Summary: Reflection on friends and the years
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: I ain't got no money, and nobody'd be daft enough to pay me for this.
AN: listening to Brad Paisley - He didn't have to be on the drive home from a holiday, I suddenly saw this
Chapter one
Cassie rested, exhausted, sore and blinking back tears. Looking at Jack, no longer the man in his prime that rescued her but still tall and strong -her children's grandfather by any other name-; the only father she remembered, playful or authoritative as needed. At the brilliant, hesitantly loving woman held tight to his side, who had become her third mother, just as dear and loving as the first; Teal'c, the uncle that should be a grandfather, bulwark of unconditional strength and loyalty. Daniel, and even Cameron and Vala, the older friends -like her father, greying and more weathered than when she met them-, always there for her, accomplices against authority or shoulders to cry foul against her parents upon. And, always last somehow, Jonas, in and out of her life, closer to her for always being a little apart from everyone else. She'd tried to be for him as the others had been for her; compensation for the rest of a world that was distant.
Not one of them related by blood, to her or each other, and yet they had raised her, each in their own way; and she knew they would continue the circle with Gabriel, come what may. Cassie looked down at the tiny creature in her arms, utterly dependent on the mercy of others to survive and thrive. His eyes closed now, mouth bowed as he slept, unconcerned about the gathering in his honour, no doubt absorbing as much of the safety the people in the room exuded as she had as a small child.
Jack's sudden, heartfelt, laughter, for so long a never-heard sound, brought her attention back up to the hospital room full of, for lack of a better word, eccentrics -aliens, geniuses and disobedient soldiers?- and she smiled in unavoidable response to the sound of happiness, watching them *all* and aware of their shared joy. These were people that had seen hardships and horror and whose smiles, let along their laughter, were rare, precious things.
She hoped she proved worthy of their years of unconditional love and support; prayed she could do half as well with her flesh and blood as they had with a literal alien. Could build onto the foundation they had fought to lay a family as solid and powerful as they had provided her.
