Chapter 61: Amnesia

Author's Note: I'm not sure I have much of an excuse for letting this story lapse for ten years. All I can say is that I'm sorry. I struggled to find my writing voice in the midst of grad school, a couple of tough jobs, and so forth. But the moment I picked up writing SG-1 stories again during the COVID-19 quarantine, I knew Grace wanted me to finish her story. So, here you are.


Sam winced as she shifted in her wheelchair. The gunshot injury in her shoulder radiated pain that seemed to set her nerves afire.

Jack leaned down beside her as the doctors at the SGC questioned Grace about what she last remembered. "You should really be in bed."

She shook off her husband's worry. "Not until I know for sure what's going on."

He reached for her uninjured hand. "Sam, it will be okay. I'll stay with her."

"Jack. . ."

He looked at her with those brown eyes that seemed to see right through her. "Believe me, Sam. I know. You don't want to let her out of your sight, but you almost died yesterday. Please, just go get some rest."

Sam cradled her injured arm with her uninjured one, hoping to ease the ache even just a little. "You can't honestly think that I can rest after what our family's just been through."

Jack leaned in close, his voice barely above a whisper. "I think that you almost died, Samantha Carter. Hell, you were dead for a few minutes. In fact, according to the news, I think the whole country still thinks you're dead, so forgive me if I'm a little touchy on the subject of you getting back in your hospital bed and getting well."

He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing thickly. "If I lost you—"

The lines drawn on Jack's face from the worry he'd had to carry almost on his own in the last few days was too much for her to bear. She reached up and caressed his cheek. "I'm here, Jack. I'm fine."

He gave her a grim smile. "So are Grace and Jacob. Teal'c's got Jake, and I'm gonna stay with Grace. I've even got Daniel with Cassie and Charlie. Let Mitchell get you back to your room. Please. So you stay fine."

Her innate desire to fight him on this ebbed. He was right. She'd almost died on an operating table. The fact that she wasn't still in a Washington hospital was a miracle.

She bobbed her head in agreement. "Okay."

Jack pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, such an intimate gesture that it felt out of place in the concrete walls of the SGC. As he let his lips linger there, the way he did whenever he was struggling with a feeling of loss, she wished she hadn't been shot in the shoulder. Then, she could have pulled him closer, run her fingers through his hair, and remind her she was safe. They were all safe.

His throat thick with emotion, he released her hand. "I'll keep you updated, okay?"

Unable to trust her voice as a trickle of tears slipped down her cheeks, she just nodded.

Jack bent down and kissed her lips, his calloused thumb caressing her cheek. "I'm really glad you're okay."

Sam smiled her thanks before she turned back to look at Grace, still answering the doctor's questions. Jack's lips brushed her temple, and she took strength from his nearness.

"You ready?"

Sam drank in the sight of her daughter, trying not to think too hard about how close she'd come to losing everyone she'd ever loved. Trying not to think about who could possibly hate her family enough to attack it from so many sides at once. "Just another minute, please?"

Jack squeezed her uninjured shoulder. "Sure, take two."


Grace watched as her mother wheeled out of the room, accompanied by one of the orderlies. The last time she'd been in Cheyenne Mountain, Jacob had just been born, and her mother hadn't remembered anything about the last fifteen years. Didn't remember getting married. Didn't remember Grace. Didn't remember any of her friends and colleagues from the Stargate program.

Funny that the reason she'd come back would be because she didn't remember the last few days herself.

The doctor whispered with her father in the corner of the room. She caught the odd word here or there like, traumatic event, normal, unpredictable, for the best.

Grace rested the back of her head against the pillow, feeling more like a prisoner here than she had in the last several days of her grounding. At least when she was at home, people talked to her.

"Thanks, Doc."

Grace looked up as her father shrugged as if he had nothing to worry about, a practiced carefree smile brightening his face but not quite touching his eyes. "Well, kiddo, they said there's nothing wrong with you. Said that we could take you home."

His long legs made quick work of the three or four steps to her bedside where he sat on a wheeled stool beside her bed. "I mean, they say they want to keep you overnight for observation, but I think that's just a formality at this point."

"How's Mom?"

Her dad hesitated a moment before the facade slipped. "Uh, she's a little tired. We almost lost her yesterday. Twice."

Grace looked down at her hands, an unexpected wave of emotion at that thought.

"Cassie gets released from the hospital today, so that's good news."

Cassie, too? Grace's head snapped up. "Cassie had the babies?"

Her dad grimaced, and she realized that if her memories had been intact, she would have known that Cassie was in the hospital.

"Uh. No." He sighed. "I know the doctors want you to get your memory back as naturally as possible, but the truth is, if we're going to get you home, we need to fill you in on a couple of things."

Her eyes widened with each event her dad unfolded. Her parents ordered to the White House with the rest of SG-1. Cassie in the hospital with what they thought might be a stroke. Grace and Jacob getting kidnapped. Doc shot in the process. Her mother shot, not fifteen feet from where the President of the United States stood.

Tears stung her eyes. "Doc..."

Her dad handed her a tissue. "Yeah. I don't think it's going to feel real until we get home, and he's not there to meet us. But we'll do something real nice when we're all home, okay? We owed that dog a lot."

Grace just played with the tissue as the memories came back. Cassie bringing the dog to the cabin when Grace had just been adopted. Walking an uncharacteristically quiet Doc with her dad the morning after her mom had spent the night in the hospital. Playing frisbee with him in the park. The way he'd barked when she'd broken her arm in the backyard, and her mom's friend, Detective Shanahan, had found her. The way Jacob would pretend Doc was his wookie friend when he played Star Wars.

"Maybe in a couple weeks, we can go to a shelter. Get a new dog."

"Get a new dog?" Grace's mind swam. "We can't just replace him, Dad."

