Forgotten but not gone
You drink it off your mind
You talk about the world
Like it's someplace that you've been
Broadway Is Dark Tonight
Goo-Goo Dolls

July 28th

Puttering. That’s what Daniel Jackson did, a lot of puttering in the absence of his wife. Well, that was, when he wasn’t at O’Malley’s drinking his wife off his mind. He puttered with his work both on the base and at home with the tablet that David said was linking the two of them once more. Daniel even thought he was getting somewhere with the table but then again that could just be his imagination. David didn’t seem to have any information on the tablet he didn’t know how it worked or what exactly it was supposed to do.

Daniel puttered with stupid things around the house like leaky faucets and scuffed up baseboards. Calla’s gardens had gone to shit. The weeds over took them and the vegetables were rotting on the vines. Yesterday he went out and picked the good tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and peas that he could find and brought them into the kitchen. It wasn’t much. Most of it had all gone by the by without anyone batting an eyelash over it. She’d be heartbroken to see her beautiful manicured gardens in such disarray.

“I care, all right, I care.” He muttered as he stood out on the balcony adjoining the room they once shared looking down on those forgotten gardens.

Daniel smiled to himself. David was a pain in the ass but that was mostly because he was turning out to be right. David. Right. What a kick in the head that was. Walking back inside he realized the house was deathly quiet and that was unusual. Colleen was still here she hadn’t left for her new job yet but there was no sound of a radio or television yacking anywhere. Throwing the customary black T-shirt over his head and then slipping into his blue uniform jacket he walked out of the bedroom and looked around in the hallway. Something was different. Something wasn’t right.

He walked past Nicholas’ empty room and then past Colleen’s door which was halfway open. Daniel looked inside, she wasn’t in her bed and it was still unmade. Then he thought he heard something. Yes he did hear something. He made that noise often over the last few weeks; Colleen was throwing up in her bathroom. Concerned and wanting to know if there was something he could do to help her he walked in. She was slumped over the toilet bowl holding her hair back with one hand and clutching her stomach with the other. “Pumpkin, you ok?” Colleen looked up at with tear stained piercing blue eyes, she looked like she was about to pass out. “Cole?” He took another step toward her and she almost cringed. Daniel was close enough now to see the contents of the toilet bowl and it was nothing more than bile. Something in her eyes or on her face he wasn’t sure which but it alarmed him, she just looked so deflated. “Coley, what’s wrong?” Daniel squatted next to her and helped her hold her hair back. “Whatever it is, you can….”

Colleen threw her arms around Daniel’s neck and began to cry. “Oh, Daddy I’m sorry.” Her grip tightened and Daniel held onto his daughter and knew what was coming all there was to do was wait for her to say it. “Please don’t be angry, Daddy, I’m sorry. Please I’m so sorry.”

Daniel kissed the side of her head and stroked her wavy hair while he held her tight. “It’s ok, pumpkin, just tell me.” Her tears were soaking the collar of his shirt. “Everything will be all right, I promise.” The other night while he was screwing Antoinette in the living room, while he had her on the floor, he saw a used condom wrapper under the couch. Calla had no need to use a condom with Hartley, she wasn’t going to get pregnant by him or any other man for that matter and she wasn’t going to contract AIDS or any other STD from him no matter how infested he might be. Nope she was letting that Limey bastard slide his naked cock in and out of her. Grrrr. The condom was the wrong size for his big son. It had to have been Colleen’s. Guess it didn’t work.

“I’m pregnant,” she mumbled against his neck. Daniel felt her shake and then grab tighter. “I’m so sorry.”

There it was out in the open. Daniel had expected that bit of news to come from Nick and Annie when they announced they’d eloped but it hadn’t. Nope his other child was going to hit him with that one. “Sandy?” She nodded her head against his shoulder. “Have you told him yet?” Colleen nodded again. “What…what…” In the back of his mind he could hear some girls’ father saying to him; What are your intentions toward my daughter? At the time he thought was such an incredibly old fashioned thing for the father to say and now here it was on tip of his own lips. “What are you gonna do, pumpkin? Do you know yet? Whatever it is, whatever you decide I’m right here, don’t forget that, ok?” Daniel held her a little tighter and kissed the side of her head again. “I’m right here no matter what.”

Why couldn’t he say that to Mom? “I love you, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that,” Daniel said in a soothing tone. She was so much like her Mother. “You didn’t do this on purpose, did you?” He pushed her away a little so he could look into her puffy eyes.

