As soon as she and Davis stepped foot in Destiny's vast engine room Cress fell over a bag of tools that had been haphazardly left practically in the doorway. Fortunately for her, Paul quick reflexes made it easy for him to catch her. With his hands around her thin waist she noticed how cold his hands were, after the amount of time she'd spent on Destiny with the ship at minimal power the cold wasn't something she really noticed; Niflheim hadn't even bothered her that much.
"For God's sake, Ezra!"
Paul chucked at that before releasing his hold on the seventeen year old and stepping back, ever the gentleman thought Cressida.
"I take it your brother is rather messy."
She nodded. "The engines are his thing, he knows them better than anyone else, even Daddy. He's always leaving stuff everywhere though, while everyone was in stasis he nearly killed me twice by leaving things for me to fall over."
Paul smiled, he supposed that sort of thing happened between siblings all the time, of course he didn't really know, he was an only child. His father had been in the military and his mother had constantly been sick so his childhood hadn't been as happy as most would assume, he'd always wanted a sibling. The Colonel pushed those thoughts from his mind, straightened up and looked down at Cress who'd already busied herself with the engines.
"I won't pretend to know what I'm doing, I'm not an engineer after all, I work with people and languages, but tell me what you need me to do and I'll do it. I can also recognise a couple of words in Ancient."
"Really?" Cressida's eyebrows raised.
She'd not expected him to know the anything about Ancient, most of the SG teams didn't and they came across it more often. There was no denying Davis was an extraordinarily intelligent man so she probably shouldn't have been that surprised, of course Cress and her brother had cheated because they'd been engineered to understand it thanks to their Father's knowledge.
"Well, we're not going to have a conversation in it any time soon but yeah. You've got no idea how many reports I have to read, after a while you start to pick things up whether you want to or not. I like Ancient though, I'm the only one at The Pentagon that understands any of it."
"Those few words could actually be really useful for us, we never know. And I'm sure Ezra wouldn't mind teaching you if you wanted."
Cress could count on one hand how many people spoke Ancient well enough to actually teach it efficiency – herself, Rush, Ezra, Eli and Doctor Daniel Jackson - but what sort of sister would she be if she didn't push Davis towards her love sick baby brother?
"Thank you. I'd like that."
How the Colonel hadn't figured out Ezra's crush – which now bordered on infatuation – Cress couldn't quite understand, it was bloody obvious. Maybe he had and just pretended not to know because of how young Ez was or because he was straight, Cressida didn't know and frankly she had more important things to do that figure out whether Paul Davis liked her baby brother.
True to his word Davis – or Disaster as she'd taken to calling him, much to his chagrin – did whatever she asked of him while they worked. He was quick, efficient, queried anything he didn't understand and she soon found herself preferring him to Volker and Brody. Almost an hour later they made their way back up to the bridge where their work continued. However, Paul had always been rather observant and could see the way her can-do attitude slowly faded and frustration set in until eventually she crashed down into the Command chair with a great thud and downcast eyes. He sat himself on the floor beside her and let silence hang between them for a moment or two before speaking softly.
"How much trouble are we in, Cress?"
She sighed loudly. "In layman's terms, the ship re-charges by travailing through a sun. We refueled before dialling the gate to Niflheim so we could boost the gate's power and stabilise the wormhole, but because we've now come back the power is depleted. The engines are at half power which means we don't have the propulsion to fight our way clear of the black hole, I've got the engines working to keep us stationary for the time being but that is the best I can do." She huffed out a laugh. "Don't suppose you've got about forty pounds of C4 hidden away in a pocket?"
"Fresh out, sorry. How long until the point of no return?"
"About two days if the engines hold out."
The two were silent for a long time as they sat there staring out into space through the thick glass at the front of the bridge. Cress looked and sounded as though she'd started to give up and not even Vulpine who had his head rested on her knee could sooth her busy mind.
"You'll think of something, you're a genius remember." He tried to comfort her but it was only there that he started to realise that despite her big brain she was still only a seventeen year old girl.
"Thanks, Disaster, but... I'm not actually that smart." Her voice was emotionless as she petted Vulpine absent-mindedly and that worried Paul more than if she'd cried. "I just know how to sound like I am. I can't do this without Daddy, Ezra and Eli."
"Yes you ca-"
"No I can't!" She cut him off with an air of anger. "There isn't enough power and contary to popular belief I can't figure out every little thing that's thrown in my face!"
His green orbs looked up at her to see just how scared Cress truly was. All that intelligence and being at the peak of physical health and been built into her by an alien race fixated on Destiny, she still felt fear like every other human. He'd read the report, knew she'd been willing to die years ago if it meant saving the Destiny crew from the Nakai but now, facing a black hole, death had no meaning, and she blamed herself. If she'd not been so desperate to get back to the ship she wouldn't have trapped Davis there, true had she waited they'd all be there, but Cress had focused more on the fact that she'd not only doomed herself but Paul as well. He didn't blame her, she couldn't have known, and he wasn't going to let her sit there with fear and self-hatred until a black hole swallowed them up. He didn't have much experience with teenagers or children but he did his best to comfort her.
