Slats: Moments in Time
Snapshots from the Bridges universe
by Tassos
See Chapter 1 for story notes.
Thanks again to Kei for the beta.
March 2006
Jack waited a good two minutes after the gate closed behind SG-5 before telling Walter to let him know when SG-14 checked in. He had two teams overdue and three more he'd sent out earlier that morning that were still in the green for then next few hours. Jack didn't like it one bit. While one team missing two consecutive check-ins could be construed as normal enough, two on the same day was edging into security breach territory. This was the part that Jack hated about being the general in charge, the waiting. He trusted SGs 5 and 10 to do their jobs – he'd been rescued enough by them himself over the years – but with nothing proactive to do himself, Jack was going to go stir crazy.
Carter's lab was a mess as usual, gadgets and gizmos everywhere. The Colonel herself was glued to the computer going through the security files and the access logs. "I'll let you know as soon as I find anything, sir," she said without looking up.
"So no luck?" he asked.
She looked over at him with a twist of her lips that was more grimace than smile. "Not yet. Nothing's out of place. There may not have even been a breach."
"Humor me," Jack told her. He couldn't shake his gut feeling about this.
Carter nodded, simply trusting him. "You'll need to leave me alone then, sir," she said.
Jack couldn't help the smirk as he left. General in charge indeed.
When he got back to the control room, Walter stopped him. "SG-14 checked in, sir. Thirty minutes until SG-18's due. And you have a Deputy Director Wells on line two from the IWC. I tried to get rid of him but he insisted.
The breath Jack let out at the news that SG-14 was fine for the moment caught again. What the hell was Andrew doing calling him in the middle of the morning? "I'll take care of it," he told Walter then hurried to his office.
"Andrew?"
"Jack! Thank Zeus! I thought the sergeant was going to ax the call for sure and then I'd have to try again and probably be cut off at the switchboard and –"
"Andrew," Jack cut through his nervous chatter. "What's going on? Why are you calling?" Why wasn't Xander? he thought but didn't say.
"Okay. The first thing you should remember is that I'm the messenger. Don't panic," said Andrew, his voice high and desperate, as all the blood drained from Jack's face. "Xander's in the hospital."
"What?!"
"Don't panic!" Andrew practically shouted. "No one's allowed to panic. It's a rule."
"Andrew, what happened?" Jack tried not to read too much into the kid's tone that was inviting him to freak out because his child was in the hospital. "Is he all right?"
"Yes. Maybe. Diana just said he was going to be all right and then locked herself in her room. She won't come out. She won't even talk to me, and the hospital won't talk to me, so you have to call them and talk to them, and then tell me. . ."
"Jesus," Jack breathed, still trying to process it all. Andrew sounded on the verge of tears, terrified. "What happened?" he asked again.
"It was just patrol," said Andrew. "But Xander got hurt and Diana won't come out of her room. Verne and Ana threw protocol out the window and left with Verne's boyfriend to try and find the Gargoyles and they're gonna get hurt and I don't know what to do!"
"All right. Stop. Back up." Jack ordered, hearing Andrew's frustration and worry and shelving his own feelings for later when he could afford them. Right now Andrew sounded on the verge of hyperventilating and Jack needed him to calm the fuck down. "I want you to take a deep breath. You hear me?" He listened as the kid breathed in and out, in and out. "Start from the beginning."
"It . . . I think it started Monday." Andrew hesitated, the sound of shuffling papers crinkled over the line then he continued in a stronger voice, reading, "Monday. Diana and Verne patrol the riverfront and Erie cemetery. Hellmouth spot check was calm. Two bodies found in Fairview Park: teenage boys, 15-16 years old. Skinny and dirty. Runes on left forearm – I've identified those," he broke off. "They're Roman death sigils, adapted in the Dark ages when they were used to mark Gargoyles over the entrances to buildings. The rune would show up on the bodies of trespassers who'd been ripped to pieces."
"But you didn't know that Monday night," Jack clarified, trying to keep the facts straight, his mind skittering over the news of two dead boys because, Jesus. "What happened Monday?"
"That was it. Patrol. Then everyone went to work or school Tuesday. I started looking up the runes. Xander got back from his trip to the University of Florida. I still hadn't found what the runes were last night, but everyone went out anyway 'cause we needed to cover the city. I stayed home to keep looking."
"That's when Xander got hurt?"
