by Karen Miller
“Hey — the odds could be worse. Don’t give up just yet.”
“Yeah,” he said, then dragged a hand across his face. “I know. Only here’s the thing. And I know this is going to sound a hundred different kinds of selfish… but I’m just too damned tired to care.” He stared down at Jack. “That guy there was the last man to speak to Frank Cromwell before he died. And until Jack O’Neill tells me different, I have to believe Frank died thinking O’Neill hated his guts. Still blamed him for something he didn’t do on purpose, that was an accident, that he couldn’t fix. That he spent years hating himself for. Trying to make amends for. And if O’Neill dies too, I’ll never know if Frank found peace before the end. It’s eating me up, Doc. I could cry like a baby.”
He said it lightly, as if it were a joke, but the pain in his face told her no… he wasn’t joking.
She folded her arms. Cleared her throat. “Colonel…”
His expression changed. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You know exactly what — ”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and took a step back. “I can only imagine how hard this is for you. But I’ve told you already. I can’t talk about it.”
And before the look on his face shattered all her convictions, she fled.
Colorado Springs June 20th, 1998
The night before the memorial for Hank Boyd and his team, O’Neill found himself on Janet Fraiser’s front step, ringing the doorbell. He wasn’t entirely certain how he’d got there. Unable to bear the stark silence of his own house, even with the stereo blaring something mournfully Mozart, he’d had to get out. Get in the car. Drive. Really fast.
And somehow, stupidly, he’d ended up here.
He could hear Jack-the-dog, barking hysterically. A moment later the door opened. Cassandra. Her face lit up in a smile of such innocent delight that he had to smile too, even though he had nothing to smile about.
“Colonel Jack!” Cassie exclaimed, and bounced forward to give him a hug. “Hi!”
“Hi yourself, grasshopper,” he greeted her, and returned the enthusiastic embrace. The feel of small arms, holding tight. The uncluttered, uncomplicated warmth of affection. Love without an agenda. “You’re in your pajamas.”
“I’ve had my bath.” And then she let go of him. “Do the thing, Colonel!” she begged. “Come on! Please? Let’s do the thing!”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, God. Not the thing.”
The dog kept on barking as she danced on the spot. “Please? Please?”
So they did the thing. Playing circuses. She turned upside in a handstand, he grabbed her bare ankles and lifted, she clasped his running shoes, and he walked them over the threshold and into the house, pausing to swing the front door shut with one swipe of his hip. Then down the hall. Into the kitchen. Jack-the-dog followed, beside himself with excitement. Clearly this was the most fun he’d had all day. Stupid mutt.
Janet was at the sink. Seeing her, Jack felt a tingle of nerves. She turned as Cassie, giggling, implored: “Do the goosestep, Colonel, do the goosestep!”
The look on Janet’s face was daunting. Pretending to stagger, he shifted away so he wouldn’t have to see it. “You’re getting too heavy for me to do the goosestep.”
Cassie bounced up and down, her nose rubbing his knees. “I am not either! Do the goosestep! Please?”
How could he refuse? She was the only ray of sunshine in his life, these days. So he marched round and round Janet’s kitchen bench while Cassandra sang a show tune at the top of her lungs, off-key.
After the third lap his ears were screaming for mercy. “Okay,” he said, stopping. “That’s it. I’m an old man, I can do no more.”
She was such a good kid. She never whinged. Never whined. She let go of his shoes and dangled there, still giggling. He lifted her a few inches higher and, mindful of the island bench, swung her like a pendulum from side to side. She laughed so hard she was nearly sick and the dog about leapt inside out, licking her face every time she went by.
He could feel Janet’s gaze on him, hot between his shoulder blades.
With one last, huge effort he swung Cassie up and around and caught her safely in his arms. She was a slip of a thing, there was nothing to her. All light and laughter, sunshine and song. She clamped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. Her cheeks, flushed with excitement, were close enough to kiss.
She leaned back a little and considered him intently. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you for ever.”
