Farscape Fic - Memorial Day; updated and re-posted
In honor of the holiday.
Original story, spoilers, and and author's notes here
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Today was Memorial Day; a day set aside to remember all those who took risks and fought in the name of progress. Most peoples’ memories focused on all those soldiers who fought in all those wars; not as many spared much of a thought for the explorers and scientists who made the world what it is today, soldiers of science every bit as important as those serving in our Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. Along with the casualties of both World Wars and Korea and Vietnam, however, Jack Crichton also remembered Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia... Farscape One. And, as with all those earthly wars, sometimes the soldiers came back. Sometimes they didn’t.
Memorial Day was also traditionally seen as the official beginning of the summer season, and people all over the country we’re firing up their barbecue grills and mixing up their summer pasta salads, going to visit family and friends or having family and friends come visit them. It was a celebration of the season, and good ol’ Mother Nature couldn’t have created a more perfect day for it. The sky was a crystal blue with a scattering of fluffy white clouds, and a fresh breeze off the ocean was a welcome relief from the Florida heat that had been plaguing the area for the past two weeks.
Jack stood on the porch of his Cape Canaveral house, hearing the distant laughter of a handful of youngsters down the street, squealing in childish glee as they were reunited with friends and cousins they hadn’t seen since the last family picnic. Someone was grilling across the street - Jack could see the barest haze of smoke drifting over his neighbor’s house from somewhere in the backyard, smell the charcoal on the breeze. He sighed and turned back to his empty house, suddenly feeling very alone.
His family used to be like that; gathering together for a Memorial Day picnic in his back yard, gossiping about all that had happened since last they met. The house would be full of laughing children and adults, summer salads, and fresh lemonade, and every year Leslie would specially pick a fresh bouquet of late tulips and early roses from her garden for this one gathering, setting it on the counter in the kitchen - well out of the way of running children and attention-loving dogs - for the whole family to compliment on.
Jack smiled at the memory of the barely contained hustle and bustle Memorial Day brought when the children were still young. Back in those days, when the world was still innocent, Memorial Day meant a house full of people - aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, sons and daughters, friends, grandparents while they were still alive. It also meant at least two barbecue grills running in the back yard, charring dozens of hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken breasts to BBQ perfection. Jack even had one of those “World’s Greatest Chef” aprons that one of the kids had bought him, something he wore proudly while flipping burgers with one hand and holding a cool lemonade in the other (no beer until the grills were shut down - intoxication and fire never mix very well), laughing as he shared outrageous stories with Cousin Bobby. “No, seriously! The fish was *this big*!”
Between the grill-checks and wife-orders, he would grab a few minutes to toss around the new Frisbee Aunt Beth and bought with John and D.K., or to show Livi how to put together her new glider. He would smile as the boys trained water pistols on Susan and Olivia, and laugh outright as the girls went for the water hose in retaliation when most would simply squeal and go running to their parents to save them. After lunch, he would grab a beer and go hang out with the rest of the guys (and a few girls), arguing over sports teams and their best guess for team MVP. Evening brought the whole family together in with the traditional family baseball game, parents vs. kids, with the grandparents cheering everyone on from the sidelines. It had always been the highlight of the celebration, a tradition Jack hoped would continue as his children got older and he became one of those grandparents. And, at the end of a long, fun-filled day, after everyone else had left to go back home or to a local hotel, Jack and the kids who were still awake would help Leslie clean up in a kitchen that smelled like tulips and roses.
Jack’s smile faded. Today, the house was empty of the laughing children and joking adults, and there were no flowers sitting on the kitchen counter this year. Leslie and D.K. were gone, the girls had business elsewhere, and John... only the universe knew where John was these days. Extended family had stopped coming after Leslie died; at first it was just because it was too much effort for him to set up by himself. But, as more years past, the harder it got for him to find the enthusiasm to restart the picnic. After awhile, the Memorial Day tradition moved to someone else’s back yard, and Jack was left to his own solitude, remembering all those fallen heroes by himself.
Now, Memorial Day was just another Monday, the end of a three-day weekend Jack often spent alone. Usually the solitude didn’t bother him much - he had enough to keep him occupied at the base most nights and weekends, keeping the loneliness at a distance by pushing two days worth of work into 24 hours, sleeping when he got tired, but getting right back to work after a shower and a few cups of coffee. Bog yourself down with enough equations and experiments and you can forget, if only for a little while, that you’re a lonely old man who has fewer years left ahead than he has left behind.
The doorbell rang, knocking Jack from delving any deeper into his self-pity. He had to remember that, despite everything that the past ten years had dragged him through, there were plenty of good times along the way. And, of all those years he had left behind, most had been quite happy. He may have gotten the short end of the stick on occasion, but if he thought about it, the good outweighed the bad. He still had his health, his home, most of his family, and five beautiful grandchildren given to him by Susan and Olivia. He had lost a lot, but he had gained even more.
The doorbell rang again, and after his mini pep talk to himself, Jack was able to answer the door with a smile on his face. He was rather surprised when he opened it to find a little boy standing in the doorway, fistful of flowers clutched in his hand. He appeared maybe five or six years old, and he looked vaguely familiar. Jack figured he was with one of the neighbors’ parties, a kid who had wandered off and found himself unsure of where he was, so he decided to ask for help.
The boy’s eyes were very big as he looked up at him, and Jack was surprised to see that it was due to caution rather than the fear or ignorance of strangers one might expect from other children of this age group. None the less, Jack tried to make himself as approachable as possible so he could get this kid pointed in the right direction and safe back within the arms of his family.
“Hey, little man,” Jack smiled and bent down to the boy’s level. “What are you doing so far from the action? Don’t tell me a big boy like you forgot where the party was.”
Some of the wariness faded from the boy’s eyes as he smiled back, bright and carefree. Jack ignored the slight ache in his heart as he was reminded of how John had smiled like that when he was little.
“Here, sir,” the boy said, holding out the fistful of tulips he held. “My dad told me to give these to you. There should be hoses, too, but Dad wouldn’t let me carry those ‘cause of the thorns.” He stated the last part rather haughtily, as if the withholding of the task had caused him a great indignity.
Jack chuckled, wondering who on Earth would want to send him tulips but being unable to hide the surge of warmth in his heart at the gesture. “Well,” he said, still smiling, “I’m sure your father had his reasons. Tell him thank you for me. Now, shouldn’t you be getting back to your family?”
The boy looked momentarily confused for a moment. “But... you are my family,” he said, puzzled. “Dad showed me lots of pictures of you and told me all these cool stories about my...my...” he scrunched his face up as he tried to remember the word, sounding it out in his head. “...Gaa-amm-pah. Gampa! Yeah, that’s it! He told me I might even be able to meet him some day, and now I’m here!”
