Mother-In-Law
Chapter 2
Branded
He doesn't like the way they leave it, but she knows he has to leave, and as soon as the shower turned on, he knew she wasn't going to see him off—hell, he's lucky that they got to have sex during this visit. Usually she's too tired, or too uncomfortable with the baby playing havoc on her kidneys, or too distraught because he leaves so damn much.
Sometimes he's too tired from the hour trek through arid, empty fields to the gate with only his mind to entertain him, and he never just has good thoughts.
He doesn't want to, but he leaves.
But stops at the back door, listening to the dulled sound of water hitting the wooden slated floor—hoping that she might have a change of heart. Wants to write her a note, let her know that he didn't mean to upset her, that he knows things between them have been strained, but he honestly doesn't know how much she'll appreciate it.
Between his absences and her flipflopping hormones, all he does lately is make her upset, or—even worse—make her cry, and it's not something he intends to do, but it's like all she wants to do is fight.
After a day of destroying high clearance documents, or deleting files on the Jacksons' computers, along with dodging everyone's questions about how his personal life is—because at this point he doesn't even know anymore—and he doesn't want to do anything except keep her happy and go to sleep.
The screen door doesn't squeak when he closes it behind him, another thing a group of random men fixed at his house when he wasn't home. A group of random men hired by his very pregnant wife to fix up a house he was supposed to, and all he can think is how badly it could've gone.
Josie sees him off from the porch, screaming like a police siren when he reaches down to pet her.
The sun isn't too high in the sky yet, but it's starting to get into the season Vala says is in between spring and summer which is apparently just full of thunderstorms and dust storms just making everything overly humid and pressure filled, playing more havoc on her sinuses because she snores like a trucker after a long haul no matter where she falls asleep.
It also makes his hip act up, and sometimes getting up in the morning, or at night, or whenever he's due back at base, is almost as painful as it was when he was first recovering. Sometimes he can't move his leg, sometimes the pain shoots from his hip down to his foot, sometimes the muscles spasm and clench, making him shout in pain.
She'll wake up beside him, clicking on the lamp, yawning as she still pulls his leg into what's left of her lap, working her fingers over the muscles and scars. Laughs as his foot tenses up, hums in approval when his boxers start to tent.
It worries him because he's not exactly young anymore—almost forty when he started being captain of SG-1 and add in the five years he and Vala have been dating—and the one they weren't—he's closer to over the hill—or under it—then not. She acts like there's nothing wrong with him, when he starts to get tired more easily, when the old injury starts to flare up and it hurts so much that his military gait is reduced to a limp.
His age was the reason why Landry set him up for the promotion that got him out of the field and behind a desk—although Landry never told him this. When the job was offered to him, he was a little relieved and then a little offended—but she was proud of him, and that's all that really mattered.
They went out to dinner, one of the first times they'd gone to a fancy restaurant—one where he didn't have to shout into a box to order—as much as she found that amusing. She looked so beautiful all done up, and the pride he felt for the promotion, was nothing compared to the pride he felt when she hooked her arm through his.
Later Landry told him that they were really looking for a family man for the position, someone who needed to be grounded because he had a spouse and kids that relied on him, but apparently none of the many members of SG-7—who ended up with kids by the bushel—were qualified enough for the job.
Thinks about what it would be like to be back on Earth now, without all their dirty laundry hung out to air.
She'd be watching the snow fall in the backyard, waiting to ask him to build a snowman with her. Wanting hot chocolate when they got inside and tucking her icy feet under his ass to warm them while they watched shitty Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel.
She'd be happily off the team and content to spend her time at home waiting for the baby to get there.
That's when he knows he's daydreaming, and he might have heatstroke.
She never stays put. Never stays still—even now, in the last few weeks of her pregnancy, she has this burst of energy, like her preoccupation with fixing up the house.
He's not upset that she did, he's upset that he couldn't do it for her.
He's upset that random, unknown men were near his very pregnant wife, and were fixing the roof above his kid's nursery.
Trekking over the last hill, he can see the gate in the distance, gleaming in the sun.
He's definitely getting too old for this shit—that's for sure.
The easy way out would be telling the Jacksons or Landry what's actually going on with the Clava Thessara Infinitas but that might be the one thing she doesn't forgive him for.
