The Next Day
Olivia wafts through a yellowed copy of a Nancy Drew novel. She's familiar enough with it that she can find all of the good parts without really looking.
She puts it down, and picks up Sherlock Holmes. She runs her fingers down the table of contents, and the memories it jogs give her strength.
Then she touches base with Ms. Marple.
Then she stands up, and takes a deep breath trying to talk herself into the plan. She'd decided to do it a long time ago, but now that the moment has begun, she's scared.
"What if they catch me and send me back?" she whispers to herself. But a mixture of the excitement of adventure and the need to connect with this part of her parents drives her on.
She heads out of her bedroom, and creeps down the stairs. Janet has already read Olivia a bedtime story, and is now watching TV in her bedroom. Cassie is doing homework in the living room.
"Need something, Olivia?"
"No, I'm just going to, ah… look in the basement," Olivia says.
"Need help?"
"No, I'm just exploring," she says, holding a flashlight.
"Sometimes I wish I could be a kid again," Cassie says with a smile, "Even the basement is exciting."
Olivia finds the organization scheme of the basement pretty quickly. The center of the room is cluttered with toys and clothes that Cassie and Will have already cast off, and things that Janet has bought at yard sales and thrift sales for her family when they get a little bigger. Olivia's heart clenches when she realizes that the purple velvet dress is obviously meant for her to grow into in a Christmas or two. She longs for permanence, even though she knows that Daniel and Janet can't give it to her yet. It's comforting to know that they want it as badly as she does.
Janet has the Christmas decorations and the keepsakes from her childhood all stacked in one side of the room. Daniel doesn't seem to have any keepsakes.
But he does have notebooks. Boxes and boxes of notebooks.
She picks one out of a box at random.
It's labeled "P3X-797". She flips through it and is bored by the drawings and numbers in the first couple of pages. She is about to put it down, when something catches her eye.
"This planet…"
"No way," she mutter.
She keeps scanning through the notebook until she is familiar with the whole story. She picks up the next notebook that includes another story of planets. She becomes so engrossed in the stories that she doesn't return to her room until just before dawn. It's a Saturday morning, so she figures that this doesn't matter.
The Next Day
"You seem really tired today, are you ok?" Janet asks softly.
"Yeah, I just didn't get much sleep last night," Olivia admits in the middle of a yawn.
"Did you have nightmares? You know that you can come into my room anytime that you feel like you need to, right?"
"It wasn't nightmares."
"Why don't you go take a nap after breakfast?"
"Ok, but can you ask you one question first?"
"Of course, honey?"
"What is the alphanumeric designation of the planet Daniel is stuck on?"
Janet pauses with a spoonful of oatmeal halfway to her mouth. "What are you talking about?"
"I found Daniel's notebooks in the basement."
"And you stayed up all night reading them, too, didn't you?" Cassie asks with a giggle.
"So you found the science fiction Daniel writes," Janet says with artificial calm.
Olivia looks at her for a second, trying to figure out if that's the truth, "Cassie was in there. This Goold thing wiped out her whole planet, an almost made her heart explode."
Janet blinks.
"The notebook didn't explain how you get to other planets."
"I don't," Janet says.
"That's right; usually, anyway. But Daniel does. How?"
"Honey, I can't tell you," Janet says at the same time that Cassie says, "The Stargate."
Janet gives her a glare.
"Mom, she's my sister, and she needs to know."
"Ok, but Olivia, you can never tell anyone about this. You see, in Egypt in 1928…"
One Month Later
"The arrangement of the refrigerator is completely unacceptable," Teal'c says, staring into it.
"Ok, what is unacceptable about it?" she asks.
"The bovine lactose curdled with bacteria is in the immediate proximity of my hamburgers."
"Ok, if you're going to use gross words for my yogurt, I'm going to use gross words for your precious hamburgers. They are the ground carcasses of a bovine."
"The carcasses of dead animals provide strength that a warrior needs. It should not be tarnished by its proximity to bacteria."
"There are millions of bacteria all over your skin, you are always in close proximity to bacteria."
He reaches into the fridge and moves her yogurt with a careless gesture.
"Teal'c, it's my fridge too, and I don't want my yogurt that close to the back. It's going to freeze."
