Chapter 12
Author's Notes: I haven't thanked my beta reader in a long time and this story
would just be a shadow of it's current state without her. Kath, stand up and take a
bow!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cassie could scarcely sit through lunch she was so anxious to explore the area.
Throughout the meal she would ask Jack questions about the lake and the
surrounding area.
"Done!" She declared setting down her fork and standing up. "Can I go now?"
"Cassandra!" Janet Frasier said crossly. "Sit back down and wait for everyone else
to finish." Janet was embarrassed. Cassie wasn't usually this rude (or quick) at
home. She opened her mouth to say something more only to close it again in
perplexity. All three members of SG-1 were smiling. Or rather trying hard NOT to
smile.
"Someone was to fill me in on the joke?" Janet asked.
"Remind you of anyone?" Jack asked turning towards Sam.
"Hmmm. Let me think? Teal'c perhaps?"
"Very funny guys." Daniel said not enjoying himself so much anymore.
Sam turned to Janet and Cassie and explained. "When Jack, Teal'c, and I go off-
world with Daniel, he sometimes get a little, uh.. energetic about what he finds."
"Danny goes nuts over rocks and buildings." The Colonel added. Seeing Daniel's
look of annoyance he held up his hands to waive off any complaints and added, "In a
good way I mean."
"The Colonel often has to force him to sit with us in order to eat, which Daniel does.
But often he'll eat as quickly as possible and then stand up and announce that he's
done and would someone PLEASE escort him back to the work site."
"I'll have you know that I haven't done anything like that in a good 6 months."
Daniel said matter-of-factly.
"You're forgetting last month so quickly Danny?"
"What? I don't remember any gulping of food..."
"No, but what about the evening I told you lights out and you continued to read?"
"That's right!" Jack, that was dam..darn mean of you to do!" Daniel said wrinkling
his nose. "And how'd you manage to sabotage my flashlight anyhow?"
"Took out the batteries and replaced them with rocks while you were on watch."
Jack said smugly. Daniel could do nothing but glare back at his best friend. One day
Jack O'Neill...
"Cool." Cassie said following the ping-pong conversation of her favorite team. "If
you're comparing me to Daniel, than that is a compliment." Cassie said sweetly.
"Everyone knows that Daniel is very clever and smart and I can only hope to emulate
him one day."
"Emulate?" Jack mouthed to Janet.
"SAT word." Janet mouthed back before turning towards her daughter.
"You're right honey, Daniel is very clever and if you study really hard, I bet you'll be
just as smart." She lowered her voice slightly and added, "hopefully not as accident
prone; but just as smart."
"Hey.." Daniel began trying hard not to take it TOO personally. After all they WERE
calling him smart. Before he could open his mouth for another retort Sam jumped
in.
"I've also finished Cass, so why don't I go on a walk around the area with you?"
Both Janet and Jack frowned slightly. Sam hadn't eaten very much dinner.
"You want any company?" Jack asked in what he hoped was a very nonchalant
sounding voice. Sam of course saw right through it.
"We'll be fine Jack." Sam said fixing him with a decidedly pointed stare. "Right,
Cass?"
"Absolutely Sam! I'll just get my coat!" And with that Cassie bounded up the stairs.
"Pretty boring living with a 15 year old isn't it Doc?" Jack asked.
"Oh yeah." Janet said helping herself to one of Jack's yet unopened beers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cassie was having fun. Not only was the forest around the lake 'cool' but she was
enjoying the one-on-one time spent with her second favorite person in the whole
universe. The pair tramped over 100 year old logs and examined the various plants
and small animals living in/on the trees.
"The squirrels here look different." Cassie announced, suddenly stopping to a
complete standstill.
Sam took a moment to examine a squirrel frozen in fear just 10 feet away. She
snapped her fingers in memory. "Their ears!" Cassie gave her a 'huh?' look. Sam
smiled as she explained. "The further north you go on the planet the more extreme
examples you can see of evolutionary adaptation. Towards the south, squirrels have
quite rounded little ears. Where we live they are slightly pointed and up here they
are EXTREMELY pointed. See?"