She does a lot of little quirky things. Little dangerous things. Things that he'll fume about for a few hours, maybe the whole day, but he always ends up forgiving her before they go to bed because he can't go to sleep without her and he doesn't want to.
But she can hold a grudge like an Olympic torch and keep the flame burning for weeks. Even after she's forgiven him, she brings up what he did with little pokes, little barbs, and he thinks that if he spilled the beans on her mom—Jesus, who her mom actually is—that she'd disappear without even giving him a divorce.
The sound of his feet crunching over dry ground echoes throughout the plains—it's more like clay, like kitty litter, and it brings him back to the sleek black cat with bright green eyes who hates his guts. The cat is going to end up staying in the house.
He knows that.
Knew that the moment he caved and let the cat stay to begin with.
The truth is, he sort of misses living with animals.
Misses having a dog, and goats, and chickens—he never really was a cat person, mostly because every single one he's met hated him, but he never had anything against them.
Sure, Josie attacks him, waits for him around corners to pounce on him, only to then go and lovely trot up to Vala and rub her boney body up and down his wife's legs, be he also knows Josie keeps Vala company more than he does these days, and with everything she's gone through—everything she's had to put up with—if a screechy cat that's got a few bald spots and looks more like a Halloween decoration than a lap cat can bring her comfort, he's not going to take that away.
Plus, Josie will probably love the kid, and the kid will probably love Josie back.
He's not worried about that.
He's worried about whether this kid will actually like him or not, because so far, all signs are pointing to no.
Maybe it's scientific, has to do with his temperature or something, how the kid just stops kicking whenever he goes to interact with them, and he's hoping it's all just a big game of peek-a-boo—a game he can actually play—because at this rate, he doesn't think he'll be able to teach the kid how to play t-ball like Vala wanted.
Gave up coffee because he was worried about what it was doing to his system and every time he's alone in the lab with the Jacksons' brewed pot of gold, or he strolls by the mess and smells the robust scent it almost beckons him in.
But he wants to be able to chase his kid. To give them pony and airplane rides. To bounce them on his knee without his hip hurting.
Having a kid has never made him feel so old, and he doesn't even have one yet.
He catches his breath at the gate that sits just outside the city limits. The place they stashed it kinda looks like a bus stop from downtown, the ones with the little awnings to keep it protected from rain and snow—and whatever else this crazy planet's got planned.
If it were up to him—just him—he would grab some groceries, start the trek back, and talk to her. Force her to talk by patiently waiting until that guilt boils up in her. He doesn't need to know the address to her mom's planet—it would just make their lives a hell of a lot easier.
He wants to sleep in late beside her. Make her breakfast in bed. Play with her hair while it spreads over the pillow. Watch her fill out the puzzle book her brought her back all wrong, and just grin and bask in the moment.
There's not much he wouldn't do for her—although she keeps hinting that she wants her toes painted—toes she can't reach—and he keeps changing the subject, pretending that he doesn't hear her.
After dialing the DHD, the gate blinks awake, and the chevrons start clicking into place.
He doesn't want to be doing this—or at least he wishes she was with him, but he doesn't want to bring her back to the mountain either. Too much stuff has happened in the last eight months, and he's just trying to keep her and the baby safe—even if it means frequent time away from her because he's busy sabotaging a mission he inherited from her, even if it means he has to work harder trying to help everyone recover lost information that he just deletes again.
They need to have a talk about it.
About where she wants to have the kid, because he has this horrible nightmare where he wakes in in a cold sweat to find her in labor—meaning she can't do the hour trek—so he has to deliver the baby in the middle of the living room floor.
It's not the birth story he wants to tell his kid.
It's a nightmare—that's all it is—he has them all the time where his teeth fall out, or where there's just a gaping hole in his head—but this one seems more real, maybe because each SG team member has to do an in-field first-aid course—he's only had to use it a handful of times, stitching up Sam, applying pressure or tourniquets, that one time when they all had allergic reactions to the food offered to them by the natives of P3X 401—but it doesn't include how to help deliver a baby, and honestly, he'd be so terrified for Vala, for the kid, that he wouldn't know who to worry about more—wouldn't be able to concentrate, and even the thought of it is making him nervous.
Tired as ever, he drags his feet up the ramp to the gate, and steps through, no longer impressed or excited about riding through the wormhole.
Knowing that he's been through the gate well over 500 times now.
