Shades of Friendship
by Adalia Zandra

For summary, warnings, and other details, please see part one.

PART FOUR

Several hours later, back in the guest quarters, Samantha Carter rose and headed, still half asleep, for the bathroom facilities they had found hidden behind a bulkhead in one corner of the room.

Slightly more awake on her way back to the sleeping area, Carter realized that they were short one person. One short person. She immediately went to wake Fraiser.

"Janet! Wake up, Janet. Cassie's missing," Sam called, shaking the doctor's shoulder.

Janet came awake quickly, reacting to her child's name. "Huh? Missing? Where could she possibly have gotten off to?"

"I don't know, but she isn't in here any more," Sam replied.

Daniel, woken by their voices, pushed himself up into a sitting position and looked around. "Have you checked in the bathroom?" he asked.

"I just came from there. She isn't here," Sam answered, shaking her head.

"Perhaps she has left the room to look for O'Neill," Teal'c spoke up from his position in the center of the floor, startling the three who had not realized he was also awake.

Janet got to her feet and headed straight for the door in response to his suggestion. She stuck her head outside and looked down the hallway, surprised to see a passing Asgard headed her way. What she and the others could not know was that Thor had arranged, after he had left Cassie in O'Neill's quarters, for there to be someone in their area every few minutes.

"Excuse me," Janet called out. "My daughter Cassandra is missing. I need to find her."

The Asgard paused to regard her, and replied with a nod, "I shall send for Commander Thor. I'm sure he will be able to assist you in locating your young one. Please remain here."

Janet contemplated heading out on her own to look for Cassie, but then thought better of it. Thor could undoubtably find her daughter using internal scanners much faster than she could by wandering around. She nodded at the Asgard and stepped back into the guest quarters with a grateful, "Thank you."

The four of them spent the next ten minutes waiting for Thor. Janet paced anxiously, trying to remind herself that there really wasn't anywhere for Cassie to go where she could get herself into real trouble. Daniel remained uncharacteristically sullen and quiet, while Teal'c remained very much characteristically calm and silent. Sam, left with no one willing to hold a conversation, sat and watched Janet pace.

Thor appeared in the doorway and the four of them descended upon him, three of them speaking at once. He merely stood there blinking at them until they quieted, then he spoke.

"There is no cause for alarm, Dr. Fraiser. Cassandra is with O'Neill," he said simply.

"Huh? She's with Jack?" Daniel asked.

"That is what I said, Dr. Jackson," Thor replied, a statement which, quite by design, gave them none of the further information they desired.

"I thought you weren't going to let us see the colonel for a while," Sam pointed out.

"That is correct," Thor replied.

"Okay, is anyone else really confused?" Daniel asked the room at large.

Thor chose to ignore that remark and instead asked, "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"May we see O'Neill?" Teal'c queried, his tone of voice suggesting that he expected no less than immediate fulfillment of his request.

"No," Thor answered simply, causing Teal'c to raise an eyebrow. "As I have told you, he is ill and requires rest."

"I take it they are both basically alright, then," Janet wanted to clarify.

"They are. When I left them they were both asleep," Thor confirmed.

"But you aren't going to let us go to them," Sam asked.

"No," Thor repeated. "I am not."

"Oooh-kaaay, then!" Daniel drawled, tossing his hands up in a very Jack-like shrug as he turned away and headed back to the sleeping area.

"Thank you, Thor," Janet said after Daniel had moved away. "I was worried when Cassie turned up missing."

"She warned me such would be the case and asked me to make sure you were aware of her location," Thor replied. "If that is all, I must go now."

"If you're sure you won't let us see Colonel O'Neill," Sam said hopefully.

Thor cocked his head to the side and regarded her for a moment, then said as he turned to leave, "I am quite sure."

When he was gone, Sam and Janet walked back over to the sleeping area. Teal'c followed part of the way and settled himself back down in the middle of the floor. Daniel had sat back down where he had been sleeping, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at some unidentifiable point on the ceiling with a belligerent expression on his face.

"Why are we just sitting around up here? I don't know about the rest of you, but I've got work I could be doing back in my office," Daniel complained.

"Daniel!" Janet scolded. "You know darn well why we're stuck here."

"Well, he does have a good point," Sam said thoughtfully. Before Janet could scold her as well, she went on, "I mean, in that we could be doing more than just sitting here."

Teal'c looked at her with interest from his seat on the floor and asked, "What would you suggest that we do, Major Carter? Have we not been told to remain here?"

"We have, but that's just the point," Sam went on. "Since when have we ever just sat where we were told to like good little Tau'ri, especially when one of our own is hurt and separated from us?"

"You make an interesting point, Sam," Janet allowed, "but it's not like we've been captured by an enemy. The Asgard are one of our strongest allies and Thor is only trying to help Colonel O'Neill. Something we've failed dreadfully at lately."

