Part XV

“A Scooby?” asked Cassie.

“Sure!” Jack guided her away from the path that led up to the front of the school, away from where anyone might overhear them. “Well…you can’t actually call me that. I never much cared for that show, but…you need someone to watch your back.”

“And you want to do that?”

Jack shrugged. “I can’t help save the world from the space aliens anymore. Maybe I can help save the world from the monsters.”

They’d reached a low retaining wall, and Cassie sat on it. “What do you mean?”

Jack sat beside her. “The WCI folks seem more inclined to take someone who looks like a kid seriously. From what they’ve told us, most of them are kids. Harris and Russell are part of the ‘old crowd,’ and they’ve been doing it since they were the age I look.”

“So, you’re just going to apply to them for a job?” asked Cassie. “Why should they hire you? What are your qualifications? Going to tell them you’re an Air Force colonel who got shrunk?”

“I wasn’t planning on applying, so much as just doing it…with you,” said Jack. “SG-1 doesn’t have the time to train you properly, but I’ve really got nothing but time. I can work with you: teach you how to fight, how to use weapons; teach you about strategy and tactics.”

“You’ll do that?” asked Cassie.

“You betcha!” said Jack. “And while I’m doing it, I’ll be watching your back, making sure that they aren’t up to anything nefarious.”

“Nefarious?”

“If you tell Daniel that I know what it means, the deal’s off.” Jack grinned at her. “I’ve got an image to uphold.”

“What am I supposed to tell the Council about you?” asked Cassie.

“That I’m your friend, and I’m helping you out.”

“And if they wonder why you have the same name as Colonel O’Neill?”

“The background they made up for me makes me my cousin, or something like that. We were both named after our granddad. And it isn’t like either ‘Jack’ or ‘O’Neill’ is an uncommon name. There’s even another Colonel Jack O’Neil in the Air Force, but he’s only got one ‘l’.”

Janet had told Cassie to invite Jack to dinner that evening, so she did. He showed up on their doorstep at ten to six, with a bottle of ginger ale. “I still haven’t been able to find a store that will sell me beer or wine,” he complained. “I’m gonna have to get a fake fake ID.”

Janet took the bottle from him. “Thank you, anyway, Colonel— Uh…” She looked uncomfortable. “Please, come in. Dinner’s almost ready.”

Jack entered the house. “Just call me ‘Jack,’ Doc. I’m not in the Air Force any more.”

“Go on in, Jack,” said Janet. “Everyone’s in the living room.”

“Everyone?” asked Jack.

“I invited Daniel and Sam, too.”

Jack saw his former teammates rising as he entered. “What about Maxi-Me, and Teal’c?”

“Maxi-uh-you?” asked Carter.

“If he can call me, ‘Mini-Me,’ I can call him ‘Maxi-Me.’”

“He felt it would be best if he wasn’t here,” said Daniel, “He and Teal’c are at the Alpha site, mediating another dispute between the Tok’ra, and the free Jaffa.”

“Wow, he must really not want to see me.”

“General Hammond didn’t give him much choice,” said Carter.

Cassie came in from the kitchen, carrying three bottles of beer. She gave one to Carter, and the second to Daniel. Jack saw Carter frown when Cassie gave the third beer to him. He took a healthy swig from it. “Ahhh, thanks, Cass. That’s good. You are now my favourite person in the whole world.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting, so make it last,” said Janet. “You may have a fifty year old mind, but your body is still closer to fifteen.”

Jack found that he really didn’t want another beer. The one he had gave him the sort of buzz he’d have gotten from two or three bottles, pre-cloning. Dinner was good. Jack had mostly been eating takeout recently. It was nice to have a home cooked meal, and with Janet as chief cook, it was sure to be something nutritious, as well as tasty. They all moved back to the living room for their after-dinner coffees while Cassie finished cleaning up.

“Did you learn anything about the Slayer, or the Council?” Janet asked Daniel, after Cassie had joined them.

Daniel set his coffee mug down on the table. “Very little. Jonas did a very good job researching WCI, I couldn’t come up with much that he missed. I remember coming across references to them in the past, as sponsors for digs, and things like that, but nothing really concrete. They’ve always tried to operate quietly, usually staying out of the limelight when someone they’ve sponsored turns up something interesting. They were always willing to let someone else take the credit. There have been stories about some unusual artefacts disappearing from digs that they were involved in, but unfortunately, that sort of thing happens a lot, especially when you’re working in third world countries. If anything, there was usually less pilfering from WCI digs than from others.”

“What about Slayers?” asked Cassie.

