One Month Later
"What did he say?" Jordan whispers to Jack. The judge has a beard, which always throws the boy off in lip reading.
"Just a second, Sir. I'm sorry, my son is having trouble following," Jack says. He kneels down before the boy, making his lips eye-level and tilts his head to the light. He doesn't want the kid to miss a word. He signs as well as speaks. The signs at this point are more about not having to explain why he's just repeating the words of the judge. He's sort of giving up on the concept of Jordan ever learning sign language.
"Meg, do you want to be adopted by these people?" the judge asks after a few minutes more of legal speak.
"Yes, sir," she says. She's in a dress. It's the first one that she's ever worn. She's more of a sweatshirt and jeans kind of a girl. Then Sam entered her life. Sam, with her skirts and dangly earrings.
Meg wanted to get her ears pierced, but she couldn't yet. She was still in foster care, and as long as she was in foster care, there could be no piercings, or haircuts, or hearing aids, or ADHD medicine. That's all going to change pretty soon.
"How about you, son?" the judge asks.
Jordan grins at that word coming out of Jack's mouth, even though he knows it is coming to him through the judge.
"Yes!" he says, a bit too loud. It's hard to get the volume right when you have a hearing loss. Usually, Jordan goes too quiet, and not too loud.
"All right then, if the parents would come sign these papers…" the judge says. Jack and Sam eagerly go up to obey. Then they turn to their new children, and give them a hug.
The rest of SG-1, plus the General, Cassie, and Janet, are sitting in the first bench. Sam reaches out her arm, and Cassie hands Leah over to her. The little family of five all join together in a group hug.
-0-
Two Weeks Later
"Cassie," Sam says, touching her hand. The teenager is sitting by the bedside of her dead mother. She's not crying, not moving, just sitting in stunned horror.
Cassie turns to stare at her in shock.
"Honey, come with me," she says. She's worried about how much shock this kid is in, but at least she seems to be able to obey commands. She stands and follows Sam. The nurses look grateful as they start working on Janet's body.
They are in the elevator before Cassie whispers, "I don't have anywhere to go."
"You're coming home with me," Sam says with certainty.
Cassie shakes her head.
"Your mother and I arranged it when she first took you in. If anything ever happened to you, then I would take care of you. I didn't think it was very likely, because I was always in more danger than she was. I never saw this coming."
Cassie's lip twitches.
"You've got a home with us."
"I don't really need a home. I'm eighteen."
Sam laughs. Cassie turns to her in surprise. She doesn't feel like anyone should ever feel like laughing again, not now that her mother is dead. "If you think I'm going to leave a teenager alone to grieve just because she's passed some arbitrary birthday, you're crazy. You're going to come live with us until you go to college, and as you need after that. You're not alone, Cass, we're your family."
"You promised my mom to take me a long time ago, back when you didn't have any kids. Now your house is bursting with three kids, you don't have to keep that promise. I can stay at Mom's house by myself for a couple of months, and then we can sell it when I got college."
Sam shakes her head, "Your mother's daughter deserves more than that."
-0-
In the two weeks since Megan and Jordan have become O'Neills, there has been no shortage of changes. Jordan has hearing aids. He claims that they hurt his ears, and he frequently removs them, but he owns them none the less. Megan is on her ADHD medicine, which gives her stomachaches on the frequent occasions when she forgets to have something to eat when she takes it. Her ears are different, too, still a bit red from the piercing they have undergone a few days ago. She was supposed to keep the studs in all the time, but she has gotten in the habit of waking up in the middle of the night, removing the studs, and putting in the sort of dangly things that her new mother liked to wear, if only for a few minutes, before replacing the studs.
Jack and Sam have reached a level where they signed whenever they were talking, even if it is just the big highlights of the conversation, but the kids hadn't really caught on to their habit.
"Cool, you guys sign?" Cassie asks as soon as she enters the house and sees Jack's fingers flying.
"When did you learn?" he asks.