"I don't know," Sam shook her head. "It just doesn't feel right to just sit here. And how come Cassie was allowed to stay with the colonel, but we aren't even allowed to see him?"

"I don't know, Sam. All I know is we've failed to treat Colonel O'Neill with the respect and friendship he's more than earned, and I, for one, feel pretty terrible about it," Janet replied.

Teal'c nodded his agreement and seemed about to say something, but Daniel's snorted retort cut him off. "Respect and friendship, hah."

"Daniel, come on!" Sam protested. "Haven't you dragged this out long enough? Don't you realize we treated him horribly, when he was hurt just as much by what happened as we were?"

Daniel looked disconcerted for a moment, as if maybe he hadn't thought that Jack might have felt as hurt as he himself had over their violated friendship. But he shook his head and said, "I just don't think I can forgive him that easily."

"What will it take, then, Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c asked.

"What will it take before you can forgive him?" Janet added.

"I . . . I don't know," Daniel sighed, looking back and forth between his three companions. "It's just . . . Jack . . . and all of you . . . are the closest thing I've had to a stable family in a long time. Abydos and Sha're came really close to that ideal, but . . . you guys know what happened after my year there. So SG-1 is all I've got now. And Jack . . . he tore that apart. Purposefully. Thoroughly. I haven't felt so completely devastated since . . . since my parents died, I think."

"God, Daniel," Sam said, reaching over to touch his shoulder. "You know he didn't mean it. You know why he had to do it. Why keep pushing him away?"

"Because it hurt, Sam. I guess that's what I do when I'm hurt. I push people away, so I won't get hurt again," Daniel replied, looking back up at the ceiling because he couldn't make himself meet her eyes.

"But you've only ended up hurting yourself, and him, even more," Janet pointed out.

"I know, I just . . . I don't know what to do," Daniel mumbled.

"I believe an apology would be an appropriate place to begin, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c suggested.

"I guess you're right, Teal'c," Daniel agreed. "It's not like he hasn't apologized a dozen times already. God, I really have been horrible to him, haven't I."

"It's not like you're the only one," Sam felt she had to point out. "I was angry that he hadn't trusted us enough to let us help him. But instead of telling him that and maybe clearing the air between us, I just avoided the issue by avoiding him."

"I am also guilty of mistreating O'Neill," Teal'c admitted. "As he pointed out in the briefing room, I should have understood the situation. But I allowed my own hurt feelings to control my actions."

"And I've been avoiding him, too," Janet said. "I was just so shocked by how he'd acted. I think almost everyone on base was. No one was sure how to act around him after he got back. And while I was busy ignoring him, he got sick. Some doctor I am."

Daniel looked up sharply at the self disgust in her voice. "Hey," he said. "It's not like you've been ungodly 'mean' to him, the way Cassie pointed out that I have."

"I'm his doctor! I should have known that he was coming down with something," Janet cried. "For heaven's sake, he collapsed in the briefing room, Daniel!"

"Only because I practically attacked him!" Daniel shouted back.

"Hey! Stop it, you two!" Sam called a halt. "We're all guilty here. None of us noticed that he'd gotten sick, or what he was going through because of each of our reactions. The important thing now, is what are we going to do about it?"

"Perhaps Cassandra Fraiser has already shown us the correct course of action," Teal'c mused.

"Sneak out?" Janet asked.

"Yeah," Sam nodded. "Sneak out and find Colonel O'Neill on our own. I understand that Thor just wants to help, but nobody keeps SG-1 from getting to one of our own."

"Okay . . . okay, but can we do that?" Daniel asked, looking up. "I mean, can we find him? I don't know about you, but I don't know the inside of an Asgard battle cruiser from the inside of a Naquadah reactor."

"Well that's okay, then, because Sam knows reactors!" Janet pointed out. "I'm sure between us we can figure it out. We know Cassie found him."

"Actually, Thor never said she found him, just that she was there. What if Thor's actually been waiting for us to grow a collective backbone and go looking for him?" Sam wondered.

"I guess that would explain why he allowed Cassie to stay," Daniel mused.

"It would seem that Supreme Commander Thor and Cassandra Fraiser have both been better role models of friendship than we," Teal'c stated.

The others nodded solemnly, internally acknowledging their recent failures in behavior.

After a moment, Sam perked up and said, "Shall we, then?"

All four rose and headed for the door. Teal'c, leading the way, checked the hallway. When he found it empty he motioned the others after him and set off in the same direction Cassie had earlier, away from the room they had been beamed aboard into.

In another room across the ship, Thor turned off a monitoring panel on which he had been watching the Tau'ri and smiled an enigmatic Asgard smile.

Thank you everyone for your supportive comments! It's been a joy to find them sitting in my email inbox every evening. I'm glad you're enjoying the story. We have one more part to go! The final chapter is finished, I'd just like some time to edit it. Expect it in a day or two. :-)