Chapter 13 – Towards home

The closer to Alexandria and General Carter's home they got, the more nervous Jennifer got. In a sense, Sam had expected it. She had taken a little fish from a dirty and narrow pond, and she was giving her an opportunity to swim in the ocean. But the ocean was huge and big and scary, and the closer it got, the more small and scared the little fish felt.

The trouble was that Sam herself was hardly competent to deal with a young girl in a crisis of confidence. She came from a reserved, undemonstrative background, and being warm and supportive was not something she was at home with. And when she tried, she was apt to do something that did not register with the daughter and sister of small-town prostitutes. When she tried ruffling Jen's hair, like she had affectionately used to do with Mark, the girl plaintively asked: "Why are you doing this to me?" And Sam had tried to explain that in her family it was an expression of caring, and she had seen a bewildered and doubtful expression in Jen's face. She wondered whether any kind of touch or of physical expression of affection might not register badly with the statutory-rape victim.

At last she had the right idea.

"Jen, can you show me your astrophysics work?"

Jen's eyes lit up, and she drew out two battered books and a few notebooks covered with scrawled writing and ink blots.

The next hour was spent in a dense, eager conversation that took them, hardly noticing, through landing and right into the airport. Sam had already had an opportunity to look at some of the girl's work, but only for a few minutes; and on the strength of what she had seen, she had been prepared to ask her father to find a way to enter Jennifer Hailey into the notoriously hard-to-enter Air Force Academy. But this was even better than she had thought; not only because she had results worthy of a second-year college course, but because of what she had started from. Her two books – prized, though falling apart, and taken with her everywhere like talismans – were an advanced textbook, by an author that a sixteen-year-old (that was how old Jennifer was when she casually acquired it) should not have been able to understand; and a popular work by a vulgarizer whom Samantha despised. On such unpromising materials, and the mathematics of her ordinary high school course, Jen had worked for two years. She had carried them with her like talismans, day and night, slept with them near her – there were practical reasons too; she could never be sure that she would not have some bright idea in the night or when she was outside, and she did not want to expose them to the spiteful attentions of family members and school colleagues.

"Ah, there's my daughter. Talking astrophysics. Some things never change."

"No, Dad, they don't," she smiled back. "Jennifer Hailey, may I introduce you to my father, General Jacob Carter."

Jacob was in mufti, and smiling, but Jennifer was still terribly intimidated. Talk of her beloved subject had kept her going for an hour – but here, suddenly, was the great ocean incarnate in a man. She muttered something incomprehensible and then attempted a military salute.

Jacob grinned. "I think we'll leave that for when you are in the Air Force."

…...

After spending a day learning that she had no idea how to look after herself without help, Buffy had had enough. She reappeared on the grounds of 's clinic and let herself be walked inside. Silent but docile, she walked right into her room – or her cell, as she thought of it – and found a large pizza waiting for her. It had been cooked for her at Gwynneth Price's suggestion.

Gwynneth came in as Buffy was eating, and started chatting. She felt she had a handle on how to deal with and manipulate the girl, now – but had already sent down the word that the Summers case was to be closed and the girl sent back to her mother. Pity, she thought to herself, looking at Buffy, something might have been made of her. Even apart from what she knew about her, and the Muggles didn't.

…...

Jack O'Neill pressed the control buttons of the glass coffin with concern. He was no technician, and while the indications on the various buttons were clear enough, he trusted nothing to do with Hydra. And nor did anyone else in the room. But then, the only way he could have been sure of what he did is if he had a live Hydra defector to guide him... and if he had been sure he could trust him.

So he pressed the switch and twisted the handle.

Slowly – but faster than it would have been if the freezebox had just been allowed to thaw without interference – heating circuits melted the ice crystals around the form of Dum Dum Dugan, while intravenous feeds were active. The cold in the chamber rose to room temperature, and the big man's chest could now be seen to rise and fall, breathing naturally. And the freezebox lid swung open.

Dum Dum's eyes had been open all the time, but now they could be seen to blink and focus. He straightened up and, after a few seconds, began to rise from his chair. His head started swivelling here and there, his eyes searching in the semi-darkness; and he muttered.

"Chucky? Chucky... 's it you? Chucky..."

His eyes took in the SHIELD agents, and moved from one face to another, as if looking for a face he could not find. He got up with a jerk.

"YOU'RE NOT CHUCKY!" he yelled, with despair in his voice. Suddenly he stopped; shook; and ran towards one of the skeletal remains of men who had been left to moulder for months.

"Chucky! NOOOOO!"