“Nothing definite. There are stories about women warriors in nearly all cultures: the Greek Amazons, the Norse Valkyries, and so on, but they don’t seem to fit with the Slayer story: they weren’t one girl. There are just as many stories about individual women warriors, but again, few of them fit the Slayer pattern: they’re usually stories about women leading armies against human foes, not the forces of darkness. Joan of Arc leading the French against their English invaders, Queen Boudica leading the Celts against their Roman invaders. Stories of women fighting monsters are much rarer.”

“So no stories about the Slayer,” said Jack. “So, maybe they made all that stuff up.”

“No!” said Cassie. “That can’t be true.”

“Just because I can’t match up the story of the Slayer told by WCI with any ancient legends, doesn’t make her not real,” said Daniel. “I can’t link up little grey aliens with big eyes to the legends of the Norse gods, either, just by looking at the legends. Thor’s supposed to be this really big guy with red hair, and a beard.”

“But you figured out that the Asgard were aliens, from the legends,” said Jack.

“I made a lucky guess,” said Daniel. “If the Egyptian gods were aliens, why not some other pantheon? But many of the gods of legends seem to be just that: legends.”

“That’s not what you said at the time.”

“I was putting the best face possible on my theory, in order to sell it to General Hammond, but if Teal’c hadn’t come up with the gate address for Cimmeria, it would have gotten us nowhere.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” said Jack. “What are we going to do about the Council?”

“Do we have to do anything?” asked Cassie. “I mean…they aren’t really doing anything are they? They’ve just come and explained what’s happened to me. They haven’t asked me to do anything that we weren’t going to do anyway, other than that trip to Cleveland.”

“We still want to keep an eye on them,” said Jack. “And on you.”

“Well, that was the whole idea with you training me, wasn’t it?” asked Cassie. “So you could keep an eye on me?”

Cassie spent a lot of time with Jack over the next months, so much so that some people started thinking that he was her boyfriend…which they both thought was really weird. She had never really had a boyfriend who lasted longer than a couple of months. She thought that most of the guys that she went to school with were pretty boring. Some of them were okay, and she’d had some dates, and even let one guy get to second base with her, after they’d been going out for a month, but they hadn’t gone any farther than that, and then they’d had a fight, and now he was going out with one of the cheerleaders.

She didn’t see much of Jack while they were in school. They only shared a couple of classes: English and one math. He wasn’t in the other math classes she was taking, or Physics or Chemistry. Jack was taking other things: History, Spanish, Geography and so on. Cassie knew that he was frustrating her math teacher. He just seemed to be coasting through the class, not really putting in much effort—just enough to get by—and he was still getting an A. Even though she knew the reason—this was Jack’s second time through—Cassie felt a little frustrated by it too. She was having to work a lot harder than Jack to get the same result.

She was getting a better handle on her strength now, enough that accidents almost never happened. That let Jack teach her hand-to-hand fighting techniques, without having to worry too much about her breaking him. Jack also taught her how to fight with a knife, and handle guns.

Jack had almost no contact with SG-1, especially the other Jack. He’d sometimes see Sam when when she was with Cassie, but he saw very little of anyone else. The SGC wanted to keep an eye on him, but he was no longer in the loop about things that were happening off-world. More often than not it was Cassie who kept him up to date on the latest happenings, not that Janet or Sam ever told her much either, but Cassie could always tell when something important was happening: Sam might disappear for weeks, and her mother would spend a lot of late nights at the base.

Jack maintained enough contact with the SGC to arrange for them to get time on the Fort Carson shooting range, so he could teach Cassie how to handle firearms. Most of the time was spent teaching her gun safety, but she also learned how to shoot a wide variety of weapons, from pistols, through rifles and shotguns, up to fully automatic weapons like the M-16 and AK-47.

It didn’t take long after being familiarized with each weapon before Cassie was shooting at an “Expert” level with all of them. She seemed to have a natural ability to quickly learn how to use any weapon placed in her hands.

February had been cold, but the skies were clear and sunny. There had been a couple of light dustings of snow in Colorado Springs, but not enough to stick around. There was lots of snow higher in the mountains. Cassie’s friends had been talking about going for a ski trip in the upcoming March break, and she wanted to join them. She didn’t think that there would be any trouble getting her mother’s permission. School had been going well, she was near the top of most of her classes and she was up to date on all of her assignments. Jack seemed to be on board with the idea too, and she knew that her mother trusted him to keep her out of trouble. (Though Cassie wasn’t so sure why that was. The other O’Neill never seemed to have any difficulty getting himself into trouble.)

