This is my first attempt at fan fic. After watching Affinity, I started wondering about the family of Krista's boyfriend. Surely they would have had something to say about the murder charges being dropped. This is my attempt at wrapping up a perceived "loose thread." I would love to have someone beta read future chapters for me. Thanks in advance for constructive reviews.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Stargate characters or plots. The other characters in this story are my own.

Blood Relatives

Jack's hand was beginning to ache from the pressure he was applying to the wound in Daniel's shoulder. He wondered if it was beginning to clot. He lifted his hand slightly and peeked under a corner of the cloth that was pressed against the wound. Blood quickly began to flow around the edges of the opening left by the bullet now embedded in Daniel's shoulder. Damn. Jack quickly put his hand back down over the wound.

I can't believe he caught a bullet AGAIN, Jack thought. Over the last seven years with the SGC, Daniel had been shot with astonishing frequency, of course. He had been zatted, ribboned, and hit by staff blasts multiple times; and even pegged once with a tranquilizer dart, by Jack himself. But Daniel had never been shot by a plain old Earth-style bullet-spitting gun until last year's excursion to Honduras. Just a few months later, Jack had been forced to shoot him again in the Gate room, of all places, courtesy of Anubis. And now, this.

Six weeks ago

Alan Royall, attorney-at-law, leaned back slightly in his chair and studied the pair sitting across the desk from him. While the middle-aged woman radiated vengeful grief, he didn't perceive anything personally threatening in her manner. But what was going on with the teen boy? Hostile, he decided: that was the right word for his body language. Or was threatening a more accurate description? Though he was only of average height and slightly-built, there was a hard-edged anger about the teen that Alan felt unsettling. He wondered briefly if the boy was in a gang, then chided himself for stereotyping the boy.

If he did take this case, he'd have to be very careful in how he handled these clients. Warnings from a particularly gloomy law school professor flitted through his head: tales of clients who filed malpractice suits, or who turned into stalkers that followed attorneys around and left disturbing messages on phones for months. Alan was concerned that this pair had a thirst for revenge, and things might get ugly for him if they didn't prevail in court. On the other hand, his practice was just beginning to get rolling, and he needed the work.

"Given what you've told me about the girl," he said in his most soothing tone, "it doesn't sound like she has a lot of money or other assets. Even if you get a judgment against her, you may not be able to recover very much; perhaps not even enough to cover the costs of such a suit. Are you sure that a wrongful death suit is in the best interest of you and your son?"

"She killed my son! Either her or that African!" the woman shouted in reply. "And the police and the prosecutor let them both get away with it! I just want to a judge to say that one or both of them is guilty, even if I won't have the satisfaction of seeing them rot in jail."

"All right, then," Alan said calmly. "I agree with you that the circumstances under which the criminal charges were dropped might raise questions in the mind of a civil court judge. If you're certain you want to proceed, then I'll draw up a client agreement for you to sign, and we'll get started. However, you must have standing to pursue a wrongful death claim. Standing means that you have the right to sue in a given case."

He took a deep breath, and continued as gently as he could. "According to Colorado law, a parent can file a wrongful death suit only if the decedent had no spouse or children. I'm sorry to have to ask you this, considering your loss, but did you son ever have a spouse or a child?"

Tears sprang into the woman's eyes. The teen sitting next to her gave Alan an angry glower. The woman looked down at her hands, folded tightly in her lap. "No," she choked out, "and he never will."

Four weeks ago

Daniel woke from just a few hours of sleep to an insistent knocking at his front door. Bleary-eyed, opened the door to find a legal courier with an official-looking envelope in his hand. "Uh, oh," Daniel thought, "this can't be good." He hurried back into his house; then opened the letter with trepidation, as though it were a snake that might bite him. After skimming the contents, Daniel whipped out his cell phone. His forehead wrinkled in annoyance when all he got was Jack's voice mail. Jack was notorious for failing to check his voice mail. Daniel hesitated – if Jack did get the message, the contents were guaranteed tick him off. Perhaps he should deliver the news in person. Then he heard the "beep." Too late to just hang up now: if he did, without leaving a message, Jack would probably think he'd been kidnapped by the Trust or attacked by a goa'uld or something.

"Jack, I've been subpoenaed to give a deposition in a lawsuit," Daniel explained quickly. "The mother of the guy that Teal'c was accused of killing is suing him, and Krista too, for wrongful death."

But Jack didn't need Daniel's message to know that. In fact, he already knew about the suit. At that moment, he was sitting his office, frowning in annoyance at a subpoena with his name on it. His subpoena, along with another for Teal'c, had been delivered by courier at the entrance to the Cheyenne Mountain complex a half-hour earlier.

Jack suppressed the sudden, overwhelming desire to throw his subpoena into the trash. His team had important battles to fight with snakeheads and Replicators and rogue NID agents. Jack didn't have time to deal with the ever-growing mound of SGC paperwork on his desk, some of which was actually urgent, let alone manage the distraction of a lawsuit. He leaned forward in his leather chair and picked up the desk phone, then hesitated. What was the name of that JAG guy who had worked the criminal case?

"Walter!" he called out.

"Already on it, sir!" came the reply.