The Pentangular Gate

1. one hour.

They frighten her. When they come to Hanka through the great circle, their faces are obscured by helmets, and their bodies are entirely covered in bright, shiny red suits like no clothing she's ever seen. They carry strange weapons and devices, and they seem as though they're searching for something, maybe trying to find out what happened to all the people, though Cassandra doesn't even know that herself. When one of them crouches to touch the body of her cousin Liliana, lying where she had fallen on the road, the only thing that keeps Cassandra from shrieking is her fear of them and the overwhelming urge to keep herself hidden from these strangers. They could have come to help - they could also have come to kill her. They could even be the ones who did this to her family, to the people of her world, and the thought makes her sick and shivery.

Eventually, though, they find her, and though she still fears them with the fear of the unknown she feels that they won't do anything to hurt her. Their words are kind and gentle, and they smile at her, sad and pitying smiles. They decide to take her back through the circle with them. She tries to be brave and goes without protest because, somewhere under the shock and the fear that dulls her mind and constricts her chest, she realizes that there is nothing left on this world for her.

2. three weeks.

They confuse her. Their planet, Earth, is such a strange place, full to the brim with strange new things, and they act strange in it. They call her 'Cassie', which sounds odd ('weird', says Colonel Jack, when something unusual happens) but is apparently a short name for 'Cassandra' on their planet. Along with 'weird', Colonel Jack says a lot of other confusing things, about going to catch fish and home-er and black hawks, and Cassandra can barely understand what he's talking about most of the time. Sam is an unmarried woman who lives in a house by herself, has an important job and wears her hair short, even though she isn't in mourning for anyone. Daniel isn't a soldier like Sam and Colonel Jack, or a laborer like most Hankan men, but studies and reads books all day, books Cassandra doesn't understand even when he tries to explain them to her. And she is a little afraid of Teal'c - just a little - for a while after she's lost her fear of the others, because he's so tall and stern, with the gold seal on his forehead and his shiny dark skin and the snake she knows is inside him. She senses, though, that while Teal'c is highly respected and has lived on Earth for a long time, she isn't the only one who finds him 'weird'. This knowledge makes her feel a little bit better, though she still feels guilty about it every time she sees him.

They love her. Cass knows now that they always did, all along, though none of them ever explicitly said it. But the first time she'd really realized it had been when her mother had died. That had been a hard time - harder even than when she'd lost her real mother, because she had been young then and though it had hurt, the shock of sudden displacement had dulled the experience, as though she'd all of a sudden begun living someone else's life and just had to keep moving on. It's easier for kids to adjust than people think, and though the wounds are sharp, they heal quickly and cleanly. Her second mother's death had mercilessly ripped those wounds open, and though Cass had thought she knew what to expect, the experience had left her raw and helpless.

The worst part of Janet's death had been coming home, to the house Cass had lived in almost as long as she'd lived on the planet of her birth, and expecting her mother to be curled on the couch with tea and a magazine, or in the kitchen making spaghetti, or going over reports at the dining room table, and realizing all over again, every time she came home, that things would never be the same again. Sam and Jack and Daniel and Teal'c had helped her through that rough time, and each of them had showed their love for her in their own way, through hugs and late-night phone calls when she'd found herself afraid to sleep, comforting things to eat and long talks and shoulders to cry on. They each have their own shadowed pasts and have suffered their own losses, and she knows they'd genuinely known how she'd felt. And knowing that she hadn't been alone in the world had been the best comfort of all.

Even though she's out on her own now, at university in California and loving every minute of her new independence, Cass will always call any place SG-1 is her home. Because to her, home is where the people who love you most are, and though the scared little girl she had been a decade earlier would never have imagined it, she loves them all right back more than she could ever say.