Spoilers for "Gamekeeper" and "Need"
Two Weeks Later
"Mom, did you and Daniel have a fight?" Cassie asks tentatively.
"No sweetie, what makes you ask that?" Janet asks.
"He hasn't been over to our house in weeks. If he isn't mad at you, he must be mad at me."
"No, I'm sure that's not it," Janet assures her.
"There is a daddy-daughter dance, and I know he's not really my dad…" Cassie begins.
"Do you want to ask him, or should I?" Janet asks.
"You can," Cassie says bashfully.
The Next Day
"What the hell is going on?" Janet asks as she marches into Daniel's office.
He blinks at her.
"Listen, I don't know exactly what happened between the two of us, but I get that you don't want to be together anymore. Fine. It would have been nice if you actually told me that. But here is the deal, you told my daughter that you were her father. And that, my friend, is a forever kind of job. So even if you want out of my life you can't get out of hers."
His bushy eyebrows raise far above his glasses, "You think I want to break up with you?"
"What am I supposed to think? You're usually at my house most of the days that you're on-world. Then suddenly we don't see hide nor tail of you for two weeks, and you've got my daughter wondering what she did wrong. She did nothing wrong, except asking the wrong person to be her surrogate father."
"I'm not very good at this," Daniel says softly.
"You're not very good at this?" Janet repeats incredulously.
"I get distracted, by the work. It was a really important translation, and I've slept here all week, studying it."
The anger goes out of Janet, and she deflates. "And you couldn't have picked up the phone to tell me this?"
"I told you I'm not very good at this. I will try to be better. But you're right, Cassie deserves better, and so do you. Pretty much everyone that I've ever been with left me because I am such a workaholic. I won't blame you if you do too," he says, looking at his feet.
Janet walks toward him, and sets his face on fire by putting her hand on it. "You don't want me to go, do you?"
He shakes his head, which results in him rubbing it against her hand.
"Ok, then I'm just going to have to accept you just as you are," she says with a smile.
"You guys are more important to me than the work is, and I'm going to work on showing you this with my actions."
Janet nods, "And you're going to have to explain this to Cassie in a way that she understands."
"I'll try my best," he promises.
"I have a way you can start showing her how important you are to her right now. She has a daddy-daughter dance next week that she would love for you to go to."
"She really wants me?" Daniel asks with a wide grin.
Janet nods her head, "She loves you."
"It's mutual," he grins.
Janet turns to leave, but quickly runs over to his counter and grabs the coffee maker off of it.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Daniel protests.
"As your doctor, I either have to take your coffee maker or give you a lecture about the importance of sleep."
"Lecture," he says, grabbing for the coffee maker.
"Well, the eagerness with which you choose that option tells me the lecture isn't going to be very effective," she says, pulling the coffee maker away.
"I'll come over to your house tonight."
"You should probably get some sleep, you can come over tomorrow."
"I'm not going to let that little girl think that I don't like her for a single second. Not if I can prevent it," Daniel argues.
The Next Week
"Bye, Mommy!" Ty says, giving his mother a quick kiss before he runs into the preschool. "Emma!" he exclaims.
"Nice to see you again, Mrs. Carter," the teacher says with a quick wave. Clearly, Sam is supposed to move on, but how exactly is she supposed to leave her baby boy?
She knows these people, and had background checks done on them. There are all these other kids here, and they are all very verbal. If something went wrong this time, Ty would be able to tell her. But she just can't leave him. She stands locked in the doorway, knowing that what she's doing, or rather isn't doing, is crazy.
"Are you having a bit of trouble letting go?" the teacher asks.
Sam nods her head.
"That's perfectly normal. If you'd like to stay for a bit the first day, that is fine," the teacher says.
"Thank you," Sam replies, but she knows that what she is feeling is far from perfectly normal. She knows that she shouldn't stay, that it's only go to make it harder when she does eventually leave. But as soon as the teacher told her that she could stay, the relief that flowed through her body was unbelievable.
-0-0-0-
Ty comes and sits down next to his mother, and runs a toy car across his own leg. "What's wrong, baby?" Sam asks, putting her arm around him.
"You seemed sad," Ty says.
