Revisionist History

by J. M. Griffin

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/asj/jmgriffin/history.php
Summary: Daniel does some thinking about the past

I remember the ceiling falling in, the huge stone slab of the temple roof coming loose of its moorings and plunging to the floor. My parents were in its way. It took my father down first and then my mother. She had an instant to stretch out her hand toward me before the stone pillars crashed down on her.

"No, Daniel, stay away!"

Those were her last words to me, the protective words of a mother warning off her child, and then there was blackness.

I did not go to their funeral. Later, someone told me I slept for four days. When I woke, my parents had been buried beneath cold earth, not stone. I did not cry when they told me.

Pauline Ballard took me to live with her. She was my great-aunt, my grandfather Nick's older half sister. In the weeks after my parent's death, I learned to tolerate her.

"Come to the table, boy, but only if you've washed your hands."

"Tonight I think we will read The Hobbit, boy. Run get the book off the shelf."

"Leave Sebastian alone, boy. Old kitties don't like little boys very well."

Sebastian did not love me, but it became obvious Aunt Pauline did. I had been living with her three months when I finally let the grief seep through and touch me.

"Shh, sonny boy, it's all right to cry," Pauline said, stroking my back as I sobbed in my little bed in the alcove where I slept in her one bedroom apartment. "It's all right to miss them."

She was wrinkled and white-haired, and, while on some mornings her steps were spry, other days she could not get out of bed. She was all I had in the world and I began to love her fiercely.

Aunt Pauline decided to buy me a hermit crab. "A boy needs a pet to look after. Sebby, old coot that he is, won't tolerate a dog. What do you think of hermit crabs?"

We were at the beach and it must have been near my birthday. My aunt took me by the hand and dragged me into one of the seaside shops where we ended up picking out three hermit crabs, not one. When we got home, she found an old aquarium and we set June, July and August up in style. We named the crabs those ridiculous names because Pauline had been a teacher before she retired and I agreed with her those were the best months of the year.

By the time September rolled around, I was happy again. I had Pauline, the hermit crabs, and daily lessons in Greek, Latin, Algebra and the classics. I played in the tiny garden behind the old apartment building, not minding that there were no other children around.

One morning I got up, made myself a piece of toast and slathered it with peanut butter. I remember I was very proud that I had done this without making my usual mess. I put the tea kettle on to boil and I went to see if Aunt Pauline would be getting up or if she wanted her tea served to her in bed.

I opened the door to my great aunt's room slowly, so it wouldn't squeak. Pauline was not in bed, but, instead, sitting in her big armchair by the window. I called her name and went to stand beside her. She appeared to be asleep, still in her flowered dress from the day before. Slowly, I reached out a hand to touch her cheek. Her papery old skin was unbearably cold to my touch. She looked so peaceful, a smile on her lips. She must have sat down to look at the stars out the window as she often did in the evenings, and fallen asleep. I think she slipped away quietly, without a murmur of pain. I hope so, anyway.

~~~

"Daniel. Oh, Daniel. It's the wrong time and place for a nap."

I looked up from where I knelt at the edge of the tidal pool. Jack was standing on one of the huge rocks that walled in the water on two sides, hovering over me like a Snoopyfied vulture. I smiled up at him and let the hermit crab go back into its hidey-hole.

"I'm awake."

"It won't be long before the gate is swallowed by high tide. We'd better go," Jack said as he jumped down from his perch. "Come on. Time to round up the troops."

I straightened and followed him across the sands towards the Stargate of PX3-Y57. Teal'c was already there and the three of us men watched as, moments later, Sam appeared over a dune.

"SG-4 and the team of engineers have finished setting up camp." Sam told us as she joined us by the dial home device. "Tomorrow they'll start moving the gate to higher ground."

Jack nodded, "Right on schedule."

I shuddered. "Let's go then. I wouldn't want to be stuck here. Too damp."

Jack grinned. "Desert-child."

"Yeah, well, what can I say?" I shrugged my shoulders.

"Come on then, Lawrence," Jack teased. "Dial us home."

"Lawrence?" Teal'c asked Sam as I began the dialing sequence.

"Of Arabia," Sam explained, but Teal'c only looked more befuddled.

"Home, James," Jack intoned as we hiked up the surf slick stone steps.

"James?" Teal'c queried.

We were laughing at him as we entered the gate.

~~~

"Whatcha thinking, Danny," Jack came up behind me and slipped his arms around my shoulders, pulling me against him. We were home. At Jack's place, that is. Which is my home away from home, of course.