Colleen shook her head. “We were just……careless.” She wiped some of the tears away from her face but they were quickly replaced by new ones.

Careless that was a good word. It seemed they’d all been extremely careless lately. He and Calla had been fighting and arguing and she left and everything was a mess and Colleen turned to Sandy the same way Nick turned to Annie. The way he turned to Antoinette and Calla turned to Andrew Hartley. God, could it get any more fucked up? “Have you told your Mother? She’s gonna hit the roof, Cole.”

Colleen sniffed back tears and shook her head again. “Mom knows,” she frowned and smiled a little at the same time. “She seemed kinda, I dunno, almost, happy about it.”

“You told her at graduation?”

“She already knew. I didn’t have to tell her. When she e-mails she’s always asking how I’m doing and if I told you yet and if I seen a doctor...”

She already knew. Knowing things in advance was something Calla had a real talent for. He could stand up in any court put his hand on the Bible and swear to that much. “Have you? You have to do that Colleen, if you’re going to keep this baby, you have to see a doctor.”

“I know.”

Sitting there on the bathroom floor the reality of the situation started to sink in. “Are you?” He cleared his throat and started again. “Are you going to keep this baby?”

“Yeah,” she smiled at him through her tears. “Mom said I couldn’t give it away.”

“Why not?” That sounded like a terribly selfish thing for Callestah to say.

“She said the baby might be special, like Nick and me and that a mortal family wouldn’t understand. They might, I dunno, they might…”

“Lock the kid up or something,” now he saw Callas’ line of reasoning on that one. “Yeah she’s probably right.” A baby. A new life. He was going to be a grandfather! Oh yes Life just kept rolling right along and changing by the second. But now he understood what Calla felt. A grandfather. There was a lot of joy in that, unexpected as it was. Calla must have felt the same thing when she realized she was going to be a grandmother. .

“I think I’m going to go to Silver Springs, you know, the school there instead of going east.”

“Ok, so you’ll stay here and we’ll raise the baby.” Daniel agreed softly. He was very happy to hear that Colleen didn’t have any plans on abandoning her education the way her brother had. “Everything’s going to be good, I swear. Don’t worry, pumpkin, I’m not angry.”

Again Colleen wondered why he couldn’t say something like that…or that exact thing…to her Mother. It was so clear that Mom wanted to come home but he was still too angry with her.

“Are you going to marry Sandy?”

“He hasn’t asked,” she sighed, “Mom doesn’t seem to think that’s a good idea.”

Really? How odd. He would have thought that was the first thing Calla would have demanded from her Daughter. “Why not?”

Colleen’s bout of morning sickness seemed to be over for now and unsteadily Daniel helped her to her feet. “I don’t know, maybe she figures there’s no sense in compounding one mistake with another. You know, two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Daniel smiled and put his arm around her. She was far too much like her Mother. The double meaning in her words was very obvious. “Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”

Colleen clutched her stomach and groaned. “No, I…”

“Yes, come on.” He led her out of her bathroom and then went downstairs where he made some toast and tea and waited for her to come down. In a few minutes the two of them were sitting together at the kitchen table. “You were afraid to tell me, weren’t you?” Daniel asked as he watched her take mouse sized bites of the dry toast.

“Mom said I shouldn’t be, she said you’d be cool and you’d understand but yeah I was scared.” She looked over at him gave a little smile and a little sigh. “Thanks Dad.”

Maybe he had kept his cool and maybe he did understand but that was a far cry from approving of the situation. Still that didn’t matter. “I love you, pumpkin.” He reached across the table for his Daughter’s hand. “Don’t worry.”

“You almost seem happy, Daddy, like Mom. Why? I thought you’d both go ballistic on me.” She took another small bite of the toast and followed it down with a sip of tea.

Daniel sat there and thought about it for a minute. “I don’t know if I’m happy about it,” he told her. “But not I’m upset,” he assured her. “I don’t know, holding your hair back up there and listening to you tell me about the baby,” his gaze wandered across the room while his mind wandered through time, “it’s the first in my life I’ve gotten to do that.”

Colleen put the toast down. “Do what?” He didn’t answer her. “Daddy where were you when Mom was pregnant with us? You were here, right? With Mom.”

“No, I wasn’t.” Daniel admitted and smiled sadly as he gaze came back to her. “I didn’t find out about you two until….”

