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The fic I was working on in Margaret River...
Edited to remove lock
Title: Keeping Vigil
Author: Maharet
Category: Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Pairing: Jack/Daniel
Rating: PG-13
Summary: If there was something significant about the early morning of March 23, Jack didn't know about it.
Author's Notes: I'd call this a "Plot, what plot? It's just angst!" kind of fic. Also, (according to feedback) hanky warning. Thanks to Fabrisse, whose line-by-line beta made this an infinitely better piece of writing.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing etc.
Keeping Vigil
By Maharet
Jack floated towards consciousness, waking so slowly he had time to
think "I think I'll wake up now" seconds before he actually did. Even
before he opened his eyes he was reaching out, registering the fading
warmth on the other side of the bed. It made him smile a little. He'd
never even been woken by Daniel getting up, a sure sign of how well
he'd gotten under Jack's defenses. The mental radar Special Ops had
developed in him and had made him aware of all of Sara's tossing and
turning seemed to have been switched off when it came to Daniel.
Still, radar turned off or not, he had a pretty good idea where
Daniel would be. Jack's three am insomnia bouts led him to the lounge
room sofa and the TV, but Daniel... Jack padded down the hallway to
the den and smiled at the light coming from under the door. He pushed
at the door and it swung open under his fingertips. A single lamp
illuminated Daniel curled up in the armchair in the far corner of the
room, feet tucked under him. He was staring down at a magazine in his
lap, but Jack didn't think he was reading, he was too still.
When Daniel read for research one hand would be resting on the book,
the other busy with a pencil, either using it to scribble notes or
tap it against something. When he read for pleasure -- and the two
were never far from each other, whatever way you looked at it --
there would still be completely unconscious, tiny movements as he
stroked the book with a finger or a twitch in his cheek as he smiled
or frowned.
Studying him now, Jack thought Daniel was barely aware of what he was
holding. He certainly jumped when Jack stepped into the room,
murmuring "hey." Daniel nodded briefly and went back to staring
through the magazine. Jack paused and considered his position: asking
Daniel back to bed would earn him a quick smile and an "I'm fine",
along with a polite but firm exclusion. This called for a different
tack.
"Whatcha reading?" he asked.
"Uh..." Daniel seemed to actually look at the page, then studied the
cover. "North American Fisherman."
"You're reading one of my magazines? At oh-three hundred?"
Jack didn't have to fake the smile. "Why?"
"It's two-thirty, Jack."
Jack blinked and glanced at the clock.
"So it is. Is that particularly significant?"
Daniel was back to staring through the page again.
"Not exactly."
Jack had been going to stand behind Daniel's chair, maybe rub his
shoulder, but Daniel was broadcasting "don't touch me" vibes so
strongly that Jack decided to keep his distance. In the six or so
months they'd been together, the two of them had struggled through
the first anniversary of Sha're's death, and Jack had gone with Sara
to the cemetery on what would have been Charlie's birthday. If there
was something significant about the early morning of March 23, Jack
didn't know about it.
He backed up to the sofa which was shrouded in darkness and sat,
mimicking Daniel's curled up position as best he could. Before he
could frame a question, Daniel spoke.
"It doesn't matter, Jack. Go back to bed, I'm sorry if I woke you up."
They were all the right words, in pretty much the right order, but
Daniel hadn't been able to muster up the casual tone needed to get
Jack out the door and they both knew it. A scowl pursed Daniel's lips
as the silence stretched.
"I don't wanna talk about it, okay?"
Jack shrugged and stretched out on the sofa. "Okay."
He'd mentally counted all the way to fifty before Daniel snapped:
"What are you doing?"
"We're not talking about things, apparently."
"Oh, fuck off."
Neither of them had moved, but suddenly Daniel seemed very far away --
the three or four steps between them were like miles as Daniel
simultaneously shrank in on himself and his defensive walls pushed
out.
"Danny --."
"Don't call me that." For a second, Daniel's glare was locked
on him, eyes narrowed with anger and, just for a moment, Jack thought
he saw pain underneath. Jack retreated. He was trying to phrase
another attempt when Daniel said abruptly:
"I couldn't get it open. My hands kept slipping..." In his lap, his
hands were unconsciously twisting around an imaginary jar, Jack
thought.
"Daniel," Jack called, and Daniel jerked slightly but focused on
Jack, who sat part of the way up and opened his arms. "C'mere?"
