Title: And Bring Us Home Again…
Date: December 14, 2000
Status: Complete
Author: Jmas
Category: Drama, angst, smarm
Email: jmasg1@bellsouth.net
Disclaimer: Characters are property of MGM, etc.
Spoilers: Maternal Instinct, Crystal Skull, FiaD, New Ground,
Cold Lazarus. A wee one for Ali’s story Prodigal Son,
just had to do it <g>.
Summary: Winter chill, reflections the nature of family
Author's note: My response to the HC Christmas challenge. Quick,
relatively painless, references to A Christmas Carol by Charles
Dickens and You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe.
And Bring Us Home Again…
By
Jmas
Snow glittered in the light of the street lamp, sparkling like
miniscule stars drifting in and out of existence; alive but
for a moment in time before joining the entropy of their
companions in the wet slush melting into the ground. Daniel
huddled deeper into his coat, just becoming aware of the
northerly wind that would soon chill the earth and grant
the snow a slower death.
Sighing long and deep, Daniel moved into the shadowed shelter
of one of the massive pines some distance off the familiar
footpath. The darkness there suited the mood that had come
over him earlier in the day, driving him out from the confining
walls of his apartment in search of a release for something
he had yet, hours later, to define.
Slipping down to sit in the soft, dry needles at the base
of the tree trunk, Daniel scrubbed a hand through his damp
hair in frustration. What was wrong with him? He’d just
spent hours moving from one undirected thought to another almost
as quickly as his legs had carried him through the streets
of Colorado Springs to the one place of solitude he had found
in the city he had so reluctantly come to accept as his home
on Earth. The ancient pines formed a bastion of aloneness for
him, especially at night when the landscape seemed to sweep
off to the edge of the park and meld seamlessly into the starlit
sky. The dark landscape and the way the wind hummed in the
pine boughs reminded him of endless nights spent on the dunes,
enrapt under the spell of alien stars that had become so familiar.
Daniel sighed again and winced as he realized he would likely
never spend another night on the sands of his adopted home;
never watch the moons rise in all their glory, never know the
warmth of Abydos or its people or his Sha’re again…
Sha’re.
Daniel surged to his feet with a choked gasp, moving across
the snow-coated grass into the deeper darkness of the trees.
His heart thundered in his chest, breath forcing its way through
a throat gone tight. Was that what had driven him out here
today? Digging his cold hands deeper into his pockets, Daniel
shook his head sharply. No, he’d accepted that. He had.
Sha’re had died months ago, and over time he had come
to realize he had been preparing for the loss long before she
had stared down at him as if he were a hated enemy and tried
to kill him. He had held onto hope until the end, but each
successive failure had widened the chasm ever further until
the staff blast had brought them both crashing down into a
stillness that continued to haunt his dreams. And still he
dreamed. The good dreams of their lives together, the bad dreams
of pain as he looked into the eyes of the stranger she had
become, searching for a glimpse of the woman he had loved so
deeply and finding none. But then there were those other dreams;
dreams of giving up and walking away, detaching from his friends,
dreams of a promise and finding forgiveness for the friend
who put an end to those dreams while freeing Sha’re at
long last. The price of that freedom had been higher than either
Daniel or Teal’c could ever have imagined, but Daniel
had come to accept that it had been at a necessary cost of
hope. He would never know now if his hope had been as empty
as it had felt in the dreams as he had packed them all away
in boxes. He preferred to think it wasn’t. Jack had said
not and Daniel wanted to believe him.
Turning onto one of the jogging paths, glowing white in the
dimness from the combination of gravel and snow cover, Daniel
sighed. It was getting colder and he knew he should turn around
and go home.
“Home?” His own whispered voice sounded strange
to him in the stillness. Earth was his home now, once again
and in actuality in a way it had not been before he had gone
to Abydos. He should go home now and…
Oh, damn.
