He didn't know how long he could pull it off, but he was determined to try to do it as long as possible. The only thing that he would allow to dominate his thoughts, despite the fact that it threatened to make him face the reality of his own pain, was Cassie. When she came to mind he didn't force her out.
Passion chokes the flower
'til she cries no more
possessing all the beauty
hungry still for more
Night came again…and again. It faithfully got dark every evening and stayed that way until the following sunup. It wasn't like Cassie thought this was something that might suddenly change, but she hated it. Night was the hardest time of her day. She would find herself wandering into the living room where she could see the front door. She would sit there in the dark and stare at it. She knew her mom wasn't coming through it, but she couldn't stop herself. She sat on the floor in the white cotton nightgown that made her feel comfortable and warm and rocked back and forth…watching…waiting…
In an abstract, detached way she knew she'd not yet cried over the death of her mother. Something told her she wouldn't be able to escape it forever. But for some reason, she felt the need to escape it for as long as possible. Something about the whole notion of crying was extremely dangerous. Panic-inducing dangerous. She didn't want to really think about what it was, exactly, that crying would do, so she started riding her bicycle in the evenings rather than sit still by herself in the house that used to be a home. Sam was staying with her but mostly staying out of her way. She would make food, but they didn't eat together. Cassie knew she'd made it clear that she was angry with Sam but was not ready to talk to her.
She never said it, but a part of her wondered why Sam couldn't protect her mom. She was part of SG-1 and they were the best. What had happened that she couldn't help her mom? She knew that Colonel O'Neill had been shot as well. Maybe she was with him. Despite her hostile treatment of Sam, her thoughts on the matter were fairly clinical and disconnected. She could see how she treated Sam, but, for the life of her, the emotional motivation for that treatment was beyond reach.
Cassie stopped rocking for a moment. The scent of something breezed through the room, through her. It was as if the door had opened and the smell of the crisp Colorado mountain air had sudden blown into the room. This was the smell of her mother coming through the door. It was only barely there, but it compelled her to her feet. Since the door wasn't open her waking mind reasoned it must just be a draft, but her desperate subconscious, spurred onward by the force of sense-memory, sought the car that would deliver her mother home from the base at last. She peeked out the window from behind the sheer curtains. There was a car in front of her house. Her heart started racing. It wasn't her mother's car, but it looked very familiar. It was a white Volkswagen Jetta. She thought it was Daniel's car, but she couldn't tell from the window. She watched for a minute longer. She wished she could see the face of the person sitting in the car, but whoever it was, he suddenly drove away. She stood there a moment longer, the scent of the outside air was stronger by the window.
Cassie finally went back to the place on the hardwood floor where she'd been sitting – it was still warm. She wrapped her arms around her legs and resumed her rocking. Sleep was the last thing on her mind. Her insomnia was intentional. It wasn't difficult, though, staying awake.
Sam heard Cassie get up again. She stood in the hallway just out of sight watching Cassie sit and stare at the front door. She longed to go to her and hold her and grieve with her. Part of her was a little angry that she was being treated like the enemy. But mostly she felt like the three of them, Janet, Cassie, and herself, had shared so much…and that Cassie and she could share this loss in a special way. She had thought they could help each other get through it. Now she figured Cassie blamed her for Janet's death because she had been there. Sam wanted to explain, but as long as Cassie remained distant and angry there was no hope for that.
Tears filled Sam's eyes. She literally ached to make things with Cassie right. Since that singularly comforting moment in the infirmary with the Colonel nothing had eased her grieving. Pete had gone back to Denver and couldn't be reached. She figured he was under cover. Daniel had withdrawn so far into himself she couldn't figure out a way to even try to talk to him. Teal'c had tried to be there for her, but what she really needed right now was to be with Cassie. The tears spilled down her face and tickled her neck. 'Do something,' her mind screamed at her. So she took a chance. She walked into the living room where Cassie was balled up on the floor.
"Can we talk?" Sam knelt down next to her far enough away to give her space, but close enough that it was personal.
"I don't want to talk." Cassie didn't even look at her.
"Will you listen, then?" The sadness was so thick it wedged in her throat and Sam fought against it.
"Say whatever you want." She kept her tone as cold and distant as possible, giving nothing away.
Sam took a deep breath and tried to steady herself a little, a completely useless tactic. "Cass, I'm so sorry." Her words spurred the pain in her heart to the surface. The anguish and sorrow spilled out of her mouth in a torrent. "I tried! I was beside the Colonel. I wasn't close enough to your mom to have done anything. But when Daniel started screaming…" her voice caught and she had to stop for a moment. "…for a medic, I ran. I ran as fast as I could. Someone was already seeing to Colonel O'Neill and I got to her as fast as I could." Her words were spilling out in strangled sobs now as Sam fought to hold herself together. "Cass, please understand! She was dead when I got to her." The image of Janet's lifeless body forced its way into Sam's tortured mind. She shuddered against the bite of it, the picture ripping into her anew.
"Why didn't you ask me how I was doing?" Cassie had turned towards Sam. Her face was passive. If the display of grief in front of her was having any effect it didn't show.
The sobbing abruptly stopped and Sam sniffed, "What?"
"At the wake. You didn't ask me how I was doing. I heard you talking to Jack and you just said I was a tough kid or something like that. You said I'd figure a way through this, too. You should have heard yourself. It sure sounded like you didn't much care." She knew it wasn't actually true, but the way it had happened had stuck with her and eaten at her. Despite wondering if Sam could have done something to save her mother, what was really bugging Cassie was that Sam had acted like she didn't care in that one moment how she was actually feeling. At least that was what she was telling herself was the problem. It was a pretty manageable problem, after all. This was much easier to be upset about - pretending Sam didn't care about her feelings - than something more terrible – the truth of what she'd really lost.
Sam was stunned. She sniffled again and wiped her face with her fingers to dry some of the tears. The astonishment she felt at the question had completely stopped the flow of grief and mourning from only a moment earlier. She had to think very hard to even remember what Cassie was talking about. Her hesitation was in serious danger of being misinterpreted as an admission that she had, indeed, been unconcerned.
"You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you?" Cassie turned her eyes back to the door. The words sounded angry, but her voice was flat.
"Do you mean when Colonel O'Neill came to me in the living room at the wake and asked me how you were doing? Is that what you're talking about?"
Cassie turned to her, this time with hard, cold eyes. "Yes. That is exactly what I am talking about. You told him I had been through a lot and would figure out a way through this too. Then you just walked away."
Sam's eyes widened as she remembered exactly what had happened…and exactly what she'd been feeling in that moment. And this is why Cassie hadn't spoken three words to her in days?!
"Cass, when he came to me in that moment I was trying really hard to deal with my own grief. You see, I feel responsible for your mother's death. I feel like I should have done something more. I should have known about the message sent from that probe earlier! If I'd known…" She cut herself off, sniffling. Nothing that would help either of them lay at the end of that path. She shook her head and then started again more quietly. "In reality, there is nothing I could have done except maybe chosen to advance in a different direction that day. I lost my best friend that day, and at that moment in the living room I was lost in my own pain. It wasn't that I didn't care how you felt. I was just wrapped up in myself." She leaned towards Cassie and pleaded earnestly for her to understand, "Cass, of course I care how you feel. And you're right, I should have simply asked you how you were doing. We all made assumptions. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't ask. That's not the way it should be with family." There was nothing more she could say.