Daniel hesitated, biting his lip for a moment, the he reached up and
turned off the lamp. Jack automatically closed his eyes, helping his
eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. He could hear Daniel shuffling
his way across the room, then a hand lightly patted his chest,
feeling along his shoulder. There was just enough moonlight coming
through the window to glint off Daniel's glasses as he removed them.
They fumbled for position until Daniel ended up curled between Jack's
raised legs, resting his head on Jack's chest. The silence lengthened
again, but this time it was Daniel organizing his thoughts,
struggling to find the words.
"After...after my folks died, I was put into foster care." Jack
nodded, rubbing his jaw against Daniel's temple. He'd known that,
knew the bare details, but Daniel rarely talked about it.
"Before that, they said they were going to track down Nick, and I'd
go with him. So they put me in temp care, said I'd be with a 'living
relative' in no time. That was the priority, see?" Bitterness crept
into Daniel's voice. "Find someone to shunt us off to so they
wouldn't have to pay for our upkeep."
Jack winced and rubbed Daniel's back.
"It felt like that, anyway. I mean, I'd only met Nick twice,
maybe. And each time he turned up he'd sneer at Dad and argue with
Mom. I didn't want to go anywhere with him, except...."
The pause was a long one. Jack kept up the slow rubbing, trying not
to break the spell.
"It took them ages and ages to find Nick. I could have told them
that, but no-one seemed particularly interested in what I had to say.
It was the early seventies -- there were no satellite phone, no
internet connections, nothing like today. If you were on a remote
dig, like Nick was, sometimes the village you bought your supplies
from didn't even have a telephone. It took them six months to figure
out where he was, get a message to him, and wait for a reply. His
response was something like 'they're dead?' He had no idea. I was on
my fifth temp placement by then, by the time his message came back."
"Five moves?"
Daniel shrugged awkwardly in Jack's arms. "Temporary care is really
short term stuff, designed for kids who have somewhere to go back to.
Kids who're waiting the outcome of their parents' court case or
something. But I...I didn't mind all that much..."
Jack kissed the top of Daniel's head. "Sounds like a special kind of
hell to me."
"All the families were nice to me, Jack. No horror stories or
anything. The worst bit about it was that I'd usually have to change
shrinks because I'd move too far away from the old one. Social
services insisted that I go, otherwise I was being 'unco-operative',
and that was bad. Had to answer the same damn questions over and
over."
"Betcha had fun messing with their heads, though." Jack smiled in
spite of himself.
"They didn't listen." The sudden anguish in Daniel's voice
startled him.
"Daniel?"
"I -- I'd seen it happen, right? I'd seen them die. I could sit there
in a hundred different shrinks' offices and say all calmly, 'my
parents are dead'. But I didn't believe it. I knew what dead was, and
they weren't really dead. They weren't going to leave me
there, it was all some nasty joke." Daniel dragged in a ragged
breath. "Every time I moved temp placements, the next family was
going to be my folks, in secret, coming to take me home. So I didn't
mind all the moving. I didn't even mind going with Nick because he'd
know where they were hiding, right?"
"Oh, Danny..." Jack wrapped his arms tight around Daniel's body,
feeling the slight tremors.
"She called me that."
"Your mom?"
"Well, yeah, but Jan did too." It was the slight hitch in Daniel's
voice that told Jack this was the nub of the matter. Jack made an
encouraging noise and rubbed his chin against Daniel's hair.
"They were my fifth placement, Jan and Mitchell."
"Good people?" Jack asked; the warmth in Daniel's voice had been
unmistakable.
"Oh, yeah, the best. They'd been fostering kids for years and years
and it showed. I was the only kid staying with them at the time,
which helped, but mostly it was the little things that meant heaps.
Some foster parents wanted me to call them 'mom and dad' and got all
offended when I refused. Jan and Mitchell didn't do that, and they
didn't ask me to call them Mr and Mrs Goddard either. When people
asked about me, what I was doing there, they'd say 'This is Daniel,
he's staying with us for a while'. They didn't get twitchy when I
didn't unpack my bags, none of that."
As he spoke, Jack felt the muscles under his hands begin to relax.
For a moment he hoped that Daniel was drifting into sleep. Then
Daniel said:
"I was staying with them when Nick finally got a message back saying
he was coming to New York," and Jack found his own muscles tensing.
"My case worker said I'd be going with him, when he came." A wry note
crept into Daniel's voice. "I think everyone thought that
except for him."
"Gee, the poor bastard," Jack said. Daniel shifted against him, and
Jack was surprised to find his own arm rubbed. "Don't tell me you're
siding with him, Daniel. There was no way he should have left you
with foster parents, no matter how good. You were just a kid."
