One Perfect Star

By sharilyn

i.

He couldn't have said exactly when or why the compulsion had taken him; it wasn't as if he'd settled himself on his couch in his solitary house one night and decided on the spur of the moment that THIS Christmas would be all about stars. And not just any star, oh no; nothing so mundane and predictable as that. It couldn't be that simple for Jack O'Neill--of course not. For whatever ungodly, ridiculous, nonsensical reason, the idea--dare he call it an 'obsession?'--planted itself in his head on a chill, gloomy night several weeks before Christmas and just would not go away.

Oh, he'd tried to ignore it, that niggling compulsion that grew and grew in the back of his mind; but it was like a festering sore that wouldn't heal and became perversely stronger the harder he tried to deny it. He kept himself as busy as he could during the daytime, so busy in fact that he was almost able to forget Christmas was even coming; while most of those at the SGC grumbled under their breaths at the sudden backlog of offworld missions that kept most teams cycling wearily back and forth through the stargate on an almost continuous basis, Jack was one of the few--hell, maybe the ONLY one--who was downright eager each day to head back offworld one more time, ready to squeeze in just one more mission, use up one more day (or days, if he was lucky) in a flurry of activity...so that when he was finally able to climb wearily into his truck and head for home again, he was usually too tired to think about much of anything.

But even exhaustion provided no long-term solution to his problem; every damned time he made it home in a tired, decidedly acerbic mood, the thought always lurking in the shadowed places of his mind was still right there, waiting. And after he'd made a half-hearted attempt at fixing himself some dinner and tended to the few household chores and personal hygiene tasks that cycled round him in a comfortably monotonous rhythm, Jack always faced the empty hours stretching ahead before dawn with a sense of weary foreboding, knowing that the second he gave in to his body's demands for rest, his ruthlessly treacherous mind would leap into the breach to torment him with images of stars--and not the incandescent, gaseous variety sizzling and flaring with such bright coldness in the vastness of space.

No; the stars that formed relentless images in Jack's head were earthbound, man-made creations, comprised of colors and materials that formed a bewildering backdrop of multi-hued confusion behind Jack's eyelids whenever he gave in each night and finally, resignedly closed his eyes, too tired to struggle any longer against the mesmeric lethargy that washed over him in the silence of his living room. There were stars of all sorts dancing and glittering maniacally inside his head then, their many-pointed bodies glowing and gyrating in giddy disorder amidst the weary hodgepodge of leftover minutiae from the day just past. Gaudy, childishly constructed paper stars that were liberally sprinkled with glitter revolved with lopsided good cheer before his mind's eye night after night, most often joined in their whimsical dance by more sedate stars that were crafted from such diverse elements as cardboard and tinsel, cloth and wood, plaster and ceramic...

There were simple stars, unpainted and unadorned and rounded on the tips; and there were ornate, gleaming, elaborately stylized stars with almost painfully sharp points spinning dangerously just at the edges of his consciousness as he sagged bonelessly against the couch cushions in the darkness, sliding further and further down toward an always restless and reluctant slumber. It frightened him a little, this sudden and irrational fixation on stars; why that one particular celestial symbol, seemingly chosen at random by his own impenetrable mind from among the plethora of traditional Christmas emblems up for grabs? What the hell did it MEAN, this disturbingly intense need he'd suddenly developed to look for or notice star shapes everywhere he went? And then to sit at home alone nights, visualizing stellar configurations of all sizes, hues, and configurations as they sparkled and shone and burned like a thousand raging suns behind the fragile covering of thin skin over his stubbornly sealed eyes.

Daniel would probably have some peculiar, esoteric explanation on hand to help explain his best friend's spontaneous descent into obsessive-compulsive WEIRDNESS, Jack found himself thinking more than once over the days leading up to Christmas. Too bad I can't just pick up the phone and call the Ascended Beings Hotline and ask him about it, he snorted darkly to himself one rainy evening as he sat nursing a stone-cold cup of coffee in which the tiny bodies of imaginary, phantom stars shimmered and scintillated madly, as though trying to send Jack an urgent message. Go away; leave me alone, he thought grimly to the elusive pinpricks of light coruscating like an oily rainbow atop the dull black surface of the bitter coffee in his mug. I'm not crazy...no, not crazy. I'm just...resigned. Tired and achy and resigned to enduring another holiday season staring out from behind a darkened soul while all the other souls around twinkle and glow and radiate the warmth and mellow bonhomie of the true believer.

Again with the star symbolism, he thought dourly; there was just no escaping it. The damned things had taken over both his conscious and subconscious mind, appearing in odd and often inconvenient moments during his waking hours and making unheralded and chaotic entrances into his dreams at night. His fevered brain began to see allusions to celestial bodies in almost everything around him, and by mid-December he was well past the point--both mentally and emotionally--of trying to find some logical, reasoned explanation for the bizarre form of insanity that seemed to be taking more and more control of his life.

Jack had a strong intimation that deep, deep down, in the most hidden recesses of his mind and heart, he already knew the answer, already knew the cause of this peculiar disturbance muddying the waters of both his conscious and subconscious awareness; he had the feeling that it all led back to Daniel and to the quiet, terrible sense of desolation that the other man's absence had engendered within the vulnerable spaces inside Jack's soul. Sometimes the despair Jack felt at not having Daniel around any longer was like a living thing--very like a dark, sinuous dragon with only cold ashes for breath, scrabbling its way across his bedroom floor during the most profound stillness of the long winter nights and rearing its sleek head for Jack's discomfited perusal. There were a few nights when sheer exhaustion compelled him to sleep without thoughts of stars, either while awake or in a semi-dream state; but most nights he lay in bed hour after wakeful hour, gritty-eyed and silence-shattered and so unutterably alone.

