Frasier's POV - Looking back

By Biltong

" I miss them. After all these years I still miss them so much."

Cassie Fraiser-Sinclair looked up from the book she was reading tosee her mother standing in front of the mantelpiece, her small white hand holding her most treasured photo.

Not the official framed photo of four stiff people smiling slightly at the camera that had been in their lounge for more years than she could remember, but the rarely seen photo her mother always took the trouble to fold up and slide in behind it, as if hiding it from the world.

A photo of the same four people hamming it up for the camera, the Stargate clearly visible behind them.

" Mother", she said softly, " that picture should have it’s own frame and be displayed with the rest, not folded up and hidden from view."

As expected, her mother shook her head, her eyes luminous with memories. 

" Not yet, Cass, one day, when the original members of the SGC have all retired, or…"

" Died?" Cassandra asked gently.

Her mother nodded jerkily, her hand lightly brushing the picture.

" Yes, died. Like they did. It was so long ago, yet the pain is still as fresh as if it were yesterday." 

She looked up from the photo, her eyes blinking as she  gazed back into another time.

"Cass, I lost my four best friends just after this was taken."

" They hammed it up for the camera, then they walked up that ramp behind them, and never came back alive."

Her face was tragic as she remembered, her daughter sitting still and silent, listening intently.

" I don’t know why Jack decided to smuggle a camera in. He always followed the rules and regulations, and this was a clear breach of them. If he had been found with a camera in his possession they would have court-martialed him immediately."

"Maybe he knew. Maybe deep down he knew that his time had run out and this was his last chance to leave something behind. I’ll never know now."

She turned towards her beautiful daughter.

" Oh, Cass, I don’t know a lot of things anymore. I’m getting old and gray, the memories fading. But this I know.

I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think of them and miss them horribly."

" So do I mom," Cass said softly. " Tomorrow will be twenty years since…" She couldn’t finish her sentence.

Her mother had more backbone then her, she always had.

" Since they bought their bodies home." Janet finished. 

" And there hasn’t been a day since that I haven’t wondered what happened. Why, out of all the teams in the SGC, they were the ones to die."

She looked towards her daughter, long since turned into a lovely young woman. " Why did death take all of them at once?"

Rising to her feet Cassie gently led her elderly mother back to her chair and saw that she was settled, her precious photo beside her, before replying. 

" Do you think that Jack would have wanted it any other way? They were a team, a unit."

Janet Fraiser shook her snow white head emphatically.

" You’re wrong, Cass. Jack would rather have killed himself before he risked the lives of SG1. Believe me, if he had any breath in his body he would have single-mindedly gone about getting them home. No whatever happened to them happened to him first… and then probably Teal’c."

Sighing sadly, Cassie sank onto the edge of the other chair and grasped her mother’s fragile hands in her own.

" Couldn’t you tell who died first?"

Janet shook her head, tears filling her eyes as she recalled that awful day two decades ago.

" No Cass. I still remember my shock when the stargate spun open of it’s own accord. SG1 were two days late, no radio messages, nothing. General Hammond was besides himself." Janet smiled softly at her daughter. " No matter how much he vehemently denied it, we all know that he had a large soft spot for SG1. Despite this he kept on throwing them at the Gua’old then waiting on tenterhooks for their return."

" They came so close to dying so many times, Cass. I can’t even remember how many times I managed to patch them up before…" Pausing to dab away the tears with a Kleenex she reached forwards and smoothed a lock of Cassandra’s hair. 

" I had so wanted Jack to give you away when you married, but it was never meant to be."

Despite herself, Cassandra’s own eyes began to fill with tears.

" He was always there, mom, like he was my father.  Whenever I needed anything he always came through. Remember that day at school when we had to bring in a parent or someone close to us and talk about what they did? And when he heard he volunteered. Remember mom?"

Janet nodded, her eyes misty. " Don’t I just. The General would have had a fit had he known. I remember you and he were sat in the lounge for days working out your cover story."

