Sam nodded, her eyes locking with his, "Deal."
The hospital was quiet and nearly deserted when the three of them got back. They entered Esther's room and found Abby asleep on a chair and covered in a blanket, along with Tom and Esther talking quietly together.
When Tom heard the door open, he turned around and nodded to Sam, making as if he was about to leave. "Tom, wait," Esther called. "Abby would be very disappointed if you left without saying goodbye."
Tom stopped in his tracks, turning back and nodding at Esther before reclaiming his seat at the foot of her bed. Esther looked at her sister, silently communicating with her as she slept.
Abigail awoke with a start, glaring at her sister, "Was that really necessary?"
Esther nodded, "Yeah, they're back. Now go outside and say goodbye to your boyfriend." At the hesitance of both Tom and Abby, Esther added in a voice that reminded Jack of a drill sergeant, "Now!"
Abby and Tom jumped up from their seats and practically ran out the door, closing it loudly behind them. Jack turned and looked between Sam, Esther, JJ and the door before turning back to Sam. "Did you send them to boot camp or something? I can see Hammond all throughout Esther's attitude – and the way she gives orders."
Esther smiled impishly at her father, "Grandpa George taught me that. He said it would help me appear scarier." As if thinking of something else, Esther turned to her mother and brother, "You did good trying to make me forget today. Thank you for that."
Sam smiled sadly, "We had some unexpected help, remember?"
Esther nodded, "It didn't help that he showed up again, tonight. That just brought all the memories back full force." She looked up at her brother, communicating with him silently before turning and looking at her father. "Thank you for stopping him."
Jack shrugged, "It's what I do. Especially for my little girl."
She shook her head, "No, you don't understand. About five years ago the FBI actually caught him twice – but he skipped bail and disappeared both times. There was even the suspected death of him last year after they got me back. When he came tonight that was our first clue he was still alive. Hammond made sure the entire thing was hushed up because if Mom was charged of anything like abuse or neglect the defense lawyers would drag out everything into the open – including the SGC and you."
Jack nodded wordlessly; he knew that Sam would have a very good reason for her actions…and he knew how much fear could paralyze. That didn't change how much he wanted to beat Pete to death over and over again.
Esther smirked sardonically; tears flowing freely down her face. This time of year represented so much suffering for her, and yet here was her father about to make things better or worse by the path he chose to take. "Did you look at the journals yet?"
He shook his head, sitting down at the foot of her hospital bed. "They should all be pretty interesting reads, but it's something you should do alone. Let's look at the photo albums." JJ set the box down and got out the required book from within them. It was a huge album full of pictures of the triplets from when they were just born, and some of Sam, before skipping to when they were four years old at General Hammond's house.
Tears came to the general's eyes as he saw first hand the pictures of what his children had gone through, what Sam had gone through. Hammond had taken group pictures of them a short time after their arrival, documenting the family of four in their malnourished state. And before his eyes, Jack watched the weight come back onto the bones of Sam and their children, the color go back into their cheeks. The pain be banished from their eyes.
Jack felt the tears be pushed off his face as if by a hand, but no one was that close to have done it. He turned to Esther and she smiled slightly, "No need to cry. There have been enough tears in our lives, Dad. You're here now, it's time for laughter and joy."
"How did you do that just now?" Jack asked still looking at his daughter closely. How the hell could she be so calm when this had just happened to her? Her demeanor completely betrayed the severity of the situation.
Esther smiled slightly, "It's my telekinesis. I've learned to do a lot with it in the last few years. Mom says I inherited your gene of stubbornness." She looked at her brother and Abby who'd just walked in, "All three of us did."
Abby and JJ both looked down at their hands, ashamed of how they had treated their father. It didn't help their feelings of smallness much that Esther was telepathically berating them for their actions.
Jack briefly wondered why Esther had allowed herself to be abused to badly…and why Sam, Abby and JJ had allowed it. If she was telekinetic…couldn't she just kill Pete with a look? He'd have to ask Hammond about that later.
"So…" the bed ridden teen looked at those around her, "When can you spring me from my cell?"
Jack's mouth quirked up in a smirk. Yep, there was not a doubt in his mind that Esther was his daughter. He had no doubts that all of them were his.
Sam smiled, "In the morning if you're good. Aylen said that you can go home after she checks you over tomorrow. If she doesn't find anything else wrong with you, Esther. And if you behave and don't call the nurses' station twenty times in the middle of the night asking for red Jell-O then yelling at them that you'd asked for blue when they get here."