He rubbed his face with one hand, like he wanted to hide how much older and more tired he looked now that the danger was over. "No, I know, Grace, I just thought that maybe—"

"Maybe what, Dad?"

He looked at her square on. "I thought maybe having something to look forward to would be a good idea. Your brother, your mom...hell, even I'm feeling a little unsettled by everything that's happened. Maybe a little happy news would be just the ticket."

Grace looked away. It killed her when she made her dad angry, or worse, when she made him sad.

He patted her leg. "Grace, kiddo, I know the last little while's been pretty hard. On you, particularly. Being thirteen's hard enough, but to do it with your dreams and the worry you've carried about your mom—well, I assume that just makes it worse."

Grace chewed on her bottom lip, letting one hand dart up to brush away her tears. One question burned in her brain, and when the silence dragged on, she took a deep breath and turned to her dad. "Was it my fault?"

Her dad's eyes widened. "Your—no, Grace. None of this was your fault. There are people in this world who are so greedy or so scared that they don't care who they hurt to meet their goals. Those are the people who are responsible for this. Not you." He pulled her close and kissed her forehead. "Never you."

"But I feel like a freak, Dad."

She'd half expected that her dad would insist that she wasn't a freak, but instead, he half-chuckled. "You know, there was someone else who once said she felt like a freak in this room a few years back."

"Who?"

"Cassie."

Grace blinked at her father. "What?"

He nodded. "I wasn't there for it as much as your mom was, but I know for a little while, Cassie sort of had a limited sort of telekinesis."

"How have I not heard this story?"

Her dad leaned back, his arms folded over his chest. "Didn't seem relevant. Besides, it was a pretty scary time. Janet, Cassie's adopted mom, didn't know how to help her. She had a high fever, her body was changing into something—what, we didn't know—but the point is, Cassie felt different. Like she wasn't like us. She thought that meant we couldn't love her. Like we couldn't see who she really was."

Grace shifted, "And was she right?"

"Nope. No matter what she was able to do, no matter what she said, no matter any of that, we all just saw her. That's not going to change just because you're the one who feels different now."

Two sets of footsteps sounded against the concrete floor, stopping right outside the door. Both Grace and her dad turned their attention only to find Teal'c and Jacob standing there.

Grace's heart melted at the sight of her little brother, especially when the poor boy's face dissolved into tears as he ran in, climbed up on the bed, and squeezed her so tight she almost couldn't breathe.

Instead of complaining, she returned the hug. "Hey, it's okay. We're safe."


As Grace hugged her brother, Jack motioned for Teal'c to follow him just outside the door. "I'm gonna check in on Sam. Can you stay with these two?"

Teal'c nodded, his hands clasped behind his back. "What is the news of Grace O'Neill's condition?"

Jack shoved his hands in his pockets. "The doctors said that everything looks clean. They suspect this is just expected memory loss due to a traumatic event."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow.

"Trust me, T. I know. I heard what Daniel said about how she projected her consciousness into your body or whatever the hell it was. Apparently, nothing looks out of the ordinary on her imaging." Jack shrugged. "Well, out of the ordinary for her at least."

"It was not unlike what Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran described when they visited the villagers and met the Ori."

Jack glanced back at his kids, pleased to see that Jacob was now sitting beside his sister, talking animatedly with his hands. At least something was returning to normal around here. "Yeah. Except they had technology to do that."

He wasn't sure whether the troubled look on Teal'c's face was comforting or not. "Indeed."

"Besides, from what Daniel said, she could actually communicate with you in your mind."

Teal'c glanced over his shoulder at Grace, who had one eye trained on them. "Yes, O'Neill."

Jack tapped a fist against his thigh, thinking. "Look, I've got to check on Sam. In the meantime, let's just keep this between us, okay? Given what they just went through, the last thing we need is for Grace to undergo a bunch of tests."

"Is there no reason for her gifts?"

Jack groaned. "The closest we've come is that her DNA is a close match for Cassandra's. Not a familial match, but Grace's parents—her biological parents—could have originally come from Hanka."

Teal'c's eyes widened.

Jack waved away the dozens of questions that came from that particular train of thought. "We don't have to solve this all today, and frankly, I'm not sure we want to know the answers." He rubbed his face as he turned toward the opposite wall, hoping his words would only travel to Teal'c and not to either of his kids. "The last thing any of us needs is to live with the threat of this happening again hanging over our heads for the rest of our lives. In fact, that's why we decided not to find out when she first came to us and was singing lullabies in Ancient and all that. The only thing we ever wanted was for her to be safe."

"Perhaps I may be of assistance."

Jack clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder. "I don't doubt you can, but you can't be there every minute of the day. We've got to be able—"

Teal'c raised a hand. "I would lay my life down in defense of your children, O'Neill, however, I have another solution."

Jack straightened, a cautious blossom of hope blooming in his chest. "Let me hear it."

"Do you not remember Krista?"

Jack browsed through his memories like a filing cabinet. Krista. Krista. Krista.

"I taught her an ancient form of Jaffa self-defense. Perhaps it would be wise that I also instruct your children in this art."

That hope faltered a little. Turning his kids into warriors might be the right way to handle this if they were Jaffa, and they would undoubtedly be safer, but—

He sighed. What kind of childhood was that? Knowing your parents had signed you up for martial arts because they wanted you to be prepared in case some nut job wanted to hurt you?

He patted Teal'c massive shoulder again, grateful at least for his friend's concern. "I'll talk to Sam. We'll let you know, but thanks."

Teal'c bowed his head and walked back into the isolation room.

Jack looked down the hallway, needing just one moment before he walked into Sam's room to see how she was doing with all of this. One moment where he could breathe. Then, maybe another when he could figure out just how he was doing with all of this.