One Familiar Face 2/?
by Meredith Bronwen
Sometimes, if Jack took a step back-- just a small step, really-- from himself, he could see the whole of his life laid out like a city between the hills. Like the Chicago of his youth, seen from the roof of the building that housed the O'Neill's modest apartment. He would go up there at night, riding the rickety, creaking elevator like a rocket, and sit against the chain-link fence, looking down. He'd put all his weight against that fence, daring it to break, looking at the sleek and chrome of passing cars, until he at last tired of the game and, wrapping his arms around his knees, at last took a look at the city itself. Lights, yellow, orange, red and tasteless neon, hovering in the smoky, half-darkness. Buildings that continued to climb, and others that were dwarfed beneath him. Pale television ghosts, flickering in rooms across the alleyway. The fire-escape, deplored by almost every mother in the complex, was his playground-- he swung along the cold black bars and ramparts with his friends, aiming rubber band guns, and was never afraid of looking down. From his rooftop perch, it often seemed impossible that the Chicago of darkness and lights was the same one who's streets he navigated, who's crumbling PS-112 he attended.
It seemed impossible, too, as he swung slightly down from his truck and into the crisp morning air of Cheyenne mountain's restricted access zone, that his world could be composed of anything more than the Earth on its lonely access. Taking a step back meant disbelief, because-- honestly-- who ever really wants to consider the world beyond the azure layer of the sky. In Chicago, he could see only the brightest stars, believing implicitly that the others were out there, would be waiting for him when he returned to the cleaner skies of Minnesota. Looking at the world like this, he simply had to take for granted that he was doing what he'd been doing for the past five years. Regularly flushing his molecular structure through ancient alien pathways, standing on planets you could never see with the naked eye. He'd never planned for this and, mostly, it no longer phased him. But every once in a while, his complacency would grab his shoulders and pull him back, hissing, 'look, man, look' like the masked figure of death in come arid Greek play.
You just didn't plan on certain things, Jack decided, nodding to the painfully young SF manning the entrance terminal. He presented his I.D. to the main desk, sighing with long-learned patience as the elevator began its long descent. Being embroiled in an intergalactic war against parasites was just one of them. Never expected to outlive your child, to end a marriage you once had such faith in, to fall in love again and have it be with a...
Well.
Jack shook his shoulders, as if to dislodge the grip of the thing forcing him to look at the wider scope, settling back into the low streets and corners of everyday life with no small relief.
SG-1 wasn't due out for another two days, so the only things waiting for Jack in his spartan, expressionless office were a stack of reports and a gentle admonition from Hammond to take advantage of the light duty and get some things done.
'Sire, yes, sir,' Jack smirked, filling his coffee mug on pure reflex. Copies of reports by Daniel, Teal'c and Carter on their latest adventure were dutifully lined up in his inbox; concise, professional, and so completely different it made Jack smile.
Step out of the gate, kids! Another planet of trees, trees, and-- comeon, how'dya guess?-- more trees. Some very comely natives, undisturbed by their 'god', who continue to worship remembered terror.
Same planet, same people-- but not. Daniel sees the independent development of Central American cultures, on par with perhaps the eighteen hundreds on earth, without the interference of Spanish conquistadors. Teal'c sees little strategic value, , though he does note that the System Lord the natives worship is at least a century dead, and their main concern is now any Goa'uld that might take interest in the abandoned territories. Carter sees Naquada in them thar hills. Teal'c wrote with the same precision he took into battle, each strange Tau'ri letter formed with learned skill, the characters even and almost printer-style. Daniel's cursive seemed to move, drawing one's eye along the page, 's's and 'q's quirky, his signature more like Arabic than legible English. Carter's handwriting was tight and fierce, pen digging into the paper, words just slightly skewed from where she would copy down and not look at her duplicate.
Jack settled down in his chair, flipping through his teammates observations before finally settling down to sum up the mission-- and any further involvement with PX-9830, in his own, angled hand.