The Jacksons are waiting for him on the other side. Not like they were back when they were both clo—not the original. Now, the original Jackson physically distances himself from his doppelgänger, and they stand on the opposite sides of the room.
Knows who the original Jackson is because he always wears his BDU jacket and his glasses most of the time. The other is usually always in a black t-shirt without glasses, but even if one day they got mischievous and decided to swap on him, could still tell them apart by their attitudes.
Jackson will greet him and lay right into the plans: where they're at since he's left, what they need to accomplish by the time he leaves and start walking towards his lab before he even gets to say hello. The second Jackson asks him about Vala, how she's doing, if there's anything she needs. If she's going to come for a visit before her next doctor's appointment.
When he retells this to her at night, sometimes sitting on the couch and looking out the front window to the stars, her hair spreading across her lap as he strokes a finger up and down her arm, or tickles one over her stomach, she just laughs at him. "Cameron, of course they have different attitudes. Daniel Two was created using a portion of Daniel's personality—"
She goes quiet and he realizes she's thinking about what part of the personality she was made from.
"I don't care."
Sometimes she grins, tries to lean up and peck the tip of his nose, flailing around until he helps her. Sometimes she doesn't say a thing, and turns so her back is to him, which he just takes a suggestion to keep quiet.
He doesn't mean to upset her.
He never does.
It's just getting to the point now that squinting into the sunlight can make her think he's judging her because of her body, because of her mother, because of her creation—but he really doesn't care—well, maybe about her mom because in-laws are never fun to deal with and apparently, this one is a real bitch.
He's honestly more afraid of her getting angry and jumpstarting labor than he is about what her origins are. She's Vala to him and that's all—well, his wife, the mother of his unborn kid, his life partner—
Taking one last look over the knoll he crossed, he wishes they could talk about it without her feeling defensive because she feels ashamed. Wants to tell her that he'll never judge her on the things she's done, especially the ones she couldn't control, but before he gets the words out, she's either crying or fuming.
He'll try again tonight.
Maybe wake up a little early and attempt to put the crib together so that she doesn't hire a complete stranger to do what he should've had done a month ago.
If this is how their relationship is—there's nothing wrong with it, and he can live with it—but he wants—needs—her to know that he hasn't even given what happened at the ruins a second thought because every time he does, he gets preoccupied with how all he could have come back with is a bitchy clone of himself.
"You're late." Jackson greets him as he steps down the ramp, his boots clunking as both doctors fall in line walking beside him.
"Hit a little snafu before I left." He rubs at the sweat on his forehead, not remembering the cut that she taped together is still relatively fresh. "Had a little snafu last night too, actually."
"Are you okay?" Jackson Two, the bleeding heart, questions from his left, gesturing to his face. "Vala get upset that you were late again?"
"I mean, it's not like we have the fate of the world to—"
"Actually." He interrupts Jackson by clearing his throat, ready to sit down, gulp a bottle of water, and mess up whatever info they've found since yesterday. "I got jumped on the way home."
"What?" Both ask in unison. It happens less often than when there were two duplicates and not an original, but it's still just as weird.
"Yeah, three guys." He scratches at the back of his head, not really wanting to go into details. "I don't know what they wanted. I didn't have any money on me."
"Why didn't you use your—"
"Because I'm not a card-carrying member of the SGC anymore, remember, Sunshine?" He tugs at the badge on the side of Original Jackson's BDU jacket.
He's never in uniform anymore. Doesn't even know if he still has one.
"Yeah, but technically you are doing recon, right?"
"In the barest of senses, yeah."
"Then why don't you ask Landry for a weapon for protection?"
"Because I don't want to owe anyone any favors."
They turn down the corridor towards the Jacksons' lab which has now been sanctioned off into two parts. Jackson wanted his space, which is warranted with the shock of finding out about his duplicates and his five years of frozen time, but he thinks it affects Jackson Two more than the guy lets on.
Even though Jackson only has limited interactions with his copy—always on base—he's pretty sure Two got used to having a partner in crime, and now he gets a little lonely.
"I don't want to be here right now, but I promised Vala I would—"
"We know, Mitchell."
They step into the lab where makeshift walls have been constructed in the almost half-a-year since he's been gone from active duty. Right now, they can move freely between the skeletal frames made of wood, but soon it will be decked out with drywall, or at least that's what Jackson has been telling him for the last month.