Cassie nodded and then sat down on a log and burst out laughing. "Sam, who IS
smarter? You or Daniel?"
Sam sat down next to her and considered the question for a long moment. "I am
pretty certain Daniel and I are quite similar in our IQ's, but we are both smart in
very different ways Cass."
"Yeah, I know. I'm just thinking about a question we had at school. If trapped on a
desert island, who or what would you take with you. My class laughed at me when I
blurted out SG-1 without thinking." Sam blanched a little at that admission. Cassie
saw her face and quickly set her fears to rest.
"I told everyone that was the name of the rescue team who found me in that
abandoned house up in Toronto. Since I won't talk AT ALL about life before my 11th
birthday, everyone is pretty certain I had an absolutely horrid childhood. So by
mentioning Toronto, everyone just shut up."
"I'm sorry you can't talk about the past with your friends Cass." Sam said putting
her arm around the younger woman.
"It's ok Sam. After four years, I'm kind of used to it." They sat in the forest for
several long moments in comfortable silence.
"Are you o.k. Sam?" Cass asked carefully, uncertainty lacing every word.
Sam sighed. Of course Cassie had been told at least a little about what to expect.
After all, the last Jan had heard, I was waking up in the middle of the night to either
puke or scream. Not exactly healthy and something you should worn a child about.
"I will be Cass." Sam said with more confidence than she felt. "What did your mom
tell you?"
"Just that SG-1 got hurt on a mission." She paused and then gave Sam a cheeky
grin. "AGAIN. But that this time you and Colonel Jack needed a little more support
from your friends in order to recover." Cassie turned to face Sam and took a deep
breath.
"Were you and the Colonel badly hurt Sam? I mean, you kinda don't look well, but it
isn't like you're in a cast or hooked up to machines or anything. When I asked mom
what happened she said she couldn't tell me." Cassie raised a hand haphazardly in
the air. "Something about doctor/patient confidentiality."
Sam didn't know what to say. Not that she would EVER tell Cass the truth, but she
did deserve to know a little something more.
"I'm ok physically Cass- it's just that something really bad happened to me
psychologically on our last mission and I am having a hard time dealing with it.
Which is stupid really because in actuality it boils down to extreme embarrassment
and not much more."
"Did that 'bad thing' also give you a bruised cheek?" Cassie was by no means
stupid. She might not be Sam or Daniel's league but she was right up there with her
mom as far as common sense and natural intelligence comes in.
Sam rubbed her cheek absently. "Yeah." Again they lapsed into silence.
"Did I ever tell you about my first few weeks at the new school here on Earth?" Sam
nodded.
"You didn't tell us a lot Cass, and we figured much of that had to do with the shock
of being on a new planet with different customs. I remember you were excited the
first couple of days and then quiet for a couple of weeks before bouncing back and
talking non-stop about your teachers and friends."
Cassie nodded, that sounded about right. "Did I ever mention Jeffrey?" Sam shook
her head. Jeffrey? Who the hell was Jeffrey?
"Those first few weeks were really tough, Sam and I think I tried harder than I would
have normally because I didn't want to disappoint all of you."
"Oh Cassie!" Sam said hugging the girl close. "You would NEVER disappoint us.
Ever."
"I know that NOW." Cass said with the arrogance of a young teenager. "But then, I
wasn't so sure. So there I was in the 6th grade trying to make new friends. We
didn't have anything like school playgrounds back on Hanka and so here on Earth, I
could always be found playing on the bars at recess. I got quite good at doing penny
drops and even..." Cassie lowered her voice "death drops."
"Cassie! Those are dangerous!" Sam remembered watching her friends hanging
from their knees from single bars 6 feet off the ground. They would swing
themselves back and forth to gain momentum before releasing their legs and
(hopefully) landing on their feet. The REAL gutsy ones would sit on the top of the
bars and just fall back and do a partial somersault in the air before attempting to
land on their feet. She shuddered at the memory.
"No recesses anymore Sam, you can stop worrying." Cassie said grinning at her
friend for a moment. She suddenly got more serious. "Most of the time all the girls
played on the bars and the guys out in the sports fields. We never really gave them
much notice and we were always flipping around in skirts and such.
