Chapter 10

"Oh my God."

A shiver ran down Janet's spine at those words. "What is it?" she asked, sitting up slowly in the infirmary bed.

"I... I don't even know how to tell you this," Warner said, slowly turning around in his chair to look at her from his desk across the room. "Janet... your blood samples contain antibodies that are like nothing I've ever seen before. I don't know how, but... it seems as though your body is trying to fight Syun's disease, even though I've found no evidence that you have it."

Janet gaped at him for a moment, and then swung her legs over the side of the bed. "Could that be what's happening to Chloe, too?" she asked hopefully as she got down and crossed the room towards him.

Warner glanced over at the baby and shook his head slowly. "I'm fairly certain we would have found these antibodies if they were in Chloe's system," he said. "Granted, we weren't looking for them when she was first born, so she may have had them then. But we've run every test on Chloe that we ran on you, and we found nothing."

"So, what you're saying is, you think my immune system has been fighting this disease throughout my pregnancy, and now that Chloe is on her own, her body can't do the same."

Warner didn't even have to answer. Janet already knew. It made a lot of sense - it explained her exhaustion, her intense morning sickness throughout her pregnancy, and it probably even explained why she went into labour so early and so quickly. Her immune system had been fighting Chloe's battle. The only thing it didn't explain...

"If this is true, then why aren't you finding any trace of this disease in her?" she asked. "And why wouldn't my breast milk be giving her the antibodies she needs? How could something like this be so devastating and resistant, and yet be completely invisible?"

Warner shook his head. "I honestly don't know," he said. "Maybe it's different for infants. Maybe it's there, it's just hiding in a place we can't find it. As for your milk... maybe your body isn't creating as much of the antibodies as it was when Chloe was in your womb. Your immune system still seems to want to fight it, but it's finding nothing there to fight."

Janet felt tears sting her eyes at the thought. Without her even knowing it, her body had been fighting hard to keep her daughter alive. It just wasn't hard enough.

"Thank you, Matthew," she said, feeling even more exhausted and deflated than ever.

"There is hope," he said. "If we can find a way to synthesize these antibodies..."

"You'll never find a way in time," Janet said as she took her place by her daughter's side again. "That could take months, or even years."

Warner came over to rest a hand on her shoulder. "Hope is hope," he said. "I'll send these results to Area 51 right away."

Janet sighed as he left the room, leaving her alone with her sleeping child. Chloe's wheezing was starting to drown out the beeps from her heart monitor. She seemed to be growing steadily worse.

There was just no time.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Daniel handed Sam his hastily traced outline of the stars above Syun's planet. "These are the star patterns I was telling you about," he said. "Think you can make something of them?"

Sam took the paper and studied it closely. "Well, I'm not making any promises," she said, "but I'll see what I can do. What was this for again?"

"Just an artifact someone found off-world that gave a star chart rather than a planet designation for some... Goa'uld treasury or something," Daniel said, hoping his lie wasn't too obvious. "You never know what kind of valuable technology might have been stashed there, so I thought it was worth checking into."

"Great," Sam said with a smile. "I'll get on it as soon as I get back to the base. Is there anything else you need?"

"Um... just... check on Janet whenever you get a chance... okay?"

Sam's smile softened and she gently touched his arm. "Of course. Good luck with Cassie."

Daniel winced. "Thanks." He knew he was going to need it.

Once he'd shown Sam out, Daniel turned to face the stairs. It was funny how ominous they suddenly looked. He shook himself out of that frame of mind and braced himself. Then he started to climb.

He heard quiet music as he approached Cassie's room, which was unusual. Usually, if there was any kind of music coming from Cassie's room at all, it was loud. Quiet could only mean one thing - she really was hung over.

As he raised his hand to knock on her door, a flicker of doubt entered his mind. He knew what he planned to do once Sam had found those co-ordinates, and he also knew that there was a very good chance that he would never return home after stepping through the gate to do it. This might be the last chance he had to talk to Cassie about... anything. He needed to make it count.

Taking a deep breath, he rapped his knuckles twice on the door.

"I'm fine, Sam," Cassie called from inside her room. From her tone, Daniel guessed she'd said those words quite a few times already.

"Actually, it's Daniel," he said. "Can I come in?"

Daniel held his breath during the long pause that followed. Finally, he heard her reluctantly say, "Yeah, come in."

He heard her switch the music off as he opened the door and poked his head inside. He forced a smile when he saw her perched on her bed with a magazine in her hands. How she managed to look so childlike and yet so grown up and hardened was beyond him, but it made a lump rise in his throat.

This wasn't going to be easy.

He nervously cleared his throat as he shut the door behind him and approached the bed. He was just about to sit down on the end of it when he noticed the frightened look on Cassie's face.

"What happened?" she asked quietly. "Where's Mom?"