"So, getting down to business." Jackson slides a pile of folders down the table to him. When he flips back the cover, he's greeted with numbers, latitudes and longitudes, varying angles of degrees, and how they all relate to constellations, then ancient constellations, then gate addresses. "We've found the right star system, but there are over seven-hundred planets within it. The Research and Development Team are doing scouting on various planets with MALPs and some of the SG teams but—"
"—so far they've all come back inconclusive."
"You don't say," speaks absently, already not really interested in what's been developed in the seven hours since he was gone. Instead, concentrating more on flipping through the pages given to him and deciphering what would constitute an old gate address.
"Yeah, it's taking a long time—"
"—an eerily long time."
When he glances up, both of the Jacksons are staring at him, waiting for input. "Meaning?"
"Meaning, we've been toying with the idea that someone has been sabotaging us."
"You don't say?" This time, it's a little more forced.
Both Jacksons pull out a chair from the other side of the table in the cramped space, and he realizes that they didn't need him for reconnaissance or research today, that this is really an interrogation.
"Anything you want to tell us, Mitchell?"
Now he just has to figure out, which one of them is good cop and which one is bad cop, and then somehow turn them against each other.
"We know things have been stressful for you these last couple of months with everything that's happened—"
"—but that's no reason to sabotage years of work."
He snorts, shaking his head as he pushes away from the table, a little pissed off that they called him here for this, more pissed off that he had to walk an hour through the heat to get here, and even more pissed off that he's gonna have to walk an hour in the heat home. "I have a laundry list of things I could be doing instead of trying to help you two play Goonies."
"We have a gate system for the address, Mitchell. We reverse engineered your backtracking—"
"seven-hundred addresses down to fifty-two—"
"But we still don't understand why you would—"
"Is this a vendetta?"
"What would Vala say?"
Before he responds, the walkie attached to his belt crackles to life, the Jacksons keep rambling until he holds his hand up to halt their accusations, so he can hear his wife's voice.
"Cameron?"
"Yeah, Baby, I'm here." Across the table, Jackson rolls his eyes, leaning more into the table, impatient for an answer, while Two moves away, always uncomfortable with their pet names and tokens of love.
"Cam—ron—on't have much ti—"
He doesn't need to hear the whole words to know what she's talking about.
He jumps up from his chair, running down the hallway, his leg muscles aching from overuse, like the time he was almost sold into slavery and she showed up, all done up in her uniform, her hair perfect, and he could smell her shampoo from where they had him locked up.
"Is it go time?" There's only the sizzle of static feeding through the speaker of the walkie. He waits a stupid amount of time for her to respond, standing in the doorway of the gate room. "Vala?"
"I—id"
"What? Honey, you're breaking up—"
" –ou musn't—"
She's gotta be having the baby. She's almost nine months along—it takes her forever to do anything—she can't really get that much bigger, and there's only one place for the baby to eventually go. "How far are they apart?"
There's a brief radio silence. The Jacksons have caught up with him now, standing at the base of the stairs, Harriman watching him, waiting for a cue to fire up the gate.
Then there's her brief sigh of confusion, followed by, "what?"
"Your contractions, how far are they—"
"Is she in labor?" One of the Jacksons asks, peering over his shoulder as all three of them stare at the walkie in his hand.
The other, he's assuming Two, asks, "can she make it back to the mountain on time?"
When he doesn't' answer, both fall silent beside him until the walkie sparks to life again.
"—Mm not—n labor—"
"Thank God," he mutters resting the walkie against his head. Both Jacksons let out a sigh of relief in unison behind him, more than likely afraid they'd have to volunteer to be mobile obstetricians.
"—Amr—n!"
"Sorry, Baby, just happy that—"
But their lives are anything but ordinary.
"—'s here."
The tone of her voice wipes the grin right off his face. He shoots a finger at Harriman, who nods, loading up the gate address for Thea. "Who's there?"
"locked—athr—m, and—"
"Vala, who's there?" Swirls his hand in a circle, impatient with how slow the gate is loading, as Harriman announces the third chevron, trying to keep her talking so he can figure out what's happening.
If he can just get through the gate, the walkie will be clearer without a galaxy of interference.
"Other."
"Other who?"