But he didn't dare allow himself to delve deeper into the mysteries of his own grimly grieving heart during all those solitary nocturnal watches; all of his energy was siphoned instead into forming and sustaining the endless parade of star images that inhabited his psyche now almost as densely as their real-life counterparts packed the night sky high overhead. He'd always loved observing the stars at home in their various constellations; and even now, lost as he was in the midst of his increasingly out-of-control fixation, the bright lights winking inscrutably down at Jack night after silent night whenever his relentless insomnia finally drove him from his bed continued to be a comfort to him rather than a threat.

The stars outside--the REAL ones (the ones that weren't just garish icons revolving in his head or blinking up at him from his plate of scrambled eggs in the morning)--were admittedly cold but not spiteful in their unfathomable distance; and even as fanciful as it sounded, Jack couldn't help but imagine that rays of mute empathy radiated down to him nightly from the remote contingent of blazing gases spread across the vast reaches of space overhead. Sometimes he even imagined that one or two of those faraway stars might have come into brief contact with Daniel, acting as cosmic road signs for the transformed linguist in his first, fledgling journeys through the universe as an ascended being.

Part of him wanted to bless the stars for being there for both Daniel and himself, for functioning--albeit unknowingly--as a tenuous point of contact between the jaded Air Force Colonel and his wandering best friend. Night after night Jack gazed up at the brilliant orbs scattered like glowing jewels on their backdrop of ebony velvet and nursed wistful thoughts of Daniel viewing these same stars from a different perspective far, far away, the eternally curious linguist no doubt 'seeing' the stars in an ascended fashion that no mere human could ever begin to emulate. And maybe Daniel even thought of Jack sometimes, too, as he journeyed in ethereal form past bits of stellar flotsam and jetsam in his never-ending quest to continue absorbing everything that the universe had to offer to one of his intensely curious ilk.

So it was that in one sense the stars in the sky late at night had become to Jack sort of like a cosmic connect-the-dots game or a clever maze, with unstated but explicit instructions directing the hapless watcher standing on the earth so far below to follow the tenuous threads of atmosphere-distorted starlight to the prize at the end of the trail--to Daniel, the last and by far the brightest beacon in the infinite blackness of space. And with that admittedly fanciful but nonetheless comforting image in his mind, Jack always felt closest to Daniel now whenever he could see the stars spread out above him in all their distant, serene glory.

But there was another, less comforting aspect to the twinkling display taking place nightly in the upper reaches of the stratosphere; just about as often as the stars consoled Jack, they also threatened him with their aura of diffident duplicity, showing one face to the fragile earth while hinting underneath at the knowledge of some dark, troubling secret loaded with the potential to upset the tentative balance of the whole damned universe. Appearances can be deceiving, Jack would ruminate morosely as he stood on his deck in the coldest part of the night, unmindful of the chill numbing his bare feet and seeping upward from toes to legs to belly until it finally lodged, immovable and icy, in the center of his chest.

Even in his ascended form, Daniel wasn't free from danger; his knowledge and his ties--however tenuous--to the Harcesis child made him an irresistible target to more than one evil Goa'uld system lord. (Is there any OTHER kind? Jack always asked himself with a silent snort each time visions of all the snakeheads he'd known crowded into his head, with a surrealistically comic word balloon proclaiming: 'EVIL' poised above their heads.) And even knowing that he himself was no super hero and had no especial advantages or fighting tactics to use against the Goa'uld, it still troubled Jack greatly to think of Daniel being discovered and set upon by Osiris or Anubis without his favorite crusty c.o. there to back him up...and then bitch him out for sticking his ascended nose into places it had no business going.

God, I miss the geeky bastard, Jack reflected as he shivered barefoot beneath the stars; not that he wanted to admit it, of course, even in the silent privacy of his own head. But there it was. He missed Daniel, missed him with a relentless, aching intensity that made the simplest mechanics of carrying on in a normal, everyday fashion extremely difficult. And if he was really honest with himself, he'd have to admit that Daniel Jackson had left true geekdom behind long ago and had become something so much more solid, something so much...harder.

But not harder in a bad sense, a voice in Jack's head always hastened to qualify that assessment; not harder in a coldly uncaring or jaded way, as had happened to so many unlucky bastards once they were confronted with anything the least bit traumatic during the course of their military service. And the bitch of it all was that Daniel wasn't even military, neither in a technical nor an emotional sense; Daniel was still a civilian at heart, a linguist and enthusiastic student of human cultures and behavior. He just happened to be a scholar who had learned, over the course of many difficult and dangerous missions offworld, to efficiently fire a loaded weapon and to defend himself by any means necessary whenever and wherever the situation called for it. He had toughened up during his years as a member of SG-1, and Jack supposed that on at least a superficial level, the things Daniel had seen and suffered had to have darkened the younger man's psyche and outlook on life. But Daniel was also possessed of an amazingly generous and resilient spirit, and Jack was convinced that it would take a hellava lot more than the petty politics and torture tactics of some sneering snakehead to cause any lasting or permanent damage to his intensely inquisitive and empathetic friend.

I hope you're doing okay out there, wherever you are now...That had become Jack's evening salutation to Daniel's journeying spirit, the words sent skyward on nebulous trails of cold-condensed breath and starshine to waft their somewhat wistful way into the heavens and beyond. And oh, yeah, I'm just fine and dandy, myself, thanks for asking...Yeah, sure--fine and dandy, my ass, a sardonic voice often snorted in the empty spaces between Jack's telepathic messages for Daniel and the coldly burning ache in the center of his chest. I'm so fucking fine and dandy that I'm standing out here on my deck in freezing weather at 2 a.m., barefoot and bare-chested and talking to my absent best friend, who is not only NOT anywhere in the immediate vicinity but is very likely not even in the same freaking solar system anymore, for all I know.