"Yeah. I was just a kid." Daniel craned his neck, trying to hold
Jack's gaze in the dark. "Do you have any idea how many changes my
parents had to make when they found out I was coming? Nick hadn't had
to take care of anyone else for decades, and suddenly there's this
eight-year-old grandkid when he was expecting to sell a house, take
care of the finances and leave." He rested his head back on Jack's
chest. "I'm not siding with him, but I'm not blaming him, either. And
it wasn't his fault, what happened after."
Jack returned to his previous duty of massaging a tense, broad back.
"That's why we're sitting here? Because of what happened after?"
"Yeah... Everything was fine at the meeting, sorta. Nick was rather
stunned to see me -- he was pretty apologetic; case worker got all
huffy because she couldn't close my file and Jan and Mitchell decided
to take me home. That was when I started to realize...if Nick wasn't
going to take me, then he didn't know where my parents were. If he
didn't know where my parents were, maybe they really were dead."
Daniel's voice wavered for a moment. "I had my first ever nightmare
that night, about the accident. I stopped coping from about then on.
I went sort of nuts."
Jack tightened his grip again for a moment. "It's called a perfectly
normal reaction to trauma, Daniel. You were just in shock for a
while."
"I had no idea about that, at the time. The shrinks never told me a
thing about it. Jan and Mitchell had to explain what a panic attack
was, what flashbacks were, all that sort of stuff. I didn't find out
until years later, but the shrinks wanted to put me in the hospital
on suicide watch."
"Christ," Jack whispered.
"Jan and Mitchell refused, I suppose. They roped a couple of their
friends into...Daniel-watching duty, I guess. They sort of took it in
shifts, made sure I was never alone. I can't even remember their
names; their friends that helped look after me."
"Hey," Jack smiled a little grimly, "you had other things on your
mind."
"Mitchell would coax me out of bed, insist I eat something. I don't
think I was actually at risk of intentionally hurting myself, but I
wasn't all that interested in keeping myself alive. Know what I mean?"
Jack closed his eyes for a moment. "Yeah," he whispered. "I know what
you mean."
There was a moment's silence, then Daniel's arms were sliding around
Jack's waist and squeezing, returning the comfort.
"Go on," Jack said after a while. "What about Jan?"
"She sat by my bed, all night. Nights were the worst. During the day
I could pit myself against Mitchell, focus on something else, but the
nights just seemed endless. She'd hold my hand or rub my back until I
fell asleep, then she'd hold me after the nightmares, calm me down,
change the sheets if I'd made a mess." Embarrassment colored Daniel's
voice, but he ploughed on. "I did that a lot -- wet myself or threw
up or something. It must have been like looking after an eight-year-
old baby."
"You get plenty of adult-aged 'babies' like that," Jack pointed
out. "And from a helluva lot less crap than you went through. Like I
said, normal reaction to trauma."
"Jan tried to tell me that. Said I wasn't the first kid to have
nightmares that she'd met, but..." Daniel choked, swallowing down a
sudden sob. "...but that I was probably the bravest, said she was so
proud of me."
"Yeah," Jack said carefully. "I'd agree with her on that one --."
"Crap," Daniel snarled, so viciously that Jack almost
flinched. "It was all bullshit, all of it."
He started to shudder almost silently in Jack's arms, and Jack,
startled, gave up on the rubbing and just held him while he cried.
Eventually, the shaking eased and Daniel sat up, swiping angrily at
his cheeks. Jack's eyes had adjusted enough to the dimness to be able
to see Daniel's expression twist in self-disgust at Jack's damp chest.
"Sorry," he croaked. "I'm gonna go get cleaned up." He left the room
without looking back. Jack paused until he heard the tap running in
the bathroom then he stood up and followed.
Daniel was splashing his face with water and for a moment they
ignored each other, busying themselves with wiping and drying off.
Jack deliberately didn't meet Daniel's eyes in the mirror and spent
far longer than needed dragging the towel over his chest, until
Daniel's breathing evened out.
"C'mon?" Jack asked, but it was a genuine question -- he had no idea
what to do now, and Daniel's hunched shoulders were
broadcasting "fuck off" vibes again. Jack took his life in his hands
and did what he'd wanted to do when he'd first seen Daniel sitting in
the den -- stepped up behind him and began to massage those rigid
shoulders.
Daniel's body jerked, then he dropped his head forward, giving Jack
access to his neck. Jack focused on his fingers, the sensation of
them pressing into Daniel's muscles, feeling the tension slowly,
slowly ease.