"Oth—r—can—ou"
"I can't—" he's panting now. Hasn't even begun to run on his spent legs, the metal rod exuding more pain with each day. How is he gonna be able to chase his kid around if they never even get a chance to exist?
"Chevron six encoded," Harriman announces over the speaker.
"Honey, I'm on my way now." He's panicking, his voice pitchy as he paces before the bottom of the ramp, watching the gate dial to the final symbol.
But as the kawoosh fills the room, there's a sudden loud thumping, banging, knocking, cutting through the static, and he wrenches the walkie back to his mouth. "Vala?" But then all he hears is static. "Vala?"
Everyone in the gate room is silent.
"Just hold on—" bites the inside of his mouth to keep his emotions at bay, because it's not gonna help him get back home any quicker "—I'm coming."
The farmhouse is gone.
Notices before he even gets there, while running through the plain with the Jacksons—who fumbled through the gate after him—he doesn't see the familiar outline of their small home, or its stretched shadow across the flat ground cast by the morning sun.
Instead the smoke raising from the smoldering ruins of the house catches his attention, makes him run faster. He can do it. He used to jog everyday, sometimes twice a day. Lately he's been sticking close to the house in case something went wrong, because he knows Vala, and he knows the foreboding feeling, and he knew that something was going to go wrong because everything was going too well.
He shouldn't have left.
He isn't as good at this as she is.
Not just the lying and the sabotaging, but the not being tethered to one place, to one person.
She is his person, and he should've either planned a daytrip for both of them to go back through the gate together, or stayed with her—should have come up with some reason to stay with her because she never would've accepted why he was staying so close, why he gave up his morning jog for a fifteen minute stroll with her through the fields to check on their crops, which were now embering ashes into the wind.
He calls for her as he approaches the house. Some of the rooms are still standing with only half walls and broken doors. Pieces of the new roof crunch under his feet as he clambers over them, hopping up fixed porch stairs that now look like they haven't been refurbished.
Ignores the flames—the heat—as he twists, trying to place himself in a house he could no longer navigate.
Jackson calls to him from the front porch, crackling under the live fire, and Two crawls up the back stairs to help him look.
A gust of wind clears away the smoke for him to see something clearly enough.
The crib.
She must have built it.
Because he never got to it.
Wouldn't have been any good anyway, he always missing a piece and ending up with an extra.
There's no sign of her.
While she's still missing from the fiery innards of their house, he didn't stumble on her charred corpse either. The heat makes him so dizzy he feels sick to his stomach. He spins, stumbles, sifts through smoldering pieces of wood, calling for her until his throat is barbequed from smoke inhalation.
It takes both Jacksons to drag him out of the house just before the roof collapses in.
He has to rest.
As much as his spirit wants to fight, his adrenaline wanes from the run here, from the contact burns on the back of his hand from kicking over the remnants of the life they made together.
His mind swims on a sea of ashes, trying to float down different tributaries to find who took her. Who would want to take her?
It's not the Jacksons in their invisible spaceship again, and the shock of staring at his house in ruins—the one he wanted to fix up, where he and Vala were going to start their family—makes him shake.
After an hour or so, the smoke reduces to a level that's not as scarring to their lungs. He and the Jacksons wordlessly go back in the bare black bones of scaffolding and wooden frames rickety where they stand. Together they sieve through burnt up mementos like her picture of the team—the one he tried to glue and tape back together, charred up with curling corners and a hole burnt right through her face.
The crib melted into a pile of scorched plastic with a stench that cuts his breath. The purple room she wanted so long ago doesn't even exist anymore, the living room—and those ornate teacups she set out to receive the company they never got—were smashed and crispy.
Their couch, their bed, their kitchen, everything razed down.
Everything except the bathroom.
And on his way there, he finds her.
Laying straight and stiff, with smoke wisping off her skin like her breath on all those early mornings she saw him off from the back porch. Her green eyes wide open, and her dark coat marred by open wounds—some from burns, some from something else—her bared yellow teeth still visible and her small pink tongue hanging to the side.
"Oh, Josie." He mutters, running a hand over the cat's open eyes to close them in respect. She's warm to the touch, but long gone, probably before the fire judging by the amount of blood hardened into her fur.
Taking off his jacket, he wraps the cat up in it to offer a proper burial—even when his folks lose animals on the farm, they still always hold a little funeral, and add them to the little graveyard out by the chicken coop.