Yeah, ok, so Daniel as David found about the pregnancy all of three or four weeks before she went into labor. But Daniel as Daniel didn’t know about it until after Eros took her away. “Until you were almost born,” he finished.

“Why? Where were you?” Colleen suddenly realized that all these years something very important was missing from their house. She had never seen one single photograph of her Mother when she pregnant with the two of them. As far as she knew there wasn’t one. There certainly wasn’t a picture of her with a big old belly and Dad smiling next to her.

Calla never told them anything about the past, about The Before Time. They didn’t know anything about their Father being chained to a bed or of their uncle Eros who’d came and spirited her away while pretending to be Ares.

Nick pieced things together on his own here and there, mostly about Kanan but he didn’t have anywhere near a full picture. Colleen, well, she never seemed that inquisitive about it. Until now. “Your Mother thought I was dead, she didn’t get the chance to tell me about you two before I left.” There was a stabbing pain in his heart. “She went through her pregnancy alone.” Not wanting to divulge any of Callas’ carefully guarded secrets he stopped there. “I didn’t get to be with her or watch her get bigger with you two or….hold her hair back.” The sad smile became a frown as his brow creased and he raised his fingers to it. There was no way his daughter was going to go through her pregnancy alone the way her mother had. Nosirree, Daniel Jackson was going to stay by her side and he was going to be there every single step of the way no matter what happened. This was his daughter and his very first grandchild and nothing was going to happen to them. There was no way in hell he was going to let them be alone when they needed him.

“Why did she think you were dead?” Colleen’s voice dropped very low. “Did you leave her, Daddy?”

“No,” he said in a strong tone, “I’d never…..”

I’d never leave your Mother, that was what he was going to say and when you got down to the nitty-gritty of it he hadn’t left her she left him. Still, that didn’t seem to make a heck of a lot of difference at the present time, now did it?

“No,” Daniel said again. “Damn Stargate.” That was the explanation he offered her. “I was exploring some mountain caves off-world and there was an Earthquake. The caves, well they, caved in and everyone thought I was dead.”

“Poor Mom,” Colleen intoned and thought about what it would be like if she had to do this all on her own. She didn’t think she could hack it under those circumstances.

“Yeah, poor Calla.” Daniel agreed softly. You don’t know the half of it, pumpkin and hopefully you never will.

“Being without you must have devastated her.”

Daniel grinned as he gauged his daughter. Oh yes too much like her Mother. What she was oh so politely trying to tell him was that Calla was probably devastated right now.

We’re not Connected like that anymore. She doesn’t need me to keep her alive.

Hump, mab-be she dun need yew to keep ‘er body ‘live, Danny. But wot about dat heart ‘a hers?

“Yeah,” Daniel said slowly, “she was very…upset.”

“I bet she was glad when you came back.” Colleen sighed.

“You’re really just pushing my buttons today, aren’t ya, Cole?” His tone and his face lightened a little. “That’s ok I probably got it coming to me. I know you want us to get back together but, pumpkin, I can’t promise that. I can tell you that she and I are very happy that the two of you are here and that you’re both healthy and smart, beautiful of course. We couldn’t have asked for more.”

She shrugged a little and then glanced up at the clock over the kitchen sink. “Oh shit! I’m going to be late.”

Daniel looked over at the clock too, seemed like both of them were going to be late today. “Take it easy at work, ok? I want you to make that doctor’s appointment before the day’s over, you got that?”

“Sure Daddy.” Colleen stood up walked over to him and stood behind him. She put her arms around his shoulders and kissed his cheek. “Thanks again. Thank you so much for not yelling at me.”

Daniel turned his head to look up at her. “I love you, pumpkin. I’m glad I handled this right.”

“Me too.” She kissed the top of his head. She’d been hired last week at the ice cream stand by the lake and the season was kicking into high gear. The job paid well and she figured she’d put the cash aside for a little place of her own. Colleen didn’t want to bother her father with the sounds of a crying baby in the house. “See you later?”

“Sure.” He said and watched her walk out the back door on her way to work. His kids, it seemed like they were all grow up. How and when did that happen? Wasn’t it just yesterday he was pushing them on the swings, bandaging boo-booed knees and tucking them into bed at night? No it wasn’t. But it sure felt like yesterday to him.

End of Chapter Three
Tarnished Heroes: Broadway is Dark Tonight--Daniel's Story
Continue to
Chapter Four