He sank to the floor and started pounding it with fists, yelling and crying like a lost soul in Hell. It was incredibly unsettling watching a large, muscular man in his sixties, stark naked, weeping and grovelling on the ground before a skeleton with the remains of a Hydra uniform.

…...

After they had made it to General Carter's home, Samantha took her to the guest room and left her to have a wash; and change. She took the time to take her father aside and gave him a brief account of Jen's background. He was suitably stunned.

"So, with a background that was nothing but abuse, and everybody expecting that she would turn out like her mother and sister, she still taught herself astrophysics out of an advanced book?"

"Pretty much. I think she was always a good student, but she had a terrible attitude and treated her teachers arrogantly. So of course they ignored her. She claims that one teacher at least deliberately cut her marks.

"The way I read her is this: that she was never taught how to behave except to johns and pimps, and she did not know how to cope. Her arrogant attitude was an attempt to cope."

"Makes sense. But if she has the kind of attitude you say, she will have trouble at the Zoo."

Sam's head turned to look at her father's face. "Sorry, did you say she 'will' have trouble at the Zoo."

"I did indeed," said her father with an unusual, half-smothered grin. "There is an opening, and one of the Senators from Idaho is interested in sponsoring her. At this point, she's the only person who can spoil the chance for herself. But let's not tell her yet."

…...

"Now, Miss Hailey, I understand that you have no savings of your own and no place to stay?"

Jennifer blushed. "Yes, General, that's so. I want to start looking for a job as soon as possible."

"Of course you do. But until and unless you find one that pays enough to rent your own place, you are my guest. I have the space, and quite frankly I could use the company."

"Sir... thank you... but..."

"Don't be embarrassed. You'd be doing ime/i a favour. It's been too long since young people have been in this house."

"Sir, if I can speak freely, what would people think if you had a young kid from a family of prostitutes as a guest?"

Jacob Carter smiled grimly to himself, His incurable cancer, which he did not want to tell her about, made the very idea of being an old goat with a young girl in the house a joke, if a bitter one. Sam just smiled and said: "Nobody who knows my father would be so stupid. Besides, those stars on his shoulders mean that he has automatic leave not to give a damn what anyone thinks – other than Congress, the Joint Chiefs, and the President. And a lot of ithem/i have a lot worse in their closets."

"Sam," said her father with a grin, "since when did you become such a cynic?" But the stare she returned was anything but amused; and he remembered the destruction of her career by a four-star general with no morals. Since then, he guessed.

"So, Jennifer, are you happy here? Is it all right if I leave you here?" asked Sam.

"Leave? What do you mean, leave?" Jennifer was suddenly agitated.

"She has to go to her sister," broke in Jacob, to her surprise. "I have a younger daughter. She's called Buffy. She was adopted by my sister-in-law Joyce when my wife died, and she lives with her in LA. Joyce loves her a lot, and treats her as if she was her own. And now there is something going on – Buffy has been detained in a psychiatric hospital, and Joyce thinks there is something wrong about the whole show."

Jennifer had been listening with wide eyes, but at the mention of "something wrong" with an official procedure, she grimly nodded.

"Sam had been out of touch on her road trip, and heard nothing about it till she rang me up to tell me about you. And I was the one who had to give her this great piece of news."

"Oh my God. Let me get this straight. You have a kid sister."

"Fifteen. She's a cheerleader in high school."

"And she's at the other end of the country, and she's been railroaded into a looney bin."

"That's what Aunt Joyce thinks."

"And you found that out when you spoke with your father? That was at Boise airport, right?"

"Yes. I had spoken with Aunt Joyce first, while you were trying to buy that ticket."

"And you knew all this, and still you came with me to Washington DC and looked after me till we got here."

"Yes. Today is Saturday, tomorrow is Sunday, and we can't do anything till Monday. And I did not want to risk leaving you alone in a strange city with no idea where to go. I wanted to be sure you were in my father's care."

"All the same... you must have been boiling inside."

"It wasn't nice. But talking shop helped," and she grinned at Jennifer.

"And does your aunt know about this?"

"My aunt was the first to say that I should follow through with you."

"Tell your aunt thanks for me... I owe her... I will owe her as long as I live. And you...

"...I'm not good with people, Lieutenant Sam. I have no manners and I get on people's nerves and they say I'm a bitch. But I promise you this: ask me anything, ask for the blood from my veins, ask me to go and get killed, and I will do it for you. I promise this as long as I live. It would hardly be enough."

Samantha and Jacob Carter just sat there – stunned. They had not been prepared for anything like this. Then Jennifer approached Sam and shook her hand with both of hers. "And now," she said, "Go and help your sister like you helped me." And Sam hugged her.