Authors Note: Eventually this story will deal with torture and rape but not for awhile, just don't say i didn't warn you.
Its taking everything she has not to turn and run away. Her breathing is so carefully controlled. In and out. In and out. These hallways haunt her dreams, and as she walks down them to the briefing room she feels like a ghost. Everyone stares at her as if she were one. Its not their fault she thinks. She might as well be a ghost. Its been ten years since she has walked these halls after vowing never to come back , and time has done little to change them. After all thats passed she still remembers the way.
The briefing room looks exactly the same as it does in her nightmares, Stargate looming through the plate glass window. If she could destroy it she would in an instant. The Stargate, portal to infinite worlds, Earth's greatest discovery, and the taker of almost everyone she ever held dear. No one has arrived yet which in her mind seems strange. They had said it was a dire emergency, that she was their only hope, that they would never have even asked her here unless it was the last and only option. They expected her to save them. She noticed Landry in his office on the red phone. He motioned for her to sit and that he would be with her in a minute. When he walked in she was standing by the window gazing at the gate. As she turned to face him he gasped as he saw her. Yeah she felt like a ghost. He recovered quickly though, "I'm sorry to have brought you in like this, especially after all this time, and after you made it abundantly clear that you would have absolutely nothing to do with the Air Force or the SGC, but it was necessary. Once everyone is here we'll begin the briefing." He waited for a response but got none. "I'll be in my office, let me know if you need anything."
After about five minutes she could feel a presence looming in the doorway. This is what she'd been dreading. Even after all this time she could tell it was him anywhere. They hadn't seen each other or spoken directly in four years and she wasn't about to be the first one to break the silence, so she let him observe her and didn't say a word.
Jack O'Neill knew he was staring, but it had been four years and at this point their relationship was so damaged a little staring wouldn't hurt. God she was beautiful he thought. Even with the new hair color, an intense deep auburn red, that took her sunny girl next door looks and made her a dangerous beauty, she was gorgeous. She was a dark mirror of all the memories that assaulted him in her presence. She was a ghost of what he wanted, and he knew that was why she hated him. When he was near her all she ever felt like was a ghost.
"Grace" he said with a slight nod in her direction.
"Dad"
