TITLE: The Drunken Colonel Saga 7. What Do We Do When The Spirit Is Willing? AUTHOR: Debi C
FEEDBACK: Onlist or to dcole6@satx.rr.com AUTHOR WEBSITE: "http://www.geocities.com/crashtomcat/debic/debicindex.html" RATING: PG13
PAIRING: Daniel/Sam
CATAGORY: Het, Alternate Universe, Romance, First Time DATE: 20 February 2002
STATUS: Series In Progress, All Stories complete within themselves. SERIES TITLE: The Drunken Colonel Saga. SEASON/SPOILERS: Season 5. Stargate, Children Of The Gods, Secrets, Absolute Power, Maternal Instinct, Forever And A Day, The Serpent' Song and probably many more whose name I can't remember. ARCHIVE: Alpha Gate. . Anyone else please ask. SYNOPSIS: After the date Daniel starts thinking and gets input from an unexpected source. NOTES: This is a continuation of the story begun in `What Do We Do With A Drunken Colonel' and is a work in progress to see what happens. WARNINGS: This takes place as an Alternate Universe. It involves deep emotions and is worth at least one hanky. The series is not finished yet--it makes no promises. I do not know where it will go or who it will talk to along the way. DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/ Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. I do not own the characters and indeed am only playing with them for a little while. I am not making any money from this. No copyright infringement whatso- ever is intended. The story is for entertainment purposes only. At least I hope it's entertaining. The original characters, situations and story are mine. Please check with me first if you want to archive or link to this story.
Daniel navigated his car out of Sam's neighborhood deeply in thought. This was going to affect his whole life. While they certainly hadn't agreed to `do' anything yet he could sense things were about to happen. He needed talk to someone, someone he could trust implicitly. If he could verbalize his thoughts he knew he could get a better `handle` on them. Normally, he would have gone to Jack but this had been Jack's suggestion albeit one that the Colonel had admitted was made under `the influence'. Jack had made an effort to apologize, to take it back. He hadn't meant to put them on the spot, but he had...and Daniel just didn't feel comfortable airing his feelings about this to him.
Daniel knew how hard Jack's son's death had hurt his friend. When he had first met Jack he thought the man was just irrational to accept orders to go through the unknown `thing' identified as the Stargate. Then he had thought he was homicidal when Jack had seemed so determined to blow up the Abydos Stargate and kill thousands of innocent people along with the evil Ra. But after his return to Earth, Daniel understood Jack had been actually been suicidal--unable to deal with Charlie's death by his own pistol. That in a way O'Neill had been seeking `death by military' in the same way a psychopath committed suicide by causing police to shoot him, performing `death by cop'. But finally, the good in Jack had won out, and he'd lied for Daniel and the Abydonians. Lied to Major General West, saying that the Gate was destroyed and everyone was dead. And he'd taken that lie as far as he could retiring again after falsifying his reports. He had only divulged the truth to Major General Hammond when the new Commander of SGC was about to send another, larger bomb through the Gate, to make fact of O'Neill's falsehood.
As he contemplated these things, Daniel subconsciously aimed his car to the one place of comfort and security he that he had found here on Earth. When he looked up at last, he realized that he was in front of Jack's house. But O'Neill wasn't home yet. Daniel knew that his friend and team chief had been planning to work late and eat at the base commissary. Obviously the meeting had lasted for several hours. The big F250 pickup was missing from the drive and no lights were on inside. Daniel had a key to the house but knew the place he wanted wasn't inside. He got out of his sedan and walked around the back of the house to the reinforced ladder stairway. The steps to Jack's `observatory' beckoned him.
When he had returned to Earth from Abydos, Jack had taken him up to the platform and shown him how to find his adopted home by using the powerful telescopes. It had been a little tricky then, but now Daniel could locate the planet's home star without any aid. The tiny red/orange planet wasn't visible with even the most powerful of the instruments, but being here, being even this much closer to Abydos, always made him feel a little closer to the people that he loved. Even if his true love was now sleeping beneath the warm sand of her world. Once, after several bottles of a Greek beer that Jack had found acceptable, O'Neill had promised him that he would take Daniel home to lie next to Sha'uri if and when the time came. Promised to take him home to his `good father' and to the people that loved him for no other reason than that he was theirs.
Carefully Daniel handled the powerful, sensitive telescope and aimed it at Abydos. He could just make out the distant star it orbited. Once he established the tenuous link with his home, Daniel sat back and looked up at it's infinitesimal sparkle against the universe.
