Well, the world didn't end. How disappointing. Still; I've got this fic to write, so yay for continued doom and gloom. I hope you enjoy this chapter :D
Cassie and Daniel are sitting knee-to-knee in the back of a truck. The last time she asked, the driver yelled back that they were fifteen minutes from the base, and that was five minutes ago, and Cassie is mentally ticking down the seconds and cheering herself on for not breaking down in tears.
Daniel had covered the back windows with drapes. "We don't need to see that," he said, quickly, when Cassie first climbed into the car. His tone of voice had caught her attention and, instinctively, she cast one last look at precisely what Daniel was trying to protect her from: pearly lumescent hoverships, perched in the stratosphere, getting bigger by the minute.
Now, twenty minutes later, Daniel is still managing to keep up a strange air of nonchalance, as though impending alien invasion has ceased to interest him sometime in the last decade. Cassie hardly blames him.
"What's it like? Dying?"
He looks up, startled that she'd broken the silence. And with something so depressing too. She raises her eyebrow to get an answer from him, knocking her knee against his playfully.
"Cassandra, you're not going to die."
She laughes; of course he'd say that. "All evidence to the contrary."
He sighs. Cassie figures that death was something he had a tough time working out in his head; she'd been spared the details but knows enough to understand that there have been numerous times in which Sam and the others have grieved for Daniel. As a kid, he mystified her with his good humor and his calm eyes and his crazy theories, but the older she got, the more she came to empathize with the look of exhaustion he always seemed to have.
"I just want to know," she presses, "just in case."
"Fine," he says, leaning back against the cool leather seat, "What the hell, we'll be there in a few minutes anyway." He lookes at her for a while as though waiting for her to laugh and tell him it doesn't matter, but she gives him a small smile. It matters Daniel, please.
He nods. They'd had this conversation a hundred times or more, the pair of them conspiring in quiet whispers in the wake of her surviving genocide or of Janet's death, but Cassie knows this time is different; this time they aren't in a hospital waiting room or a bunk in the SGC, safe and sound and relatively okay – this time they are crouching under a sky loaded with pyramid ships. Every word he says now has real meaning; he has to be careful not to give her false hope.
"I died on Abydos. Did I ever tell you about Abydos?"
He had, frequently. "Your wedding to Sha're, and Skaara making moonshine, and Uncle Jack sending Kleenex through the Stargate." That part had always made her laugh.
He nods. "But, before that, when we first went through the gate, we encountered Ra. And I… died."
"Did it hurt?" She imagines the Jaffa staff weapon's blast cutting through his thin skin, his dirty archaeologist's clothes, muscle and bone until his heart stopped beating. She imagines him screaming, and dying, in much the same painful way that her mother had.
"I'd be lying if I said it didn't. Every time, it hurts, and I can never remember just how bad it feels. An all-over pain, like poison, and then you sleep."
Cassie isn't even aware that she's crying until she tastes salt on her lips. So much for playing tough kid. She swipes at her eyes angrily, hoping that Daniel won't notice.
Whether he does or not, he ignores her and continues speaking. "It's dark for a while, not just physically dark, but everything is sort of empty, like you're on pause for a while. And then, you come back."
"If you're lucky?"
"I don't know about lucky." He gestures skywards and Cassie feels the sharp reminder of what lurks above. The car slows down, and the driver is speaking into a crackly old walkie-talkie. They are almost there, Cassie is certain, and she is terrified of what she might see when she steps out. How many ships are there now? How close?
The driver stops the car altogether, and turns around to gesture at Daniel that they have arrived. "Tell me," Cassie says, urgent to speak before they are jostled out of the car, and separated in the crazy thrum that accompanies the end of the world. Daniel would be called to the frontline, and she would be closeted away in some back room with only a TV for company, she is sure. "What do you think our chances are? Be honest."
He pauses with a hand on the door. "Statistically, we'll probably survive the invasion. We've been in worse situations than this. But realistically, we're screwed. There are ships in the sky Cassandra; this is pretty hardcore right now. But, we can work it out."
"You're certain?"
"As certain as I ever am."
She barely has enough time to register the quick flash of guilt that coveres his face as his lies to her, before he throws the door open and steps out into the icy night.
"You're good at that," she says, hesitant to join him in the open air. She feels sick just thinking about how close the ships could have got in the twenty minutes since she last looked at the sky. She isn't sure what the protocol is during alien invasion; would anyone think less of her for wanting to close her eyes tight?
"At what?"
"Lying. I almost believe you."
"Hey," says Daniel, bending down so that his head appears in her frame of view again. "You should believe me. I'm a genius." He gives her a goofy smile and extends his hand for her to take.
"And I'm an alien," she rolls her eyes, "what a pair we make." She takes his hand and lets him pull her up, deciding at the last minute to screw her eyes shut to avoid catching sight of the sky.
"Are you ok?"
"Just peachy," she grimaces, and forces herself to open her eyes. She doesn't want to be that scared kid that can't even look at the spaceships, she hasn't wanted to be that kid in over a decade. She keeps her eyes on the government building in front of them, all grays and smooth edges and shadows in the moonlight, and follows Daniel's calm, collected lead up the steps.