By the time Sophie came back the smell from the milk was driving Cassie bonkers.
While Nate inquired as to where Sophie was and the grifter got a tin of cookies from the cabinet, Cassie methodically put her crocheting things back in the bag and carefully stepping free of the living room furniture before dashing up the spiral staircase again just as Parker asked if Sophie had been with "the boyfriend."
Nate glanced at Cassie's retreating figure as he tried to push down the jealously that shot up at the mention of Sophie's boyfriend. Eliot very quickly followed after her and Nate turned to Hardison for an explanation.
"Morning sickness," the hacker said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "She was pretty sick earlier, too. Seems like she's gonna have a rough start to it."
It wasn't very much longer than a few seconds before Eliot came bounding down the stairs again, looking for all the world like he'd been chased out with harsh words.
"Everything okay?" Nate asked, irritation creeping into his tone as the hitter sat down again in his seat. Eliot nodded once and Nate turned to Hardison, "Continue."
Up the stairs and to the right, just beside the toilet and the bathtub, Cassie sat, hugging her knees to her chest as silent tears rolled down her cheeks. The nausea had passed almost as soon as she'd been up the stairs, but when she looked at herself in the mirror she was hit with a sudden feeling of inadequacy and longing.
A part of her felt bad about snapping at Eliot when he showed up in the doorway. He was just trying to help, but he was only making things worse. All she wanted was to be left alone. Alone with her unborn baby and the giant hole in her heart.
So she sat and rocked gently as she cried. She felt a fantom embrace surround her and instinctively leaned into it, smelling the light fragrance of lavender that had been Janet's favorite. Oh, what'd she'd give just to be held in the arms of her mother again.
"Shhh, hush now," a soft voice whispered into her hair. "Everything will be all right, child. Hush."
Cassie forced her eyes open through the tears and looked up to see the face of Nimue, as revealed to her in her dream, surrounded by a glowing light instead of a body or more tangible form. Despite her ethereal qualities, however, the ascended being was still quite firm beneath Cassie's quivering form.
Tears overwhelmed the pregnant woman again as she choked out between silent sobs, "You left me. All alone. You let her do this to me."
Nimue took the accusation with a sad, albeit straight, face. One of her glowing hands came up to brush Cassie's hair out of her face. "It was necessary, Cassandra. All of it was necessary."
Cassie flinched at that and shot out in a quiet anger so as not to alert those beneath them of her argument, "The destruction of the planet I grew up on was necessary? Nirrti destroyed everything and everyone I'd ever known. How is that necessary?"
"Nimue pulled back as well, settling herself seemingly over the edge of the bathtub as she replied with a voice that on a human would have been described as raspy. "It was necessary for you to survive. To come here, to this planet. Your offspring is necessary."
"Why?" Cassie demanded as she got to her feet, her tears drying up in anger and frustration. "What's so important about a genetically modified clone?"
"Cassandra," Nimue's eyes were hard as she looked into her daughter's, "If there is one thing to hold on to as truth without a doubt it's that your child is not a clone."
Her daughter's eyes grew wide with fear, disgust, and any number of emotions that would be too difficult to dissect. "What are you talking about?" she demanded of her mother.
Nimue closed her eyes and sighed as she gave her head a small shake. It was almost as if she was sorry to have said something in the first place about the whole thing.
"Best to show you instead of tell you," she finally said after a very pregnant pause. She reached out as if to put her hands on Cassie's head but the mortal woman jerked back.
"Nothin' doin'," she growled. "You're not putting your hands in my head."
Nimue gave her a terse smile and held out one of her pale white hands. "Then take my hand and journey with me to my memories of the past."
Hesitantly Cassie did as instructed and was almost immediately hit with a strong sense of vertigo. Her eyes closed on their own and she was transported through Nimue's memories to a time and place most had forgotten...
She was cold. That was the first thing she processed as she watched the scene unfold. It was snowing outside the stone castle, creating quite a draft inside, no matter how good the fires were. She floated along like a specter, not of her own accord, and soon she found herself in a room high in the castle where a small group of women sat doing what appeared to be needlework.
"Curse this cold," one of the ladies mumbled. "If only Merlin would hurry and fix that contraption."
One of the other women giggled at her, "I'm surprised at you, Thespia. This babe of mine is acting like a portable heater. I'm comfortable for the first time in five months."
Cassie turned as the speaker's voice registered in her mind. There, bearing a very pregnant stomach, sat Morgan le Fay, otherwise known as Ganos Lal. Next to her sat Cassie's own mother (not noticeably with child) who was grinning along with the rest of them. She counted five women in all, each in a different stage of pregnancy.
"Oh my God," Cassie whispered under her breath even though the women in the memory couldn't hear her. "She had five babies to experiment on."
