Chapter 25

Epilogue part 1

3 months later

September 27th

Christopher Rosenberg sighed heavily as he looked around the school playground, he looked closely at the sheets of rain that poured from the darkening sky; good thing he had his raincoat on or he'd be soaked.

The redhead looked down and scuffed his shoe on the asphalt beneath him, careful not to make his hood slip off his dry head; he jumped slightly as two of his classmates ran past him towards the school gates.

He wanted to be away from this school, he HATED it there; he'd only been at the school for a week and already we wanted to go back to his other one, the others didn't know him and some laughed at him today, some of them thought he was odd- not that that was much of a change- because he was over a year younger than them. Chris scowled at the ground angrily, "Stupid school."

He'd been moved up to first grade early, which was one good thing about all this; at least he wasn't bored with the work anymore- but it was still really easy. They said that moving up more than one grade wouldn't be good for him.

He wished that he was with his friends, Hailey and Ty, but he wasn't in Cleveland anymore and he doubted that they'd ever move back. Although he liked Daniel a lot he kinda missed his home and his school…

Mostly he missed-

"Chris!"

Chris's head snapped up as he heard his name, he smiled as he saw his dad running up to him- he was soaking wet! Silly-Billy, he should have put a raincoat on, like him.

"Hiya, Daniel," he said shyly. He clutched his book-bag tightly and stared up at the man through rain-soaked lenses. "You're all wet!"

Daniel smiled, "Ya, I forgot my coat…but there's one thing I HAVEN'T forgotten." He smirked secretively.

Chris's interested piqued, "What? What haven't you forgotten?" he wanted to add 'dad' to that last part but it still seemed strange to him; he'd spent over four years of his life without a dad and now he had one.

He called him 'dad' sometimes but it was mostly 'Daniel' he called him- out loud anyway, in his head he always called him 'daddy', 'cause he knew that that was what the man was. He was his dad.

"I'll tell you in the car," replied Daniel to his question. "C'mon." he led Chris in the direction of the school gates.

As they walked passed the gates and along the sidewalk Chris, grasping Daniel's hand, looked up at him, "Has she woke up yet?"

Rain spilled onto his freckled cheeks as he looked up, Daniel gave him a sad look and shook his head, "Sorry, Chris."

Sadness and disappointment swept over him for the millionth time it seemed to him, "Oh." And that was it…

Oh.

What else could be said, over the last three months he'd heard that apology so many times since…

Since his mommy had been to hospital, the nice lady Doctor Janet Fraiser was taking care of her; but she still hadn't woken up yet. He knew she wasn't gone- not like Serena was, but all the same it seemed as though she was.

She just lay there on the hospital bed and refused to wake up, everyone was saying that she was in a coma…it was sorta like sleeping for a long time. Which was also what dying was…only, when you were in a coma you could wake up at any time; when you were dead you were asleep forever.

When was she going to wake up? He missed her, he just wanted everything to be like it was before the stupid men had messed everything up…

Well, not Duncan…he was nice, he helped him and his mommy get out in the first place.

But if he HADN'T taken him and mommy they never would have needed to be help; everything would be great and Serena wouldn't be dead, his mommy wouldn't be in a coma and missing everything.

Suddenly, Chris realized that they'd stopped walking; they were now beside the car- but Daniel wasn't opening the door, he was kneeling down in front of him, "I miss her," Chris mumbled suddenly.

Daniel sighed, "Let's get inside the car." He opened the door to the back seats and they both got in, shutting the door behind them.

Chris sat on the kid-seat whilst his dad sat next to him on the normal one, he stared at his dad curiously.

"Chris, I-I know that this is hard on you," he said as he took the raincoat off Chris. "But try not to let it get you down, she'll wake up soon. I'm sure of it."

The sounds of cars drifted in through the window

Chris looked away feeling hot tears well up in his eyes, his throat clenching painfully, "What if sh-she doesn't, she'll m-miss another-

Daniel pulled him out of his seat and onto his lap, hugging him, "She would have been there if she could, you know that."

Chris nodded, his glasses digging slightly into his skin; he took no notice, it wasn't important, "Uh huh…" But she wasn't here today…he wanted her here today more than anything; more than the presents that his family had given him that morning.

"You have to be brave, okay," continued Daniel as Chris pulled away. "When she wakes up…not IF but WHEN…she'll see how brave and grown-up you are."

The redhead smiled through his tears, feeling a flicker of pride amidst the grief and sadness, "I'm a whole five years old now."

Daniel smiled and poked him playfully in the stomach making him giggle, "That's right, you're almost all grown up…so…"

"I'm real brave," finished Chris, wiping his face dry.