Sam's heart shatters into a million pieces. Her son really needs to stop suffering because of her fear.
"I'm not sad. Why would I be sad, just because my son is growing up? Growing up is a good thing. I'm going to get going; I'll see you in a couple of hours when preschool gets done, ok?"
"Ok, Mommy," he says with a grin.
She leans forward and kisses his forehead. She is glad that the abuse didn't scar her son as deeply as it scared her.
A few Days Later
"Janet, I'm not going to be coming over tonight like we planned. I'd like to talk to Cassie and explain to her why."
"Sure, no problem. Would you mind explaining it to me first?" Janet asks playfully.
"You know about the mission I was just on, right?" Daniel asks carefully.
Janet nods her head, "Yeah, at little. You were trapped in a video game that forced you to relive parts of your life."
"I was stuck watching my parents die again and again," he says mournfully.
"Oh, Daniel, I'm so sorry."
"Right, well you can see that I wouldn't be very good company tonight."
"Daniel," Janet says in awe, surprised that after all of this time that he understands her so little. "You don't come over to entertain us. We spend time together so that we can help each other. Daniel, you shouldn't be alone tonight."
"Janet, if it was just you, I'd agree. But I can't let Cassie see me like this."
"Like what, Daniel? Grieving for your parents? Haven't you seen her like that a few times? I think this is going to be a good thing for her. If you don't agree to come over, we're going to invade your apartment."
"Well, I guess I'm going to have to come over. Otherwise, we'd have to explain the presence of your bra."
"That's where I left it!" Janet exclaims.
"Where else would it have been?" Daniel asks with alarm.
"I thought it was in my locker at work."
"And you thought you left work without a bra?" Daniel asks in surprise.
Janet laughs, "Ok, I should have known where it was."
"You'd better," he grins to her on the phone.
-0-0-0-
As soon as Daniel walks through the door Cassie wraps her arms around him. "I'm sorry about your parents," she whispers.
"Thanks," he says, choking back tears.
She looks up at him, "You told me that it was ok to cry."
"I know, but there were a lot of people when I was a little boy that told me it wasn't ok to cry," Daniel says carefully, not entirely sure that this is something that he wants the girl to know about him.
Cassie turns to her mother a little uncertainly, "They were wrong though, mom, weren't they?"
Janet nods her head, locking her eyes on Daniel's above her daughter's head, "They were wrong, honey. But Daniel is so lucky that he is with us now. He's safe, and he can do whatever he needs to do. We're going to love him anyway."
Cassie nods her head, and Daniel's crying starts in earnest.
Two Week Later
"I have to go back," Daniel says with crazed eyes.
"You can't," Janet says, trying to school her face not to show how deeply Daniel has wounded her. He wants to go back to another women. And he's telling her this, and doesn't even care.
She knows that she shouldn't blame him. He's high, out of his mind, he doesn't know what he's saying. He doesn't know what he's saying because of the drugs that women gave him. And she is not going to let the man that he loves go back to her.
"You're killing me! Don't you understand? You're killing me!" he shouts.
"No, you're going to be fine. You're getting better, the worst is over," she assures him. She'd worked in a detox clinic once when she was still in medical school. She never thought she would be going through this on a more personal basis.
"You're just jealous," he bursts out.
"No, sweetie," she says with power which belies the gentle words. Then the words turn to match the power behind them, "I'm trying to protect you from a bitch who screwed with your brain chemistry!"
Daniel jumps up from the chair, the restraints that they used to tie him apparently being no challenge for him at all. He pushes past Janet, slamming her arm into wall on his way out of the room. Pain radiates through her arm, letting Janet know that something is wrong; the arm might even be broken. Janet drags herself over to the alarm to set it off, all the while in shock that Daniel, her Daniel, could do this to her.
Two Days Later
"I have to go back," he tells her. It shatters her heart into a million tiny pieces. He's not high now. He's sane and he's healthy. And he's asking her to let him go to another woman. What right does she have to refuse him? It's not as if she has any true ownership over him. At least, no ownership except for the fact that she is in love with him.
"What am I supposed to tell Cassie?" she says, grieving the fact that her heart isn't going to be the only one whose heart breaks in this situation.
