Daniel and Janet walk down the hallway together. "What are we going to do with this Goa'uld?" Janet asks her husband.
"She says she can help Cassandra," Daniel says.
"If we trust her," Janet says, with obvious sarcasm in her voice. She can't stand the idea of her daughter's life and safety being in the hand of the person who very nearly destroyed her daughter's entire culture.
"No, if we let her go," Daniel says frankly.
"Do you believe she can actually help?" Janet asks, examining her husband's face.
"Well, seeing as we don't have a choice… I guess it's worth a shot," Daniel says.
"What about General Hammond? What's he gonna do?" Janet asks.
"He hasn't decided yet," Daniel says.
She stops walking, and says, "I really need to get back to see Cassandra."
"It's going to be ok," Daniel says, pulling her into a hug. Janet nearly breaks into tears.
-0-0-0-
The decision is taking too long. If it doesn't get made now, Cassie might die anyway. So Janet decides to take matters into her own hands.
"General Hammond wanted me to check on the prisoner," she lies to the guard. He nods his head, and opens the door for her.
She walks in and levies her gun at the woman before her, and tells her in a voice with fewer shakes than she expected, "You are going to save my daughter right now."
By the time that the guard's called for reinforcements. the hand that she used to hold the gun straight out in front of her is so tired that it had to be replaced with two hands.
"Doctor Fraiser, stand down," the Generals voice says.
"I can't do that, sir. I don't have a choice," she says, her voice starting to shake.
"Honey, you can't do this," Daniel says softly.
"We can't… help Cassandra. She can," Janet pleads.
"Doctor Fraiser, your husband and his team has already convinced me to make a deal for Cassandra's life. This isn't necessary," General Hammond says.
"Then you agree to my terms?" Nirrti says with a grin on her face.
"Just one… once you've cured Cassandra of her illness, you'll be free to go," Hammond replies.
"And how do I know you will honor this?" Nirrti asks.
"You have only my word," Hammond says with a booming voice that makes it hard to doubt that his word alone would be enough.
Still Nirrti doubts it, and says, "Not enough."
"Then, shall I remind you that the woman holding the gun on you is Cassandra's mother?" he asks. Daniel's arm goes under her elbow. He knew without asking that her arm is burning from the strain of holding the heavy gun. He is willing to help her with the physical as well as moral implications of this decision.
Nirrti stands up. There is still a chance that they could save her daughter.
-0-0-0-
Janet is back to working on Cassie. But it's different this time. She isn't fighting a losing battle to save her daughter's life. She's just holding off death until the cure arrives. The cure walks in, and looks at her daughter with a touch of distain in her eyes. She is handed the healing device, and Nirrti puts it on her hand, and holds it over the teenage girl. It glows white, but goes dead altogether too soon.
"You have waited too long."
"You try again," Janet demands.
Nirrti looks at her, and knows that this face is nothing to mess with. She tries it again, and Cassie starts coughing.
"It is done," Nirrti says, handing the healing device to one of the people nearby. The monitors are making beeps which mean that everything is returning to normal. Cassie takes in a sharp breath, and pulls the mask off her face, feeling that it would be easier to breath without it, even though the opposite is true. "Mom? Dad?" she asks, sounding groggy, and using names for her parents that she hasn't used since she got sick. In fact, she hasn't been calling them by those terms of endearment much since she became a teenager.
"It's OK. I'm here," Janet says, with a voice shaking with emotion.
The Next Day
"Hey, honey, how is our girl?" Daniel asks his wife as he walks into the room.
"Bored," Cassie says as Daniel sits down at the end of the bed.
"She's still has to do a lot of that homework. Other than that, she's just fine. We get to take her home tonight."
"Glad to hear it, Livvy and Will will be glad to have their sister back."
"Yeah, I'll be glad to be out of this concrete place."
"Right, you probably want to get back to Dominic."
"Dad," Cassie says, her cheeks turning red.
"So you kissed," Daniel says.
Cassie fidgets.
"Hey, it's ok, kissing is normal at your age. I just want to meet him, have him come to dinner before you date him again."
"We're not dating," Cassie says quickly.
"But you are kissing," Daniel says with his eyebrows raised.
Cassie nods her head.
"Ok, so we need to meet the boys that you're kissing," Daniel says, "Especially the ones that you are kissing with fireworks in the background," he teases, nudging his shoulder against his daughter's.
"Is this going to be an interrogation?" Cassie asks suspiciously.
"Nope," her father promises.