She arrived home on a Friday afternoon, determined to ask her mother for permission to go on the trip. She had it all planned out. She’d make a nice dinner for them to soften Janet up a bit first, and then mention the trip over dessert. She’d had a light lunch today, and was feeling hungry. She was a little surprised to see Sam’s car in the driveway.

She dumped her school bag at the base of the stairs after entering her house. She saw Sam waiting in the hall, in her dress blue uniform. “Hey Sam! What’s up?” Cassie’s smile faded when she saw the expression on Sam’s face. “Is something wrong? Has something happened to Mom?”

Sam looked sadder than Cassie could remember her being for some time. “Cassie I— I’m sorry.”

Cassie was starting to get worried. “What’s wrong? Is Mom hurt?”

“I’m sorry, Cassie. There’s no good way to say this. Janet’s dead.”

Cassie felt like someone had hit her. “No. She can’t be,” she said, but she knew that was a lie. The expression on Sam’s face told her that it was true. She still didn’t want to believe it. “She can’t be dead.”

Sam stepped toward her. “I’m so sorry. I wish it weren’t true, too.” She reached out to wrap Cassie in a hug.

“No!” Cassie pushed her away. “No!” She spun around, and smashed her fist into the wall. “No! No! No!” She hit the wall again, and again, each blow making a new hole. She eventually stopped, when there was no more wall to hit. “What am I going to do?” she cried.

Sam came to her again, and this time Cassie didn’t push her away when she hugged her. “You’re going to be okay.”

Cassie cried against Sam’s shoulder. “What am I going to do?” she asked again, in a tiny voice.

“First thing, we’re going to pack you a bag with a few things you’ll need to stay with me for a while,” said Sam. “I’m going to help you get through this.”

“Why does this happen to me?” asked Cassie. “First Mommy and Daddy, and everyone on Hanka. Now Mom. Why does everyone leave me?”

“I’m not leaving you,” said Sam. “And you’ve got your friends, and Jack…both of them, and Daniel and Teal’c. We’re not leaving you. We’ll never leave you.”

“You can’t promise that,” said Cassie. “Daniel’s already been dead once. You’ve all been hurt.”

“But we’ve always come back,” said Sam. “Now come on. We’ll pack up the stuff you need for the night.” She took Cassie’s hand and led her up the stairs.

“What happened?” asked Cassie. “How did she die? Did it hurt?”

“It was quick,” said Sam. “She didn’t suffer.”

Sam told Cassie what had happened while they packed up her overnight bag. SG-13 had been attacked offworld, and Airman Wells had been seriously wounded. Janet had gone with the rescue team, to stabilize him in the field, and been shot by a Jaffa staff weapon.

“What about Airman Wells?” asked Cassie. “Is he alright?” It seemed like the question she should ask.

“He’s going to recover,” said Sam. “Janet saved him.”

“I wish…” Cassie stopped herself. She wanted to wish that her mother hadn’t gone, hadn’t risked herself for this Wells guy, but she couldn’t. Her mother couldn’t not have gone. “Was anyone else hurt?” she asked instead.

“Colonel O’Neill was wounded too, but he’s going to be fine,” said Sam. “The med people are already talking about letting him go early, he’s making such a fuss.”

Cassie smiled. Her mother had always complained that Jack was the worst patient she ever treated. Then she felt a stab of guilt. How could she smile now?

Sam finished packing a change of clothes for her. “Come on. We’ll go over to my place, and I’ll make you dinner.”

Cassie shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

Cassie was surprised to see Jack sitting on Sam’s porch, when the car stopped. “Daniel called him,” said Sam. “We figured he’d want to know.”

Cassie just nodded, without saying anything. She hadn’t spoken since they’d left her house. She wrapped her arms around herself, and shivered from the cold. The temperature seemed to have dropped, and the sun wasn’t giving her any warmth.

Sam grabbed Cassie’s bag out of the back seat. “Come on inside. It’ll be warmer there.”

Cassie just nodded wordlessly again, and followed Sam into the house. She ignored Jack saying something sympathetic to her. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

Cassie mostly just poked at her food. She managed to force herself to eat a few bites, but it seemed tasteless to her. She didn’t pay attention to Jack and Sam as he got Sam to tell him what had happened. They didn’t say much about her mother—they seemed to be avoiding that subject—he mostly seemed to want to hear about how the other Jack had been wounded.

They sat around after dinner, with Jack and Sam both trying unsuccessfully to get Cassie to talk. It only made her feel worse. She wanted to be left alone right now, but they wouldn’t do that. She knew that they were doing this because they cared about her, and in a way that made it harder. Her pain was making those around her feel worse. It was all too much. She stood up. “I’m going to bed.”

