Reading Time: 136 Minutes
Title: Finding Perspectives
Series: Priceless
Series Order: 7
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Criminal Minds; JAG
Genre: Crime Drama, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Established Relationship, Family, Kid!fic, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): Paula Cassidy/Anthony DiNozzo – present, Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran, Jack O’Neill/Sarah O’Neill – past, Anthony DiNozzo/Paula Cassidy – past.
Content Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Rape/Non-con/Dub-con, Slavery, Torture, Violence – Graphic, Violence – Domestic and/or Against Children , Violence – graphic, offscreen torture, discussions of past and offscreen rape/non-con, issues around the loss of free will, loss of bodily autonomy, mind control, past murder of OC character, discussions of miscarriage and abortion, discussions of slavery and implications of mind control, non-consensual drug use, discussion of past domestic violence, discussion of canon vaccination and future vaccination programs, discussion of past canon unethical medical experimentation, character bashing (Elizabeth Weir and Ziva David). Not friendly to: McKay, Gibbs, Keller, McGee, Vance. (Note: slavery, mind control, autonomy issues are related to canon events)
Author Note: British Spelling
Word Count: 140,984
Summary: With Sahar finally neutralised, Ziva decides it’s time to take her daughter back to Israel and sets out to track her down, but it may be far harder than she thought. Penelope sets their plan in motion, hoping to eradicate the Trust once and for all, calling in some old hacker friends to assist Home World in thwarting her search and identifying and tracking down Trust personnel. Meanwhile, Home World Commands program to produce vaccines to inoculate Planet Earth and their Allies continues feverishly when a group of interdimensional travellers arrive at Area 51, requesting asylum, warning them that they could face grave danger. Members of this group profoundly affect some personnel when they find their worlds turned upside down. Will they take the unexpected chance at happiness, or will their duty force them to sacrifice a chance of a happy ending?
Artist: Angelicinsanity
Chapter 18
Colin Chaos Mason was fed up with Alec Hardison’s juvenile mind games. He’d been trying to contact him and sign on for the job that he’d put out feelers for four days ago, but he wasn’t responding. Colin was hearing around the traps that LEVERAGE was sending out feelers to see who was available for a significant mission that could take a month or more which was paying generous rates. He’d heard from several of his own crew who’d signed on that several former and current Mossad operatives had signed up. Along with the tantalising prospect of working for the MOBAB (mother of all badass hackers) who he still hadn’t been able to confirm if they were actually the Black Queen or a hacker nicknamed The Dirty Dozen by a bunch of dangerous killers on the dark web. Chaos was positive that Alec knew, but he wasn’t telling…mostly because he was ignoring Mason’s attempts to engage him in communication.
And he knew he shouldn’t be letting Hardison get under his skin, that he should just ignore him. In fact, the best way to psych out his annoying nemesis was to snub him and make the smarmy little shithead come crawling to him, begging for his expertise. After all, if this mission was as important as Colin suspected, it was a no-brainer that Alec would need an awesome hacker cum organiser/fixer to save the day. All he had to do was play it cool and bide his time and Alec would soon start to sweat. To that end, he’d planned his day accordingly. On the agenda had been scheduling a relaxing few hours at his favourite spa, having a therapeutic massage, a clay mask facial, a booking in for the Manly-Manicure and the Mani-Pedi. He would finish up his indulgence day with a Botox session with the cosmetic surgeon to attend to some fine lines around his eyes before going to lunch at his favourite seafood restaurant on the way back to his apartment.
Once back home he planned to veg out in front of the TV, watching Treknobabble’s five top Wesley Crusher Star Trek episodes. If he was still at a loose end and in the mood he might even watch the four honourable mentions episodes that the website contributors singled out as being worthy of attention. Like him, the site seemed to feel that the bad rap that the Wesley Crusher character got wasn’t justified and that he served an important function as a Mary Sue character and that he was a young nerd that younger viewers could relate to. It was refreshing to discover that there were others out there who liked Wesley because Chaos felt simpatico with the boy genius who, like Colin was a child prodigy and that was considered to be extremely uncool. Plus, he often got to show up older, more average members of the crew and save their asses which appealed to Chaos.
However, while he had an awesomely fantastic day, all planned out, it had gone completely pear-shaped, right in the middle of Inge’s Swedish massage, just as he was beginning to relax, and she was working all the painful knots out of tense muscles in his shoulders and neck. He received a text message from Hardison after days of ignoring him and he had to wonder, was it deliberate? Did that infuriating jackass know that he was right in the middle of his therapeutic massage? Was he tracking him, monitoring his appointments.
He totally would not discount the possibility because Hardison was a real jerk and Chaos knew that he should totally ignore his phone, not check it. After all, Hardison had been ignoring him and he should give the annoying prick a taste of his own medicine, but as much as he tried to resist the urge to check and see what Alec had to say, it wasn’t that easy to withstand the temptation. It was as if the phone was calling him, much like the famed ancient Greek Sirens in mythology lured clueless sailors to their deaths with their irresistible songs.
Knowing that the massage was doomed to be a failure until he read the text that Hardison finally deigned to send him, albeit, at a completely inappropriate time, Mason gestured to Inge to stop and take a break while he checked out his phone. Although he suspected that she wasn’t really from Sweden and her name wasn’t Inge because he’d overheard one of the receptionists call her Ava. Of course, in their rapidly escalating game of brinkmanship, the encryption by this stage had escalated up to fourteen levels, so it took forever to be able to read it. Okay, so that was a slight exaggeration, but it took a lot longer to find out what Hardison had to say than Colin preferred, his curiosity red hot.
As he read the message he noted in annoyance that the smug jerk was still refusing to tell him if the MOABAH was The Dirty Dozen or the Black Queen and it was driving him crazy not to know. Instead, he had sent Chaos a seemingly innocent message asking him if he’d heard good things about a Hacker who he was thinking of recruiting for his Big Job.
Thinking of hiring Zane Donovan! Pros – crashed NY Stock Exchange & stole $3.1 million from War on Drugs Fund. Reputation as a brilliant hacker. Plus, physics, string theory and astronomy. Accepted to MIT when he was 13 y/o. Cons – said to be childish, petty, and arrogant – RU you related? Have fun with Inge!
Colin threw his phone in a childish fit of pique, alright he was enraged. He knew it, that fucker was tracking him, trying to mess with him. And now this, taunting him with this Donovan character that he said he was thinking of hiring when Hardison knew damn well that Chaos wanted in. Okay, so he’d initially turned him down when he offered him a job but now, he was desperate to accept. The calibre of grift was beyond anything Mason had ever seen or heard about, and that extremely hot piece of ass, Tara Cole, as well as Sophie Devereaux and Parker were all going to be working the con, Colin hoped to get a little action with Cole or Parker, since Sophie was married, and he had to have some standards. Besides, if he tried to make a move on Sophie, or even look her way, he reckoned Eliot Spencer would snap him in half like a twig. Her LEVERAGE teammates would never let it go that he’d tried to kill her some years ago.
But at the moment, Hardison was playing extremely hard to get and now his stress-free day of relaxation was ruined. Mason resolved that he was going to go home and try to track down this Zane Donovan… seriously, what sort of dumb ass name was Zane? Did he wear cowboy boots and a goddamned Stetson?
When he located this Zane Donovan character he was going to convince him that working for LEVERAGE Consulting was a super bad idea!
~o0o~
Mossad Officer and Kidon team leader, Malachi Ben Gidon stared at the leave form with Liat Tuvia’s name on it, requesting a leave of absence for personal reasons. He sighed, thinking of the chatter they’d been hearing lately regarding a threat to the entire planet from someone said to gained access to a terrible weapon. Although Mossad had tried to confirm it, it was nebulous and proved impossible to confirm, but Malachi’s highly tuned intuition had him on edge. The closest they’d been able to pin down the vague rumour was it seemed to be emanating from somewhere in Asia, which was hardly very helpful. Even after Mossad started to seriously work their intelligence contacts, all they’d been able to confirm was that the rumours first surfaced in Hong Kong. Ben Gidon’s first thoughts as to who might be behind this was that it had similarities to a deeply worrying group known as the Trust which seemed to have its tentacles into far too many countries – both government officials and rich industrialists.
There were rumours that a US secret agency which was known as Homeworld Command had been created specifically to deal with this ever-increasing threat to world order, led by quasi-military personnel but seemingly not under the auspice of either the US Department of Defence or the Dept. of Justice. Aside from whose authority they were operating under – rumoured to be the US president – they tried and failed on several occasions to crush the Trust. The shadowy group always seemed to be able to resurrect themselves, bigger and more dangerous than before, despite their losses, which to date had included a US Vice President Robert Kinsey. The Kidon team leader had heard a lot of crazy assed tales over the years about aliens heading up the group. Then there were claims that some of the billionaires who invested in Bio Research and Medical research companies had cracked the code and were cloning people. Although the Israeli higher-ups openly scoffed at all the wild rumours, Malachi had a feeling that perhaps some might have more than a grain of truth in them.
So, honestly, as he stared at the leave request of Officer Tuvia who had been Ziva David’s replacement on his team, he wasn’t keen on the idea that she wanted time off right now. While they had no immediate ops on the books and ostensibly it seemed like a good time for her to take leave, his intuition was saying otherwise. She hadn’t even stated how long she wanted time off. Sighing, he decided that he wouldn’t approve her leave until he talked with her to see why she needed it and how long she was thinking of taking off. He sent her a text message, telling her that before he approved her request they needed to meet. He arranged a late lunch at the Olive Grove, a small café cum coffee shop owned and run by a former Kidon operative who had been medically retired from Mossad ten years ago. The café was on the outskirts of the city and had excellent security and several private rooms where they could get a meal and talk securely at the same time.
Later that day as he sat in the small room, enjoying a generous-sized share plate of pita bread, olives, olive tapenade, baba ghanoush, hummus and delicious falafel as a first course as he waited for Officer Tuvia to arrive. She slipped into the private room with a minimum of fuss as he nodded his approval of his subordinate’s low-key arrival. Of course, Liat’s unobtrusive entrance was nothing less than he expected from his team who understood that being discreet was imperative, even when they were off the clock because when you were on a Kidon team, there literally was no “off the clock’ ever. You needed to have your wits about you 24/7 as the Americans were so fond of saying. Still, that didn’t make it any less true.
As she sat down at the table and he gestured her to help herself to the food that he’d ordered as starters before her arrival, she popped a piece of falafel dipped in humus into her mouth and Malachi watched, admiring how her pouty lips close over the chickpea morsel as her green-blue eyes slowly shut in appreciation. Liat was certainly a very beautiful woman, at least as attractive as Ziva David. She was certainly as deadly as the former director’s daughter was but far less of a headache. As the Americans would say – Ziva was a loose cannon, who found it difficult to control her temper at often crucial times. Truthfully, Ben Gidon had found it stressful being her team leader given who her father was. Liat was much more even-tempered and had excellent control over herself which made life much easier for him as her superior officer.
After several minutes of polite conversation, as they satiated their initial hunger, Malachi use the opportunity to assess his officer, but she seemed to be just fine. After the waiter had taken their order he decided to cut to the chase.
“Tell me why have you requested leave, Officer Tuvia,” he said.
Liat stared at him. “It’s personal, Malachi.”
“You failed to inform me how long you need to take leave,” her boss observed dryly.
“That’s because I don’t know at this stage. It could be a few days it might be a month… or more.”
“Are you ill?”
The brunette shook her head. “No Malachi, I am not ill. I’m fine.”
Her team leader look his agent in the eyes and said, “Then unless you can give me a better reason than you have, I’m not willing to grant you leave without knowing how long you might be away.”
Sensing his determination, Liat decided that she really had no other choice but, to be honest with her team leader.
There’s an operation that I want to be a part of in the US, but I intended to work as a private contractor. I was contacted by a friend looking to get in contact with Mikel Dayan for a private security operation. He wants to hire her because it involves Ziva David. My contact has been contracted to place her under surveillance while she searches for her five-year-old daughter, Tali David DiNozzo and he wanted to hire Dayan.”
“Any idea why?”
Liat shrugged as she shook her head. “I gather that they’ve worked together before.”
Deciding to skip that topic for the moment Malachi said, “Has someone abducted Tali David?”
“I don’t think so. I think she is with her father Anthony DiNozzo, but he seems to have dropped completely out of sight. My contact hinted another party might also be after DiNozzo and their daughter and a client is worried Ziva will lead them right to Tali and her father.”
“I can see why they might need Dayan’s expertise, but I don’t understand why you want to go as well.”
Suddenly, his normally even-tempered team member seemed to lose her temper. “It might have something to do with the fact that Ziva David brings death and destruction with her wherever she goes. Dayan couldn’t wait to join the operation because she will never forgive Ziva. She blames her for Michael Rivkin’s death. David was his control officer – she knew he was an alcoholic and that he was drunk on the job, and she never reported it. If she had done her job, Dayan is adamant that Michael would have been recalled back to Israel.”
“Well Mikel is correct about that, he should have been recalled. But I don’t see why she is so fired up about it after all this time.”
Tuvia post her lips briefly as she considered her next words. “Mikel and Michael were together and had planned on being wed, before the then deputy director Eli David ordered Rifkin to break up with her. He did not approve of their match and soon after that, Dayan was wounded by a grenade in Somalia and left the Mossad.”
Ben Gidon noted speculatively, “Rumours were floating around that she did not leave willingly.” And that the grenade might have been friendly fire!
His young teammate agreed. “ Dayan told me that deputy director David used her injuries as an excuse to get rid of her. So when she learned that the mission which my friend wanted to hire her for involved Ziva, there was no way she was going to turn it down.” Liat tactfully didn’t mention that even though she had shot Eliot Spencer in Myanmar in 2003 she had the impression they may have hooked up after that. And Tuvia could certainly see why, having had a casual on-again-off-again relationship with Eliot herself over the last couple of years.
Ben Gidon was nodding and muttering under his breath, before turning his attention back to Tuvia. “I can understand Mikel’s motivation, but I didn’t think you would all be that close to Dayan.”
“I’m not,” she told him. “But Adam Eshel was my third cousin on my mother’s side of the family, and she got him killed too. Anthony DiNozzo struck me as a pretty good guy, and he seems to have been a good father to Tali David. The last thing I want is for him to become another Adam.”
And now it all fell into place for Malachi. Everyone had heard about the absolute debacle involving Ziva David pretending to be dead while the Shin Bet Officer Eshel went undercover with the terrorist organisation believed to have targeted Ziva and blown up her father’s house. Her idiotic plan had been convincing Director Elbaz that she was dead by providing forensic proof with the assistance of Eshel. Even going so far as to make her kid believe she was dead which was damned cruel. Not to mention the shabby way she’d treated Special Agent DiNozzo who had a rude awakening when he discovered that he and Ziva had a daughter who was almost two years old.
Liat picked a little at her poached fish, pretending to eat it as she said, “I can’t believe that Adam was stupid enough to go along with her ill-conceived scheme. If they’d only reached out for help we could have put a proper operation in place and taken down Mira Sahar Azam so much quicker than she did and maybe Eshel would still be alive.”
Malachi agreed with Liat, for three years she was trying to hunt Azam down and eliminate her but what was done was done. No amount of lamenting over it would change the past. He was more interested in the future.
“So why is Ziva trying to track her daughter down now?”
“To take her back home and pretend the last three years didn’t happen, of course,” Tuvia gave a cynical laugh.
“And what of the child’s father? Where does he fit into this plan of hers,” he mused, feeling sympathy for the former agent who had sacrificed his career to look after his daughter.
Liat threw her hands up in the air. “Who knows, but at the rate she’s going, he’ll probably end up dead too.”
Ziva’s former team leader thought about what Liat had said. She wasn’t wrong about the fact that people seem to die around her. Even after she’d become a naturalised American and probationary agent at NCIS, Ziva and her father had brought death and destruction upon innocent U.S. citizens. First when Eli had ruthlessly killed a journalist whose crime was that he’d recognised him, which to Eli David’s Machiavellian mind threatened his so-called Palestine peace plan and was therefore justified as acceptable collateral damage. Then, according to Shmeil Pinkhas (a former Mossad spymaster who’d mentored Eli many years before) when Ziva realised that the journalist had been killed by her own father, she should have reported her suspicions and had him taken into custody. Her failure to do so resulted not just in his assassination but also in the death of Director Vance’s wife who was the mother of two young children.
Yes, Ziva certainly had the blood of innocents on her hands. Even Ilan Bodnar, a close family friend who’d been set up by Eli’s real killer had been hunted down and dispatched by the assassin, who failed to listen to anyone who told her he was probably innocent because it didn’t fit her simple narrative. Malachi knew that there were plenty of others who had far more plausible motives to want Eli David dead aside from Bodnar. Unfortunately, once Ziva became fixated upon something it was almost impossible to persuade her otherwise…and Ilan Bodnar now occupied the family crypt because of her fixation.
He also was aware that Eli David, the then deputy director of the Mossad had ordered his daughter to kill Ari when his son went rogue. That fool Jethro Gibbs had taken the blame for killing Haswari out of some outdated sense of gallantry in protecting Ziva from her father’s wrath, stupidly believing that Ziva killed Ari to protect Gibbs. And years later he’d paid dearly for the misplaced protectiveness when Ari’s half-brother Sergei Mishnev decided to extract retribution on the man he believed to have killed his brother. Innocent people died, including Gibbs’ ex-wife who also had a daughter with one of Gibbs’ friends before ultimately Mishnev became another casualty of Ziva’s dispatching of Ari because Daddy Dearest decreed it.
So many innocents had lost their lives because their lives just happened to intersect with hers. “Tali should remain with her father,” he said bluntly as he ate his steak.
Liat’s eyes filled with tears. “Ziva told Adam he was Tali’s father, but I don’t believe it,” she said.” She has Anthony DiNozzo’s eyes and his grin.”
“You think that she lied to Eshel” to convince him to help her?”
Maybe, but if so, she need not have bothered. He was besotted by her, and he’d have done anything she wanted,” Tuvia said harshly.
Malachi stared intently at Liat for almost a minute as she held his gaze before he nodded. “Alright, I’ll approve your leave request Officer Tuvia. However, I must insist that you keep me informed of any developments.”
Tuvia heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Malachi, but why do you want to know?”
Ben Gidon smiled grimly. “Ziva David was one of my team members and I know how stubborn and dangerous she can get when she’s fixated on something. You can’t reason with her, and like you, I don’t want to see a lot of collateral damage. I especially do not want to see anything happen to Tali or her father, so I guess that means I’m coming too.”
He didn’t tell his young officer, but he had a feeling that while he was in the US he may be able to track down more information about the Trust at the same time. It was what he would tell Orli Elbaz to persuade her to send him as a liaison officer to keep an eye on Ziva David. Hopefully, that way they could avoid any major carnage. She had caused enough damage to relations between their two countries, they didn’t need any more.
