The Tegan Chronicles

Intuition and Lies 34

When Janet realized it was raining she went out and drove along Tegan's normal route to pick he up, when she didn't see her she began to worry. Back at home she called Sam when she realized Tegan hadn't beaten her back.

"Carter."

"Sam, Tegan's missing."

"What do you mean she's missing?" She put her hand over the mouth piece of the phone. "No not that one. I'll take care of it in a minute"

"She went out for a walk right after we hung up, and then it started raining so I went out to pick her up and she's not on her normal route."

Sam glanced at her watch.

"Can you track her?"

"No."

"Why not?" Janet was beginning to get annoyed at Sam's apparent distraction.

"You know it's only for emergency use."

"This is an emergency."

"I'd have to get General Hammond's ok, and that's not exactly the point. We had a lightening strike and can't access over half the mainframe including the tracking controls. I'm sorry Janet. Look I'll call you as soon as we get it back up and running, unless I hear from you first."

"Alright."

"I'm sure she's fine."

"Yeah, thanks Sam." Janet hung up tried her phone for the fourth time.

As soon as she saw the taxi pull into the driveway Janet ran to the door and pulled it open. Relief flooded her face when she saw Tegan climb out of the cab.

"I was –" She noticed the scrubs.

Tegan hadn't thought that far in advance, if she had she probably would have put her wet clothes back on before making the trek home.

"Where were you?" Janet closed the door behind them. "I was worried."

"I went for a walk, got caught in the rain, hopped on a bus that ended up near Peterson so I went in to reschedule my appointment with Dr. Tillman who gave me dry clothes."

Succinct and to the point. Either it was true or she'd really thought up a great lie. Janet doubted it was a lie, she couldn't think of a plausible reason Tegan would need to come up with such an elaborate lie, and it wasn't like Tegan to conjure up lies. She could dance around and bend the truth on occasion, but it wasn't like her to flat out lie.

Janet noticed she'd followed Tegan to the closet housing the passageway between the two houses and Tegan was already stepping through. "Tegan?"

"Space," was the only word she said as she reached for the sliding door.

"Dinner will be ready in forty-five minutes." Janet managed to get out before the door was completely shut.

"I thought I heard Tegan come in." Cassie observed as she sat down to dinner.

"She did."

"She's not in the living room, and I didn't see her up stairs."

Janet handed the bowl of mashed potatoes to her and tried not to look in the direction of the other duplex. "She'll come to dinner if she's hungry."

"Don't hold your breath mom."

"I said if she's hungry."

"I know you did." Cassie looked toward the living room as Tegan came around the corner. She wasn't sure if she'd come from next door, upstairs, or had somehow materialized right there. "Nice of you to join us."

"Cassandra." Janet shook her head.

Cassie shrugged as Tegan sat down. She looked mad, and tired, and she didn't say a single word through dinner. Cassie could feel the tension in the air and wondered what was going on, but even she knew better than to ask. After dinner Tegan disappeared again.

"Have a seat Major."

Tegan sat on the couch and waited for Tilly to start asking questions.

"Are you still mad?"

"Are you?" Tegan turned the question around.

"A little bit." Give a little, get a little. She hoped. "I feel they withheld important information."

"Well," Tegan grinned. "Maybe they were protecting you."

"What do you mean?"

"I certainly wouldn't be sitting here talking to you if you'd known."

Tilly nodded.

"And yes I'm mad, seething actually. But I'm trying to use it to my advantage."

"In what way?"

"I've got a lot to accomplish in the next three weeks."

"You're not seriously thinking you can pull this off are you?"

Tegan nodded.

"What are the new standards?"

"To get one-hundred points I have to run one-point-five miles in under eleven-fifty-four, complete forty-two or more situps in a minute and forty or more pushups. Plus a waist circumference of under twenty-nine and a half inches." The last part was already in the bag.

"What'd you do last time you ran it?"

"Nine-forty-five, forty-eight situps and forty-four pushups, but I was taking it easy on the push ups."

"The situps shouldn't be a problem right?"

Tegan stood up and moved to the floor careful to use only her right arm getting down.

"You favor your prosthetic, does it hurt?"

Tegan looked up from were she was sitting and regarded Tilly for a minute. It would be so easy to say no, or ignore the question all together, but wasn't that why she was mad at SG1 and Janet? They'd withheld information and she hadn't even directly asked them a question. "Yeah, it hurts."

Tilly watched as Tegan tried to cross her arms over her chest. It was difficult to find a comfortable position, finally she just went for it ignoring the pain that scrunched her features as she started to curl up and down in situp like fashion. After ten she stopped and looked at her watch, she was going to have to more than double that pace if she was going to make it. "Running is the easy part."

Tilly watched Tegan move into position to do a pushup, but she couldn't even put partial weight on the prosthetic. She put her arm behind her back and did ten one handed.

"Too bad McKenzie won't let that fly." Tegan stood up and moved back to the couch.

"Most guys couldn't pull that off."

Tegan smiled quickly, she knew she wasn't like the guys in more ways than just her sexual organs.

"Can we go back to phantom pain?"

"As in do I have it?"

Tilly nodded.

"Yeah I do. It sometimes feels like my entire arm is on fire."

"Percentage wise, how often is sometimes?"

"Ninety-six percent."

"Most people would look at that as being sometimes it doesn't feel like that."

"You'll find I'm not most people."

"No," Tilly agreed. "I think I've already figured that out."

"I'll see you Friday, same time."

Tegan shrugged.