"Tell her I'll see her tomorrow, and that I'm better. I mean… I guess I don't know what you told her about when I was detoxing, but I'm guessing you had to tell her something.
"You're going to be back tomorrow?" Janet says in confusion.
He looks at her in surprise, tilting his head toward her, "Janet, you thought I was going to leave you for her?"
Janet bursts into tears. He gathers her up into her arms. "What was I supposed to think? You were engaged to her!" she exclaims.
"Oh, not really, Janet. What happened with that woman was no more voluntary than what happened with Hathor."
Janet recoils in horror. She knew that Daniel was engaged to the women, but until that very moment she had not actually considered that he might be involved in a sexual relationship with her.
"The two of you…" she stammers, not quite willing to ask the question that is on her mind.
"No," he says shaking his head, "To be honest, I think Shaya was more interested in a co-ruler than a husband. Thank goodness. But she did still use drugs to make me stay. I can't believe my team was being worked to death in the mine and I did nothing to stop it."
"Like you said, it wasn't really you," Janet says.
"And I really can't believe I broke your arm," he says tenderly, touching the brace that is over her wrist.
"It's not broken, it's just a sprain, this is coming off in a couple of days," she says softly.
There is a moment of silence, and her eyes met his blue orbs. His eyes are filled with more sadness than she's ever seen. "Growing up as a foster kid, I swore to myself I was never going to be the kind of man who hurt a women."
"Did anyone…" she prompts, a little alarmed by what his statement hints at.
He shakes his head, "No, no one ever hurt me. But I had quite a few foster siblings that were beat up by their parents, and quite a few more who saw a parent getting beat up by someone. They seemed more bothered by the second one, strangely. I guess we can at least be grateful that Cassie wasn't around to witness that."
"This was a long way from beating me up, and you aren't that sort of man. You weren't yourself when you did this to me."
"Yeah, well a lot of the people I'm talking about weren't themselves when it happened, either. A lot of them were drunk or high on drugs, but it certainly didn't make what they did ok."
"Of course not, but they choose to take those things. You didn't choose this," Janet says softly.
He takes the splint, and brings it to his mouth gracing it with a gentle kiss on the way.
-0-0-0-
Janet's stomach drops as she hears Cassie talking to her grandmother on the phone. "Janet is having so much trouble driving with her wrist."
Janet flinches, she hadn't thought of how she was going to explain this to the outside world. She'd been honest with her daughter. She probably wouldn't have if she'd seen Daniel's reaction to his actions before she'd done it. But she'd been frustrated and a bit scared when she'd come home the night after it had happened. So when Cassie asked about the wrist, Janet had explained that Daniel had done it to her by accident, because something alien had messed with his head. Now, she's not really sure what her daughter is going to let slip.
"Daniel sprained her wrist," the girl explains simply.
Janet flinches. A second later, her daughter extends the phone to her saying, "Grandma wants to talk to you."
"Hi, mom," Janet says, walking out of earshot of her daughter.
"Janet, what happened?" her mom asks breathlessly.
"It was an accident, a work-related accident. It's really no big deal. I just have to wear the splint for a couple of days, and I honestly am not having as much trouble driving as Cassie makes it sound like."
"But Daniel did it?"
"It was an accident at work, mom."
"Sweetie, he hurt you. I know you feel sorry for him. I know that he had a pretty rough time growing up. But what if it's Cassie next time?"
"He would never hurt Cassie," Janet protests softly, her heart clenching in the fear.
"He hurt you, Janet, and you can't let him get away with it. I know it's hard, but it's not going to get easier. You have to get out while you still can."
"Mom, Daniel feels terrible about what happened."
"Of course he does, they always feel bad after it's said and done."
"Mom, it really wasn't his fault, and I am sure it's not going to happen again."
"I'm just trying to protect you, sweetie."
"I know, I'd get the same way if I ever thought that someone laid a hand on Cassie."
"And you know that I really do like Daniel, right?"
"Well, that's good, because I plan on bringing him home for Christmas this year."
"Two Christmases in a row? That has to be some kind of a record for you. I'm pretty sure that your husband didn't even make two Christmases."