The young man settled back against the padded chair that Jack and he had wrestled carefully up the ladder on a sunny summer's day months ago. He leaned his head back against the cushion and closed his eyes, his mind's eye picturing his lovely Sha'uri as she walked towards him while he rested in the shadows of the cartouche room, waiting for her to arrive.
Sha'uri came to stand beside him and gaze warmly down at his tired, dirty face. "Hello, my husband." She had smiled softly on him. "You have worked hard today?"
"Yes, my wife. My day has been long and wearisome." He replied as she bent down next to him and pushed his desert cloak from off his hair and back from his face.
"You have done much," she acknowledged his efforts. "You have learned many things of the old ones?"
"Yes, and I am tired." He confessed, reaching a hand up to touch her face.
From her voluminous robe she pulled a leather flask of water and a soft ragged cloth. She moistened it and stroked the cooling dampness across his brow. "You work too hard my husband. Surely it is not good to think so hard in the great heat of the afternoon."
He smiled up at her and caught her around the waist, pulling her down next to him. She laughed softly, and she continued to stroke his face and neck with the cloth; he allowed his hands to explore her full, voluptuous figure, stroking her shoulders and waist. "Thinking is not work, Sha'uri. Thinking is...enjoyable."
"Is thinking of your work as enjoyable as resting with me?" She teased him.
"Never that my love," he assured her, gazing into her dark eyes..
"But you are not thinking of your work now?" The knowledge in her voice stopped him cold.
"No." He sighed and leaned back onto the wall for support. "I am thinking of other things tonight."
His dark haired love settled beside him, watching his face for his expression. "Do you wish to speak of it?"
Daniel chewed on his lower lip. "I do not think this is a proper thing to speak of with my wife." He admitted to her.
"Are there secrets between us my husband?" Sha'uri put down the cloth and laid her cool hand on his face, gazing at him searchingly.
"There can never be secrets between souls such as ours, my love," he assured her. "You know everything in my heart."
"Then we should speak of the child." She demanded gently, stroking his cheek with her palm.
"The child?" His voice caught.
"Your child, with the sister of your heart." Sha'uri smiled gently at him.
Daniel had a very strange feeling coming over him, a peculiar double vision of seeing himself sitting in the dark, cool, stone room overlapping a view of himself sitting on a deck high up in the night air of Colorado Springs. He struggled to sit up but Sha'uri put her hand on his chest and held him down. "Where am I?" He grasped her hand, panicked. "How are you...?"
"My Dan-yel, we are together. We will always be thus." She soothed him. "Do not worry, no force may separate us."
"But", Daniel was afraid to say it; afraid he would break the spell. "But, I'm on Jack's roof and you're...."
"Be at peace, my husband." She soothed him like she would a child. "You are here, and I am with you, in all ways, with you." She sat back as he ceased to struggle against her gentle touch and looked at him knowingly "You are afraid that the child with Sama'tha will hurt our love."
Daniel lay back and looked up at her in confusion. "How do you know?"
"My Dan-yel, I know all that is in your heart." She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him. "As I have always known." Sha'uri straightened and bowed her head. "As you knew what was in my heart when I bore my child."
He was afraid to breathe. "Shifu. I have seen him." He finally admitted, fearful that at any moment that the spell would break.
"Yes, my husband. I too, was afraid." She continued speaking. "When you came to my father's house and found me and I was great with the child of the demon. I was afraid you would denounce me, I was afraid that you would hate me."
Daniel shook his head. "Never, Sha'uri, you had no choice. You were a prisoner, a slave to...them...you couldn't control what they did to you, that you were raped."
"Other men would not have been so...generous, Dan-yel. Even my father did not understand." She bent her head to hide her eyes from him. "Even my father was ashamed."
He sat up and reached tentatively for her, but then his hands closed on her arms, and he pulled her to him in an embrace. Evidently whatever magic was here, it was enough. "I know. But when you delivered the child into my hands...." He buried his face in her hair. "It was your child...and god help me I couldn't hate it."
He felt her nod on his neck as she leaned against him. "You are a good man, my husband. You always understood. And later, you found each other again, and again you could not hate him." She pulled slightly back so that she could look at him. Sha'uri touched his tears with her hand. "He learned much from you, my Dan-yel. He learned of your love and what it is to love... completely and without hate or fear." The young woman shook her head. "The goddess could not teach him that; my husband, only you could."