~o0o~
One week later, the first stage of what Parker and Sophie Devereaux were already calling The Mossad Bird Dog’s Always Been a Matter of Trust Caper or the Mossad Bird Dog Caper for short was already underway. At this point in time, the plan was to continue to plant a false trail in Midwestern America for Ziva David to follow and see how much attention she attracted from the Trust or at the very least, people who had been hired by the Trust. The plan was to try to identify as many of the people as possible and then let Hardison and Chaos Mason start deep background checks on looking for links to the trust. They also had LEVERAGE people following the people who were following Ziva. After a week of surveilling the surveillants and sending Ziva off on wild goose chases, sometimes using decoys who looked like Anthony DiNozzo or a child who resembled Tali, they planned to send someone in undercover, getting up close and personal with Ziva. They’d yet to decide if it should be Eliot, Quinn, or Colonel Vance who was US Army Special Ops assigned to counterterrorism operations. Vance was also Eliot’s former CO who had worked with Eliot and the LEVERAGE crew before.
Of particular interest, was one individual who seemed quite curious about Ziva. He was tall and dark-haired and Sophie and Tara both agreed he had a very charismatic presence. Although he seemed to be following her, he made no attempt to approach her or proposition her, which was unusual for the exotic Israeli who was not short of sexual partners while she was on her quest for her daughter. In fact, Malachi Ben Gidon her former Kidon team leader explained that when Ziva became frustrated or angry, she often used sex as a means of controlling her emotions. Liat remarked rather bitterly that she didn’t seem to be pining for the death of her lover, Adam Eshel overly much. Meanwhile, Eliot was reasonably sure that she noticed the dark-haired guy and had tried to flirt with him, although the mysterious man hadn’t taken the bait.
The LEVERAGE crew left Cramer’s Corner the next day, having already organised to have a Tony DiNozzo look-alike with a five-year-old daughter reported to have been in Jackstone Ridge for Ziva to chase. Unfortunately, no one thought to interrogate the Cramer’s Corner locals or they would have picked up some crucial Intel from the barmaid and several working girls about the charismatic stranger who had spent time with him during Ziva’s time in town. As it was, Mr Hunky as Tara and Sophie had nicknamed him, had been followed when he left town as a possible member of the Trust but somehow he’d managed to give their super-qualified operatives the slip. While it was an unfortunate lapse in the operation, luckily Jack had the widow of a former Air Force Sergeant living in Cramer’s Corner, but it was several days before she heard the gossip around town and several more days before she could contact General O’Neill who was in classified meetings regarding the distress call that had been received by the SCG from the crew George Hammond and so they kept missing each other’s calls. By the time the General finally received the intel from Esther Lees about the rumours going around town about the guy who during sex with the local women had glowing eyes, he groaned, knowing immediately what that meant.
“I was so damned sure we got them all. How did we miss another one of Baal’s clones? I’m so over that miserable snake,” he complained to Colonel Davis, who was pretty damned pissed himself.
Aside from not liking Goa’ulds either, the General was particularly bad-tempered whenever he’d had to deal with Baal in the past. Still, if Davis been the one who had his body hijacked by a Tok’ra called Kanan and forced to travel to a distant planet in an impulsive and frankly dumb-ass attempt to rescue his lover who just coincidentally happened to be Baal’s human slave, Paul reckoned he’d been fuming too. Then when Kanan was caught, the symbiote bailed on O’Neill, trying to save itself and he’d perished but left Jack there to face the music. Baal had tortured and killed the General on so many occasions that he lost count, only for the sadist to revive him in his sarcophagus, just to see if he could extract information out of him, torture and kill him all over again. Somehow, although no one knew how and O’Neill had been understandably vague, he managed to escape when Lord Huu attacked Baal’s home world and he managed to gate back to Earth. Not surprisingly, it had taken time for him to recover from that experience, so Colonel Davis was perfectly happy to cut him some slack over being grumpy about Baal’s cockroach-like ability to keep resurrecting himself when you thought he was dead.
Most people Paul knew wouldn’t make it back from such a trauma, but General O’Neill did. And if it shaded his boss’ opinion of the Tok’ra and the Goa’uld, well it was entirely understandable. Still, finding that there was a Goa’uld involved was most assuredly a game changer and it made the mission that much more complicated. Now they had to figure out how to protect everyone taking part without totally blowing security. In the end, they decided to read in a few individuals – Ben Gidon, Colonel Vance and Eliot Spencer who was former Special Ops to keep an eye out for the Baal clone and take defensive measures should he show up again. One thing was clear, their plan to use Ziva to lure out the trust did seem to be working.
On the Intel front, Hardison and his cohort were doing an excellent job, collecting data on the people they’d been surveilling. They were building a huge net that was connecting suspects with other known Trust personnel, but also Hardison and Mason were connecting them to an alarming number of individuals who’d been flying under the radar, including a prominent US senator, and member of Congress, a member of the UK House of Lords and a member of the UK Foreign Ministry. Plus, they’d managed to identify several unknown billionaires with obvious links to the Trust, data which would help crush the Trust when they finally decided to make their move.
Of course, Homeworld was also thigh deep in the investigation of General Landry to determine if he was influenced by anyone to send spies to Atlantis to learn what research Homeworld was engaged in. Zane Donovan was working out fine. So far, he was just getting started but it was looking like Ambassador Shen might have set up a honey trap. The brigadier general had started seeing someone a few months ago, a young attractive accountant called Zhang Mei who’d emigrated with her parent to the US when she was a child and was just five years older than his daughter. Jack had shaken his head in disgust when he’d learnt about the young woman’s age. However, Donovan had discovered while doing a deep dive into her background that contrary to her portraying herself as an accountant, Zhang Mei was not in fact an accountant, nor had she come to the US as a child. It was a carefully crafted legend.
Her real name was Li Fang, and she was an intelligence analyst at the Chinese Ministry of State Security. The MSS being the civilian intelligence, security and Secret Police of the People’s Republic of China and it was responsible for counterintelligence, foreign intelligence, and political security. General O’Neill and Colonel Davis found that not just alarming but extremely damning for Landry and his career.
Fang had been working as a personal aide for Ambassador Shen, recruited when Xiaoyi had taken leave from the IOA (possibly under orders of her superiors back home) after the IOA’s disastrous visit to the Gamma site. Zane speculated that her failure to secure more intelligence on the technology procured by the US military via Stargate exploration may have prompted Li’s involvement since following Xiaoyi’s months-long return to China, Li Fang worked as her personal assistant up until her return to the IOA. Once back in the US, she’d tried to use General Chekov and the fact that the treaty between the US and Russia regarding the Stargate was soon to expire with the view to having Russia rather than the US control the Stargate. Unfortunately for Shen, her efforts weren’t successful, as Russian only wanted spaceships and had no intention of revisiting the disaster of the last time they’d tried to run a Stargate Program. Then she suffered another humiliation, attempting and failing to oust Richard Woolsey as the Commander of the Atlantis base.
Was it back then that Shen and her bosses had decided to go with the honey trap of Zhang Mei? Maybe it was more recent – perhaps when Homeworld had started working on the MCD –238β project and their security measures were absolutely impenetrable. Colonel Davis was wondering if they should perhaps manufacture some leaks. They could say that while studying the Enchuri plant they found a cure for something big, perhaps extending average life expectancy by more than 25 percent or that a piece of technology had some incredible properties and that was why security was so tight. Hopefully, they only needed to stall Shen and her minions for a few more months if Donovan was right about Dr’s Fargo and Marten’s ability to solve their dispersal problems.
The pair on secondment to Homeworld had been read in on the program after signing their massive NDAs and seemed totally unfazed by them. They were due to go to Belara in a few more days but until then, the two scientists were already working at Area 51 in a private lab. The plan was that General O’Neill was intending on smuggling the alt-reality adults, children and the two DARPA scientists onto the SGC with the cooperation of the acting base Commander Colonel Dixon and then the General, Colonel Lorne and Colonel Sheppard would fly them all to Atlantis. Sarah O’Neill was already awaiting them on Atlantis, supposedly she was now undergoing a medical trial in Germany that promised new hope for remission of her Multiple Sclerosis. This was the cover story Paul and Garcia had come up with to dispel any suspicions about her disappearance from the swanky nursing home where O’Neill had organised for her to stay and Jack was still paying for her room, lending credence to the explanation that if the trial was a bust, she would return. Garcia already had emails composed, supposedly from the former husband and wife to each other about how her treatment was proceeding, to keep up the ruse of her being in the experimental trial. Paul was impressed by the attention to detail she had gone to.
Both Penelope and Paul were deeply concerned about the General, though. He was barely eating or sleeping, was in high-level meetings much of the day, ever since they were notified about the distress call from the George Hammond. The Odyssey was already on her way to their last known coordinates but was still four days away from the last known contact they’d had with the 304. After seventy-two hours of not knowing what was going on, everyone was fearing the worst, although O’Neill insisted that with Carter at the helm, he was not going to rule out the fact that the George Hammond’s crew had somehow managed to survive, not without unequivocal proof. Still, they could see the toll it was taking on him not knowing, but there was nothing anyone could do at this point but wait until the Odyssey reached their last know position. Meanwhile, the Daedalus was just finishing up routine repairs and would be dispatched later today, so that they could carry out a proper search and investigate what happened.
On the whole Mossad’s Bird Dog Always Been a Matter of Trust Caper, Donovan who normally wouldn’t be read in on that operation as it had nothing to do with him, coincidentally had been approached by Colin Chaos Mason, telling him to back off, because the LEVERAGE consulting job offer was his. He went further, telling Zane that he’d have a very short and miserable life if Donovan stole his job, so naturally, he checked out Chaos and LEVERAGE Consulting, not having a clue who they were. Apparently, Hardison had been messing with Chaos about hiring Zane, who Alec saw as something of a sellout after he’d hooked up with his partner, Jo Lupo. Lupo, while she was seen as a badass, was still working for the USSS. The upshot however was that Donovan realised that Chaos had tried to kill people before and had no intention of having his bits scattered all over the place when everything was going so well with him and Jo finally. In fact, they were even talking about maybe having a couple of rugrats (Jo’s descriptor, not his) so he wasn’t going to let a stupid little knobhead ruin everything.
So, like a conscientious employee, he’d reported the threat to Colonel Davis and learned that Homeworld had contracted LEVERAGE to conduct an operation for them, so he’d take care of Mason. In his quiet way, Paul had ripped shreds off Hardison for messing with Mason, given his propensity to blow people up who he felt threatened by. Eliot Spencer and Parker, the two other proprietors of the business, were fuming. Eliot had promised to tear Hardison a new asshole and confiscate some of his toys while Parker intimated that he was going to be denied sex for a considerable time and he’d better fix the mess asap. Meanwhile, with the increased danger due to the cloned Baal or horrifically, possibly multiple Baals, Zane suggested that they could borrow his partner, Jo Lupo to help with security since she was a former deputy sheriff in Eureka before becoming the head of security for Global Dynamics.
That was how Josefina Lupo, a rare female special operations soldier, and a graduate of Westpoint, had joined in the ‘Mossad’s Bird Dog Always Been a Matter of Trust Caper.’ Immediately, Jo had buddied up with Mikel Dayan and Liat Tuvia, and later on, the trio adopted the slightly socially inept blonde Parker and also their boss.
Notes:
These lists of best Wesley Crusher episodes of Star Trek Next Gen and site do actually exist – Treknobabble: Top 5 Trek: Wesley Crusher Episodes
Chapter 19
Carter regained consciousness with an agonised groan, her head felt as if it was going to explode. Her entire body felt like she’d been run over by a steamroller and was one giant bruise. Even an experimentally shift of her pinkie finger elicited a moan of agony and after trying to take a deep breath and failing, she belatedly wondered why it felt as if an elephant was standing on her chest. Far away, she could hear voices but although she tried to open her eyes, all she succeeded in doing was succumbing to unconsciousness again.
Trapped under the wreckage in engineering, along with several of the engineers, it was the George Hammond’s executive officer, Major Ross Grayling who was in temporary charge, directing rescue operations with an increasingly desperate sense of urgency. Bio-life signs indicated that there had been four crew members and Colonel Carter who were in close proximity to the hyperdrive or in the sub-light engineering section when the two devices detonated one after the other, taking out both sets of engines and leaving them with just auxiliary engines that were barely enough to maintain life support systems and travel, if they were lucky, to the nearest planet capable of sustaining life while they tried to effect repairs.
Of immediate concern, since the integrity of the ship was thankfully still intact, was the rescue of their CO and engineering crew. The bio life signs computer – an invaluable gift from the Asgards which allowed the 304s to track each unique life sign signature of every crew member was proving to be extremely helpful. Thanks to it, they knew that Lieutenant Axel Gustaf was dead. His body was located adjacent to the sub-light engines, and he was the only crew member in that section of engineering. So, knowing he was beyond medical help and that there was no other crew in that section, Grayling was able to concentrate the search party in the hyperdrive section. In this situation, time was crucial; life signs for Sergeants Rodriguez and Arthurs were remaining stable which was a relief, however, the head engineer, Major Lily Wang and their CO Colonel Carter were seriously wounded and needed medical attention asap.
Grayling wasn’t sure how it happened but somehow they weren’t where they were supposed to be. If the navigation equipment was functioning correctly and he wasn’t sure as they hadn’t been able to run a full-scale diagnostic on it since every able-bodied crew member was helping in the rescue mission, then the George Hammond had been blown way off course. But right now, they needed to get to Carter and Chang and engineering was a right old mess. Unfortunately, roughly fifteen percent of the crew had incurred minor injuries from the twin explosions. They were mostly sprains or slight concussions which were incurred by crew members who were located directly above or below where the hyperdrive or the sub-light engines were housed and therefore, directly above and below the explosions.
Grayling was aware that the explosions could have been far worse, the ship’s hull could so easily have been breached and they could have all died but the explosions seemed to be more designed to disable rather than to destroy the George Hammond. He wondered if he should be expecting an attack or an attempt to board the ship. Sending a warning to their security crew to keep their eyes on the radar, looking for anyone trying to approach them, he also ordered a perfunctory search of the ship in case there were any more unexploded devices placed in vital areas around the 304. After they’d freed their injured crew members, Grayling would order a much more exhaustive search of the entire ship than the cursory one that had been carried out so far.
Luckily, thanks to the bio-life signs computer, the rescue effort was able to be targeted with laser-like precision which certainly helped morale. Knowing exactly where to focus their efforts, they were able to significantly reduce the time it would take to retrieve them. Two hours later, Carter and Wang were on their way to the infirmary and their efforts were now redirected into clearing the debris and twisted metal to free the less injured Sergeants Maia Rodriguez and Wade Arthurs.
~o0o~
Samantha Carter awoke again, having regained consciousness several times already but because of a subdural haematoma which they had been carefully monitoring, she had no memory of her previous periods of wakefulness. Initially the George Hammond’s medical officer, Dr Stephen Larson had opted to treat her conservatively with anti-inflammatories drugs, not wanting to go drilling holes in the commander’s skull unless necessary. Over the next several days as he fought to save the life of Major Wang who had suffered serious abdominal injuries and she’d needed abdominal surgery and subsequent operations to correct severe fractures requiring external fixators to hold them together. It was not that surprising that the head of Engineering had suffered the most severe injuries, Major Chang being the closest to the explosion and Dr Larson was been focused on saving her life. Their Commander was less severely injured, aside from Colonel Carter’s traumatic brain injury, she had several fractured ribs and a compound fracture of her right wrist and a dislocated shoulder, so he was happy to treat her head injury conservatively for a few days then reassess the situation. So, he’d reduced the dislocation and used an eternal fixator for her wrist and continued to monitor her symptoms. When her headache had continued unabated, her confusion increased and her level of consciousness deteriorated along with her slurred speech, he decided that surgery was indicated to relieve intracranial pressure and had drilled several small bur holes and inserted a drain.
This was Carter’s sixth time regaining consciousness since the surgery, the first time had been shortly after the surgery, but Sam had no memory of that, or of the numerous times she’d returned to a wakeful if confused state. Although she felt confused, it was because she had no memory of why she was in the ship’s infirmary. Major Grayling, her XO dutifully gave her a status report, making no sign that he’d already done so at least half a dozen times previously. This time, he noted that the colonel seemed far more lucid than before, although it would remain to be seen if she would remember this briefing later. Dr Larsen felt that she should make a full recovery, although he’d warned Grayling that it may take several weeks for her to regain her full mental abilities.
Grayling really hoped that would not be the case because they were in a huge mess. He was convinced that it was something that their genius commander needed to put her problem-solving skills to work on to figure out what to do. So far, no one could understand what had caused the explosion which was a serious one but could have potentially blown them out of existence, but instead of being blown up, they had somehow been transported into another galaxy. With no hyperdrive or sub-light engines viable at this point, without them, it would take decades for them to return to the Milky Way galaxy unless they could come up with a solution. Morale amongst the crew was extremely low, which was totally understandable, he was pretty damned depressed too.
~o0o~
Ziva collapsed into the lumpy bed, feeling tired and extremely frustrated. She had been searching for Tali for more than six weeks now and was still no closer to chasing her down. Grudgingly, she had to give Tony credit for doing such a good job of disappearing. It was frustrating to her that she was Kidon trained, yet he’d managed to remain hidden despite all of her contacts. She remembered that Orli had mentioned to her his paranoid idea that people will watching him and Tali and that it was colleagues of her father who disapproved of him having custody of Eli’s granddaughter. Ziva thought that while some of them probably didn’t approve of him having Tali, it was unlikely that they would have him under surveillance. If people were watching them, she felt it was much more likely to have been Mira Sahar Azam hoping to hurt Tali.
If Sahar had been watching them, she should be grateful that he had done an acceptable job protecting her daughter, but Sahar was dead now and Ziva just wanted to collect her daughter and take her back to Israel. This excessive caution of Tony’s what’s beyond tiresome, it was reaching the point where she wanted to attack him with a paper clip and show him just what sort of damage the harmless office implements could do in the hands of a skilled assassin. He’d always laughed at her when she made threats about paper clips being lethal weapons, calling her ninja but he really had no idea who he was dealing with. Kidon agents were also well-schooled in the use of poisons and other pharmacological agents such as tranquilisers and sedatives and how to spike people’s food and drink.
As Ziva settled down to get some rest, her thoughts naturally turned to the handsome stranger who she’d run into that day when she stopped for lunch at a small café. He’d come in about five minutes after she did and had taken a table at the back of the café, having to pass by her table to get there. He seemed to accidentally stumble just as he was going past her in the cafe, which to the experienced spy definitely seemed contrived.
Like Gibbs, Ziva really didn’t believe in coincidences, she thought that he was probably going to come onto her. Especially when he reached out to grab the back of her chair and his hand came in contact with her neck. It was quite common for her to be noticed by attractive men, after all, it was part of her Kidon training to be alluring. Several of her trainers had commented on her possessing a natural sexuality which turned heads. Rather than trying to damp it down so that people didn’t notice her, Ziva had always played it up, feeling that it made for a good cover since most people tended to underestimate attractive females. Still, while the stranger was extremely sexy in a darkly brooding kind of way, she was completely unprepared for the jolt of electricity she felt when he made skin contact with her.