Well, thar first Friday at school happened to be my mom's birthday. Um, my real
mom that is.. and I was missing her like crazy that morning." Sam gave her a look
of concern and sadness. Cassie returned the look with a slight shrug and a look of
"it's ok, I'm ok, so stop looking at me like I'm made of glass." Sam could relate to
that feeling so she gestured at Cass to continue.
"That day I wore a pair of-what did you call them? Knickers. I wore a pair of
knickers my mother had made me for the year before. They were underneath my
robe when you and the rest of SG-1 found me. They are really pretty Sam- lots of
handmade lace and really soft fabric that shimmers and nearly changes color in the
sunshine. There actually isn't anything like it here on Earth.
So I was wearing these knickers and hanging upside down when a gang of boys
decided to pay the upper playground a visit. They saw me hanging there with my
kickers showing and totally lit into me for my funny underwear. Their ringleader was
a guy named Jeffrey. He was the first bully I had ever met and I'm afraid he hurt
my feelings quite a bit those first couple of weeks. I just wanted to curl up and
disappear. He made fun of my knickers and called me names. And if that wasn't
enough, he began to make fun of my mother when I had told him in a fit of anger
that she had made them for me. For the next couple of weeks he would use any
occasion at all to bring up my strange looking knickers and how I must have freaks
for relatives." She paused as if to consider her words more carefully. "I wanted to
hurt him Sam. I wanted to hurt him like he was hurting me. But I didn't know
how." Cassie gave a sigh lost in the memories of a tortured little girl.
"But then came gym class!" She said perking up. "To this day I do NOT understand
the rationale behind teaching 12 year olds the finer skills of wrestling but that is
what we were learning. The thing is, wrestling is actually very similar to a game I
used to play with my father's brother's sons back home." Cass knew the word for
cousins of course, but that wasn't what they were called back home, so she felt
strange giving them the name 'cousin' here on earth.
"I was really quite good at the game and would often beat my much older and
stronger relatives. Never the less, I was quite surprised when the P.E. teacher
teamed me up with Jeffrey. At first I was quite nervous and scared but then Jeffrey
started in once again on my knickers and I just lost it."
"Lost it?" Sam asked a little fearfully.
"Yep, lost it. I had Jeff pinned to the mat in under 5 seconds. In a very painful
position. He couldn't believe it and asked for a rematch. Again I beat him very
quickly. This happened three times and in the end I had him pinned with the right
side of his face pressed tightly into the mat and me on top of his back. And that's
when I whispered to him that he was NEVER to mention my mother or the knickers
ever again or I would kick his ass."
"Oh no! Cassie, please tell me you didn't pick up that phrase from Jack!"
"It might have been the t.v..." Sam just shook her head. Would he ever learn?
"I then let him up and sat back and watched as he painfully got to his feet and eyed
me wearily. The thing was Sam, he KNEW I was better than him in this. He KNEW
that I could and WOULD kick his ass and yet I was 'letting him go.' Something he
most definitely hadn't done with me."
"Did it make you feel better?" Sam asked in a quiet voice. The story was eerily
familiar.
"Knowing I COULD embarrass and hurt him made all the difference Sam. Yes he
hurt me earlier but knowing that I held all the power then somehow made everything
ok again. That and I realized that the folks who were making fun of me weren't my
friends. They weren't people I even respected so what the heck should I care if they
thought me strange? By the end of the week I realized that I had a lot more friends
than I had previously thought and that Jeffrey and his friends couldn't hurt me
anymore."
Sam sat stunned on the fallen log thinking about what Cass had said. Cassie looked
apprehensive and was unsure why that story seemed to be affecting Sam so much.
"You ready to head back?" Cass asked tentatively.
"Yeah, I think I am." Sam said nodding to herself as she stood up and swiped the
seat of her pants to get rid of the excess dirt and moss. They walked most of the 1
1/2 miles in silence.
"Thank you Cassie." Sam said sincerely as they approached Jack's cabin.
"For what?" Cassie asked utterly perplexed.
"For reminding me about what it means to be human."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
tbc.