"They-wanted-to-adopt-me."
It was whispered so low and fast, Jack almost thought he'd misheard.
Surely that would have been a good thing? He fumbled for a neutral
way to reply.
"What happened?"
"Social services didn't like it, Nick was --."
"That bastard."
Daniel raised his gaze to Jack's reflection in the mirror.
"He didn't know, Jack. He was back in Central America, on a dig. The
problem was, he was still alive. Social services couldn't legally
sign me off to someone who wasn't my relative when I still had a
relative alive -- ow. Go back in time and take it out on him,
but leave my shoulders out of it, 'kay?"
Jack found he had to consciously relax his hands, and grinned a
rueful apology to Daniel in the mirror, hoping for a return smile.
Daniel's gaze was fixed on something much further away, though.
"They were appealing the decision," he murmured finally. "Trying to
get in contact with Nick again. If they'd been able to get him to
agree that he'd never want custody of me, then we had a really good
chance of success. I unpacked my bags, even."
Jack had to stroke Daniel's shoulders -- rubbing was invitingly close
to making fists, and he felt seriously compelled to hit something.
Daniel had closed his eyes.
"Jan had heart problems. Not major ones, her doctor thought, but she
had medication, and she'd shown me the drill, what to do if something
went wrong and she couldn't get to the medicine cabinet on her own."
"A bottle," Jack realized aloud, and Daniel opened his eyes, raising
his eyebrows in query. "Back in the den, you were doing this --" he
mimed the gesture, twisting his hands around empty space, "-- and I
thought you were trying to open a jar."
"Yeah." Tears glistened in Daniel's eyes until he squeezed his
eyelids closed again. "She had an attack one afternoon. I was...well
enough that I didn't need intensive watching anymore, so it was just
her and me in the house. She was on the floor and I couldn't get the
bottle open --." He gasped and Jack grabbed his hands before he could
start the unconscious twisting again, holding him while the
remembered panic and fear flooded him. "I didn't know what to
do. I called an ambulance, and they took her to hospital."
Eight-year-old hero, Jack thought. But hero stories needed
people to smile and be happy and relieved for the cameras and he'd
already guessed this story didn't have any.
"She was in intensive care for two days. Mitchell...Mitchell said I
was their son, so I could go and sit with her too." Daniel's mouth
twisted slightly. "She brought me through the nights, helped me keep
going, but I couldn't do the same for her. I didn't know how. She
died tomorrow, early hours of the morning. Well, tomorrow twenty-or-
so years ago, you know?"
Jack nodded, sliding his arms around Daniel's middle, offering what
comfort he could. Daniel's eyes were still closed, and Jack studied
his face while he talked.
"Mitchell wasn't in any fit state to look after himself after that,
let alone me, so I started in long term foster care. It wasn't a
raving success; I'd stopped...caring, after that. Didn't seem much
point in getting close to people if they were just going to die on
you."
Daniel's voice caught slightly, but there were no new tears in
evidence. In fact, Daniel's expression was hardening into one Jack
recognized intimately: anger. Jack hesitated, wondering how to open
that particular can of worms, then plunged in with a whispered:
"They loved you, so did your folks. So did Sha're."
Daniel opened his eyes, shrugging, and his mouth pinched into a tiny
scowl. "I know," he said shortly.
"I love you, Daniel."
"Don't --," Daniel began, but Jack kept talking, overruling any
protest.
"They didn't want to leave you, Daniel. It wasn't their fault they
died, Sha're's, Jan's or your folks, and it definitely wasn't yours,
either. Sometimes really shitty things happen to good people. Hardest
bit is realizing that and not letting it rule the rest of your life.
You can't live not letting people get close to you, Daniel. Well, you
can, but you shouldn't, especially not you."
Daniel was staring at Jack's reflection, lips still pursed. Jack
swallowed.
"You were the first person I let in after Charlie died." He managed a
tiny smile. "And you've died on me, several times."
Daniel's lips quirked upwards, just a little. "Yeah, sorry about
that."
Jack nodded judiciously, the smile relaxing and spreading across his
face.
"So you should be."
For a moment Daniel was still, then he turned in Jack's arms,
fiercely returning the embrace and pressing his face into Jack's neck.
"No following my track record. No more damn dying, especially not the
permanent kind."
"Can't promise that," Jack said. "But if we make it, you can push my
wheelchair around the nursing home?"
A slow smile curved against his neck.
"I can live with that."
