Chapter 20

Willow smirked and waggled her finger at the several soldiers circling her, at the moment some of them looked like they wanted to run for hills; whilst others were stupid enough to think that they could take her on, "Soldiers…so lame."

She watched them coldly as some of the soldiers aimed their guns a little better towards her, she blinked as one of the soldier broke rank and ran in the other direction. "Poor little boys, so out of your depth."

Another soldier then followed his comrade back down the hall after he'd muttered a curse; he hurried turned the corner and flew out of sight with the sickening feeling of having the woman's too-bright eyes on him the entire time.

"Stand down!" a young soldier yelled. He was gritting his teeth and glaring at her with more fear than anger.

Willow looked at the soldier, he looked to be in his early to mid-twenties; younger than her, foolish and easily led. She smiled slightly, a smile that had none of the usual warmth, as she wondered if the boy was incredibly brave or very stupid, "Y'know, I would but I have an 'elsewhere' to be, so…"

The boy fired abruptly, his green eyes wide with fear; his eyes widened further as the bullets failed to hit his target, they had stopped in midair almost a foot away from her; he gulped audibly and looked at her.

With an eerily calm expression on her face she inclined her head slightly; pursed her lips and shook a finger at him, "Shame on you." The bullets tumbled to the floor, horribly loud in the deafening silence.

With his mouth open in shock and horror the green-eyed boy stared at the bullets and then at her; he took a step back, still watching her and waited- unable to move- to see what would happen next.

"Open fire!" yelled one of the other soldiers, a middle-aged dark-haired man. The soldiers, except the youngest one, immediately complied and sprayed the bullets towards her.

She just blinked in a seemingly calm manner as the bullets rained down upon the floor yet again, she frowned a little and looked at them all studiously, "Sleep."

As they slumped to the floor like rag dolls she shook her head, "Gotta go and fry some nice little chickens." With that, she stepped over the snoring soldiers and walked on silently.

Rupert Giles slowed to a stop as he caught sight of two bodies lying motionless in front of him and his companions; he felt the colour drain from his face.

He remained unresponsive when he felt another person's shoulder brush up against his own; he knew, by the glasses and height, who it was. He wondered, vaguely, what was going through Daniel Jackson's mind; he found that he almost didn't care.

The boy he'd known since birth, had seen grow up into a small child; who he thought of as his only grandchild was dead. He stared at Chris, or rather his shell, and felt numb; this little boy wasn't dead, how could he be?

No, the Powers That Be would never allow that to happen; it was preposterous; unthinkable…and yet, here they all stood; staring at the still, tiny body of Christopher Rosenberg.

How could they let this happen?

Oh, god. Willow, it was all just like Tara. All over again…oh, god.

Jack felt sick, no he felt worse than that. He felt the box at the back of his mind begin to open; the box that held everything of his son. About that day when he'd let his family down in the worst way.

He looked at the tiny, little boy; his best friend's son, and he saw Charlie. He was back at his old house when everything had gone wrong. He was back in his bedroom where Charlie lay, blood soaking his chest where the bullet, from his gun, had penetrated his left lung.

Blood had been sprayed on the wall behind him before he'd collapsed to the carpeted floor, his brown eyes had still been open when Jack had fell to the floor beside the boy. He had choked out something that was unintelligible to him, the blood that had filled his lungs were forcing out any and all oxygen that was needed.

Jack had tried to stop the blood-flow in a futile attempt to save him and he'd seen Charlie blink up at him one last time before the light in his eyes died out forever. Along with his own.

He felt a hand grip his shoulder, the touch brought him out of his head; his worst memory and back to reality where, it seemed, yet another young child- another family- had been destroyed by a man and a gun.

The touch had been from Teal'c who was looking at him knowingly, he shifted his reddened-eyes away from his 'brother' and saw that his best friend was walking towards Chris; the so-called 'Scooby gang' did the same.

The rest of SG1 hung back to give them all some room, as much as they knew that Chris wasn't in anyway related to them, with the exception of Daniel, it didn't make them feel any better know that they'd never as much as spoken to the boy.