Author's Notes: I haven't thanked my beta reader in a long time and this story
would just be a shadow of it's current state without her. Kath, stand up and take a
bow!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cassie could scarcely sit through lunch she was so anxious to explore the area.
Throughout the meal she would ask Jack questions about the lake and the
surrounding area.
"Done!" She declared setting down her fork and standing up. "Can I go now?"
"Cassandra!" Janet Frasier said crossly. "Sit back down and wait for everyone else
to finish." Janet was embarrassed. Cassie wasn't usually this rude (or quick) at
home. She opened her mouth to say something more only to close it again in
perplexity. All three members of SG-1 were smiling. Or rather trying hard NOT to
smile.
"Someone was to fill me in on the joke?" Janet asked.
"Remind you of anyone?" Jack asked turning towards Sam.
"Hmmm. Let me think? Teal'c perhaps?"
"Very funny guys." Daniel said not enjoying himself so much anymore.
Sam turned to Janet and Cassie and explained. "When Jack, Teal'c, and I go off-
world with Daniel, he sometimes get a little, uh.. energetic about what he finds."
"Danny goes nuts over rocks and buildings." The Colonel added. Seeing Daniel's
look of annoyance he held up his hands to waive off any complaints and added, "In a
good way I mean."
"The Colonel often has to force him to sit with us in order to eat, which Daniel does.
But often he'll eat as quickly as possible and then stand up and announce that he's
done and would someone PLEASE escort him back to the work site."
"I'll have you know that I haven't done anything like that in a good 6 months."
Daniel said matter-of-factly.
"You're forgetting last month so quickly Danny?"
"What? I don't remember any gulping of food..."
"No, but what about the evening I told you lights out and you continued to read?"
"That's right!" Jack, that was dam..darn mean of you to do!" Daniel said wrinkling
his nose. "And how'd you manage to sabotage my flashlight anyhow?"
"Took out the batteries and replaced them with rocks while you were on watch."
Jack said smugly. Daniel could do nothing but glare back at his best friend. One day
Jack O'Neill...
"Cool." Cassie said following the ping-pong conversation of her favorite team. "If
you're comparing me to Daniel, than that is a compliment." Cassie said sweetly.
"Everyone knows that Daniel is very clever and smart and I can only hope to emulate
him one day."
"Emulate?" Jack mouthed to Janet.
"SAT word." Janet mouthed back before turning towards her daughter.
"You're right honey, Daniel is very clever and if you study really hard, I bet you'll be
just as smart." She lowered her voice slightly and added, "hopefully not as accident
prone; but just as smart."
"Hey.." Daniel began trying hard not to take it TOO personally. After all they WERE
calling him smart. Before he could open his mouth for another retort Sam jumped
in.
"I've also finished Cass, so why don't I go on a walk around the area with you?"
Both Janet and Jack frowned slightly. Sam hadn't eaten very much dinner.
"You want any company?" Jack asked in what he hoped was a very nonchalant
sounding voice. Sam of course saw right through it.
"We'll be fine Jack." Sam said fixing him with a decidedly pointed stare. "Right,
Cass?"
"Absolutely Sam! I'll just get my coat!" And with that Cassie bounded up the stairs.
"Pretty boring living with a 15 year old isn't it Doc?" Jack asked.
"Oh yeah." Janet said helping herself to one of Jack's yet unopened beers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cassie was having fun. Not only was the forest around the lake 'cool' but she was
enjoying the one-on-one time spent with her second favorite person in the whole
universe. The pair tramped over 100 year old logs and examined the various plants
and small animals living in/on the trees.
"The squirrels here look different." Cassie announced, suddenly stopping to a
complete standstill.
Sam took a moment to examine a squirrel frozen in fear just 10 feet away. She
snapped her fingers in memory. "Their ears!" Cassie gave her a 'huh?' look. Sam
smiled as she explained. "The further north you go on the planet the more extreme
examples you can see of evolutionary adaptation. Towards the south, squirrels have
quite rounded little ears. Where we live they are slightly pointed and up here they
are EXTREMELY pointed. See?"