" Oh yes. Deep space radar telemetry. I remember Jack kept it as close to the truth as possible, telling everyone that his job was investigating any planet for viable life signs. Sam helped, remember? It was she who came up with all the plausible scientific explanations he used during the question and answer session."

Janet smiled at her daughter. " I remember you and he were as thick as thieves, although you never told me precisely what went on in class, I know that it was a roaring success."

She nodded, her tears running freely now.

" It was mom. He arrived in his full dress uniform, impressing everyone. I was so proud. But you know what the best thing was?" She hesitated. " It was something that I never told you."

Janet stared closely at her daughter. " What honey?"

" When the teacher asked Jack what he was, a parent, friend or guardian, Jack said that he was all three to me."

Janet raised her eyebrows at her daughter. " So what? Cassie, he was."

" But the teacher misunderstood, she thought that Jack was my father, and referred to him as that for the rest of the day, despite his name badge saying Colonel O’Neill."

Janet clapped her hands together in delight. " Oh wonderful. I bet that he didn’t correct her, did he?"

Cassie looked shocked. " And there I never told you, thinking you’d be annoyed."

" Maybe back then I might have, although I somehow doubt it. Jack needed to be needed. That’s why he was so protective of the rest of SG1. They were the only family he had."

"Is that why you believe that he had to have died first?"

" Yes." Janet ran a shaking hand through her snow-white hair, as if feeling someone else’s hair between her fingers, so long ago.

" Followed by Teal’c. He was as protective of Colonel O’Neill as Jack was of his team. He would not have idly stood by and watched. Then whatever it was then claimed Sam and Daniel."

" Do you…"Cassie hesitated. " Do you know what killed them?"

Janet shook her head sadly. " I haven’t a clue. To this day I have no idea.

I remember that the gate spun of it’s own accord, almost giving Sergeant Simmons a heart attack. Then the SG1 GDO code was received and we all relaxed.

They were late, but it wasn’t a train smash. With SG1, the first-contact team, late was the expected norm. The problem was that although the wormhole had been activated and their code received, they never arrived. Nobody walked through the event horizon, nor ever would again.

At the time we didn’t realize this. All we knew was that SG1 hadn’t made it home, nor were they answering repeated radio calls. When the incoming wormhole eventually deactivated General Hammond immediately sent through a MALP. It was the MALP who first showed us the visuals of their …bodies."

Janet was back to dabbing her eyes.

" The General immediately sent through SG2, armed to the  teeth, but no sign of the enemy was ever found. Lou Ferretti bought back the four bodies, and they were bodies, believe me. It was the first and last time I have ever seen an entire team crying. And when they were gently laid down on the ramp and I had confirmed that they were dead, there was not a dry eye in the entire gateroom."

Janet blew delicately into a Kleenex. " Oh Cass. How I wished it wasn’t true. There wasn’t a mark on any body. They all looked as if they were sleeping. I even shook Jack’s shoulder, thinking that he was playing some sort of macabre joke. He wasn’t. He had no pulse, respiration, nothing.

None of them did.

We rushed them down to the infirmary, hoping against hope. This was, after all, the famous indestructible SG1. But their luck had finally run out."

" And no one knew who did it?"

" No one. Like their deaths, their assailants were also a mystery. We looked Cass, believe me, we looked for months. Grieving and hurting, we wanted to find out who had done such a terrible thing. We found out nothing. To this day we know nothing."

Cassandra reached forwards and embraced her frail mother.

"Tell you what, let’s hold a wake tomorrow evening at the SGC after we visit their graves. A twenty-year old delayed wake.

I’ll have to clear it with General Ferretti, but I don’t think it will be a problem.

It will be sad thing to do, but I think it’s more than necessary. Okay?"

When her mother nodded, Colonel Cassandra Fraiser-Sinclair, amicably divorced mother of twin sons called Jack and Daniel, rose to her feet and went to call her commanding officer, leaving Dr Janet Fraiser (retired) alone with her tears and memories, and a precious carefully folded photograph of four smiling people frozen in time.

Four people who used to be called SG1.

*EINDE*

Beta Tested By CiGiK

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