Sam added the last part much to the chagrin of Esther before the girl could get any ideas into her mind about tormenting the nurses. Sometimes the girl was just too much like her father.
"Fine."
As soon as Sam, Abby and JJ had left with Hammond to spend the night at his house, Esther turned her attention to her father. "I think Pete has something on Mom that made her stay with him as long as we did."
"What are you talking about, Esther?" Jack's ears and attention picked up the hint of desperation in his daughter's voice.
Esther looked down at her hands before continuing; "I heard him say something about the Trust to Mom a few years ago. She was about to call the police after he'd broken into our house when I was eight; I was sitting on the stairs where they couldn't see me and I heard him say, 'Just remember, whore, if you call me in I'll call in you for neglect. Not to mention your precious General O'Neill will be history. Where would that leave your kids?' I don't know Dad – but I do know that right after that we moved to Canada for all of two months."
Jack was enraged that the Trust would have anything to do with a rapist and a murderer. The more he thought about it, though, the more it made sense. The men backing Pete up were high up the ladder – and it appeared that most of them didn't want Sam or Jack alive and were willing to take any measure to see to it that the commander of the SGC and the mother of his children were no longer a threat to their world domination scheme. He'd stop that soon enough.
Jack refused to leave Esther's side throughout the night. The father and daughter spent most of the night just enjoying each other's company. They had a bond that couldn't be shared with the rest of their family: Both had lost a child much sooner than they should have.
"She's buried in the plot next to Charlie, you know," Esther said seemingly randomly after waking up in the middle of the night for the fifth time. It appeared that the resistance to sedatives and painkillers was genetic.
Jack didn't need to ask whom she was talking about. "I wondered who that was when I went to his grave a few weeks ago."
"Destiny Hope O'Neill, killed by the bastard who sired her." There was a darkness in Esther's eyes that Jack had hoped to never see in any of his children. "I knew when I was in labor that she wasn't going to live very long. I could feel the life slipping out of her tiny body as she cried in my arms." Tears came to her deep brown eyes as they gazed steadily into the same eyes on her father's face. "No parent should have to outlive their own child. All while I was pregnant with her I kept on thinking of how wonderful it was that something so good could come out of such evil. And then he kidnapped me again and took away my hope – he took away my baby."
Jack gathered up his baby in his arms, ever mindful of the painful gash on her back. He held her while she cried, just being there for her as she let the tears out and the pain take over her quivering form.
Her tears did what the morphine couldn't. They lulled her into a deep, sleep that could start to heal her wounded and battered soul.
As Jack watched her sleep, all he could really think about was Charlie: how much he'd lost when he'd lost his son, and how much he'd gained back again when he'd met his other children – Sam's children.
How could she have taken them away and kept them away from him for so long? Could he ever really forgive her for that? These were his children. Three miracles that by all rights and purposes shouldn't be alive – yet they were, and they were his. How could he ever forgive her keeping them from him for all those years?
A part of him always could. When he'd received that first letter from Sam, in her handwriting, he knew even then that the line between love and hate may be thin, but he was nowhere near that line. All she'd had to do was come home. But she didn't. At the time, sixteen years ago, he didn't even know why she'd run – just that she did. Now, as he looked at the sleeping form of his daughter in the hospital bed, lying there after an attack made by a maniac, he thought he knew why she left.
She left because of the babies.
Every child deserves a relatively normal life with a mother and a father. If she had stayed, they wouldn't have had that – only pain and heartache. But now Jack had found Sam again, and in doing so he'd found their children.
Briefly Jack's mind wandered to think about Pete. The anger inside of Jack nearly boiled over just when he thought about what the bastard had done to his family. It didn't matter if Jack didn't know where they were or even if the triplets existed at the time, Pete had nearly killed them.
The lines that prematurely graced Esther's face had vanished while she slept, giving her the air of any other teenager her age, without cares or worries. She looked so beautiful, so much like Jack's mother it was a little eerie. Looking at her face, and the way she grimaced slightly when she forgot about her back and tried to turn over, Jack was determined never, ever to play the fool again and let his family leave him. He'd move heaven and earth if he had to, but he had found his family again, and he wasn't going to lose them.
A/N: So? What think you? Like the Esther/Jack interaction? No? ShadowDancer9, still okay? Any problems with this? Anyone at all? Oh, and I'm still taking suggestions for Pete-torture! More what should be done to him, though. I already wrote who's administrating it.