I shrugged to loosen his arms and turned in his embrace. Face to face with him now, I didn't answer, just leaned in and kissed him. Jack responded eagerly, his tongue insistently pushing mine back into my own mouth as he took over the kiss. He took a step forward, insinuating his long, lean thigh between my legs. His movement pushed me off balance and I grabbed at his shoulders. Easing me down to the floor, he trailed kisses more along my cheek than my mouth. The heat from his hard-on seared me through my sweat pants. I hadn't really been in the mood, but I was getting there fast.

Jack started unbuttoning my shirt. He went after my left nipple, the warm wetness of his mouth on my cool flesh making me gasp.

"Yeah, yeah," he murmured against my chest, "So you say."

The odd melancholy mood I had been in was now totally shattered, and I moaned and jerked my hips closer to the maddening man I loved so much.

"Jack, Jack, fuck me, please. Do it."

He pulled back a little at that, giving me the evil eye. "Ya don't have to ask me twice, darlin," he drawled and reached under the couch, feeling for the tube of lube that had gotten left there a week or so ago.

I urged him along by unzipping his pants and taking his heated cock in my hand; together we coated him with lube. At my insistence, he slid into me without much preparation.

Jack narrowed his eyes at my involuntary hiss of pain. "Danny...."

"Shut up, Jack." I made myself relax and then tense up again and suddenly his eyes were no longer narrowed, but wide with pleasure. He thrust gently into me, making that little noise deep in the back of his throat. God, how I love that sound.

I moved again and started working him in and out, taking control, though he was impaled in me. "Daniel," he said distinctly, and, "Daniel, Daniel, Daniel," in time with my thrusts. And then his hot come jetted into me. I watched as he shuddered in climax, his face gone slack with the intensity of it. He was so damn beautiful; it made my insides tighten. I came then, spurting my seed between us.

We stayed together for a bit, in a cooling sprawl of arms and legs. Then Jack groaned and stood up. Reaching down to take my hand and help hoist me to my feet, he once again gave me the evil eye. "Now, Dannyboy. Now we talk about what's been eating you all afternoon."

~~~

By the time Nick came to get me, I had been in the group home for about six months. I had learned not to cry when the lights went out, learned not to flinch when the bully of the house came after me. I had learned how to fight, though I hated doing it. It was sink or swim, so I got tough very quickly. I pretended I didn't know Algebra, Greek or Latin and that I'd never read The Odyssey or The Hobbit. There was no one around with whom to speak Latin, anyway.

On the day my grandfather came along to scoop me out of there, he apologized for not coming immediately upon Pauline's death, saying he'd been in the wilds of Belize and not known his sister had died until a week ago. I hardly knew whether to believe him.

Nick took me to his house on Long Island. It was bigger than Pauline's apartment, but, just as her place had been, it was marvelously cluttered with the collection of a lifetime of exploring. Nick's collection was larger and from lands farther afield than his sister's, but the two homes were so similar I spent the first month or so expecting to see Aunt Pauline walk into the room. Nick taught me Dutch and German, while being sure to let me know this was a temporary arrangement, and that he was looking for a new home for me. He meant foster home, of course, and before long he'd found the perfect couple, two professors who taught at nearby Hofstra University.

The day Nick signed me into their custody was bright and shiny as a diamond. All my papers, passport and birth certificate had been misplaced, though if anyone had asked I could have told them Pauline kept them in an old valise that sat on her closet floor. Regardless, when the Bakers came to make me their son, Nick made it all up. He was asked how old I was and before I could open my mouth, he'd answered for me. "He's ten. His birthday is July 8th. I watched the woman behind the desk write down, "Daniel Jackson, age 10, D.O.B. July 8, 1965." I made a noise, but Nick snorted dismissively.

"You're almost ten. You'll do fine. You're a smart boy."

I knew damn well I was only eight, but I didn't argue. By then I was used to going along with the flow, watching and listening, and not saying much.

I liked the Bakers, but they weren't Pauline or Nick, and they sure weren't my parents. As best as I can remember, I never had allergy attacks before going to live with them. Pauline had often stated I was as healthy as a horse. But a week after I moved in with Mom and Pop Baker, I started sneezing and couldn't stop.

~~~

I sneezed when we stepped out of the Stargate and onto the grate flooring of the gate room. Everyone stopped in their tracks and looked at me.

"You haven't done that in a long time," Sam commented and Teal'c nodded his head in agreement.

Jack said nothing, but handed me his handkerchief.

I wiped my nose and stuffed it in my pocket. Jack was still pissed at me; there was no doubt about it. He'd orchestrated things to get me to talk, but I'd clammed up on him, which meant he wasn't about to let me off the hook anytime soon. We'd spent all day on a new, but deadly dull, planet and he hadn't said anything beyond, "Teal'c and I'll take the South and East quadrants. Sam, you and Daniel cover the North and West."

"Lover's spat?' Sam had asked me, as we scouted out a grey planet with no obvious life (sentient or not) within five miles of the gate.

