The Next Day
Sam makes her way into Daniel's office, because he has an artifact that she's been dying to get her hands on. He's had it for four days, and she figures that that is more than enough time to make the translation. If he hasn't done it by now, he's probably can't. What's more, he probably needs to be told that he can't. Left to his own devices Daniel will keep trying long after anyone else would have given up. He'd cracked so many uncrack able codes that nothing seemed impossible.
She thinks that the office is empty when she first turns the light on, and is wondering if it would be appropriate to take an ancient artifact and leave a note. When she sees him.
Daniel Jackson, a man with three PHD's lying on the floor of his lab.
"Daniel!" she says in surprise.
He blinks up at her.
"Did you fall asleep while you were working?" she asks.
He blinks at her, wordless, and confused. Then her eyes take in the whole picture, the way that his clothes are crumpled by more than a short nap, the smell of burnt coffee, and unbathed man.
"Daniel, when is the last time that you've been home?" she asks gently squatting on the floor next to where he is still sitting.
He shrugs his shoulders.
"The funeral? Daniel, have you been home since the funeral?" she asks.
He shakes his head.
"Oh, Daniel," she says mournfully.
He hangs his head.
"What about your children? Who has been taking care of your children?"
He can't even muster panic. There is definitely something wrong with him. He needs medical help. She'd better call Janet.
It hits her, all fresh and new, that she'll never be able to call Janet again. That sort of thing has been happening an awful lot since Janet died.
Well, she'd better call someone, and she'd better check on his kids.
Later That Day
As soon as Cassie gets out of her last class she checks her cell phone. She'd love to check it in class, sometimes the day care calls to say that Will has been crying or that Drew won't eat. She's afraid that one day Olivia, who has already lost four parents, is going to shatter and need someone to pick up the pieces as well.
Today, though, there is a message from Sam. She's got the boys at home, and she's going to pick up Olivia.
There is nothing to worry about, Sam says.
That only means that there is everything to worry about. Cassie has been worried about this ever since her father first dropped out of their lives. She didn't think that people would fail to notice his absence forever.
She worried about what might happened when they finally did notice. She worried that they might take her siblings from her.
Olivia had been in foster care. She'd run away from foster care. They were all too old to be adopted, even little Drew wasn't really a baby anymore.
And what about Cassie? If her siblings were pulled away from her now she would have no family left. She was eighteen, and she would have no place to live until she graduated from high school. There would be no place to go for Thanksgiving and Christmas. There would never, ever, be anyone that she could call "hers".
No, she was going to keep this family together any way that she could.
She rushes home so fast that she beats them. She pulls some much neglected Shakespeare out of her backpack to study. Not that it really matters. She's close enough to the end of her schooling, and was a good enough student that the only way she's not going to graduate is if she really screws up, and college is out of the question for reasons completely different than grades.
Sam comes in, and pulls some pre-cut vegetables out of the fridge. This immediately makes Cassie feel like a crappy mother surrogate. She should prepare after school snacks like those out of a magazine or a 1950's TV show as well.
"Cassie, can I talk to you in the other room?" Sam asks softly.
Cassie nods, and shuffles after her into the living room.
"Honey, why didn't you tell me it was this bad? You could have called us! Any of us! We would have helped you!"
"I didn't know it was bad," Cassie mutters.
"Honey, you're dad needs help, he should have been there for you guys."
"I was taking care of them," Cassie says squaring her shoulders.
"You're a kid."
"I'll get custody of them if I have to. I'll fight you for them," Cassie says suddenly. She isn't even sure where the words are coming from, but they're spilling out of her mouth.
"Custody? Cass, it's not going to come to that. Your dad is getting help. Catherine is flying tomorrow on the two o'clock flight. She's going to be staying at least two weeks, longer if you need it. I'm going to be staying with you until she arrives. We're just going to make sure that you're taken care of until your dad gets better. We had no idea that he was…wasn't home, and not showering or eating or…functioning."
Cassie's heart clenched. She hadn't really thought about where her father was. She'd been much too busy being angry at him to worry about him. "You said he's getting help, so he's like in a mental hospital?"
"He is for now. He's on some depression medicine, and in therapy," Sam says softly, "You didn't know what was going on with him?"
Cassie shakes his head, "No, I just…he wasn't here."
"Honey, you needed to call us. He could have hurt himself, and we never would have known to look for him, to try to save him."
Cassie is struck with cold terror when she thinks about her father being dead, gone forever like her mom, "He's suicidal?"
"I don't know, he would barely talk to me," Sam says.
Cassie starts to cry, and Sam folds her into her arms, "It's ok, honey it's ok."
A Week Later
Cassie accepts Catherine's arrival the way a new mother accepts a grandmother coming after a birth. It was desperately needed childcare, and a parenting boot camp all wrapped into one. Not that Catherine had ever been a mother, but she had more experience with children than Cassie did herself. Catherine was useless with household chores though, having grown up around servants.
Dominic seemed relieved by Catherine's arrival. He started coming around again, and he and Cassie them tried to resume the easy light-hearted teenage romance they had had before Janet's death.