Sha'uri placed her hand on his chest and pushed away, separating herself from him. "My Dan-yel, you should have love...love I can no longer be here to give you." She looked at him sadly. "This child will be a good thing...a pure thing that you may have... with no sorrow, no grief, and no sadness. This child will be yours and hers." When he tried to speak Sha'uri laid her hand on his lips. "Take what is freely given...as was my heart."
Jack O'Neill drove up to his house and parked his big pickup in his driveway. He slid out of the cab and walked over to the silver car that was parked in front of his house. Recognizing it, he peered into its windows. The car was locked and there was a pile of books lying in the backseat. Its owner was nowhere to be seen.
O'Neill shook his head as he let himself into the living room. He half expected to see Daniel slumped on the living room couch. When he wasn't there, Jack walked back to Daniel's old room confidant that Jackson would be asleep in his old bed. Again, no cigar. Now curious, the older man checked the other 'guest' bedroom, nothing there. He strode quickly to his own bedroom, confused but ready to find his friend there in the king sized bed for some unknown reason...but again, no Daniel.
Okay, now he was really worried. Where the hell was he? Finally, on nothing but a wild idea, Jack slammed out the back door and took the ladder two steps at a time up to his telescope landing, fully expecting to have to turn around and call the base. But when he got up to the top, he saw the still form of his friend curled up on the hard wood floor of the deck. Jack quickly scrambled over the guardrail and knelt by his missing man.
"Daniel, Danny?" Jack put his hand on his friend's cheek and a streak of fear ran through him. He was cold; a thin veneer of frost covered his face and clothing. "Danny!" Jack gently rolled him over from his side onto his back. "Daniel! Wake up!"
The somnambulant man moaned and tried to move, resulting in only a shudder. "Daniel, are you all right? Say something!" Jack bent down closer to feel if his friend was even breathing. "Are you hurt?"
But Jackson inhaled right on cue and blinked confusedly up at him. "Jack?"
"What the hell are you doing up here? Trying to freeze to death?" O'Neill demanded, frightened by his friend's incoherent condition. "Daniel!"
"Uh, yea...no...I'm okay." The younger man struggled to sit up. Jack pushed his hands under Daniel's arms and lifted him to a sitting position against the chair.
"Talk to me, damn it. What the hell are you doing up here?" O'Neill demanded, running his hands down his friend`s body, checking for injuries.
Daniel shivered again and tried to straighten. "I'm sorry, Jack. I...I came up here to think...and I... must have... fallen asleep."
"Fallen asleep?" Jack demanded. "Daniel do you know what time it is?"
Jackson looked at him blearily. "Uh, no...Is it late?"
"It's three fucking o clock in the morning...and you're frozen stiff." O'Neill stood up and hoisted his friend up onto his feet, supporting him. "Come on, let's go downstairs and you can explain to me why you decided to freeze to death on my roof."
Jack put the steaming cup in front of his friend's face as Daniel sat slumped over on his dining room table. "Here's the hot chocolate, now what's the story."
Daniel grabbed it in his hands and inhaled the steam as it came off the hot liquid. "Geez, I'm cold."
"Ya think?" The older man sat down and put his hand on his friend's arm. "What the hell were you doing up there?"
Daniel took a sip and grimaced at the liquid in the cup. "This isn't coffee." He complained.
Jack glared at him. "No coffee. Hot Chocolate. Don't whine. Why were you on my roof, for god's sake?"
"I needed a place to think, Jack." Finally a sentence. "And...I guess I needed to be close to...home...when I did it." He sighed. "So after I dropped Sam off at her house..."
"You were with Carter?"
"Yea, we needed to talk...so I took her out to dinner." He looked at Jack. "About...you know..."
"Yea, I know..." Somehow, Jack knew he was going to regret this. "Go on."
"Well, we talked. It was nice." Daniel looked into the cup and sighed. "But I needed to talk it out...with someone."
"A certain someone?" Jack asked softly.
Daniel nodded. "Yea. And the only place I really feel close to her is..."
"My roof?"
"Remember how when you first brought me back, you showed me how to find Abydos?" O'Neill nodded slowly in comprehension. "Well, after...that...I always felt comfortable there...like I was closer to her somehow."
"I know Daniel, you told me, but..."