Gampa...Grand... No, it couldn’t be...
“Hey, Little D,” said a voice from behind him, “That’s Grandpa, not Gampa. You make him sound like a reject from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Jack froze at the sound of the voice, one he had thought he would never hear again even as he prayed to be proven wrong some day. Three times he had lost his son in this life, and he had lost him thousands of times more in his dreams, watching helplessly as he flew off to war with enemies of unimaginable of power. I don't want to turn around, Jack thought, his heart aching at the memory of those nightmares. I don't want to turn around because if I do, none of this will be real. It will just be a dream, and I'll wake up and everything will fade away and I can't handle losing him again.
But what if it's real? Oh, god, please let this be real. He turned around.
John stood there, eyes smiling, dangling an old house key from his hand. “I was hoping you still kept the spare key under the mat... I think I lost mine somewhere in the Uncharted Territories.”
“John...” Jack reached forward to embrace his son, his arms meeting solid muscle and bone that didn't fade away like they always did in the dreams. John's arms wrapped around him in turn, solid and warm as the rest of him. If this is a dream, I don't want to wake up.
“My god, John..." Jack swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump in his throat before he managed to continue. "I thought I would never see you again. How in the universe did you find your way back home?” He wasn't waking up. John was still there, and his eyes were damp and his cheeks were wet and none of this had ever happened in the dreams and just this once, Jack let a seed of hope plant itself in his heart.
“I just clicked my heels together and said ‘There’s no place like home.’ Who woulda thought it would be as simple as that?" With his face pressed against his father's shoulder, John's attempt at humor was slightly muffled, and Jack could feel the vibration of his words - thick with the same emotions Jack himself was trying (and failing) to hide - against his collarbone. No dream could ever mimic this, he thought, and with that realization, the seed took root and began to grow. He tightened his arms around his son and let himself believe.
“It’s a long story, Dad,” John continued after a moment, hugging him so tight that Jack was having a bit of trouble breathing. However, breathing didn't seem all that important at the moment. “A story I promise to tell you some day, starting with a cup of fresh ground coffee and finishing it off with a nice cold beer.”
With one final squeeze, Jack stepped back from the younger man but kept one arm around his son's shoulders, still afraid he might disappear if he let go. “It must be one hell of a story,” he responded, smiling.
John smiled back, wiping a few stray tears off his face with the back of his hand. Jack took a moment to do the same. Crichton men didn’t cry. Or, well, at least they didn’t cry much.
They both might have said more once they composed themselves, but a third voice interrupted them from the doorway, female and slightly accented with a hint of withheld laughter in it. “Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?” Jack turned toward the door again, heart lightening even more at the sound of it.
Aeryn stood next to her son, smiling at them both. In one hand she held a small bouquet of yellow roses - likely the ‘hoses’ the boy had mentioned earlier. Her other hand supported the small toddler braced against her hip who’s bright blue eyes peeked out at him from behind baby-soft curls every bit as black as her mother’s hair.
Jack smile grew to a grin as he stepped away from John, doing his best imitation of a courtly bow as he gestured her through the door. “I would have to be mad to deny an angel such as yourself into my home, fair Lady Sun.”
Aeryn just shook her head and laughed, stepping across the threshold with her son in tow. Jack’s eyes were drawn to the familiar ring glittering on her finger as she walked in. “And perhaps the most beautiful daughter in law in the universe,” he continued. “I couldn’t be more glad to welcome you into the family, Aeryn.” She just smiled all the bigger, and he leaned over to kiss her cheek, a bit surprised when she actually let him.
John complained. “Hey, how come whenever I try that charming and chivalric stuff with you, you always hit me?”
“Because he does it better than you do,” Aeryn answered, leaning down to set her daughter on the floor next to her brother. “And hitting you is just a force of habit these days. After all, it’s how we met. Who am I to ruin a good thing?”
Now it was John’s turn to laugh. “Alright, point taken.” He continued chuckling as he gestured toward the two children in front of them, both staring up at Jack with huge blue eyes. “Dad, I would like to introduce you to your grandchildren: medium sized one is D’Argo - D or Little D for short - and the half-pint there with the innocent eyes and mile-long wrap sheet is Rosalyn, Rose...”
“Ro,” the little girl corrected him with a huff and a mini foot-stomp.
“... Right,” John continued, “forgive me, your majesty, Ro for short because apparently Rose is too girly for her. Jeez, only four cyc... years old and already she’s got an attitude problem. You believe that?”
Jack chuckled. “Reminds me of someone I used to know,” he mumbled under his breath, bending down to greet the children and ignoring the snort he heard from Aeryn’s direction and the indignant “Hey!” he heard from John. “Well,” he said holding out his hand, first to Ro and than to D’Argo, both of whom shook it as grown-uply as possible. “It is very nice to meet you Ro and D’Argo. I’m your Grandpa Jack.”
Ro smile was bright enough to light up the entire room, and Jack almost believed he was looking at a young Olivia for a moment. “We know,” she said, “Dad has told us al’bout you n’ how you was a afronut just like him n’ how if it wasn’t for you, he woulda never made it ‘nta space to meet Mommy.”
John laughed, bending down to pick up his daughter. “That’s astronaut, munchkin. Dad was never an afro-anything. Can’t say the same for your grandpa, though... he did live through the 70s, after all.”
Jack smiled and stood up, holding his hands out to the side, palms forward. “Hey, I plead the Fifth on that one.”
D piped up then, continuing his sisters gushing as he dug something from the small pack wore on his back. “Yeah, and he told us you could teach us how to play with these,” he said, pulling a few Frisbees and a baseball and glove out of his bag. “He tried teaching us himself, but there ain’t a lot of space to throw stuff around on Moya. That ‘n Pilot kept getting annoyed at us every time he used the Shell to talk to Dad or Mom and kept seeing stuff flying at his face.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I’ll see what I can do. Let me just put these flowers in some water while you go start practicing out back.”
D bolted through the house toward the back patio door on the other side of the kitchen at these words. Ro squirmed in her dad’s arms until he set her back down and then ran after her brother. “I’ll go keep an eye on them,” Aeryn said with a smile, moving past the two men and following her brood out to the back yard.
“So,” Jack asked as his son followed him into the kitchen, “do you have any idea what’s going on with the rest of the crew? Or have you guys since gone your separate ways.”
“Most of us are still together,” John answered as he started helping Jack with the search for a vase to put the flowers in. He laughed shortly before continuing. “After everything we’d been through together, we discovered that we were kinda stuck with each other. We had tried going our separate ways before, but something kept bringing us back together. Some were... lost a few months after I closed the wormhole, and damned if that didn’t hurt like hell, but we managed to keep it together.”
