Chapter Text
Sam heard the lock click – too early. Her eyes darted to the clock on the kitchen wall. Nineteen thirty? Not too early, then – just too slow. Biting her lip, she pulled the cranberries off the heat – fifteen minutes, no more, no less – and hurried to the door.
There was Cassie Fraiser, wearing her favorite red sweater and an all too familiar expression: sad, but trying to keep it together, and doing a pretty good job of it. She’d had plenty of practice. When she saw Sam, the ghost of a smile graced her lips.
‘Hey, Sam.’
‘Hey, Cass!’ Sam pulled her into a hug and held her there for a while. Cassie had only been out of the house for the better part of a day, but Sam knew she needed it. For that matter, maybe Sam needed it, too.
Cassie pulled away and looked Sam up and down, her obvious surprise schooled into a faintly doubtful teenaged squint. ‘Nice outfit. It looks good on you.’
Sam beamed. In point of fact, the dress was nothing fancy: a sky - blue, V-necked frock with little white polka dots, complete with a white apron tied around the front; but Cassie had never seen her in anything remotely like it. It had sat in Sam’s closet for a long time, but she’d never had occasion to wear it.
‘Thanks! I got it from Target.’
Cassie snorted. ‘What, like anyone here’s gonna care? A Target’s something they shoot at. And when did you get your hair done? It’s really pretty.’
Sam’s smile widened further still; flattery was one of the gentle arts the junior Fraiser had inherited from her mother – ever the diplomat when the situation required. ‘Don’t you think you’re getting extra, young lady. Teal’c’s gonna be here, he’ll eat two thirds of everything all by himself.’
Sam made her way back to the kitchen with Cassie drifting along behind her. What was she supposed to be doing, again? Potatoes? Three each made eighteen – three more for Teal’c. Cut, boil, roast – forty five minutes in the oven. Shit. Couldn’t she just turn up the heat? 330, 360, how different could it be? Anyway –
‘Earth to Sam!’
Sam blinked. ‘Sorry, Cass. What is it?’
‘Do you want me to peel those?’ Sam didn’t answer for a moment until Cassie pointed helpfully to the bag of potatoes on the counter.
‘Oh, No! No. It’s all under control. Just relax.’
‘Uh-huh. When are the guys getting here?’
‘Twenty – er, eight o’clock.’
‘Okay, I’ll be in my room if you need me. Gotta look pretty for Uncle Jack, right?’
‘Yeah,’ Sam answered absently, and didn’t see Cassie roll her eyes.
It took about two minutes for Colonel Doctor Samantha Carter to cut her hand with the potato peeler and five more to realize she was supposed to be boiling cranberries. On both occasions she cursed under her breath. What the hell was her problem, anyway? She made particle weapons for a living, and cooking had no right being this hard.
Against all probability, Daniel was the next to show up – at nineteen fifty, which would have mightily impressed Sam on any other day of the year. Today, it just seemed like one more substantiation of Murphy’s Law at work; still, she managed to front another smile by the time she opened the door to greet him. He was carrying several boxes, and his smile was one hundred percent genuine – you could pretty much always tell.
‘Hey, Sam! Something smells – wow, you look nice. Special occasion?’
‘Thank you, Daniel,’ she answered; perhaps a little too cheerily now, but oh well – such was the season. ‘Just dinner with my favorite guys.’
‘She’s talking about me,’ he whispered with a nudge to Teal’c, trailing behind him with a pack of Bud Light under each arm.
‘ColonelCarter.’
‘Hey, Teal’c. How was the drive?’
‘It was uneventful.’
‘Great! That’s – er, come in! Put the beer on the counter, I’ll put it in the fridge. I assume you’re drinking, Daniel?’
‘Daniel! Teal’c!’ Ordinarily Cassie might have charged them down; not today, but nobody could have doubted that she was pleased to see them. She enveloped them each in a long hug, and Sam figured for a moment maybe all the trouble was worth it. Then she remembered she’d left the cranberries on high.
She quick-marched back to the kitchen, trying to look like she wasn’t rushing; peered into the aggressively boiling pot of red sludge, and anxiously turned down the heat. Moving on to the fridge, she inserted Teal’c offering and withdrew two identical bottles for herself and Daniel.
‘Can’t tempt you, Teal’c?’