"Look Jack, I'm sorry I went up there without telling you, but..."
O'Neill laid his hand on Daniel's. "Danny, I don't care...you can go up there anytime you need to. You know that, but it's thirty degrees out there tonight. You could have died of exposure if I hadn`t found you. Couldn`t this have waited until tomorrow... uh, today?"
Daniel looked up at him and met his eyes. "Jack, I saw her. I spoke to her."
O'Neill shook his head. "Daniel, look, I of all people understand what you want to happen, but it won't. Not like that." Jack met his friend's gaze. "It's not possible."
"No Jack, It did happen. I saw her. I spoke to her." The blue eyes blinked stubbornly at him.
"Okay, Danny. " He sighed not wanting to argue with his friend right now. "So... what happened?"
"She told me it was all right. She said she understood, like I had about her child... about Shifu."
Jack nodded, because Danny needed him to. "So, you feel better about it?" Jack asked noncommittally.
Daniel nodded. "Sha'uri said the child would be a pure thing that we could have with no sorrow, no grief, and no sadness."
Jack looked at his friend with softness and rubbed his hand up and down on his friend`s arm. "Danny, that's the way all children are."
Daniel smiled slightly at him. "No, that's just the way they should be." He shook his head. "Too many children know fear and sadness. I couldn't ever do that to anyone."
Jack could only look at his friend and try to think of something to say. "Daniel," he paused and tightened his hand on the other man's shoulder. "Daniel, I promise you, no child of yours would ever want for anything, much less those things."
Those blue eyes caught him in their gaze. "That's what my parents thought too, Jack, but it wasn't true."
"Daniel, the same people who care about you would love your kid. Hell, that just wouldn't happen." Jack reached up and ran his hand through Daniel's damp hair. "C'mon, you need to get some dry clothes on and into bed where you can get warmed up." O'Neill got up from the table and headed into his room where he pulled some sweats out of his dresser drawer. On the way back to Daniel, he ducked into the bathroom turned the heater on and started the hot water in the shower. He lay the dry clothing by the sink.
By the time Jack got back to the dining area, Daniel had finished the warm drink. So he hoisted his friend up by the shoulders and propelled him into the steamy shower area. "You gonna be okay by yourself?" He asked as he pulled Daniel's damp, chilled sweater off over his friend's head.
"Yes." Came the peeved sounding reply. "Jack, I can take a shower by myself."
"Okay, ya got fifteen minutes. If you're not out by then, I'll assume you've fallen asleep or passed out and I'm coming in to get you. Okay?"
"Okay, Mom."
O'Neill pulled the door closed behind him and went to turn down Daniel's bed. As he entered "Daniel's" room, Jack realized that he had stripped the bed last washday and hadn't remade it, all the linen was piled down in the laundry room. He shook his head and went back into the hall outside of the main bathroom. His king-sized bed was the only one prepared for the evening, so Daniel would just have to be satisfied with sharing. In ten minutes the door to the bath opened and a warm, dry, tousled Daniel emerged draped in the overly large sweat suit.
"Feel better?"
A shy grin appeared. "Yea, thanks a lot Jack"
"No problem. Come on, bed time Buddy." He grasped his sleepy friend by the shoulders and navigated him into the master bedroom. Aiming the lethargic linguist at the bed, he scored a direct hit on the turned down side. Daniel hit the pillow with closed eyes, snuggled into the soft folds of the cushion and never came up for air. O'Neill shook his head at him fondly and pulled the blanket up under Daniel's ear.
Jack checked his wristwatch and compared it to the alarm clock. He shook his head and went back into the kitchen to use the phone.
Daniel awoke, stretched and watched the ceiling fan that was rotating above him. He found it unusual; he didn't have a ceiling fan. And at last note his ceiling was ivory beige, this one was a pale blue with sparklies in it. He tilted his head slightly to the side and noticed another form in the larger-than-his bed. It was long and relatively flat, and the hair that stuck up past the bedclothes was a grizzled salt-and-sand shade. He was in bed with Jack for some reason, one that escaped him at the moment and by the amount of light coming in through the tall windows with the sheer curtains on them, it was fairly late in the day. Not early enough for him to make it in to work on time, obviously. Of course, the fact that he was in bed with his immediate supervisor sort of took the edge off of the importance of this observation.
As if sensing that he was being watched, Jack rolled over and peered into Daniel's face. "Good Morning."