Cassie's eyes softened. She considered Sam's words and admitted to herself that she'd been too hard on her these last few days. She knew that Sam and her mom had been best friends. They'd been through a lot together. And she knew that Sam had lost her own mother, too, when she was a little younger than Cassie was now. She suddenly regretted the way she'd been so cold to Sam. It was a mild regret. Somewhat superficial, but it was all she was really capable of. She really thought she shouldn't have acted that way, but she didn't have a way to tell Sam that. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words felt too honest. The closer she got to that kind of honesty the more she began to panic inwardly. The word family kept repeating itself in her mind; a horrible echoing force she couldn't deny.
At last she managed a robotic, "Okay. Thanks for explaining. We're cool," and she abruptly got up and went to her room leaving Sam staring open-mouthed after her. Cassie closed the door and began clamoring to keep the honesty…the truth…the feelings at bay. She pulled her hair, dug her nails into her arms, bit the skin of her knee. The pain of it was safe. It was something she could control. Something she could feel besides the terrible things that were threatening to surface. Once she was sure that she had it under control she went to the kitchen and made coffee. She took her mug and went back to her little spot on the hardwood floor where she watched the door. After a long, long while, through the windows on either side she could see the sun coming up.
Heaven holds a sense of wonder
and I wanted to believe
that I'd get caught up
when the rage in me subsides
Daniel dropped his keys on the chest next to the door in the entryway. He'd stopped at Cassie's thinking he'd try and have some kind of casual conversation with her but had never even made it to the front door.
Coming home this night was really no different from coming home any other night, but the darkness of his house and the emptiness of it loomed larger than he remembered it normally being. He suddenly had the urge to get a dog, which was really odd considering he was allergic to dogs. He turned all the lights on in his path to the kitchen. He opened the cabinet and looked inside. Nothing looked appetizing. It was true, however, that on a good day nothing in those cabinets actually was appetizing except for his stash of Fifth Avenue bars and chocolate chip cookies. But right now they didn't appeal to him either.
He opened the refrigerator and stood there long enough to cool the room by two degrees before he closed his hand around the neck of an unopened bottle of wine. He started digging through drawers for a corkscrew. He opened one and rummaged through it to no avail. He opened the next and had the same negative results, this time slamming the offending drawer. When he jerked the third drawer open too quickly, its loose contents sloshed first to the far reaches of the drawer and then, when it stopped abruptly, some of the innocent utensils leapt from the drawer and clattered to the tile floor. In frustration Daniel slammed the third drawer as hard as he could, which only caused it to bounce back open. Daniel drew a few deep breaths, bent to the floor and gathered his scattered utensils, one of which happened to be his corkscrew, and with a forced calm, replaced everything but the corkscrew in the drawer, closing it gently. He could feel his sense of control starting to slip and that was a bad thing. A very bad thing.
He opened his wine and poured a very large glass. He didn't bother with a wineglass, as his intention was not to enjoy the wine, but to drink it very quickly and get as drunk as possible without having to go to the liquor store. This should not be a challenge, as he rarely drank and couldn't hold his liquor. It wasn't a matter of pride with him, only fact.
It had only been a few days since she'd died. The documentary was in the can. The base, though in a state of mourning, was back to business as usual. But Daniel was feeling just a bit stuck. He was stuck in a moment of a flash of light…a scent of smoke and charred clothes and flesh…the iron tang of blood…the lifeless open eyes of a woman who…
He took a drink of his wine. He took several drinks of his wine. Then he reached for the remote control to his television. Jack had ordered him off the base for the night. Jack knew that he'd just try to bury his nose in work in his office all night. Not that he'd have been successful at getting anything done, but he sure would have tried. So he turned on his television and gulped the sweet white wine from a huge glass as he surfed the fifty or so channels that had come with his cable package. He'd only wanted things like Discovery Civilization, the History Channel and the like but, he'd discovered, they don't let you pick just the channels you want. 'Ridiculous,' he'd thought. And, as usual, there was nothing of interest on the television. He settled on something on the History Channel about the Westernization of ancient cultures. He was only superficially taking in the information. The drone of the narrator and the suddenness of the warm buzz he'd gotten from drinking too much too quickly worked together to make him feel comfortably drowsy. It was just the state he was aiming for. The show broke for commercial.
The intense baritone of a dramatic voice-over with a backdrop of melancholy strings playing Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings encroached upon his barely-established haze.
"They died with violence, recording a story that was sadder than words could tell. They came from both sides, from no sides, and from a dozen countries. They were professionals, amateurs, soldiers and adventurers. All they had in common were cameras, guts, and professional brilliance. But beyond a string of Pulitzer Prizes, there was no memorial to these unsung heroes until a group of their surviving comrades collaborated on an astonishing book called, appropriately, Requiem."
Daniel opened his eyes and saw the images on the screen: jerky and faded footage of photo journalists running along with boy soldiers through the jungle from a hostile enemy and still shots of screaming angry-faced soldiers firing their service weapons into the reeds and trees. Then there were shots of the wounded, with their grimy faces and pinched, pained, screaming mouths. The images on the television started to dim from the corners of his vision as the man advertising the book started in again, but his voice seemed further away. Daniel's breath started coming in short quick gasps. His heart started to race. His palms were sweating. Something about the room felt different…
"'Camera Martyrs Of Vietnam' combines the most memorable images from Requiem with the recollections of those who survived the jungle holocaust to paint a picture of what life--and death--was like for those who covered the conflict. Celebrating the work of these unheralded victims and recognizing their ultimate sacrifice…"
Daniel wasn't hearing anymore. He wasn't seeing anymore. He was kneeling along with Dr. Janet Fraiser next to Sr. Airman Simon Wells trying to quell the man's bleeding while simultaneously trying to capture a message for his wife and unborn child on video. They were under fire. Explosions thundered all around them. Smoke filled the air. The screaming…the smell of burned flesh…the blood soaking the ground and seeping through the knees of his uniform…then the flash…the way she was lifted off the ground and fell with eyes half-lidded in that stare of the dead. He could remember screaming for a medic. Over and over he screamed for a medic. Wells was screaming too. Screaming in pain…screaming for help. The screaming…it went on and on…it was all screaming:
"JANET!… I NEED A MEDIC! FRAISER'S HIT!… I NEED A MEDIC!…… I NEED A MEDIC!"
Over and over the memory assaulted him. The flash, the way she lifted up and then fell to the bloody ground, the way it smelled, the sounds of weapons' fire and screaming, the sound of him screaming for help.
The sound of him screaming.
The sound of screaming.
Screaming…
"DANIEL!" Someone had him by the shoulders. He pushed wildly, incoherently at the body in front of him with flailing hands.
"NO!" In the light of the television he could see the blood darkening the shirt of the man who was grabbing at him. Panic rose in his chest and he fought to free himself, overturning the table next to his chair. The crash was different…it wasn't the sound of battle. It didn't fit. His whole world suddenly became disjointed and incongruent. The sights and sounds that had had him in their grasp only a breath ago seemed to turn at a right angle to his hazy perceptions. The disorientation was overwhelming.