‘I am not thirsty, ColonelCarter.’
‘Right,’ Sam smiled, handing the second bottle to Daniel, who offered no such objection. ‘So, what’s the news? Is Ry’ac gonna be there tomorrow?’
‘Ry’ac is at the front on P3X-228, and he is too young to attend the council of war,’ Teal’c answered solemnly. ‘But I am content to see CassandraFraiser this Christmastide.’ Cassie gave him a rare smile. The Jaffa, of course, had festivals but no holidays, and so could not have been prevailed upon to postpone their council even if anyone had asked; but in any case “Christmas Dinner” had almost never happened on Christmas Day for SG-1. It had always happened though, one way or another. Janet had always insisted.
Sam shot an uneasy glance at the oven – nothing on fire, yet – before returning to the much - abused cranberries and making another futile attempt at stirring. The TV was on, and Teal’c settled in the living room with Cassie. Daniel, who by now had evidently sensed Sam's agitation, casually offered to lend a hand. Daniel, she knew for a fact, was not a bad cook. But, she assured him, the kitchen was too small for two people, and she had it under control. She was a grown woman, right? Daniel took the hint, and Sam set the potatoes down on the stovetop with a resounding thud.
At exactly twenty hundred, the doorbell rang again. Sam made for the door at a brisker pace than last time. With a fresh new smile plastered on her face she swung it open to find Jacob Carter, clad in USAF dress blues with a fifty dollar bouquet of flowers in one hand and a pair of smartly gift - wrapped boxes wedged under his other arm. When he saw her he froze solid.
‘Sam?’
‘Hey, dad!’
He was staring at her, up and down, mouth ever so slightly ajar. She kept smiling at him until it started to feel awkward. ‘Are those for me?’
‘What’s all this?’
Sam’s gaze flitted momentarily over her shoulder, checking for anything out of place, before returning to her father’s face and then – when he showed no sign of easing up – to his shiny boots. ‘All what?’
Jacob let out a short, disbelieving exhalation. ‘You look like…’ He trailed off and stayed silent as her eyes found his once more. It was rare enough that he was ever lost for words. ‘You look beautiful,’ he finished quietly. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he added as an afterthought, holding out the bouquet with an apologetic smile.
‘Thank you,’ Sam answered, though by now she was deeply regretting her choice of apparel and wondering whether she could still get away with changing it.
Sam introduced her father to the living room, which he hadn’t seen. She offered him a drink, but, as it turned out, Selmak didn’t like the taste of beer any more than coffee. Daniel Jackson was a different matter; he already wanted another beer, which meant that at the present rate he’d be passed out on the couch by twenty-three hundred at the latest; but in any case, Teal’c was driving, and Daniel, like the rest of them, was stood down for Christmas.
For some reason there was a barbershop quartet on the TV, which Teal’c and Cassie were watching with great interest. The big man’s penchant for random bits of Americana was well known, but Cassie was assimilated enough that her Teal’c - like wonder at the cheesiest little snippets always managed to take Sam by surprise. The tenor hit a long, quavering high note – now lower, now higher, and lower again – and Cassie giggled. Sam hadn’t seen her giggle for a while.
Back in the kitchen again, Sam found a suitably vase - like jug for her father’s flowers, then started mining frozen chicken fat out of a plastic tub. The stuff was white and solid and looked every bit like a heart attack in a jar; but she had it on very good authority that it made for the best roasted potatoes. In fact, the recipe called for them to be mashed and roasted, but it was the latter entry which was marked with a little pink heart, and Sam didn’t have ten hands.
There was a chill in the air which Sam’s thermostat hadn’t quite banished; then again, she had always felt the cold more than most – ever since Antarctica, and especially since… No, not thinking about it. Outside the sky was already completely black, and the wind was up. Just as soon as the potatoes made it to the oven Sam was jolted from her work by the unmistakable drumming of rain on the rooftop, scattered and intermittent at first but quickly rising to a dull crescendo. Rain, on Christmas Eve – Sam couldn’t remember the last time. It had always seemed to snow for Janet.
Where was he, anyway? He said he’d be here. Had something come up? Was there an emergency? Or wasn’t he interested in coming to begin with? He wouldn’t stand her up, would he? Would he? She knew she shouldn’t have allowed the whole thing to drift all the way to Christmas Eve, for there had always been a tacit understanding (more or less enforced by a few sharp words and a lot of sudden disappearances to Minnesota) that he was not to be disturbed on the 25th of December except on government business. But the 24th…?