"Good Morning," Daniel rolled over to face his friend. "Don't take this the wrong way but why am I in your bed?"
"And after last night" Jack put on a mournful face. "You said it meant so much to you."
"Jaaack."
"Daaaniel." Jack tossed the blankets back and got out of bed. "You don`t remember me finding you on my roof last night?"
"Roof?"
"Roof, Daniel. As in `top of my house' with the telescopes." He looked curiously at the younger man. "You went up there to `talk' to Sha'uri...coming back to you now?"
"Ah, yea...it is." Daniel sighed and put his hands over his eyes. "And I fell asleep."
"And you nearly froze to death and took five more years off of my life." Jack grabbed some clothes from his drawers and closet. "I'm gonna take a shower. If you get up start breakfast, or if you want, go back to sleep."
"What day is it?" Daniel was still confused.
"Well, it's Friday morning, but..."
"Oh my god!! My presentation!! What time is it?" He sat straight up in bed and pushed the covers back. "Jack, I had a presentation at 0800...what time is it?" Daniel leaped out of the bed and looked like he was going to run out of the room.
Jack turned back and caught his panicked friend around the waist and held him still. "Daniel, Danny. I called in early this morning. You're taking a comp day off...calm down. Your presentation has been reassigned...relax...I took care of it."
Daniel slumped in his friend's grasp and looked up at Jack's grin. "Comp day?"
"Yea, ya know a compensation day off as in getting back some of the many hours that you spend in your little dark dungeon."
"I can't take a day off. I'm supposed to brief SG 11 on Planet 2P456 about the trade agreement thats..."
"Nyan's doing it." O'Neill slowly loosened his grip, watching Daniel carefully as if the younger man was going to make a break for the door.
"Nyan?" Jackson whispered weakly.
"Nyan." O'Niell repeated firmly.
"But..."
"Nyan." Jack rotated his hips and off balanced Daniel, depositing him back on the bed flat on his back. "He'll do fine."
"But..."
Jack reached down picked up Daniels feet and placed them on the bed, then he pulled the blanket back up over his friend, tucking it under his chin. Daniel glared at him. "Nyan." Jack sat down on the side of the bed. "Daniel, when I finally got you down off the roof and into the bed last night, it was four thirty am. I called the desk Sergeant and told him that we were taking the day off and to give Nyan this message. `Daniel is not feeling well, he's at my place, take care of his briefing this morning, call me if there's a problem'. Daniel, he didn't call. It's eleven fifteen. The briefing is done...good, bad or indifferent...it's done. Don't worry about it. You've only had seven hours of sleep in at least the past day and a half. Get some more."
"But Jack..."
"Go to sleep, Daniel." Jack straightened the covers and ruffled his hair. "Besides, I hid your glasses." O'Neill gathered up his clothes and headed for the shower. When he returned to the room after ten minutes, clean and shampooed, his friend had once again rolled over and buried his face in the pillow, dead to the world. Jack pitched his pajama bottoms into the hamper and went in search of breakfast.
After locating, killing, cooking and eating his eggs and bacon, O'Neill phoned in to the mountain and asked for Carter's office.
After a few rings, her efficient voice answered him. "Major Carter."
"Carter, it's O'Neill. Whatchadoing?"
Her voice took on a worried tinge. "Sir, is everything all right? How`s Daniel?"
"Oh, yea. We're fine. He uh, didn't get much sleep last night and I know he's got a few billion overtime hours on the books, so I made a command decision and called him in sick."
"Yes, Sir. That's what I was told this morning." Her voice sounded relieved. "I knew you were taking today off but he said that he had a briefing earlier today and..."
"It's okay, Carter. It's a long story and one he should tell you, if he wants to." He didn't want to say too much to her about Daniel's adventures of the previous evening just in case Daniel wanted to keep his `experience` private. "But, I figured you'd be worried and I wanted to set you at ease."
"Thank you, Sir. Sir," It was her turn to sound ill at ease. "I'm sorry about last night..."
"Carter, don't. It's okay." Jack started to put the dishes in the sink. "You're both big kids. It's none of my business. I'm not worried about it, Daniel's okay and all's right with the world. Right?"
"If you say so, Sir."
"I do. Just save his cookies until Monday and I`ll be there to collect them for him."
"Okay, Sir. Tell him I'll hide a few more for him."
O'Neill hung up the phone and shook his head. "Respect...I get no respect."
The end
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