“Okay Cassie.” Sam got up too. “I’ll see you in the morning.” She gave Cassie another hug. “I love you.”

“Alright.” Cassie shuffled off to her room. She spent enough time with Sam that it was like a second home for her, just as familiar as her own. She didn’t bother changing into her pyjamas. She just collapsed across the bed in her clothes. After a while she rolled over onto her back, and stared at the ceiling.

Sam and Jack were still talking quietly in Sam’s living room. Quietly enough that they probably figured that she couldn’t hear them.

“She’s taking this hard,” said Jack.

“Can you blame her?” asked Sam. “This is the second time she’s lost a mother.”

“No, I understand,” said Jack. “But we’ll have to keep an eye on her for a while.”

“You think she might—”

“No!” said Jack, “But after this…you know what I think about the shrinks, but she might need one of those grief councillors we’ve got on staff.”

“Already on it,” said Sam. “It’s not like we could send her to a regular therapist. If she told him the truth about her life, he’d have her in a straitjacket faster than you can say ‘event horizon quantum fluctuations.’”

“Well, certainly faster than I can say it,” said Jack. “What really happened with Janet?”

“It was pretty much as I told Cassie,” said Sam. “She was hit square in the chest by a staff blast. It killed her instantly.” She lowered her voice even further, into a whisper. “We’ve got it on tape.”

“What?” asked Jack.

“There’s a film crew, doing a documentary on the program,” whispered Sam. “They asked Daniel to tape what was going on offworld—take some pictures of ‘some action’ instead of just his usual rocks—and then Wells…he was afraid he was going to die, and wanted to say goodbye to his wife, so Daniel got out his camera. He was shooting Janet, treating Wells, when it happened. He’s hanging on to that tape, and the General is backing him up, we’re not giving it to the film crew, but I’ve seen it.” Sam paused for a moment. “I wish I hadn’t.”

They were quiet for a while after that. The silence was broken by Jack. “Look Carter, I’ll be going, but call me if you or Cassie need anything.”

“Okay, Jack. I’ve got to go back into the base in the morning. We’ve got a weenie from Washington doing an ‘investigation.’ Could you come over, so Cassie won’t be alone?”

“Of course.”

“We’re going to do a memorial service for Janet. I’m not sure when yet. Cassie will want to be there.”

“That’s good,” said Jack.

“I’ll talk to General Hammond. He’ll probably agree to let you come to it too. You have as much right to be there as anyone else. I’ll call to let you know.”

“Thanks,” said Jack. “I appreciate it.”

Cassie heard Jack leave, and then she listened to Sam moving around the house, cleaning things up a bit. She heard her coming down the hall toward her room, and knew that she was going to look in on her. She quickly moved under the blankets on her bed, and pretended to be asleep when Sam opened the door.

Sam stayed in the doorway. Cassie concentrated on her breathing, slow and steady, in and out, nice and regular, like a sleeping person: willing Sam to go away and leave her alone. It eventually worked, even though Cassie didn’t think that Sam was fooled. She rolled onto her back again, and resumed staring at the ceiling.

She listened to Sam getting ready for bed, and then the house went quiet. Cassie still lay there, looking at the ceiling.

“Screw this!” she said eventually. She got out of bed and went to the closet. She’d left a light jacket here a couple of weeks ago. She put it on, and went to the window. She slipped out it into the night.

It was cold, and Cassie’s jacket wasn’t really warm enough, but she didn’t care. She started to run. She didn’t pay any attention to where she was going. It didn’t matter. She just ran. Before she knew it she had left all the houses behind. She knew where she was: she and Sam went jogging here all the time, though not at night. She was among the rock formations of the Garden of the Gods. She ran harder, choosing the steepest, most difficult trails, trying to wear herself out. She eventually came to a stop at the top of a hill. The cold breeze carried away little puffs of mist from her breathing. She looked back down, and she could see the lights of Colorado Springs spread out below her. She looked up, and she could see the stars. She could see the Milky Way splashed across the cloudless sky. She wondered if one of those little dots of light was the sun that had been shining down on her mother when she died. She looked below the bowl of the Big Dipper. Sam had told her that that was where Hanka was, but that star was too distant to be visible. She let out a wordless cry of rage at the cold universe around her. She wanted to kill the Jaffa that had killed her mother. She wanted to hit something, anything. She remembered something Faith had said, that night they’d met in the cemetery. It really was too bad that Colorado Springs was dead for the undead. It would be nice to have a vampire to beat up about now.