He worked through lunch, raising his head from a packet of supply forms only when his knees began to protest their long-held position. Stretching slightly, he looked at the clock, then at the half-eaten Milky-way tossed to the side of his desk. He was halfway there when when it occurred to him that he'd taken the turn to Daniel's office, rather than the commissary. Annoyed, but unsurprised, he shook his head without faltering once, wondering how the hell his was supposed to (fix? cure? defuse?... what?) this thing if his subconscious insisted on parrying every attempt to distance Daniel with an equal and opposite act of affection. Yell at Daniel, take him out for a beer; say he didn't want to hear it, then-- on the gate ramp-- pat the other man's shoulder and say, 'nice save back there'. If Jack himself felt like one of those dumb, bright-red yo-yo's, he couldn't fault Daniel's occasional suspicious glance as it clawed into his chest.
But there he'd be, flopped down next to Daniel on the couch, perched on some log in front of a fire, or stretched out next to the younger man in some alien long house-- it would be fine, great even, just line old times. Then his fingers would ache, or the light would play on Daniel's cheek, and he'd be ensnared all over again. He'd reach out to...
'Look, don't touch,' his mother's voice said suddenly, echoing with detachment in his mind. An aunt, with endless rainbowed glass closed off in a display case, 'Eyes only.' Jack shook his head, though whether to dispel the memories or the sudden itching of his palms, he didn't know. Funny-- you grew up, all the while collecting junk that rose to the surface when you least needed it.
'Daniel, you wanna come over tonight?'
(But, oh, every Sunday Pa was home, Jack would find himself in the echoing basement of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, playing with the clip on his annoying, cheesy bow-tie. Miss Peters, with her ageless, freckled face and empty hands, watching her students with nervous eyes. Hell was very real to her-- so much so that Jack had almost believed she'd seen it, when he was still young and able to believe in anything at all.
'If you are tempted, you must remove the temptation.')
'Daniel, lets catch a game, huh?'
(The word 'queer', spat in the crowded bar. A pretty boy with dark hair, no more than twenty, in the shadow of someone Jack definitely knew from Academy. An impatient sound from the airman beside him. 'Come on, Jack.'
He was a only a cadet, so he walked away and never said a thing.')
Yeah, you collected junk-- your parents stuffed your head full of it-- just one more clean pair of underwear you might need at college-- your teachers, coaches, instructors throwing in their nicknacks, friends contributing change and sticky candy that never really washed out.
No wonder he had a headache most days.
"Daniel," Jack managed to greet warmly, strolling into the other man's cramped office. The walls leaned and groaned against the numerous shelves and cases stacked against them-- the main table was only there in theory, under the spread of papers and reference books. His teammate was hunched over a small section of tablet, eyes flickering between the artifact and his own, careful but hasty notes.
"Jack," he said, and the other man only widened his smile, hiding the instinctive flinch at the surprise in Daniel's voice.
"You hungry for lunch?"
The blue eyes blinked carefully, "Lunch?"
"Oh, you know," Jack began plopping some wayward pens back into their container, eyes on Daniel's computer and its endless dancing Egyptians. "That ritual, middle of the day, in which we Earthlings partake of edible foodstuffs."
"Ja-ack," Daniel drew the word out, snorting, "Is there such a thing as non edible foodstuffs?" He stepped away from the table, crossing his arms, and Jack knew the battle was already won.
(The war, too, if you'll but admit it. You can see the way the tides are turning, but you'll fight to the bitter end, forgetting this is not an enemy, but a friend.)
"Sure," the Colonel rolled his shoulders, "sushi, for one. Also asparagus and my Aunt Cindy's fruitcake." He leaned over a little, resting his chin in his hands. "What do you say?"
"Wow," Daniel said, glancing at his watch, "yeah, I guess so." He motioned towards the tablet, 'This is really fascinating-- a cross pollination of Eskimo and Japanese cultures; not my specialty, obviously, but still very interesting when you consider..."
"Earth to Planet Daniel," Jack waved a hand, "lunch, not lecture." He took the other man by the arm
("look, don't touch"
--oh, just shut up.--)
and towed him gently towards the door.
"Alright, I'm thinking." John tapped his chin, despite the fact the gesture could not be seen. "Here you go-- who wins in a fight, Batman or Superman?"
Danny made a gently disgusted noise, "What kind of a question is that?"
"A very relevant question," John sniffed. The other boy made a sound of consideration in the back of his throat, and John could hear his fingers tapping against the floor in a way that told him Danny was thinking. He looked determinedly through the darkness which, while still thick, seemed somehow trivialized beside the comfort of another human voice.