Cassie nodded and then sat down on a log and burst out laughing. "Sam, who IS
smarter? You or Daniel?"
Sam sat down next to her and considered the question for a long moment. "I am
pretty certain Daniel and I are quite similar in our IQ's, but we are both smart in
very different ways Cass."
"Yeah, I know. I'm just thinking about a question we had at school. If trapped on a
desert island, who or what would you take with you. My class laughed at me when I
blurted out SG-1 without thinking." Sam blanched a little at that admission. Cassie
saw her face and quickly set her fears to rest.
"I told everyone that was the name of the rescue team who found me in that
abandoned house up in Toronto. Since I won't talk AT ALL about life before my 11th
birthday, everyone is pretty certain I had an absolutely horrid childhood. So by
mentioning Toronto, everyone just shut up."
"I'm sorry you can't talk about the past with your friends Cass." Sam said putting
her arm around the younger woman.
"It's ok Sam. After four years, I'm kind of used to it." They sat in the forest for
several long moments in comfortable silence.
"Are you o.k. Sam?" Cass asked carefully, uncertainty lacing every word.
Sam sighed. Of course Cassie had been told at least a little about what to expect.
After all, the last Jan had heard, I was waking up in the middle of the night to either
puke or scream. Not exactly healthy and something you should worn a child about.
"I will be Cass." Sam said with more confidence than she felt. "What did your mom
tell you?"
"Just that SG-1 got hurt on a mission." She paused and then gave Sam a cheeky
grin. "AGAIN. But that this time you and Colonel Jack needed a little more support
from your friends in order to recover." Cassie turned to face Sam and took a deep
breath.
"Were you and the Colonel badly hurt Sam? I mean, you kinda don't look well, but it
isn't like you're in a cast or hooked up to machines or anything. When I asked mom
what happened she said she couldn't tell me." Cassie raised a hand haphazardly in
the air. "Something about doctor/patient confidentiality."
Sam didn't know what to say. Not that she would EVER tell Cass the truth, but she
did deserve to know a little something more.
"I'm ok physically Cass- it's just that something really bad happened to me
psychologically on our last mission and I am having a hard time dealing with it.
Which is stupid really because in actuality it boils down to extreme embarrassment
and not much more."
"Did that 'bad thing' also give you a bruised cheek?" Cassie was by no means
stupid. She might not be Sam or Daniel's league but she was right up there with her
mom as far as common sense and natural intelligence comes in.
Sam rubbed her cheek absently. "Yeah." Again they lapsed into silence.
"Did I ever tell you about my first few weeks at the new school here on Earth?" Sam
nodded.
"You didn't tell us a lot Cass, and we figured much of that had to do with the shock
of being on a new planet with different customs. I remember you were excited the
first couple of days and then quiet for a couple of weeks before bouncing back and
talking non-stop about your teachers and friends."
Cassie nodded, that sounded about right. "Did I ever mention Jeffrey?" Sam shook
her head. Jeffrey? Who the hell was Jeffrey?
"Those first few weeks were really tough, Sam and I think I tried harder than I would
have normally because I didn't want to disappoint all of you."
"Oh Cassie!" Sam said hugging the girl close. "You would NEVER disappoint us.
Ever."
"I know that NOW." Cass said with the arrogance of a young teenager. "But then, I
wasn't so sure. So there I was in the 6th grade trying to make new friends. We
didn't have anything like school playgrounds back on Hanka and so here on Earth, I
could always be found playing on the bars at recess. I got quite good at doing penny
drops and even..." Cassie lowered her voice "death drops."
"Cassie! Those are dangerous!" Sam remembered watching her friends hanging
from their knees from single bars 6 feet off the ground. They would swing
themselves back and forth to gain momentum before releasing their legs and
(hopefully) landing on their feet. The REAL gutsy ones would sit on the top of the
bars and just fall back and do a partial somersault in the air before attempting to
land on their feet. She shuddered at the memory.
"No recesses anymore Sam, you can stop worrying." Cassie said grinning at her
friend for a moment. She suddenly got more serious. "Most of the time all the girls
played on the bars and the guys out in the sports fields. We never really gave them
much notice and we were always flipping around in skirts and such.