Jack recalled whom his grandson was named after, and couldn’t help but feel a small stab of sorrow at the loss - not only for John at the loss of another friend, but also for himself. John and the rest of Moya’s crew had been guests in his home for several weeks, and people tend to get to know each other pretty well in such situations. He had guessed from what John had said just before he collapsed the wormhole that the world he and the rest of them were returning was a very dangerous place, but it still hurt to realize that some of his... friends... had been lost along the way.
“Pilot is still up on Moya, for obvious reasons,” John continued after a heartbeat, wandering over to the fridge to help himself to a beer. “He’s keeping her hidden in the shadow of the moon in hopes of not drawing too much excess attention to our return.” He took a sip of his beer, enjoying it with such obvious relish that Jack couldn’t help but laugh at him. John mock glared. “Hey, I’ve spent the last decade or so billions of light years away from the nearest brewery... Felipe Nectar is all well and good, but just can’t beat a nice wholesome Budweiser. Anyway, Rygel’s back there on Moya, too, probably moping because I told him he couldn’t come along - it’s just too damned hard to disguise a giant floating slug, you know? Chi and Noranti are around somewhere, though. They decked themselves out with makeup and Earth clothing and decided to go shopping. They’ll probably show up here eventually to inform me that they maxed out the credit card I gave them.”
“Where the hell did you find the money on such short notice?” Jack asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve been on Earth long enough to set up a bank account and several credit cards without coming to visit your old dad.” He continued, mock hurt in his voice as he filled the vase he had pulled out of the cupboards with water before depositing the flowers Aeryn and D had brought him inside it, setting it on the kitchen table just as Leslie used to do.
John laughed. “Moya’s been orbiting Earth for about a week, honestly, but we’ve had to jump through a few hoops to avoid detection, and that meant not making any contact with anyone down on the surface. I wanted to see you, Dad, but I also wanted to avoid getting our faces plastered all over the 6:00 news. The first day any of us actually set foot on Earth was Thursday, when I started setting up the whole bank and credit card things. Those I wanted in place before I saw you to make sure everything *was* in place, getting the foundations set up so I could see you without fear of being kicked out of the country right afterward for being an illegal alien or something.” He smiled, and Jack laughed at the reference.
“As to where I got the money, well, I have my connections,” John’s smile grew, spark of mischief igniting in his eyes as he continued. “I just cashed in on a few stocks I bought before the whole Farscape program got unexpectedly suck through a wormhole in ‘99. I also still had a little cash lying around from our last visit to Earth... Becoming famous does wonders for your bank account, you know. The young lady at the bank did look at me kind of funny when I walked in requesting to reactivate a checking account that had been dead for ten years, though.”
“So,” Jack said, almost afraid to ask as the meaning of all John had just told him started sink in, “you set up a place for yourself.” He looked into his son’s eyes, preparing himself to take the dive even as he wondered if the water was deep enough to fulfill all his hope. “Does this mean you’re staying?”
John set his half-finished beer aside, straightening from the counter he had been leaning against before turning to look at his father with total seriousness on his face. Jack held his breath.
“Yeah, Dad,” he finally said, his eyes damp and his voice horse as he reached forward to envelope Jack in another tight embrace. “Yeah, we’ll be sticking around for awhile.”
The breath Jack had been holding whooshed from his lungs in a barely contained sob, and this time he let the tears stream down his face without any shame. His son was home, and he had gained a daughter and two more grandchildren all in a few minutes. He couldn’t remember the last time his heart had felt so light and he didn’t give a damn who saw him crying. Let the world see his tears; give it one more moment to remember, one more hero to welcome home, one more excuse to celebrate the day. “Welcome home, son,” he squeezed past the lump in his throat. “Welcome home.”
“I am home, aren’t I?” John responded, his voice thick with his own tears and muffled by Jacks shoulder. “It’s been so long, I wasn’t sure if I would ever have one again... God I missed you, Dad.”
The arms around him tightened even further, just as Jacks tightened his own grip on his son. “It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been away, John...You always had a home here. I missed you too.”
They stood like that for a long time, both seemingly reluctant to pull away in case the other one disappeared as soon as they let go and it turned out to be a dream after all. After awhile, though, when the tears had slowed to a mere trickle and both of their breathing had returned to almost normal, Jack finally loosened his grip, giving John the opportunity to pull away if he so choose. He did, wiping a few stray tears off his face as Jack did the same, leaving a hand on his son’s shoulder.
“Why don’t you go grab your old bat from the closet in the hall,” he said after a moment, pointing down the hall with his free hand and giving John an extra shove with the one still on his shoulder. “Let’s go teach those kids how baseball should be played.
John smiled at him, a mirror of the smile that had been on D’Argo’s face when Jack had first met the boy at the door. “You still have all our old baseball stuff?” he asked as he wandered off to start digging through the closet.
“Sure I do,” Jack said. “It comes out every ones in awhile when Livi brings her kids over. It’s not the huge event it used to be back when you kids were young, but we still have a good time.”
“Olivia has kids?!” John sounded surprised, though the words were muffled considering his head was still in the closet as he said them. “Any chance her family might be popping over here today?”
Jack opened his mouth to answer, but the doorbell rang before the words could leave his lips. “Who could that be?” he said instead, moving back toward the door.
“Not Livi?” John asked, head popping out of the closet almost comically.
“No,” Jack answered, shaking his head as he walked past John in the hall. “Both she and Susan told me they had other plans when I talked to them the other day.”
“Crap, I hope the press hasn’t found me already,” John said, looking like he was seriously considering hiding in the closet. “We were trying to avoid things going public until tomorrow, at least.”
Jack continued down hall toward the door, motioning for him to keep quiet and stay back. If it was the press, Jack had no problem lying and playing the hurt father who misses his son card. It wasn’t technically dishonest if it was the reporters he was lying too, right? They lied enough for everyone as it was. Besides, he wanted to keep John, Aeryn, and the kid for himself for the day. If the damn press could wait six years, they sure as hell could wait another twenty-four hours or so.
The door opened before he could answer it. “Knock knock, anyone home?” Jack hadn’t thought anything else could surprise him today. He was wrong. Olivia peeked her head around the around the door, and he couldn’t have been more stunned if someone hand hit him over the head with the baseball bat he had sent John looking for less than two minutes ago.
Olivia’s squinted through the dark hallway until her likely sun-dazzled eyes lit on Jack. She smiled, pushing the door open the rest of the way. “Happy Memorial Day, Daddy,” she said, reaching out to wrap him in a tight hug.