He was supposed to have met the team at Jack’s two hours
before to exchange gifts, share dinner, be together…
Daniel laughed sharply. Some company he would make at a holiday
gathering. Better just to go home and go to bed. Tomorrow was
Christmas, things had to look better then, right?
“Right…”
Daniel moved off the jogging path, angling back toward the
sidewalks, realizing the snow was now several inches deep away
from the sheltering trees. The ground shone now with its own
subdued glow, looking all the more like the dunes he missed
so badly, but there was an unfamiliar light coming from just
beyond the trees now, too low to be a street light. Edging
nearer, Daniel saw it was a crèche. Simple carved figures,
subdued fluorescent bulbs strategically highlighting all the
major players in one of humanity’s most important dramas.
The figures were familiar in their simple beauty and plain
desert robes, so much so Daniel had to swallow hard against
a return of his earlier emotion. Mary, Joseph, the not-surprisingly
incorrect Magi…all of them looked Middle Eastern…were
all people he could have known, eaten with, laughed with.
All his past was embodied here in this quiet tableau in the
middle of a park in Colorado Springs. Joseph was Kasuf, Mary
could so easily be any of Sha’re’s friends, if
not Sha’re herself, the child, the Wise Men. Balthasar
looked just like Kasuf’s brother in law, the one with
the breath like a mastadge pen and the sense of humor that
could make all of them blush. He missed it. It wasn’t
just Sha’re who had made Abydos home, it was the sights,
sounds, smells, memories, laughter and tears they had all shared
together there. Things the people represented before him had
known just as familiarly…except, of course, for the mastadges.
And the child…
Serene blue eyes stared out from the manger; so hauntingly
familiar it jerked him forward unthinkingly until he was standing,
then kneeling, before it. The carver could have crafted this
figure from the child he’d held not long ago, so intense
was the likeness. Daniel smiled a little at the memory of the
soft weight in his arms, the lilting laugh and infectious smile
that had broken through his hatred of the Goa’uld to
the reality that he could not keep the child safe. He had made
the right decision, he knew that, but there was a lingering
emptiness at the loss. The search for the child had eased the
loss of the greater search that had kept him going so long,
but now…
His promise was kept, the child was safe. What was left to
hold him?
The missions, the fight against the Goa’uld, the need
to learn more about the vast universe beyond the Stargate.
Yes, there was all of that. But was it enough?
The past few years – hell, every minute of his life
since he had unburied the Abydos gate - had been full of ups
and downs that ranged from the greatest joys he had ever known
to the deepest of emotional and physical pain. The man who
had almost cluelessly stepped through the Stargate that first
time was still inside him, but tempered now by time and trials
his younger, more innocent self could never have imagined.
Jack, Teal’c, Sam…they had helped him through it
all. They had helped each other and forged the kinds of bonds
Daniel had thought he had left behind him on Abydos.
But then Jack had been lost for nearly three months, months
in which Daniel had seriously considered leaving the SGC once
they had determined Jack’s fate. Then Jack had returned
and morphed into a person Daniel recognized all too clearly,
and understood no better than he had in the beginning of that
first mission…perhaps hated more because he had come
to believe in the man that bastard had become. Then Rygar’s
face, haunting his dreams with endless questions, questions
punctuated by pain when the answers failed to satisfy. Later,
there had been Nick, in and out of Daniel’s life just
as quickly and painfully as he had always been in the past,
though this time with the words Daniel had waited most of his
life to hear. Better…but just as gone.