"Exactly," agreed Daniel, he shifted to the right slightly and lent down to pick something up, careful not to dislodge him. "This is something that I didn't have on me to give to you this morning." His hand grasped a thick well-read looking book.

Chris looked at him, confused, as he was given the book, "What's this?" it was heavy, a heavy book! Those were his favorite kind of books!

"Well, I used to live in Egypt when I was a little kid," explained Daniel, smile dropping a little. "Moved to America when I was eight, and over the years that my parents and I were in Egypt we collected and catalogued everything we ever found there."

A beat later and Chris's eyes went wide, "This is from Egypt, this is real Egypt stuff?" he looked down at the book feeling as though it was best thing he'd ever gotten in his whole life.

Daniel nodded, "Yes."

"Wow! Th-this is all grown-up Egyptian; not like the kid workbooks I get from the shop, this is real?"

Daniel nodded, "Exactly, it's a very old book that I've had for a very long time; and like we said, you're almost grown-up now."

Wide eyes were now fixated on Daniel, he continued, "You'll look after it, right? It's very important to me…well, I already know you'll take care of it. I would."

Chris felt a happy smile tugging at him lips, the first real smile in months, "I'll look after it, I promise. You're parents don't mind, right?"

He frowned as he saw his dad's smile dropped, "What? Did I say something wrong?" what did he say?

Daniel shook his head, "No, you didn't say anything wrong. My…" he paused looking thoughtful, a sad smile played across his face. "My parents are gone, they went away a long time ago."

Gone? "You…you mean like, angels?" up in the sky, like his mommy had said. When people went away forever, when they weren't able to stay, they went up to heaven with the angels and they looked down at you from the sky.

So far up into the sky that you could never see them, but they could always see you; they'd stare down at you, wanting you to keep being happy, that's what his mommy and her friends said.

That's what Aunt Tara, Grammy Joyce, Uncle Jesse, Aunt Jenny and the others were doing, they went away a long time ago.

"I guess," replied Daniel, smiling again. "It's only one of the books I got from them; I thought you might like it."

Chris nodded brightly, his lenses still wet, "I do, can…can I look in it?" what if he wanted him to look at it when they got back to the apartment, or after dinner; he'd be thinking about his mommy ALL the time and that made him really sad. But if he was reading-

"Go ahead," replied Daniel. "It's what it's there for. We'd best get going now, though." With that said he ruffled Chris's hair slightly, buckled him into his kid-seat and then got out of the car.

A couple of seconds later the drivers' side door opened and the archaeologist climbed in before jamming the key into the ignition, "Meatloaf tonight, sound good?"

Chris nodded as he opened the book, "Yup, can I have ice-cream afterwards?" he looked up from the book hopefully as the car pulled away from the sidewalk.

"Only if you eat all your dinner," said Daniel, as they drove out of the street. "Then, you can."

Grinning, Chris asked, "Can I have chocolate ice-cream?" please, please, please, please, please-

Nothing said for a moment, then, "I think I have some in the freezer, if not Jack'll have a few tubs of it."

Chris blinked, looked down thoughtfully and said, "With chocolate sauce?" 'cause that was the best thing to have with chocolate ice-cream; that and whipped cream…yummy!

"We'll see," replied Daniel, turning a corner onto a different street, rain pounded on the windows, the windscreen wipers looked like two thin, black arms waving at him and wiping the rain water away.

"But, can I?" did that mean he could?

"Maybe, don't know if I have any," he explained as he watched the road in front of them.

Oh, well, chocolate ice-cream by itself was still yummy, smiling brightly, he started reading through the pages of photographs, pictographs; hieroglyphs in the book. They were already translated but Chris covered the words quickly and made sure to only look at the different languages.

He pushed his anxious and depressing thoughts to the back of his mind and started concentrating on translating the language on the current two pages; he could already feel himself relaxing.

Daniel scooped up a chunk of chocolate ice-cream from his glass bowl, looking at his son opposite him, "How was school?"

Chris looked at him, frowning and shrugged, "It's okay, sorta." The five-year-old ate another spoonful of his ice-cream quickly, getting some on his upper lip.

He could tell his son was lying; inability to lie obviously ran in the family both ways, "'Sorta?'"

Chris finished off his ice-cream and looked at him solemnly, "I miss Tyler and Hailey, and the other kids are mean to me; I want everything to be like before." He closed his eyes momentarily and then opened them, looking at his dad.

Daniel understood, aside from the absence of Willow, the others and everything else Chris knew there was also the fact that from now on they'd both be monitored by the SGC, the Joint Chiefs and pretty much everyone else who knew about what had happened three months ago; they were all waiting for Willow or Chris to lose it again and to say that everyone was cautious would be the understatement of the century.