The doorbell rang.
‘Sam!’ Cassie called from the living room.
‘I know, I’ll get it!’
Sam hurried off to the bathroom, biting her cheek when she got a look at the mirror. Cassie, luckily enough, had left the lipstick on the counter – an unnecessarily expensive brand inherited from her mother, and just the right color for her to share with Sam. Applying it with an annoyingly unsteady hand – less is more, Samantha – and furiously marshaling her disobedient hair, Sam half - jogged to the front door. Her heart beat a lively tattoo in time with the rain on the rooftop, as if just looking at all those calories had already turned her blood to syrup. She swung the door open a little too fast and there was the General, dressed in a heavy woolen overcoat and doing a fine impression of a drowned rat.
‘Carter. What happened to you?’
‘Sir!’ she exclaimed, wondering for a brief instant whether the damned cranberries had surreptitiously exploded on her without revealing themselves in the mirror, but no – there was nothing unusual about her appearance, save for the polka dots. ‘I, uh…Figured I’d dress for the occasion?’ She made a valiant attempt at a smile and immediately regretted it.
‘Nice.’
Sam’s brain short - circuited for a moment before she figured out that she was supposed to get out of his way. ‘Er, do you wanna come in, sir?’
‘That was the plan.’ He looked faintly amused, and Sam felt her treacherous cheeks begin to burn.
‘Uh, let me…’
Before she knew quite what she was doing, Sam found herself standing behind him, pulling his rain - soaked overcoat from his shoulders. She felt him tense as her hand grazed his upper arm, and for a terrifying moment she seized up completely, before he shifted slightly to allow her to continue. Deciding that she was pretty much committed at this point, she carried on tugging at the fabric like she was playing a game of Operation! and the wire delivered electric shocks.
‘Shall we?...’
‘Oh, I never say no to turkey and beer.’
She trailed him down the hallway, holding a heavy wool coat in her arms and wondering where exactly she was supposed to hang it. In spite of the rain it still smelled faintly of him.
‘Uncle Jack!’
The General was intercepted as soon as he was out of the hallway. Cassie threw her arms around him with enough enthusiasm to leave the other boys in little doubt as to who was the favorite, then pulled him away to take his place next to her on the couch. Sam offloaded the General’s coat in the first place that seemed appropriate, then hurried to the kitchen and emerged a moment later with a bottle of Guinness. A little gingerly, she reached out to hand it to him, and he raised his eyebrows.
‘Thought you didn’t serve the good stuff, Carter?’
Sam looked at the floor. ‘I, er...heard it’s an acquired taste, sir.’
She forced her eyes upward to meet his, and he cracked a little smile that did funny things to her insides.
‘That’s my girl.’
Sam retreated back to the kitchen, before – she hoped – anyone got a good look at her face.
The cranberries, she decided, were a lost cause: better to concede defeat and start over, since at least she’d had the humility to buy more than she needed. Orange juice, white sugar, brown sugar (was a “cup” really supposed to be that big?) and salt. Heat, stir, add cranberries and simmer. It’s not rocket science, Samantha.
The next time she left the kitchen, the General was missing. After a brief instant of irrational panic, Sam decided he’d probably just gone to the bathroom. Did he even know where that was? Oh, well, he could probably find it all by himself – special forces, after all. Cassie was draped diagonally over the couch, her head resting on the shoulder of an increasingly animated Daniel. Teal’c was trying to watch the movie. Jacob was observing the whole thing with a slight tilt on the corner of his mouth that was probably the closest he ever came to expressing genuine contentment.
It all looked so…domestic. As if they were all together like this every weekend, or at least every other month. As if Sam wasn’t filling in for a ghost.
‘...Yah. Okay. Keep me posted. Merry Christmas.’ Sam turned to find the General leaving the hallway. He stared at his phone for a moment before flipping it shut and stowing it in his breast pocket. He looked ever so slightly agitated – but then again, of all the officers Sam had ever known, the General was the least likely to accommodate himself to taking calls after hours on Christmas Eve.
‘Something happen, sir?’