And let's not forget the latest addendum to this oh-so-interesting situation, Jack would find himself musing bitterly, ruthlessly tamping down the small frisson of fearful unease that always swept through him when he allowed himself to think too much; let's not forget the stars, all those damned annoying, may I say near-maddening STARS dancing all sorts of semi-hallucinatory jigs in my brain at all hours. What do you make of THAT, eh, Daniel? Why dontcha come back here, just for a brief holiday visit, of course, and explain to me why the hell I can't stop thinking about stars, especially in conjunction with thoughts of YOU?

But Daniel never came back, and he certainly never answered Jack's silent, increasingly desperate queries for assistance and/or moral support; night after night the real stars in the ebony sky continued to glitter enigmatically down on the solitary figure of one scarred, laconic man keeping gritty-eyed vigil over his sleeping kingdom. And in the blessedly sane light of day, Jack always managed to keep to himself the quirky observation that his nocturnal mental parade of stars had now become a twenty-four/seven extravaganza, with pointed, stellate objects wheeling and spinning through his head till their nauseating blur of colors and textures kept a dull headache pounding nonstop just behind his eyes.

Maybe I really am losing it; maybe I've completely lost it already and no one else has caught onto it yet, Jack would muse pensively during odd moments at work. And in as casual and nonchalant a fashion as possible, he would cast covertly assessing glances at the other members of his team in an effort to scan their reactions to him for any warning signs that they might be worried about his behavior of late. And it wasn't just his team that he looked to for reassurance about his mental state; as stars multiplied exponentially in the increasingly crowded confines of his cranium, anyone he came into contact with during the course of his day became the unknowing reflective surface in which Jack O'Neill indirectly gazed back at himself in a furtive search for glaring signs of incipient, irreversible insanity. After several days of secretive surveillance, Jack came to the conclusion that either he was very, very good at masking the symptoms of a complete nervous breakdown in progress, or else he really WASN'T crazy after all and this whole star business was about something else entirely. The only question was: what? What did it all mean, and how could he make it STOP, for God's sake?

Blue; it has to be blue. The thought popped into his head one night as he lay in bed, arms folded behind his head as he gazed blankly up at the darkened blur of the ceiling above him. The star has to be blue; and when I find it--when I find the RIGHT star--then it will all be okay. He didn't know how or why this peculiar tidbit of 'knowledge' came to him just then, and he sure as hell couldn't see any logic or sanity in the sudden, taut conviction filling his mind and soul concerning the trustworthiness of that knowledge. If I can just find the RIGHT star, he muttered pensively within the uneasy confines of his consciousness, then all these others will go AWAY and I can have some peace and quiet at last. That's all I want--just some peace and quiet, just the boring darkness of no thoughts, no images at all inside my mind as I lie down to sleep...certainly no more frenetically gyrating stars to drive me to distraction night after night. I just want to sleep, God I could sleep for DAYS, if only I knew...

Knew what? If he only knew about Daniel, knew if his friend was truly all right, untethered as he was now to anything so mundane and ordinary as a corporeal body and the basic laws of physics? Could it be so mind-bendingly, senselessly simple as that, this sudden, illogical fixation on stars? Were the stars really nothing more than symbolic representations of Jack's subconscious concerns for Daniel's safety and well-being, dancing with maniacal insistence in his head until he finally bought a clue and figured out WHY they were there and what he could do about it?

It was an intriguing notion, Jack had to admit, maybe even the kind of theory Daniel himself might have come up with; and in some strange way it comforted him, the idea that he and Daniel might actually have seen eye to eye concerning this odd conundrum plaguing Jack so remorselessly day after day. Damn the man, Jack mused with a small half smile of wry admiration; even as a glowy being cruising God knew where in the company of Oma and her ascended coterie, Daniel was still affecting those he'd left behind on earth, and in ways Jack was sure would have baffled and somewhat discomfited the earnest archaeologist. Your influence extends farther than you know, Dannyboy, Jack thought with a twinge of melancholy fondness and exasperation, mixed. Now, if only I could figure out WHY I need a blue star, and what I'm supposed to do with it once I find it...

Three more days passed after Jack's unexpected and annoyingly obscure flash of enlightenment, and in that time the daily cavalcade of stars that had taken up residence in his head continued to make their presence known, though in a more subdued fashion as Jack figured out a way to block the majority of them from his conscious awareness. At times he still found himself unpleasantly startled by a sudden, blinding flash of scintillating light just behind his eyes, flinching almost imperceptibly to avoid having one or both of his corneas pierced by the amazingly realistic phantom spikes of star points pirouetting right in front of his face. At first he had to fight the almost unbearable compulsion to reach up and swat at the imaginary objects filling all the space around him and accompanying his every move; but after awhile they were as unremarked by his conscious awareness as the myriad of dust motes always dancing on stray beams of sunlight in the brisk winter air. He knew they weren't really there, that they were just his mind's way of trying to deal with everything that had happened to Daniel--and by extension, to Jack himself. And while it still wasn't exactly reassuring to have illusory stars clinging to him like pollen to a bee everywhere he went, Jack did find it obscurely comforting to realize that he WAS handling the situation after a fashion by not freaking out completely and begging MacKenzie to issue him his own rubber room and rotating electro-shock therapy regimen.

I just need to find the blue star; once I find it, everything will make perfect sense, Jack repeated the secret mantra over and over to himself inside his head as the days counted down to Christmas Eve. To the others on his team, and to everyone else who interacted regularly with him at the base, he seemed perhaps a bit more restless than usual, his gaze more often distant and abstracted as he moved with his usual, silent agility through the gray-painted corridors of the mountain complex. But he did his job as efficiently as ever, replied to others' holiday greetings and casual comments with his customary sardonic brevity; and for the majority of those he came into contact with, he was just Jack-as-usual.