~finis~
Title: Keeping Vigil
Author: Maharet
Category: Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Pairing: Jack/Daniel
Rating: PG-13
Summary: If there was something significant about the early morning of March 23, Jack didn't know about it.
Author's Notes: I'd call this a "Plot, what plot? It's just angst!" kind of fic. Also, (according to feedback) hanky warning. Thanks to Fabrisse, whose line-by-line beta made this an infinitely better piece of writing.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing etc.
Keeping Vigil
By Maharet
Jack floated towards consciousness, waking so slowly he had time to
think "I think I'll wake up now" seconds before he actually did. Even
before he opened his eyes he was reaching out, registering the fading
warmth on the other side of the bed. It made him smile a little. He'd
never even been woken by Daniel getting up, a sure sign of how well
he'd gotten under Jack's defenses. The mental radar Special Ops had
developed in him and had made him aware of all of Sara's tossing and
turning seemed to have been switched off when it came to Daniel.
Still, radar turned off or not, he had a pretty good idea where
Daniel would be. Jack's three am insomnia bouts led him to the lounge
room sofa and the TV, but Daniel... Jack padded down the hallway to
the den and smiled at the light coming from under the door. He pushed
at the door and it swung open under his fingertips. A single lamp
illuminated Daniel curled up in the armchair in the far corner of the
room, feet tucked under him. He was staring down at a magazine in his
lap, but Jack didn't think he was reading, he was too still.
When Daniel read for research one hand would be resting on the book,
the other busy with a pencil, either using it to scribble notes or
tap it against something. When he read for pleasure -- and the two
were never far from each other, whatever way you looked at it --
there would still be completely unconscious, tiny movements as he
stroked the book with a finger or a twitch in his cheek as he smiled
or frowned.
Studying him now, Jack thought Daniel was barely aware of what he was
holding. He certainly jumped when Jack stepped into the room,
murmuring "hey." Daniel nodded briefly and went back to staring
through the magazine. Jack paused and considered his position: asking
Daniel back to bed would earn him a quick smile and an "I'm fine",
along with a polite but firm exclusion. This called for a different
tack.
"Whatcha reading?" he asked.
"Uh..." Daniel seemed to actually look at the page, then studied the
cover. "North American Fisherman."
"You're reading one of my magazines? At oh-three hundred?"
Jack didn't have to fake the smile. "Why?"
"It's two-thirty, Jack."
Jack blinked and glanced at the clock.
"So it is. Is that particularly significant?"
Daniel was back to staring through the page again.
"Not exactly."
Jack had been going to stand behind Daniel's chair, maybe rub his
shoulder, but Daniel was broadcasting "don't touch me" vibes so
strongly that Jack decided to keep his distance. In the six or so
months they'd been together, the two of them had struggled through
the first anniversary of Sha're's death, and Jack had gone with Sara
to the cemetery on what would have been Charlie's birthday. If there
was something significant about the early morning of March 23, Jack
didn't know about it.
He backed up to the sofa which was shrouded in darkness and sat,
mimicking Daniel's curled up position as best he could. Before he
could frame a question, Daniel spoke.
"It doesn't matter, Jack. Go back to bed, I'm sorry if I woke you up."
They were all the right words, in pretty much the right order, but
Daniel hadn't been able to muster up the casual tone needed to get
Jack out the door and they both knew it. A scowl pursed Daniel's lips
as the silence stretched.
"I don't wanna talk about it, okay?"
Jack shrugged and stretched out on the sofa. "Okay."
He'd mentally counted all the way to fifty before Daniel snapped:
"What are you doing?"
"We're not talking about things, apparently."
"Oh, fuck off."
Neither of them had moved, but suddenly Daniel seemed very far away --
the three or four steps between them were like miles as Daniel
simultaneously shrank in on himself and his defensive walls pushed
out.
"Danny --."
"Don't call me that." For a second, Daniel's glare was locked
on him, eyes narrowed with anger and, just for a moment, Jack thought
he saw pain underneath. Jack retreated. He was trying to phrase
another attempt when Daniel said abruptly:
"I couldn't get it open. My hands kept slipping..." In his lap, his
hands were unconsciously twisting around an imaginary jar, Jack
thought.
"Daniel," Jack called, and Daniel jerked slightly but focused on
Jack, who sat part of the way up and opened his arms. "C'mere?"
Daniel hesitated, biting his lip for a moment, the he reached up and
turned off the lamp. Jack automatically closed his eyes, helping his
eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. He could hear Daniel shuffling
his way across the room, then a hand lightly patted his chest,
feeling along his shoulder. There was just enough moonlight coming
through the window to glint off Daniel's glasses as he removed them.