I did not dignify her question with a response and so she spent the day trying to bait me into saying something. Between her picking and Jack's silence, no wonder I started sneezing.

We were planet hopping for the next five days. The usual drill, but while I was used to keeping away from Jack when we were working, I didn't like the strained feeling between us. I should have told him what was going on in my head. I simply didn't know where to begin.

On Friday night, I fell asleep at my desk and dreamed I was lying in Jack's arms. I hadn't had to tell him anything, he just knew. No burden of old memories dredged up from an unscheduled visit from my grandfather kept us apart.

I woke up with a jerk to find someone was knocking on my door. Sliding out from behind my desk, I padded to the door. It was Jack, of course.

"You were asleep," he said at the same time I asked, "You couldn't sleep?"

I shrugged my shoulders and he shouldered by me, closing the door firmly behind him.

"Danny," he said, looking at me with that steely gaze of his, "I don't have to know what is going on in that crazy head of yours. If and when you're ready to talk, just let me know, okay?'

"Okay, Jack," I said softly. I found myself listing toward him, and he opened his arms and folded me into his embrace.

Jack nodded at the door to my office with his chin. "Locks, doesn't it?" he said. The question was rhetorical; he knew damn well it locked.

"Uh huh," I told him anyway. He released me long enough to lock it, and then came back to where I stood. He kissed me then, long and deep, and I wondered if he could taste the tears that had gathered at the back of my throat.

We ended up sleeping spooned together on the couch in my office. Only sleeping, we'd long ago resolved not to have sex on the base. Such resolve did not keep me from awaking up with a beast of a morning erection. I groaned and Jack was instantly awake beside me.

"Easy," he said softly in my ear as he turned us from the camera, took me in hand and dealt with my aching cock. I bit my lip to keep from crying out when I climaxed. Jack used the hem of his black tee to dab at the drop of blood that welled up there.

""I love ya, you jerk," he hissed as he clambered off the couch and headed for his own office down the hall.

~~~

Nick came and saw me before he left for Belize again. I'd been with the Bakers for almost two months and I was beginning to find my place in their lives. They were an older couple, with a son who had died in Vietnam. Fostering me was their way of assuaging their loss.

Another kid might have chaffed under their well meaning, but old-fashioned, ways, but I was a book worm, a quiet, mousy kid, and I didn't mind. I didn't give them any trouble, just tagged along on their trips to every museum on the east coast.

Just as I was beginning to feel like I fit in at my new home and school, Nick showed up.

"I am so sorry, boy. I just can't adopt you. There is no place for a kid where I'm going."

I believed he was sorry, but I was glad I wasn't going to be dragged along on his expedition. Mom Baker had insisted I go to the same private school "her Jamie" had attended and it turned out to be just the right kind of place for me. I had never set foot in a school. My mother had been my teacher, and, later, Pauline. I'd have been eaten alive in the public school setting, but St. Andrew's was run by Catholic priests who loved the fact that I knew Latin and Greek. Plus, there were enough other geeky boys that I was able to make a friend or two.

I got my courage up enough to ask whether Nick had retrieved my box of papers and photographs from the valise in Pauline's apartment.

Nick shook his head sadly. "No, my boy. Pauline's home was burglarized shortly after I brought you to live with me. There was no suitcase to be found."

So all record of my life with my parents was gone. All I had was a couple of pictures.

Nick helped the Bakers apply for a delayed certificate of birth. Since I was born at home and not in a hospital and the country I was born in no longer existed, they used the date on the form my grandfather had filled out a few months before. Which is how I got a birth certificate that listed my date of birth as July 8, 1965.

Life with the Bakers didn't turn out so badly. I loved St. Andrews, though I never converted to Catholicism, much to the dismay of the priests who taught there. I learned French from Mom Baker and kept up with my German on visits with my foster dad's mother. I played lacrosse for the school team.

I fell in love with one of my older classmen at school and the daughter of one of Dad Baker's professor friends. I got a scholarship to a top university and became a prot,g,e of Professor Jordan. I got my doctorate a month before my alleged 25th birthday and fell in love with Sarah and Stephen that same year. There was pattern developing in my love life, but I wasn't aware of it at the time.

Through it all, Nick sent me birthday and Christmas cards and newsy letters about his travels. He left out a detail or two, of course.

~~~

"Daniel, you got some mail." Jack waved the envelopes in front of my face. "One has a postmark from Hempstead, New York. Who do you know from there?"

"Give me those," I growled.

Jack laughed and snatched the mail out of my reach.

Jack," I warned as I pushed away from my desk where I'd been paying my bills. Jack just grinned and tensed to flee. "Damn it, Jack." I lunged, but he eluded me and I chased him into the living room where he jumped the couch and waggled his eyebrows at me.