"Is not frozen yogurt a delicacy of your planet?"
"Yes, but freezing yogurt doesn't actually make frozen yogurt."
"I do not understand why words in your language do not derive their meaning from their parts," he complains.
She reaches past him to move the yogurt back to the middle, right next to the hamburgers she made him yesterday.
"You will move that objectionable food away, woman."
"Woman?" she says, her eyebrows shooting up, "Did you really just call me 'woman'?"
"I am absolutely certain that is your gender," he replies with the tiny centimeter quirk in his lips he says when he makes a joke.
It's enough to cut the tension, and they both burst into laughter.
-0-0-0-
"Do I have to go to school today?" Olivia asks as she digs into her waffle.
"Of course you do, why wouldn't you go to school?" Janet asks.
"Daniel is coming home today," Olivia says, as if it was completely obvious.
"You'll see him when he gets home from school."
"But if I don't go to school, I will be able to see him a whole lot sooner," Olivia says.
"School is really important," Janet says.
Cassie rolls her eyes, "Come on, mom, we haven't seen Dad in a month. It's just one day of school."
Janet looks at the girls, "He won't be in until 12:30. I'll pick you up right after lunch."
"Mom, it's turkey surprise day at school today. Is it possible that you are going to pick me up before lunch?"
"Ok, girls," Janet says, reluctantly.
-0-0-0-
"Where is Janet?" Daniel says, looking around, confused as he steps through the Stargate.
"She and the girls are waiting for you topside. I wouldn't clear her to bring Olivia down here, since she doesn't know about the Stargate," General Hammond says.
"She brought the girls to see me? Is it a day off school or something?"
"I think a father coming back after this long an absence justifies a half day of school, don't you?" General Hammond says.
"They were really that desperate to see me?" Daniel asks, completely stunned.
"In case you haven't noticed, you're pretty well-liked around here, son," General Hammond says, giving him a pat on the back that is so firm that it almost takes his air away.
And for the first time, Daniel starts to believe that he really is important. That there are people in the world to whom he is just as important as they are to him. People that could not live without him. People that had been missing him with a terrible ache in their stomach that probably felt a lot like the terrible ache that had been in his stomach ever since he first went missing.
People love him. People with good taste. So maybe, he is worthy of love.
-0-0-0-
"Daniel!" Olivia shouts, jumping into his arms. He holds her up with one arm, while scooping the others into a hug.
"I missed you guys. It killed me to be able to only talk to you by phone or e-mail," he says, nuzzling the younger girl.
"I'm not supposed to know that you were on a different planet, that's why I couldn't talk to you through the wormhole like Janet and Cassie could."
"Hey, William can't either," Cassie says, comforting her little sister.
"Wait… wormhole?" Daniel says, setting Olivia down so he can look at her. He ushers his family farther away from the guard tower, and glares at his wife, "Why exactly did you let classified information drop?"
"I think we can blame the person who wrote a whole bunch of classified information down in a notebook and left it in the basement."
"Oh," Daniel says, staring at the little girl before him.
"You didn't want me to know?" Olivia asks, wounded. Janet bought her the dress to grow into. She caught Janet talking about making the adoption final. Daniel hasn't really done anything to make her believe that this is going to be forever.
Daniel bends down with his knee touching the sidewalk, "I didn't want you to know because I didn't want you to worry about me. There are some scary things in that notebook."
Olivia nods her head, "The snake, does Teal'c really have one of them in his stomach?"
Daniel smiles, "Yeah, he does, but he's not going to let it hurt anyone."
"But every time you go through the gate, they could hurt you."
"But I'm going to try not to let that happen," Daniel says.
"Janet called the social workers and told them I could stay, but she didn't ask you," Olivia tells him suddenly. She has to know how open he is to this being long-term.
Daniel looks up at his wife, "Actually, Livvy-Lou, she did ask me when they got to talk to me through the wormhole, but she didn't need to ask me. You're my daughter now."
A warm feeling bubbles up in Olivia's chest until it comes out as a sigh. Daniel picks her up again.
"I'm too big to carry!" the seven-year old protests.
"I missed you!" he responds as if that explains everything, and refuses to put her down.