They fumbled for position until Daniel ended up curled between Jack's
raised legs, resting his head on Jack's chest. The silence lengthened
again, but this time it was Daniel organizing his thoughts,
struggling to find the words.
"After...after my folks died, I was put into foster care." Jack
nodded, rubbing his jaw against Daniel's temple. He'd known that,
knew the bare details, but Daniel rarely talked about it.
"Before that, they said they were going to track down Nick, and I'd
go with him. So they put me in temp care, said I'd be with a 'living
relative' in no time. That was the priority, see?" Bitterness crept
into Daniel's voice. "Find someone to shunt us off to so they
wouldn't have to pay for our upkeep."
Jack winced and rubbed Daniel's back.
"It felt like that, anyway. I mean, I'd only met Nick twice,
maybe. And each time he turned up he'd sneer at Dad and argue with
Mom. I didn't want to go anywhere with him, except...."
The pause was a long one. Jack kept up the slow rubbing, trying not
to break the spell.
"It took them ages and ages to find Nick. I could have told them
that, but no-one seemed particularly interested in what I had to say.
It was the early seventies -- there were no satellite phone, no
internet connections, nothing like today. If you were on a remote
dig, like Nick was, sometimes the village you bought your supplies
from didn't even have a telephone. It took them six months to figure
out where he was, get a message to him, and wait for a reply. His
response was something like 'they're dead?' He had no idea. I was on
my fifth temp placement by then, by the time his message came back."
"Five moves?"
Daniel shrugged awkwardly in Jack's arms. "Temporary care is really
short term stuff, designed for kids who have somewhere to go back to.
Kids who're waiting the outcome of their parents' court case or
something. But I...I didn't mind all that much..."
Jack kissed the top of Daniel's head. "Sounds like a special kind of
hell to me."
"All the families were nice to me, Jack. No horror stories or
anything. The worst bit about it was that I'd usually have to change
shrinks because I'd move too far away from the old one. Social
services insisted that I go, otherwise I was being 'unco-operative',
and that was bad. Had to answer the same damn questions over and
over."
"Betcha had fun messing with their heads, though." Jack smiled in
spite of himself.
"They didn't listen." The sudden anguish in Daniel's voice
startled him.
"Daniel?"
"I -- I'd seen it happen, right? I'd seen them die. I could sit there
in a hundred different shrinks' offices and say all calmly, 'my
parents are dead'. But I didn't believe it. I knew what dead was, and
they weren't really dead. They weren't going to leave me
there, it was all some nasty joke." Daniel dragged in a ragged
breath. "Every time I moved temp placements, the next family was
going to be my folks, in secret, coming to take me home. So I didn't
mind all the moving. I didn't even mind going with Nick because he'd
know where they were hiding, right?"
"Oh, Danny..." Jack wrapped his arms tight around Daniel's body,
feeling the slight tremors.
"She called me that."
"Your mom?"
"Well, yeah, but Jan did too." It was the slight hitch in Daniel's
voice that told Jack this was the nub of the matter. Jack made an
encouraging noise and rubbed his chin against Daniel's hair.
"They were my fifth placement, Jan and Mitchell."
"Good people?" Jack asked; the warmth in Daniel's voice had been
unmistakable.
"Oh, yeah, the best. They'd been fostering kids for years and years
and it showed. I was the only kid staying with them at the time,
which helped, but mostly it was the little things that meant heaps.
Some foster parents wanted me to call them 'mom and dad' and got all
offended when I refused. Jan and Mitchell didn't do that, and they
didn't ask me to call them Mr and Mrs Goddard either. When people
asked about me, what I was doing there, they'd say 'This is Daniel,
he's staying with us for a while'. They didn't get twitchy when I
didn't unpack my bags, none of that."
As he spoke, Jack felt the muscles under his hands begin to relax.
For a moment he hoped that Daniel was drifting into sleep. Then
Daniel said:
"I was staying with them when Nick finally got a message back saying
he was coming to New York," and Jack found his own muscles tensing.
"My case worker said I'd be going with him, when he came." A wry note
crept into Daniel's voice. "I think everyone thought that
except for him."
"Gee, the poor bastard," Jack said. Daniel shifted against him, and
Jack was surprised to find his own arm rubbed. "Don't tell me you're
siding with him, Daniel. There was no way he should have left you
with foster parents, no matter how good. You were just a kid."