He turned to her with a start; for once, he hadn’t noticed her. ‘Nope.’
‘Was it the SGC?’
He answered her with a single shake of his head. ‘The Company,' he said.
Sam’s brow creased in confusion. ‘The Company, sir?’
‘CIA,’ he clarified.
Sam’s frown deepened. ‘The CIA is a company?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s what they call themselves. Apparently.’ He glanced over his shoulder, and for a second Sam got the strangest feeling that he thought the place might be bugged.
‘Pretentious assholes,’ she supplied, flashing him a weak smile.
‘Yah,’ he grimaced back. He moved over to stand a couple of feet away from her, peered down her line of sight at the party before them, and seemed to immediately guess what she had been thinking. ‘You okay?’ His tone was casual, but his eyes were not.
‘Yes, sir. Just…Thinking.’
Daniel or Teal’c would have asked the obvious question, but the General rarely seemed to need to. Sam only wished it worked both ways.
‘Okay,’ he nodded again. After a short pause he made his way past her, careful not to brush against her in the narrow entranceway, and briefly Sam tried to figure out when, exactly, he stopped touching her.
The timer on the oven read ten minutes – tight, but doable; only the gravy remained. The “good” recipe called for giblets – whatever those were supposed to be – which were replaced in the “easy” recipe by bouillon cubes. Both variants, for some reason, added “a little” full cream milk, because all the chicken fat wasn’t going to make her fat enough. Combine with corn starch and whisk to a paste: that was step one.
It seemed simple enough on the page, but after about three minutes of ever more forceful whisking, she ended up with a paste which looked suspiciously like a jug of milk with flour at the bottom. Step two was crumbling the bouillon cubes, which didn’t seem to want to crumble at all. Boiling water seemed to win out eventually, which brought Sam to step four: mix, “carefully.” Slowly, torturously, she poured the milk into the boiling stock, which produced an unappetizing soup of sickly brown liquid and churning clumps of flour. Step five – a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce – didn’t seem to help matters, which left only step six, a la Sam: whisk furiously for about five more minutes, give up, and start over.
Over in the living room, hidden from sight but not from sound, the quartet was at it again, and they were starting to really get on Sam’s nerves. What were they supposed to be so cheerful about, anyway? And what right did they have forcing it on everybody else on a day like this?
The oven started beeping loudly and obnoxiously when she was half way through heating the new batch of gravy. Shit. Surely the water didn’t need to be actually boiling, right? Deciding to chance it, she poured the tiniest amount of the corn - paste into the stock and almost jumped for joy when it folded smoothly into the mixture. More paste, same result. For the first time in Sam’s whole evening, something had worked. Flushed with victory, she swung open the oven door and was greeted by a pall of smoke.
In its defense, the bird was just the right shade of golden brown – in some places. In others, roasting seemed to have given way to charring, and Sam was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to happen. Never mind – It’s the inside that counts.
Her brand new hundred dollar stainless steel wonder - knife revealed white meat underneath the black-ish exterior, which was an encouraging sign. Slowly, apprehensively, she prodded the slice with a fork, raised it to her mouth, and chewed. And chewed. And chewed some more.
Oh dear.
Teal’c found her a little while later with her head in her hands.
‘Are you well, ColonelCarter?’
Sam almost thought she might have preferred her father, or – God forbid – the General to see her now. Daniel wasn’t so bad; he always understood. But how on earth was she supposed to explain to Teal’c, of all people, that a dead turkey had broken her will to resist?
‘I’m fine, Teal’c,’ she sniffed, and reluctantly she turned to face him to prove she wasn’t actually crying. ‘Just a little tired is all.’
Teal’c didn’t nod. ‘Recent events have been…untimely.’
Sam let out a strangled half - laugh that sounded suspiciously like a sob. Untimely. Wasn’t that just the perfect word for it – for Janet, and Fifth, (no, don’t think about it!) and everything else that had gone so horribly wrong lately? Teal’c had a way of cutting through everyone’s bullshit that made any pretense seem pointless. Sometimes it was refreshing. Today, it just made her feel naked – as though the pretty blue dress was invisible to him.
‘Yeah,’ she conceded.
‘Have you discussed matters with GeneralO’neill?’
Sam almost did laugh this time – Teal’c said it so simply, so reasonably, that it sounded like the easiest thing in the world.