“Olivia, what are you doing here?” he asked, returning her hug. “I thought you said you would be out of town today? You’ll never guess...”
He didn’t even get the chance to finish his sentence before a muffled exclamation came from the general direction of the closet behind him. “Livi? Livi, is that you?” There was a crash and a string of curses that had probably been learned from Aeryn before John stumbled out of the closet, slightly dusty with a few cobwebs in his hair, but with such a huge grin on his face that Jack doubted he really noticed.
“Oh my god, John!” She pushed him aside and ran to her brother so fast that Jack might have felt hurt had a grin of his own not split across his face. John caught her up in his arms and twirled her around like she was small again, both of them laughing so hard they were crying. Or was that crying so hard they were laughing? Either way, they were both home, and Jack didn’t think he could be any happier than at this very moment.
Olivia had stopped crying/laughing long enough to speak, though the smile on her face never faded for a moment. “Where the hell have you been the past six years, John? You disappear down a wormhole, never called, never write... You’d think you fell off the face of the galaxy or something.”
John laughed, arm still around his sisters shoulders as they walked back toward the front of the house. “Yeah, well, the latter’s not my fault. The postage system sucks in the Uncharted Territories and, unfortunately, UPS doesn’t go out that far. As to the whole calling thing, I did leave a few voice messages on Dad’s machine, but as it was his line on the moon, I’m not sure how often it got checked. I would have called you, but my cell phone lost signal at about Jupiter.”
Now it was Olivia’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, I guess it’s hard to set up cell phone towers on planets that have no solid mass.”
They rejoined Jack by the door, where he had been joined by two of Olivia’s three children. They both stood shyly behind their grandpa’s legs, looking up at John with huge eyes.
“Well, space man, I want you to meet two of your biggest fans,” Olivia said, removing her arm from around John’s waist to take one small hand in each of her own and gently pull her offspring into the open. “Jacob is the oldest,” she continued, ruffling her hand through the hair of a boy about D’Argo’s age as both children moved to attach themselves to her legs instead, “...and this is his little sister Leslie.” She jiggled the hand of the little girl in question, who giggled into her mothers pant leg. “Jacob, Leslie, I want you to meet your Uncle John.”
John knelt down in front of the two, mirroring what Jack had done earlier with D’Argo and Ro.
“Are you the space man Mommy has told us about?” Jacob from within the safety of his mother’s shadow.
John shrugged. “Well, I don’t know... it depends on how many Space Men your mommy knows.” He leaned closer to Leslie and stage whispered, “She hasn’t been cheating on me with other Space Men, has she?”
Leslie just giggled again, and Olivia laughed. “No, John. You and Dad are the only space men in my life, and god knows you two are handful enough. I went with a nice, safe, Astrophysicist named Adam who is down the street picking out a hotel room with the baby - Celina, our youngest.”
Jack spoke up, slightly hurt. “You didn’t have to get a hotel room, Livi. You know I always have a room open for you.”
Olivia leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and smiled. “I know, Dad, but we wanted it to be a surprise. It’s not polite to spring surprises on poor, unsuspecting old men and then beg him for a place to sleep.” She eyed John from where he was still squatting down on the floor. “Besides,” she continued, “something tells me the guest room will already be taken tonight.”
John had the grace to look slightly sheepish at her accusation. “She’s got me there,” he answered, straightening. “Our temporary quarters won’t be set up until the end of the week; you mind having a few house guest until Friday?”
Jack smiled, slapping his son on the shoulder. “Always,” he answered.
John smiled back before turning his attention back to his sister. “So,” he said, “An astrophysicist and *cosmologist; if this Adam character is half as good looking as you are, I have every belief that your kids will be running the planet when they grow up on looks and brains alone.”
Olivia shook her head and grinned. “Considering the fact that they already have their father wrapped around their little fingers - someone whose stubbornness and determination could only ever be matched by you or Dad - I’d have to agree with you there. He would spoil these kids rotten given half the chance.”
“Hey,” Jack mock-complained, “I thought that was my job.”
John grinned right back, slinging one arm across his father’s shoulder again and wrapping the other around his sister’s waist, herding his niece and nephew ahead. “Come on,” he said, urging them back toward the kitchen and the sliding door that led to the back yard. “We got barbecue grills to fire up, lemonade to be made, and four children and an ex-PK who need to be taught how the game is played...”
Olivia looked up at him, startled. “Four grandchildren?”
John just grinned all the bigger, that mischievous twinkle back in his eye. “You didn’t think I spent six years on the other side of the universe with a beautiful ex-Peacekeeper just getting chased by insane military commanders, did you? You got a fan club of your own started out there, Livi.”
Olivia laughed again and hugged John around the waist. “I can’t wait to meet them.”
Jack pulled away just before they got out the door. “You two go on a head, I’ll go get the charcoal from the garage.”
John looked back at him, his other arm still stretched across Livi’s shoulders. “You want a hand with that?”
“Nah, I got it.” Jack shook his head, already turning around to head back the direction they had come. “I’ll be out in a minute, you two go along and catch up a bit.”
“Don’t take too long,” John tossed over his shoulder as the two of them continued on out the door, “With Aeryn, Olivia, and the two girls all in one place, I might go into estrogen overdose without anyone to act as a buffer... Ow! Hey, no need to get violent about it.” Jack didn’t have to turn around to see Olivia’s response to her brother’s comment - he could hear the smack all the way on the other side of the kitchen. “Daaaaad, Livi hit meeee...”
Jack laughed and shouted back without stopping, “Your just lucky Aeryn wasn’t standing close enough to agree with her.”
Laughter from both his son and daughter followed him the rest of the way down the hall, and Jack couldn’t seem to stop grinning as he opened the door to the garage and started digging around for the charcoal. It was an old sack, probably still left over from their last family gathering. Jack hadn’t grilled much at all since the traditional Memorial Day picnic had moved to someone else’s back yard, so he wasn’t even sure if the stuff would ignite anymore. But, it was a place to start. If all else failed, he’d just run down to the nearest gas station and hope it was the type to keep outrageously overpriced small sacks of charcoal somewhere in the store.
He found it, and tossed the half-empty bag over his shoulder. He was amazed at the surprising turn the day had taken, and all within the last half-hour. A day that had started out sad and lonely was turning into one of the happiest days of his life, and god help him, Jack found himself whistling as he carried the dusty sack back through the house.
The smell of roses and tulips wrapped around him as he walked back into the kitchen, and Jack had to stop for a moment as the reality of all that had passed over the last thirty minutes sunk in. He set the bag of charcoal on the white linoleum floor just inside the door, watching through the double-paned glass of his patio door as his children passed down a family tradition to his grandchildren.