"Him and Diana were ambushed. Diana called from the hospital, Saint Vincent's. She was fine by then, but she went straight to her room and hasn't come out since we got home. She and Verne got into a fight and then Verne and Ana took off to find whatever jumped them and I told them it was a bad idea because they're going in blind and it's against protocol. They didn't even tell me where they were going, and now Xander's going to come back and I won't know where they are."
"Did you call Giles?"
"No. No, not yet," said Andrew slowly like it was something he really didn't want to do. "He's busy in Moscow and it's hard to get a hold of him," he rushed on. "And I could be wrong. It could be nothing. I probably just worried over nothing. And I don't really have anything to tell him."
Jack thought about two missed check-ins that could be nothing. "Call him as soon as you're off the phone with me," he said. If he was wrong, he was wrong. If he was right . . . There was a long drawn out pause that Jack figured was Andrew trying to come up with a good reason not to. "Andrew. Call him."
"Okay."
"Good," said Jack. He took a deep breath of his own before asking, "Do you know how badly Xander is hurt?"
Another pause for a different reason. "His blind side got torn up. That's all Diana said," Andrew said softly. "Laurie's with him."
Jack rested his forehead in his empty hand. He did not need this right now. "So Xander's out, Diana's taken herself out, Verne and Ana rushed into things with no intel, and you think it's bad."
"I tried getting Diana to come out. She won't listen to me," said Andrew helplessly.
"How bad is it? Can Verne and Ana handle it?" asked Jack, ignoring the kid who wanted nothing more than someone to fix this for him.
"Gargoyles are gate keepers," said Andrew. "Powerful gate keepers. The kind you use to protect something pretty important."
"So bad," Jack summed up.
Andrew hesitated. "I could be wrong," he repeated softly. "I'm not always the best at digging things up. For that you want Dawn, not me. I'm just the cook."
"Xander trusts you," said Jack, hating the doubt he was hearing. For all that Andrew was a dork and annoying, he was someone Jack couldn't help but feel for, and not just sorry for but in the same way as when Xander insisted he was family in his own way. The only way that mattered. "That's enough for me. If you say it's bad, it's probably bad. Call Giles, call Buffy, call Willow. Call someone. Don't try to do this alone."
"But they'll –"
"Andrew!" Jack interrupted the whining. "Call them. I don't care if you think you don't have enough information. They need to know, and they can help you better than I can. Next," he went on before Andrew could get going again. "Call Laurie and tell her to call me as soon as she knows anything about Xander. Have her say she's from the IWC and the call will get through."
"IWC. What do I do about the slayers?"
"Verne and Ana are out of contact?"
"They have their phones but since the fight they won't answer from me or the house."
"Why not?" Just what had gone down in that fight that had their normally functioning friendships split wide open?
"They think they're right," said Andrew as if it were obvious, and Jack supposed it should have been. Unlike the military, the Council taught their slayers to think, and now they'd gone off on their own without Xander there to rein them in.
"You need to get back in touch with them. Call from a different number, get Laurie to call them, get Buffy to call them. Keep trying to get into contact and don't stop until you do, understand?"
"They're just going to hang up on me."
"Then talk fast. Just get them to keep you in the loop. You have to know what's going on in order to help them." Jack hoped they listened. "Diana's supposed to be in charge, right?"
"Yeah, she's Chief Slayer."
"Then you have to get her to be Chief Slayer. If she won't listen to you, go over her head. Buffy, Willow, someone. She can't afford to hide in her room with people in the field."
"But –"
"Tell her if she wants to cry she does it on her own time. With Xander out of commission that means you're Chief Watcher. It's your job to stand up to her and make her listen," said Jack in the tone of voice that expected to be obeyed. "You can do this Andrew," he added more gently. "You're already channeling Xander enough to call me. Just pretend you have one eye, a wicked sense of humor, and backbone of steel."
"Be Xander." Andrew laughed nervously.
"General?" Walter knocked on the door. "SG-18 missed their check-in."
Crap. "Andrew, I've got to go. Go be a Watcher. And don't forget to tell Laurie to call me."
"Right."
"Good luck."
"Bye. Thanks."
Jack hung up, twisted up inside. The last time something like this had happened, he'd been on the first flight to Cleveland. He stared at Walter for a second to get his head back on the here and now of three missing SG teams. Teams that depended on him to get them back safely. As much as he wanted to be with Xander, he couldn't do anything about Cleveland right now.
"Have SGs 5 and 10 reported in yet?"
"Yes, sir. Nothing yet from either one."
"All right. Tell SG-13 we're briefing in ten minutes."
Xander, please be okay, he allowed himself while Walter rushed off. Then Jack pulled himself back together and got back to work.