‘No.’
Teal’c thought about it for a moment, inscrutable as ever. ‘Perhaps it would be the wisest course,’ he eventually decided. Sam answered him with a watery smile. It must be a strange sort of life, she thought – always being wise.
Teal’c carried the turkey, perhaps to spare Sam the shame. Its arrival spurred exaggerated noises of approval from Cassie and Daniel; the former, having never seen a burned turkey in her life, had no frame of reference, and the latter was probably too tipsy by now to tell. The potatoes, which came out of the ordeal looking considerably more presentable and very obviously unhealthy, earned an appreciative nod from the General.
‘Aren’t you gonna say Grace, Jack?’ prodded Daniel once the little table was full.
‘Thank you, Carter,’ the General replied, unceremoniously jabbing a piece of turkey with his fork and getting down to business without another word.
Sam shot him a furtive glance and then another, but to all appearances her fears were in vain. The General, who might actually have been raised on MREs, was never going to be a very tough customer – or else he was very good at hiding it. Sam could never really tell with him.
‘It’s delicious, Sam,’ was Cassie’s immediate verdict, strategically pronounced after her very first mouthful – but Sam knew her too well. Cassie Fraiser knew how to force a smile, and now she knew the difference between a perfectly roasted turkey and a lousy one.
‘It’s burned,’ Sam answered glumly. The rest of them might have been more than happy to keep up the pretense, but that only made it worse.
‘Just for you, Jack,’ chimed Daniel, and Cassie giggled again – the second time in one day. The General grunted his approval and Sam suddenly became very interested in her plate.
She tried a few mouthfuls, but her heart really wasn’t in it. Teal’c, who had sat next to her and unsurprisingly consumed the Tau’ri meat without much regard for its quality, had already emptied his plate, and with a small smile she switched hers with his.
‘Just not that hungry, Teal’c,’ she answered in response to his questioning eyebrow.
The table was quiet. SG-1 generally knew better than to much disturb their former leader while he was eating, and they’d learned pretty early on that it was wise to extend a similar courtesy to Jacob. Daniel, who sat next to Cassie, seemed intent on making her laugh again, though Sam couldn’t quite hear what he was murmuring to her out of the corner of his mouth. Nobody had mentioned Janet, but her absence was obvious. It had always been a little noisier with her around.
A gust of wind outside brought with it a new squall of rain, which sounded as though it had turned to sleet. Accompanying it were the strains of yet another aggressively cheery song on the TV – something about…Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo?
Oh.
All of a sudden Sam’s eyes were glued to the screen. She had seen this movie before.
She stole a glance at Jacob, who was facing the TV and might have been watching it. He’d seen it too – more than once. She wondered if he remembered, or if he forgot long ago – if he chose to forget. He had always been good at that.
The General was the second to finish his turkey, and presently leaned back in his chair and raised his beer. ‘Well, Carter, not that I want to give you any ideas,’ he said, ‘but in my expert opinion, you make an excellent civilian.’
Maybe I should’ve been a Doctor, she thought and almost said.
‘The potatoes are really great, Sam,’ Daniel quickly added. ‘How’d you get them to crisp up like that?’
‘Chicken fat,’ said Jacob, matter - of - factly. It was the first time he’d spoken since they sat down to eat.
After that, the rest of the meal fell into a comfortable cadence – the General, having eaten his fill, started cracking jokes, telling Cassie partially exaggerated stories of offworld Christmases past (the details of which changed every year for her amusement and Daniel’s annoyance,) and between Cassie's laughter and Daniel’s interjections and Jacob’s smiling eyes, Sam almost forgot her failure. Either way, it was over soon enough, which meant only one thing.
‘Presents!’ Sam called, gathering as many of the year’s offerings as she could in her arms and distributing them around the table, leaving them on the floor in the places where there was no room. Presents after dinner on whatever day “Christmas” happened to be was another one of Janet’s traditions. Intended to compel the young Cassie to swallow all of her vegetables, the practice had been denounced as blackmail by the then – Colonel O’neill; leading to the compromise solution that presents would be served immediately after the main course. Much as he might have resented the annual requirement to find gifts for all of his teammates, he had always considered it something of an obligation to one - up everyone else’s tributes to the younger Fraiser – ever since he’d opened with a dog.