“It’s a little late for you to be out here isn’t it?”

Cassie turned toward the voice, thinking for a moment that maybe the universe had heard her silent wish, and provided her with a vampire, but it hadn’t. She didn’t feel anything when she looked at the man who had come up behind her. He was just a man. Scruffy looking, probably smelled, if the slight breeze had been blowing the other way. It had been several days since he’d shaved. There was something predatory about the way he looked at her, though. A year ago, a look like that, in a situation like this, would have scared her. “Go away,” she told him.

“You alone?” he asked. “Maybe I should walk you back home.”

“I don’t want your help,” said Cassie. “I’m fine on my own.”

“You’re really alone?” asked the man.

“Just you, me and the stars,” said Cassie.

“Well, isn’t that nice.” His voice had changed. He sounded smug now. Cassie heard a snick and saw the glimmer of light reflected off the blade of a knife. “No one but me heard you yelling earlier. No one but me will hear you scream.”

Cassie felt her pulse quickening. It wasn’t fear. It was anticipation. This guy wasn’t a threat to her. She could take him easily, but… “Get out of here while you still can,” she told him coldly.

“What?” asked the man. “You think I’m afraid of a little girl like you?”

“You should be,” said Cassie.

“In your dreams, girl.” He raised his knife threateningly, and tried to grab her with his other hand.

Cassie’s hand clamped around the wrist of his knife hand, and she kicked him in the balls. The man doubled over in pain. “My dreams are of much scarier things than you.” She brought her knee up, and smashed it into his nose.

She squeezed his wrist, and felt bones crack in it. He dropped his knife, and fell to the ground. Cassie kicked him in the ribs. “I was wanting something to beat up. Looks like you’re it.” She kicked him again.

The man rolled over on the ground. Cassie pulled her foot back to kick him again, when he coughed, spraying the rocks with black dots. She froze. He was coughing blood. That wasn’t good. She knelt down beside him, and rolled him over onto his back. He was barely conscious, and groaned in pain. Cassie quickly decided that she really hadn’t hurt him that badly. The blood had come from his broken nose. He was breathing all right, if painfully: probably because of some broken ribs. Her moment of fear was replaced by disgust. Disgust with him, and with herself for what she’d done to him. She stood up, and looked around for his knife. She kicked the switch-blade farther away from him. “Stay here,” she told him. “I’ll call you an ambulance.”

She knew the park. If she ignored the paths there was a parking lot just a few hundred yards down hill from here, and there was an emergency phone there. It only took her a couple of minutes to reach it. She dialled 911.

“911. What is your emergency?” asked the operator.

“Yeah, I’m in the Garden of the Gods. There’s an attempted rapist about 400 yards west of this phone. He’s been beat up pretty badly.”

“Please stay on the line,” said the operator. “May I have your name?”

Cassie ignored her. She figured it probably didn’t matter, but she used her jacket sleeve to wipe her fingerprints off the phone, and the buttons on the keypad. She left the receiver dangling, with the operator still trying to get her to talk, and ran back up the hill to where she had left the man.

He was right where she’d left him. Cassie could hear the sirens from police cars and an ambulance when she got back to him. She looked back down the hill and saw flashing lights converging on the phone from opposite directions.

She waited for their sirens to stop, and for the cops and ambulance attendants to get out of their vehicles. “Yo! Up here!” she shouted, and waved, even though she knew that they couldn’t see her in the dark.

A pair of cops started up the hill toward her, lighting their way with flashlights. The two men from the ambulance carried a stretcher behind them. Cassie sometimes whistled at them, to get them back on the right track, when they seemed to be losing their way. When they got close enough that they might be able to see her, she started to pull away, staying out of the range of their lights. She saw the cops’ flashlight beams stop on the man on the ground, and they ran the last few yards to him. One of them knelt down to check on him.

“Don’t forget his knife!” Cassie shouted from the darkness. The other cop’s light swept around the ground until he found it.

The ambulance guys arrived, and began tending to the man. The cops turned their attention outward, shining their lights toward Cassie. “Why don’t you come back here, ma’am?” called one of them. “We won’t hurt you.” His light swept through the darkness, looking for her.

“She’s a crazy girl!” she heard the man say. “She tried to kill me!”

Cassie scoffed at that. “Yeah, right! After you pulled your knife on me.”

“Please ma’am. You’re safe now,” said the cop. “You can come back.”

“I was always safe,” said Cassie. “I just wanted to make sure he didn’t die before you found him.” And with that, she turned her back on the cops, and ran into the darkness.