Passing the Buck

Yep, he really knew how to save the day.

He'd perfected it at this point—the process had been refined to where he no longer even had to think about it. He could size up a situation and know just what tack to take to solve it. Dangers no longer loomed. Situations no longer needed to be averted. Evil no longer waited to be thwarted

Jack O'Neill was here!

General Jack O'Neill.

Crap.

Jack sat on his porch, watching the shadows lengthen. He held a beer in his hand—a beer from a rapidly diminishing supply, he might add. He'd asked Daniel to pick him some Guinness up on the way over, and Daniel had brought a single six-pack along with the Chinese they'd shared over a game of chess. But then, what would you expect from a guy who gets buzzed on wine coolers?

He turned the cap to his current beer over in his fingers, pressing his fingers on the sharp crimped edges. He kind of liked the sensation—being able to feel it. He'd missed that in the pod.

Or he assumed he would have. He hadn't been conscious. It had been like the best nap of his life. Long, dark, quiet. Until they'd woken him up and asked him to save the day.

Again.

And then they'd gone and made him a General.

He still wasn't exactly sure how he felt about that one.

He sandwiched the bottle cap between his thumb and middle finger and took careful aim. The neighbor's cat was climbing on his bird feeder again. It wasn't fancy—nothing more than several traditional red plastic nectar feeders suspended by long hooks from a central pole. But his pole was a four by four of wood cemented into the ground. Perfect for the cats to climb.

He'd already lost three of the little beggars to this particular stupid cat this year.

The cat paused at the top of the feeder and licked his paw, then looked around hungrily for a hummingbird. Jack snapped his fingers sharply, sending the bottle cap whizzing the twenty-odd feet necessary to plunk the cat squarely on the head. The feline hissed, and scampered, yowling, into the night.

Yet another crisis averted. Boy, howdy. He was good.

He deserved another beer for that. But alas, when he reached down to his side, the bucket was empty. Curse Daniel and his girly metabolism.

He settled for crossing his ankles in front of him and watching as the night fell.

The night lay still around him—no sound except for the shushing of the trees and distant sounds of traffic on the nearest major road.

This is what he was supposed to crave, right? A man of his age and experience would naturally desire to sit on his own back patio of an evening, pleasantly woozy, and equally as pleasantly full of Ming's Happy Family Chicken and Dumplings.

After all, he'd had quite a time of it lately. Saved the world not once but several times—and not just this world, he might add. He'd saved Thor's homeworld too. He'd discovered the method necessary for destroying the Replicators, stopped Anubis from invading Earth in the form of one or all of Jack's own officers, and prevented an alien plant from overrunning the SGC. He'd successfully brokered a deal between the Amway delegates. (Or was it Amtrack? Enron? No, he was sure it was something like that, though.) Camel-ass had tried to trick him into blowing up Earth with a screwy ZPM, but O'Neill had seen through that one and had made a tricky switch. Daniel had disappeared for three months, and they'd gotten him back safe and sound. Sure, they had thrown that planet into civil war, but hey, nobody's perfect.

Colonel Carter (that still had a nice ring to it) and the others had been stranded in that underground laboratory for a while—but Jack had handled it rather nicely, he thought. Not a single Airman had returned home minus his head. That was a major triumph.

He'd almost resigned, but hadn't. O'Neill was more proud of that accomplishment than he was of any of the others.

Jack sighed and interlaced his fingers over his abdomen. His eyes drowsed shut, heavy with fatigue, comfort, and beer. He'd only been a General for a few months and already he needed a vacation.

How had Hammond done it for so long? That old man must have had gonads of trinium.

A sound nearby forced O'Neill to open his eyes. He turned his head only enough to see a figure coming around the corner.

"Jack?"

The voice was female. Not Carter—lighter. He squinted against the dark and was surprised to see Cassie. She crossed the patio, briefly bathed in the light spilling out from the arcadia door. He barely recognized her—dressed like the college student she was. She'd put streaks of blond in her reddish hair, and she'd started wearing pants that she knew he wouldn't approve of—pants that barely covered anything pertinent. And she'd taken to wearing two t shirts at a time, but they were so skin tight that nothing was left to the imagination. She may as well have been walking around bare-butt naked. He scowled at her.