If the reminder of her mother’s absence had shaken her, Cassie hid it well; she opened the festivities, as was tradition. For reasons which none of them had discussed but which everybody understood, it seemed everybody had gone above and beyond for Cassie this year. From Daniel – an expensive - looking leather handbag; from Teal’c, an equally expensive - looking digital camera; from Sam, an I-Pod and cold, hard cash; and from the General –
‘Oh my God.’ Cassie set the little black box down on the table and stared at him with disbelieving eyes. ‘Uncle Jack, where did you…’
‘Some planet,’ he answered with a flippant wave of his hand.
Up came a necklace, glittering gold and silver and trailing tiny, unearthly gems.
‘How much is this…’
‘Nothin’ much.’ If the conspicuous bulging of Daniel Jackson’s eyes was anything to go by, it might easily have been worth more than Colorado Springs. ‘Hey, you’re only eighteen once, kid,’ he added, and for the barest moment Sam saw his eyes cloud over with a fathomless melancholy before his face reset.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Cassie breathed, and clasped it around her neck before making her way around the table and snaking her arms around him, evidently afraid to break it. She kissed him on the cheek, and for another year the General was supreme.
‘Yeah, real nice, Jack,’ came Jacob’s voice from the other end of the table. ‘How the hell am I supposed to follow that?’
For the first time in a long time, Sam laughed for real.
As might have been expected, nobody else made out nearly as well as Cassie, but the team knew each other plenty well enough to compensate for a more stringent budget. Among other items, Teal’c got Star Wars on DVD – apparently a novelty, although he’d received it on VHS two years before – and Daniel got a comically small rock - hammer. Sam received a heavy, leather-bound book from Daniel, a swiss army knife from Teal’c, perfume from Cassie – and, from the General, a framed photograph of SG-1, back when he was still in it. They (especially Sam) looked far younger and seemed to be without a care in the world, standing in front of a small waterfall in the middle of a rainforest.
‘The week after the Nox thing,’ he told her. Seven years ago. The thought made Sam uneasy, and her voice wavered a little when she told him she’d keep it forever.
‘Oh, come on, Sam,’ Daniel interjected, ‘you know it wasn’t his camera, right?’ Sam laughed again.
‘My turn,’ said Jacob, handing her a heavyish box in plain red wrapping paper. ‘But you can’t open it – not ‘till tomorrow morning.’ He wouldn’t say why, and even Daniel’s famous curiosity was not sufficient to make him – or anyone else – question the order.
With the festivities over, it was time for the cleanup. Sam was still feeling a little off - kilter from the General’s photograph and would have preferred to do it alone, but – in spite of her protests that the kitchen really was too small and he was liable to break something – Daniel insisted on helping, and they made relatively light work of it.
‘Do you want another beer, sir?’ Sam called from the kitchen when most of the work seemed to be done.
‘Only since you asked, Carter!’
It was inevitable, really. When it rains, it pours. Nothing had gone right tonight, so when Sam rounded the corner a little too quickly at exactly the wrong moment, ran headlong into the General, spilled most of the contents of the bottle onto his uniform and shattered the remainder on the floor, she had no business being surprised.
‘Sir!’ she exclaimed with more obvious concern than the situation probably warranted, hurriedly snatching a kitchen towel from the countertop and pawing ineffectually at the large patch of black beer now soaking his service coat.
‘I guess I should have specified “drink,” not “swim,” Carter.’ Sam heard Cassie’s giggles from somewhere behind her, and flushed an even deeper shade of crimson.
‘I’m so sorry sir, I wasn’t looking…’
‘Carter, it’s fine.’
She gave the stain an experimental rub – to little effect – and kept going a few seconds longer as her brain once more failed to catch up with her hands. ‘I’ll go fetch you a clean shirt, sir, it’ll come out in the wash…’
‘Yeah, Sam, go tend the wounded hero!’ shot a half - drunk Daniel as he sidled effortlessly past them with a handful of plates.
‘Would you be quiet?’ Sam rounded on him, though her cheeks were burning furiously as Cassie’s laughter intensified.
‘Hey, Sam.’
For a moment Sam thought her heart actually stopped. At the very least her brain now failed her completely, because it took her another long second to snatch her errant hand away from the General, marshal her unresponsive nervous system and turn around.
‘Pete!’