She was rather disappointed when he didn’t prolong their meeting, merely apologising for his clumsiness and then proceeding on his way to the empty table at the back of the café. He then proceeded to order lunch and thoroughly ignore her, and it made her wonder if she had misinterpreted his interest in her or if he was playing hard to get. She hoped that she would run into him, after all, it was quite a small town but by the time she finished eating he was still making his way through his meal, and she still had several more shops to show Tali and Tony’s photo to before she decided where to go next.
In the end, Ziva ended up staying in the town overnight not because she had high hopes of finding a fresh lead, but because she couldn’t get the sexy stranger out of her thoughts. She was kind of hoping that he would stay in the small inn called the Travellers Rest, but the only other guests were a couple of tourists and a middle-aged salesman who tried to proposition her, and she ignored him. As she wiggled around trying to get comfortable she realised that maybe that old dark stranger was a local. In which case he wouldn’t need a room at the inn and so she was sleeping in a slightly musty room that could do with a proper airing, with no hope of hooking up with him. As she finally drifted off to sleep, she felt slightly exasperated with herself for losing sight of what she was meant to be doing which was looking for Tali. She really needed to get her head back in the competition.
Even though she recognised that she’d let herself get diverted this afternoon by a stranger, Ziva’s dreams that night were full of erotic encounters with the man in the café. When she awoke the next morning, despite her making a resolution the night before to focus on her goal of finding her daughter she felt an overwhelming compunction to track down the stranger from the cafe, who she couldn’t get out of her head. She decided to go back to the cafe and ask if anyone knew who he was, plus she didn’t fancy the sort of breakfast fare that the inn was likely to serve up. It was while she was waiting for her breakfast to be served that she overheard a conversation between two of the cafe waitresses who were also discussing the stranger from yesterday’s lunch. Apparently, the younger waitress who Ziva estimated was only a couple of years older than she was had been more his type. Her description of the night of passion filled Ziva with a surprisingly violent sense of jealousy. She wanted to take down the raven-haired server whose nose was slightly crooked, and her breasts were definitely oversized and to scratch her eyes out. Ziva put her irrational jealousy down to needing to have several strenuous sessions of sex, it had been almost a week since she had been with anyone.
As she decided to refocus her attention back on her task and forget the enigmatic stranger, she checked out of the Travellers Rest as quickly as possible and headed on to Brownsville about 30 miles away where she’d heard other possible sightings of Tony and her daughter. It was frustrating for her that she was unable to get the stranger who she’d learnt was called Abe, out of her thoughts completely. Angry at herself, Ziva decided that the first thing she needed to do was to find someone who wasn’t physically abhorrent in Brownsville who she could fuck. Then she would be able to regain her focus, she was wasting time, and every day her daughter was growing older. It was time to bring her home to Israel and bring her up in a way that would make her father Eli proud.
~o0o~
Carter was still in the infirmary, but she was feeling a lot better five days after Dr Larsen had been forced to drill several small bur holes in her skull. She wasn’t sleeping all the time any longer and her concentration was improving, although it still wasn’t where it was before the explosions rocked engineering. It was frustrating that she was still recovering because the ship and the crew were in a perilous state, existing on auxiliary engine power at the moment and given where they were, in relation to where they had been right before the explosion pushed them into a distant galaxy, they needed to find some way of getting supplies so they could survive long enough to figure out what happened and how to carry out repairs to go home.
She thought about Maj. Grayling’s investigations into the sabotage, locating a spy that somehow had managed to infiltrate the crew and plant several devices in the engines. When he realised that they had tracked him down, Corporal Lomax pulled a gun that they’d encountered members of the Lucian Alliance using and killed one of the SFs who had gone to collect him for interrogation and the other SF had returned fire, killing him, unfortunately. It would have been helpful to be able to find out about the devices he planted and that was probably why he’d opted for a shootout, killing Sergeant Everson in the process. Sam really couldn’t comprehend how someone could be persuaded to compromise everything they stood for but unfortunately, Lomax had knowingly sabotaged the ship and managed to detonate the devices and now although most of them were alive, that didn’t mean that they weren’t deep in the shit.
At the moment they were focused solely on survival, and she was relieved that Lee Grayling was a Marine who happened to excel in survival strategies. On her own, or leading a small team, Carter had no doubt she could hold her own, after all, SG1 had been stranded quite a few times without supplies and had dealt with it. However, the crew aboard the George Hammond numbered over one hundred and twenty-five personnel, mostly military, but with a few civilian contractors on board too and that was a lot of mouths to feed and water. If it was up to her, she would do her best to find adequate food and water, but she was mighty glad that she could delegate that aspect of their survival to her XO and the rest of the Marines on board.
Her talents were better employed elsewhere, like in trying to figure out how to get them all home alive. Although she suspected that a lot of the crew were extremely fearful that returning home was a physical impossibility given just how far off their original position the George Hammond had inexplicably ended up. If they weren’t capable of hyperdrive speeds anymore, then logically, it would seem to be an extremely tall order, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d defied the bounds of expectation. Carter wasn’t about to throw her hands up in the air and just give up.
Unfortunately, although she was much improved, Dr Larsen had refused to clear her for active duty, insisting that she needed several more days of rest, and pointing out that until they located a planet that could sustain them, there wasn’t really that much that they could do anyway. The trouble was though, that lying around in the infirmary with nothing to do but brood about their situation, Sam was finding it increasingly difficult not to think about the news that she’d received moments before their engines were sabotaged. It was the cruellest of jokes that barely had she reached a decision to give up her commission as the CO of the Daedalus class warship to be a mother to Riley Faxon and fate had stepped in to prevent her following through on her decision.
It was so unfair and all she could think about was that there was a four-year-old little boy who would never see his mother and father again and now, who would care for him if she never made it back to Earth? As much as she hated that prospect, she had to trust in Jack to look after him and make the best decision for him at this point in time – the one thing that she knew better than most was just how much he loved kids and she knew he would have Riley’s best interest at heart. She also took some comfort in knowing that they would have people out there searching for them, thanks to the SOS that they managed to get off just in the nick of time before the explosion. Of course, they would be searching in the wrong place, but she knew that Jack wouldn’t believe they were dead. Not unless he had definitive proof and maybe someone, Bill Lee, Rodney McKay, Radek Zelenka or his partner Miko Kusanagi or even Sam’s young protégé Jennifer Halley might piece together their mysterious disappearance and come riding to the rescue. Call her a Pollyanna but those people were exceptional scientists, and she was going to hold onto hope.
However, the current situation was that there were effectively one hundred and twenty-five lives…well to be precise, one hundred and twenty-two lives if you factored in the death of 2nd Lieutenant Gustaf, Sergeant Everson, and Corporal Lester Lomax, all depending on her pulling off a miracle. She wanted to get started asap but as much as Sam was desperate to get started, she had to admit that her concentration was not one hundred percent yet, and she was apt to fall asleep in the middle of a stream of thoughts. Dr Larsen was right that she needed additional recovery time but waiting, while never easy for Sam, was now literally torture.
~o0o~
Ziva stared around the cheap motel room, ironically named the Paradise Inn in Brownsville in dismay. The room was old, the sheets were threadbare but thankfully clean, and the furnishings about three decades out of date. The room was tired and depressing and the first thing she did was scrub the shower because it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a long while, if ever. During her years as a Kidon operative, Ziva had stayed in some pretty sketchy places. Often when she was on a mission she would pick the most disgusting places to stay, knowing full well that anyone staying there tended to go unnoticed because of the type of clientele who stayed there -drug addicts and whores. This motel was obviously several steps up from the flea-ridden places she used to frequent as an assassin, but that didn’t say a whole lot.
With Sahar out of the picture and access to her father’s diamonds, which she had exchanged for cash, Ziva could afford to stay in the best places. Unfortunately, this was the best place in Brownsville, so she decided to just get on with what she come here for. To check out a sighting of Tony and Tali last week and if it was credible it meant she was getting closer to a reunion with her daughter who would be five by now, almost six. Much as she craved being with her daughter again after more than three years apart, she was still having extremely intrusive thoughts about the dark charismatic man who seemingly acknowledged her but then chose some ugly old tart to spend the night with instead. Ziva honestly didn’t know why she couldn’t get him out of her head when she should have been focusing on her goal of locating her daughter, so she decided to go trawling for someone she could fuck and get it out of her system.
She went to the Tankard Tavern not far from her motel room and ordered a beer, slowly sipping it as she checked out any perspective bed partners. As desperate as she was to find someone, looking at all these pathetic specimens of the male of the species just made her think of the dark mysterious stranger and she couldn’t help comparing them to the handsome stranger. Finally, someone came in who didn’t have a beer gut and seemed to have all of his teeth and no mullet hair in sight. She could also see he was wearing a wedding ring but that was no obstacle to Ziva. The last thing she wanted was a relationship, only sex. Using her seduction techniques which had been honed by Kidon trainers, but came naturally to her, it didn’t take her long to entice the married man with a full set of teeth into the lady’s bathroom.
After a trial run, Ziva decided to invite Eddie back to her hotel room for the rest of the night. Truth be told she hadn’t had any real sex since just after Adam was killed. She’d been too focused on chasing down her prey… in this case her daughter Tali. But for the rest of the night, she managed to forget her daughter and the mysterious dark-haired stranger that had become her obsession, losing herself in multiple bouts of mindless sexual activity. Eddie might not have been the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he wasn’t bad looking and he was quite well endowed, so Ziva didn’t have to work too hard to find release for the rest of the night.
In the morning she felt more like her normal self and after a cup of coffee and a few insincere words of thanks to her bed partner she checked out of the motel and began to canvas the commercial district of Brownsville. Granted it wasn’t much just a strip mall, a medium-sized supermarket, a liquor store and a small library. When she showed people working in the shops Tali and Tony’s photograph a few people thought they looked familiar. It wasn’t until she entered a store selling bed linen and furnishings that two women, a blonde and a redhead nodded.
“Yes, they were here probably about a week ago, I think,” the redhead said looking over at her companion. “The little one stopped us when we were out walking our dog, Zanzibar. She wanted to pet him. He’s a standard poodle, you know, and she tried to talk to it in French. We had to explain to her that he was born in Brownsville and didn’t speak French,” she said.
Her blonde companion nodded her head emphatically. “Oh yes, I remember her now. Such a little cutie she was, and she was trying to persuade her daddy to buy her a puppy, too.”
Ziva thought this was a rather promising lead. All children loved dogs, didn’t they, plus she knew that they had spent time in France, so it stood to reason that Tali would be able to speak French. “Do you think she managed to persuade him,” she asked the woman.
The blonde pursed her lips. “Gee, I don’t know, what do you think Laurelle?”
Laurelle smiled. “Well maybe. She sure would be hard to say no to with that cute dimple of hers. Although he did say that they would have to wait until they went back to England again.”
Ziva preceded to spin her tragic sob story to them which was also a total fabrication. Her postpartum depression and how she left Tali and Anthony, thinking that she was a bad mother but after getting some professional help she was much better and trying to find them to reunite with them. The two females seemed moved by her story and the blonde who she learned was called Elaine, seemed especially sympathetic, saying that her sister had suffered from postpartum depression too.
Before she left the shop, Laurelle remembered something else. She said that Tail had been excited about them going back to England. “She said something about an Aunty Lavender and the sky.”
Crinkling her brow, Elaine said, ‘I think she also said something about Aaron or maybe it was Aiden.”
Ziva knew Tony had relatives in England, but he’d had a falling out with them after suing them last year. She’d heard about it when she was supposedly dead since it had made quite a splash in the media. It seemed that the press loved to dish the mud on wealthy families, especially when they were arguing over hefty inheritances. So Ziva was a little bit dubious that Tony would want to go back to England again. Maybe this was a trick, he might be trying to make it harder for anyone to find where they were going if he was paranoid about them being followed. She knew that there were three towns close by Brownsville and she would have to check all three of them out to see where they went next.
“I don’t suppose they mentioned where they were staying, did they,” she asked them anxiously. I really miss them so much and I want to be with them again. It’s so hard to be this close and yet not find them,” Ziva said forlornly.
Laurelle patted her shoulder comfortingly. “No, Dearie, I don’t think so. Although they were talking about catching fish for their dinner, so maybe they were camping by the Browns River.”
Ziva managed to contain her amusement at her suggestion since Tony DiNozzo despised camping. He was definitely not the sort of person who enjoyed roughing it. Thinking about the motel in Brownsville though, maybe he thought a tent would be a better option than staying at the Paradise Inn with Tali.
Deciding to check out any possible camping sites or cabins, Ziva recalled hearing about a new tourist trend called glumping. It was supposed to be high-end camping with the bathroom and bed in a tent and it was something she could see Tony doing rather than staying at the antiquated motel. She was sure he would have had a fit if he’d been forced to stay there even for one night, he was just too much of a hedonist! There was no way he could have cut the relish as a Kidon assassin.
She politely thanked Elaine and Laurelle and left their shop, having no idea that the store had been under surveillance by Chaos Mason’s sophisticated spyware equipment. Nor did she suspect that Elaine and Laurelle were two of the best grifters in the business.
~o0o~
Colonel Carter looked around at the planet which was, at least for now their home. While she hoped it would only be temporary, time would tell whether or not they would manage to leave here and go home again. It was a week since they had lost their hyperdrive and sub-light engines to a curious explosive device that had somehow pushed them ridiculously off course, with limited supplies. Their current position meant that they didn’t have enough supplies to enable them to return to Earth, so they needed to find somewhere to shelter and sustain them as they searched for a way to fix the ship’s engines. It had taken them days of searching to locate this planet, and although there wasn’t a lot of vegetation, the tests had shown that it would support agriculture and there was water below the surface so they should be able to feed themselves, plus they had the ship as shelter.
This planet may not be picturesque but they were lucky to find it and the crew was now focused on setting up several wells so they would have water to drink and grow crops. Major Grayling was keen to map out the planet to determine what food sources it had and as he was a Marine, Carter was more than happy for him to lead an expedition searching for possible food supplies. Although they had almost a year’s supply of MREs in the cargo hold, and maybe six months’ supply of water if they were careful, they didn’t want to eat into those supplies, because if they got the engines running again they would need them on the journey home. So, their plan was to try and live off the planet that they’d landed on as much as they possibly could manage although obviously, they were using up their supplies right now.
As she stared at the simple graves of 2nd Lieutenant Axel Gustaf and Sergeant Everson, Samantha Carter hoped that he would be the last of her crew that she would have to bury before they returned to earth. Their prospects of going home looked pretty grim right now since they’d estimated it could take at least 50 years to get there, using only auxiliary engines, that was if they didn’t break down. Carter refused to entertain the notion that they may never return to the Milky Way. She knew it was important for the morale of the crew that she portrayed an assurance that they would be able to go home sometime in the foreseeable future. Sam also steadfastly refused to think about Jack O’Neill or little Riley because it was too unbearable. Suddenly, all she wanted was to go back home a make a family for Riley Faxon, but she wondered if they would think that all those aboard the George Hammond had perished in the explosion.
Had the powers that be already held a service for the crew of the George Hammond who officially, would be declared MIA since there were no bodies to find, but practically considered to be dead. She remembered attending a funeral for Daniel back in the early days of SG1 when she, Teal’c and Colonel O’Neill had all had their memories altered so they believed that Daniel had drowned but he’d still been alive and held captive by an alien searching for his mate. It seemed to be a bitter irony that literally minutes after deciding she wanted to become Riley’s mother the ship had been sabotaged with the device that her people were still trying to figure out exactly what it was.
It also hadn’t escaped Carter’s notice that in all probability they had more than one spy in their midst. Someone had to have planted the explosive devices that had taken out their engines and while Major Grayling had pointed the finger at Lieutenant Gustaf, Sam was not about to make him the sole scapegoat without further proof. It would be a foolish mistake to assume that he was the only culprit, and it may mean that there were additional saboteurs onboard who might try to prevent them from repairing the ship. So, until she had solid evidence to the contrary, Sam would assume that they still had a Viper amongst them and take appropriate precautions including always having security guarding the ship.
In the meantime, they were going to have to divide the crew up into teams to hunt and gather food, cultivate fresh food, and find some way of fixing the engines and probably the most important factor, to figure out if there was some way to speed up their journey home. Even if they had hyperdrive capacity back again, it would still at least seven years to make it back to the Milky Way Galaxy again. While she didn’t mention it to anyone, Carter was wondering if she could build a time dilation device to speed up time – like when the replicators had done it. But before they did anything else like messing around with the fabric of time, survival had to be their number one goal. She and Major Grayling agreed that surveying their immediate surroundings must take priority over everything else.
Another factor to consider was that while this planet seemed to be uninhabited, it would be extremely foolish to assume that just because there was no evidence so far that they were on their own here, no one else was living here. In fact, with a planet that was capable of sustaining life, it seemed unlikely that it was uninhabited, so they needed to factor in the possibility that others might already be here. Even now, they could be under surveillance. While on the surface, that was a pretty creepy thought, Carter hoped there might be aliens living here, especially if they were an advanced race and might help fix their engines s they could be on their way sooner.
Feeling a headache coming on, Carter decided to follow Dr Larsen’s orders and lie down in her quarters for an hour. While she had been cleared for light duties, he insisted that she still needed plenty of rest before Sam would be declared fully fit. Colonel Carter knew he was right she was certainly not up to leading a team on a survey mission. Soon maybe, but not just yet.
Chapter 20
General Jack O’Neill paused momentarily outside the door of the Commander’s office at the SCG, before knocking on the door. Standing here seeking permission to enter his old office always seemed to be somewhat surreal for him, even after all this time. Colonel David Dixon, the acting commander of the SCG called out for him to enter, and when he saw that it was the director of Homeworld Command he rose out of his chair and hurried around to salute the general.
“Sir it’s good to see you, I trust you had a good trip,’ he said snapping off a crisp salute before smiling at O’Neill. “Take a seat.” he gestured.
As Jack sank into a chair, Colonel Dixon confessed, “Does it feel as surreal for you to be sitting on that side of the desk as it feels for me to be on this side? Although to be honest, it doesn’t feel like my seat either, just that I’m keeping it warm for General Landry. Do we have any idea if he’s going to be back?”
“This is strictly between you and me, Colonel, but if it was me making the decision, I’d say it’s looking increasingly won’t be coming back,” he said sounding disgruntled which Dixon was not especially surprised by. Quite a few of the old hands at the SCG knew that O’Neill had pushed for Landry to get Jack’s old job because he wanted to ensure that his former command was left in safe hands. “Homeworld’s newest recruit uncovered information that’s making it look increasingly as if Hank got himself caught up in a honey trap, and that on top of the spying… well I just don’t see him coming back from it.”
Dave looked suitably shocked, “Right, well that’s a surprise! Was it the Trust, Sir?”
“Yeah, no, we don’t think so. It seems more and more like it was orchestrated by Ambassador Shen,” he said sadly because Hank Landry had been Jack’s friend since his early days in the Air Force.
Discreetly changing the topic Colonel Dixon asked, “All ready for the big trip to Atlantis, Sir?”
“Yeahsureyabet’cha,” Jack told him with a hint of his old insouciance.