He shrugged. “Oh, well, you know. Work.”
“Huh,” she said, unimpressed. “You mean hospital. Again. Janet said. I wanted to come visit you but she said you were asleep.”
Amazing, the amount of cynicism a kid her age could pack into one comment. One look. One huff of breath.
He still wasn’t ready to look Janet in the eye. “I kind of hit my head. That can make you pretty sleepy.”
Cassie unwrapped one arm to wag a finger at him and put on her severest scolding expression. “I thought I told you to be more careful?”
God. She slayed him. He pulled an apologetic face. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Her scowl faded. A shadow touched her serious eyes and she pressed a small warm palm against his cheek. “I’m sorry, too. About your friends. Janet said.”
That nearly undid him. He had to swallow, hard, and wait for a moment. Then he took the small warm hand that comforted him and kissed her slender, childish fingers. “Thanks, Cass,” he said, his voice rough. “I appreciate that.”
“Cassandra,” said Janet. She sounded… restrained. “Time for bed.”
Cass sighed and rolled her eyes, and then let loose with an impish grin. “Tuck me in?”
It was what he missed most, not having Charlie any more. The simple moments. The quiet intimacies. Lamplight and bedspreads at the end of the day. Of course he’d be a teenager now. Way too old for sissy tucking in. “Oh, all right. I suppose so. If I have to.”
“And tell me a story?”
“Tell you a story?” He pretended to be outraged. “Hell’s bells and buckets of blood! And what are you going to do for me?”
The impish grin widened. “Be your best girlfriend for ever and ever.”
She was already. “Oh,” he said, and found another smile for her. “Okay. I can live with that.” He wandered towards the kitchen door. The dog padded after, toe-nails clicking on the tiles. “Which story?”
“Umm,” said Cassie, as they left the kitchen behind them. “The one about the time you got back at the school bully by painting the rabit poo and making him think it was candy.”
Ah, the follies of youth. He’d told her that story six times at least. She could recite it with him verbatim, and often prompted when he left out a line. “Again? Cassandra Fraiser, is there something you’re not telling me?”
She giggled, pink with secrets, and he banged his forehead lightly to hers. The pain he couldn’t show her, a child, was numbing a little.
Maybe instinct had done him a favor, guiding him here.
He got her tucked into bed and told her the rabbit poo story. Told her another one, a highly edited version of a recent mission with names and places changed to protect his tender ego. By the time he was finished her eyelids were drooping. He kissed her on both cheeks, and when at last her fingers uncurled from his he left her to sweet dreams and went back to the kitchen.
Standing in the doorway, watching Janet as she stared through the window into the silver night, he said, “She’s asleep.”
Slowly Janet turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “Rabbit poo? Just what are you teaching my daughter, Colonel?” Beneath the arch humor, she was still angry.
Yeah, well, so am I. And I didn’t start this.
“Vital lessons in tactics and strategy,” he answered. “Besides. He deserved it.”
“He?”
“Billy McGrath.”
She nodded. “Ah. The school bully?”
“The same.”
&n
bsp; A heartbeat of silence, and then she moved to a cupboard, took out two glasses and a bottle of Laphroaig — he’d recognize the label blindfolded — and held them up. “Drink?”
Was it a peace offering? Or an overture to battle? He couldn’t tell. Not yet. But he was here, so… “Sure.”
They sat at the cleared and spotless kitchen table and sipped the smoky malt, unspeaking. Suicidal moths threw themselves at the window, making soft banging sounds before they fell to the ground outside.
At length, she shifted a little on her chair. “Bill Warner says you’ve made a good recovery.”
It was more than could be said for Frank Cromwell. Frank, swallowed alive by the monstrous wormhole that Carter’s bomb had collapsed. Redirected. Whatever. The bomb that had nearly claimed his life, too.
And yet here I am. Saved, again. There’s got to be a reason. I just wish I knew what.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Not bad.”