Nimue looked up from her needlework and straight at her grown daughter. "Six, actually." She motioned with her head to the woman who had spoken first, "She's carrying twins." The other women acted as if they hadn't heard the side conversation and continued to laugh amongst themselves.
A sudden wave of vertigo hit Cassie again and she had to close her eyes to help combat it. When her stomach and head settled down again, she opened her eyes to discover that her surroundings had changed. She was now in a lab that looked distinctly Ancient in design.
To her left stood stasis pods, and to her right was a set up that looked vaguely like an abortionist's chair. Her mother was on the chair with tears in her eyes. Ganos was holding her hand tightly, her own stomach already showing that she had recently undergone the same procedure. "It's the only way for them to survive, Nimue. You know that."
"It doesn't make it easier," came the raspy response. The physician finished extracting the embryo and put the partially grown life directly into a stasis pod filled with what was most likely a synthetically grown amniotic fluid.
"The embryo will survive," the woman acting as doctor told her as she put the stasis pod in its spot next to the other five that already had life in them.
"And so will we," promised Nimue to the containers. "We must hurry if we will beat this disease." She turned her head this way and that, clearly looking for someone who wasn't to be found. "What happened to -"
"He has already been put in stasis, dearest. I've put him somewhere safe," Ganos explained, knowing without being told who it was that Nimue wanted by her side.
The woman let one single tear fall down her cheek before bucking up and saying, "We must go."
There was no vertigo this time. No, Cassie instead felt the years pass after the Alterans ascended and the lab went into its own sort of stasis. Nothing came in, or went out. The unborn children lived in their pods, growing so slowly that in the thousand years it took for them to be discovered, only Ganos's male child was ready to be born.
And then Nirrti came. She came with a contingent of Jaffa bearing her mark and a few devices that were probably scientific in nature. The Goa'uld laughed horribly as she took in the six stasis pods and their occupants, coming to rest on each one in turn. With an evil grin she turned quickly on her First Prime. "Extract the pods and bring them to my laboratory. Make sure none of the fetuses are harmed. They are worth more than a thousand Jaffa."
"Yes, my lord," said the ever subservient First Prime with a bow. He started shouting out orders to his fellow Jaffa as Nirrti made her way to the console and brought up the data stored there on the children.
Time and space shifted again and Cassie watched with a sick stomach as Nirrti terminated the pregnancy of Cassie's birth mother and replaced the fetus with what would grow into Cassie.
"Where is the child?" Nirrti demanded after sending Cassie's mother back down to the surface of the planet.
"Here, my lord," said a female slave, bringing forth the male child Cassie recognized as belonging to Ganos.
Nirrti motioned for her to set the child on a table and strap him down. Moving over to her table of instruments, Nirrti picked up a syringe as the child started to wail from discomfort and fear. Her face was locked in a terrible and evil smirk as she put the syringe through the soft, pink skin and filled it up with his blood.
She had just set the blood in a different device when the first shot hit the shield on her mother ship. Nirrti's eyes glowed as she shouted, "Jaffa, kree!"
The babe was still wailing, so the nursemaid picked him up and hurried as quickly as possible back to her quarters to wait out the attack. Nirrti made her way to the bridge to command her troops.
The ship was taking a beating from the opposing side, their own weapons ineffective against the Asgard technology that assaulted them. Very soon, their shields were down and a white beam of light encompassed the ship. When it cleared, however, NIrrti and her Jaffa were still standing.
The nursemaid for the Alteran child came rushing in screaming a few minutes later. "The child, my lord," she said as she fell to her knees before her goddess. "He's gone. Disappeared into the white light."
Nirrti's eyes flashed, "What?"
A second later, two Jaffa ran in to report that the rest of the stasis pods had been removed from the ship during the battle as well.
Nirrti's eyes glowed again and she motioned with her hand to her guards. Her three guards were very quick to level their staff weapons at the "incompetent" fools who had allowed such important property to be stolen by the Asgard. Her eyes glowed again as the screams of the nursemaid were cut off with death.
With a few more breaths Cassie was back in her own body and staring at where her hands touched the ethereal ones of her mother. A few more shaky breaths and she found she could talk again.
"What happened to the others?" she whispered.
"The Asgard accelerated their growth and when they were viable, they were deposited in different parts of Earth. Nirrti used the DNA from the oldest child to sire your children."
"Children?" Cassie croaked out. "Half an hour ago it was child. Now it's children?"
"Their life forces are intertwined, as if two halves of the same whole," Nimue explained, "I couldn't feel it until we grasped hands."
Tears fell down Cassie's eyes and she shook her head slowly, "Oh no. No, no, no. This can't be happening."
"It can, and it is, dear one," Nimue said softly. Her eyes flickered toward the doorway before turning back to her daughter, "I must go now. Ganos will be back later to help you through a few things."