Dave wasn’t fooled though, everyone at the SCG who knew him could see the signs of strain and exhaustion on his face. It was coming up to 10 days since they had received the SOS from the George Hammond and there was still no clue as to what had happened to the 304 warship under the command of Colonel Samantha Carter. They all knew that General O’Neill was taking the ship’s disappearance personally, Colonel Carter had been an original member of SG1 back in the day in Jack was its CO. His team had been an incredibly close one over the years, and Dave knew he would move heaven and earth to try and save any of his former team’s lives, but in this case, there was little he could do except hope and maybe pray that the crew of the George Hammond was still alive somewhere.
“I take it that everyone else has already arrived on base,” Jack asked.
Dave preceded to give him a Sit Rep. “Yes Sir. As per your orders, we brought the refugees here in three separate groups, several hours apart. Doctors Fargo and Marten got here approximately an hour ago and now that you’re here, we just waiting on Colonels Lorne and Sheppard to arrive too.”
“Eggcellent,” Jack responded, trying hard to appear casual, even if inside he was an absolute mess. “Do we have an ETA on the puddle jumpers?”
“Yes, General. Colonel Sheppard is 35 minutes out and Colonel Lorne is another 20 minutes behind him.”
Jack nodded approvingly. “And personnel on the base has been restricted,” he double-checked.
“As you ordered, Sir. Just us old timers here at the moment,” he said, referring to the fact that they’d sent most of the teams off to the Gamma site, ostensibly to play war games. Those who were staffing the base today were all regulars who had worked under Jack O’Neill when he was second in command of the SCG under General Hammond and team leader of SG-1 or they served under him when he was promoted to the rank of general and given command of the SCG. Basically, the only people working on base today were ones who Jack knew well and trusted with his life or in this instance these kids’ lives.
Jack nodded approvingly, “When do we expect the rest of the crew to return to base?”
Dave pursed his lips as he formulated a reply. “SG-9 and SG-14 are back in approximately 90 minutes. As for the teams at the Gamma site, they aren’t due back for another 3 hours yet,” he said.
“Right well in that case we better get this show on the road,” Jack said impatiently.
Dave nodded. “Your paddle jumper is ready to go, Sir as soon as you are.”
O’Neill rubbed his hands together and gave Dave a grin. “Well, I guess we might as well head off then. No point in waiting around. Can you have the Paddingtons, Sarah O’Neill and Gia Kawalsky escorted to the jumper please?”
Colonel Dixon picked up his phone and issued an order to have Paula and her children, his granddaughter, and Gia Kawalsky plus their luggage taken to the general’s paddle jumper.
As they stood up to leave the office, Dave commented pensively, “I must admit when I saw Lieutenant Murphy, it was very surreal. It was a good idea for her to come in disguise though, because even amongst the old-timers her appearance would have caused a commotion.”
Walking through the conference room that overlooked the embarkation room and the stargate, Jack paused for a moment, and said, “Yeah I know what you mean, and you’re right about it causing a stir, which is the last thing we want.”
Dave gave a furtive glance around the conference room before saying, “I admit, it’s hard to wrap your mind around this alternate reality stuff, isn’t it? And confession time General, I know Dr Heng cautioned against us seeing our alternate reality kids, but I had to see Davinia, although I made sure she didn’t see me.”
Jack knew Dave Dixon was waiting for him to rip into him, but Jack had no intention of doing so. Putting himself in Dave’s shoes, he reckoned he would have done exactly the same thing himself.
“You decided what to do about her yet,” he asked the man he’d served with for years.
Shaking his head, Dixon told him, “No not yet. It’s such a huge decision and the boys are settled in school. Do I pull them out and go to Atlantis for Davinia or do I stay here and sacrifice her?”
Nodding sympathetically, Jack told him, “I get it. I’d like nothing better than to retire and go and raise Sarah but it’s just not an option at the moment. I promise I’ll do my best to make sure that she has good and kind people to love and care for her and are good people should you decide that you can’t adopt her. You and Suzy have the four boys to think about too, I don’t envy you.”
“Thanks, General, I know we’re not the only ones who have tough choices to make. As for promising to look after Gia if we can’t take her in, thank you, Sir. That means a lot.”
Ten minutes later, Jack, seated in the pilot’s chair with his precious cargo of Sarah, Gia, Joshua, Mikelle, and Paula situated for the flight, and they were ready to get underway. The puddle jumper was quite crowded with supplies and personal belongings because although the bulk of their positions had already been loaded on the Zephyrus, The amount of gear needed for the two babies seemed immense, but he had rather dim memories of taking several trips when Charlie was a baby and how much stuff they had needed to take with them. The car had been chock-a-block full of baby gear and it had been hard to see out the back window.
Jack looked at the excited faces of Josh and Gia, noting that Paula was extremely animated, even if she was trying to play it cool. Sarah was sleeping soundly in her capsule with some sort of restraint keeping it from flying around in the event of a crash landing and Jack made a mental note to thank Paul Davis. Mikelle Paddington was sitting on her mother’s lap, playing with her toes, supremely uninterested in her first flight into space, unlike her own fascinating appendages.
Grinning at his passengers, he asked them jovially, “All righty, campers is everyone ready to go to Atlantis?”
“Yes, General Jack,” Gia and Josh chorused as they left the docking bay and carefully initiated their way to the embarkation area where the wormhole was already established waiting for them to go through.
Glancing over at Paula he nodded and hoped for the best. He knew that she was somewhat nervous about taking the babies through the wormhole and Jack admitted that he was not entirely sanguine about the prospect either. However, the idea of taking ten children via one of the 304’s spending nearly three weeks in close quarters was not terribly appealing either. It would also be hell trying to maintain security for three weeks so hopefully travelling within a puddle jumper would negate most of the side effects of wormhole travel. Keeping his fingers crossed, he headed towards the blue event horizon, eager to get the journey over and done with so he could see for himself how his ex-wife was settling in on Atlantis.
As they arrived at Midway II, they were boarded by the medical team who would check them over so they could proceed to Atlantis without having to remain in quarantine here for hours. The station was small and cramped and there was little in the way of entertainment options available to keep ten amused…well eight kids because to be honest, Mikelle and Sarah weren’t all that hard to occupy. A feed, a change of their diapers, a song or two and playtime with a soft toy and they’d be ready for nap time again. Doctors Biro and Keller had volunteered to spend half a day at Midway II, having been dropped off by Colonel Lorne on his way to the SG-1 and he’d take them back home to Atlantis with his group of refugees. He would be transporting Lieutenant Murphy and her daughter Justine, the Jackson twins, Claire, and Nicholas, plus the two DARPA scientists, Drs Fargo, and Martens. Colonel Sheppard, having resumed his position as commanding officer of Atlantis would bring Thora Edmunds, Dave Rossi, Dr Heng, Davinia Dixon, Kelvin Austen-McKay and Riley Faxon back to New Lantea.
Jack was somewhat surprised to see Jennifer Keller since he’d heard via the grapevine that she and Rodney McKay had split up. Watching her, she seemed rather subdued, although she was unfailingly pleasant to the kids. He’d suggest discreetly to Dr Biro that she handle the medical exam of Kelvin to be on the safe side. He surmised that their split up after being a couple for approximately four years right after Dr O’Shea informed McKay about Kelvin Austen-McKay was connected to the demise of their relationship. Maybe she didn’t want Rodney to adopt him, although since he wasn’t going to adopt Kelvin, his sister and his husband were going to adopt him, that wouldn’t explain why they broke up.
Given the medical all-clear, although they would also have to pass another medical back on Atlantis, they bid the two doctors a hasty farewell, continuing their journey through the second gate on Midway II. With neither baby showing any signs of distress during their journey via the wormhole, both adults were far more relaxed about entering the second wormhole to Atlantis. All too soon for Josh and Gia who thought going through the Stargate was awesome, they were exiting via the Atlantis Stargate into the gate room and then flying up to the docking bay to park the puddle jumper.
Although Paula was a little disappointed that Alex wasn’t there to meet them, she understood that Alain Heng had strongly discouraged all of the alternate reality parents from greeting them as they arrived on Atlantis. He wanted to control their introduction to people who were going to be their guardians, mainly because they were also spitting images of the parents they had been forced to leave behind. She felt like her kids’ situation was a little different to most of the other children. Except for Justine Murphy, who also had her real mother come with her in this alternate reality, her two kids had her here with them, even though they’d had to leave their dad behind. Plus, Josh was old enough to understand that Alex was not Tony while Mikelle was too little to understand what was going on, just like Sarah O’Neill.
When she’d mentioned being disappointed that Alex and Belle hadn’t turned out to welcome them to Atlantis, Jack had pointed out that he’d either been called out on a case, or he’d stayed away to help persuade Daniel not to lurk around in the gate room when the twins flew in. He was having a hard time not embracing the pair, even though he acknowledged why a gradual introduction was in the children’s best interests, since cognitively, unlike Joshua, who was almost thirteen, they weren’t capable of seeing Daniel and not thinking he was their father. Paula accepted that he was probably right, but she was desperate to see Alex, even knowing that Tony in this universe wasn’t her husband. And wryly admitted that it proved how crucial it was to proceed with gradual introductions because if she felt that way about seeing Alex, how much harder was it going to be for the children, yes even for her son.
Although Alex and his daughter Belle hadn’t met them, Sarah O’Neill and General O’Neill’s surrogate daughter, Cassandra Fraiser were waiting for them in the gate room when they exited the puddle jumper and climbed down the metal staircase from the jumper docks. Another familiar face greeted them, Dr Aoife O’Shea was waiting for them with a friendly smile. Jack introduced Paula to Cassie, and Paula could see how proud Jack was of Cassie, who looked a lot like Janet Fraiser’s Cassie back in her universe. Although she wasn’t a teacher, she was an academic, cataloguing the history and language of her home planet of Hanka.
Major Cadman, the head of base security on Atlantis was also there to greet them and all too soon the beautiful red-headed Marine was herding them down to the Infirmary for their medical exam while organising their gear which they’d brought with them in the puddle jumper to be sent to their rooms where it would be waiting for them later. As they made their way, first to the medical wing, Jack could see that both Sarah and Cassie were bursting, wanting to hold baby Sarah, but he didn’t think that his ex-wife was physically up to hauling the baby all the way to the Infirmary just yet, so he asked Cassie if she’d mind carrying her. Cassie’s one-thousand-watt smile was something to behold, and it confirmed something which Jack hoped would be possible. He was hoping that Cassie would agree to adopt Baby Sarah and that she would let Sarah help her raise her granddaughter. Initially, he’d hoped that his ex-wife would be able to raise her, however, the failure of Vala’s Goa’uld healing device to completely cure her MS had put paid to that idea, but Sarah could certainly still play a pivotal role in the baby’s life as her gran. Just as he hoped to be able to spend a lot of time with her as a hands-on granddad, even if he couldn’t leave his position as Director of Homeworld Security yet. Not with the mind-controlling zombie plot still hanging over their heads. Paula’s tale was warning enough that they couldn’t afford to be blasé about the threat MCD –238β posed to their future. Not just to their future but also, to the world’s future was potentially hanging in the balance.
Jack knew how deeply affected Cassie had been after she had received a definitive diagnosis from Dr Lam some years ago that she would never get the chance to carry her own biological babies. All due to that Goa’uld bitch Nirrti who’d manipulated her DNA in her evil attempts to create the perfect host for her Goa’uld symbiote, thereby rendering Cassandra not just infertile as a side effect but unable to go through IVF because any embryos implant would almost certainly be rejected thanks to her enhanced DNA. Not that Nirrti cared one whit that her eugenics had caused infertility which not even Vala Mal Doran had been able to fix with her Goa’uld healing device. The truth was that Nirrti was a narcissistic sociopath – like all of the Goa’uld. Hell, all her selective breeding had wiped out of existence the good people of Hanka except for Cassandra and it hadn’t stopped the evil bitch from deliberately turning the eleven-year-old Cassie into a suicide bomb so the Goa’uld could destroy the SCG.
O’Neill also thought about the unmitigated horror when they’d discovered what Nirrti had done to Alebran’s people on the planet P3X-367 after she found a device left behind by the Ancients, goddamn them. She’d moved on from her selective breeding of Cassie’s people, turning to experiments that would make Josef Mengele seem like a rank amateur by comparison. Using the Ancient DNA re-sequencing device which could alter someone’s DNA in real time, she began altering the DNA of the people on P3X-367 attempting to create a Hok’taur with super sensory powers such as telekinesis and psychic abilities.
Jack could never forget the shocking deaths suffered by Alebran and Lt Colonel Evanov, whose bodies literally broke down, liquifying right before their eyes, while they’d stood by, powerless to stop it. Janet Fraiser had theorised that the Ancients’ DNA re-sequencer had broken down every cell in their bodies simultaneously and truly, Jack still experienced nightmares about those deaths. Not to mention how close Carter came to suffering the same damned fate since Nirrti had forced her into the Ancients’ DNA re-sequencer too. Jack had finally been able to persuade Alebran’s brother Eggar (who’d received psychic and telekinetic powers from the alteration to his DNA) to use his newfound abilities to look into Nirrti’s mind and discern the true motive for her experiments to stop her before Jack was also subject to the DNA device. While he had finally convinced Eggar, when he saw the truth that she wasn’t trying to cure them, merely use them as test subjects, much to Jack’s horror, he’d used his telekinetic abilities to snap Nirrti’s neck, killing her. Fortunately, Eggar had also been able to retrieve the knowledge of how to reverse the effects of the DNA device from Nirrti’s mind and they could safely heal Carter, Jonas, Eggar and the rest of his people.
Thinking of Sam’s close call with death that day reminded him of the current situation. He forced his mind not to think about Carter and her crew aboard the George Hammond. A part of him wished that Sam had never accepted that damned commission to command the 304, which was operating at the outermost reaches of their solar system, so far from support or assistance from the SCG, but Jack recognised how selfish that was and ruthlessly stifled the sentiment. All he could do was hope for the best – he had absolute faith in Sam’s abilities. If there was any way for them to have survived and to return to them… to him, he would put his money on her pulling it off every damned time!
Resolutely he turned his attention back to a less depressing topic, watching as Cassie held Baby Sarah cooing at the little one, adorably and the baby reached out and touched her face in that cute way she had, which would melt the hardest of hearts. Even Colonel Davis, the most stoic of stoics, had turned into a great big pile of goo when she’d done it to him – a sight Jack had never imagined seeing of his 2IC. Jack exchanged significant glances with his ex-wife and Paula Cassidy err Paddington, who nodded too. They too had noted Cassie’s adoration of their granddaughter.
As Dr Beckett was carrying out Josh’s medical, scanning him using the Ancient’s scanner looking for Goa’uld symbiotes or other nasties, and Dr Bellamy Angel, their fourth medico was drawing blood from Paula, Jack drew Sarah aside and said sotto voce, “How have you settled in?”
She nodded at him, all smiles. Pretty good, all things considered. This is a lot to take in – it feels like a dream,” she said in wonder. “I can’t believe that I’m here, in the Lost City of Atlantis.”
Jack smiled benevolently. He was fairly accustomed to that reaction by people. Tobias Fornell was still expressing his awe and disbelief and he’d been here for a few months now. To be fair, it had probably taken O’Neill a couple of years to wrap his own head around the whole Stargate thing and he’d been right at the coalface fighting Goa’ulds at the time.
Watching Cassie making faces at the baby, while Sarah was imitating her, he said, “And you and Cass are getting along together?”
Sarah nodded. “She’s a lovely young woman and a credit to her mother and to you Jack. It’s been so helpful to have her helping me adjust to living here,” she said. “From what I’ve seen of her, I think she’d make a wonderful adoptive mom for Sarah. I’m sure Charlie would have loved to have had her, not just as a sister but also as Sarah’s mother if he couldn’t rear her himself. Plus, if I haven’t lost my touch, I think there might be a daddy waiting in the wings for Baby Sarah as well,” she said with a smirk.”
Jack was about to interrogate her about Cassie’s mystery man when Paula, who needed to be scanned, asked Jack if he could hold Mikelle for her. He was more than a little bit disgruntled that he’d lost the opportunity to discover who it was that he was going to be having the shovel talk with. Although he comforted himself with the thought that rather than threatening to bury them with a shovel, he would just threaten to drop them whoever it was into a black hole so that the gravitational forces would literally tear apart anyone who dared to mess around with his surrogate daughter. He would also grill Sheppard and Lorne to find out what they could tell him about the cretin who believed that they were good enough to go out with Cassandra Fraiser and disabuse them of that wrong thinking.
She’d already been hurt by one jerk who broke her heart by cheating on her, he was damned if anyone else would hurt her again. She was finally getting over having to call off her wedding because her cheating fiancé couldn’t keep his dick in his trousers and didn’t know how to use a condom so as not to impregnate another woman. Although, even though his infidelity had devastated Cassie weeks before their wedding, Jack reckoned it had been better to find out what sort of person he was, a liar, a cheater and someone bereft of honour or a scintilla of integrity before she married the douche bag. But damned if he let it happen again on Atlantis!
Accepting Mikelle who beamed at him and proceeded to babble away at him, revealing the presence of several milk teeth, he momentarily forgot that he was going to hunt down Cassie’s secret admirer and threaten them with the direst of fates, finding himself enchanted by Mikelle’s dimples and a smile that rather resembled Belle Paddington. Although Belle and Mikelle differed greatly in colouring, they both had a strong resemblance to their father while Joshua seemed to strongly resemble Paula, although Jack had noticed that certain expressions were pure Alex. He hoped the three kids would get along.
After they’d all been cleared of carrying symbiotes or anything obviously infectious, Cassie, Sarah, Jack, and Aoife had led the refugees to the family wing where a large apartment had been set up to accommodate them. After a lot of angst and discussion, the children had been split up into three groups, living with either Paula, Heather, or Thora but then after receiving the distress call from the George Hammond last week, and not knowing what the current status of Colonel Carter was and if she would be adopting Riley, there had been an urgent rethinking of the how the groups were split up. Lieutenant Murphy who had initially been going to take the twins and Gia would now take Davinia and Kelvin, while Thora Edmunds was going to take the twins and Riley.
If, when the children had willing guardians or foster parents available to transition into what hopefully was the final stage of their integration into this new world and Sam Carter’s fate was still ambiguous, Daniel had offered to be Riley’s foster carer. He knew that Jack would do it in an instant, even if Carter had remained nothing more to him than a highly valued member of his old SG1 team, just as he would have for Teal’c, Daniel or probably even Jonas. Hell, his friend understood how badly Jack wanted to raise Sarah and that it was eating him up already and that he couldn’t become Gia Kawalsky’s foster parent because Charles Kawalsky served under Jack too. Jack was the epitome of loyal to his people but with the threat of the MCD –238β hanging over their heads and the warning from Paula’s world uppermost in his mind, he was needed to take care of the problem and save the Earth one more time.
Jack didn’t like it, but he knew that he had to finish the job he’d already begun and that it would help keep the refugees safe as well. So as much as he’d longed to retire and raise little Sarah for his beloved son, Charlie, currently his duty was to all of the people in this universe. Even after they had successfully inoculated the whole damned planet and all of the other planets which contained humans who’d been seeded on habitable planets in the Milky Way, and he was absolutely confident they would prevail, Jack recognised that he was still could able to retire in good conscience. When the monstrous threat of MCD –238β had been contained, he had vowed to smash the Trust once and for all.
