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Part Two: The Ghost of Christmas Past

He'd barely closed his eyes when he became aware that his bed was moving. Bouncing, actually. He threw his arm over his eyes and groaned. "I'm getting sea sick!" Much to Jack's dismay, the bouncing stopped. He almost opened his eyes, but then he remembered his dream of Kowalsky and decided it would be better to keep his eyes tightly closed.

Then there was a slight pressure on his chest and a tiny warmth wrapping around his wrist to pull his arm away. A laugh. A young boy's laugh.

Jack squeezed his eyes closed tighter and felt the lump forming in his chest. He told himself it wasn't real. He couldn't look.

"Come on, dad! I know you're awake!"

"NO!" Jack clapped his hands over his ears and screamed, not caring who he woke. "Leave me alone!"

"Please, daddy?"

Jack was a fool to even think about resisting. He let his eyes open slowly, momentarily blinded as the tears poured out. "Charlie?"

"Who'd you think it was?" The boy was straddling his chest, wearing the red and green striped pajamas they'd both tried to convince Sara were for boys far younger than Charlie's eight years. Charlie grinned, revealing the missing tooth he'd lost two days before his last Christmas. "Who else would call you Dad?"

Jack reached out with both hands, tentatively cupping the boy's cheeks, letting out a breath at the warmth he found there. "Oh, Charlie, I miss you so bad."

Charlie pulled back and made a face, already displaying the O'Neill lack of affection gene. "Come on, Dad, let's go!"

Although he'd never been one to get swept up in anyone's excitement, Jack smiled and took his son's outstretched hand. Even he couldn't say no to the sheer exuberance of a kid on Christmas.

He tried to ignore the odd way they drifted rather than walked toward the living room. The father that still existed in him, despite Jack's desperate attempts to bury it deep within his psyche, rose up to try to warn Charlie. "Hey, kid, you know, I wasn't expecting company, so there really aren't any presents. Or decorations. Or cookies." Jack felt more disappointed in himself than Charlie looked when he turned around.

Charlie's poker face dissolved into a grin in seconds. "Dad, there are always presents on Christmas! Santa brings them!"

Jack didn't have the heart to mention that he was a little old for that, so he said nothing. Instead and shrugged and hoped Charlie wouldn't hate him for the living room that held a couch, a TV, and a table to hold up the lamp with the burned out bulb he never got around to replacing.

Charlie's eyes twinkled the slightest bit and at that moment, Jack's ears picked up the softest hint of the Nat King Cole album Sara insisted on playing on Christmas. Jack felt himself start to smile as he followed Charlie once more, rounding a corner that hadn't been there the night before and emerging into a room he hadn't seen in over a decade.

He closed his eyes and savored the feeling - the warmth from the fireplace, the smell of fresh baked cookies, the sound of Charlie's excited cries every time he tore through the paper on another gift. When he opened his eyes again, he saw exactly what he'd expected, although it was a sight he'd only actually witnessed once. Sara was tucked into an old quilt, nestled in the corner of the couch. Charlie was darting about the room, trying to play with everything all at once. He watched his young son, unable to stop himself from feeling content.

It felt like only minutes had gone by, but he'd witnessed hours before him. The fire had died down. Charlie was passed out on a half-assembled model airplane. Sara had worked through half a bottle of wine and was smiling, although Jack didn't miss the tears in her eyes. He watched her slowly reached out to answer the ringing phone, her smile brightening when she greeted him.

"Merry Christmas, Jack."

He heard his own strained, tired voice sounding through the quiet room. "I'm sorry, baby. I couldn't call sooner."

"It's ok. I'm glad you're all right." Sara reached up to wipe at the tears that remained in her eyes. "You are all right, aren't you?"

Jack heard for the first time what a bad liar he was - it was evident in the length of the pause as he determined how much of the truth would suffice. Apparently, none of the truth would work. "Yeah, there was a really long line for the phone."

Jack suddenly recalled that day, where he'd been when he'd made that call. Lying in hospital bed on an aircraft carrier, with a broken collar bone, three broken ribs, a surgically repaired lung, and pretty damn near loopy on pain meds - still a far cry from three of the men he'd started out with that morning who'd wound up in body bags on Christmas day.

Jack saw the trembling of Sara's jaw and heard her silence as she fought back the tears. She cleared her throat and gulped a large portion of her wine. "Charlie loved the plane you got him. He would have thanked you himself, but he fell asleep playing with it."

His voice was choked even as it carried across the bad connection. "I love you, Sara. Tell Charlie I'll be home soon."