Sam and Teal'c were the only ones who noted that their commander and friend had become thinner as the holiday season progressed, and that an underlying film of weariness sometimes glazed his quiet brown eyes at odd moments. In lowered voices they spoke to each other of their concerns for his health and well-being, musing over possible causes for the worrisome physical changes they'd begun to notice in their friend. They were always careful to keep their subdued conversations to themselves, not wishing to raise a red flag where it was unwarranted; and after a few whispered consultations in various labs and unoccupied corridors, both team members came to the cautious conclusion that it was just overwork on Jack's part, coupled with the Colonel's quite understandable melancholy at not having Daniel around this Christmas to tease and to provoke into unleashing a rather terse and exasperated lecture on how Jack would be receiving nothing but coal in his stocking if he didn't leave said archaeologist ALONE to get some work done, for God's sake.

He'll be all right once Christmas is over and things get back to normal around here, they assured themselves and each other and decided to keep their deeper concerns silent for the moment, not wishing to borrow trouble unless and until things with Jack neared some sort of crisis level. Jack, despite his outward display of simplicity of character, was in truth possessed of a very complex and multi-layered soul, and Sam and Teal'c both respected and honored the deeper, very private levels of the man they served under and considered a good friend.

Jack was aware on a distracted level that his team mates were growing a bit concerned about him the closer it drew to Christmas; he was both annoyed and oddly touched by the furtive glances of wary solicitude directed his way sometimes during debriefings or in the middle of yet another unremarkable mission, and at those times Jack exerted at least a semblance of effort toward setting his team's fears to rest. He appreciated their concern, but he didn't want or need it; he just needed to be left alone to work this whole star situation out on his own. He was confident that he wasn't so far gone as to pose a danger of any sort to his team's safety while offworld; over and over he told himself that as soon as he sensed himself coming anywhere close to that point, he would voluntarily excuse himself from command and surrender himself over to MacKenzie and the psych brigade for immediate head shrinkage or whatever the hell you wanted to label it.

But for now he was still adept at his job, still able for the most part to block out the sometimes distracting elements of the star symphony always playing inside his head; work was a relief to him, a welcome solace from thinking too much about the scintillating images that danced just along the edges of his peripheral vision in the daytime and reluctantly receded into blessed darkness when he was finally able to sink down into exhausted slumber late, late at night. The stars were the first thing to greet both his vision and his conscious awareness when he awoke in the gray light of dawn, and they were the last thing he saw at the end of another weary day, their iridescent afterglow fading with gentle regret into the welcome void of dreamless oblivion that ultimately came to claim him when his mind was just too exhausted to deal with anything more.

And Daniel, like the stars, was always there, the memory of his limpid blue eyes shining brighter than any of the stellar lights in Jack's head; night after night in the profound solitude of his bedroom, Jack lay quiescent, waiting for the crystal clear image of Daniel's eyes--of his best friend's quietly earnest face--to superimpose itself over the maddening lustre of the stubborn stars that insistently followed him down into oblivion. I'm trying, Daniel, he often found himself murmuring silently as the starshine in and around him merged with the electrifying blue of Daniel's eyes; I'm trying to find the star, I've even gone to the damned mall to those godawful, kitschy shops looking for THE star, for the blue one...but I haven't found it yet. Dammit, I just haven't found it. You've got to help me, buddy; if all of this is for you--BECAUSE of you, if you will--then the least you can do is help me figure out what I need to do next. Help me find the goddamned star before I really do go insane and you come back from the hallowed halls of Ascendedness to find me drooling in a corner. God, Daniel, help me here...

And every night Jack imagined that he could detect his absent friend's own sorrow and frustration at not being able to help, at not being there for Jack when all the stars were spinning and glowing and twinkling so maddeningly on the edge of some great, cosmic epiphany that Jack's earthbound mind was unable to access or comprehend. I'm sorry, Jack, so sorry...but you have to do this on your own. You have to be strong now, you can do this, you'll figure it out...Jack could almost hear the words murmured into his ear in Daniel's voice, breathed like a fragment of some long-forgotten invocation into the exhausted and bewildered corridors of his subconscious mind. And he wanted Daniel to stay and talk to him, wanted Daniel to make the stars go away, if only for a little while. But every morning he awoke to their presence, blinded anew by their relentless brilliance; every morning he lay there as the last dregs of sleep cleared from his brain, his soul silent and resigned in the center of his sleep-tossed bed as he waited for a sign from somewhere--from anywhere--that might point the way to the blue star and to some sense of resolution for the dark grief in his soul.

ii.

He found the star where he least expected to see such a thing (wasn't that always the way?), practically hidden on some unremarkable agrarian planet that the SGC's dial-up computer had lovingly gifted with the quaint appellation of PX-5G9. Or something close to that; after awhile all the numbers and letters just sort of ran together into one big blur in Jack's mind. But the name the natives gave their world was easier to remember--Firindole--sort of like something from Lord of the Rings or some kind of Italian musical composition. All Jack knew was that when he and the rest of SG-1 stepped through the stargate, he was not exactly in the mood for meeting and greeting a new set of backwoods natives; nor was he keen on forcing himself to sit patiently among a group of strangers with a stupid smile plastered stiffly on his face while Sam and Jonas chatted up the local populace. But it beat sitting at home alone, surrounded by the veritable sea of stars that shadowed his every move.

So he forced himself to greet their new friends with an air of calm equanimity while general introductions were performed and the obligatory sizing-up and threat assessment routine was duly enacted on both sides; once everyone was satisfied that neither group meant any harm to the other, the initial barrier of caution between the two peoples fell away for the most part (Jack noted with silent approval that Teal'c retained his customary watchful pose, just as Jack himself made sure to keep a ready hand near his P-90, now casually dangling around his neck.); and SG-1 found itself sharing cups of some richly spicy, apple-tasting drink with their new acquaintances as they all sat in an open village square under brisk fall skies.