"DANIEL IT'S ME!" The man had Daniel's face in his hands. Jack. It's Jack. It's Jack. Jack, Daniel. It's Jack. The words repeated themselves relentlessly in his mind demanding comprehension. The world came sharply and painfully into focus, and Jack was covered with blood. Daniel was sitting on the floor. Everything in his head fought against the reality of all he was seeing with his eyes. He felt split in two.
Daniel yelled, "Jack, Jack! You're injured!" He began running his hands over Jack's arms and torso attempting to figure out where the blood was coming from.
"DANIEL!" Jack reached up and grabbed him by the wrists. "I'm not injured! It's your blood. Yours!" He turned Daniel's hand over to reveal a long, deep slash in his right palm that was oozing blood steadily.
Daniel stopped fighting. Stopped moving. Jack's eyes were wide with alarm. Fear for his friend. Fear of what might have happened if he hadn't shown up when he did. Daniel went from combative to passive, just sitting there like he was in shock.
"Aw, crap," Jack muttered. He thought he knew the score when he saw Daniel staring off into the distance shuddering from head to foot in the cafeteria. He knew for certain when he saw how easily Daniel was startled by someone walking into a room, or saying something to him unexpectedly. And there was no denying that Daniel had decided to stop sleeping. He had hoped it wouldn't get to this point. Daniel had had a mild case PTSD before and dealt with it pretty well. But Jack wasn't sure how this was going to go. He had to keep MacKenzie out of it. Inwardly he cringed as he realized this was a moment where he would usually call Janet. He quickly pushed that thought as deep into the box he'd labeled 'Janet's death' as he could.
He lowered himself onto the floor amid the debris of broken glass and things that had been thrown to the floor when he'd overturned the table. Careful to avoid the glass as best he could, he sat on the hard floor and reached for Daniel's arm slowly and gently.
"Daniel, do you know where you are now?"
When Daniel spoke the intensity of the smell of wine on his breath helped Jack understand why he was having so much difficulty reaching him and getting him grounded in the here and now. He knew Daniel had been drinking, but he hadn't realized how much.
Daniel tried to focus on Jack and answered, "I'm on the floor." He paused then said, "Jack? What happened? You're covered in blood."
Jack reminded him, "It's your blood, Daniel. You cut your hand. How you feelin' now?"
Daniel thought about it for a minute. "Drunk," he finally answered matter-of-factly.
Jack huffed tired laughter. It looked like the emergency had passed for now. There was little chance he'd get anywhere tonight so he settled for 'crisis over'. He was about to get up and start cleaning up the place when Daniel surprised him.
"I need to see Cassie," he declared.
"Not tonight, you don't. You are drunk and she doesn't need that." Jack started pushing himself up, accidentally pushing his palm into a pile of glass slivers. He put his hand in front of his face and started picking out shards. They reeked of wine. At least he knew he wouldn't get an infection. "What did you do, drink the whole bottle?"
"Nah, there's about half of it left if you want some." Jack was about to refuse when on a whim he changed his mind. "Okay." He got up and poured himself a glass and then went back to the den where Daniel was still sitting on the floor bleeding. He was staring at the cut hand.
"Oh, no you don't." Jack set his glass down, grabbed Daniel's arm, and yanked him up before he could flash back on the bloody scene of Janet's death again.
Jack helped Daniel wash off his hand and wrap it with gauze he'd retrieved from the medicine cabinet. He straightened up the den and then he sat down with the television tuned to ESPN, which he assumed was relatively safe.
Daniel sluggishly turned towards Jack, "Before you say a word, I'm having another glass of wine. I'll make it small." Jack opened his mouth to protest and then, again, changed his mind.
The sat together in silence drinking for a little while before Daniel piped up.
"Why are you here?"
Jack shrugged and played it coy, "After the amount of time you'd been spending at the Mountain I was kind of used to seeing you 24 hours a day. I missed you."
"Uh huh." Daniel took a gulp of his wine.
"I guess it was a gut thing. I knew you were having flashbacks, but you really needed to go home. Since I was the bastard that took your distractions away I figured I'd just check in on ya'." Forthcoming was a strange thing to get from Jack. Daniel's instinct to let it go without comment was wise, indeed.
He decided there really was no need to talk about what had happened when he'd arrived. No need to discuss the fact that he'd heard the kind of screaming that made the blood run cold as he'd approached Daniel's front door. No need to explain that fear for his friend's life had washed over him in vast waves, compelling him to action like the tidal forces of nature herself. No need to tell him anything like that at all. After seven years the unspoken things were easier to understand than the spoken, especially where Daniel was concerned. Jack tried to understand as little of what Daniel said as possible. Besides, Daniel obviously felt a little embarrassed by the whole display. Still, there was something on his mind.
"What happened, Jack? I mean back on that planet. What happened to us?"
"I don't know, Daniel. I was busy being unconscious."
Daniel's speech was slurred from all the wine, but rapid and effusive the way it always was when things spilled out of his over-full brain. "I don't know…it just seems like someone might have seen we were exposed...no one was covering us. I don't mean to second-guess the efforts of everyone who risked their lives to rescue SG-13, but…it shouldn't have happened. We had tree cover and were down from the ridge. Everyone knew where we were and supposedly what we were doing was the main reason we...well Janet...went to that planet in the first place. Where was everyone? It shouldn't have happened." He stared at the floor and his glasses slipped down his nose.
"No, it shouldn't. But that's combat. Things like that just happen sometimes." He took a gulp of his wine then added, "It sucks." Jack silently argued with himself for a moment and then decided to do something that was completely unexpected. Maybe it was the wine…he didn't know…but what he would say next might help…or hurt…he wasn't sure. "I saw a Jaffa heading for you guys right before I got shot. I was heading in your direction to cover your position when I got hit."
Daniel looked at him over the rim of his glasses, blinked a few times, and downed the rest of his wine.
"I could have done this alone." Cassie wasn't trying to be difficult. She just didn't want Sam putting herself out to drive her to the attorney's office when she could have done it herself.
"It's no problem, Cass." Sam smiled at her. "Besides, I was thinking that after we might see a movie or something. I mean, you're supposed to be going back to school on Monday so you might as well enjoy your last day off." It was a directive couched in an invitation and it was utterly blatant.
"I really don't want to see anything that's playing right now." Cassie looked out the window and watched the rugged countryside of Colorado Springs. She tried to release herself into the silence of the mountains in winter, but Sam kept talking.
"What about shopping? I know you're in the market for a prom dress." The minute she said it she knew it was a mistake. Janet had told Sam how Cassie was so excited about the prom. She was going with a group of girls who had decided to be each other's dates instead of going with boys, which suited Janet just fine. Janet and Cassie had planned to go the weekend after Valentine's Day, when all the dresses would be marked down, and shop for her prom dress.
Mother and daughter.
The two of them.
Together.
Sam could not have put her foot in it any worse if she'd tried. But to her surprise, Cassie didn't respond as negatively as she thought she would.
She very softly and calmly said, "Mom and I were supposed to do that right after Valentine's Day."