This new POTUS Isiah Walsh had already promised to give Homeworld Command whatever resources it took to finally and irrevocably defeat them, and he knew that for Penelope Garcia, Belle, Alex Paddington and now there were the new kids on the block, Sarah O’Neill, Joshua and Mikelle DiNozzo to be able to live safely here on Atlantis or back home on Earth, they needed to be defeated. Not just defeated but crushed to dust and the entire organisation from the kingpins to the most insignificant of foot soldiers needed to be taken down brutally so it would never again attempt to rear its ugly head and threaten the people of Earth.
And Daniel, bless his sometimes infuriatingly self-righteous best friend, had understood just how terribly conflicted Jack had been. Unable to fulfil the role his alt-reality son Charlie had asked of him for his daughter nor the obligation he felt to his former teammate Charles Kawalsky to care for his alternate reality great granddaughter Gia Kawalsky was terribly difficult. And then there was little Riley Faxon!
Being one of the very few people Jack and Sam had told about their relationship, Daniel was also able to understand how badly he must want to take custody of Riley Faxon too. Even more importantly, Daniel also understood why his personal desires to look after the three children MUST take a back seat to the importance of the tasks he’d undertaken.
Knowing the impossible situation that Jack was in already with Sarah and Gia and wanting to spare him further grief over Riley when George Hammond disappeared, Daniel immediately offered to step in to become Riley’s temporary foster parent. Until they had a clear idea of what happened to Sam and the crew of the George Hammond, both Daniel and Jack were loath to write Carter off – not just because they both loved her because they were all family, but because they knew how many times things seemed to look incredibly bleak for them all and somehow they’d managed to survive and return back home again. That was why, unless they had definitive proof that the vessel was destroyed, along with her entire crew, then they would assume she was still out there somewhere trying to get back home to Earth.
Jack was inexpressibly glad for the emotional support of his friend but also for the way he had stepped up and offered to take on caring for Riley too. For someone who, up until quite recently had maintained that he didn’t think he would make a good parent because of his own upbringing in a series of foster homes and group homes after his parents died, Daniel had undergone a major change of attitude about being a parent. Not only had he agreed to become a dad to Claire and Nicholas but was willing to take on Riley as well. While that may seem a very tall order for someone who had never seen himself as suited to being a parent the SOS sent by the George Hammond had been something of a watershed moment for him, given the extremely disturbing contents of the message, coupled with the SCG’s inability to raise them via standard communications. It was at this point that Vala had gone to Daniel, and they’d had a seriously overdue talk about their feelings.
Vala had dropped her flirty behaviour and apparently been serious as a grave. She’d told him that she’d had deep feelings for him for a very long time, but she’d come to realise he didn’t feel the same way about her and never would, but she was still willing to help and support him to bring up his alt-reality self’s twins and Riley too. Daniel had been suitably shocked by the ultra-solemn Vala and astounded that she knew he was thinking about becoming Riley’s foster parent. When he asked her how she’d known what he was thinking, apropos Riley Faxon, Vala had given him a real smile, not the flirty one she usually did and said that she knew how fond of Sam he was. She was like his sister and because General Jack couldn’t take him, it was obvious that Daniel would.
Daniel had confessed privately to Jack that her insight into his character surprised him a lot. She was always so ready to joke and flirt with everyone, which was why he tended to view her as somewhat superficial and a bit flaky. She was not someone who he thought of as being capable of offering solid and dependable emotional support. He saw her as rather flighty and perhaps prone to being a bit too self-involved, plus she was more than a little hedonistic. As to her revelation that she’d cared about him deeply, Daniel admitted that he was quite shocked, having assumed that her flirting with him wasn’t serious. Daniel looked at Jack uncomprehendingly when he couldn’t help but laugh at his best friend’s bemusement.
“Why are you laughing, Jack,” Danie asked, feeling a bit hurt at how Jack reacted to him sharing something so personal with him.
“I’m sorry, Danny boy, but Vala’s feelings for you have been pretty damned clear to pretty much everyone but you, for a long time now.”
“Why didn’t you say something,” Daniel demanded irately.
“Yeah right! Because everyone really appreciates getting relationship advice from their friends,” Jack scoffed at him. “Be honest with me Space Monkey, would you have taken my observations about Vala the slightest bit seriously? I don’t think so! Besides, I thought that you weren’t ready to move on from Sha’re and I wasn’t sure if you ever would be, which was why you always ignored her attention,” he said with a shrug. “But if you want me to give you relationship advice, then just say the word.”
Daniel had shuddered. “Maybe not, Jack.”
Jack grinned at him evilly. “Yeah, that’s what I thought!”
And much to everyone’s amazement, the relationship between Daniel and Vala was changing before everyone’s eyes as both parties began changing the way that they interacted with each other. They became more serious – or Vala did. Daniel seemed to take her more seriously, listening far more carefully to what she said. Jack felt like Vala was trying to show more of her true self which he knew took a lot of courage.
He’d long been guilty of acting like a dim-witted officer who thought everything could be solved by blowing it up. It was a defence mechanism, after losing Charlie, he preferred that people think that he was a dumb oaf rather than share the depths of his pain and self-loathing. He reckoned that Vala, having been a host to the Goa’uld Qetesh, must also have a fair degree of self-loathing. While Jack was no psychologist, he reckoned her flirty manner was probably partly her way to protect herself from pain and rejection. He reckoned as he watched the pair negotiating a new understanding of each other and Daniel pulling his head out of his ass and realise that although Vala was no Sha’re and she never would be, she cared profoundly for Daniel and her flirting with him didn’t make her any less serious about having a committed relationship.
There were going to be a lot of disgruntled people back on Earth because the change in their relationship happened too gradually for anyone to claim the stupid pool about when they would get together. In fact, Jack wasn’t even sure they were romantically involved but whatever their relationship was, they were going to be looking after Nicholas, Claire, and Riley together. At least until Sam’s fate was determined officially or until Jack had managed to fulfil Homeworld’s two current and crucial goals and thus allow him to retire. And to prove that the two of them were finally trying to sort themselves out, they were undergoing counselling to deal with a shit ton of trauma from their pasts.
As Vala told Jack, she wasn’t sure if they were going to make it romantically, it was time to boil the pot and brew the tea. Jack after a brief contemplation decided it was a metaphor that was roughly equivalent to the Earth simile of ‘to piss or get off the pot.’ In other words, they were going to stop dancing around each other and see if they could have a genuine relationship. She told him that Aoife had helped her realise that she used her flirting to avoid risking being rejected by Daniel. O’Neill was no psychologist but he reckoned that Daniel was probably using his own grief as a way to avoid getting close to someone and then being abandoned.
~o0o~
Meanwhile, the second group of Lieutenant Heather Murphy, her daughter Justine, Riley Faxon, and Daniel’s twins, Claire and Nicholas had arrived on Atlantis. After they’d all been cleared medically Jack and Dr O’Shea had met them on arrival, escort them to the family wing and their new quarters, consisting of three bedrooms and a living area and kitchen. They decided that for now, Justine and Claire would share one bedroom and Riley and Nicholas would share the second bedroom. Jack managed to persuade Cassie to come along to their apartment, pointing out that Sarah and Paula could look after Baby Sarah, to meet them since she was likely to be teaching all four of them soon.
Dr Heng in consultation with the two other psychologists had recommended that the refugee kids should begin attending school after a couple of days acclimating to Atlantis. It was felt that giving them structure would help them to settle in more quickly. As the children began settling into the new quarters unpacking the meagre belongings which they brought with them from the old world and also some of the new gear that Penelope, Paula and Capt. Sparks had ordered online for the refugees but their new homes were still quite empty. The rest of their new possessions were aboard the Zephyrus which was due to arrive in a few days. Dr Heng felt it would make it easier to settle in if initially, they had fewer new belongings. He’d explained that as a refugee it could be quite overwhelming to have to unpack a heap of new gear and adjust to being split up into smaller groups, plus deal with living in an Alien supercity in a whole new world.
Two hours later the final group arrived, due to them staggering the arrival times. The staggered arrivals had been decided on beforehand, partly so they didn’t put too much of a strain on the medical staff dealing with a bunch of kids and the three females who were their escorts. Plus, there was the two DARPA scientist, plus three pilots, and the Atlantis personnel who were returning to the city, Agent Rossi and Dr Heng. Last but not least, Drs, Biro and Keller who had conducted the Midway II medical exams would also need their own medical exams. All in all, it was quite a lot of people in need of physicals for Dr Beckett and Dr Angel to conduct, but that wasn’t the only reason for staggering their arrivals. They were hoping to downplay the children’s arrivals by having the adults like Rossi and Heng and the new scientists Fargo and Martens arrive amongst them and take the focus away from the children as much as possible. Paula’s arrival would be heralded as her being a new federal agent who was recruited to the ISIB, being an experience NCIS agent back on Earth. Lieutenant Murphy was a skilled nurse and Thora was a seasoned teacher who would help teach the older children primarily.
The fact that ten children and three adults had arrived at Area 51 out of the blue from an alternate reality was for the moment being kept on a need-to-know basis to keep the chatter to a minimum. Although all leave and deployments had been halted for the foreseeable future to prevent news from getting back to the IOA (read Shen Xiaoyi) and the ISBI had identified a shocking number of spies which had been planted on Atlantis, they couldn’t be sure they had caught them all.
So, for now, with them hopefully becoming close to having a dispersal system ready to go, Jack wasn’t taking any chances with the security of the lives of the people back on Earth. Atlantis was locked down as tight as possible and there were just the supply flights and personnel that they would have to watch like hawks.
Notes:
Hok’taur – a Goa’uld word meaning an advanced human
Chapter 21
Paula DiNozzo rolled over in the bed and looked at Alex, who was sleeping. His face seemed so familiar and yet there were things about him that differed so much from her husband Tony DiNozzo, and not just the superficial stuff that was because he was undercover either. It seemed like an inevitability that they would find themselves in bed together, after all in both realities they had been intimate. And even though they were from two very different realities they still fit together in many ways. Although Paula felt that while they fit together, she also felt as if she was cheating on her husband, even if in all likelihood he was already dead.
The weird thing was though that she didn’t regret giving in to her impulses to make love to Alex. Somehow, she felt that it was likely to be the only time they came together, and it felt a little bit like she had been saying goodbye to her Tony, so perhaps one day in the future she could move on from her grief over losing the love of her life. Paula suspected that her relationship with Alex, rather than being sexual, would settle into a strongly platonic one of being best friends and maybe co-parents. Truthfully, Belle was a delightful little girl, and Paula was more than happy to be a surrogate mom. The fact that Belle, like Josh and Mikelle, possessed not only the ATA gene but also an additional one that until a few months ago, no one had even known existed meant that the three kids had a great deal in common. As they got older and came into their abilities more, she suspected that having those commonalities would become increasingly significant for them. As far as they knew, the three children and Sarah O’Neill very all highly unique – only Alex and General Jack shared their extra genes, making them members of a highly exclusive group.
Paula was also comforted by the thought that although the children had lost Tony, Alex was an excellent father to his daughter Belle, and he was proving to be an equally terrific surrogate dad to Paula and Tony’s children too. While she knew that Alex was undercover here on Atlantis to keep Belle safe, it had also been easier for Josh to think of him as an uncle, as he didn’t have the same hair colour or eye colour as Tony had. For Paula, those mere cosmetic changes couldn’t hide the similarities to her husband which was probably why she’d been so sexually attracted to him, but for Josh and Mikelle it had helped them enormously in seeing him as a separate person to their dad – as had his new name.
As a father to the rather headstrong little girl, Paula was really very impressed with the job he had done raising Belle on his own over the last four years since getting custody of her. Dealing with a toddler as a single parent had to have been a difficult experience, especially when you factor in the fears he’d had about her safety. Plus, having to do it with a 20-month-old toddler who didn’t speak any English and had just lost her mother – had to have been hellaciously difficult. So, it was a tremendous achievement to not only have reared a relatively well-adjusted child but also prevented two serious abduction attempts.
Paula was shocked that Belle’s mother had been so damn cavalier in turning her daughter over to a stranger, even if he was her father. He didn’t even know she existed and to just assume that he would be able to look after her was pretty selfish in Paula’s opinion. But the whole situation of having a Mossad liaison working at NCIS seemed to be an utterly insane situation to the former NCI agent. Even if Ziva David had been assigned to the counterintelligence department, Paula still thought they were asking for trouble letting a trained spy and assassin have access to classified information. But it made absolutely no sense at all to have assigned her to work on the premier investigative team that investigated mostly murders, so they could hardly have been surprised to discover that she was handling Kidon operatives and missions, on the side and stealing classified data and passing it over to her father Eli David.
Her opinion regarding the insanity of Ziva David working on the team as the Mossad liaison was formed long before Alex felt safe enough to share with her the real story about his relationship with her and how his daughter was conceived. To say that she was furious and appalled by what he shared with her would be understating the case quite dramatically. Should she ever come face to face with that woman she would be tempted to rip her limb from limb for what she had put Belle and Alex through.
She thought her kids were lucky to have him, and she was grateful he was willing to help. Paula also felt fortunate to have Alex as a friend and supporter and she was looking forward to joining the ISBI as a special agent. She had been worried about how she was going to be able to support her children in this new world. Back home she and Tony had always shared the child-caring duties so that they both could continue to have a career in law enforcement, but Tony wasn’t here. To be able to continue as an agent was something she hadn’t dared to hope for and yet General Jack had already organised the creche so that she, Cassie, and Nikola Bates could continue to work on Atlantis.
Paula was super impressed with Cassie Fraiser and the way she was taking care of Baby Sarah. Jack had not only found an excellent mother for the little one, but from what she could see of Jack’s surrogate daughter, he’d seemed to have given Cassandra something that she desperately wanted and needed. He told Paula he’d never seen her so happy as she was now, not even when she was engaged to be married. She knew that Jack’s first thought had been to ask his ex-wife to care for the baby but the failure of Vala’s healing device to effect a complete cure had put paid to that plan. And yet, Paula felt like Jack had somehow managed to give the baby a perfect family to make up for losing her real ones. Cassie would be an awesome mom who adored the baby, plus, she had a doting Grandma who would be ready and willing to help out with childcare and she had a grandfather who was helping to save the world for her. You really couldn’t get better than that!
As for her own career, Alex had assured her that she wouldn’t be placed in highly risky situations and before getting the chance to berate him for treating her differently, he pointed out as a single father himself, that he had to be far more mindful of his actions now that he had Belle. Neither Josh nor Mikelle would cope well if anything happened to her. He’d explained to her how his uncharacteristic caution had led to the creation of Thomas Magnum and how that brought about David Rossi’s recruitment.
“At first it was just a one-off gig,” he’d told her, rolling his eyes comically, “but Dave liked it here so much that he decided he wanted something more permanent. Which is how we ended up having such an illustrious special agent in our fledgling agency.”
Regarding her safety, Paula knew that he was right. As a single mom, she had to be even more mindful when she was in the field than she used to be. Still, it comforted her knowing that should anything ever happen to her Joshua and Mikelle would always have Alex and their sister Belle. When she’d told him that if anything happened to him, she would be honoured to take care of his daughter as if Belle was her own, even if she could never replace her real mom, Alex had broken down and told her how Ziva had drugged him, then raped him. Although he only found out about it when he discovered that Tali was his real daughter, not long before the Trust started stalking them.
He was overwrought and also relieved that she had offered to care for Tali if anything ever happened to him. It had been weighing on him ever since he fully accepted the reality that Tali was his biological child. Paula knew why he was worried that if something were to happen to him that Ziva may end up getting custody of her again. While Paula would normally support a mother’s right to custody, in this case, she agreed with Alex that Belle’s mother was not a fit parent. She raped Tali’s father so she could have a baby, then lied by omission to him and then when it became inconvenient for her to be responsible for the child that she had conceived, dumped the little one on Tony, who assumed that someone else was her father.
His story appalled her, and then when he shared with her his secret fears that he’d end up resenting his own biological child it had broken her heart to think about how terribly alone he must have felt. Learning that Tali was his biological child and then having to piece together the truth about how she’d been conceived was tragic. He also confessed that his own childhood was filled with neglect and abuse, growing up in a family with two parents with substance abuse had always made him incredibly chary about being a father. Then to suddenly find out that his control over being a parent or not, had been taken from him, he had struggled greatly and had no support until Jack O’Neill stepped in and saved their lives from the Trust.
“And when you came to Atlantis? Did that change,” she asked.
“Yes, it did, because once Tali… once Belle was safe, I fell apart. I started having major panic attacks that I hadn’t had for years. I was convinced that I was going to end up resenting her because of how she was conceived, and it scared me to death because I know what it feels like not to be wanted. I never ever want that for my daughter.”
Paula was shocked at how desolate he sounded, and she wondered if her Tony had endured the type of upbringing that Alex had and managed to conceal it from her. That thought pained her and she hoped that he’d always felt safe enough to tell her the truth. She knew that he wasn’t close to his mother and father, and he hadn’t exactly had a great childhood, but Tony had never hinted at any actual neglect or abuse.
“What did you do?” she asked Alex.
He sighed. “I overcame my phobia about counsellors and started seeing Dr O’Shea the Atlantis psychologist. After more than two decades of avoiding them and psych evals, I made an appointment within days of arriving and went for my first session before we were even here a week, “ he said wryly. “And I had a massive panic attack in her office and almost ended up in the infirmary.”
“Oh wow,” Paula exclaimed. “Are you still having them,” she asked him worriedly.
“No, I haven’t had one for a few months,” he said.
“Because of Dr O’Shea?”
“In part, but while I was investigating Colonel Sheppard’s disappearance I came across a sexual predator who attacked and impregnated countless women, including some on Atlantis. Helping them find justice and being with other parents who were forced to have a baby without consent, helped me too. I realised that I could build a relationship with Belle that wasn’t toxic,” he explained. “And I found that I had a lot of support from the rest of the parents.”
“Does anyone know about Ziva and what she did to you?”
“Aoife does, and I told Teyla because I found out about what happened to Teyla when I was questioning her about Sheppard’s disappearance. Someone intimated that he was Torren’s real father, and her partner Kanaan was jealous and got rid of him. She told me that John wasn’t Torren’s, and that’s how I learned about Lucius Lavin. It seemed only fair to let her know that I sort of understood how she felt. It helped both of us,” he conceded.
So just Dr O’Shea and Teyla know,” she clarified. “Apart from me?”
“I told Nikki a couple of weeks ago and I’ll probably tell Monique, too.” He saw her look of bemusement at his mention of someone she didn’t recognise. “Dr Monique Girard,” he said.
She realised who he was talking about. “Oh, you mean the statuesque gorgeous blonde in the family quarters who is living in a triad with Colonel Sheppard,” she said.
Alex smothered a smile. “No, not a triad. Ilsa lost her partner, Sofie, who was raped and impregnated along with Teyla, Monique and one other scientist by Lucius Lavin. Sofie wanted to have him charged and she posed a threat and was killed to keep her quiet. After I arrested their rapist, Monique tried to kill him, but it wasn’t a serious attempt to kill Lavin.”