"Getting old, Doctor Jackson? Can't manage a leap over the furniture after your lover?"

So, naturally, I scrambled over the couch as he took off for the bedroom.

I skidded into the bedroom after him and slammed the door behind me. Jack stood on my bed, his bare chest heaving slightly, a trickle of sweat sliding down his neck to gather in the well of his collarbone. I was caught by the way his lean hips moved back and forth as he shifted his feet to keep his balance. He wagged the envelopes once again.

"Can't catch me, " he teased.

I launched myself onto the bed, tackling him below the knees. He bent at the knee and went down on his ass, which allowed me to swarm over him. We were both sputtering and laughing as we wrestled. The three pieces of mail flew from Jack's hand to the floor. We left them there and hungrily latched onto each other.

A series of deep, tonsil licking kisses later, I was pawing at Jack's zipper, my hands none too steady as the passion mounted between us. He was commando, which made it marvelously easy for me to take him into my mouth. No nipping or licking today, we were both too hungry for each other. I began to suck him steadily, alternately speeding up and slowing down. Jack curled over to the side and took my cock in his hands, pulling and stroking. We soon had my bed creaking with our rhythm. The room filled with my muffled moans and his grunts and groans. Jack came first and I swallowed him down, loving the way he clutched at me as he climaxed, loving the little aftershocks that shook him as he finished. When he was done, he rested his head on my thigh and took me down his throat and that was all it took for me to come, too. Damn, it was so good.

Afterward, Jack stripped a pillowcase off a pillow and cleaned us both up. Next, he reached down and picked up the mail off the floor.

"Your reward for being such a good boy, " he informed me as he handed it to me. I stuck out my tongue at him, quickly opening the letter from New York.

It was from Nick, of course, and it read, "Back in the world for a bit. Wanted you to know I am fine. See you at Christmas, or maybe at your birthday. Signed, Your Loving Grandfather."

~~~

My foster parents died in a car accident a few months before Katherine Langford found me giving a lecture to a bunch of skeptics. It was just as well that the Bakers didn't live to see me lose my research grants and get evicted from my apartment. They never questioned me about my off-the-wall ideas. They had known about Nick's crazy theories, and, after all, I was Nick Ballard's grandson. Yet, they never once threw it in my face that my grandfather checked himself into a psychiatric institution on and off for twenty-odd years.

So there I was without parents, apartment or career, with only one insane relative to my name and my crackpot beliefs concerning the great pyramids of Egypt and aliens. It isn't to hard to see why I accepted Katherine's "travel plans."

The first time I met Colonel Jack O'Neill, I was in awe of him. But spending several days with someone as you struggle to save a world together, well, the awe wears off pretty quickly. And then there was Shau're. Nothing like gaining a wife and a best friend on the most incredible journey of your life. Nothing like falling in love with them both within a matter of days.

~~~

"So your grandfather made his way back. I wonder what he's doing in New York," Jack said, reading over my shoulder.

"He has a house on Long Island. I lived there with him for a while when I was kid."

"So, let's go see him. Find out what's up with him and the crystal skull from PJ7 989."

"Oh, yeah, " I sneered, "like General Hammond is going to authorize that."

"Ya never know unless you ask him. Besides, maybe it will put a stop to all this brooding you've been doing." Jack arranged the bed pillows against the headboard and settled back on them.

"I have not been brooding," I said haughtily. "I've been contemplating."

Jack snorted. "Contemplating, my ass."

I grinned. "That too."

Jack laughed and pulled me up to lie against him. He ran a finger down the side of my cheek, kissed me on the forehead, then shook his head at me. "You've been brooding, Daniel."

"I know. Sorry."

"What did you and Nick fight about four years ago?"

"He hated that I was being made fool of, that I was following after some crazy theory no one would believe.

"Following in his footsteps," Jack commented, obviously remembering what Nick had told the team when they'd met him at the psych institute.

"Yeah," I nodded.

Jack pulled me tighter. "It's one thing to go your own crazy way and be mocked for it. It's another thing entirely to watch someone you love do it."

"I suppose so."

"Nick loves you."

"I know."

"I love you."

"I know that, too."

"I wish you could publish your findings. That you could get credit for being right."

"You give me all the credit I need."

Jack shook his head sharply. "Not always."

I shrugged. "I need a skeptic to keep me on the straight and narrow."

"Always forward, never straight," Jack said softly in my ear, then licked delicately around the outer edge of it. I shivered and he continued to trail his tongue down my neck and along my shirt collar.

"This really has to go," Jack complained as he began tugging my shirt off.

Much, much later, when I got up to make us some dinner, I realized I could no longer think of any reason to brood.