The sound of her voice was odd. It was so controlled and measured. Sam was beginning to worry about Cassie not expressing any grief. She stole a glance as she drove. Cassie was sitting with her arms crossed and it looked like her fingernails were dug into her arms.
"Cassie, what are you doing?" Sam was alarmed, but tried not to elicit the knee-jerk defensive teenager response that an overly anxious authority figure always gets. Cassie didn't answer. Sam's tone became more insistent, "Cass, what are you doing with your fingernails?" Immediately Cassie changed positions. Sam could see purple and red marks in her upper arms where she'd been clawing herself.
"I just don't want to talk about the prom, okay?" She wasn't hostile or spiteful. She didn't sound angry. Just earnest.
"Okay. So you don't want to do anything this afternoon?" Sam was very worried, but she decided to let it go for the time being.
"No. Thank you."
"It's your call. If you don't mind, then, I'd like to go in to work and see how things are going there and then go check on the Colonel. He's still recovering from his injuries and I'm fairly certain he's not following Dr. Warner's orders."
"Sure. I'll just go for a ride on my bike."
In this white wave
I am sinking
in this silence
in this white wave
in this silence
I believe
When they got home there was a very familiar white Volkswagen Jetta sitting outside the house. Daniel was sitting behind the wheel staring off into space. He didn't even notice them drive up. They got out and Sam went to the driver's side window and knocked. Daniel nearly jumped out of his skin. He hurriedly got out of the car.
"Hey. Where've you guys been all morning?" He looked awfully tired to Sam. And disheveled. Well, more disheveled than usual.
"I had a meeting with mom's attorney."
"How'd it go?" He ducked his head and looked over the rims of his glasses in that 'I'm concerned about you' look.
"It was great. I own the house, the car, and the life insurance money goes into a trust to help me pay for everything as long as I go to college in the fall." She was trying to sound enthusiastic, but was failing miserably. She sensed he wasn't buying it and looked at her feet, her hair falling in her face. "You wanna come inside?"
"Yeah. I brought something for you. Hang on, let me get it." He went into his car and retrieved a small shoebox.
"I'm going to run those errands." Sam felt the distinct sense that she should let them have some time alone for some reason. She got in her truck and left. Daniel and Cassie went inside and sat down.
"So, how are you doing, really?" Daniel's voice communicated that this wasn't about small-talk. This was for real and she could feel her pulse quicken.
Cassie looked at him for a minute and debated actually telling him things. Lots of things. He'd been her friend since she'd come to this planet. He'd always been kind to her. She had thought at first that he had come by to see Sam but apparently not. That he was here to see her somehow made her want to talk. But she knew what would happen if she talked…really talked…and her heart raced.
"Cass?"
"I'm okay, I guess. I miss her." She couldn't keep looking him in the eyes because now she knew she was basically lying and surely he knew it too. She tried taking a deep breath to slow down the buzzing of the rush of blood in her ears. She reminded herself that she had nothing to fear here. And replied to herself that she didn't believe her.
"You know, you and I have some things in common. We've never really talked about it. I don't really talk about my family with anyone. But I would like to tell you about them now, if you don't mind." She thought it was pretty cool of him to not just do what he wanted. He was asking for her permission basically to talk about stuff. Nobody else she could think of had ever treated her that way. It felt...respectful. But as cool as that felt it shrank rapidly from the fear rising in her heart now. There was no amount of breathing that could keep at bay the tang of panic, acid and bitter in her mouth. Adrenalin coursed through her body.
"Daniel, I don't want to talk about my mother right now." She tried to keep her voice steady. It was getting harder and harder to keep her voice steady these days. She balled up her hands and dug her fingernails into her palms. The sting of it was instantly calming.
"I didn't mean that I wanted to talk about your mom or my family with the SGC." He opened up the shoebox and pulled out a picture on top of a handsome blue-eyed man with dark hair and a beautiful light-haired woman. They were holding a towheaded kid with wide inquisitive eyes who was looking at something beyond the person holding the camera. They were smiling happily. "I meant I wanted to tell you about my family: my mom and dad. They died when I was 8. I was just a little younger than you were when you came to us."
"What happened to them?" She released one fist and to the picture. She studied it closely.
"They were killed in an accident at a museum in New York City. They were crushed when a heavy cover stone fell on them." The image of it and the sound of his parents screaming still jarred him. He shuddered.
"Are you cold?" Cassie started to jump up and get him a blanket.
"No, no. I'm fine. Just thinking about that day…it is difficult." Daniel closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. In theory the practice relieved tension. In reality, Daniel was inclined to believe, it didn't do a damn thing to help. But it was one of his little habits.
"Yeah, I remember when I had to tell mom about what happened to my…." She trailed off falteringly. Family. There was that word again. She had the overwhelming urge to strike it from her vocabulary. "Well, you know. It's hard to talk about stuff sometimes." She handed him back the picture. When he reached for it she noticed the bandage on his hand. "What happened?"
"I cut it on a broken glass." Desperately wanting to change the subject, Daniel saw the catalog of prom dresses sitting on the coffee table in front of them. "Are you going to the prom?"
Cassie clinched her fists again as a dizzying heaviness pressed in on her. "I was. I don't know now."
"Do you have a date?" Daniel grinned sideways at her.
"I was thinking about going with some of my friends. None of us really have boyfriends and so we figured it would be easier to just go together than worry about guys." Cassie shrugged.
"Whatever happened to what was his name…Dominic?"
"He was sweet and all, but that was two years ago, Daniel. We only went out for a few months. Besides, he graduated last year. He was a year older than me." She sounded nonchalant, but something in her demeanor told Daniel that there was more to that story.
"Your mom didn't like him?"
Cassie laughed, "Mom hated him. After that whole thing when I got sick he was scared to come around, anyway." She was smiling, but it never reached her eyes.
"Well, I hope you have fun at the prom. It is still a big deal, right? I mean when I was a senior in high school that was what everyone talked about from January until May: what they were going to wear to the prom, what they were going to do at the prom, what they were going to do after the prom." He poked her in the arm playfully. She tilted her head and grinned with just a little more sincerity. It still didn't reach her eyes.
But just as suddenly as the lightness had started, it was over. Cassie asked Daniel, "What did you do after your parents died?"
"I went to foster homes. Lots of different foster homes."
"So you never really had much of a family after they died?" She dug her fingernails deeper into her palms. The pain seemed to draw away the tightness that constantly seized her throat every time she had to speak that word.
"Not until SG-1. They're family to me now." Something about saying it felt a little weird, but somehow he'd felt compelled to come here and try to share this with Cassie. He felt responsible to her…responsible for Janet's death. Responsible for Cassie being left without anyone to whom she could belong. Though he would probably never say it aloud, he'd always longed to feel connected to someone in a permanent way. He'd found that for the first time as an adult with his wife, Shau're. Then she'd been taken from him. But at that time he'd been given something that had connected him in a way that he knew would last forever: SG-1. Even though he'd chosen to leave them for a while, he had stayed connected to them. And when he returned from his adventures as an ascended being they'd welcomed him back eagerly. Not even death had defeated that connection.