But this was a child, he'd just been shot by some crazy psycho for being different; and as much as the military training had taught them they couldn't remain detached. It would be impossible…for them anyway.

He heard a choke behind him as saw the Sam had abandoned the attempt to be cold and emotionless and was close to tears; he had to give her credit for at least trying to hold them back.

Teal'c gripped her shoulder firmly, her only link to reality which was telling her that it was all real; that there were people in this building that needed to be punished.

Jack gritted his teeth as he felt the cold flame of rage burn at the pit of his stomach, he knew that this Willow girl was going to nuke the bastard that had done this, as much as he knew he try to stop that from happening he really couldn't bring himself to give a damn.

Whoever had done this brought it on themselves; he'd say let 'em have it. Hell, screw that; he'd help.

"I believe the prophecy was correct," intoned Teal'c with a hint of sadness. "WillowRosenberg will seek retribution and in doing so she will bring destruction down upon everyone on this planet."

The colonel just looked at the dead kid, so the world was gonna end? There would have been a time when he'd jumped up to save this miserable planet…when people like Kinsey made him wonder why he even bothered.

At this time he wondered whether this world deserved to be saved. Did it? Looking at the bloody puddle under the kid; he made up his mind, no this world did not deserve to be live.

The Powers that Be obviously thought so, or they wouldn't have let this happen; then again he'd always thought that there was no such thing as gods or higher powers. Well, maybe there were; but higher powers that CARED, no such thing.

"Good, I say let it happen," growled Jack incensed.

Teal'c looked at him, eyebrow raised in disapproval…maybe.

"Hey!"

Jack looked away from the body and saw that Buffy was tending to a bleeding soldier; was he the guy that had killed Daniel's son?

"This guy's still alive," she informed almost tonelessly. "In a way that means he's almost dead, anyway."

To Jack's surprise Daniel leapt up from his kneeling position beside his son and threw himself onto the soldier; he drew his fist back and-

"DanielJackson!" boomed Teal'c warningly. "I do not think this man is the culprit!" He didn't? Jack sure as hell did!

The archaeologist didn't stop his assault on the soldier, Buffy had to drag him off the man as he thrashed around; amazingly the slight girl had no problem in restraining the much bigger, rage-crazed, man.

"W-what're you talking about?" asked Dawn who was leaning against the wall unsteadily. Her face was white with shock and tears were shining in her dull eyes as she looked at the Jaffa.

Teal'c strode over to the fallen man and knelt down beside him, he looked up and said, "If this man was indeed the culprit WillowRosenberg would have not left him alive." Then he glanced from the boy and then back to the soldier, "Also, the bullet seems to have gone through this man before hitting the child. I could be incorrect but I believe this man was trying to help them."

Dawn looked up from the floor and then pushed herself away from the wall; she walked to the man and started checking his pulse, "I-It's faint, unsteady; he needs medical attention now."

Jack grasped his radio and said, "We need a med team in here now." He released the contraption and waited for a reply.

Come on, haven't got all day.

"Medical team has already been sent," the voice said over the radio. "They should be there by now."

"Janet!" Sam ran passed Jack suddenly.

He turned and saw that the doc was already there along with her team, "What've we got- oh god." She caught sight of the dead boy.

He could still hear Daniel's ragged breathing as the blonde woman held him down; it was easy to tell that the man was still enraged and struggling to get at the soldier guy; the soldier guy that was probably going to die if-

"Doc!" snapped Jack, they really needed to act fast. "This soldier's been shot in the stomach; pretty sure he's a good guy." He'd better be; not that that would deter Janet, she would treat him simply under the grounds that he was now her patient.

Janet was visibly shaken but shook herself enough to be able to work, she looked at the soldier for a moment; taking in all the blood, before turning back, "We need to get him back to the mountain NOW, or he won't make it."

He didn't want burst her bubble but this guy looked like he fucked either way, a trip to the SCG would take too long. Then again, if the guy did help kill Chris then good riddance.

He jerked slightly as he felt someone push past him; it was the older guy- Giles, probably going to help the doc. The guy had a blank look on his face; shock probably.