John knelt in the grass with Little D and Jacob, showing his son and nephew how to grip a bat. Aeryn knelt in front of them a few feet away, tossing a soft Nerf ball for them to swing at with John’s guidance. Olivia sat behind them, helping Leslie and Ro into a pair of tiny baseball gloves, tossing another softball back and forth between the three of them once the gloves were in place. Jack didn’t think there could be a more perfect family reunion.
Flashbacks of family gatherings decades in the past flooded his mind as he stood there, and Jack’s heart swelled with pride and happiness as he watched his family come back together after so many years apart. A tradition unpracticed for far too long was being rekindled, and Memorial Day had become something special again. It was still a day for remembering, but the memories that had weighed so heavy on his heart and soul seemed lighter somehow, and for the first time since his wife’s death, Jack was ready for the celebration to return to his life - a celebration he reached out and grabbed with both hands before it got away from him again.
The old, dusty, half-empty sack of charcoal was left forgotten on the kitchen floor as Jack ran out to embrace the life that had been left behind so long ago. He paused only long enough to grab his own slightly cracked but well loved mitt from where someone had left it sitting on the kitchen counter next to the flowers before running out to join the baseball tutorial already in progress.
It was Memorial Day; a day for remembering and a day for celebrating. He had the best of both worlds - the celebration of his soldiers returning home, safe and sound.
*cosmologists: The study of the physical universe considered as a totality of phenomena in time and space.
a. The astrophysical study of the history, structure, and constituent dynamics of the universe.
b. A specific theory or model of this structure and these dynamics
Original story, spoilers, and and author's notes here
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Today was Memorial Day; a day set aside to remember all those who took risks and fought in the name of progress. Most peoples’ memories focused on all those soldiers who fought in all those wars; not as many spared much of a thought for the explorers and scientists who made the world what it is today, soldiers of science every bit as important as those serving in our Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. Along with the casualties of both World Wars and Korea and Vietnam, however, Jack Crichton also remembered Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia... Farscape One. And, as with all those earthly wars, sometimes the soldiers came back. Sometimes they didn’t.
Memorial Day was also traditionally seen as the official beginning of the summer season, and people all over the country we’re firing up their barbecue grills and mixing up their summer pasta salads, going to visit family and friends or having family and friends come visit them. It was a celebration of the season, and good ol’ Mother Nature couldn’t have created a more perfect day for it. The sky was a crystal blue with a scattering of fluffy white clouds, and a fresh breeze off the ocean was a welcome relief from the Florida heat that had been plaguing the area for the past two weeks.
Jack stood on the porch of his Cape Canaveral house, hearing the distant laughter of a handful of youngsters down the street, squealing in childish glee as they were reunited with friends and cousins they hadn’t seen since the last family picnic. Someone was grilling across the street - Jack could see the barest haze of smoke drifting over his neighbor’s house from somewhere in the backyard, smell the charcoal on the breeze. He sighed and turned back to his empty house, suddenly feeling very alone.
His family used to be like that; gathering together for a Memorial Day picnic in his back yard, gossiping about all that had happened since last they met. The house would be full of laughing children and adults, summer salads, and fresh lemonade, and every year Leslie would specially pick a fresh bouquet of late tulips and early roses from her garden for this one gathering, setting it on the counter in the kitchen - well out of the way of running children and attention-loving dogs - for the whole family to compliment on.
Jack smiled at the memory of the barely contained hustle and bustle Memorial Day brought when the children were still young. Back in those days, when the world was still innocent, Memorial Day meant a house full of people - aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, sons and daughters, friends, grandparents while they were still alive. It also meant at least two barbecue grills running in the back yard, charring dozens of hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken breasts to BBQ perfection. Jack even had one of those “World’s Greatest Chef” aprons that one of the kids had bought him, something he wore proudly while flipping burgers with one hand and holding a cool lemonade in the other (no beer until the grills were shut down - intoxication and fire never mix very well), laughing as he shared outrageous stories with Cousin Bobby. “No, seriously! The fish was *this big*!”
Between the grill-checks and wife-orders, he would grab a few minutes to toss around the new Frisbee Aunt Beth and bought with John and D.K., or to show Livi how to put together her new glider. He would smile as the boys trained water pistols on Susan and Olivia, and laugh outright as the girls went for the water hose in retaliation when most would simply squeal and go running to their parents to save them. After lunch, he would grab a beer and go hang out with the rest of the guys (and a few girls), arguing over sports teams and their best guess for team MVP. Evening brought the whole family together in with the traditional family baseball game, parents vs. kids, with the grandparents cheering everyone on from the sidelines. It had always been the highlight of the celebration, a tradition Jack hoped would continue as his children got older and he became one of those grandparents. And, at the end of a long, fun-filled day, after everyone else had left to go back home or to a local hotel, Jack and the kids who were still awake would help Leslie clean up in a kitchen that smelled like tulips and roses.
Jack’s smile faded. Today, the house was empty of the laughing children and joking adults, and there were no flowers sitting on the kitchen counter this year. Leslie and D.K. were gone, the girls had business elsewhere, and John... only the universe knew where John was these days. Extended family had stopped coming after Leslie died; at first it was just because it was too much effort for him to set up by himself. But, as more years past, the harder it got for him to find the enthusiasm to restart the picnic. After awhile, the Memorial Day tradition moved to someone else’s back yard, and Jack was left to his own solitude, remembering all those fallen heroes by himself.
Now, Memorial Day was just another Monday, the end of a three-day weekend Jack often spent alone. Usually the solitude didn’t bother him much - he had enough to keep him occupied at the base most nights and weekends, keeping the loneliness at a distance by pushing two days worth of work into 24 hours, sleeping when he got tired, but getting right back to work after a shower and a few cups of coffee. Bog yourself down with enough equations and experiments and you can forget, if only for a little while, that you’re a lonely old man who has fewer years left ahead than he has left behind.
The doorbell rang, knocking Jack from delving any deeper into his self-pity. He had to remember that, despite everything that the past ten years had dragged him through, there were plenty of good times along the way. And, of all those years he had left behind, most had been quite happy. He may have gotten the short end of the stick on occasion, but if he thought about it, the good outweighed the bad. He still had his health, his home, most of his family, and five beautiful grandchildren given to him by Susan and Olivia. He had lost a lot, but he had gained even more.
The doorbell rang again, and after his mini pep talk to himself, Jack was able to answer the door with a smile on his face. He was rather surprised when he opened it to find a little boy standing in the doorway, fistful of flowers clutched in his hand. He appeared maybe five or six years old, and he looked vaguely familiar. Jack figured he was with one of the neighbors’ parties, a kid who had wandered off and found himself unsure of where he was, so he decided to ask for help.