The stinging reality here was that Janet had been a part of SG-1, in all honesty. She'd been there with them through many of their most trying and difficult moments. She'd put more energy and effort into keeping them alive and together than anyone else. She'd been on a few missions with them, but the thing that stuck out was the fact that she'd always been there waiting for them when they'd returned. She'd been there when he'd ascended. She'd been there when he nearly died from addiction to the sarcophagus. She'd been there when he'd nearly died from withdrawal from the Goa'uld light. She'd always been there. Her life had been dedicated to the health and well-being of others, particularly those at the SGC. And that dedication had ultimately robbed her of her own.
Daniel suddenly didn't feel like talking any more. He'd hoped to come here and have a meaningful heart-to-heart with Cassie. He wanted to somehow to begin to make up for the fact that he'd not been able to do anything to save her mother. He wanted Cassie to know that she still had him and the rest of SG-1 – that they cared for her like family. But words began to fail him, as they so often did when it came to matters of his heart. He took the picture of his family and stuck it in his shirt pocket. He turned and looked at her. Her blond hair was hanging in her eyes, but he could see how tired she was, how sad she was. He felt utterly responsible.
"Ah, I really can't stay, but I wanted to bring you these." He pushed the shoebox towards her. "They've just been sitting in my house collecting dust. I thought you might enjoy having them."
She took the box from him and opened it up to find a pile of photographs. There on the top was a photograph of her beautiful adopted mother flashing one of her bright toothy smiles at some cookout or other. She was holding a beer and mugging for the camera. Cassandra quickly replaced the lid of the box.
"Thank you" she said tightly.
"Look, Cass, if you need anything, please call. You know we're here for you. It doesn't have to be major. That's what family is for." He leaned over and gave her a quick hug and then basically darted out the door.
Cassandra watched him rush out and speed away. She understood. He probably felt the same way Sam felt: like it was somehow his fault. She figured she should tell him she didn't blame him. Maybe she'd call him and tell him. They all seemed so ready and willing to blame themselves. It was almost touching. They really did care for her. It would have been touching, she guessed, if she dared let anything touch her at all.
There was a sudden unexpected and intense desire welling up with in her to reach out; to grab the phone and call Daniel and make him come back, to sit and talk with him about his family, to tell him about hers. Maybe she could call Sam and get her to come back to the house early. Maybe even Colonel O'Neill. He'd always been there for her when she'd asked him to. It was a suffocating desire. It clawed at her mind until she was panting against the strain of it.
"NO!" She screamed it at the top of her lungs, rattling the glass in the china cabinet. She could not let such selfish desires take hold of her. Everyone who became her family died. And as much as she loved Sam and Daniel and Jack and even Teal'c, she knew that she had to be very careful not to let them think of her as family.
Because family was the one thing she could never be.
Not to anyone.
Ever.
She locked the front door and went back to the living room to gather the box of pictures. She tucked them under one arm and went to the kitchen. Then she did something she'd never done before: she grabbed the bottle of bourbon her mom had kept "hidden" in the cabinet over the refrigerator. She took the bottle and the box and a utility knife to her room and closed the door.
Daniel sat on the sofa in his living room for a few minutes after the CD he'd been listening to was over. He'd neglected to hit the repeat button and he hadn't felt like getting up to restart the music, U2's The Joshua Tree. The phone ringing forced the issue. "Hello?" Daniel rarely received phone calls on his landline. It was so seldom used that he'd considered having it removed and relying on his mobile alone. But here he was getting a phone call at home, and it felt decidedly odd.
"Daniel, why aren't you answering your mobile phone?" It was Sam.
"I didn't hear it ring." He reached into his pocket and fished around for it. It showed that he'd received five calls, all from Sam. He realized the music he'd been blaring as loudly as possible was to blame for missing the calls, the music he'd been blaring to try to numb his mind and body. To shore up his walls. "Sorry, what's up?"
"Daniel, do you know where Cassie went?"
"What? No. What do you mean 'where she went'?"
"She didn't mention to you that she might go out or anything?" The alarm in Sam's voice told Daniel that his response was not what she'd hoped for.
"No. To tell you the truth, I kind of left in a hurry. We didn't really talk much. I just wanted to bring her that box. I gave it to her and then I left. What's wrong?"
"She's not here."
"Well, it's still pretty early in the day. Why are you so worried?"
There was a pause on the other end.
"Daniel, I think she's been drinking. And…" she hesitated to relate her suspicions about what she'd found in the bedroom. Something was definitely very very wrong with Cassandra.
"And what? Sam, I can't help if you don't tell me what is going on."
"And…I think she may have hurt herself." There. That was fairly vague, yet informative.
"What do you mean by hurt herself?" Naturally, vague was completely ineffectual where Daniel was concerned. His inquisitive mind wouldn't let him not ask questions. It was his only major failing as a diplomat. And here he was, neglecting to see that Sam was deliberately trying to be vague. "Sam! What do you mean by that!?" The fear in his voice was disarming. She had to tell him something.
"Daniel, I think Cassie may be in real trouble. I'm going to call Colonel O'Neill. Can you swing by the base and pick up Teal'c? I think it would be best if you saw this for yourself."
"And you won't give me any more than that?" It was posed as a question, but he knew the answer.
"Just get Teal'c," and she hung up.
Daniel's mouth was dry. Sam had found something that had scared her enough to believe Cassie was in trouble, possibly even hurt, but she wouldn't say what it was on the phone. If it was too much to tell him specifics before he got there, then it was probably because it would be upsetting enough to make driving dangerous. His mind began to race through the potentialities of the situation. Nothing he could come up with would leave him free of nightmares and crushing guilt for the rest of his life. He grabbed his keys and ran out the door to go get Teal'c.
The Colonel had arrived shortly before Daniel and Teal'c. He entered the house unannounced and found Sam pacing in the kitchen.
"Okay, talk to me. What did you find?"
She wiped at the panic-induced tears staining her cheeks and took a deep breath. "Follow me." She led him to Cassie's room. Before he had a chance to fully take in what it was Sam wanted him to see Daniel and Teal'c erupted into the house. Daniel's face was white and Teal'c's hardened to a determined grimace. Neither knew what they were about to face, but both clearly feared the worst. In Cassie's room they saw what had alarmed the major to the point of near-hysteria. And they were all instantly drawn into a collective sense of alarm.
The comforter had been shredded by what appeared to be a knife. It had blood-red stains on it in several places. Sam drew Teal'c all the way into the room and pushed the door closed, indicating the red smear on the white paint. There was blood on the door and a few drops could be found leading from the bed to the door. There was also an empty bourbon bottle on the floor.
Daniel hunched over like someone had punched him in the gut and moaned. Flashes of bloody nightmares flickered through his conscious mind like a jittery reel of film. He licked his lips and took deep breaths trying to get control before the flashes became the flashback.
Teal'c straightened like an arrow. And Jack closed his eyes and muttered through tightly clenched teeth, "Son of a…"
A moment passed as they all stood staring then Jack interjected, "Okay, what the HELL happened here?"
"I don't know. I just got home from running a few errands. When I left it was just you and Cassie here." She turned and pointed at Daniel. In her frantic state she began to accuse him with her voice before she knew any real facts. "Did you do or say anything that would upset her?"