Jack sat down on the coffee table in front of his wife and watched her face crumble as she stared at the disconnected phone. "Please come home in one piece, Jack." He reached out with shaking hands, wanting to wipe her tears away.

But a yawning Charlie crawled up onto his mother's lap. "Why are you crying, mom?"

She forced a smile out. "Because I'm very happy. Santa got me just what I wanted."

Charlie looked confused. "But you didn't get any presents."

The forced smile turned into a real one. "Santa kept your daddy safe and he's going to be home real soon." Charlie smiled as he snuggled up against her.

Jack turned away with tears in his eyes, looking at the other Charlie who was waiting patiently in the corner of the room. "I can't watch anymore of this." He'd been so stupid - all those years he'd thought that life had been great when he was married to Sara. Now he knew, he understood - Sara hadn't been sitting at home, happy and smiling while he was away. He hated to think of how she had suffered without him, and then how she'd suffered without Charlie.

"Come on, Dad, I've got more to show you." Charlie held out his hand, smiling softly at his tearful father.

Jack reluctantly took his hand, praying he wouldn't open his eyes and see the dismal next Christmas where he'd downed a bottle of Jack Daniels and Sara had sobbed over a photo album and the five feet between them seemed like unfathomable chasm. He didn't need Charlie to show him the room with no decorations and fireplace with no stockings and the obvious hole in their lives.

"Dad, it's ok to look. I'm still here."

It was at Charlie's soft encouragement that Jack opened his eyes, almost shouting out in joy that he was in a completely different room. He'd never seen it in all his life. But as he looked around, he felt a familiar tingle in his spine. The depressed looking Christmas tree. The stereo playing carols that somehow sounded flat. A young man sprawled in a recliner reading a magazine. A teenage girl curled up on the couch. He found himself looking for the parents, for some indication as to what was going on.

"Sure, fine. I'll tell her." The boy - because upon closer look Jack realized he was probably only in his late teens - dropped the phone Jack hadn't noticed. He turned the page and waited several minutes before he looked up. "That was Dad. He's not going to make it home. He said to order a pizza for dinner if there's anywhere open."

Jack decided he had no idea who he was looking at and turned to see the girl's reaction. Except for the slight tightening of the hold she had on the blanket around her shoulders, she gave no indication that she'd heard anything. He looked back at Charlie, who was waiting patiently for Jack to learn the lesson he was there to teach.

Jack moved closer to the couch, finally noticing that the girl clutched a piece of paper in her hands that she was staring at. As he moved closer, he realized she was sobbing, almost silently. He glared at the boy, who was carelessly flipping pages again, seemingly unaware of what the girl was going through.

"Are you hungry or are you just going to sit there and sniffle all day?"

"Shut up!" The girl's ferocious, angry shout made Jack take a step back, even though he knew he wasn't really even there.

"If you're going to act like that, I'm going to go out." The irritation in the boy's tone made Jack wish he really was there to smack him. "I don't know what the big deal is. What were you expecting? It's not like Dad's ever been here on Christmas."

The girl jumped to her feet, surprising Jack by her lanky height, her face still hidden behind her long, uncombed hair. Instead of the scream he'd heard a moment before, the girl barely forced out a whisper. "Mom was here last Christmas." She tore out of the room then, pounding up the stairs and down the hall until Jack heard a door slam. He could imagine her sprawled across her bed sobbing, waiting for someone to comfort her. Someone who wasn't coming.

He looked down, at the picture the girl had dropped, not needing to see the smiling faces of the girl and her mom to know what Charlie was showing him. He only needed to see those brilliant blue eyes to realize he wasn't the only one who' d ever hurt on Christmas.

He felt like shit as he stared after her, wishing he could follow her and give her that hug she needed. Jack felt a gently tug on his hand as he tried to blink back his tears. He glanced down at Charlie and squeezed his hand. "Don't leave me, Charlie." Charlie only smiled back.

Jack jerked upright in his bed, his hand still tingling from his son's hold. It was dark and cold, though not as cold as when he'd thought he was talking to Kowalsky. He was at home, in his bed, still half-dressed from work. He considered the phone, which lay beside him in the bed from where he'd aborted his attempt to remedy his dreams by calling the landlord.

As he moved it back to the bedside table, he paused for a moment, considering calling Carter again. It was two by his clock, but she was in a different time zone. She was probably still up. Hell, he thought chuckling to himself, she was probably still working. He set the phone down and told himself that it would be ridiculous to appear needy and lonely just because he apparently missed her so badly that he was having nightmares about her life.

He shifted back to a more comfortable spot in the bed and closed his eyes, trying to drum up his dream of Charlie to lull him back to sleep.