"Yesterday Ezra said he does the one liners and you do the technical bit, I know I'm not much of a substitute but I can stand in for him until we get back." There was a pause. "I witnessed an attempted murder earlier... fortunately only one crow showed up."
"That is the worst joke I've ever heard."
"I've got more." Paul laughed, it was already having the effect he'd wanted.
"Please don't." Cress groaned.
"The Past, The Present and The Future walked into a bar... it was tense."
"Please God stop." She tried not to laugh at his horrendous jokes.
"Okay, okay." He held his hands up in surrender. "What would Rush do? If he were here what would he do next?"
"He'd... he'd go to the blackboard corridor with some chalk and sulk until Mom went to get him."
"Right," Paul hopped to his feet and held a hand out for Cress to take. "blackboard corridor it is. Maybe with less sulking though." She just looked at his hand. "Come on, you beat an unbeatable Naquadria bomb, you can do this. I'm just moral support."
"Alright."
The young woman with loose chestnut curls reached out and took his proffered hand.
XXXX
After dialling Destiny about a million times - and that wasn't really that much of an exaggeration - Rush and the others had been forced to admit that it was Destiny's gate that was the problem not Niflheim's, that little nugget of information had only worked to put Rush even more on edge. Three weeks they'd been trying to establish contact with Destiny but with the gate broken and the stones locked up in a SGC vault they'd got no options what so ever.
The lab was pitch black save for a tiny lamp over in one corner that lit up the white board that Rush had covered in equations and possibilities, the Scotsman's whiskey colored orbs stung but he didn't care just forced himself through it and carried on.
"Nicky?" Chloe's voice came softly through the silence from the lab doorway but he didn't acknowledge her. "Nicky, you've been in here for hours. It's two in the morning, please come to bed."
"I don't have time to sleep." He barked back without taking his eyes from the dimly lit whiteboard.
"Please Nicky. Cress will figure something out, she's like you. And she wouldn't want you working yourself to death... and... I need you."
There were tears in her cerulean eyes but Rush hadn't noticed, too locked up in his own world.
"I need to figure this out."
Chloe couldn't hold back her tears any longer, they rolled down her cheeks and dripped of the end of her chin onto the floor, sniffles caused her face to redden as her arms wrapped around herself.
"Please Nicky," She pleaded again. "Cress is my little girl too."
He stopped at that, almost as though he'd snapped back to the world around him and turned to face Chloe. He'd been ignoring her, of course she hurt too, Cressida was their daughter not just his. The marker he'd been holding fell to the ground and he quickly took Chloe into his strong arms to hold her close.
"You're right, I'm sorry Sweetheart." The Chief Scientist rested his chin atop her head as she cried into his red shirt; it was still strange to see him in something that wasn't that greet t-shirt "I should have been with her."
"Then I'd have lost you too." The words were muffled into his chest, fingers clung to the fabric as she refused to let go of the man she loved.
"Shush, it's all alright." He soothed. "Come on, let's go to bed like you wanted. You'll feel better after some sleep."
General O'Neill had been kind enough to provide Chloe and Nicholas with a room on base until they got Cressida and Colonel Davis back rather than forcing them to stay with Chloe's mother and commute back and forth. That was one meet the mother that everyone had wanted to know about but with Cress gone no one dared ask.
Rush helped dry Chloe's eyes when they got to their basic quarters right across the hall from Ezra and settled her down in bed before pulling his clothes off, throwing on a pair of black sleep pants and a grey t-shirt and then clambered into bed with her. Chloe instantly cuddled into his chest in search of warmth and comfort, they'd nearly lost their daughter once before, they shouldn't have had to do it again.
After about thirty minutes – just as Chloe had finally started to nod off – there was a faint knock on the floor and Ez poked his head in. Nicky saw his son had been crying instantly and just shuffled over a bit for the boy to sit beside his mother. At first they'd expected the problem to be fixed in a few hours, then a few days but they'd been gone almost a month and the panic and pain had fully settled in. Ez rubbed at his Mother's shoulder in an attempt to comfort her.
"We're going to get them back. Almost four weeks doesn't mean anything." Ezra sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than Chloe.
"Of course we will." Said Rush quickly. "I've never met anything your sister can't figure out."
In all honesty Cressida's absence had probably affected Ezra the worst, he'd never been without his sister before, they'd spent four years alone together with only one another and Vulpine for company and Rush seriously doubted his son knew how to function properly without her. The way they worked together, the way they didn't have to speak for the other to understand, Rush hated to admit it but Ezra needed Cress more than he or Chloe did.
Long ago when Gloria had gotten sick he'd hidden away in his mind and his work, then he'd done it again after Cressida saved them all from the Nakai. This time there was no work to hide himself in, there wasn't anything he could do to get that gate open, all he could do was watch the woman he loved cry and his son grow quiet and subdued.
But what hurt most was not knowing whether Cressida, Paul and that beloved pet of hers were alive or dead.