The colonel's eyes narrowed in puzzlement, "Uh-

'Kay, maybe not…

Giles walked passed the doc; stooped down next to Dawn and grabbed her hand, "Dawn, we should-

The girl nodded, face damp with tears that were now controlled, for now at least, "I-I know, I think it'll work- we've really go nothing to loose with this guy."

Jack had to agree with the kid, just getting him out the damn warehouse would take too long never mind the SGC; but what could they do? Sing prayers?

Janet glared at them, "This man's going to die if we don't get him the proper medical attention he needs!"

He actually agreed on that, what were they doing? "I'm going to have to agree with Fraiser here, what're you-

Giles glared at them, "If you wouldn't mind keeping your questions to yourself for a while, that would be wonderful. We have another way of helping the man but we need total silence for this!"

Okaaay, tetchy…of course the guy was upset he'd just seen the son of close friend dead on the ground.

He felt a pang of cold sadness, two kids dead by two guns. Shaking himself out of it he looked around; he needed a cool head for this.

The he frowned, talking about close friends with Willow, where was Xander? He looked around and felt his heart sink as he saw the young man cradling Chris's body to him; his head was down and he was muttering something; Jack couldn't make it out.

Bile rose up in his throat as more flashes of Charlie's limp, blood-soaked body flitting in and out of his mind. Poor kid. As soon as they found the bastard that had done this he was gonna help kill him.

Daniel started shouting, he turned to his best friend and he felt a pained expression etch onto his features; he watched as Buffy used one hand to cover his mouth and the other to grab his friend's hair and put her face closer to his, mere centimeters apart.

Sam ran to Daniel's side and checked him over before just looking at him uncertainly, she glanced at Buffy; Jack nodded inwardly. Sam felt as 'Out of her depth' as he did, they didn't know anything about these people or what they did. Yeah, he knew about the mojo-magic thing that Chris and Willow had going for them; but that was mostly it.

Jack went over to Giles and Dawn, "What the hell are you about to do?"

Dawn gave him an unfriendly look, "We're trying to help this guy-

In the background he heard Buffy talking to Daniel in a low, no-nonsense tone.

"Calm down. You. Need. To. Calm. Down. That soldier didn't hurt Chris, he tried to save him. We need to get to Willow NOW and we can't do that until you CALM DOWN!" She shouted in his face. Normally a shout would have just made a guy angrier but the shout was devoid of anger, it was a loud, dead tone.

-so, can you just make sure that that Frasier woman doesn't interrupt us?" finished Dawn, then she turned away from him.

Confused, the middle-part of her statement had been lost in the shouting, he turned to look behind him and saw Janet walking towards them; then he knew what they were going to do and what Dawn had meant.

He grabbed Janet firmly as she made a move for the soldier, he cringed inwardly as the doctor glared at him furiously, "Doc, these guys know what they're doing."

"They can't DO anything without any medical-"

Jack interrupted her, "Janet, call me crazy but I THINK these two can help the guy." These guys weren't normal…maybe they had not-so-normal methods of treating gunshot wounds.

"What-

"Just trust me," he implored her. If there's one thing he'd learned over the years at the SGC was that sometimes their ways of dealing with things weren't the best and that other beings often had more effective methods than them.

He gripped the doc's arm, he knew that she was on the borderline between staying put and running to help…which might not actually help any of them. He turned back to the other nurses, "Stay put, that's an order."

Janet glared at him.

He hoped his decision to stop Janet from interfering wouldn't backfire.

Willow paused, then she smiled darkly. She could feel them; they'd better not get in her way. If they tried to stop her they'd get a nasty surprise; no one was going to stop her from killing the people responsible for Chris's death.

If they tried, she'd kill them.

The soldier at her feet, wrapped in demon tentacles, stared up at her with more than a little fear; Willow smirked slightly, her eyes bright and shiny with the absence of human sanity.

Jack stared at them in silent shock; they'd done it. He stared, along with his colleagues and friends, at the moving form of the previously-dead soldier.

"Not so dead anymore," he muttered under his breath. He watched as the man, still lying down and injured, blinked up at them.