"Doesn't your allowance cover the cost of whole clothes? Or are you just buying them in pieces?"

"Jack." Cassie rolled her eyes at him. "Get over it. I'm not a kid anymore."

"You're what, thirty?"

"I'll be nineteen soon."

"In six months."

"Right. Soon."

"Yeah, well, I'm just surprised Carter lets you wear stuff like that."

"She's not my mom—and besides, you should see some of the stuff that she wears."

O'Neill had prided himself lately on the fact that he hadn't imagined anything remotely close to that in several months. His had been a mostly Carter-free imaginary life. He'd narrowed the scope of his existence down to only the things that mattered—planetary security, good base management, and keeping all the random scientists on base in order. It was just a case of mind over anti-matter. Great—now he was making science jokes.

Somewhere, God was laughing at him.

"She's an adult—she can wear whatever she likes."

Cassie plopped herself down on the top step leading off the deck into the yard and leaned back against the rail post.

"I'm an adult, too."

"According to whom?"

"The State of Colorado and the Federal Government."

O'Neill snorted. "None of them are adults, so what the hell do they know?"

Cassie smiled. "Wow. You're in a mood."

"It was fine until you showed up wearing half an outfit."

Cassie gave him half a laugh.

"So what brings you here this evening?"

Cassie rolled her eyes again. "The usual."

Jack understood immediately. "Pete."

"I just don't see why Sam likes him so much. He's such a schlong."

That took him back for a second. "Did you just call him a schlong?"

"Yeah."

"Do you know what it means?"

"I'm not a complete idiot." Cassie ran a hand angrily through her multi-toned hair. "Duh."

Jack sobered up a bit. "Did you just 'duh' me?" He scowled and shook his head slightly. What had happened to the nice girl he used to know? But then he remembered—she'd lost as much as he had. More. "Cassie?"

But the young woman on his porch didn't answer. Her bottom lip pouted out stubbornly as she twisted a strand of hair between her fingers.

Jack sat up and leaned forward on his knees. "So what's going on with Pete and Carter?"

"Are you interested? Last time I tried to tell you, you put your fingers in your ears and started singing the Simpson's theme song."

The General shrugged. "Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do."

She grinned. "I know." She adjusted her shirt so that it covered her abdomen and then sat up straight, crossing her arms in front of her. "Um—they're just at the house right now. He cooked. Something lame—spaghetti, out of a jar. Sam was cleaning up from dinner and he came in and tried to talk to me about school."

"That doesn't sound so bad." He knew he was treading on thin ice, here, but there wasn't much to be done about that. He'd made a conscious decision to support Carter in getting on with her life. And if that meant taking Pete's side every once in a while, so be it. "I mean, he's just trying to be nice."

"He's a shrub."

"What kinds of things was he saying?"

Cassie's fingers flew back into her hair and started twisting again.

"Cass."

"Okay. Okay—I'll tell you." She looked up at him. "You know how I want to be a doctor? You know—like my mom."

"Yeah. I think you'd be great at it."

"Well, he told me that I might want to rethink that—because I'm not too great at biology."

"What are you talking about? You got great grades in high school."

She fell silent, her fingers twirling even faster. Jack thought she might actually tie the strand into a knot. He rose from his chair and lowered himself to the step next to her. Cassie looked up at him through her eyelashes. "I'm not doing too well in school right now. College is harder—and I had help in high school. Both Sam and my mom were there if I needed them."

Jack absorbed that briefly before holding his arm out to her. She immediately scooted over and settled in next to him, draping his arm around her like a blanket.

"But now it's just Carter and she's away a lot." He knew how to miss her, too.

"Yeah."

"Would it help if you lived on campus? Closer to tutoring centers and the library?"

Cassie waited for a long time before answering him. "It would be easier if I could live here. With you."

His life just got infinitely more complicated. He swallowed.

"Jack—I would help out with the cleaning and cooking, and you have the whole basement that's finished out with that bedroom down there and the bathroom, and so you'd never have to see me if you didn't want to. And I have my own car—well, it's my mom's car, but I just kept it after she—went. And you're not off world as much anymore—and you aren't with anyone, so it wouldn't be awkward like it is with Pete."