"I don't think so. We didn't talk much. I talked to her about my parents a little, but it was just got too awkward so I gave her the box and then I left." His voice was weakened. He couldn't feel his feet beneath him. The room spun crazily around him.
"What was in the box, Daniel?" Jack asked, his voice measured and calm.
"Just some pictures of all of us that I had lying in a box at my house. I had a bunch of Janet and I thought Cassie would want them." There was a beat, then Daniel's blue eyes went wide and his face ashen. "You don't think…"
"Jesus, Daniel!? Did you think they wouldn't have any effect on her?" Sam snapped manically.
Daniel shook his head and stammered, "I didn't think…I didn't realize…"
Jack calmly defended Daniel, "I don't think I would have assumed a box of pictures would be enough to cause a problem. If there was a problem it was there before Daniel showed up." He turned and took Daniel by the shoulders and led him from the room, knowing that the blood on the bed and floor was wreaking havoc with his barely-established equilibrium. They all followed.
"Sir, we have to find her. I knew that she wasn't dealing with Janet's death well. I knew that it was going to be hard." Sam's own sense of self-control began to return as she went into action mode. "I don't know if any of you have noticed: she hasn't cried. And today…today I thought I saw her clawing her arms to stop herself from getting emotional."
"I, too, have noticed that Cassandra was not expressing herself with her usual degree of candor." Teal'c's baritone voice was edged with deep concern for Cassie. "I had hoped it was simply a matter of time: that in time, she would begin to deal with the loss of a second mother."
He'd said it. Sometimes he had the courage to speak the things the rest of them wanted to pretend weren't true. This one thing they'd all realized and yet had not spoken aloud: Cassandra had lost two mothers in seven years. It suddenly seemed so ridiculous to Sam to have expected that Cassie would be anything but mad with grief.
"Where do we look?" Daniel could barely get the words out. He looked like he might throw up.
"I think she's on her bike. She said something about going for a bike ride today," she recalled suddenly.
"Bicycling and bourbon….great." Jack muttered. "I suggest we start with the park where we used to all meet. Daniel, stay here."
Daniel found his voice suddenly, "STAY HERE? But Jack I can't just sit here and wait?!"
"Daniel, I mean it. Someone has to be here in case she comes back or calls, and Carter knows more of her friends than you do. She has more places she can look right away." Jack didn't add that he wasn't sure Daniel was really up to handling this whole situation. He wasn't even sure leaving him alone was such a good idea. No doubt Daniel was berating himself for giving her the pictures. He had a self-indictment streak a mile wide, but now was not the time to deal with that. They needed to find Cassie.
Jack decided to call General Hammond and let him know what had happened. It wasn't that it involved base security or anything like that, but the General was very fond of Cassie and it was also entirely possible that the Colonel might want to use some of the base resources to try and find her if their own efforts proved fruitless. The General was, not surprisingly, distressed to hear of the situation and promised whatever aid he could provide. The Colonel devised a strategy for their search, and they set off in different directions, Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill in one vehicle, and Sam in another. Daniel watched them drive away into the long shadows of the late afternoon. Then he closed the door and sank onto the couch and waited.
I can't help this longing
comfort me
I can't hold it all in
if you won't let me
The shadows in the room grew longer and longer and soon were being cast by the streetlights instead of the sunlight. Daniel didn't move from his spot on the couch for some time as he replayed the day in his head over and over. He knew there was no way he could have known that the pictures would upset her as much as they obviously had. But he could have shot himself for not even considering it.
The darkness of the room was interlaced by light beaming in through the windows from glowing street lamps diffused by sheer white curtains. The light reflected in hazy patterns off the wood furniture, brass lamps, and glass of the television screen. It was odd the way night changed the shape of everything. Even sound was different at night. The room was spacious, but the long shadows and glowing reflections filled it up in a way that gave it a claustrophobic feeling. Daniel finally had to stand up and walk around. He started looking for a light switch when the door suddenly sprang open, slamming against the wall as Cassandra literally fell into the house.
"WHOA! Cassie?" Daniel found the lamp's switch and turned on the light to discover the cacophony of sound had been created by a thoroughly inebriated and explosively out-of-control young woman. Cassie had launched herself through the door with enough force to cause the door handle to dent the plaster. She was unable to maintain anything resembling balance and fell to the floor with a bone-crunching crash.
"Cassie?" Daniel squatted down next to her and tried to help her get sorted out. "You okay?"
She slung her head back and her tangled stringy hair swatted him in the face. He jerked backward and lost his balance, knocking into the entry table and spilling the lamp to the floor. The light blinked back out again as the crash broke the bulb.
"What are you doing here?" She was thick-tongued drunk and menacingly hostile.
"Well, I was waiting for you, as a matter of fact." He could see her crumpled figure in the light from the street lamp. Something about the way the night took the color out of everything made the blood on her shirt so much more stark than it would have been in regular light. Daniel drew a sharp breath. "Cassandra, are you hurt?" He went to her side and started to try to help her again.
She swatted at him clumsily with her hands, "Get away from me."
Despite the sting of her words, he knew she was in no condition to be left alone. "No, I'm not going to do that. Now, are you hurt?"
"Of course I'm hurt, you...nitwit! Aaaaah!!" She opened her mouth, thrust her head forward and let loose a frightening primal scream at him. The sound of it threatened to unravel the frayed edges of his own fragile sense of balance. He clenched his jaw and willed himself to remain calm…remain focused. He tried to shake it off a bit.
"Where are you hurt?" That's it, Daniel. One foot in front of the other.
"Everywhere." She rolled over on her back and stared up at the ceiling. "Why are the lights off?"
Daniel could see her better then in the silvery light of the doorway. Her right hand appeared to be cut across the palm in a strikingly similar pattern to the gash he was sporting. The blood on her shirt was hopefully from that wound. She didn't appear to be injured otherwise. "Cassie, at least let me help you get the rest of the way into the house."
"Oh sure. Of course, help me. But don't think if I let you help me that that makes you family." She spit the word at him like acid. It was a strange thing to say. He reminded himself that she was drunk. It was a mental note that didn't sink below the surface. It was truth, but his heart bore the mark of her attack.
"Of course." He reached down and started pulling her into the room. "You know, you had us all pretty worried." Once he got her inside he closed the door he found a light switch and turned on the overhead in the hallway.
"Us? Who is us?" Cassie cocked her head, confused.
"Sam called Jack and Teal'c and me when she came back and found you gone. You left evidence of your little party-for-one in your bedroom. It scared her, she called us, and it scared us, too. They're out looking for you right now."
"Cause that's what families do, right?" She said it in the saddest tone Daniel thought he'd ever heard. He knew he needed to call everyone and let them know she was home, but he was not going to let this go. He wasn't going to run out on her this time. If he even turned away for a moment he knew she would try to crawl back inside herself. This might be his only chance to really talk to her. He scrabbled to her side, trying to not upset his injured hand.
"Yes, Cass. Families worry about each other. When someone is hurting...they're...there for each other. Some families aren't all that healthy, but I've noticed that even the really dysfunctional ones seem to at least care about each other."
She seemed to contemplate that and then she bound to her feet and stumbled for her room. Daniel was stunned into place for a moment, but quickly found his feet and hurried after her. "What? What are you doing?"