She looked at him sharply over the rim of her glass. “Headaches?”
“Some.”
“You taking anything?”
Stupid question. How long had she known him? “Mmm.”
Long enough not to bother arguing, at least. She just pulled a face and reached for the whiskey. “More?”
He could drink the whole bottle but that would be dumb. “Better not.”
So she helped herself to another generous finger of liquid gold, and sat there, and sipped it, and waited for him to speak.
He had no idea what he wanted to say. If he wanted to say. He was back to not knowing why the hell he’d come here. After all, she’d betrayed his trust. Broken an unspoken promise. Nobody in his life, now, not even Hammond, knew about him what Janet Fraiser knew. It had taken him a long time to feel easy about that. But he liked her, and trusted her, and in the end he’d let her in.
And she’d repaid him by talking about him to his team. Told them his secrets. Secrets that were his to tell, dammit, that he’d never wanted them to know. Frank. Abu Ghraib. Hell, and nightmares.
Just thinking about it curdled his guts all over again.
She had no right. I don’t give a crap how many times she’s saved my life. She crossed the line. She’s in the wrong. Did she really think I’d take it lying down?
Except…
“I know you meant well.”
“But?” she said, when he didn’t continue.
He met her quiet gaze steadily. “I don’t have to say it. You know.”
She took a careful sip of whiskey. “Yes.”
“My relationship with Frank Cromwell was private,” he said. Feeling anger’s heat lick along his bones. “Not for public consumption.”
She sat back, a new and caustic edge to her stare. “Well if that’s true, why did you go out of your way to let everyone within earshot know you had a beef with him?”
She might as well have stuck a knife in his ribs. “What?”
“You were rude to him in front of me. Sam. General Hammond. God knows who else.” Her fingers drummed the table. “You might as well have taken out an ad, Jack.”
Sometimes it was easier to hate a friend than an enemy. He got up from the table before he said something unforgivable, and walked away from her. Walked the length of the kitchen until he hit the sink and glared into the moonlit garden until the bubbling fury subsided. Jesus. She was lecturing him?
My God, this woman. Why can she twist me inside out like a pretzel?
He wasn’t in love with her. God. Not in a million years. She was like — like a sister. Or an evil guardian angel. Jabbing him with needles. Stabbing him with truth.
Did I want them to know? Did I want everyone to know Frank couldn’t be trusted? That the book and the cover bore no relation? He was slick. He was smooth. He got people to like him. To — hell — love him like a brother. And then, when it mattered most…
“I — ”
He had to stop. Clear his throat. He should go. Just go. Frank was dead. It didn’t matter. That particular piece of the past had died with him and good riddance. But instead of walking out he kept on talking.
“You know my file. Probably better than I know it myself by now. You know what happened in Iraq.”
“Unfortunately I do, yes,” she said. Her voice was soft, and gentle as the moonlight. Running beneath it an undercurrent of distress. He didn’t know if that made things better, or worse.
“Those are the facts. Who did what, to which bits, and how many times. But the file won’t tell you what it was like. And I can’t. I can’t talk about that, Janet. Not to you. Not to anybody.”
Her silence was palpable. It spurred him on. He needed her to understand. Didn’t want her thinking he was just some crazy, irrational torture survivor, a trendy poster boy for PTSD.
“We knew what would happen to us if we got caught,” he said tightly. “We talked about it. Frank promised, he promised, that no matter what nobody would be left behind. He promised he’d shoot us himself before he let any of us get taken. I believed him. And then he left me there.” He shifted so he could see Janet’s face from the corner of his eye. But only a little, so she couldn’t see very much of him. “Afterwards people kept asking me, how did you do it? How did you beat them? How did you survive? And I told them, I was well trained. Or, my family. Or, knowing my buddies were counting on me.” He felt his lips peel back in a snarling smile. “Lies.” He shifted again, so she lost sight of him. “It was hate.”
He heard her shocked little gasp. “He thought you were dead, Jack.”
