A/N- Yes, thank you for the many Colonel note. The same day I wrote about an impatient and foreboding Colonel, I considered applying to Cornell. Subconscious, no? Well, thanks for all the reviews. I hope you like the new chappy.
Daniel found it rather foreboding that thirty minutes into the dinner he was on his fourth glass of wine. The California Burgendy was quite delightful, but not as delightful as the buzz it was giving him.
Not much had been said, besides the regular pleasantries. Then the server came over. While the table d'hote menu left little in the way of options, there was still a vegetarian option which young Jack was intent on.
"What do you mean?" O'Neill went pale. "You mean you don't eat..meat?"
"No. I don't like killing things." Young Jack said, leaning back in his chair and chewing on the flesh of his lip. Daniel was sipping wine and was about to ask for something a bit harder.
"What are you going to do after school?" O'Neill asked, trying to push the conversation into a better direction. However, the tongue ring, the tattoo and the loose barely tied tie was making it hard.
"Art school. I want to paint." Jack, on the other hand, was trying to make the older Jack as uncomfortable as possible. "Or, I don't know, maybe be a stage proformer, an actor."
O'Neill swallowed hard and looked over his shoulder. "Check, please!" Daniel took the younger Jack's arm and pulled him to the side of the restaurant where the doors to the kitchen were. They were sheltered behind a railing and hanging plants while Jack wrote off the check and dinner was paid for, thanks to of the U.S. Air force.
"Jack!" Daniel whined.
"Uncle danny." Jack mockingly whined back.
"Why do you delight in ruining things for people? Jack's a really good friend of mine and." Daniel huffed, unsure of where his tangent was going.
"Jack wanted a mini-him and I refuse. I'm doing nothing but being honest."
"You're doing nothing but being a pain. Why? Why why?" Daniel stomped his foot for emphasis but only succeeded in making himself look like a five year old. Young Jack snickered. Daniel glared and hit his arm as lightly as he could. "Stop it, will you?" However the light tap bruised Jack's arm and he took it as a certain insult in his masculinity. Jack slammed his fist right into the breast pocket of Daniels shirt.
Bump...bump...ba ...bump... Daniel felt his heart slowing, like he was falling into a deep sleep. He watched the teal liquid stain his shirt, dripping from his breast pocket. He remembered lazily about the sample of teal liquid in a glass cylinder Carter asked him to analyze and in his rush he had shoved it in his shirt pocket.
He watched it leaking on to Jack's hands, the teal staining the perfect pale of his hands. The alien liquid followed the veins of his skeleton hands. Running rampant up the thin boy's arm. Jack looked up at Daniel, and Daniel looked back. For the first time Daniel saw pure terror on his nephews face, and Jack, unfortunately, saw the same on his uncles. Slowly, very slowly, like some creeping disease, the liquid spread, running all over both of them. Daniel felt his body being pulled away, like a suction cup being pulled off a surface.
The echoes of his mind followed, each moment moved with him, like slides falling out of a projector. And like anything does while falling, they hit the floor.
A astro-physicist Julian Barbour, theorizes that every moment of our lives is played and replayed over and over again. So from the time we were born, to the time we're on our death beds, every single second is replayed over and over again in parallel yet equal universes.
When Jack woke up, sat up, and looked down onto his own body, it was the strangest fucking moment in every single plane of existence that could ever exist. He prompty fainted.