The boy’s eyes were very big as he looked up at him, and Jack was surprised to see that it was due to caution rather than the fear or ignorance of strangers one might expect from other children of this age group. None the less, Jack tried to make himself as approachable as possible so he could get this kid pointed in the right direction and safe back within the arms of his family.
“Hey, little man,” Jack smiled and bent down to the boy’s level. “What are you doing so far from the action? Don’t tell me a big boy like you forgot where the party was.”
Some of the wariness faded from the boy’s eyes as he smiled back, bright and carefree. Jack ignored the slight ache in his heart as he was reminded of how John had smiled like that when he was little.
“Here, sir,” the boy said, holding out the fistful of tulips he held. “My dad told me to give these to you. There should be hoses, too, but Dad wouldn’t let me carry those ‘cause of the thorns.” He stated the last part rather haughtily, as if the withholding of the task had caused him a great indignity.
Jack chuckled, wondering who on Earth would want to send him tulips but being unable to hide the surge of warmth in his heart at the gesture. “Well,” he said, still smiling, “I’m sure your father had his reasons. Tell him thank you for me. Now, shouldn’t you be getting back to your family?”
The boy looked momentarily confused for a moment. “But... you are my family,” he said, puzzled. “Dad showed me lots of pictures of you and told me all these cool stories about my...my...” he scrunched his face up as he tried to remember the word, sounding it out in his head. “...Gaa-amm-pah. Gampa! Yeah, that’s it! He told me I might even be able to meet him some day, and now I’m here!”
Gampa...Grand... No, it couldn’t be...
“Hey, Little D,” said a voice from behind him, “That’s Grandpa, not Gampa. You make him sound like a reject from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Jack froze at the sound of the voice, one he had thought he would never hear again even as he prayed to be proven wrong some day. Three times he had lost his son in this life, and he had lost him thousands of times more in his dreams, watching helplessly as he flew off to war with enemies of unimaginable of power. I don't want to turn around, Jack thought, his heart aching at the memory of those nightmares. I don't want to turn around because if I do, none of this will be real. It will just be a dream, and I'll wake up and everything will fade away and I can't handle losing him again.
But what if it's real? Oh, god, please let this be real. He turned around.
John stood there, eyes smiling, dangling an old house key from his hand. “I was hoping you still kept the spare key under the mat... I think I lost mine somewhere in the Uncharted Territories.”
“John...” Jack reached forward to embrace his son, his arms meeting solid muscle and bone that didn't fade away like they always did in the dreams. John's arms wrapped around him in turn, solid and warm as the rest of him. If this is a dream, I don't want to wake up.
“My god, John..." Jack swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump in his throat before he managed to continue. "I thought I would never see you again. How in the universe did you find your way back home?” He wasn't waking up. John was still there, and his eyes were damp and his cheeks were wet and none of this had ever happened in the dreams and just this once, Jack let a seed of hope plant itself in his heart.
“I just clicked my heels together and said ‘There’s no place like home.’ Who woulda thought it would be as simple as that?" With his face pressed against his father's shoulder, John's attempt at humor was slightly muffled, and Jack could feel the vibration of his words - thick with the same emotions Jack himself was trying (and failing) to hide - against his collarbone. No dream could ever mimic this, he thought, and with that realization, the seed took root and began to grow. He tightened his arms around his son and let himself believe.
“It’s a long story, Dad,” John continued after a moment, hugging him so tight that Jack was having a bit of trouble breathing. However, breathing didn't seem all that important at the moment. “A story I promise to tell you some day, starting with a cup of fresh ground coffee and finishing it off with a nice cold beer.”
With one final squeeze, Jack stepped back from the younger man but kept one arm around his son's shoulders, still afraid he might disappear if he let go. “It must be one hell of a story,” he responded, smiling.
John smiled back, wiping a few stray tears off his face with the back of his hand. Jack took a moment to do the same. Crichton men didn’t cry. Or, well, at least they didn’t cry much.
They both might have said more once they composed themselves, but a third voice interrupted them from the doorway, female and slightly accented with a hint of withheld laughter in it. “Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?” Jack turned toward the door again, heart lightening even more at the sound of it.
Aeryn stood next to her son, smiling at them both. In one hand she held a small bouquet of yellow roses - likely the ‘hoses’ the boy had mentioned earlier. Her other hand supported the small toddler braced against her hip who’s bright blue eyes peeked out at him from behind baby-soft curls every bit as black as her mother’s hair.
Jack smile grew to a grin as he stepped away from John, doing his best imitation of a courtly bow as he gestured her through the door. “I would have to be mad to deny an angel such as yourself into my home, fair Lady Sun.”
Aeryn just shook her head and laughed, stepping across the threshold with her son in tow. Jack’s eyes were drawn to the familiar ring glittering on her finger as she walked in. “And perhaps the most beautiful daughter in law in the universe,” he continued. “I couldn’t be more glad to welcome you into the family, Aeryn.” She just smiled all the bigger, and he leaned over to kiss her cheek, a bit surprised when she actually let him.
John complained. “Hey, how come whenever I try that charming and chivalric stuff with you, you always hit me?”
“Because he does it better than you do,” Aeryn answered, leaning down to set her daughter on the floor next to her brother. “And hitting you is just a force of habit these days. After all, it’s how we met. Who am I to ruin a good thing?”
Now it was John’s turn to laugh. “Alright, point taken.” He continued chuckling as he gestured toward the two children in front of them, both staring up at Jack with huge blue eyes. “Dad, I would like to introduce you to your grandchildren: medium sized one is D’Argo - D or Little D for short - and the half-pint there with the innocent eyes and mile-long wrap sheet is Rosalyn, Rose...”
“Ro,” the little girl corrected him with a huff and a mini foot-stomp.
“... Right,” John continued, “forgive me, your majesty, Ro for short because apparently Rose is too girly for her. Jeez, only four cyc... years old and already she’s got an attitude problem. You believe that?”
Jack chuckled. “Reminds me of someone I used to know,” he mumbled under his breath, bending down to greet the children and ignoring the snort he heard from Aeryn’s direction and the indignant “Hey!” he heard from John. “Well,” he said holding out his hand, first to Ro and than to D’Argo, both of whom shook it as grown-uply as possible. “It is very nice to meet you Ro and D’Argo. I’m your Grandpa Jack.”
Ro smile was bright enough to light up the entire room, and Jack almost believed he was looking at a young Olivia for a moment. “We know,” she said, “Dad has told us al’bout you n’ how you was a afronut just like him n’ how if it wasn’t for you, he woulda never made it ‘nta space to meet Mommy.”
