“Oh, Daniel has a theory about that,” Fraiser said. “Ask him, if you’ve got a spare couple hours. It’s something to do with his theory about Asgard principles of cultural preservation.”
Carter smiled and pushed herself to her feet. “Actually,” she said, “if I’m done I’d like to check in with Colonel O’Neill. How is he?”
“He’s fine,” Jack said from the door.
Carter smiled when she saw him. Fraiser scowled.
From his bed Teal’c said, “You do not appear to be ‘fine’, O’Neill.”
“That’s because he isn’t fine,” Fraiser said and pointed to the bed Carter had just vacated. “Colonel, lie down. Now.”
When he didn’t argue, Fraiser raised a knowing eyebrow that clearly said ‘I told you so’. Jack made no comment. He figured his ready compliance with doctor’s orders was admission enough that he may have overestimated his level of recovery.
“So,” he said, while a couple nurses fussed around with pillows behind his head, “what did I miss?”
Perched on the end of his bed, Carter, with occasional help from Teal’c, filled him on everything that Hammond hadn’t already told him: how the deaths of the two archeologists had been explained to the Icelandic authorities, and how a team from Area 51 was on site at the long barrow, trying to find a more permanent fix to the Asgard device so that they could move the whole kit and caboodle back to Nevada. What the Icelandic government was being told, Carter wasn’t sure, but that was Hammond’s bailiwick. All Jack needed to know was that the threat had been neutralized and his team was home safe.
Carter trailed off when she reached the end of her report, glanced over at Teal’c and then back at Jack. “I guess I should let you guys get some rest,” she said, with enough reluctance to make it obvious that she didn’t particularly want to leave.
Which suited Jack, because he didn’t particularly want her to go. “Hey,” he said, “you know what day it is today?”
She looked at him blankly. “Friday?”
“Christmas,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “Oh. Merry Christmas, sir.”
“Yeah.” He glanced around the infirmary. “They could have bought a tree, don’t you think?”
“No tree,” a familiar voice said from the doorway. “But I did bring pizza and ice cream.”
Daniel, smiling behind his glasses and a flop of too-long hair, stood there with his arms full of takeout. “There’s some kind of turkey dinner in the commissary,” he said, “but since we’re actually allowed to leave the base at last I thought I’d, you know, actually leave the base.”
Carter’s face split into a grin. “Daniel,” she said, “I officially love you.”
“Well.” He smiled. “Then it was worth battling I-95 in the snow.”
Jack smiled and, to hide exactly how much he was feeling, said, “Did you bring beer?”
Fraiser lifted her head where she was working on the far side of the infirmary, ready to object.
He held up a hand, forestalling the protest. “Okay, no beer.”
Not that it mattered. What mattered was that SG-1 was home, alive, and more or less in one piece. What mattered was that Daniel and Carter were laughing, that Teal’c was almost smiling, and that Jack, sitting in the infirmary with a fractured skull, nibbling on slightly cold pizza, was having a better Christmas than he could have imagined. The first Christmas he’d had anything to celebrate in over four years.
Daniel lifted his glass – of water – in a toast. “To friends,” he said, and after a moment added, “To family.”
Jack could drink to that.
Stargate SG-1 - Permafrost Page 12