Cassie doesn't actually speak for the next bit, she just forms the words with her mouth silently, "I took it as an elective when I was in junior high. Julie and I talked to each other with it ever since, it's like a secret code for us. I've never gotten to use it with an actual Deaf person before. I never realized Jordan signed."
"I don't, and I'm not deaf," he says with offense.
She blinks at him in surprise, "I meant like Deaf with a capital D, not a small one."
"I don't know what that means," Jordan says, although he would if he'd been paying attention in his sign language class.
"It means Deaf as in a part of Deaf culture. A person whose native language is sign, whose cultural identify is Deaf."
"That's not me. I'm normal, and I don't even sign. It's definitely not my native language. I speak English."
"Deaf is normal, kid," Cassie says.
"Can you talk with your voice? I don't know what you're saying," Megan says.
A wicked idea crosses Jack's mind, "Actually. I'm going to declare Saturdays 'silent Saturdays'. Sign language is the only accepted language on those days."
"I don't know how to sign!" Meg objects.
"Exactly. You've had months to learn, and neither one of you has made much progress in that department. This will be a good motivation to get you going."
-0-
"We are going to have to get Cassie a real bed. I don't want her to be on that air mattress for more than a night. It's going to make her think she doesn't belong with us," Jack whispers. He and his wife are standing in the hallway of their home, looking at the three bedrooms which contain their children. Cassie has been put up for the night on an air mattress in Meg's room, her brother is next door, and the baby is sitting in Sam's arms, tucked into the nook of her shoulder, thinking about falling asleep.
"We should probably get her bed from Janet's place, and some her stuff, anyway. That room's kind of small. We might have to ask Meg to put some of her stuff somewhere else," Sam replies.
"Only question is where," Jack agrees.
"Jack, before the zatarc, did you ever think we'd be married with five children?" she asks with a coy smile on her face.
"Four."
"Five."
"Samantha, our family might be growing at an unfathomable rate, but I think I can still count our children." He points to the girl's room, "One, two," Jordan's, "three" and the baby in his wife's arms "four".
She grabs his finger and points to her stomach, "Five."
He laughs, kissing her.
"I know it's a little unexpected. We did plan on two biological kids. We just sort of got a little sidetracked with the three adopted kids. It's okay, isn't it?" she asks insecurely, honestly not that sure how her husband is going to react to their rapidly-expanding family.
"It's wonderful. There is just one thing. I think we are going to need a bigger boat," he quips.
"We'll start house-shopping in the morning," she replies with a girn.
-0-
Three Days Later
Jordan walks into the sign language class, and pulls the hearing aids out of his ears. They don't hurt as much as they used to, and the doctor says that if he would just leave them in all the time he'd get used to it faster.
Pain isn't really the reason why he's taking them out this time.
The world is loud, and sometimes he finds himself longing for the world he knew before he got his hearing aids. The world where he could think without people constantly breaking in.
"Deaf is normal," Cassie had told him.
The teacher greets the class, and they all respond in sign language. He's sitting on his hands the same way he has been for months, but he lets one of them slip away, and he touches his forehead in the mini-salute that means "hi" in sign language.
The teacher grins at him, and fires the first review question in his direction.
With perfect syntax and a very classical hand font, he fires back a response. It turns out, the last few months, Jordan has been learning sign. He just wasn't using it.
-0-
The Next Day
"I'm telling you that I don't have any homework," Meg says with her hands on her hips.
"Okay, and I'm telling you that I don't believe you. You've had homework every solitary day since we took you home," Jack says.
"I know, but I don't have any today. I got it all done in school."
"Planner," he says, extending his hand with a raise of the eyebrows.
She hands it to him, and he asks her to produce every bit of work that was assigned. Not only is it done, but it's done well. The correct answers are written in handwriting which is still recognizable as hers, but only a little neater.
"How?" he asks.
"They said I would have to take the medicine for a couple of weeks steady before it really kicked in. I've never had my medicine every day before. It's… I didn't know I was smart."
Jack grins, "Well, I did! Yep, wasn't fooled at all."