"Chris, you know that they'll only be watching you for a LITTLE while, right?" asked Daniel, he cringed inwardly. Speaking of understatements…

Chris looked at him seriously for a moment, too seriously, "They want to watch us until we go bad again, they don't trust us…and I don't think that they should." He looked down guiltily.

Sadness and anger swept through him, "It's NOT your fault, if you want to blame anyone blame the people who started this."

No! Chris should blame HIM, he was the one who'd screwed up, he was the one who hadn't been fast enough. He was the one who'd let all of this happen!

Chris looked at him tearfully; eyes haunted, "I ruined everything, I hurt mommy; Serena gone now and Duncan's really sad because she's gone, mommy's not awake and Auntie Anya and Uncle Xander aren't getting married anymore. And I killed people!"

Daniel was up and holding Chris in his arms before he'd even realized it, he rubbed his back gently and carried him over to the sofa before sitting down, "Okay, first off, none of this is your fault-

Chris opened his mouth to protest, but Daniel shushed him and continued, "Your mom WILL wake up soon, just gotta wait a bit longer-

"HOW long!?"

The archaeologist sighed, "I don't know, but she will; and she'll be awake to see your Aunt Anya and Uncle Xander's wedding." At least he HOPED so anyway.

Chris sniffled, "I hope so, she doesn't even know they're getting married. Not yet anyway."

Not YET, Daniel smiled inwardly, maybe Chris was coming around to the idea that she might survive after all; he'd lost so much hope over the last few months and had stubbornly come to the conclusion that his mommy would always be 'asleep'.

Thankfully and not surprisingly, Xander and Anya had postponed their wedding until Willow came out of her coma; they still didn't know when she would though.

But Xander and Anya were both staying at Colorado Springs for when Willow woke up; Xander said that they might stay there permanently because they liked the house, and the street they were in. Xander was excelling through his job in carpentry and was thinking of starting up his own business.

But at the moment, they had all their attention on waiting to see when Willow would wake up; though the doctors at the SGC weren't able to estimate the time that the redhead might awaken.

Apparently, according to Janet, Willow's body had simply shut down somewhere between her passing out in his arms and her being carried to the vans still waiting for them.

Giles had said that Willow had expelled the dark-magic and energy inside her entirely and her body had, therefore, given out completely and she'd lapsed into a coma. Her body was slowly healing itself as the magic- equally slowly- returned to her, though, thankfully, the magic wasn't tainted with rage and grief.

At least, not completely anyway.

Daniel, Janet and the others were stunned that, after Willow's body had shut down, she'd been alive after they'd gotten her hooked up to a life-support machine; it was as if she'd died and waited until she could be helped before she'd resettled into herself…it was complicated…strange.

No one knew how that had been possible; Willow's friends had some ideas but that was it- Chris, of course, had immediately believed that all of Willow's deceased friends were 'watching over her'.

Which, considering what had happened over the last few months- what they'd found out, could very well be true.

It all just gave him a headache.

Daniel was brought out of his thoughts when he realized that Chris was staring up at him, perplexed, the archeologist just smiled, "You'll be okay- everything will be okay, soon. It won't be like before, but it won't be as bad as you think. It'll all just take time."

Chris nodded, eyes now dry, and wrapped his arms around his dad's chest, "You're gonna look after me, right?" he looked up at him, eyes wide.

"I will," he replied, but still, inside he was worried. He hoped that after Willow did wake up he'd still have the chance to spend time with his son. Chris was already starting to grow on him, plus- his team absolutely adored him, especially Sam; the kid gave Jack a headache whenever he talking about Egyptian artifacts, Teal'c was having a second chance at looking after a small child.

Apparently, he reminded him a little of Rya'c when he was a little boy.

Agent Grey hadn't let a day go by without at least talking to Chris over the phone, long conversations that would cost the young soldier a pretty big phone bill; some times all the soldier could do was phone Chris.

Daniel ruffled Chris red hair absentmindedly as he recounted the last few months; Agent Duncan Grey had been detained by his own superiors; debriefed and then had been released and transferred over to the SGC.

Apparently Duncan was waiting for a position on one of the teams to be opened, at the moment SG12's second in command was close to being promoted and given his own team; so the agent was pretty much veering towards joining SG12.

Unfortunately for Duncan he had to go through t LEAST a year's SGC training; he was trained as a soldier but not every soldier was cut out to be in the SGC.