John laughed, bending down to pick up his daughter. “That’s astronaut, munchkin. Dad was never an afro-anything. Can’t say the same for your grandpa, though... he did live through the 70s, after all.”
Jack smiled and stood up, holding his hands out to the side, palms forward. “Hey, I plead the Fifth on that one.”
D piped up then, continuing his sisters gushing as he dug something from the small pack wore on his back. “Yeah, and he told us you could teach us how to play with these,” he said, pulling a few Frisbees and a baseball and glove out of his bag. “He tried teaching us himself, but there ain’t a lot of space to throw stuff around on Moya. That ‘n Pilot kept getting annoyed at us every time he used the Shell to talk to Dad or Mom and kept seeing stuff flying at his face.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I’ll see what I can do. Let me just put these flowers in some water while you go start practicing out back.”
D bolted through the house toward the back patio door on the other side of the kitchen at these words. Ro squirmed in her dad’s arms until he set her back down and then ran after her brother. “I’ll go keep an eye on them,” Aeryn said with a smile, moving past the two men and following her brood out to the back yard.
“So,” Jack asked as his son followed him into the kitchen, “do you have any idea what’s going on with the rest of the crew? Or have you guys since gone your separate ways.”
“Most of us are still together,” John answered as he started helping Jack with the search for a vase to put the flowers in. He laughed shortly before continuing. “After everything we’d been through together, we discovered that we were kinda stuck with each other. We had tried going our separate ways before, but something kept bringing us back together. Some were... lost a few months after I closed the wormhole, and damned if that didn’t hurt like hell, but we managed to keep it together.”
Jack recalled whom his grandson was named after, and couldn’t help but feel a small stab of sorrow at the loss - not only for John at the loss of another friend, but also for himself. John and the rest of Moya’s crew had been guests in his home for several weeks, and people tend to get to know each other pretty well in such situations. He had guessed from what John had said just before he collapsed the wormhole that the world he and the rest of them were returning was a very dangerous place, but it still hurt to realize that some of his... friends... had been lost along the way.
“Pilot is still up on Moya, for obvious reasons,” John continued after a heartbeat, wandering over to the fridge to help himself to a beer. “He’s keeping her hidden in the shadow of the moon in hopes of not drawing too much excess attention to our return.” He took a sip of his beer, enjoying it with such obvious relish that Jack couldn’t help but laugh at him. John mock glared. “Hey, I’ve spent the last decade or so billions of light years away from the nearest brewery... Felipe Nectar is all well and good, but just can’t beat a nice wholesome Budweiser. Anyway, Rygel’s back there on Moya, too, probably moping because I told him he couldn’t come along - it’s just too damned hard to disguise a giant floating slug, you know? Chi and Noranti are around somewhere, though. They decked themselves out with makeup and Earth clothing and decided to go shopping. They’ll probably show up here eventually to inform me that they maxed out the credit card I gave them.”
“Where the hell did you find the money on such short notice?” Jack asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve been on Earth long enough to set up a bank account and several credit cards without coming to visit your old dad.” He continued, mock hurt in his voice as he filled the vase he had pulled out of the cupboards with water before depositing the flowers Aeryn and D had brought him inside it, setting it on the kitchen table just as Leslie used to do.
John laughed. “Moya’s been orbiting Earth for about a week, honestly, but we’ve had to jump through a few hoops to avoid detection, and that meant not making any contact with anyone down on the surface. I wanted to see you, Dad, but I also wanted to avoid getting our faces plastered all over the 6:00 news. The first day any of us actually set foot on Earth was Thursday, when I started setting up the whole bank and credit card things. Those I wanted in place before I saw you to make sure everything *was* in place, getting the foundations set up so I could see you without fear of being kicked out of the country right afterward for being an illegal alien or something.” He smiled, and Jack laughed at the reference.
“As to where I got the money, well, I have my connections,” John’s smile grew, spark of mischief igniting in his eyes as he continued. “I just cashed in on a few stocks I bought before the whole Farscape program got unexpectedly suck through a wormhole in ‘99. I also still had a little cash lying around from our last visit to Earth... Becoming famous does wonders for your bank account, you know. The young lady at the bank did look at me kind of funny when I walked in requesting to reactivate a checking account that had been dead for ten years, though.”
“So,” Jack said, almost afraid to ask as the meaning of all John had just told him started sink in, “you set up a place for yourself.” He looked into his son’s eyes, preparing himself to take the dive even as he wondered if the water was deep enough to fulfill all his hope. “Does this mean you’re staying?”
John set his half-finished beer aside, straightening from the counter he had been leaning against before turning to look at his father with total seriousness on his face. Jack held his breath.
“Yeah, Dad,” he finally said, his eyes damp and his voice horse as he reached forward to envelope Jack in another tight embrace. “Yeah, we’ll be sticking around for awhile.”
The breath Jack had been holding whooshed from his lungs in a barely contained sob, and this time he let the tears stream down his face without any shame. His son was home, and he had gained a daughter and two more grandchildren all in a few minutes. He couldn’t remember the last time his heart had felt so light and he didn’t give a damn who saw him crying. Let the world see his tears; give it one more moment to remember, one more hero to welcome home, one more excuse to celebrate the day. “Welcome home, son,” he squeezed past the lump in his throat. “Welcome home.”
“I am home, aren’t I?” John responded, his voice thick with his own tears and muffled by Jacks shoulder. “It’s been so long, I wasn’t sure if I would ever have one again... God I missed you, Dad.”
The arms around him tightened even further, just as Jacks tightened his own grip on his son. “It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been away, John...You always had a home here. I missed you too.”
They stood like that for a long time, both seemingly reluctant to pull away in case the other one disappeared as soon as they let go and it turned out to be a dream after all. After awhile, though, when the tears had slowed to a mere trickle and both of their breathing had returned to almost normal, Jack finally loosened his grip, giving John the opportunity to pull away if he so choose. He did, wiping a few stray tears off his face as Jack did the same, leaving a hand on his son’s shoulder.
“Why don’t you go grab your old bat from the closet in the hall,” he said after a moment, pointing down the hall with his free hand and giving John an extra shove with the one still on his shoulder. “Let’s go teach those kids how baseball should be played.
John smiled at him, a mirror of the smile that had been on D’Argo’s face when Jack had first met the boy at the door. “You still have all our old baseball stuff?” he asked as he wandered off to start digging through the closet.
“Sure I do,” Jack said. “It comes out every ones in awhile when Livi brings her kids over. It’s not the huge event it used to be back when you kids were young, but we still have a good time.”