She banged into the door frame on the way into her room and weaved across the floor. She fell to her knees beside her bed and reached beneath the mattress, where she retrieved the box he'd given her earlier. "Here." She tossed the box at him. The lid came loose and the pictures, shred into hundreds of pieces, scattered all over the place, raining down like snow. "I don't want them. I don't have a family any more." Her erratic, forceful movements had caused the cut on her hand to open up and bleed again. She ran her hands through her hair and smeared the blood on her face and in her hair.
The sight of it lit a sparking fuse in his mind. It was a flash and the sound of hissing air and Janet being thrown slightly into the air. It was her, dead before she landed back on the ground. And blood was everywhere. It streaked her face. It soaked the ground and soaked through the knees of his pants. It soaked his thoughts, everything he could see...it seeped into his dreams and now his waking nightmares.
And there was screaming. There was the screaming of Simon Wells. There was his own screaming…but this time there was someone else. Cassie was here. Cassie was screaming. Cassie was in front of him screaming at him and hitting him. There was blood on her face. She was screaming at him. And she was hitting him, smearing gore all over both of them.
"Do you hear me?! GET OUT!!!" She was pounding at his shoulders with her bloody fist. Daniel grabbed her arm and held it before she could hurt him or herself any further. He hadn't even seen her come across the room. The reality of everything that had happened merged with the reality of everything that was happening right in this very moment and it slammed Daniel like a blast from a staff weapon.
"NO!" He yelled back at her. She stopped, stunned. "NO! I AM NOT LEAVING!" The suddenness of the tears just then was overwhelming. There was no stopping them. They were a tide of pain that washed over him, engulfing him, rolling him like he was seaweed, and spitting him up on the shore. His chest heaved and sobs wracked his body so that he trembled violently. He let Cassandra go then collapsed to his hands and knees for a moment. Unable to really support himself, he leaned against the door frame and then sat back. He wrapped his arms around himself as tightly as he could and held on for dear life. He was certain the soul-searing pain in his heart would simply open up his chest and all that he held inside would burst out of him, exploding like bloody fireworks.
Cassie became very quiet and still and simply gaped at him. She was completely stunned. She'd seen everyone cry some this week. Sam had really let go in the living room the other night, but this was something else. This was Daniel. She didn't want to care, but the drinking had weakened her walls. Maybe she'd been wrong to try to not care in the first place. The display of utter despair before her smacked her like a smart-ass bully. It awoke something in her determinedly closed heart. She didn't want to see Daniel hurting this way. He was grieving so deeply he didn't even seem to be aware of her presence any more. Her mind was fuzzy and the room dipped and swayed, but she managed to put her uninjured hand on his shoulder gently. He looked up at her with tear-filled blue eyes.
"I'm so sorry, Cassie." The words came out strangled and hoarse. "I never even saw the Jaffa who shot her. It happened so fast. She was just gone. Instantly. Gone." They sat there holding each other's gaze for a moment. Daniel's shaking began to subside a little. The insistent pain of his grief seemed to be satisfied for the time being now that he'd attended to it. He felt the tide starting to roll back out to sea. Cassie's demeanor, however, had changed dramatically for the second time in as many minutes. She was pale and breathing rapidly.
Cassie felt that familiar tension in her chest and panic start to rise. She gulped air and swallowed against the lump forming in her throat. Everything felt tightened - stretched to its limits. The intense heartache in Daniel had ripped away the careful façade she'd been constructing. She couldn't control it. As she tried to comfort him, the storm inside her began to swell and the anxiety of what might happen if she let it rage built right along with it. She reached up with her hands and grabbed two fistfuls of hair and pulled as hard as she could. The harder she pulled, the more pain she caused, the more she could push back the tide of the anguish. She pulled as hard as she could, willing the thick silence to return, to wrap its safety around her.
Daniel realized what she was doing and reached up to take her hands. "Cassie, don't do this. Don't hurt yourself." He sniffed and shook his head. "Cass, do you hear me? You have to stop that." Her eyes were glazed over and cast in the distance. He didn't want to hurt her, but she was really out of it. Completely dissociated from herself. He forcefully took her hands and started to try to pry them loose. She let go immediately and started fighting him, again. She hit him and sent his glasses flying. They soared across the room and crashed into a desk. He tried to get control of her as she scrambled backwards. "I'm not going to hurt you!" The violence of her fighting was scaring him. The strong aroma of bourbon on her breath reminded him that she may be unreachable. "Cassie, it's okay!"
She continued fighting him, frantically shoving herself backwards. Daniel desperately grabbed at her to try to stop her before she hurt herself, but she was flailing maniacally. She squeezed her eyes closed and screamed at him, "NO!" Then she launched herself backwards with all the force she could muster. Just out of his reach, Daniel grabbed at the air as Cassandra smashed her head into the corner of the railing of her bed. Stunned and no longer fighting him, Daniel was able to catch her before she fell into anything else. She looked up at him for a moment, then started to struggle against him again.
This time he had some leverage. He flipped her around and grabbed her in a basket hold. He held her arms crisscrossed and tight against her abdomen, one wrist in each hand. She struggled and pulled against his hold to no avail. She tried to head-butt him, but he'd tipped his head to the side. In her desperation she started kicking him in the shins. It was the only thing she could do.
"OW! CASSIE, YOU'RE HURTING ME!"
"You're hurting me! Let me go! PLEASE! LET ME GO!!" The desperation in her voice rose. The panic, the frantic dread that seemed to have completely possessed her was a driving force she couldn't deny, yet Daniel was just as determined to not let her go.
He responded with a stern, but quiet tone, "No, I can't let you go. You're hurting yourself. If you keep going down this road you could end up killing yourself, Cassie! I won't let you do that. WE won't let you do that. We love you!" He continued to brace himself against the thrashing girl.
"You don't understand!!! You can't love me! You'll die if you love me!" It was as sudden as the way it began: all the fight went out of her. Daniel didn't dare let her go. He wasn't sure what was happening.
Neither of them noticed the sound of the front door, or the appearance and then sudden disappearance of Colonel O'Neill in the doorway to her bedroom. Every instinct he had told him not to interrupt; that the key to this whole thing was for Cassie and Daniel to work it out together. That neither of them would be okay without turning to the other. Teal'c understood with a glance at the colonel what was going on in the other room. He silently disappeared into the kitchen to call Sam and then the base to let them know that Cassie had been located.
"I won't die if I love you." He hoped desperately that she wouldn't bring up the fact that he'd already died. To his utter relief she didn't.
"EVERYONE WHO LOVES ME DIES!" The words ripped from her like the sound of shredding cloth. It startled Daniel. He had to breathe for a moment. The memory of a night when he'd screamed those very words into a stark and unforgiving sky just after Sha're had died washed over him. The stars had twinkled their veiled riddles in reply. He'd felt exactly this way. And he knew exactly how to respond.
He took a chance and released Cassie's wrists, placing his hands on her upper arms gently. She didn't pull away. His head over one shoulder, his mouth next to her ear, he spoke his next words tenderly, "Being alone is infinitely worse than the loving, and then the sometimes losing, of those we love. I promise you, Cass. I've lived it." She stood there with her back up against his chest, panting from exertion. She was grimy and bloody, drunk and completely exhausted. In that quiet moment Cassie came to the end of herself. All the fight and restraint she'd summoned to keep it all shoved away died. The walls inside were gone, obliterated by the power of Daniel's words. There was nothing left to protect her from the truth. Not the truth of her mother's death. Not the truth in what Daniel had just told her.