"So basically, you're saying that you want to stay with me because I'm lonely and messy?"

"That's not what I meant."

Jack gave her a one-armed hug and pressed a fatherly kiss to the side of her head. "I know, kiddo—let me talk to Carter about it."

"So you're saying I can?"

"I'm saying I need to talk to Carter."

Cassie stilled. "She won't like it."

"I'm guessing you're right."

Companionably, they sat in the darkness. Crickets and cicadas started singing in the bushes around the house, drowning out the noise of the thoroughfare traffic.

Cassie sighed, borrowing closer. Jack looked down at her, smiling inwardly.

How had he gotten so lucky to have been a part in this child's life? Not a child anymore—Cassie had grown up in the seven or so years since they had found her in the devastated environment of her home world and brought her back to Earth. He sometimes forgot that she was still somewhere in that hinterland that existed between childhood and adulthood—when kids wanted to be left alone to live their lives, yet at the same time craved unconditional love and support as they made their mistakes and celebrated their triumphs.

He couldn't have loved her more had she been his own—that part was easy. It was the rest of it that would plague him.

"Jack?"

O'Neill looked down at her. "Yeah?"

"Did you know she has nightmares?"

"Who, Carter?"

"Yeah—I heard her screaming one night and went in and found her huddled in the corner of her room. She was all sweaty and she'd been crying, and she was yelling something about a fifth—"

"Fifth."

"You know—like liquor."

"I think she was talking about something else." He knew she was—he hadn't been conscious for it, but had read the mission report where she'd written up her experience with the human-form replicator. He'd found her afterward on Orilla, and she'd made it out to be no big deal. Obviously, she'd lied.

"Well, anyway, she told me it was just a bad dream, but now she sleeps with her door locked and a white noise machine on."

"She thinks you can't hear her?"

Cassie nodded.

"How often is it bad?"

"A few times a week."

And then he asked the question he didn't want to ask. "What about when Pete's there?"

Cassie had started playing with his fingers. "She doesn't let him stay the whole night when I'm home. Thanks heaven for small favors."

He didn't answer, just watched as she picked at a hang nail on his right index finger.

"You know, if I stayed here, I could give you manicures—you'd have much healthier cuticles if you let me massage in some sun oil."

"No."

"Too girly?"

"Ya think?"

Another long silence passed before Cassie broke it again. "I really want this, Jack."

"I know."

"He doesn't make her happy—not like he should."

"That's her business, Cass. She's got her own life to lead."

"I'm just surprised that you're okay with it."

He wasn't, he knew. To say he was okay with it all would be an overstatement of fact like none other in the history of the world. But he'd made a few breakthroughs lately—knowing that the relationship had to stay in its current, platonic, form, and knowing that other things took precedence over him and his libido—like keeping the world safe.

O'Neill wasn't perfectly sure what was making it easier these days. He'd gone and chatted with Doc Poly a few times since his triumphant return—but it wasn't totally her help that had aided him in turning the corner.

He could remember smidgens of his experience with the device. He'd led Daniel to believe differently, of course. Only because if he admitted that he remembered a bit of it, then Daniel would be convinced that he could remember it all. So he saved the biggest breakthroughs for himself.

He remembered how he'd felt when he'd seen himself through Carter's eyes—there in the engine room. He'd seen someone of worth—and he'd never considered himself in that way before. He'd understood himself better in an instant—known himself better in the sheer miracle of another's perspective.

For some reason, it wasn't possible to feel sorry for yourself when you could see how very much you meant to other people.

And now Cassie was proving it again. She trusted him completely—knew that he would never do anything to hurt her. Gave him the opportunity to do something good. Be something good.

"So you'll talk to her?" Her voice drew him out of his own thoughts.

"Tomorrow."

"Promise?"

"Yep."

Cassie turned a smile towards him. "Thanks, Jack."

"You're welcome, Cass."

Another brief silence passed.

"So, I guess you'll only need half a dresser. Half a closet."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know—for those halves of clothes that you wear."

"Holy Hannah, Jack, you're so lame."

But they both smiled into the darkness.

"I love you too, kid."