Well, thar first Friday at school happened to be my mom's birthday. Um, my real
mom that is.. and I was missing her like crazy that morning." Sam gave her a look
of concern and sadness. Cassie returned the look with a slight shrug and a look of
"it's ok, I'm ok, so stop looking at me like I'm made of glass." Sam could relate to
that feeling so she gestured at Cass to continue.
"That day I wore a pair of-what did you call them? Knickers. I wore a pair of
knickers my mother had made me for the year before. They were underneath my
robe when you and the rest of SG-1 found me. They are really pretty Sam- lots of
handmade lace and really soft fabric that shimmers and nearly changes color in the
sunshine. There actually isn't anything like it here on Earth.
So I was wearing these knickers and hanging upside down when a gang of boys
decided to pay the upper playground a visit. They saw me hanging there with my
kickers showing and totally lit into me for my funny underwear. Their ringleader was
a guy named Jeffrey. He was the first bully I had ever met and I'm afraid he hurt
my feelings quite a bit those first couple of weeks. I just wanted to curl up and
disappear. He made fun of my knickers and called me names. And if that wasn't
enough, he began to make fun of my mother when I had told him in a fit of anger
that she had made them for me. For the next couple of weeks he would use any
occasion at all to bring up my strange looking knickers and how I must have freaks
for relatives." She paused as if to consider her words more carefully. "I wanted to
hurt him Sam. I wanted to hurt him like he was hurting me. But I didn't know
how." Cassie gave a sigh lost in the memories of a tortured little girl.
"But then came gym class!" She said perking up. "To this day I do NOT understand
the rationale behind teaching 12 year olds the finer skills of wrestling but that is
what we were learning. The thing is, wrestling is actually very similar to a game I
used to play with my father's brother's sons back home." Cass knew the word for
cousins of course, but that wasn't what they were called back home, so she felt
strange giving them the name 'cousin' here on earth.
"I was really quite good at the game and would often beat my much older and
stronger relatives. Never the less, I was quite surprised when the P.E. teacher
teamed me up with Jeffrey. At first I was quite nervous and scared but then Jeffrey
started in once again on my knickers and I just lost it."
"Lost it?" Sam asked a little fearfully.
"Yep, lost it. I had Jeff pinned to the mat in under 5 seconds. In a very painful
position. He couldn't believe it and asked for a rematch. Again I beat him very
quickly. This happened three times and in the end I had him pinned with the right
side of his face pressed tightly into the mat and me on top of his back. And that's
when I whispered to him that he was NEVER to mention my mother or the knickers
ever again or I would kick his ass."
"Oh no! Cassie, please tell me you didn't pick up that phrase from Jack!"
"It might have been the t.v..." Sam just shook her head. Would he ever learn?
"I then let him up and sat back and watched as he painfully got to his feet and eyed
me wearily. The thing was Sam, he KNEW I was better than him in this. He KNEW
that I could and WOULD kick his ass and yet I was 'letting him go.' Something he
most definitely hadn't done with me."
"Did it make you feel better?" Sam asked in a quiet voice. The story was eerily
familiar.
"Knowing I COULD embarrass and hurt him made all the difference Sam. Yes he
hurt me earlier but knowing that I held all the power then somehow made everything
ok again. That and I realized that the folks who were making fun of me weren't my
friends. They weren't people I even respected so what the heck should I care if they
thought me strange? By the end of the week I realized that I had a lot more friends
than I had previously thought and that Jeffrey and his friends couldn't hurt me
anymore."
Sam sat stunned on the fallen log thinking about what Cass had said. Cassie looked
apprehensive and was unsure why that story seemed to be affecting Sam so much.
"You ready to head back?" Cass asked tentatively.
"Yeah, I think I am." Sam said nodding to herself as she stood up and swiped the
seat of her pants to get rid of the excess dirt and moss. They walked most of the 1
1/2 miles in silence.
"Thank you Cassie." Sam said sincerely as they approached Jack's cabin.
"For what?" Cassie asked utterly perplexed.
"For reminding me about what it means to be human."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
tbc.