Christmas Present (G)

Originally posted 12/21/03

Okay, the holiday spirit grabbed me, and this had to come out! What can I say. It's Christmas fic.....

Rating: G
Setting: 9 months or so post-BT
Spoilers: Through BT
Disclaimer: Not my characters, not my universe, no money being made....

Thanks to Loco, shipsister, Shipscat and MadScientist for a little feedback, but this one kinda wrote itself!

Happy Holidays!

Christmas Present

It was Christmas Day. There were lights, and garlands, and Christmas doo-dads scattered all over the living room. The house was full of people, full of family and friends: Suse and Frank, with not-so-little Bobby running around with that damned video camera, Livvy, DK and Laura, John, and the remarkable alien woman, Aeryn Sun.

Jack Crichton loved Christmas, but standing there, on the edges of the action, he knew that this, this was a nightmare, a genuine nightmare that was most quickly ended not by fighting it, but by just enduring it, getting it over with. He sucked in his gut and clenched his jaw, and let the scene wash over him, trying not to think about how it always ended.

Bing Crosby was singing "White Christmas," which always made him smile, because they'd never once spent Christmas anywhere that was cold enough to snow, but it was everyone's favorite Christmas song.

John was laughing at something Susan had said, and she reached out and touched her little brother's arm affectionately.

The babble of the music, and the voices, and the laughter swept over him as he watched, trying to stay detached.

Olivia snuck up behind Bobby, who was poking at the brightly-colored packages under the tree. Christmas turned even the most determinedly grown up teenagers into little kids, he couldn't help thinking.

Stop it. He wasn't supposed to think, just get through it.

Aeryn was talking to Frank, of all people, a slight puzzled frown on her face. Obviously trying to make sense of something. She was trying her darnedest to fit in, he had to give her that.

And DK, well, DK and Laura had snuck off to the doorway with the mistletoe, and were doing some serious nuzzling.

Jack really couldn't bear to look at them....

And just when the cold, dark dread got a grip on his heart despite all his efforts, there was a loud crash and a shattering of glass, and a dark creature practically flew into the room. Jack's eyes flew open as everyone screamed and scattered.

Jack lay in bed, heart pounding, listening to the sounds of the house, trying to tell if he'd actually woken himself from the dream just at the point where everything went seriously south, or if there'd been a real noise, a real crash in the darkness around him that had brought him to consciousness.

He didn't hear anything, so he counted it a small victory that he hadn't had to see the blood and the bodies.... He looked over at the bedside clock and saw that it was just after 3 a.m. Shit. He'd been awake till 2:00, brooding on the events of last Christmas Eve. He wasn't going to be worth anything in the morning.

He got up and headed for the bathroom to wash his face, wishing he hadn't let Olivia and Susan talk him into this, this first Christmas since he'd been given the gift of his son back, and then had him abruptly snatched away again. It would have been easier to hide his head in the sand, ignore the holidays. Somehow, this was harder to deal with than that first Christmas after Leslie passed, or the first Christmas after John had disappeared. Jack snorted, and patted his face with a towel. Maybe he was getting old, or maybe the third loss was one loss too many....

But the girls said you have to get back on the horse, or was it the bicycle, and he'd thought maybe they were right, and so he'd let Olivia put up some garlands, and he'd helped her decorate the tree, and Susan and Frank and young Bob would be coming for dinner in not all that many hours from now. And he'd do his best to smile, though he wasn't sure how he was going to manage it.

Heading back to his bed, he heard something, something that sounded like voices, and he stopped dead.

What the? It seemed to be coming from downstairs.

Even now, he didn't scare easily. Olivia was staying in the guestroom for the holidays, maybe she couldn't sleep either.

He headed quietly down the stairs in his flannel pajamas, thinking he'd check the kitchen.

But when he reached the bottom of the stairs, he realized there was a light on in the family room, where the Christmas tree was, and he diverted his course to that room instead. Even before he reached it, he could tell by the tenor of the sound he was hearing that it was coming from the television set. Livvy must really be having a hard time sleeping if she'd resorted to the boob tube.