Looking horrified, Paula supplied, “She wanted the MPs to shoot her?”
Alex nodded sadly. “She couldn’t handle her ambivalent relation to her son Felix anymore,” he said. J.P. warned me what she was doing, and I got to her in time but then she suffered a complete breakdown,” he said quietly.
Monique was in the infirmary for a long time before we managed to coax her out of her deep depression and John helped her. And no, Sheppard and Ilsa are just staying with her to help her rebuild her relationship with Felix. Their relationship is platonic,” he insisted. “Just friends being there to support her,” he said a touch wistfully.
Paula had an inkling as to why he sounded so melancholy. Her Tony would have wanted to have been there too, supporting Monique Girard, right along with Dr Meier and Colonel Sheppard if he didn’t have family responsibilities. However, because of Belle, she suspected that he wouldn’t take such a hands-on approach with Monique, recognising how similar their situations were in some ways. She was the physical embodiment of his deepest and darkest fears – that he would come to resent his daughter because he’d been forced into conceiving her without consent. And with his issues of neglect and abuse from his own childhood, he was desperate not to let history repeat itself and inflict emotional and psychological harm on Belle.
Paula felt a deep outpouring of emotion, greatly honoured that he’d trusted her. Well, probably it was more that he trusted his Paula enough to let down his guard and make love to her. It made her feel very special, and she was awed by his trust. Watching him sleep beside her, knowing what his former partner had done to him when he was unconscious and defenceless, it made it even more amazing that he’d let his guard down with her and had permitted himself to sleep so deeply. As someone who did undercover work, she knew he had trained himself not to fall into a deep sleep when he was undercover, so his slumber spoke volumes about how much he trusted her, and she vowed to never betray that trust.
She thought about how their relationship had stumbled and failed in this reality, before ending so tragically. Tony shared with Paula how she died in his reality, and how he’d had been right there and unable to prevent it. He told her how in some ways it bore similarities to the death of Caitlin Todd, his partner when they first met. Both deaths he’d been up close and personal for him with Todd and herself – literally feet away from them when they occurred. Both of his partner’s deaths were grotesquely violent and came completely out of the blue. She felt her heart break for Alex – even if he wasn’t the same guy as her husband because at his core, they were similar in all the ways that mattered. They were both born with an innate unwavering drive to protect other people, especially those who were vulnerable and that made them both wonderful fathers. They were incapable of bearing grudges, and quick to forgive other people, even when they didn’t deserve leniency. Although in this reality, she felt like Alex had let people take advantage of him to the point that they had almost obliterated his self-esteem, unlike her own Tony.
The information that Alex had shared with her of his fifteen years as a senior member of the NCIS major case response team had horrified her. It also made her realise how seemingly insignificant actions had such an indelible impact on the future. On their future in this reality which ended with her death and his career left languishing on someone else’s team as other people took advantage of his skills and loyalty, even as they ravaged him little by little… stealing his potential for professional growth and failing abysmally in receiving meaningful recognition of his ability. Only now, under the banner of General O’Neill’s Homeworld Command was he able to rise to the challenge and fulfil his potential. Already he was Associate Director of the ISBI, but Jack had already told her that when the agency was big enough, he would be promoted to director, and she was so happy that he was finally receiving the recognition he deserved.
From his description of his time on the MCRT, Paula really wished she could travel back in time and give her alt-self a stern wakeup call – one that would have saved her life and brought her a great deal of happiness (along with the heartbreak of losing Hannah Rose) and would have seen Alex leave the MCRT while he still had plenty of his self-esteem intact. Sure, it might have needed working on, but still meant that he was ambitious and believed in himself. Her Tony would never have let himself be attacked by a colleague while injured and let her hold a loaded gun to his heart and then to his femoral artery and let it go. Her Tony would never, ever let two juniors turn off his comms while he was chasing down a dangerous domestic terrorist, just because they grew tired of him talking while getting voiceprints for comparison. Her Tony would have made very sure that it was the last case those cretins ever worked on, because clearly, neither agent could be trusted to work in the field watching colleagues’ backs.
However, as much as Paula wanted to be able to fix Alex’s life in this reality, she knew that if she had been able to go back and fix things for him and they had ended up together in this world, she and her children would never have been able to seek sanctuary here. Alex’s suffering had been what enabled them to find a place here and without Belle’s existence, Alex would never have come to Atlantis, never investigated Colonel Shepherd’s disappearance, and never learned of the plant that was causing so much havoc back in her reality. His years of suffering at the hands of the MCRT was the catalyst that made this reality a safe one for her and her kids and it also made her feel somewhat guilty. So, if she had been able to help him heal even a little when they made love to each other she could never regret it. If it helped him to regain a measure of trust in others, Paula considered it was the very least that she could do for him.
~o0o~
After they’d made love, Tony watched Paula fall asleep in his bed, which was certainly a first at least for the longest time. Having anyone in his bed apart from Tali, who thankfully was having a sleepover with Kazumi Zelenka hadn’t happened since before he’d learned that he was Tali’s father.
Ever since he’d learnt about Tail being his biological child, he’d lost any desire for sex. Now he felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off him. He sometimes thought that Ziva’s rape and betrayal meant that never again would he be able to trust someone enough to be able to share the intimacy that he and Paula had just shared. He’d always had a great deal of trouble trusting people but what Ziva did when they were together in Tel Aviv had made his trust issues a thousand times worse than they’d ever been. Even more horrific, he had lost the ability to trust in himself. As with many victims of non-consensual sex, he blamed himself for getting himself into a situation where she could take advantage of him. He also blamed himself because he must have been such an awful person that she felt he deserved to be drugged and treated as a sperm dispenser, despite her knowing how ambivalent he felt about having children.
Did she think because he was filled with self-doubt about being worthy or capable of looking caring for a child, especially of his own flesh and blood, it was okay to take his DNA without asking permission since he didn’t want kids anyway? Even when on an intellectual level he knew there was no excuse for what she had done to him, done to Tali too by initially depriving her of the chance to have a relationship with her own flesh and blood father, he still felt that somehow, he must have brought on this horrendous situation. If he had been more vigilant, and not allowed her to drug him, then it would never have happened to him.
He figured that nothing would have stopped Ziva if she had made up her mind to have a baby, but he wouldn’t have been the unwilling father and his trust in other people, inadequate as it was, would not have been completely and totally obliterated. She would have found someone else and then he felt guilty for wishing what had happened to him on someone else. Although when he expressed those thoughts to Aoife one day, she’d pointed out that maybe his availability, staying with her after he spent weeks hunting her down to warn her she was in danger, had emboldened her to take advantage of his friendship. As she said, there was nothing stopping her from going to a fertility clinic – she could even have asked him to be a donor, but something about their relationship had made her feel she was entitled to take his sperm without his consent – like he was nothing!
Although to a large extent, he’d moved on from the self-blame, he still wasn’t capable of being in close physical contact with other people, so he honestly didn’t see how he would ever be able to trust someone when it came to being intimate. If he couldn’t even contemplate having sex that consisting of a purely physical act like he’d done when he was young and reckless, in a car or in a bathroom and there was no pretence of being intimate, he was convinced that he’d never be able to trust himself or another person enough for him to risk the intimacy of making love as opposed to just having sex. And while most people who knew him superficially would never guess that Tony craved intimacy and physical connections which eclipsed mere sexual urges, it was nevertheless the truth. His parents had been too busy losing themselves (in prescription drugs in his mother’s case, and alcohol in Senior’s) so little Anthony had been deprived of physical contact and the unconditional love of his parents which had impacted him significantly. It left him with an unquenchable yearning to experience love, desperately wanting and needing that intimacy. The irony was that even when he thought he found it, he was always wary of it, and with good reason after relationships with Wendy and Jeanne had been such spectacular debacles. Even Paula who he’d loved too, the failure of their relationship and later her death had had a profound effect on him.
As hard as it was for him to find and more importantly, to accept it from the people he dated, at this point, he’d realised he was just too messed up to even try. Tony was convinced that when Ziva stole his semen, she’d also stolen way more than just his DNA. She’d also shattered any hope he’d held that he would manage to find what he craved the most, which was love and intimacy and a lifelong partner. Which also ironically, was something he’d always been afraid of accepting. Yet today, after sharing his story with Paula, not his Paula but the alternate reality’s Paula, something inside of him had shifted. Perhaps it was because he and ‘his’ Paula had been intimate years ago and at that time he’d dared to hope they might have a future together. Maybe it enabled him to open himself up to the intimacy of making love to her and letting himself be vulnerable in return.
He’d been astonished to learn how in this Paula’s reality, he had only been with the MCRT team for such a short period of time. According to Paula, he’d left just after they completed the investigation into Commander Dornan, the USS Kennedy’s Safety Officer who was found dead at Bethesda Naval Hospital after seemingly bursting into flames. Dornan was at Bethesda to have surgery to repair a defective valve in his heart and had supposedly been resting comfortably after having extra pain relief when there was an explosion in his hospital room – prompting McGee and Abby to suggest it was spontaneous combustion. However, the cause of death turned out to be much more prosaic, initially it was believed to be murder. The fact that the Commander was extremely unpopular on the Kennedy had made it quite feasible that someone would want to kill him.
Paula Cassidy had been assigned as the agent afloat on board the Kennedy and Tony had been thrilled to have an excuse to work with her again, having had an affair with her before she was deployed to the Kennedy.
Hearing about the wonderful life Paula and Tony had built together in their reality, he couldn’t help wishing he’d had the same wonderful life in this reality. Joshua and Mikelle were awesome children and from what he’d heard about her, Hannah Rose had been an absolutely delightful child too. Although he couldn’t imagine the pain they had endured when she’d been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour, and they had to watch her die. But aside from the family that Tony and Paula had made in her reality after he left Gibbs’ team, angry at the way his boss had treated Paula during the investigation and the number of mistakes that had occurred, alt-reality Paula and Tony had been recruited into the Stargate Programme when it had still been in its infancy. He wondered if Tom Morrow in this reality ever had a finger in the SCG pie and if some of the job offers from his former director were offers to join the Stargate program. But he was so invested in the idea that the MCRT was his family, an idea perpetuated by Abby, Tony had always brushed aside every last one of the many jobs offers he received from Director Morrow or anyone else for that matter.
When Tony compared his 15 years of servitude at NCIS under Gibbs to Paula’s husband in her reality, he could see how different he was to her Tony in significant ways. Paula claimed that most of the differences between Alex and her Tony were because of how his staying on as Gibbs’ 2IC had undermined his confidence in himself. He wondered if she was right. Certainly, in the end, during that last horrendous year, he spent at NCIS, a part of him knew that he should walk out the door and never return, that Gibbs was toxic but somehow he could never bring himself to leave. As bad as Gibbs treated him that final year after he nearly died, shot by a teenage terrorist, it wasn’t as if his behaviour towards him had been good before that, either. The lack of respect and backup had for years been steadily deteriorating, but Tony had been too close or too blind to see it. He was good at turning a blind eye to abuse until the Mossad director Orli had handed Tali over into his safekeeping.
Despite her telling him that she was his daughter, pathetic fool that he’d been, Tony was able to convince himself that it was all an elaborate plot by Ziva, and she’d sent her daughter to her old partner to protect her child until she had dealt with whoever tried to kill her. He had deluded himself into believing that this desperate act of sending him her daughter was the vindication he craved – that Ziva despite all of the abuse that she inflicted upon him during the decade they’d known each other, trusted him. Now he could see that he had been the desperate one, willing to go along with her insanity, blindly avoiding the giant elephant in the room that he and Ziva had never been together, taking it as a sign that she trusted him with her daughter more than she trusted Tali’s safety to whoever her biological father had been. No doubt as she’d expected him to.
The stupid thing was that all he had to do was request a paternity test be carried out, but she must have known that he wouldn’t do that. Why confirm that he wasn’t Tali’s father when he already knew they’d never had sex? It would simply mean that he would lose custody of Tali and that would put her in danger when Ziva’s wish had been that her former partner would raise and protect her most priceless possession. She had skillfully appealed to his vulnerabilities – his desire for family, his innate need to protect everyone, his obsessive need to earn his family’s love and respect – and like the Kidon-trained assassin her father had trained her to be, she had used his weakness against him. And if the drunk driver hadn’t careened into them back in Paris, injuring Tali, then he would have remained blissfully ignorant of his true status as her father. He would have meekly handed her over to her mother when she resurfaced again, just as he knew she would reappear, and he would never have known the truth.
Still, he couldn’t help wondering how he would have reacted if he’d learned the truth about who Tali was to him when Orli first brought her to him back in DC. What if the Israeli woman had insisted that he take a paternity test before she handed her over. What if he had demanded one? Tony was pretty sure if he’d learnt the truth before he had a chance to know Tali properly, to see her as a unique individual who was not just Ziva’s daughter and realised that while he was in Israel with Ziva she’d obtained his DNA without his consent, he would have turned tail and ran away. He would have immediately understood why he’d experienced blackouts since he’d worked Vice for two years back when he was in Philly and Tony was pretty sure he would have rejected her. The one thing that he feared the most about being a parent was neglecting and abusing his child as he had been and it was exactly what he’d have done if he’d learned that Tali was his biological child.
It was only because of his wilful blindness in believing one of his ‘family’ even someone as abusive as Ziva would never treat him as a sperm bank that he’d dutifully gone about raising Ziva’s daughter for her. And as Tali’s personality emerged, he had learned to love his former partner’s child, doing his best to protect and love her until her mother could come and take her home to Israel. He even learned Hebrew so that Tali would be able to fit back into her homeland when it was safe for her to go back to Israel. He gave up everything to care for her, yet in doing so, he found himself again and reinvented himself, gaining a PhD in psychological profiling. While he had intended to carve out a new career for himself, Fate had intervened when the car accident changed their life forever and they’d ended up in Atlantis.
In the short time that he’d been here, he realised that the Lanteans had become much more of a family to him and Tali than anyone at NCIS had ever been. Aoife and Jack probably didn’t realise how much he owed them – well Aoife might have an inkling, but Jack only knew that he’d given them a safe place to live and that he was trying to make sure that the Trust was destroyed but Atlantis represented so much more than that. It represented a safe haven where Tony could face some extremely difficult and uncomfortable truths about himself including his real relationship with Tali and begin to put the pieces of his shattered life back together again.
It was the place where finally, he had to stop running from the truth and began to unpack all of the deep dark dirty secrets he’d spent a lifetime repressing using the Ostrich in the sand method of dealing with his trauma. For a while, burying all of his pain and hurt had worked somewhat, until it didn’t. When he learned of Ziva’s betrayal and even though he was good at forgiving, too good according to Aoife, he knew that this thing that Ziva had done to him, to Tali was a bridge too far and he could never forgive her. That was when all of the other betrayals he’d suffered in his life and hadn’t faced up to came spewing up from the depths of his psyche, threatening to engulf him. Aoife had helped him to understand that it wasn’t just Ziva’s betrayal that was causing his panic attacks. It wasn’t just his perfectly valid fears of rejecting his daughter at some point down the track either, it was all of the other traumas he’d experienced as a child, as a cop and federal agent that was overwhelming him. All because he hadn’t stopped running long enough to deal with them and now they were like the veritable iceberg that sunk the Titanic – the supposable unsinkable ship.
Now with Aoife’s help and his new job, he was in a much better place. Tali was thriving, she now had siblings – something she longed for, but he had never thought he’d be able to provide for her. He’d thought that the closest she’d ever get was being a surrogate big sister to Erica Leigh Bates who was due to make her grand entrance in less than a month. Now she was the middle kid, with Joshua as her big brother and Mikelle as her baby sister, Tali was blissfully happy.
The kids all wanted to move into one apartment and Paula thought that it was a good idea too, even though he knew that they would probably end up living platonically. There were too many obstacles to them being together but living as a family unit certainly made much more sense than being separate.
And while Tony knew that he was far from ready for a real relationship with anyone yet, he was not sorry that he and Paula had spent the night together, making love for most of the night. He was so grateful to her because he wasn’t confident that he’d have been able to take that step with anyone else. But the truth is that he’d always cared deeply for Paula Cassidy and even when he was caught up in the madness of falling head of heels for Jeanne Benoit even though he knew it was wrong, a part of him had lamented that Paula had never wanted to rekindle their affair. And perhaps that was his fault for never telling her how much he’d loved her…too afraid of getting his heart broken again, as Wendy had done. The irony was that not being real with her, not telling her he wanted a future with her, had resulted in him losing his chance of a permanent relationship anyway.
As she rolled over, waking up slowly and smiling up at him, he thought about what his life might have been like if ‘his’ Paula had answered his frantic calls to her the night that they closed the case and Ensign Evan Hayes lay in a drawer in Ducky’s morgue, killed by bullets from Caitlin Todd’s Sig Sauer. He knew how upset Paula had been about the young ensign’s unnecessary death, and although he knew that Paula didn’t blame Todd, she did blame Gibbs for not listening to her about how vulnerable Ensign Hayes was. Tony knew that Gibbs had ballsed up the investigation badly by letting Ducky date the Doc. She’d covered up her medical negligence by making it look like murder, thereby ensuring that the MCRT hounded a troubled and abused young man to his death. But in this reality, Paula had never answered any of the dozens of messages he’d left her and returned to sea aboard the Kennedy. They had been going to catch up with each other the weekend that Ari killed Cate, but her death had plunged them into an investigation into her death and Paula had started seeing an attorney.
Paula reached out and touched him cautiously, but he leant into her touch, starved of it for so long. As they snuggled together in his bed, she asked him, “Is everything alright?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I was just thinking about the case with Commander Dornan. Wondering what would have happened if I’d applied for a transfer,” he said. “It wasn’t just that Gibbs didn’t listen to you and balled you out in the bullpen in front of everyone which you don’t do to a senior agent in front of subordinates. He screwed up that investigation by turning a blind eye to Ducky dating Dr Byers.”
Stroking his arm, Paula agreed. “I know. If he’d been there in the lab when the toxicology results came in, Ducky would have known immediately that Dornan wasn’t murdered.”
“And Ensign Hayes would have been off the hook as a murder suspect,” he said, finishing her thought. “I know. And if I’d applied for a transfer, maybe you and I would have gotten together and gone into the SGC program in this reality too and you wouldn’t have died. But I was also thinking that if I’d left the MCRT back then, Tali would never have been born and despite how she was conceived, I can’t imagine what it would be like if she didn’t exist.”
Paula looked sad. “I wish your Paula had taken those calls and you’d had the blissful happiness that we had with our family but I’m also extremely grateful that Tali was born too. If she didn’t exist, you would never have come to Atlantis, never uncovered the plot by Ambassador Shen to turn your world into mindless zombies and stop her threat before it started. You have made this world a safe haven for my Tony’s children to grow up in and I am so damned grateful to you and Tali for giving Joshua and Mikelle a future here.”
Both Paula and Tony were silent for several minutes before he spoke again. “I was also thinking about when I came here. I believed that my biggest fear after I found out who Tali really was to me, was that I would end up not just resenting her or hating her. I was terrified that I would reject her, and I do know how much it hurts for a child to know that they aren’t wanted,” he said gravely, making Paula’s heart ache for him.
“And are you still afraid of that happening, Alex,” she asked him with infinite gentleness.
He thought for a long time about her question. The old Tony would brush it off with a glib re-joiner or a joke. But he’d finally grown up and he answered her query honestly.
“NO, I don’t think so. The case with Lucius Lavin sometimes cut a little too close to the bone but all of the survivors have taught me a great deal and I’m grateful to them. When I looked at Monique Girard and Felix, I was so afraid that I would be like her, resenting poor Felix but I’ve seen how Teyla and Kanaan have embraced Torren and loved him because he had no say in being born. And how Ota, Lahn, Willa, Heleen and Neese love their kids despite how they were conceived, and I know that I will never blame Tali for existing, even if I can never forgive Ziva for how she was conceived. No, I’m not afraid anymore,” he told her, and Paula knew he spoke the simple truth.
Coming to Atlantis had been the right thing for Alex and Belle, and it was proving to be the best possible outcome for Paula and her children too. As they lay curled in each other’s arms, their cuddling turned to ardour as they tacitly acknowledged that they would make love to each other a final time. They were laying to rest the ghost of the past before they came together as a family.
Chapter 22
Sarah O’Neill nee Wyatt looked at Mikelle and Sarah who had just woken up from a nap and were lying side by side in the same cot together, although normally, they slept in separate cots. They were lying staring into each other’s faces and cooing at each other. It was so darn cute it made her jaw ache from all of the smiling she was doing. After her recent bout of depression, Sarah hadn’t been doing much smiling, not finding much in her life to smile about after losing her dad, Mike and being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis but all that changed after Baby Sarah arrived from an alternate reality. Oh, how she thought that Jack had finally lost his marbles when he came to the nursing home that day – and yet now, Sarah and Mikelle Paddington were reaching out and patting each other’s faces in the sweetest way imaginable and here she was on Atlantis, the Earth’s super-secret military base in a galaxy far from their own.
A week after the children had been brought here to Atlantis, much had changed in her life. Now she had a granddaughter – a precious gift from an adult son who she never got the chance to watch grow up. It hadn’t escaped her notice how ironic that was that he had sent his only child to another dimension where he hoped that she could grow up safe and free, but he would never get to see her grow to adulthood. Both she and Jack had made a vow that they would do everything in their power to see that Charlie’s daughter had a happy life to make up for her never getting to know her father. They would make sure Baby Sarah knew how much Charlie had loved her and Sarah was so damned grateful for the precious gift he’d entrusted to them.
As the babies became more alert, she noted that at least one of them required a fresh diaper and knew she would need to ask for assistance to lift them out of the cot. While Vala Mal Doran, had been able to send her into remission with a miracle healing device, after falling into a slump after her father Mike Wyatt died, Sarah had given up on doing therapy to retain her mobility. Now Sarah had some way to go before she trusted herself to be able to lift and carry Sarah or Mikelle, but she was working assiduously towards that goal. At this stage, no one, not the doctors and not Vala could tell her how long her remission might last but Sarah was determined that for however long it did last, she was going to make the most of it. Her granddaughter would grow up so fast, and she wanted to be able to enjoy every aspect of her babyhood for as long as possible, even just being able to pick her up from her cot and change a poopy diaper.
But that didn’t solve her immediate dilemma. She was disappointed that Cassie and Paula who had gone for a run together would have to cut it short because she couldn’t pick up Sarah and Mikelle. She had wanted to repay Paula for all she had done in caring for Baby Sarah, and she knew that the agent was fretting that she had to get back into shape to join the ISBI, so she had encouraged Cassie to go with her and show her where to run. While Sarah didn’t think that Cassandra was a serious runner, she was looking a little frazzled between the stress of having a number of the newly arrived refugee children in her class and wanting to spend every other waking moment with Baby Sarah O’Neill. Sarah knew that the younger woman needed a break. All new mothers needed to take a break every so often, even if they didn’t realise it and because it took a village to raise a child, sometimes it was a grandmother’s role to step in and gently but firmly take charge, which was what she’d done. Which was why she was dismayed that she would have to call them back so soon.
As if by magic, little Gia Kawalsky appeared, asking her if she could please help Sarah watch the babies. Sarah opened up her arms, inviting the little girl in for a hug which she accepted, somewhat tentatively.
“Wow, Gia! Am I glad to see you! I could really do with your help because I’m still not strong enough to lift the babies yet and one of them definitely needs a fresh diaper,” she told the solemn child.
Gia looked up at her intently, as if to see if Sarah was patronising her but seemed satisfied that the older lady meant what she said. “Okay, I’ll lift them out for you Sarah, but I’m not good at putting on fresh diapers. The last time I did it, Mikelle took it off,” she confided sounding ashamed.
Sarah laughed at her woebegone expression. “Oh, Honey, all babies do that. You just have to be really quick and put a pair of pants on over their diapers when they reach that stage, so they can’t take them off,” she explained kindly.
Gia gave her a tentative smile and she said, “Really Sarah?”
“Absolutely,” she declared, as Gia carried Mikelle over to the changing station that they had set up in Paula’s nursery.
She was extremely glad of Gia’s help as she helped her with the fine motor skills required to undo the zippers to Mikelle’s onesie and help her get the wriggle-worm out of her diaper, knowing that Mikelle had filled her diaper. Expecting Gia to skip the messy bit, she was quite surprised that the little girl remained by her side. When the two babies were both changed, since Sarah’s diaper had been wet, and both were lying in the living room, Mikelle was in her playpen playing with her toys and Baby Sarah was lying on her play mat, playing with the dangly toys above her, she thanked her assistant for her help.
Gia smiled shyly. “You’re welcome, I love helping. I always wanted a little sister or a brother, but it was just me and Uncle Charles,” she said wistfully. “My parents died when I was three.”
Sarah nodded, “You must miss them,” she told her.
Gia shrugged. “I guess, although I don’t really remember them. But I do miss Uncle Charles, even though he was my great uncle he was kind of like a parent to me,” she said trying not to cry.
Sarah nodded. “It’s only natural that you should miss him, Sweetie and it’s okay to be sad and to cry when you’ve lost someone,” she told her. I lost my little boy, and last year I lost my dad and I still get really sad and cry because I miss them so much,” she said as Gia gave a sob and fell into her comforting arms, sobbing her little heart out.
From what Sarah knew from Paula, Heather and Thora, Gia Kawalsky hadn’t broken down at all since they left Area 52 in their own reality, although she may have done so in the privacy of her bed. But this was the first time she had done so publicly and accepted comfort from an adult. Sarah felt an increasingly strong affection for this motherless child as she held her in her arms and thought about how Jack had confided in her that he needed to find someone very special to care for Gia. They’d talked about how important Charles Kawalsky had been to Jack, how he had saved his butt on many occasions and how Jack had saved his, until the final time when Kawalsky had been infested by a parasitical being called a Goa’uld and had died. She knew that Jack still harboured guilt over not being able to save him, so Sarah understood why he was determined to find someone special to look after his grandniece, Gia.
She also understood her ex-husband well enough to know that he felt guilty for not being able to take Gia himself, but that he still had unfinished business and needed to ensure that what had happened in Baby Sarah’s reality didn’t happen in this one. She knew how difficult it was for him to remain focused on thwarting the attempt to turn the world into a planet of mindless automatons. She also had known for a while about Jack and his former teammate, Samantha Carter, and their extremely complicated long-distance relationship. He first told her about it back when she had entered the nursing home in DC and he’d been able to visit her more regularly than when she was still at the house where they had lived with Charlie in Colorado. While she hadn’t been all that surprised, she privately thought that he had chosen Samantha because it seemed impossible for them to be together. But since her arrival on Atlantis, Daniel had spoken a great deal about his team, who he considered family, particularly Sam and Jack. After listening to the archaeologist, Sarah realised that Jack had chosen her, not because she was unattainable but because he loved her despite all of the obstacles that should have made a relationship with her totally impractical.
Now, faced with the news that the George Hammond was missing and presumed by the bigwigs to have been destroyed, she realised how he was also feeling guilt at not being able to put his hand up to be a guardian for little Riley Faxon as well as Sarah and Gia Kawalsky. What a terrible burden Jack must be carrying on his shoulders right now and she just knew that both he and Daniel were desperate to get out there and search for Carter too. Neither man would accept that she was dead, not without irrefutable proof but with no sign of the ship or even a trace of what happened after they sent the SOS she wondered if they would ever learn the fate of the George Hammond and her crew.
As Gia remained in her arms, her sobs had quietened now, apparently, she was all cried out, Sarah wasn’t even sure if the little girl had fallen asleep. Sarah knew from her own experience that grief was an exhausting business and crying wasn’t only cathartic it could be a soporific too. So, with Mikelle and Sarah otherwise occupied, she let Gia remain right where she was until Paula and Cassie returned from their run and woke her up. Paula was pleased albeit quite surprised to learn that Gia had accepted comfort from Sarah, as she hadn’t turned to any of the adults from her own reality and seemed to not be all that comfortable around females. Given the fact that she had been brought up by her great-uncle, that wasn’t so surprising though. Still, it definitely gave Charlie’s mother food for thought.
Then, later that day, something that Gia said to her, caused her to have an epiphany. They were pushing the little girl in a baby buggy that Penelope had organised for them, and it had just been delivered by the Zephyrus, which had docked on Atlantis several hours ago. Gia was really keen to take it and Baby Sarah for a spin and Sarah had agreed to accompany her as Dr Angel had encouraged her to take a daily walk as exercise, but to start out slow at first. So, she and Gia were setting off for her very first walk around Atlantis with Baby Sarah.
Gia was chattering away, telling her what Baby Sarah had done when she was playing peek-a-boo with her that morning before she’d stopped and grown silent. Wondering if she was alright, Sarah pointed to the bench seat in the corner of the hallway where three corridors intersected. As she sank down for a rest, Sarah asked Gia if she was okay.
“Yes, I was just thinking though about having two Sarahs. It’s alright now because she is still a baby, but it is going to be confusing when she isn’t a baby anymore,” she observed with a degree of insight that up until now had escaped the adult Sarah.
She nodded. “Yes, you’re right Gia, I hadn’t thought of that. Our name really doesn’t lend itself to being shortened either. If it was Rebecca for example then one of us could be Bec or Becky,” she mused.
Gia nodded. “There were two boys in my old school called James, so one of them used to be called Jamie and the other one was James.
Sarah nodded. “Yes, that name is a good one for shortening. You could shorten it to Jay or Jim as well.”
Gia thought about it and said, “Well maybe we could shorten Sarah to Rah or Ess for Sarah,” she suggested helpfully. Seeing Sarah’s less-than-impressed expression she said, “Well what about Rahry or Essie?”
Sarah nodded, not totally convinced. “Maybe. I like those last two names better. Let’s think about it and perhaps talk to Cassie and Jack,” she suggested, as they stood up to continue their walk, since Baby Sarah was getting restless and was keen to be on the move again.
Later that night, as she lay in her bed, Sarah returned to the conversation with the youngster. Gia was right, it was going to be confusing. The Jackson twins, Claire and Nicholas, who were very close to Paula and her kids, had adopted Sarah into their family unit too, and they had started calling her Big Sarah and her granddaughter, Little Sarah. But she recognised that at some point, and she hoped she would still be in Sarah’s life at that point, the little girl would probably baulk at people calling her Little Sarah. So really, they should come up with a better solution as soon as possible and she acknowledged that it wasn’t just that they shared their first name but they shared a last name too.
Although Cassie was going to become Sarah’s guardian and adopt her, she was most insistent that in honour of her courageous father and grandfather who were prepared to sacrifice themselves to give the little one a life of freedom, she felt that Sarah should keep O’Neill as her last name. Cassie pointed out that while the name Fraiser honoured Janet, her adopted mother, it wasn’t the name she was born with, so she didn’t feel all that proprietorial about it. That the last thing that she would want for Sarah would be for her to lose her link to her father and mother who had sacrificed everything to give her life. Jack and Sarah had been touched by her thoughtful gesture and already she was coming to think of Cassie as a surrogate daughter. And while she hadn’t divulged the identity of Cassie’s secret to Jack, Sarah was pretty sure that the young curly-haired woman just might be swapping Fraiser for another name in the not-so-distant future. It would give her an unexpected chance to help plan a wedding and watch Jack walk the lovely Cassandra down the aisle.
But it lead her to examine why after she and Jack had divorced, she hadn’t gone back to her maiden name? Why almost two decades later was she still using O’Neill and not Wyatt? And if she was being honest with herself, she would be forced to admit that it was because a small part of her had hoped that maybe someday, she and Jack would get back together again. Honestly, she knew she still loved him, an exasperating man that he could be at times, but at his core, a good kind man who was steadfast and loyal. She also knew that he still loved her too, but after all this time, she was forced to admit that they were never going to reconcile as husband and wife. There was still too much pain and grief over their son, although Baby Sarah was slowly healing some of their grief, it was impossible to ever get over losing your child, especially the way they had lost Charlie.
Realistically, although their relationship was really solid these days, she knew that they would never work out as a couple after what they’d been through. And now that she knew that Jack was in love with Colonel Carter – although when Sarah met her, she was only a captain – she realised that there had never been a hope of them getting back together, even if Carter was never found. She hoped that the crew and Carter had survived though, because it would be a tragedy for little Riley to grow up without having her in his life although Jack, Daniel and Vala would do their best to give the child everything he needed.
Still, Sarah decided that it was time to let go of their painful past and fully embrace the future. A future that involved helping Cassie Fraiser to raise Baby Sarah O’Neill and maybe she would live long enough to see her grow into adulthood, unlike their own Charlie, who’d been taken far too early. She was so glad that Jack hadn’t listened to her in the depths of her grief when Mike died, and given up on her, like she had given up on herself. Sarah had been a life-changing gift from their alt-reality son, and she was going to grasp that gift from him in both hands and embrace it for all she was worth. She felt that in the spirit of looking to the future, it was time to forge a new identity and leave the name Sarah O’Neill for Charlie’s daughter. She would use her second name, Lauren and go back to using her maiden name Wyatt. Lauren Wyatt was a good name, it represented the future, one that a year ago when Mike died, she thought was impossible.
Now it held the promise of family and given Jack’s close familial relationship with Daniel Jackson, who himself was an orphan, that family would now include Claire, Nicholas and little Riley, was getting rather large. But to the lonely childless mother, it sounded like manna from heaven, and she was so glad that she was still alive. She had made a vow to Vala that having gone into remission, she would do everything in her power to stay that way for as long as she possibly could. Now lying in bed, thinking about her Tai Chi class at seven o’clock tomorrow, she knew she needed to get a good night’s sleep. She also resolved to follow the example of Daniel, Vala and Alex Paddington and attend counselling classes to help her resolve some of her trauma and grief issues.
She decided that she going to put her hand up to become Gia’s guardian or foster mom. While she didn’t feel that she could adopt her granddaughter because of being in remission and the physical strain at her age of looking after a baby, the situation with Gia was different. She was ten, not six months old and her needs were much more emotional. She felt that she could help guide Gia Kawalsky through the minefield of her grief and loss, but Lauren needed to get her own house in order too. She remembered Alex introducing her to one of his agents, a fairly new arrival like herself, who had recently lost his daughter to drugs. He had come here to Atlantis for a fresh start, having also lost his daughter’s mother to a violent terrorist a few years ago and was still dealing with his losses. It made her think about the support groups which Dr Nkusi had begun to run and Lauren Wyatt resolved to speak to her tomorrow about starting up a grief support group for people such as herself and Tobias Fornell.
When she had first been diagnosed with MS she had done a lot of reading about the mind-body connection and she knew the physical toll that grief could play on the physical body, particularly if you repressed it. It was time to get some professional help and support from other survivors and for her to help others too. Gia had taught her that much already, that helping the little girl also helped Lauren to face her own pain too.
~o0o~
Jack watched his granddaughter from an alternate reality sleeping peacefully in his arms, feeling a sense of contentment stealing over him which he’d been lacking for a very long time. Somehow this little girl was helping to heal him, and he wished more than anything that he was able to honour the wishes of adult Charlie from the alternate reality who had sent him his daughter to protect. But in this reality, Jack O’Neill was not a retired former Air Force officer, he was head of Homeworld Command and at the moment, the fate of over eight billion people of Earth were depending upon him and his people, even if most of them may never even know about it. Indeed, if he was doing his job properly, then there would be no need for them to learn the truth about how close they all came to becoming mindless zombies. It would be too alarming for them to know.
Jack thought about how much had changed in the weeks since Agent Paula DiNozzo had led ten children and two other adults through the interdimensional drive, into this world at Area 51 and frightening the crap out of General Goldstein. Sarah had been nothing short of a blessing that neither he nor his ex-wife had thought to experience. Not after their whole world had collapsed when they’d lost their son as a child, and yet here she was, in the flesh, blissfully asleep in his arms as he sat in the rocking chair, holding her. The Lieutenant General had stood his ground against the worst despots, monsters, and sociopaths, not to mention politicians and System Lords, even half Ascended evil psychos like Anubis, and refused to give an inch. But Jack knew that he didn’t stand a chance of withstanding the likes of the little one nestled so trusting against him. The highly decorated warrior knew he would immediately accede to her every whim and strive to fulfil every last desire of the now seven-month-old granddaughter, lying miraculously in his arms while she slept, tuckered out from all of the excitement from today.
Little Mikelle Paddington had turned one year old today, and they had thrown her a small party. While it was a significant milestone for the little girl, and must surely be celebrated, it was also a bitter-sweet one for Paula because Mikelle’s daddy wasn’t there to celebrate it with them, and she was clearly struggling. Most of the time, Paula was strong, not just for her children but for the rest of the kids who saw her as their protector and part surrogate mom but today, with just the refuge kids, Heather, Thora, plus Alex and Belle, Cassie, Sarah, Daniel, Vala, Nikola Bates and himself as extended family, she had let her vulnerability show. It wasn’t all that surprising to Jack that Cassie, Alex, and Sarah had stepped up and offered her support and comfort in their own unique ways to help her get through what was an emotional day.
Uncle Alex had taken charge of watching out for the now ambulant toddler, with Belle as his faithful attendant, helping to keep Mikelle occupied. Jack noted with real pleasure that Belle was no longer such a clingy, nervous little girl which was how she’d been the first time he met her after the Trust had tried to abduct her. Nearly nine months on Atlantis had worked wonders for her, she was definitely a much more relaxed and happier child than she had been in the aftermath of the failed abductions. This rather extreme form of witness protection had definitely been the right option for her and Alex too. Now with the unexpected arrival of the refugees, Belle was relishing having an extended family drop in her lap. Alex said she had constantly been begging him for a sibling and now she had gotten her wish in the form of a ready-made pair of siblings or half-siblings.