"Chris?" he ground out around the pain. "Is he…okay?" Dawn pulled up the shirt and saw that the wound had filled and half-healed, but it was still painful and life-threatening.

He wanted to know if Chris was okay? "He's…not okay, he's dead."

He watched as a pained expression contorted the man's pale face; maybe he wasn't the bad guy, maybe…

"What's your name, kid?" Jack asked.

"Agent Duncan Grey, sir," he replied after a few moments; the kid then grimaced. "They got Serena, now they got Chris too."

"Serena?"

"Agent Serena Ryan, she helped Chris get out of that room," he replied, then a guilty look came over his face. "After I'd persuaded her to help me help Chris and Willow; I should have done it alone."

Shit, rage built up even more inside Jack as he realized that these assholes had killed yet another person who, by the sounds of it, was just trying to do the right thing, "It's not your fault, but we need you to help catch the mother-fu…people responsible for this."

Grey nodded, "What d'you n….need," he groaned in pain as he clutched his stomach.

Jack called Janet over to them and then turned back to the agent, "Where did Willow go?"

Grey grimaced before answering, "Last I saw, Bryce ran away from Willow. He ran past me." He jerked his hand behind him.

Jack frowned, "Bryce?"

"Doctor Harry Bryce," he breathed around the pain as Janet prodded the wound and looked at it. "He…he was guy that shot Serena, Chris and I; and I'm pretty sure that he was the one mistreating Willow and Chris when he tried to experiment on them."

"And this Bryce guy?" he gestured in an attempt to get the man to elaborate.

Janet moved Grey onto a stretcher.

"Willow killed him," he stated flatly. "Blew him into a million dust particles; a little unfortunate…I wanted a little go a him too…she's really pissed off.

Jack nodded, he didn't blame her in the slightest, "So, this Bryce guy's dead, anyone else she'd want to go after?"

Grey snorted as the doctor lifted him and the stretcher up, "Just about everyone involved; didn't kill me though…guess she's sane enough to know who needs to go down. Most of the soldiers here are trying to bring her down…that's why it's kinda quiet here."

As the nurses wheeled him down the hall he suddenly shouted, "And, uh, I heard a few days ago maybe that Kinsey was responsible for those two being brought in…last I heard he was flying over to this place, I'm pretty sure he's in this building…a few floors above this one. We're only on the first or second floor at the moment."

Jack nodded at the guy as he was taken away back to the ambulance, "We'll get the bastard don't worry, we're not sitting on this one."

The soldier nodded and was then taken out of Jack's sight. The colonel winced as the other stretcher, holding Chris's body, was obviously about to be taken in the same direction as Grey's; Xander had an expression of rage and grief on his face as he watched the child disappear.

Buffy and Sam were holding onto Daniel's arms, ready to restrain him if need be, all three of them had the same expressions on their faces- all in varying degrees of anger and pain.

Teal'c stepped up beside Jack after he'd watched the two stretchers being carried away and said, "I suggest we make haste and stop WillowRosenberg before she makes a decision she will most likely regret later on."

How would she regret killing the bastards that shared the responsibility in Chris's murder? He voiced this question to his friend incredulously.

"I do not think she will take any pleasure from taking lives anymore than she did the last time," he intoned as the others in the hall drew closer to them. "Retribution does nothing but to serve to make the executioner feel emptier than before."

"As much as hate to agree," started Xander darkly. "I think Chuckles is right."

Chuckles? Jack glanced at Teal'c and saw that the Jaffa had the ghost of an expression of perplexity on his mostly blank face.

"'Chuckles?'" repeated Teal'c.

Xander just shook his head, "Doesn't matter-

Teal'c raised an eyebrow.

-point is, I agree. The last time Willow killed a human for revenge she only felt worse, we have to stop her. Like we did last time."

Daniel glared, "I'll help her kill him."

"Daniel! That'll just make you feel worse," Sam said as she gripped his arm. Then she looked at everyone. "How'd you stop her last time?"

Buffy sighed, "We didn't, Xander did. Don't you already know this?"

Sam blinked, "Just wanted to be sure."