She felt like she couldn't breathe. She held her breath as the tightening in her chest ran away with her. Suddenly she was gasping for air and her throat had betrayed her. It clamped tight and the gasping turned to crying. Tears spilled over and washed in streams down her cheeks. Her shoulders shook with the effort she put into trying to maintain some kind of composure. She was so afraid of what would happen if she completely let it go.
Daniel put his arms around her then and whispered, "It's okay...I'm right here...I won't let you go...you can let it out now...I promise...I'm here." There was nothing more she could take. She let go a strangled anguished sound that broke both their hearts. Her knees buckled. She tipped forward and collapsed to her knees. Daniel supported her to the floor, holding her from behind gently, but confidently. This was right. It was terribly horribly right. The pain he carried was alive and awake and slipped to the surface as he held this dear young woman in her worst hour. Silent tears spilled down his cheeks, dripping into her hair as they rocked gently.
The silence she'd wrapped so tightly around herself shattered and Cassie moaned from a place of primal grief.
She had never felt so alone...
Completely alone...
Alone.
The Goa'uld had taken every bit of family she had ever had. She felt robbed, violated. Janet had known all her secrets, even the ones about boys. Janet had been her mother when her first mother had died. She hadn't HAD to take on such a responsibility. She'd WANTED to. Janet had loved Cassie when she had no one else. Cassie sometimes had tried to use the fact that Janet wasn't her 'real' mother against her when she wasn't getting her way and Janet never fell for it. The truth was, she was as real a mother as you get. And now she was gone. They would never share her prom, her graduation, her wedding, the birth of her first child.
The reality of it all crashed over her in wave after wave. She was completely at its mercy as the greatest pain she'd ever known forced its way out of her soul, dashing her on the jagged rocks of grief. It would be denied no longer. She practically howled with anguish. Daniel just held on tightly and rocked.
In the hallway Jack could hear the sounds his heart knew so well – sounds he'd made in the private moments after his son had died. Sounds his heart still made, kept in silence for fear of the real depth of the pain. The young girl they'd rallied to save not once, but twice, was hurting that deeply now. It was almost more than he could take. His throat tightened and the most unwelcome sensation of tears became undeniable. It wasn't about Charlie, either. He'd cared for Janet. She'd been there. She'd put them back together after they'd been blown up, shot, infected with illness or otherwise maimed more times than he could count. She was more than a doctor. She was his friend, too. He gasped and fought against his own grief as Cassie and Daniel were carried away in the currents of their own on the other side of the wall.
The flow of tears seemed endless. The depth of this pain was hidden, unknown. The three of them were there, locked in their own measure of grief, until suddenly Sam returned. The colonel held out his hand and stopped her in the hallway, indicating that she should absolutely not go in there. She didn't look pleased, but when she heard the sobbing she realized something important was happening and reluctantly consented. She stood there in the hallway and the lamplight from the street hit the colonel's face in just the right way. She saw the tears and turned away. The thought of him crying gripped her heart in an unmerciful fist. Everything about this was a horror. She desperately wanted to wake up.
Seeing her composure degrading, Jack took her by the arm and led her quietly back outside. It was cold, bitterly cold, and their breath, hot with the energy of pent up emotion, clouded heavily each time they exhaled. He started to say something to her, but instead he put his arms around her. For her, the cold disappeared and the warmth of this man enveloped her, soothing her pain and inciting a desire she knew she would deny. She wept quietly into his shoulder.
Daniel and Cassie sat in the bedroom floor grieving and crying until they were spent. He gently caressed her hair and waited to see what would happen next. After a long exhausting while she spoke:
"I cut my hand."
"I know." He kept his voice low. He thought he'd heard a door earlier and didn't know if someone was listening or not.
"On purpose."
"I know."
"It was the only way to stop the pain."
"I know." Her confession was not startling to him, but he'd hoped he'd been wrong about her cutting herself on purpose.
"I did it on my legs, too."
"That, I didn't know." He pushed her out of his arms so he could look her in the eyes. "Cassie, you can't do that any more. Do you understand that? Ever."
"Yeah. I understand." She had more to confess. "I drank half a bottle of bourbon."
"Oh, I definitely knew that." He smiled at her and she smiled back. But something about the smile frightened her and she abruptly threw her arms around his neck.
In a timid child's voice she asked, "Are you really not leaving?"
He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly. "Cassie, you and I both know that bad things happen and because of what I do I cannot promise nothing bad will ever happen again." He spoke in soft muffled tones into her long hair. "But as far as I'm concerned, I'm not going anywhere. And I am completely certain that Jack and Sam and Teal'c all feel the same way."
"You're right, we do." Jack's voice startled them and they both looked up to find Sam and Jack standing in the doorway. "Are you okay?"
They answered simultaneously, "No." And they smiled.
"Good." He said, grinning back at them. "I'm glad you figured that out."
Heaven holds a sense of wonder
and I wanted to believe
that I'd get caught up
when the rage in me subsides
Sr. Airman Simon Wells had been discharged from the infirmary the next day. His wife had gone into labor. He called Daniel a couple of days later and asked if he would come over and see the baby. Daniel said he'd be right over.
He went in the house and gave the teddy bear he'd bought for the child to her parents. He was amazed at how beautiful she was. She was lying there in her mother's arms, sleeping like all new babies do. Her mouth was beautiful, her hands graceful with long elegant fingers. The wisps of her light brown hair framed her face in a soft diffuse manner. Daniel thought she might be the prettiest little baby he'd ever seen.
"What's her name?"
Mom and Dad looked at each other. Dad said, "Janet."
There was a beat as he struggled to keep his composure. "That's nice." He smiled at mother and baby and decided that it would be appropriate to ask for the favor he wanted from them after all. "Listen, I know that this is an emotional time for you two, but I have a big favor to ask of you."
He explained what he needed from them and they readily agreed to his request. He ran out to the car and then reappeared with Cassie behind him. She entered the living room apprehensively, but began to grin from ear to ear when she saw the baby.
"Cassie, I wanted you to meet the family your mom was saving when she died. And I especially wanted you to meet…Janet Wells."
Cassie looked at Daniel with wide eyes and looked back to the baby. She knelt beside the mother and took a closer look at the beautiful reminder of why it was her mom did what she did.
Mrs. Wells asked, "Would you like to hold her?" Simon's eyes got big as saucers. She'd barely let him hold her so far.
Cassie looked askance at Daniel. He just smiled at her and pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose. "I would really like that, yes," she said in a soft voice.
She sat down on the couch next to mom and took the soft bundle of newborn. She felt tears start to come to her eyes…and she didn't fight them. She leaned down and kissed the baby girl's forehead and a tear rolled down her cheek.
"Nice to meet you, Janet. You have a very special family."
I have seen you
in this white wave
you are silent
you are breathing
in this white wave
I am free
~fin~
Please leave a review and let me know what you think.