Belle absolutely adored Josh, treating him as the big brother she’d always dreamed of and never expected to have, and he seemed equally enamoured by her. She had immediately taken to calling him Joshie and he hadn’t batted an eyelid even as his mother gaped, explaining that he’d forbade anyone from using it several years ago, claiming it was a little kid’s name and he was too big for it. However, with the tragic loss of his beloved little sister, Hannah Rose three years ago to a brain tumour, Jack reckoned Belle being close in age to what Hannah would be if she had survived, it wasn’t so surprising that the almost teenager would be so highly indulgent with her. And as both kids and little Mikelle had the ATA gene in the same strength as Alex, it would no doubt be helpful to have each other to lean on and to be there for Baby Sarah too.
As for Mikelle, Belle followed the little girl around, playing baby games with her and making sure as she toddled on chubby unsteady little legs that she didn’t fall and hurt herself. She had also latched onto her Aunty Paula with great enthusiasm. The kids had welcomed the news that when Sarah went to live with her new mom Cassie next week, they were going to be moving into a new apartment which was being set up so that they could all live together as a family unit, although Paula and Alex would both have separate bedrooms.
While the psychologists had discouraged Paula and Alex from starting a relationship right now which would be extremely confusing for Josh in particular, Jack didn’t reckon that they would have contemplated it anyway and if they had, he would have offered his own strongly worded advice, having been a similar but different situation when Dr Carter arrived with alt-Charles Kawalsky, announcing that she was married to General O’Neill, head of the SCG in her reality. It had been downright awkward and had set tongues wagging with a lot of people, particularly the misogynists who hated having females in the SCG assuming that if they were married in one reality then Jack and his subordinate must also be having an affair which was against the fraternisation regs. Since they had been totally innocent of wrongdoing, it had been extremely awkward but of course, it was a lot different for the two federal agents. After all, they had been intimate in both realities, and there was only one Paula in both realities which certainly made things far less complicated, although there were two Alex in both dimensions.
Still, there was the matter that Alex was the Associate Director of the ISBI and would be Paula’s boss, although he and Jack had already discussed the appearance of impropriety, given that in Paula’s reality she was married to Alex and he figured that in matters of discipline or promotion, Alex would recuse himself and Jack would take over. As he looked at the pair, he noted how in tune they seemed to be with each other and he was fairly sure that while they weren’t planning to start a relationship, he wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t been intimated, but if that was the case, he couldn’t blame them. It was easy to imagine that the person from another dimension who looked and sounded just like the person you were married to or had a relationship with was identical, but there were significant differences that left you feeling awkward and disappointed. But maybe in their case, they needed to sleep together to realise that neither one of them was the same person as the partner they’d lost, even if they seemed identical. But it wasn’t the physical similarities that made them who they were but their different experiences that affected the people they’d become.
Meanwhile, as Jack looked over at Cassie with Sarah bouncing her on her knee, as the other children all included the infant in their games with the birthday girl, he thought about how much Sarah’s unexpected appearance had changed life for Cassie. Not only had it filled the deep longing in Cassie to be a mother, but it had helped cement her as his daughter and a member of his family in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before. Partially because she had never met his ex-wife who had immediately taken her into her heart as a daughter, but mostly because they were willing to entrust their granddaughter to her and let her adopt her legally, which went a long way towards convincing Cass she would always be an important part of Jack’s family. And his former wife eagerly embraced Cassie as a surrogate mother, something the young woman had been lacking after she lost Janet. Granted, she’d had Sam but her relationship with Cassie had always been more of a big sister or Aunty than a mother.
But with Sam MIA, however, you defined the relationship with Sam, Cassie was hurting tremendously over the missing spaceship. No matter what the status of Carter was… out there somewhere, yet irrevocably lost to them or God forbid, she was dead, his former wife would help fill the role long left vacant after Janet was killed by the Goa’uld. Jack berated himself for not introducing them sooner, but he knew that a part of him felt guilty to have Cassandra in his life and he felt that Sarah might feel that he’d tried to replace their son with a surrogate daughter when that was emphatically not the case.
After they had rescued Cassie, the sole survivor on Hanka, he’d purposefully tried to keep his distance from her, but Cassandra had refused to be rebuffed. When the Tok’ra, Jolinar had taken over Carter’s body, hiding from the Goa’uld assassin sent to kill her, Cassie had turned to him, not her adopted mother, Janet Fraiser, to confide in him that Sam was a Goa’uld. It had been a turning point between them and it was only natural when Janet was killed that he assumed responsibility for the troubled teen, both of them mourning Janet together. But Cassie was never a replacement for his son. In fact, Cassie being so close in age to his dead son, she was more often a painful reminder of the milestones that he’d never achieved. Graduating from high school, heading off to college, having a first serious romance, and settling into a career – all things that he never got to do.
Yet when Sarah had finally met Cassie on Atlantis, she hadn’t resented the young woman or accused him of trying to replace their son. She had reached out and embraced her, granting her the highest of compliments when she gave her the tick of approval to become Sarah’s mother after observing her, first with the students in her class and then with the precious baby who fate had sent their way. And she would be invaluable in terms of helping Cassie with the baby, providing her with much-needed experience and wisdom, and as her rehab progressed, a willing set of hands to take up some of the slack when Cassie needed some time out. He’d been wrong to keep them apart all these years but like the two special individuals that they were, neither one had expressed a word of reproach, simply embracing each other, and filling a need that had been vacant for too long. If Sarah’s dad were still alive, he’d no doubt give Jack a massive boot up the ass and it would be well-deserved but if the tough old coot was watching on, he reckoned he’d be happy that Sarah was here on Atlantis.
Thinking about his former father-in-law, made him think about Sarah’s grandmother, who had refused to call the baby her alternate-reality granddaughter right from the first moment she met her. She insisted that since Charlie had sent her to Jack to rear, that made her theirs, even if her arrival was mighty unconventional. Since Jack intuitively felt the same way, he couldn’t really argue with her, nor did he want to. Somehow the very first moment he’d held Baby Sarah he’d know she was his and he reached out to check that she wasn’t too cold, his hand caressing her soft as silk cheek as she continued to sleep, safe and warm in his arms.
He whispered softly to his granddaughter, “Sooner than we think, we’ll be celebrating your birthday too, little one, and it will be such a happy day. Bittersweet as well because your parents will not be here, but you will be surrounded by love,” he told the sleeping child tenderly.
“And hopefully by then, you granddad will have taken down the evil Emperor General Shen,” a much-loved voice murmured to the side of him.
“I’ll certainly be trying my hardest to give you that as a birthday present,” he vowed before he glanced into the smiling face of his ex-wife. “But I can’t say how long it will take to defeat the Trust. We have to make sure that this time, they can never rise up from the ashes,” he said gravely.
She brushed her hand gently over their granddaughter’s head, her still sparse hair was starting to grow. Her head was apparently too cool to her touch because Sarah magicked up a cute little unicorn hat that Penelope had given them, saying that it was only appropriate since she would be living in the Pegasus galaxy. After putting it on Baby Sarah’s head without her stirring, she smiled and left them alone again.
As she exited Sarah and Mikelle’s temporary bedroom, she paused though, “Yes, I know. Sarah, Mikelle, Belle, and Josh will never be safe until they have been crushed and their ashes scattered in separate galaxies,” she said quite seriously because Sarah did know just how high the stakes were for Sarah and the Paddington children.
Several days ago, Chaya Sar had paid the newcomers a flying visit, having been summoned, Jack suspected, by Alex Paddington who, like Jack had an extra Ancient gene that until recently, no one knew even existed. O’Neill suspected that while Chaya, like Atlantis, was staunchly Team Sheppard, they were also very strongly invested in Alexander Paddington too. He also believed that had he been the first one through the Stargate, the Ancient supercity and the Fallen Ancient might well have been Team Alex instead. Perhaps that was fanciful, but it was true that Alex and Chaya were close, and she adored Belle, treating the child like an overly indulgent Aunt.
Huh, maybe Chaya had sensed the little Paddington’s excitement at the arrival of Paula and her children. Whatever had brought her here, she had been extremely keen to meet the children and had gravely informed Alex, Paula, Jack, Cassie, and Sarah that Baby Sarah had also inherited the healing gene like her grandfather, while Mikelle and Joshua had the Ancient communication gene like Belle and Alex. And all of the adults had agreed that that information would remain a closely guarded secret, between them until such time Joshua was deemed old enough to be informed about the extra gene. Until then, while a select number of people knew that the kids had inherited the ATA gene, it was not well known that it was as strong as Alex, Jack and John Sheppard. There was no way they would place any more of a target on their children’s backs than there already were.
As Sarah left him for his special time with the baby, he thought about his ex-wife and the recent choices she’d made. She informed Jack that coming to Atlantis to become Sarah’s grandmother and surrogate mom to Cassie Fraiser was a fresh start for her after enduring what had been the second worst time in her life, losing Charlie and then their marriage being the absolute worst. Now that she was settled in, she realised that she needed to make a completely fresh start and stop living in the past which was filled with ghosts. She’d confided that having found a new raison d’être she intended to embrace it.
First, she announced that she was going to revert back to using her maiden name to honour her Dad, Mike Wyatt and as Baby Sarah would all too soon be too big to be referred to as Baby Sarah, she had decided that as part of her fresh start, she would start using her middle name, Lauren. Brushing aside Jack’s objections, she explained that she had made up her mind, because of something that Cassie had said. When he’d asked what she’d said, his ex-wife explained that Cassie pointed out that aside from her conception, Sarah’s name was the only legacy from her parents that their granddaughter had brought with her. She was too young to remember her parents although Paula would tell he about them when she was older. But Charlie and Marta O’Neill had given up everything for her and Cassie really wanted to honour them and their sacrifices by ensuring that Sarah kept the name they’d sent her here with. And really, how could anyone argue with that logic?
While he hoped that Sarah wouldn’t regret giving up her name which was so tied up in her identity, he could hardly begrudge her the sacrifice either. So, he’d nodded. “Well, if you are sure, then I support your decision, Sarah…I mean Lauren. Okay, that’s gonna take some getting used to,” he said with a grimace.
Lauren nodded. “Yeah, I know, Jack. But all the more reason to do it now when most of these people barely know me as Sarah.”
Jack had nodded. “True. So, what is the other decision that you’ve reached to embrace the future,” he asked with no small amount of trepidation as he watched her smile and recognised it as the Sarah O’Neill you probably won’t like this, but I’ve made up my mind, so don’t bother trying to stop me look, even after all these years.
As he stoically waited for her to put him out of his misery, she told him, “I’m going to put my hand up to take Gia Kawalsky. While I don’t feel like I’m physically capable of keeping up with Sarah, Gia is ten years old and she was used to having an older person as her parent,” she pointed out. “She seems to have made a real connection with me and she doesn’t usually relate easily to women, according to Paula and Thora. I think I can help her face her losses,” she said, trying to convince him.
“And what about your MS,” he asked. “Yes, it’s in remission, but Vala said there was no way to predict when it might return,” he said wanting to be practical even if one side of him thought that Sarah…Lauren taking Gia would be an ideal solution to his dilemma of finding someone very special for her guardian.
“Yes, I know, but Vala also said that if I go out of remission, she may be able to use her device to induce it again. Plus, with all the technology lying around here, Dr Angel said that a cure may not be too far off. In the meantime, I’m going to start taking my health much more seriously. I’m already doing Tai chi every morning and Gia and I take Sarah for a walk in her buggy every day, plus she’s helping me with my physical therapy exercises,” she told him. Gia is a very sweet child and I already feel like she’s a part of our family, she said with complete sincerity.
Jack knew that what Lauren said made sense, she also informed him that Daniel and Vala had inspired her to go looking for psychological healing, recognising that there was a connection between emotional and psychological pain and physical disease. She had talked to Dr Nkusi about starting up a grief support group and had already convinced Special Agent Fornell to join and she said that Garcia would join in too when she was here. She was also going to persuade Paula, Daniela and Vala to attend, and Jack told her he was sure that there would be plenty of Lanteans who would benefit too. He suggested that Lauren talk to Dr Ilsa Meier who had lost her partner, Dr Sofie Danziger a few years ago.
Frankly, having Sarah…damn it, Lauren taking Gia Kawalsky was a dream come true, to be honest. She was a wonderful mother and Gia would be in the best of hands. Even better, she would remain a part of their family and with Daniel and Vala willing to look after Riley until they could come up with a more permanent solution or he was able to retire, having them both remain in their extended family was the best possible outcome. He felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders and with Jeannie and Kaleb officially agreeing to adopt Kelvin Austen McKay, that only left Davinia’s future in limbo. Although he could see that with Sam being officially declared to be MIA along with the entire crew of the George Hammond, Dave Dixon was looking like the most obvious contender with Cameron Mitchell as a very long shot to get the nod. If Colonel Dixon was offered the SCG, Jack was pretty sure that along with their issues with the boys’ schooling, it would rule out them coming to Atlantis. He was thinking about approaching Aoife and A.J. Chegwidden about the possibility of them becoming her legal guardian, but he would wait until the Dixons reached a decision. In the meantime, Thora was more than happy for Davinia to continue staying with her so he would wait and see what the Dixons decided. He didn’t envy their decision and all he could do was give them time to make it. It wasn’t much but it was all he had.
His granddaughter gave a little sigh and scrunched up her little rosebud mouth momentarily as she relaxed it again to briefly reveal a mostly toothless mouth apart from her two bottom incisors that had erupted. She was such a pretty baby, Jack anticipated that when she was older, he would need a Zat gun to keep potential paramours away from her. Which reminded him that he was a little bit pissed off with Sarah um, Lauren. She’d hinted to him that Cassie had someone here on Atlantis. Despite his past denials, he immediately suspected Alex, knowing that Cassie had a crush on the single father, and they ran into each other a lot, but Lauren had scoffed at the suggestion. She’d told him that while he was a good friend to her, and highly protective, Alex Paddington definitely wasn’t interested in Cassie in that way.
So, like any concerned father, Jack had investigated. Okay, so he’d quizzed Sheppard and Lorne about anyone who was paying inappropriate attention to Cassie.
Sheppard had chuckled, “Ah you mean dating the General’s daughter, I take it, Sir,” he said with entirely too much levity. At Jack’s glare, he dropped the humour, denying any knowledge of anyone paying too much attention to the teacher who he only knew in passing.
Turning his attention to Lorne, he gave him an interrogatory glare. “What about you Lorne?” He was unprepared for Lorne’s reaction which was extreme discomfort. “Sir, can you define what you mean by inappropriate attention? A lot of people are attracted to her General. She’s a very lovely person, but she also seems to be able to handle anyone that pays her unwanted attention,” he said as Jack frowned.
“Yes, well both of you keep your eyes open and let me know if you see anyone getting too friendly, he said, disgruntled that he still hadn’t discovered who had caught her eye.
Frowning at his lack of successful intel gathering, he’d run into Admiral Chegwidden, who for the moment had agreed to remain as JAG for the Stargate Program. Realising that he now lived in the FQ (family quarters) wing, he decided to ask him if he’d noticed anyone hanging around Cassie and being inappropriate.
A.J. frowned. “Have you asked Colone Lorne?”
“Yep, and Colonel Sheppard,” he said grumpily. “Shepard acted like it was some big joke and Lorne got all awkward and wanted me to define inappropriate,” he said.
A.J. had chuckled and changed the subject, asking if there was any further news of the George Hammond.
Most people avoided the topic with Jack, but Chegwidden was one of the few who didn’t shy away from the highly sensitive topic. Jack had replied that there was no clue despite the Zephyrus and the Apollo joining the search of every planet capable of sustaining life in the vicinity of their last known position. It was their best hope by this stage of the search for the 304 that it had been badly damaged and without communication capability, they had limped to a planet to try to effect repairs to the ship and find supplies to keep them alive.
He and Daniel were probably the only ones after several weeks of no trace of the Hammond who still believed that the crew were alive. O’Neill thought about all of the times that he’d been missing, like when Harry Maybourne had pulled a swifty on him and he and Jack had ended up trapped on the Utopian Moon or the time when Jack had ended up stranded on Edora after a meteor struck the Stargate and he spent three months with no way to get home. Carter hadn’t given up on him and she’d found a way to bring him home. And it wasn’t as if this was the first time, she’d been missing either, but the old team of himself, Daniel, Sam and Teal’c always seemed to make it back home in the end.
It wasn’t surprising that Daniel and he felt that unless they had incontrovertible proof of her death, they would hold out hope that she’d survived. It also wouldn’t be the first time they had defied death but what was different about this situation was that neither Jack nor Daniel could go tearing off to the rescue and join the search for the George Hammond. Jack had responsibilities, most importantly overseeing the War on Happy Zombie research program and also the refugees from an alternate reality and Daniel wasn’t able to just up and leave the twins when he was trying to forge a relationship with them. It was frustrating to have to leave the search and rescue to others but since Riley Faxon was one of those responsibilities that they needed to look after. They both knew that Sam would understand why they couldn’t physically search for her.
Listening to the party winding down outside, he felt that they had done a pretty good job of settling the children in on Atlantis and getting them used to living apart from each other. Sure, they were still living in groups, but they were smaller groups, and soon many of them would be ready to transition into moving in with either their new parents or in Riley’s case, their foster parents in the next week or so. Thankfully having the expert advice of Dr Heng, they had managed to avoid causing additional trauma to the refugee children and that was something to celebrate. Their arrival had made many people examine their perspectives and some of them, like his ex-wife had drastically changed the direction of their lives. In his case with extended family around him, Jack was hopeful for the future, and he was really looking forward to being able to retire.
Even if he and Sam didn’t end up together as they’d planned, he still had a granddaughter, a surrogate daughter and Lauren and Gia in his life and he was mighty grateful for that. Staring down at Sarah’s rose bud mouth and long eyelashes, he suddenly felt like everything was going to be alright.
Awesome story. This is such an amazing universe that you have created. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for sharing, and special kudos for the reference to master thief Archie Leach!
Fantastic story- really well built universe and characters, and then lovely long parts which each progressed the story in their own direction. This year you’ve really outdone yourself. Thank you so much!
I’m really looking forward to the future parts that will deal out some much deserved outcomes. However, long it takes.
This is a really great series. Do you plan on any more episodes?
Fantastic series of stories! I’m a huge fan of your writing and you’ve outdone yourself with these!
Great great you have done a wonderful job and I really hope that you continue this AU. I know you did a lot of research to cover all these different people so they all are blending together in this word.
Love love love this series!!
I look forward to where you take things next!!
Great part of the universe. Thanks for sharing!
I hope you continue this series; I love it!
Just re-read ”Priceless” and enjoyed it very much. Thank you for sharing.
I found this series last week, and have been voraciously reading it since. All of the characters are so fully developed and the story is so placated, but believeable and internally consistent.
This is also one of the best explanations for Tali”s existence.
I hope you continue this and tie up all the unfinished story thread!
Thank you so much for sharing!
I took notice of your tags and waited until I was in a good frame of mind to read this series.
I glad I did. Awesome stories, awesome series, and 3 days after starting, I finally finished. Best wishes for 2025.
I’ve loved this series! I’m dying to know more about Sam and the Furlings and Ziva’s story lines. Also Cassie’s beau (my bet is Lorne) and whether Tony and Nikki get together.