It was also pretty much the same deal for Dawn Summers, who had graduated Med School with full marks at the top of her class…hell, top of her entire YEAR; she was very gifted in the area of Medicine and Janet had expressed a great interest in recruiting Dawn to join the SGC and her Medical team. But at the moment, she was to go through training- both medically and military- at the A.F. Academy.

One thing was for sure Buffy was certainly very proud of her little sister and had taken some time off her job as a High School counselor to fly out to Colorado; she was followed by none other than Clem who had decided to visit Chris and Willow again.

He was a regular visitor, the passengers on the plane wrote off Clem's odd appearance as a bad skin condition- which wasn't anything new.

Daniel looked at the clock on the wall: 8:57pm and said, "'kay, Chris. It's bedtime for you." He looked down at him and saw that the boy was fast asleep, glasses askew, and breathing calmly.

But he knew that it wouldn't last long.

Duncan Grey drew away quickly from another Intar shot, a red light glared out from the semi-darkness as he pointed his own weapon at his 'enemy' and fired, turning around at the last second to avoid a hit.

An electrical sound and a grunt, then a muffled 'thump' immediately told Duncan that he'd hit his target; good thing he had cover, even if it was just a crate it was better than nothing.

Suddenly an electrical charge shot through him, he shook a little and slumped against the crate, dazed for a few moments, the crate's hard surface dug into his back.

Crap.

When his vision and senses cleared he looked behind him and groaned inwardly; he'd been shot from behind, he should have watched his back.

Duncan sighed, Colonel O'Neill was gonna have his head on a spike for getting shot; even though the Intar's were practically harmless the colonel still took it seriously…yes, he knew that 'if it had been a real weapon, he would have been dead' as O'Neill said; but, man, that guy could get real cranky.

Worse than Serena on bad day-

He shook the thoughts of his deceased best friend out of his mind, as O'Neill said, 'There was a time and a place'; he needed to concentrate on the training…the depression, grief-filled thoughts were better left for nights when he was in his apartment.

Duncan tightened his grip around his 'non-lethal Jaffa training weapon' and followed his 'CO' into another part of the warehouse where more of the training was taking place.

All in all, things had definitely changed over the last few months.

Daniel opened his eyes blearily and his gaze fixed on the blurry red digital numbers on the clock, in read: 12:22am. He turned over in his bed and wondered what had woken him up; he shrugged inwardly and closed his eyes again.

A second later his eyes snapped open and he pushed himself up by his elbow into a half sitting-up position as Chris's shout met his ears; he pushed himself out of bed and walked over to his bedroom door.

Chris was having another nightmare, it wasn't the first and it certainly wouldn't be the last one he ever had about that place, those people.

Anger simmered within Daniel as he cursed the NID for what they'd put Chris and Willow through; not just them but other people as well, Duncan was still grieving silently for his best friend, things were still 'up in the air' so to speak and Chris was having night-terrors.

Five years olds shouldn't have nightmares, not like those ones anyway.

Daniel pushed opened Chris's bedroom door, his eyes immediately found the light-blue colored bedcovers; he walked over to the bed as Chris cried out in his sleep again.

He flicked on the bedside lamp, casting a dim light around the room; he looked down at his son to find the child staring right back up at him with tear-filled eyes, "Hey, it was just a nightmare."

Chris sniffled, still looking up at him with the same child-like vulnerability that every kid his age possessed; his arm was wrapped around his stuffed bear- Loki- in a death grip, "D-daddy? They came back…Serena died again; I didn't do anything," guilt stained the boy's eyes making them appear dark.

Daniel felt anger stir within him again, "What happened to Serena isn't your fault-

"But I stood there, I didn't even try to do anything," he said, firmly believing that he was to blame. "She tried to save me, but I couldn't-

Daniel sat on the edge of Chris's bed as the boy sat up, "Exactly, you 'couldn't'; you would have if you were able to; like you said at your last session with Dr. Hawkins, you couldn't move because Doctor Bryce was holding you."

Chris nodded tearfully.

"And, even if he HADN'T been holding you," continued Daniel fervently. "No one could have stopped him, not you, not me; not even your mom." He HAD to know that!

But Chris still didn't looked convinced, Daniel sighed; inwardly thinking that this argument was better left 'til morning, "It's late, try to sleep, okay?"

The one good thought within the last few minutes was that at least Chris was talking again, the kid had spent the first few weeks after the ordeal completely silent; Daniel wasn't surprised.

The child looked worriedly at him; Daniel smiled reassuringly despite the anger that was bubbing beneath the surface, "You can come in with me, if you want." Chris usually slept in Daniel's room if he had a nightmare.

The young redhead nodded eagerly.

Chris was going to see his psychiatrist tomorrow afternoon, they'd be able to address his feelings of guilt in the sessions.