I am so sorry!
Disclaimer: So not mine.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Heroes
Warning: Canon Character Death
Summary: They say the camera adds ten pounds. They forget to mention that sometimes it subtracts things too.
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Things the Camera Missed
Cassie was numb.
Outside on the street, cars drove past and geese could be heard honking as they flew overhead. Colours hadn’t muted and the tilt of the Earth hadn’t changed noticeably in the last few hours, but Cassie felt like everything was upside down.
Her mother was dead.
Again.
And Cassie didn’t know if she could go through this again.
“Simon, Simon! Look at me. You are not going to die, OK? I did not come all the way out here for nothing. Now we've stemmed the bleeding. We're gonna get you to a stretcher. We're going to get you home with your family in no time, ok? Now you hang in there, airman.”
Daniel thinks about the last time he kissed her.
No, he thinks about the second last time he kissed her. They been in the infirmary and she was about to go to the Mess for her interview with Bregman. The room was deserted and in spite of their defined boundaries and agreements, he had pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He could never remember what had prompted him to do it because his mind always drifts to the last time he kissed her. The time when it had been too late.
And now the woman he loved was dead.
Again.
And Daniel didn’t know if he could go through this again.
“You try to tell yourself that every man and woman under your command means the same to you. Each has to be equally valuable if you're going to make the kind of decisions that affect their lives the way I have to. But you can't help it. You get closer to some people. You never want to lose anyone.”
Sam had brought Cassie to the base, the place where she had entered the world.
Daniel had met them at the elevator, folding Cassie into his arms. They had stayed for the memorial service, long enough for Jack to try to make her feel better, and then Cassie had asked to go home.
They had almost made it to the house when Cassie asked if Daniel still had his old apartment. The place was between tenants and Daniel still had his name on the lease even though he’d barely lived there since his return to the mortal plane. But he understood what Cassie was asking and left her in the driveway while he fetched their tooth brushes and some clothing. The neighbours noticed and wondered, but Daniel made it to the car and they fled before any questions could be asked.
Gradually, Cassie moved more and more of their belongings into Daniel’s apartment. She said things like “We don’t need that much space” and “I don’t want you to have to worry about my tuition for college”, and Daniel understood. The decision was Cassie’s, and she sold the house.
“Yeah it's easy to predict the score when the game is over, and if we had found powerful weapons in those ruins capable of defending the planet from the Goa'uld, we wouldn't be having this conversation.”
Daniel, it turns out, is a very good cook.
All the same, Cassie is not surprised when she finds herself eating at Sam’s or Jack’s or, somewhat more rarely, Hammond’s, at least once a week. Her mother had often remarked on the dynamic that SG-1 shared and Cassie was in need of the company. She would be going to school soon and she knew that she would meet people and make friends, but she worried about Daniel. While she was home, he had reasons to look up from his books and live a little, but once she left, she was afraid he would throw himself so deeply into work she would lose him too.
The third time she watches Teal’c lose at senet by making a move even she can tell was ill-advised in order to raise Daniel out of a stupor, she stops worrying. Her mother’s friends have seen each other through the blackest times, and they always drag each other through to the light.
“No, no. She's dead because a Jaffa shot her. She was doing her job. The same way you were doing yours when a Jaffa shot you.”
Cassie finds the picture of Sha’re when she is packing her things before she goes to college. She had been hunting for storage space and had stumbled upon a collection of Daniel’s artefacts he didn’t have room to display and, while examining them, she’d found an old frame in the bottom of the box. She pulled it out and stepped back out of the closet to see the picture in better light.
Daniel’s wife was beautiful.
“She looks so solemn in that picture.” Daniel’s voice sounded from behind her and she jumped.
“I’m sorry,” Cassie began, but Daniel waved her off.
“It’s all right. It’s just a picture.” Daniel smiled sadly. “They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this one barely scratches the surface of her. She wasn’t solemn at all, but I told her that this would be a permanent record what she looked like and so she tried to look right. The camera missed so much.”
Cassie took the photo into the living room and set it on the shelf next to a picture of herself, her mother and Daniel that had been taken shortly after her sixteenth birthday.
“Is that all right?” she asked, looking over her shoulder as Daniel followed her into the room and saw what she was doing. “I don’t mean to overstep.”
“I think it’s time for pictures,” was his reply.
He went to the drawer where they kept the phone books and an assortment of take-out menus and rummaged around for a few minutes before removing a tape. He sat down on the couch and waved her over. She creased her brow, but complied.
“Cassie, when you look at pictures, you see what they mean, right?” He sounded oddly desperate.
“I hope so. It’s what all those extra art classes were supposed to teach me,” she answered.
“There’s a video,” he said haltingly. “Of your mother. When she died. I had a camera.”
She understood and blinked tears from her eyes.
“I can see what the camera missed.”
“This is my daughter.”
The very last thing Cassie bought in Colorado Springs was a teddy bear.
She had only piecemeal memories of her mother’s memorial, of Sam’s speech. She remembered thinking it was unfair that she should be motherless again so that another child could have the luxury to two parents. She was angry and, afterwards, very grateful that she hadn’t voiced any of these thoughts.
But it had been a long time before she’d been able to face the thought of Airman Wells’ child.
She had to catch a plane, so she wasn’t able to go with Daniel when he delivered the bear. She heard from him much later that the ultrasound, the camera, had been wrong; that the baby was a girl.
Somehow she wasn’t surprised.
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AN: I think this might actually be the first time I’ve ever included Cassie in a fic.
GravityNotIncluded, February 4, 2008.