Dominic thought that they had resumed it.
To Cassie it was empty and shallow. She had become an adult. Grief can often do that without any additional responsibilities when you reach a certain age, and Cassie had the added complexities of bills and laundry and bath time to her list.
Dominic was a child. Dating him to her, suddenly seemed as perverse as if she started dating one of Olivia's friends. It was wrong somehow, and perverted. Sex, an even kissing, were not options for her. He said he understood, that it was grief.
She wanted to break up with him, but she didn't want to hurt him. Like an adult would want to protect a child from heartbreak over her first crush.
Like her father, back when he was a father, had tried to protect Olivia form being crushed by her crush on Tyler.
She didn't tell anyone about all the thoughts that she kept on the inside, about her ideas for the future. She didn't tell anyone that she'd never actually sent those college applications. She kept quiet about the job interviews she slipped away to during her lunch hour.
Maybe she would be a secretary at the family friendly accounting firm down town.
Maybe she would work in the mail room of the lawyers, after all, they had a day care right on site.
Maybe she would take the job working as a para at Olivia's school.
No matter what, her kiddos would be well looked after, of this she was sure.
Four Days Later
Daniel returns to their home with much fanfare. The little boys don't do anything all day but hang off of them. Even Olivia has a pretty bad case of hero worship. It's like he's come back from the dead, and after all the loss that she's suffered she could use an occasional resurrection.
He doesn't talk much, but he makes eye contact, and he listens, which is somehow more than Cassie expected.
How could you check out so completely? How could you leave your family alone, and then come back and start to act as if nothing at all was wrong?
After their bathes the boys pile into his bed.
"I'm sorry, we got into the habit of doing this when you were gone," Cassie says apologetically hauling Drew up.
Daniel shakes his head, "No, that's right, remember, Livvy Lou? When you came to say with us? You slept in our bed for a while."
Olivia nods.
"And you stayed with your mom too when you first were adopted," Daniel says turning to his older daughter.
She is not about to be won over that easily.
"I wish someone had been there to do that for me when my parents died."
"So do I." Cassie says.
His eyes are wounded, but he doesn't say anything.
Cassie thinks about sleeping in her own bed, but if she's honest she needs her siblings as much as they need her, and so she takes her usual place between the boys. They are already asleep, and Olivia is not far behind. She sleeps a lot now days. It's a sign of depression, and it's got Cassie worried.
Daniel isn't asleep, and neither is Cassie.
"Have you ever been unable to do something, no matter how much you wanted to?" he asks into the darkness.
"Yeah, solve quadratic equations, not love my family," she whispers as she gets up to leave the room.
"Have you ever wanted to get off the floor, to shower, to move, and just not been able to manage it?" he presses as he follows her.
"Don't give me that crap. I lost my mother, and I still got off my butt every day, and did what needed to be done."
"Cassie, I have been losing people my whole life. I have lost everyone…."
"You didn't lose us. You checked out on us, Daniel."
He stiffens at the word. She hasn't called him that in a long time. It took him a long time to earn the title of "Dad" he hopes that he doesn't have to earn it all from scratch again.
"I'm sorry, but she was gone…" he mutters.
"I've lost as much as you have. So has Olivia. We're still parts of this family. Do you even understand what you've done to us? What I've had to give up?"
"Catherine was here," he says confused. Catherine was leaving the next day, and when he'd seen her upon his arrival he'd naturally assumed that she'd been here ever since the funeral.
"Not always, and that's not the point. Catherine isn't family. Well, at least she isn't immediate, live here all the time, wipe snot from a baby's nose, I'd be happy to take your chewed gum kind of family.
"I'm here now," he says softly.
"Fat lot of good that does us. Do you think I will ever be able to trust you again? You left, when we needed you most."
"You're going to have to trust me when you go to college."
Cassie's facial expression is strictly involuntary, but it gives away everything.
"Cassie, you sent the applications out, right?"
"There is something noble in motherhood," she whispers.
"I agree, but not when you're unmarried and eighteen."
"It's not as if it's literal motherhood. I'm not pregnant," she says thinking that he misunderstood.
"Well, thank heavens for that, but it doesn't matter how you enter into parenthood. It's hard work, and you're too young for it. I'm here now. I know that I was gone for a while. I can even understand if you cannot forgive me for that. But I'm back, and I'm not going anywhere now, and I'm going to raise my children."
Tears run down Cassie's face. "I told you that my parents were divorced. What I didn't tell you was that my father never really saw me after the divorce. He promised that he was going to come visit me. He swore, but he never did. Not once."
"I'm not your father," Daniel says lightly touching her face.
"No, you're not," she says with a sad laugh, "Now, you're just some guy that an amazing women fell in love with, long ago, before she died."
"You're going to school," he says firmly.
"I'm finishing high school," she agrees.
"You're going to college."
"Eighteen, remember? That means I get to make my own choices," she says spinning out of the room, and going to her own bedroom. Right now she needs to be alone as desperately as she needed to be together not long ago.