"Uh...Carter?" he murmured in a whispered aside after initial pleasantries had been exchanged and SG-1 had reiterated the information that they were merely peaceful travelers from a planet called Earth, here for a bit of cultural exchange. Together Sam and Jonas seemed to have the conversation well in hand, and Jack found himself growing increasingly edgy and bored as he sat under the canopy of brilliant blue heaven overhead, fighting off a sudden attack of drowsiness and tasting the leftover tang of mulled apples on his tongue.

"Sir?" Carter whispered back, her blue gaze quietly amused on his as she correctly read the inner level of fidgety boredom her commander was just barely managing to mask beneath a superficial grimace of feigned interest in the halting communication going on between his 2IC and some white-bearded native named Ornith. For a brief moment Jack gave Carter a look of wounded affront that quickly melted into apologetic humor as he leaned in close to the pale shell of her ear and muttered:

"I...um...I think I'm gonna take a little stroll, see the sights. Maybe buy a few postcards to send to the folks; you know the drill."

"Yes, sir; certainly, Colonel," Sam replied with a small grin, her blue eyes gleaming at him with the gentle affection she always displayed for his little quirks. "I'll just explain to these nice gentlemen that you would like to see a bit more of their lovely village. Will Teal'c be joining you?"

"Nah, not this time; I don't think I'll need him to watch my back, not just for the few minutes it should take me to wander around and stretch my legs a bit. Oh, and I'd prefer no helpful native escorts; I'd appreciate it if you could manage to get that point across without insulting any of these nice people. I just want to...soak up the ambience on my own, so to speak."

"Yes, sir; I'll try to make that clear in the politest possible way," Sam returned wryly; and after several moments of laborious back-and-forthing and some curious frowns from the native contingent, the team's second-in-command nodded at Jack and gave him a subtle thumbs-up. "You're on your own now, sir," she murmured with a small grin, and Jack shot her a grateful look as he rose to his feet.

"Appreciate it, folks," he smiled easily to the seven men eyeing him with various degrees of interest and mild suspicion; and as Teal'c lifted one questioning eyebrow and made as if to accompany the Colonel on his latest adventure, Jack merely shook his head and gestured for the Jaffa warrior to keep an eye on proceedings right here. I'll be fine, he telegraphed with a raised brow of his own, and Teal'c gave a stiff nod that let Jack know he wasn't quite convinced of that but would follow Jack's orders nonetheless.

Geez, you'd think I was DANIEL wandering off, the way those two try to nursemaid me lately, Jack groused to himself as he took long, easy strides away from the strangely empty central square of the village. He could hear a surge of noise and activity around the corner of the main road running through the center of town, and simple curiosity had him heading for the source of all the ruckus, even though a part of him wanted nothing more than to head in the other direction, back toward the quieter warrens and narrow lanes of the village.

As he rounded the end of the main street, his lean body turning toward the steadily increasing noise of voices calling out and music playing and the clackity-clack of shod horse hoofs on stone, Jack found himself walking straight into the Firindole version of open-air market day. The street before him was alive and awash with the bright colors of festively dressed natives and the strong smells of strange foods cooking over open fires, mingling not unpleasantly on the crisp fall air with the aroma of animal dung and the much fainter tang of the occasional unwashed human body. Wares of all sorts were lavishly displayed up and down the busy avenue, with some vendors exhibiting their goods in tastefully constructed stalls while others merely piled their offerings into carts or spread them out in neat rows on the stone paving of the street to entice customers over for a closer look. Children of all ages and sizes ran freely up and down the length of the crowded bazaar, calling laughingly to one another and adroitly dodging customers, animals, and mildly exasperated vendors alike as they snatched bits of food or candy from the latter and tripped merrily along in the enthusiastic search for yet more easy pickings.

Cool, Jack thought to himself, feeling a slow smile of something very like pleasure curve his lips. Even in his admittedly crusty mood, the scene before him was undeniably charming, and he found the simple, good-humored vitality of the natives to be contagious. Maybe I can find some little trinket here for the General for Christmas, Jack found himself musing as he began a leisurely survey of the bewildering plethora of goods and services being offered for sale. Of course, there's the little problem of what I might use for payment...but he was sure something could be worked out. If the intensely curious looks he was receiving right now from the majority of the natives packed into this street was any indication, he was certain he could find at least one vendor who might trade with him just for the novelty of receiving something from a planet none of them had ever heard of before today. Hey, wonder if they like chocolate; I have all those energy bars in my pack, Jack was thinking to himself when he was suddenly waylaid by a very small, very determined native in the form of a golden-haired, cherub-cheeked little girl tugging imperiously at his legs.

"Well, hello, you little darling, you," Jack found himself smiling gently as he dropped to one knee before her, his brown eyes softening and coming alight with simple enjoyment as the energetic tot with her huge, lavender-blue eyes latched onto his arm with pudgy hands and began chattering busily at him, never stopping for breath. Jack listened to the little girl's incomprehensible ramblings with an expression of utmost seriousness and concern on his face, his attention seemingly focused exclusively on this intriguing exchange while the trained soldier within kept wary senses honed on the milling crowds surrounding them, just in case. He sincerely hoped and prayed that none of these good people came up with the erroneous idea that he was some sick sort of child-molesting pervert; but as busy shoppers continued to make a tolerant berth around Jack and the small child, the Colonel relaxed and devoted the majority of his attention back to his charming new acquaintance.

"You're certainly fired up about SOMETHING, aren't you?" Jack smiled at the engaging little girl as she finished her animated spiel and flashed him a wide, gap-toothed grin, pleased with her report. "Sorry, honey, I'm afraid most of that--well, okay, pretty much ALL of it--went right over my head," Jack smiled gently, reaching out a slow, careful hand to lightly chuck her under her chin.

Her eyes mirroring her growing frustration at this tall, silver-haired stranger's inability to understand her, the child took a firm grasp of Jack's hand and began backing away from him, tugging earnestly at Jack to force him to a standing position so that he could accompany her through the bustling throngs of people crowding the avenue.