"Batman," Danny answered at last. "Maybe in the first fight, Superman would win, but once Batman did his research, he'd figure out a device to utilize Kryptonite, and that would be the end of that."
"S'what I thought, too," John said approvingly.
"Favorite time of year?" the younger boy inquired.
"Winter," he answered easily. "Christmas, New Years and hockey season. What's not to love?"
"The cold?" Danny suggested. "I like summer."
"Yeah," John sighed, "and here we are missing it! I didn't want to get out of school just to be kidnapped by a bunch of weirdoes with weird body art."
"Doesn't really bother me-- missing Summer, not the kidnapping, I mean," Danny said hastily.
"Foster parents?"
"Yeah. Plus, I like school."
"You are weird," John laughed, "My favorite subject is lunch."
The other boy made a rude noise, "Oh, please."
"Alright--" John conceded, "so I like the part of science where we study Astronomy, and I don't have any problems with cutting into pig fetuses or anything... can't stand math."
"I'm okay in Math, but I don't like it," Danny admitted. "My favorite subject is history."
"Yeah, there's a surprise," John smiled despite himself, glad his friend couldn't see it, "but you're gonna be an archaeologist, so you should like learning. Me? I'm gonna go into the military."
"The Navy, like your Dad?"
"Nope, I wanna fly-- maybe Pa'll be more open to me joining up now that the war's over." John frowned as he listened for Danny's reply. The moments seemed to trickle by, rife with Daniel's thoughts-- the hum of which John seemed able to hear but not decipher-- until the older boy almost feared this was it. All around the mulberry bush-- pop goes the delusion! He'd be alone again.
"... What war?"
"What do you mean 'what war'?" John asked, surprised, "The war. Vietnam."
Danny paused carefully, "The Vietnam war is over."
"No shit," came the reply, "S'what I'm telling you. My Pa's finishing up in Cambodia. He'll be back early September, latest."
"No, John," Danny said, sounding a little exasperated, "The Vietnam has been over for years."
"It has not--"
"Who's president?" the younger boy demanded.
"Nixon--"
Danny plowed on, "When were you taken?"
"I told ya," John muttered, frustrated, "June 10th."
"I mean what year," the last word seemed to echo between John's ears.
He said, quietly, "1973." And then, "Shit, Danny... are you telling me..."
"I was taken June 11th," Danny said, voice breaking with the effort to be calm, "1983."
(That's it, Johnny-- you've really lost it now. Maybe all those comic books really were that bad for you. Maybe you've got some sick growth in your brain, and you're really lying, mouth open and drooling, in the kitchen, and no one will find you 'til Miss Brant bothers to do the weekly checkup she promised your Pa. Won't that be a sight!)
Except that wasn't true, because he couldn't come up with this stuff-- he couldn't come up with Egyptian kidnappers, coiled tattoos of golden snakes and birds, couldn't come up with Daniel.
'So crazy, it has to be true,' he remembered his father saying, laughing too loudly one night over beer. 'It just has'ta be true.'
"Christ," John said meaningfully, "Christ on a sidecar. Please tell me you're joking." The last was a plea, despite the sincerity he heard in the other boy's voice. For some reason, the first thought to surface passed his lips as well. "So you're, what, six years old in my time?" A strange sense of loss caught in his throat, sliding down, cold and burning.
Softly, "Yeah."
"So, what-- we're in 1983, now?" John tried to laugh a little, "Tell me who won the past ten Super bowls and I could be rich."
"Probably not," the younger boy said, his brief chuckle the only indication he'd heard John's last sentence. "Think about it-- these people have lasers... and when I saw, you know, her, we were in a room full of all sorts of things I've never seen before. They could be from further in the future."
"Really, really further," John shuddered.
"The walls were also decorated with hieroglyphics... I didn't get a good look, though," the last was said apologetically.
"You can read hieroglyphics?" John heard the murmured affirmative from the other side of the vent. "Wow. Very cool."
A blush seemed to color Danny's voice, "Thanks."
"So, in the future, the world is run by crazy Egyptians?" John asked after a moment.
"I don't know," Danny tapped his fingers quickly against the floor. "None of this makes any sense. What do they want with an orphan and a kid from Minnesota?"