"Yeah. I was just a kid." Daniel craned his neck, trying to hold
Jack's gaze in the dark. "Do you have any idea how many changes my
parents had to make when they found out I was coming? Nick hadn't had
to take care of anyone else for decades, and suddenly there's this
eight-year-old grandkid when he was expecting to sell a house, take
care of the finances and leave." He rested his head back on Jack's
chest. "I'm not siding with him, but I'm not blaming him, either. And
it wasn't his fault, what happened after."
Jack returned to his previous duty of massaging a tense, broad back.
"That's why we're sitting here? Because of what happened after?"
"Yeah... Everything was fine at the meeting, sorta. Nick was rather
stunned to see me -- he was pretty apologetic; case worker got all
huffy because she couldn't close my file and Jan and Mitchell decided
to take me home. That was when I started to realize...if Nick wasn't
going to take me, then he didn't know where my parents were. If he
didn't know where my parents were, maybe they really were dead."
Daniel's voice wavered for a moment. "I had my first ever nightmare
that night, about the accident. I stopped coping from about then on.
I went sort of nuts."
Jack tightened his grip again for a moment. "It's called a perfectly
normal reaction to trauma, Daniel. You were just in shock for a
while."
"I had no idea about that, at the time. The shrinks never told me a
thing about it. Jan and Mitchell had to explain what a panic attack
was, what flashbacks were, all that sort of stuff. I didn't find out
until years later, but the shrinks wanted to put me in the hospital
on suicide watch."
"Christ," Jack whispered.
"Jan and Mitchell refused, I suppose. They roped a couple of their
friends into...Daniel-watching duty, I guess. They sort of took it in
shifts, made sure I was never alone. I can't even remember their
names; their friends that helped look after me."
"Hey," Jack smiled a little grimly, "you had other things on your
mind."
"Mitchell would coax me out of bed, insist I eat something. I don't
think I was actually at risk of intentionally hurting myself, but I
wasn't all that interested in keeping myself alive. Know what I mean?"
Jack closed his eyes for a moment. "Yeah," he whispered. "I know what
you mean."
There was a moment's silence, then Daniel's arms were sliding around
Jack's waist and squeezing, returning the comfort.
"Go on," Jack said after a while. "What about Jan?"
"She sat by my bed, all night. Nights were the worst. During the day
I could pit myself against Mitchell, focus on something else, but the
nights just seemed endless. She'd hold my hand or rub my back until I
fell asleep, then she'd hold me after the nightmares, calm me down,
change the sheets if I'd made a mess." Embarrassment colored Daniel's
voice, but he ploughed on. "I did that a lot -- wet myself or threw
up or something. It must have been like looking after an eight-year-
old baby."
"You get plenty of adult-aged 'babies' like that," Jack pointed
out. "And from a helluva lot less crap than you went through. Like I
said, normal reaction to trauma."
"Jan tried to tell me that. Said I wasn't the first kid to have
nightmares that she'd met, but..." Daniel choked, swallowing down a
sudden sob. "...but that I was probably the bravest, said she was so
proud of me."
"Yeah," Jack said carefully. "I'd agree with her on that one --."
"Crap," Daniel snarled, so viciously that Jack almost
flinched. "It was all bullshit, all of it."
He started to shudder almost silently in Jack's arms, and Jack,
startled, gave up on the rubbing and just held him while he cried.
Eventually, the shaking eased and Daniel sat up, swiping angrily at
his cheeks. Jack's eyes had adjusted enough to the dimness to be able
to see Daniel's expression twist in self-disgust at Jack's damp chest.
"Sorry," he croaked. "I'm gonna go get cleaned up." He left the room
without looking back. Jack paused until he heard the tap running in
the bathroom then he stood up and followed.
Daniel was splashing his face with water and for a moment they
ignored each other, busying themselves with wiping and drying off.
Jack deliberately didn't meet Daniel's eyes in the mirror and spent
far longer than needed dragging the towel over his chest, until
Daniel's breathing evened out.
"C'mon?" Jack asked, but it was a genuine question -- he had no idea
what to do now, and Daniel's hunched shoulders were
broadcasting "fuck off" vibes again. Jack took his life in his hands
and did what he'd wanted to do when he'd first seen Daniel sitting in
the den -- stepped up behind him and began to massage those rigid
shoulders.
Daniel's body jerked, then he dropped his head forward, giving Jack
access to his neck. Jack focused on his fingers, the sensation of
them pressing into Daniel's muscles, feeling the tension slowly,
slowly ease.
"They-wanted-to-adopt-me."
It was whispered so low and fast, Jack almost thought he'd misheard.