“Olivia has kids?!” John sounded surprised, though the words were muffled considering his head was still in the closet as he said them. “Any chance her family might be popping over here today?”
Jack opened his mouth to answer, but the doorbell rang before the words could leave his lips. “Who could that be?” he said instead, moving back toward the door.
“Not Livi?” John asked, head popping out of the closet almost comically.
“No,” Jack answered, shaking his head as he walked past John in the hall. “Both she and Susan told me they had other plans when I talked to them the other day.”
“Crap, I hope the press hasn’t found me already,” John said, looking like he was seriously considering hiding in the closet. “We were trying to avoid things going public until tomorrow, at least.”
Jack continued down hall toward the door, motioning for him to keep quiet and stay back. If it was the press, Jack had no problem lying and playing the hurt father who misses his son card. It wasn’t technically dishonest if it was the reporters he was lying too, right? They lied enough for everyone as it was. Besides, he wanted to keep John, Aeryn, and the kid for himself for the day. If the damn press could wait six years, they sure as hell could wait another twenty-four hours or so.
The door opened before he could answer it. “Knock knock, anyone home?” Jack hadn’t thought anything else could surprise him today. He was wrong. Olivia peeked her head around the around the door, and he couldn’t have been more stunned if someone hand hit him over the head with the baseball bat he had sent John looking for less than two minutes ago.
Olivia’s squinted through the dark hallway until her likely sun-dazzled eyes lit on Jack. She smiled, pushing the door open the rest of the way. “Happy Memorial Day, Daddy,” she said, reaching out to wrap him in a tight hug.
“Olivia, what are you doing here?” he asked, returning her hug. “I thought you said you would be out of town today? You’ll never guess...”
He didn’t even get the chance to finish his sentence before a muffled exclamation came from the general direction of the closet behind him. “Livi? Livi, is that you?” There was a crash and a string of curses that had probably been learned from Aeryn before John stumbled out of the closet, slightly dusty with a few cobwebs in his hair, but with such a huge grin on his face that Jack doubted he really noticed.
“Oh my god, John!” She pushed him aside and ran to her brother so fast that Jack might have felt hurt had a grin of his own not split across his face. John caught her up in his arms and twirled her around like she was small again, both of them laughing so hard they were crying. Or was that crying so hard they were laughing? Either way, they were both home, and Jack didn’t think he could be any happier than at this very moment.
Olivia had stopped crying/laughing long enough to speak, though the smile on her face never faded for a moment. “Where the hell have you been the past six years, John? You disappear down a wormhole, never called, never write... You’d think you fell off the face of the galaxy or something.”
John laughed, arm still around his sisters shoulders as they walked back toward the front of the house. “Yeah, well, the latter’s not my fault. The postage system sucks in the Uncharted Territories and, unfortunately, UPS doesn’t go out that far. As to the whole calling thing, I did leave a few voice messages on Dad’s machine, but as it was his line on the moon, I’m not sure how often it got checked. I would have called you, but my cell phone lost signal at about Jupiter.”
Now it was Olivia’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, I guess it’s hard to set up cell phone towers on planets that have no solid mass.”
They rejoined Jack by the door, where he had been joined by two of Olivia’s three children. They both stood shyly behind their grandpa’s legs, looking up at John with huge eyes.
“Well, space man, I want you to meet two of your biggest fans,” Olivia said, removing her arm from around John’s waist to take one small hand in each of her own and gently pull her offspring into the open. “Jacob is the oldest,” she continued, ruffling her hand through the hair of a boy about D’Argo’s age as both children moved to attach themselves to her legs instead, “...and this is his little sister Leslie.” She jiggled the hand of the little girl in question, who giggled into her mothers pant leg. “Jacob, Leslie, I want you to meet your Uncle John.”
John knelt down in front of the two, mirroring what Jack had done earlier with D’Argo and Ro.
“Are you the space man Mommy has told us about?” Jacob from within the safety of his mother’s shadow.
John shrugged. “Well, I don’t know... it depends on how many Space Men your mommy knows.” He leaned closer to Leslie and stage whispered, “She hasn’t been cheating on me with other Space Men, has she?”
Leslie just giggled again, and Olivia laughed. “No, John. You and Dad are the only space men in my life, and god knows you two are handful enough. I went with a nice, safe, Astrophysicist named Adam who is down the street picking out a hotel room with the baby - Celina, our youngest.”
Jack spoke up, slightly hurt. “You didn’t have to get a hotel room, Livi. You know I always have a room open for you.”
Olivia leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and smiled. “I know, Dad, but we wanted it to be a surprise. It’s not polite to spring surprises on poor, unsuspecting old men and then beg him for a place to sleep.” She eyed John from where he was still squatting down on the floor. “Besides,” she continued, “something tells me the guest room will already be taken tonight.”
John had the grace to look slightly sheepish at her accusation. “She’s got me there,” he answered, straightening. “Our temporary quarters won’t be set up until the end of the week; you mind having a few house guest until Friday?”
Jack smiled, slapping his son on the shoulder. “Always,” he answered.
John smiled back before turning his attention back to his sister. “So,” he said, “An astrophysicist and *cosmologist; if this Adam character is half as good looking as you are, I have every belief that your kids will be running the planet when they grow up on looks and brains alone.”
Olivia shook her head and grinned. “Considering the fact that they already have their father wrapped around their little fingers - someone whose stubbornness and determination could only ever be matched by you or Dad - I’d have to agree with you there. He would spoil these kids rotten given half the chance.”
“Hey,” Jack mock-complained, “I thought that was my job.”
John grinned right back, slinging one arm across his father’s shoulder again and wrapping the other around his sister’s waist, herding his niece and nephew ahead. “Come on,” he said, urging them back toward the kitchen and the sliding door that led to the back yard. “We got barbecue grills to fire up, lemonade to be made, and four children and an ex-PK who need to be taught how the game is played...”
Olivia looked up at him, startled. “Four grandchildren?”
John just grinned all the bigger, that mischievous twinkle back in his eye. “You didn’t think I spent six years on the other side of the universe with a beautiful ex-Peacekeeper just getting chased by insane military commanders, did you? You got a fan club of your own started out there, Livi.”
Olivia laughed again and hugged John around the waist. “I can’t wait to meet them.”
Jack pulled away just before they got out the door. “You two go on a head, I’ll go get the charcoal from the garage.”
John looked back at him, his other arm still stretched across Livi’s shoulders. “You want a hand with that?”
“Nah, I got it.” Jack shook his head, already turning around to head back the direction they had come. “I’ll be out in a minute, you two go along and catch up a bit.”
“Don’t take too long,” John tossed over his shoulder as the two of them continued on out the door, “With Aeryn, