DISCLAIMER: I only borrowed them for a while. MGM and whoever can
have them back whenever they want.
SERIES: The eighth in a series of vignettes from those close to Sam/Janet.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author
Outside Looking In:
Cassie
By Celievamp
My mother taught me to count my blessings. My birth mother, that is. She's dead along with everyone else who was on my planet when Nirrti attacked it. I survived.
I don't remember much about Hanka. I told Janet and Sam that I didn't remember anything. When I first got here it was easier being a clean slate. The first thing I do remember is Sam holding my hand. I felt so safe. My brother Kirrin was there but he was dead. There was a tag on his wrist with writing on it. I wanted one for myself so that I would be remembered as well. Sam told me that the tags were only for dead people and that I was alive.
I didn't quite believe her. I thought I might be a fetch, a spirit but as long as she saw me, as long as she thought I was alive then I would be.
They brought me through the Stargate, Sam holding my hand all the way because they wanted to help me because they believed that my survival was some kind of miracle. It wasn't until they discovered that my survival had been by design that Nirrti wanted to destroy Earth as well as Hanka that I realised just how much I wanted to be alive. I wanted to be with Sam and my new family.
I lost my mother and my father, my brother and my baby sister, my aunts, uncles, grandfather and cousins. I lost all my friends. I lost everyone I had ever known. And I could never tell anyone the truth about them. I had to keep it secret forever. I was told a story about a place called Toronto and a fire that had killed my family. And that was the truth I could tell anyone who asked about me.
I gained two mothers, three, later four uncles, two honorary grandfathers and a life I could not have imagined. Oh, and a dog. I learnt a whole new definition of family. Jerry Springer would have had a field day. The fact that my two mothers were together, a couple, was the least of it. Two of my uncles were from a different planet, as was one of my grandfathers (sort of) and my Uncle Danny had spent a year dead for… well, personal reasons I suppose.
Janet is my legal guardian but Sam and General Hammond also get a say in what happens to me particularly if something happens to Janet. Not that that's likely. Not as likely as something bad happening to Sam. I love Janet very much but I'm ashamed to say I'm not always as nice to her as I could be. Hey, I'm a teenager. We're supposed to be brats. As Uncle Jack would say, it's the law.
I love Janet. She's the best mom she could be. But Sam… Sam's my hero. I work hard to make her proud of me.
I figured out that Sam and Janet were together – handfasted as my people would have put it – when I had been on Earth a couple of months. I knew enough about Earth culture by this point to know that this wasn't considered `normal' and that the fact that both my moms were in the military made what they felt for each other even more of a problem.
My presence was a problem as well. If the authorities – civil and military – found that my moms were lesbians then I could well have been taken off them. And neither of them wanted that. It took me a long time to realise how much they loved me. Enough to put my security, wellbeing and happiness over their own.
I think it was my first `Mother's Day' on Earth when I told them what I knew and what I felt. We'd gone to the National Park for the day and had brought a picnic with us. Sam might not be much of a cook but she's a great picnic shopper. She makes these insane combinations of things but it all tastes good. Anyway, I was watching them all day, watching how often they wanted to just touch each other but backed off at the last moment in case I or anyone else who happened to be watching got the wrong idea. Or the right one.
I started to tell them about my mother. I think it was the first time I'd really said anything detailed about her. And then I told them about her sister, my aunt Helena and how she was handfasted to my Aunt Artemisa. How they had been two of my favourite people on Hanka. I kept glancing at them to see if they got the point yet. I could see that their hands were close to one another, their little fingers just touching.
"They would have been very unhappy if something happened that they couldn't be together any more," I said. "And I would have been unhappy for them as well."
They looked at one another. That was another thing they could do which just proved that they had to be together. They could talk without speaking. Sam just nodded and then Janet reached out to hold my hand.
"Cassie, sweetie, thank you for telling us about this. Sam and I got together a few months before you came to us. We do love each other very much but we stopped seeing each other because well, we didn't want to confuse you or make you uncomfortable. And because a relationship like ours, it's not really permitted here. If it was discovered we could lose you, lose our jobs even go to prison."
"If you're okay with us being together then we'd very much like to be a proper family," Sam said, one hand resting on my knee, the other playing nervously with a strand of Janet's hair. "But you can't tell anyone – I mean, no one about this. Not anyone on SG1, your friends… are you sure you can do that, Cassie?"
Another secret to keep. I promised I would. And I will. Because it makes them happy. And everything they have done and continue to do not just for me but for everyone means that they deserve to be happy.
And seeing them goof around with each other and being a part of that, this wonderful insane scary beautiful family of mine, well that makes me happy.
The End