He entered the room quietly, intending to commiserate with his daughter about being awake. But the intense look on her face stopped him cold. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, just a foot or two from the television set, staring at it, a remote control clutched in one hand. Her dark hair was mussed, and she'd grabbed a fuzzy bathrobe before coming downstairs, but she looked....cold wasn't the right word, but he thought she might be shivering. His eyes followed her gaze to the television screen, which showed an inexpertly framed close-up of a tiny dark-haired baby, maybe a month or two old. Boy or girl, he had no clue. What the hell was she watching? Old home movies? Was that Bobby?

"Liv?" he said quietly. "You okay?"

Olivia looked up with a start, wiping at her eyes as if she'd been crying. "Hi, Dad," she said, attempting to smile.

He gestured at the screen, which he finally realized must be the VCR recently set on pause. "What do you have there?"

"I heard a noise," she said, "and I came down and found the lights on the tree were turned on. And then I saw this," she said. She took a deep breath and held out a piece of paper in the hand that wasn't holding the remote.

Puzzled, he reached out and took it from her. The paper was off-white and rough-textured, and it had writing on it -- writing in a very familiar hand....

Hey, Dad, the note read. I'm sorry I couldn't be here. Things are complicated, as usual. Maybe next year. But I -- and the "I" was crossed out, and written in was "we" -- we wanted to give you this present. Merry Christmas, Dad. I love you. John.

Stunned, Jack turned it over a couple of times as if he could discern some deeper meaning. His brain really didn't seem to be working. Finally he looked at his daughter. "What was with it?"

Livvy nodded at the television screen with its frozen image. "This videotape. It wasn't wrapped," she said, as if to excuse viewing his present before he did. "And it wasn't labeled. I really thought I should see what it was before I gave it to you." She smiled, embarrassed to be caught protecting the Old Man.

He looked back at the baby on the screen, and gave his heart free rein over his mind. The infant had darker hair than John's, but something in the mouth and in the eyes just screamed, I'm a Crichton! "This is John's child?" he dared to ask, assuming Olivia had viewed the entire tape, and there was a soundtrack.

Olivia nodded and bit her lip. "Here," she said, "let me rewind it for you, it's not very long." Sure enough, the recorder clicked to a stop almost immediately, and Olivia held out the remote to her father.

Jack took it, feeling like he was in a dream. Not the nightmare that had woken him, but still, there was this odd, slow-motion effect when he punched the play button and waited for the image to settle in. There was a fleeting hint of a football game, and then John appeared, smiling into the camera. The camera showed him from the waist up, dressed in a black T-shirt, and from the golden ribs in the background, the analytical part of Jack's brain deduced he was somewhere on Moya, or a someplace built on a similar design.

"Hi, Dad," John said, looking straight at him, and Jack felt an amazing comfort suffuse him. He hadn't stopped worrying about John since the boy had returned, and his worry had only been increased when John had reappeared just long enough to tell him he was closing the wormhole that led to Earth. But on the TV John looked wonderful, healthy -- and he was smiling.

"I, uh, I just wanted to say Hi to you, before we introduce you to someone really special." John looked off camera for a moment, nodded an affirmative to some question that wasn't quite audible on the soundtrack. Aeryn Sun appeared, a brilliant smile on her face. John reached for her and gave her a quick sideways hug.

Better and better. "I knew you had feelings for her, boy! Teach you to lie to you father!" Jack said to the television in triumph. Still sitting on the floor, Olivia snorted, but otherwise made no comment, and he didn't turn away from the set.

Aeryn looked slightly uncomfortable being on camera, looked at John with a hint of pleading in her face, and then cleared her throat and said, "Hello, Jack. I, um...." She trailed off, and then reached out of the frame of the picture and took the infant whose image Olivia had been scrutinizing earlier from delicate gray hands that probably belonged to Chiana, if Jack had to guess. Aeryn settled the babe in her arms, glanced up at John again, and then looked back at the camera. "This is our son, your grandson."

"His name is TJ," John put in, wrapping his arm around Aeryn's shoulder. "That's for Talyn John Crichton."