Jack stood in front of Daniel and glared at him, but there was an absence of anger at the man, "Daniel, you translated that prophecy yourself; you know what you can and CAN'T do. Right?"

The archaeologist glared back at him for a few moments, "I'll try, but I'm not making any promises; they killed a child and I KNOW they need to pay."

Jack grabbed his arms, "And the rest of this damn planet? As much I hate Earth at the moment…not EVERYONE deserves to die; there are innocent people on this crap planet and they deserve to live."

He knew that; part of him yelled at him to let everything end, a damn KID had just been killed, HIS own kid was dead. Willow had come back five years ago and had recovered and was now faced with yet another death of a loved one on her mind.

CHILDREN were fighting wars that no one else knew about…wars that adults were supposed to be fighting. There was too much shit going wrong with everything.

He looked at Sam and his team, the thing was he knew that a lot of people didn't deserve to be killed…he knew that Willow didn't deserve to have her last moments on earth destroying the planet that she'd fought so hard to protect. It was sick, everyone here had given up so much and now the one person that had lost the most, had given up the most for this world, was going to be the one who ended it.

The world was sick place to be in.

But, then there were the good parts to this planet; they deserved to survive no matter how bad everything else was.

"We have to stop her," declared Jack stubbornly.

A few moments later, they all reluctantly agreed. As they walked in the direction they knew Willow had gone in Dawn spoke up.

"After we save Willow, then can we kill this Kinsey guy?"

They remained silent for a while, then Buffy said, "Yes, but first we save Will."

They all inwardly agreed.

Willow turned away from the soldier that she was magically holding in the air, this man was going to be her third kill, but it was going to have to wait.

She listened intently to the thoughts of her friends and a grim smile came over her features, "'Kinsey' huh…time to pay 'Kinsey' a little visit. Make nice."

She dropped the her would-be killer to the floor and ignored his yelp of surprise before he hit the ground; she walked and started collecting up magic into herself to teleport when she realized that some of her magic was dissipating a little.

"Mm, guess it's time for a pick-me-up," she muttered. It would have to wait until after she'd dealt with Kinsey; this couldn't wait.

Location: The military ambulance

Janet gaped in amazement, "Oh my god." That was remarkable, in all her years as a doctor at the SGC she'd seen some of the strangest things…this was right up there with all that.

Christopher Rosenberg coughed a little as she stared at him; he still had his eyes shut but he was breathing and his wound…

She looked at his bare chest, which she had been about to be clean, and looked at the smooth, pale…completely unblemished skin and slowly shook her head.

Amazing.

Chris POV

The blanket of familiar darkness that he'd wrapped around himself suddenly tightened around him and sunk into his body; he could feel the energy, the magic flowing through him. Dark magic, that was coming from his mommy, it made him feel powerful and…

Alive.

Location: Military Ambulance

Janet gasped, freaked, as the cute little boy opened his eyes…his big, black eyes. A scary grin was already forming across his face; she jumped away as his hair bled black.

Chris sat up, iris and pupils now pulsing with red energy and still smirking, he jumped off the stretcher and walked up to Grey.

What was he going to do? Hurt Grey? Did he think that he was one who'd tried to kill him? "Don't!" she yelled, her protective instincts towards any and all of her patients, already in overdrive.

Chris's head snapped to side to look at her, "Don't move," he commanded and he stuck out his right hand.

Don't move? She didn't think so.

Janet tried to move to Grey; nothing happened. What the hell? Oh right…magic. She looked to her other nurses. They weren't moving either.

She watched, warily, as Chris looked at the man; he stuck his hand out. She struggled against the magical restrain and felt sure that the boy was going to kill her patient. She had to stop him!

The painful, potentially-fatal wound on Grey's stomach slowly disappeared and revealed the lightly-tanned, unmarked skin beneath.

What in the world?

As Grey sat up in wonderment and felt his stomach for any pain; then he looked up and saw the boy he'd tried to protect, he gaped and stared with a strange mixture of relief and horror.

Chris, still smirking, backed away slowly almost mockingly and then, with a final wave, disappeared. But not before saying, "My mommy needs help with somethin'."