Daniel snorted and wiped the self-indulgent moisture from
his eyes as he sank down to sit on the cold ground. God, he
was a mess. He looked up into the eyes of the angel hovering
over the manger. Oma Desala, ‘Mother Earth,’ he
had translated, but the sheer beauty of the creature known
as Oma Desala put this poor reproduction to shame. Close, so
close. The same regal protectiveness, the serene air of power
taken for granted, the flowing light-like wings stretching
into infinity…
Infinity sounded pretty good about now…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jack watched as Daniel slipped down to sit cross-legged before
the stable, apparently unaware he was sitting in several inches
of snow. Hands slid around to interlock behind Daniel’s
bowed head, a posture of pain and grief that sounded loud and
clear to Jack even across the distance. Jack had been following
Daniel since he had heard the younger man’s voice break
in the darkness of the trees, before Daniel had come out of
the shadows as if being chased by a demon…or a few personal
ghosts. Jack recognized the sound, had felt his own gut clench
with the familiarity of it. Grief, loss, crisis of identity…the
head shrinks would have a field day dressing it all up with
fancy labels but Jack knew on a gut level that needed no name – Daniel
was hurting.
Jack had seen Daniel’s eyes growing restless after the
Earth Mother chick had taken off into the night with Sha’re’s
son. Daniel had said he was okay, but they had all wondered
just what level of ‘okay’ Daniel meant. Sha’re
was dead, they’d faced Apophis again, found out later
the snake was not part of the dust cloud that used to be Naetu,
got tortured by a religious zealot, found the kid, lost the
kid, lost Daniel, found Nick Ballard, got Daniel back, but
lost Nick again.
Crap.
He should have seen this coming.
They had all been ready to sit down to dinner a couple of
hours ago, but the empty chair had been as eloquent as the
man who was supposed to be occupying it. It had only taken
one, “Maybe we should…” from Carter to send
them all into the night in search of Daniel. Once Teal’c
had reported Daniel’s apartment empty and his car parked
in front of the building, Jack had known where to go.
He and Daniel had been here before, early on when Daniel had
first come back to Earth. Jack had quickly clued in that his
houseguest tended toward working himself into insomnia when
it came to avoiding the bad dreams Jack had overheard a lot
more often than he let on. One night in particular, after a
slim lead on Sha’re and Skaara had bottomed out and Daniel
had finally jumped at one shadow too many, Jack had thrown
a coat at the younger man and hauled him out here. The clear
mountain sky, the quiet company, and the whispering pines had
slowly given Daniel what he needed. Peace.
There had been no question in Jack’s mind that Daniel
had taken to haunting this place when things got really rough.
More than once Jack had watched from the shadows, there to
defeat his own bad dreams or just to keep a watchful eye out
on Daniel’s. Sometimes Jack would make his presence known
and flop down on the grass, getting lost in the stars. Sometimes
Daniel would speak quietly, letting words lead them both to
other places and times. But most of the time the silence spoke
more clearly, and was more than enough.
Watching Daniel now, Jack did not think even the magic of
the pines would do the trick tonight. Moving forward slowly,
Jack thought he heard Daniel muttering to himself, but the
words were lost in the wind and the light crunch of snow under
his shoes. When he got within a few feet, Daniel asked, “Where
do I go, Jack?”
Jack stepped closer, kneeling stiffly beside his friend. “Home
might be a good start….”
Daniel made a sound Jack was pretty sure was meant to be a
laugh. “Yeah.”
Cold-reddened hands scrubbed the snow out of Daniel’s
hair, and hollow eyes looked up for the first time. Jack was
taken back in time to the first night back from Abydos.
‘They don’t know what to do with me, and I don’t
know what to do with myself…’
The SGC had figured out damn quick what to do with Daniel – and
all that Daniel could do - but it looked like maybe Daniel
was back to square one on the what to do with himself angle.
Jack looked out over the crèche, noticing the strong
faces, the baby, the angel. It had been a few years since he
had taken the time to really look at one of these. It had taken
a long time for him to really take note of Christmas at all
without feeling the kind of desperate emptiness that it seemed
Daniel was feeling now. Jack had leaned on the Stargate program,
his new family with SG1, made a kind of peace with the past
by way of the gift from the crystal entity. But then Jack had
many years of practice when it came to leaning on family and
Kate O’Neill had made sure her son knew it. Well, maybe
Daniel just needed the O’Neill refresher course.