"She's still at the SGC with Chloe," Daniel said as he sat down. "Chloe's stable for now, but... she could grow worse at any time."

Cassie swallowed and nodded gravely. "So... why are you here?" she asked.

Daniel looked down at his hands for a moment and then back at Cassie. "Sam called me," he said. "She was concerned about you."

Cassie rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. "Well, she needn't be," she said. "I'm fine."

"So I heard."

"Yeah. So, you've done your job. You can go back to your baby now." She picked up her magazine and proceeded to ignore him.

Daniel sighed and closed his eyes as he tried to think of what to do. He couldn't handle this hostility from Cassie much longer. He missed the days when they were friends, when they'd have fun together. He knew they'd probably never be that way again, but he couldn't go off on this solitary mission knowing she hated him.

He really had nothing to lose.

"Cassie?"

She peeked up at him over the top of her magazine, seemingly intrigued by the sadness in his tone. "What?"

Daniel took a deep breath and released it before he spoke again. "I... feel like I'm losing you," he said, his emotions constricting his voice so it came out as almost a whisper.

Cassie's expression changed from indifference to surprise to confusion and finally to suspicion in the span of a second. "W...what?"

Daniel wetted his lips and cleared his throat again. "Ever since... the pregnancy... you've been distancing yourself more and more from your mom and me," he said. "You've completely ignored your sister since she was born, and..."

"She's not my sister."

Daniel blinked at her in surprise. "Cassie... just because we're not all related by blood, it doesn't make us any less a family."

"I'm the outsider here, Daniel," she said, tears filling her eyes. "The rest of you are a family. I'm not."

"God, Cassie... that couldn't be any less true."

"It is true! I was just getting used to you being here when the baby came along, and suddenly that was all you and Janet could think about. The baby this, the baby that... it was like I didn't even exist anymore. And then Dominic dumped me, and nobody even noticed! Then the baby was born and the three of you were this happy little family, and I just wished she would die. And now that she is... I can't stop thinking about it and feeling like it's my fault, that I wished her to die!"

Daniel didn't let her get any further in her impassioned speech. He scooted closer to her and gathered her into his arms as she started to sob.

He couldn't believe she'd been holding all of this inside all this time. He mentally kicked himself for not sitting down to talk with her months earlier. He'd been so absorbed in his own self-pity that he hadn't even noticed his daughter was hurting just as much as he was.

To Daniel's surprise, Cassie clung to him as she cried into his shoulder, and made no attempt to push him away. Neither of them said a word - he simply stroked her hair and rocked gently from side to side as she let it all out. He even kept up the motions when her tears eased off a few minutes later, not wanting to let the moment go just yet.

Finally, Cassie lifted her head from Daniel's shoulder, sniffed, and said, "I'm sorry."

Daniel cupped her face in one hand and brushed her damp hair back with the other. "I'm sorry, too," he said. "We should have had this talk months ago."

Cassie backed away from him and reached for a tissue from her nightstand. She quickly dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose, and then tossed the tissue in the garbage can by her bed. "What's gonna happen?" she asked as she folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them.

Daniel sighed and wiped a stray tear from his own eye. "I don't know," he said. "Your mom will probably stay with the baby as much as she can, and I'll have to go back at some point this afternoon. But Jack, Sam, and Teal'c will take turns being here for you."

Cassie looked up at him through her lashes. "That's... not what I meant," she said tentatively. "I mean..."

"I know what you meant," Daniel said. "Like I said... I don't know. She might have a few days left, she might have months... I just don't know."

Cassie looked stung, and wrapped her arms tightly around her stomach.

Daniel reached out to put his hand on her knee. "But no matter what happens," he said softly, "we love you, and none of this is your fault. Do you understand me?"

Cassie bit her lip and nodded. "Yeah."

Daniel lifted his hand from her knee and laid it on top of her head. He'd often found it amazing how much you could love a child that wasn't your own, and wondered whether it was possible to love a child you'd fathered any more than he loved Cassie. Now that he had Chloe, he realized that the answer was no - he loved them both the same. God, he loved them so much it hurt.

"Come here," he said, pulling Cassie towards him again. She nestled her head against his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist as he buried his face in her hair and hugged her tight. "I love you," he said. "I always have, and I always will. Never forget that, okay?"

Cassie nodded as best she could and squeezed his waist. "I love you, too."

Daniel winced and raised his head to take a deep breath. He wasn't sure which was more painful - doing what he was about to do thinking she hated him, or doing what he was about to do knowing she loved him. He'd been willing to die before, but now... now he knew he had to survive. He had to go back to that planet and bring back a cure for his baby. Not just for Chloe's sake, but for everyone's sake.

Somehow that thought erased a considerable amount of his fear. He couldn't fail. They were counting on him.

He wouldn't fail.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

To be continued...