Surely that would have been a good thing? He fumbled for a neutral
way to reply.
"What happened?"
"Social services didn't like it, Nick was --."
"That bastard."
Daniel raised his gaze to Jack's reflection in the mirror.
"He didn't know, Jack. He was back in Central America, on a dig. The
problem was, he was still alive. Social services couldn't legally
sign me off to someone who wasn't my relative when I still had a
relative alive -- ow. Go back in time and take it out on him,
but leave my shoulders out of it, 'kay?"
Jack found he had to consciously relax his hands, and grinned a
rueful apology to Daniel in the mirror, hoping for a return smile.
Daniel's gaze was fixed on something much further away, though.
"They were appealing the decision," he murmured finally. "Trying to
get in contact with Nick again. If they'd been able to get him to
agree that he'd never want custody of me, then we had a really good
chance of success. I unpacked my bags, even."
Jack had to stroke Daniel's shoulders -- rubbing was invitingly close
to making fists, and he felt seriously compelled to hit something.
Daniel had closed his eyes.
"Jan had heart problems. Not major ones, her doctor thought, but she
had medication, and she'd shown me the drill, what to do if something
went wrong and she couldn't get to the medicine cabinet on her own."
"A bottle," Jack realized aloud, and Daniel opened his eyes, raising
his eyebrows in query. "Back in the den, you were doing this --" he
mimed the gesture, twisting his hands around empty space, "-- and I
thought you were trying to open a jar."
"Yeah." Tears glistened in Daniel's eyes until he squeezed his
eyelids closed again. "She had an attack one afternoon. I was...well
enough that I didn't need intensive watching anymore, so it was just
her and me in the house. She was on the floor and I couldn't get the
bottle open --." He gasped and Jack grabbed his hands before he could
start the unconscious twisting again, holding him while the
remembered panic and fear flooded him. "I didn't know what to
do. I called an ambulance, and they took her to hospital."
Eight-year-old hero, Jack thought. But hero stories needed
people to smile and be happy and relieved for the cameras and he'd
already guessed this story didn't have any.
"She was in intensive care for two days. Mitchell...Mitchell said I
was their son, so I could go and sit with her too." Daniel's mouth
twisted slightly. "She brought me through the nights, helped me keep
going, but I couldn't do the same for her. I didn't know how. She
died tomorrow, early hours of the morning. Well, tomorrow twenty-or-
so years ago, you know?"
Jack nodded, sliding his arms around Daniel's middle, offering what
comfort he could. Daniel's eyes were still closed, and Jack studied
his face while he talked.
"Mitchell wasn't in any fit state to look after himself after that,
let alone me, so I started in long term foster care. It wasn't a
raving success; I'd stopped...caring, after that. Didn't seem much
point in getting close to people if they were just going to die on
you."
Daniel's voice caught slightly, but there were no new tears in
evidence. In fact, Daniel's expression was hardening into one Jack
recognized intimately: anger. Jack hesitated, wondering how to open
that particular can of worms, then plunged in with a whispered:
"They loved you, so did your folks. So did Sha're."
Daniel opened his eyes, shrugging, and his mouth pinched into a tiny
scowl. "I know," he said shortly.
"I love you, Daniel."
"Don't --," Daniel began, but Jack kept talking, overruling any
protest.
"They didn't want to leave you, Daniel. It wasn't their fault they
died, Sha're's, Jan's or your folks, and it definitely wasn't yours,
either. Sometimes really shitty things happen to good people. Hardest
bit is realizing that and not letting it rule the rest of your life.
You can't live not letting people get close to you, Daniel. Well, you
can, but you shouldn't, especially not you."
Daniel was staring at Jack's reflection, lips still pursed. Jack
swallowed.
"You were the first person I let in after Charlie died." He managed a
tiny smile. "And you've died on me, several times."
Daniel's lips quirked upwards, just a little. "Yeah, sorry about
that."
Jack nodded judiciously, the smile relaxing and spreading across his
face.
"So you should be."
For a moment Daniel was still, then he turned in Jack's arms,
fiercely returning the embrace and pressing his face into Jack's neck.
"No following my track record. No more damn dying, especially not the
permanent kind."
"Can't promise that," Jack said. "But if we make it, you can push my
wheelchair around the nursing home?"
A slow smile curved against his neck.
"I can live with that."
~finis~
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::happysigh::
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(Hope you didn't get two versions of this comment; lj's been eating my comments this morning and I forgot to save the text of this one before I tried to post.)
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(Also? Your icons are fabulous)
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(Also glad, about the six hours. :-) )