"Okay, okay, lead the way," Jack chuckled, tamping down his natural suspiciousness as he told himself that surely no one would be so twisted as to use this lovely little child as some sort of lure to get him away from the crowds. Sometimes he grew so sick and tired of always having to play the cynic, the eternal skeptic when it came to looking into the motivations of others, no matter what planet they hailed from. Today he just wanted to have a bit of a respite from the weariness in his soul, just wanted to go with this delightful bundle of energy to see whatever it was that had her so worked up. Maybe she wanted to show him some neat toy she'd found or take him to meet her family, sort of like dragging a stray puppy home to ask, 'Can I keep him?'

Jack smiled to himself at the whimsical notion of this adorable cherub of a girl asking her flabbergasted mother and father if she could keep Jack for a pet; hell, stranger things than that had happened to him on other, less amenable worlds than this one. As the determined child pulled him relentlessly through the busy market place, Jack followed obediently in her wake, shrugging somewhat sheepishly at the few raised eyebrows and wondering frowns that their bizarre trek elicited from others crowding the area. He had no idea what lay in wait for him at the end of this particular journey, but he had to admit that this was a lot more interesting than sitting around drinking fermented apple cider with a bunch of overly serious native men.

"So, okay, where are we off to?" Jack asked of his newly appointed tour guide; but the little girl merely pouted up at him and tugged harder on his fingers, impatient with the gibberish this unusual visitor was spouting at her. Mouthing a contrite 'sorry' at her, Jack mimicked zipping his lips shut, and the little girl giggled brief approval at him before dragging him off to one side of the market place, toward the less populated end of the avenue. Here there were fewer vendors and less foot traffic, and Jack couldn't help but put up his guard a bit as he allowed the child to lead him to a shadowy booth tucked away almost at the very end of the market space.

"What have we here, darling?" Jack murmured as the little girl gave one last, peremptory tug on his hand before darting around behind the tall counter of the narrow stall. Jack could hear her jabbering excitedly to someone unseen in the back of the booth, and he found himself leaning cautiously over the edge of the counter, trying to see who the mysterious owner of this booth might be. But his vision was maddeningly occluded by a sudden backwash of iridescent stars flaring behind his eyes, and as he was blinking rapidly to try to clear his sight, an amorphous figure suddenly materialized almost directly in front of him, causing Jack to huff out a startled, quickly bitten off "Whoa!" as he involuntarily jerked back and away from the pale, masculine figure looming at him over the counter top.

"Er...hello. Jack O'Neill, friendly visitor from the planet Earth," Jack murmured, extending a cautious hand in the other's direction. "Pleased to meet you; is this your daughter?" He gestured lamely at the bouncing bundle of energy bobbing up and down behind the counter, only the top of her head with its blonde riot of curls visible to Jack's eyes. The owner of the booth merely glared suspiciously at Jack, one pale hand moving to pat the child's head in a half-possessive, half-protective manner. The little girl babbled a string of intense words at the recalcitrant adult at her side, and Jack stiffened in disbelief as he suddenly caught a word that sounded heart-wrenchingly familiar.

"Dan'el," the little girl was lisping demandingly as she reached up now to tug the man's hand away from her head; and as the irritated native frowned distractedly down at her, Jack couldn't stop himself from reaching across the counter to tap demandingly on the man's shoulder.

"Daniel? What do you know about Daniel?" he cried in a low, hoarse voice; but even as the other man jerked relexively back from Jack's unwanted touch, something of the harsh desperation in the strange offworlder's voice kept the vendor from calling out for this man to be removed from the vicinity. As Jack's eyes bored darkly into his own, his jaw clenched tight with some deep emotion beyond naming, the native man's stiff outrage settled into a grudging curiosity. Taking a deliberate step back to avoid any further physical contact from Jack, the vendor gestured to himself with one finger pointing to his chest and corrected Jack in a terse voice.

"Danhel," he named himself, his pale gray eyes holding Jack's tortured gaze. "Danhel." When Jack's shoulders slumped in obvious dejection at the announcement, Danhel's cool gaze softened to something approaching concern. The bleak look that had entered the offworlder's dark brown eyes was indeed painful and terrible to behold, and something of the grief hidden in the lean man's heart surfaced briefly to lend added years to the strong lines of the stranger's face. Almost gently Danhel reached out a hand to clasp Jack's shoulder; and when Jack lifted dulled eyes to his, Danhel carefully tightened his grip, as if asking what it was that Jack needed from him now.

"I...I don't know," Jack answered tonelessly, interpreting the other man's silent signal but having nothing useful to offer in return. "I don't know...the little girl, your little girl...she brought me here. She seemed quite insistent that I come with her."

Just then the small figure in question darted from beneath her father's touch into the shadows at the back of the booth; and in the time that it took both Jack and Danhel to squint frowningly after her, she had busied herself rummaging messily in the stock behind the counter and gave a triumphant cry as she came up with the desired prize from the indistinguishable jumble of goods her father had brought to sell.

Chattering animatedly, the little girl dashed back to Danhel's side and held aloft the object she was clutching in both hands; and as her father took it from her and set it on the counter, Jack's breath left him in a stunned whoosh of air. It was a star, a perfectly sculpted gemstone star carved from a chunk of lapis lazuli, as blue and crystalline clear as Daniel Jackson's eyes when he was really enthused about some new artifact he'd just discovered.

"How?" Jack breathed out painfully, fighting the urge to clutch at the sudden pain blossoming in the center of his chest. "Oh, God, how...? Please, I NEED this, I have to have it...I'll buy it from you, whatever you want, I'll pay or trade..." And as the bewildered vendor frowned back at him with increasing concern for the bizarre offworlder's sanity, Jack reached out for the star and enclosed it in his fist, curling his palm around the object's five smoothly rounded spires and stifling a low moan as the something that had been lodged so tight and hard and agonizing in his soul for all these weeks suddenly broke apart in a rush of heat and light that had Jack staggering helplessly on legs turned to rubber.