"They named him after a ship?" Jack said to Livvy, but remembered almost immediately that Talyn had also been her father's name. That little human touch, the sheer normalcy of naming the baby after his grandfather, finally pushed his emotions out of "idle." His eyes filled with tears, and he reached down and grabbed Livvy's shoulder for emotional support.

On the screen, Aeryn rocked the baby from side to side for a moment, looking at the little guy with an expression that was both loving, and fiercely protective. Olivia commented wryly, "Camera shy, isn't she? It's funny, she didn't seem to mind Bobby sticking his camera in her face when she was here."

Jack just shook his head. He understood completely where Aeryn was coming from. He wouldn't have had any idea what to say, either.

And then John took the baby, and Jack's tears were back. To see John holding his child was a true Christmas miracle.

"Here, D," John said, which suggested that the big Luxan Ka D'Argo was the cameraman, "Zoom in on TJ here, okay?" He turned slightly so the baby's face would be more visible, and the picture did zoom in, in jerks, until the baby's face and shoulders filled the screen, much as it had when Jack entered the room.

Jack stood, transfixed, for a minute or two while his beautiful half-alien grandchild blinked, turned his head slightly as if he might be thinking it was time to eat, turned it back again, stuck the tip of his tongue out, and waved one arm far enough to get it into the frame. Aeryn's voice explained that the baby was a month old, and that he appeared to be quite healthy, and that they were very proud of him. Jack almost laughed at that last. Talk about stating the obvious!

Then John told D'Argo to pull the zoom back so that both he and Aeryn were in the frame again, and said, "Dad, I wish we could come to stay for a bit, but the usual dren is happening in our lives, and we can't." He looked down at his infant son, then up again with a smile on his face. "I hope this'll make your Christmas a little brighter, anyway. We're pretty sure we can get it to you without tripping alarms." He paused as if trying to think if there was anything more he wanted to say. "I love you," he said finally. "Don't worry, I'm already telling TJ all about you."

That choked him up again, that the boy remembered their last conversation as clearly as he did....

On the screen, Aeryn put her hand on her baby's head and smoothed his wispy dark hair. Jack noted in satisfaction that she was wearing Leslie's wedding band. Then she looked up at the camera and smiled. "Merry Christmas, Jack," she said, and the screen went dark momentarily, followed by more images of a football game.

He hit the stop button on the tape, and then rewind, and then looked at Olivia, who was watching him intently. He took a deep breath, blinked to distribute any tears around his eyes so they wouldn't fall, and smiled. "Well, now, isn't that a beautiful surprise?" he asked, the warmth of John's gift filling him full of a peace he hadn't known in years.

Olivia nodded. "I don't know how they got it here, but it's....amazing! Isn't he beautiful?"

Jack shook his head. "I can make a lot of guesses how the tape got here, but....I think I'm just going to call it our Christmas miracle." Miracle tape, miracle baby.... His mouth twitched back into a smile.

"Do you want to watch it again?"

Surprisingly, he didn't feel the need just then. He yawned and pushed the eject button on the remote, watching the tape appear through the slot. "No, I don't think so, hon. I'll probably wear it out looking at it tomorrow, but right now....I think I'd better get back to bed. You coming?"

Olivia yawned back at him and got up off the floor. "I suppose I'd better. If we don't have the turkey in the oven in the morning before Susan gets here, she's going to kill us!" The affection in her voice belied the griping about her sister. She flipped off the lights for the tree while her father turned off the TV and the VCR.

The two walked up the stairs in comfortable silence, entering their bedrooms with a quiet, "See you in the morning."

Jack climbed back into bed, pulled up the blankets, and scrunched around, trying to get comfortable. This time, he was actually able to do it. The incredible surprise from John had kicked him out of his Christmas funk. Things would never be the same as they'd been before John got lost through that wormhole, he knew that. He still might never see John again. But right there on tape was proof that his son was alive, and happy....that he had a home, and love, and, by god, a child of his own! He smiled a silly smile in the dark.

There was no point in brooding on the past.

Suddenly, he couldn't wait for the morning, for Christmas Day. He couldn't wait to show Susan and Frank and Bobby the newest member of the Crichton family.

He drifted into sleep, secure that his nightmare had been banished for good.