“He thought wrong,” he replied. And again saw Frank’s anguished face… heard the torment in his voice…
“What?” said Janet. “Are you okay?”
Damn, she saw too much. But he’d started this. He might as well finish it. She was a doctor… and he’d come to be healed. “Frank said that what he did to me in Iraq was the same as what I did to Hank.”
Hank Boyd and his team, like Frank, probably still dying in slow motion in that black hole, each heartbeat of agony lasting a lifetime. Hank, his good friend. Crazy guy. The best.
“Well, he was wrong,” said Janet. “Because you didn’t do anything to Hank.”
When he closed his eyes he saw Hank’s face on the base monitor. Distorted with terror. Stark with grim knowledge.
“Yeah, I did. I killed him.”
He heard her sigh. “So you killed him. So now what?”
That spun him round. “You think I killed him?”
She shrugged, the warm sympathy in her eyes turning chill. “I think it’s pretty clear that you don’t care what I think.”
It took him a moment, then he realized what she meant. She hadn’t forgiven him for how he’d reacted when he found out she’d talked to his team. “I was angry.”
“Oh. Well. Sure. That makes it okay then.”
This was her house. Her kitchen. There were no uniforms here. He was Jack, not the colonel. She wasn’t obliged to call him sir. To guard her tongue. To hide her pain.
He swallowed. “You’re hurt.”
Eyes glittering, she raised her glass. “Give the man a kewpie doll.”
Okay. This was a road to be walked both ways. “You don’t think I had a right to be pissed off? About you and Hammond telling everyone that… stuff?”
“Well, for one thing it wasn’t everyone, it was Daniel and Sam and Teal’c,” she snapped. “And for another it wasn’t a joint operation. Hammond called me and the team into his office and just started talking. There was nothing I could do.”
What? Hammond told them? “I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t ask.”
Well, crap. Why didn’t she say? When he tore her a new one for talking out of turn, why didn’t she tell him it wasn’t her?
Because you scared her, jackass. She did exactly what you wanted her to do, she tucked her tail between her legs and headed for the hills.
It was a miracle she’d let him through her front door.
She was looking at him no
w, reading him like a book. “Do you want to know what I think?”
Yes. No. Hell. Why had he come here?
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s what I think. I think Frank Cromwell had a split second to make a decision. I think he decided to save his team instead of risking them for someone he thought was already dead. I think he probably wanted to die himself when he found out he was wrong. I think he hurt every day of every week of every month of the last seven years because of it. I think you were wrong not to see him. I think you probably know that now, because you’ve led your own teams for the past five years and you’ve made some tough calls that weren’t always appreciated and you’ve lost one or two men of your own and suddenly it’s not so black and white any more. I think you were blinded by your own pain, and then when you finally began to understand things from his point of view you were too stubborn to admit it. Too pigheaded to make the first move. And now he’s gone, and he’s not coming back, and the things you thought you’d say to him one day… one day when it suited you… they’re just smoke on the wind.”
He couldn’t breathe. Could barely see. Every word was a bullet, tearing him apart.
God dammit. God dammit. Frank… I’m sorry.
“He sent flowers to Charlie’s funeral,” he said, his voice ragged. “Sarah wanted me to call him. Say thanks. Say something. Anything. She never stopped trying to get us talking again. But by then it was way past too late. By then I wasn’t talking to anyone, not even her.”
By then he had no words worth speaking. All he could do was sit in Charlie’s room, holding the gun that had killed his son, putting its barrel in his mouth and taking it out again… over and over and over and —
On a deep breath he pulled himself out of that memory.
Oh God. Frank’s dead.
It was too late to say sorry.
Chapter Twenty-six
“Hey, Jack,” said Daniel. “How are you doing?”
Jack didn’t answer. Like Lotar at the end, he was sunk deep in stupor. On fluids. On oxygen. Teetering on the edge of existence.
I haven’t seen him look this bad since Antarctica. He nearly died then. God, we need another miracle.