"Danhel, Danhel!" the small girl cried as her father quickly rounded the narrow entrance to the stall and hurried to set Jack back on his feet, gripping the stranger by both arms and standing directly in front of Jack as the shaken Colonel closed his eyes and panted out harsh breaths through his mouth.

"Sorry, sorry...I'm all right, I was just caught off guard..." Jack muttered uncertainly, but for one brief moment he leaned almost gratefully into the other man's strength as he struggled to bring his treacherous body back under control. He kept the star tightly clenched in his right hand the whole time, dead certain of the one truth shining loud and clear in his shocked soul: he wasn't letting go of it, no matter what. This star was meant for him, it was a sign from Daniel, a perversely humorous Christmas gift, if you will, passed along from Daniel to Danhel in a series of events too quirky to be accidental coincidence. As Danhel scrutinized Jack's pale face with a displeased frown, Jack dredged up a wan smile and pushed back from the other man's supportive hold, his brown eyes moving from Danhel to the smugly grinning face of the little girl, who had clambered atop the counter to better view the interesting spectacle this offworlder was making of himself.

"Who told you, sweetheart? Who told you to give this to me?" Jack asked her softly, stepping carefully around Danhel and moving to stare down into his small daughter's serene face. "Did you see this person?"

"Dan-yel...nee Danhel," the little girl announced prissily, her eyes gleaming as at some delightful joke. When Jack pointed back to her father, one eyebrow lifted, and mimicked her: "Nee Danhel?", his gaze going to the star in his hand, the child nodded sagely and pointed toward the blue edge of sky just visible from the counter. "Dan-yel," she intoned solemnly, and Jack couldn't help the sudden, hot rush of tears that filled his eyes at the little girl's simple affirmation.

"Thank you," he whispered to her as she lifted one wondering finger to trace the salty path his tears made as they ran down his weathered cheeks. "Thank you...God, I don't even know your name." He chuckled rustily, sniffling like an idiot as his fingers rubbed against the warm smoothness of the blue star nestled in his palm. For a moment the child frowned at him in perplexity and then grinned broadly, tapping her own thin chest in pride.

"Kat'ala," she named herself, eyes shining brightly. "Kat."

"Well, Kat, I'm very, very pleased to make your acquaintance," Jack murmured and took a step back so that he could bow formally in her direction. Kat burst into delighted peals of laughter at this ostentatious show of gallantry, and even Danhel was smiling as Jack turned back toward him, though the vendor's face still reflected his complete bewilderment with this whole situation.

"Please, I really do want to buy this star," Jack importuned the other man, almost reluctantly extending the star for the vendor's bemused perusal. He was afraid that if Danhel tried to take it back he would just punch the native man and run for it, that was how badly he wanted the warm, two-inch bit of carved gemstone resting in his hand now as if it had just been waiting for him to come along, as if it had been crafted especially for Jack.

Whoa, shades of Frodo's evil ring, Jack thought dimly with one corner of his mind; but he knew that Daniel had left this star here for him, that if he was to have any hope of exorcising the myriad phantom stars from his every waking hour, he would only be able to do so once he had this star safely in his possession. It made absolutely no rational sense, but Jack didn't care; he knew what he knew, and this star was his property now.

"How much?" Jack pressed the vendor now, gesturing first at the star and then fumbling in his pack to bring out an assortment of nonessential, non-dangerous items that he might use for trade. Danhel eyed the compass and the bandana and the power bars and other assorted oddities that Jack piled up on the counter with an abstracted frown creasing his face, then shrugged helplessly as he pointed at the star and let loose with a long-winded explanation whose main gist seemed to be that he himself had never seen the star before and had no idea how it had gotten into his sales inventory. Through it all Kat merely sat with a demure little smile on her sweet child's face, her gaze traveling surreptitiously from the bandana to the silver wrappers on the power bars. Finally, convinced that Danhel was asking nothing in return for the star, Jack smiled and reached to press both the bandana and the chocolate-covered snack bars into Kat's eager hands.

"Enjoy...and thank you, darling. You don't even know it, but you've just given me a wonderful Christmas present," he whispered to her and moved to shake her father's hand, his brown eyes holding the other man's flabbergasted gaze with a wry warmth that had Danhel grinning back reluctantly despite himself.

"Don't let her eat all that chocolate at once; you'll never get her to bed tonight if you do, my friend," he cautioned Danhel as Kat bit blissfully into one of the energy bars. "Take if from one who knows; when Daniel has too many of those things, he's like some demented chirping squirrel all night, going on and on about the ancient Aztecs or Mayans or whoever the hell it was who used chocolate as part of their religious ceremonies." And as Danhel merely nodded in blatant mystification, Jack let out a snort of laughter and began the trek back to find the rest of SG-1, his heart feeling suddenly, incredibly light as the calm blue star seemed to pulse warmly in his hand.

They're gone, he thought in relieved wonder as he strode past the noisy throngs of shoppers still searching out bargains in the late afternoon sun. I don't see them anymore, all those damned-frigging stars. Thank God they're gone. But as he came in sight of his team still conversing with the greeting committee of Firindole, an almost dangerous gleam entered Jack's eye as he decided that if and when he ever saw his old friend in corporeal form again, Daniel Jackson was going to have some goddamned explaining to do. I could've gone NUTS, with all those stars living in my brain for weeks; what the hell was THAT about, Jackson? he snorted disgustedly to himself. And as he carefully slid the lapis star into his pack out of sight of the others, he had the strange feeling that an explanation might be forthcoming much sooner than he expected.