By the looks of her, the cat obviously went out fighting and there is only ever one thing he's seen her defend.
Maybe Vala got away because of the cat, maybe she was able to call him because of her. He knows the cat became enamored with his wife and the scraps of meat she offered, but he didn't think the little furball would have gone to this length to protect her, dying in front of the bathroom door while the whole house burnt down.
Only one of the bathroom walls toppled, not burnt by fire, but broken under pressure.
Knows Vala was in there because that's where she goes to hide, that's where she goes to feel safe. Once told him the walls were reinforced in case one of the sandstorms turned into a full-blown tornado.
Cradling Josie's body, he peers around the room, searching near the floor by the scorched enamel tub, the melted shower head, searching for any sign, any clue Vala would think to leave.
The Jacksons call to him, standing a few feet away from where the back porch was, from the swing where he'd sit with her every morning and share a peppermint tea, where they'd stare out at the field, at their slowly growing crops, as she tried to balance the teacup and saucer on her stomach, and he kept his hands steady as a goalie so she didn't laugh and get third degree burns.
He won't leave the bathroom until he finds it—whatever she's left him.
He knows Vala better than he knows himself.
Vala doesn't like to be tethered down.
Two's words course through his mind, and he knows that the Jacksons are probably discussing how easily she could have set this up in order to get away. The house is in her name, she's the one with the fortune tucked away somewhere, and she gets nervous when she has to stay in one place for too long.
A child is going to anchor her to you for life.
She's not like that anymore.
Sure, she needs her space every once in a while, sometimes she likes to just be by herself, and he's got to respect that.
Sometimes he's got to worry about her from a distance because he can't suffocate her with his concern, he can't change the way she is, and he doesn't want to. He fell in love with all of her and that includes the antsy feeling she gets when she stays put for too long.
"You've lived a lot of places." He told her once, stroking her hair as she lay curled against his chest, her cold feet mingling with his. Played with her fingers while she thought of an answer to the statement or didn't.
"You didn't join the air force to stay in on place, Darling."
"No, but I've never seen anyone who needs to move around as much as you."
"I'm nomadic." It was one of her non-answers, accompanied by pressing her hands onto his chest, and touching her lips gently to his chin, trailing his jawline upwards. She sat up, straddling her knees around his torso, and arched in as he placed his lips to her collarbone. "It's just something else to appreciate about me."
"It's almost like you think someone is after you." Spoke the words against her skin, but she managed to hear them anyway.
Stiffened in his arms, and pulled away from him, her hands stilling in his hair. "How do you know someone isn't?"
"Mmm," hummed against the side of her neck, nuzzling his nose against her skin. "You on the lam from someone, Princess?"
"Mmm," she hummed back, falling into his rhythm again, the weight of her balanced against the tops of his thigh. "From everyone, Darling."
Knows that when she first walked into the SGC she was on the run from the Lucien Alliance—doesn't know if she's ever really repaid her debts to them, or if the SGC moniker protects her now, but this is to big to be part of the Alliance's gig. He's seen the types of bounty hunters they have; he's seen the way they search, and it's not this collective and vindictive.
If this were their work, there would be proof of it in her body, which shows that whoever did this, took her alive.
There are dozens of planets she can't go back to. Planets where a bounty has been placed on her head—he still only has one wanted poster of her, but that's enough. Thought the SGC backing her up—or previously backing her up—would have been enough to deter anyone seeking her out for a pay day.
Hell, she went back to being a freelance agent, and no one seemed to give a shit other than him.
Athena's been after her for years because of the Clava Thessara Infinitas, but the trust has been tied up in internal affairs and facing charges of insider trading—stupid little charges meant to keep any remaining Goa'uld busy in litigations. Athena had insiders though—Vala was able to sniff out Gloria, but what if there were others that she didn't finger on time. It has to be—
Then he sees it.
A few little scribbles on the bottom of the sink cabinet, so small that he thinks that they're just smudged soot, but when he creeping in closer—still cradling Josie's lifeless body—his feet crunching over glass, broken floor tiles, chunks of wall, until he steps on one of the only things she brought with her from Earth—a black makeup pen that just happens to by laying under some ash by the symbols.
"Jacksons," he shouts, shooing away the smoke, gently dabbing around the note she left—knows she left because she knew he'd be searching for something to follow. "Get in here!"