"Chicago," John correct automatically.
"My point still stands."
"I dunno... maybe..." A thousand images flashed through John's mind. Greentown on Mars, aliens that looked like those you'd loved and lost; lumbering, mechanical Martians against the setting sun; a future so grave and decadent that its citizens could only thrill themselves with the barbarism of the past. "Maybe it's like in the pulps... maybe they're looking for fresh meat or blood or DNA."
Danny seemed to consider this, "That tracks with what the woman said."
"Which was...?"
"She said I'd be the father of a magnificent race."
John couldn't help but make a face, darting a finger through the vent to briefly touch Danny's. "Creepy."
Small and fervent, "You're telling me."
They allowed silence to settle over them for several minutes, listening and matching the rhythm of their breathing. The initial shock of the idea seemed to slide off John's skin like summer sweat, leaving only disbelief and the ever-present ache for home. He cleared his throat, casting about, holding onto triviality and humor with a grip that scared him stiff.
"Alright. If you could live forever, but you had to spend one day as a fish first, would you do it?"
Danny almost giggled, "That's the silliest thing I've ever--" He broke off suddenly.
"Danny?"
"Listen!" the other boy hissed. The was a release of air, and Jack had been in the dark so long that even the tiny bit of light that filtered from Danny's cell through the vent hurt his eyes. Footsteps, low, deep voices over foreign words. And, though John's capture could have only have been a few days prior, his isolation made even that strangely unreal. He opened his mouth to speak but found fear instead of words-- he could only close his eyes when Danny quickly squeezed his fingers, skin slipping away by centimeters, and was gone.
The waiting was worse than the darkness, worse than his sense of isolation from before. John sat staring into the nothing, occasionally whispering for his friend and receiving no reply. The sense memory of human touch played over in his mind, emphasizes, arguing for its reality and urging him to hold on. People held on-- they did that, for amazingly strange and varied reasons, and now John did it, too.
Grandpa held on, the visage of his dead wife staring compassionately down from her perch upon the mantle, decades and decades dead of trying to bare a third O'Neill son.
Pa held on, while Mother walked the path between her study and the kitchen like a collection of delicately jingling bones. He kissed her dry cheek when even John could see it was just numbers back there behind her-- he married her and loved her, though rare strange was the indication that she loved him back.
Jeannie Cronour, the girl in the apartment downstairs, held onto the soft, peach fuzz skin of her baby, slogging across the city each day to serve coffee and overpriced donuts to dull men in suits. She walked with her fatherless child in the forest of skyscrapers, taking each day like the next opponent in a fencing match.
John held on, because he wanted to see the sunrise over Grandpa's lake again, jump off the pier and feel the rush of cold, to haunt the halls of PS-112 just one more time, waiting for that letter from the USAF.
(And Danny, who knew what Danny wanted to do? John didn't want him to sit, lonely, with only a gibbering shadow for company.)
For a few minutes, he tried to count the actual seconds passing-- in his own head, it seemed to echo off the walls, painfully, reminding him of how long it had been since he'd seen anything. Felt anything, really, except the floor and...
(Danny's fingers, trying to grip strongly, to reassure.)
'Dear Pa,' he thought, thinking of the postcards and censored letters his father sent. 'Am having one hell of a summer. Kidnapped by weirdoes-- possibly aliens-- from the future. Feel like my life has turned into a Asimov novel. How are you? Your severely dislocated son, Johnny.' He quirked his lips in amusement before mentally adding, 'Ps. You worried about me being lonely this summer, but don't. Have made a name friend-- name of Danny-- from 1983.'
Hand in his pocket, John fingered his army knife once more, trying to remember the exact details of the last postcard his Pa had sent. A picture of a jungle river, or something, with bright blossoms and murky water. Finally, curled up and miserable, he fell into uneasy, shadow-laden dreams.
(Yeah, a jungle river. He and Danny wade in the shadows, splashing, and in the dream he knows what Danny looks like even though he'll forget when he wakes up. The sun is hot and the water so thick it feels like it's own entity, and they're laughing together right up until he sees a man-- a soldier-- come out of the jungle. He shouldn't panic, because the soldier is American, but all he can do is step backward as he looks into a mirror of angry brown eyes.)
He woke, and Danny was still gone.