EPILOGUE

It wasn't too cold out now, Jack reflected, even for 2 am on Christmas Day. As he stood on his deck, fully dressed, with a thermos of coffee in one hand and Daniel's star resting smoothly between the thumb and index finger of his other hand, he breathed in deeply of the brisk air and decided that he just might take Janet up after all on her invitation to spend Christmas Day with Cassie and herself and the usual odds-and-ends assortment of unnattached base personnel who had nowhere else to go on this day of all holidays.

"Too bad you can't be there, too, Daniel," he murmured aloud now around a sip of blessedly hot coffee; and even as the words died away on the crisp night air, he knew. But still he did nothing for a moment, didn't move or blink or adjust his carefully relaxed pose one whit in honor of the presence he sensed coalescing behind him.

"Well, surprise, surprise...I thought I recalled you saying to me, after that whole tiresome mess with Ba'al, that you wouldn't be able to make it back for Christmas this year; glad to see you managed to squeeze in a visit after all," Jack murmured wryly and finally did turn, his eyes widening fractionally despite himself as they took in the wondrous sight of Daniel Jackson standing in a rather chastened posture on his deck.

"Um...hullo, Jack," Daniel murmured quietly, his eyes gleaming like daylight in the friendly darkness. "Merry Christmas. I...uh...see you got the star."

"Oh, yes, I got it; first I had all these OTHER stars that wouldn't go away dancing maniacally in my head for weeks and weeks till I thought I was NUTS...but then I gated to lovely Firindole and found your gift waiting for me there. Kat says hello, by the way."

"She's a cutie, isn't she?" Daniel sighed with a small, charming half smile that went a long, long way to melting the last of the curmudgeonly disfavor in Jack's tone. "Uh, look, Jack, I can explain the whole seeing stars thing, really I can...you see, it was ME, I mean you were somehow picking up on MY thoughts..."

And as Jack merely lifted one mystified, can't-wait-to-hear-this-one eyebrow and calmly poured himself another thermos lid of coffee, Daniel gave a longsuffering sigh and folded stubborn arms over his chest, his nose wrinkling as though he longed to be able to smell the steaming aroma of coffee wafting from Jack's thermos.

"Well, it was like this, Jack; I was...journeying...with Oma, passing through a region of space I'd never been to before, where there were these truly awesome cosmic phenomena, you might say...and we came across this long-abandoned asteroid that was embedded with the most incredible chunks of minerals, in all these really gorgeous colors...and well, anyway, when I went up closer to get a better look, I saw this one perfectly star-shaped bit of topaz-like stone that was the same shade as your eyes when you're out in the sun...so I guess I...I started thinking about you and everyone else here, and I was...I was missing you a bit, I guess. And okay, so it was more like a strong emotion, really, and I'm still learning this whole telepathy thing Oma's been trying to teach me, and I think I inadvertently sent you a sort of telepathic image of my own thoughts, I mean the whole thing with the star-shaped gemstone and missing talking to you and being here at Christmas for all your annoying, hokey jokes and pranks and..."

"You miss me, Daniel," Jack cut in, his voice low and matter-of-fact but underlaid with a tone of such warm, sweet pleasure that Daniel took a longing step toward his friend, as if desperate to enfold the other man in a bone-crushing hug to show Jack just how much he had missed him. But he knew he didn't dare allow himself to transform to anything near a solid state, not right now, not when doing so would risk bringing Oma's temporarily diverted attention back onto him and give the whole game away. "You're not supposed to be here, are you?" Jack continued glibly, taking another sip of coffee as he calmly assessed Daniel's guilty, mutinous expression. "You didn't get...PERMISSION...to come and wish me a Merry Christmas."

"I can do things all on my own, Jack," Daniel insisted without much force, and Jack gave the smallest snort of disbelief before setting the thermos down on the deck and moving with lithe grace to stand a careful but still-tantalizingly close distance from his ascended friend's gently glowing form.

"How long are you gonna do this, Daniel? How long are you going to BE...like this?" Jack murmured without heat or rancor, something very much like pain filtering into his words. "Is this truly the way to fulfill your last, best destiny? Cause if it is, then more power to you, I'll support you all the way. You KNOW that. But if it turns out that it's NOT the be-all and end-all for you...will you come back, Daniel? Will you be ABLE to come back, knowing that even if you do things won't ever be EXACTLY like they were before?"

"Are you asking me if I miss you enough to make the adjustments returning would require, to still BE 'us,' only maybe on a bit different level?" Daniel murmured a rueful reply, and Jack shrugged, then nodded stiffly.

"Yeah, something like that," he agreed, his gaze softening on Daniel's in a brief instant of painfully open emotion. "You know I'll always take you back, Daniel, any way I can get you. You're my friend, dammit, whether you're all glowy and wispy like some damned Christmas ghost or whether you're plain old flesh and blood again and boring the hell out of us droning on and on about some ugly-assed water jug from a thousand years ago."

At Daniel's brief smile, Jack lifted a yearning hand in his friend's direction and then drew it back as Daniel shook his head in aggrieved denial and took an ephemeral half-step back. "I'll...uh...keep your invitation in mind, just in case this whole ascended thing starts to get old," he spoke softly, and for a long, silent moment the two men gazed intently at each other beneath the black velvet sky peeking in at them from the edges of Jack's roof.

"Thanks for the star," Jack sighed after everything that couldn't be spoken aloud was spoken nonetheless, voiced in the infinite spaces between Jack's heartbeats and the pulse of the universe expanding silently all around them. "Sorry I didn't get you anything."

"It's okay; I tend to travel light these days," Daniel retorted with a wry grin; and as the crisp night swept majestically on toward the dawning of one more holy day in human history, Jack and Daniel sat exchanging all the latest gossip concerning doings at the base and just how sucky the latest hockey stats were...and from Jack's perspective, the brilliant wash of stars gleaming in the ebony bowl of heaven had never looked more beautiful.

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