Jack raised a hand to Daniel’s shoulder, feeling the
slight tremors of cold he knew Daniel had yet to notice. “Yeah.
Home. My place. Dinner, bad movies, good company, too much
hard cider and a standing invitation to my guest room.”
Daniel’s mouth quirked at one corner. “You cooked?”
“If I say ‘yes’ will it scare you off?”
The shoulder under Jack’s hand shrugged minutely. “It’s
a pretty scary thought…”
Jack raised his hand to cuff Daniel’s head lightly,
sending snow fluttering into his face.
Daniel’s head ducked on a soft laugh. “I’m
not really good company tonight, Jack…”
“Who said you had to be?” Jack asked gruffly,
his voice softening as he continued. “We’re family.
The important thing is being there.”
Blue eyes looked up, bright in the soft glow of the crèche,
meeting Jack’s levelly in an obvious search for truth.
Slowly, he nodded.
Jack stood up, extending a hand. “Then get your ass
out of the snow. Didn’t anyone ever tell you what that’ll
do to you?”
A cold hand grasped Jack’s own, shivers transferring
themselves along Jack’s arm as he helped Daniel to his
feet. Daniel’s eyes roamed back over the figures in the
stable and Jack could see there was more in the fixed expression
than just an admiration for a pretty decent, if incorrect -
even Jack knew the wise men were supposed to be African, Oriental,
and European - piece of craftsmanship. But, hey the old guy
looked a lot like Kasuf.
Light dawned.
Double crap.
Jack shook the hand in his own causing Daniel’s head
to turn quickly, emotion lay raw on a face paled by the cold
and the ghosts of the past, present and future that seemed
to be haunting the night. Jack snaked an arm around Daniel’s
shoulders, pulling the younger man to him in a tight embrace
of shared pain. Daniel shuddered a moment, body tensing as
if he would pull away before finally sinking into the embrace.
Jack just held on. Daniel was bleeding all over the pristine
snow just as surely as if someone had cut him open. Small snuffs
of something that might have turned into tears puffed into
Jack’s chest. Jack held on tighter, knowing from experience
that words were useless, and even this small comfort was like
putting a Band-Aid on a severed limb, pretty damn useless but
with any luck at all it might stem the flow. Silence reigned
and the stable watched as the ghosts gradually receded into
the night, slipping back into their appointed places and granting
a painfully slow release.
Daniel’s head started shaking against Jack’s chest
and muffled words penetrated the silence.
“What?”
Daniel raised his head a bit, surprisingly not pulling away. “I
said, ‘let’s go home…’ ”
Jack smiled and slid an arm around Daniel’s shoulders,
steering them toward the place where he had parked his car. “Home
as in…?”
“Your place. Dinner, bad movies. Good company, I hear?”
Jack grinned. “The best. Hard cider, it’ll warm
you right up. Got extra blankets for the spare room, too.”
Daniel nodded, looking back one last time at the stable, before
turning to look askance at Jack. “So…Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Cook.”
Jack smiled again. Daniel was okay. At least for now. His
own private version of Charles Dickens by way of Thomas Wolfe
had receded back into the shadows of dreams, and if healing
had not exactly taken place, then at least the wounds were
clean and bandaged. The rest would take time. Maybe a lot of
it. But they would be there to help, just like always. They
were family after all; the important thing was being there.
Jack laughed at the side-long glance he was getting, equal
parts tremulous smile and exaggerated fear.
“Well, sort of.”
“Jack…”
Jack shrugged, tucking the younger man closer under his shoulder. “I
put it in the oven after the guy delivered it.”
“Probably cold by now.”
“Nah, Carter will keep it warm. I sent them back to
my house once I found you.”
Daniel nodded. “Good plan.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“My bucks are bigger…”
“We aren’t really going to do the size thing,
are we?”
“Jack…”
They walked on in silence a few moments longer, the pines
sighing a peaceful goodnight.
“How much bigger?”
*Fin*