Cassie raises her eyebrows at him, "So you're not going to do anything to embarrass me?"
"Oh, I'll probably do something to embarrass you, but I won't do it on purpose," Daniel says with a smile.
Cassie leans her head onto his shoulder, partly because her illness has still left her pretty sick, and partly because this whole conversation was far less awkward than she'd been thinking it was going to be.
One Week Later
"Hello, sir," Dominic says, looking very nervous as Daniel opens the door, holding on to his toddler son.
"Come on in," he says, smiling at the boy.
"Cassie said that you're in the Air Force or something, right?"
"Well I work for the air force, but I'm certainly not a soldier. Relax, I'm not going to be cleaning my Beretta while I have a serious talk with you. I just want to get to know all of Cassie's friends, particularly her good friends."
"Friends?" Dominic asked, standing stock-still in the hallway for a second. Daniel just barely manages to keep the grin inside. That was exactly the reaction that he was hoping for.
"That's what my daughter tells me," he says.
"Oh," Dominic says, looking disappointed.
Now Daniel is starting to worry that he's done more harm than good. He knows that his daughter would never forgive him if he scared away her first boyfriend before he even became a boyfriend, "It didn't sound like she was particularly happy with the word," Daniel adds. He calls up the stairs of the house, "Hey, Cass, Dominic is here."
Cassie runs down most of the stairs, and then pauses on the last one, embarrassed to have been caught running down the stairs to him.
"Hi," Dominic says.
"Hi," Cassie says with a goofy grin on her face.
"I'm going to go help your mother with dinner. Can you watch your brother for me?" Daniel asks.
"Sure," Cassie says, taking the boy out of her father's arms. Will wiggles to get down, and she lets him.
"Sorry we're babysitting," she says with a roll of her eyes that is very teenager.
"That's ok, we've just got to make sure that the kid doesn't do anything stupid, right? I still get to spend time with my girlfriend."
"Girlfriend?" Cassie asks, snapping her head to look at Dominic.
"Is that ok?" he asks insecurely.
"It's great," she says, a huge goofy grin on her face.
"Are you feeling better?" he asks.
"Yeah, that whole illness thing was just… dumb. Don't worry, it's not going to happen again, and it's certainly not contagious."
"I'm just glad you're feeling better. I kind of felt like it was my fault."
"It definitely wasn't."
"Well, I mean it happened right when we kissed…"
"Well, any strong emotion would have triggered it," she confesses.
"Strong emotion," he says, causing her to blush. "I feel strongly about you, too," he says, making her face break out in a giant grin.
He reaches over to her hand which is resting on her knee, and takes it into his own.
"Sissy," Will says, crawling toward his sister.
"What's wrong, little man?" Dominic asks, taking the boy onto his knee. The little kid puts out his hands.
"He wants to play patty cakes," Cassie says, blushing at her brother's behavior. Pretty much anything that her family did would be completely humiliating to Cassie.
Dominic starts to play with the kid. Olivia walks down the stairs in the middle of the game. Seeing her sister with her boyfriend she tries to run through the room as quickly as she can.
"Is this the little sister that I've heard so much about?" Dominic asks.
"She called me her sister?" Olivia asks in surprise.
"She's not your sister?" Dominic asks Cassie, confused.
"Not biologically. We're both adopted. Or at least, she's going to be adopted before too long," Cassie explains.
"Get out of town, you are adopted? You never told me that," Dominic says to Cassie. Then he turns to the smaller girl, "You can hang out with us 'til dinner if you want. Of course, it looked like you had somewhere pretty serious to go, so you don't have to."
Olivia smiles, "I just didn't want to get in the way."
Cassie knows that a lot of the group homes that her sister was in made Olivia feel like she was a huge inconvenience. "You're never in my way, little one," she says, patting the couch next to her.
"We were just in the middle of a game of patty cake," Dominic says with an overexcited face for the little boy, who is more than a little miffed at having his game interrupted, and who looks like he is about to begin a huge wail.
Janet peaks into the room, and her heart swells with pride with the last part of the conversation. She returns to the kitchen, and her husband, "He's really great with kids."
"Well, hopefully, he won't be displaying that attribute on our grandkids anytime soon," Daniel says.
"Don't even joke," Janet says, giving her husband a light smack on his shoulder.
"I can't help it. I don't really like the idea of my daughter dating."
"I'm not a huge fan, either. But I really like the guy that she chose to date," Janet points out.
"Agreed," Daniel says with a little reluctance.