Cassie sat there numbly as her mother disappeared in a ball of light that flew out the closed window. Moments later there was a knock on the door and Sophie came in bearing a cup of cool water.
With a smile the grifter handed it to her as she sat down on the cold tile next to her. "How are you?" Sophie asked, her eyes taking in everything about Cassie's disheveled condition.
"Confused," Cassie replied honestly. "Angry. Confused, mostly. You?"
Sophie let out a snort, "Confused. Sad. Mostly sad. Anything I can do to help?"
Cassie shook her head and took a long drink of the water. Her stomach welcomed it with open arms and she realized just how hungry she was. "Tell me something, Sophie," Cassie asked as she dried her eyes, "How is it I can be nauseous one minute and starving the next?"
Sophie let out a laugh at that, "The mystery of pregnancy, Cassie. That's all."
"Yeah?" Cassie replied with a good natured grumble, "Well I find it annoying."
"Most do."
Once back downstairs, Cassie frowned as she noticed the absence of Alec and Eliot. "They went to go steal a school," Parker explained with a grin. "You feeling okay?"
"Peachy," Cassie replied as she made her way to the kitchen. "The real question is: Does Nate have quinoa?"
"Check the pantry," Nate answered from his spot on the sofa, looking over what had to be personnel files from the school. "I think Eliot put some in there last week."
"Thanks," Cassie replied, pushing aside the many cans of coffee and revealing the sought after grain.
Silence reigned as Cassie washed the grains off before putting them in a pot to boil the same way one would make rice. As she stirred and adjusted the temperature to make sure it didn't boil over, Nate busied himself with the papers and Sophie spoke quietly with Parker about something related to clothes it seemed. From what Cassie had seen of Parker's fashion sense, it was edgy and not in need of any help.
Her stomach began to roll again as she turned off the stove top and removed the quinoa from the hot pot so it wouldn't burn. She began searching through the refrigerator again and this time, after looking past the rows of orange soda, she found a few things to complete her quinoa salad: tomato, a little cilantro, balsamic vinaigrette, black olives, and half an onion.
After setting her find on the counter and putting the hot quinoa into the freezer to cool down, she was hit with a sudden wave of nausea that forced her to grab the edge of the counter and focus her attention on not throwing up in Nate's kitchen. Instead she focused on her breathing, in through her nose and out through her mouth just like Teal'c had taught her.
As she was doing this, she didn't see Nate move into the kitchen and retrieve something from the cabinet where his coffee was kept. In fact, she didn't even know he had moved until he shoved an herb under her nose.
"Try this," he said a little briskly, as if he was lowering himself by talking to her.
"Fennel?" Cassie asked with a frown.
"It helped Maggie," he explained a bit softer in tone.
Cassie glanced at Nate's face before taking the offered herb and eating it slowly. The black licorice taste was one of her favorites but she was a little surprised it actually did help in calming her stomach down. "Thanks," she said gently before going back to cutting the vegetables and getting her salad ready.
"Have you ever had quinoa salad?" she asked him as he moved back to his spot on the sofa.
"I'm not too big into the salad thing," Nate replied as he picked up a file he'd already read. "It's just one of those things Eliot put in there."
"Of course he did," Cassie replied blandly as she made quick work of the tomato, onion, and olives. She checked the quinoa in the freezer and found it just cold enough to work her magic. A few minutes more and it was ready. "Feel like trying some now?" she asked as she sprinkled a pinch of salt over the top.
Nate glanced up at her over the top of his reading material, "Sure. Why not?"
"Thanks for the confidence," Cassie replied dryly as she dished out four helpings of the concoction. She took two of them over to the table where Parker and Sophie were talking.
Parker poked the grains with her fork, frowning as it stuck to the metal utensil. "What is it?" she asked, almost as if it would bite her.
"Health food that tastes good," Cassie replied. "You need more than sugar, Parker."
Parker looked at her warily as she took a bite, her eyes never losing their scowl even as she swallowed and took another bite like a child forced to eat brussels sprouts. "Not bad," she finally said grudgingly.
Cassie turned her attention to Sophie and noticed the slight red under her eyes, like she'd been crying.
"I'm not hungry," Sophie said, "I had cookies."
Cassie rolled her eyes and pushed the bowl into her hands, "What's the matter with you people? Thief cannot con on sugar alone."
Nate snorted as he picked up his bowl and took a bite. "Try telling Hardison that."
"How do you steal a school anyway?" Cassie asked as she busied herself with filling her stomach with something that wouldn't make her hurl.
A/N: Well? I hope you liked it. This story seems to be dragging, but we're almost done. I have the sequel all planned and everything. This one will end with the defeat of Hera and her minions.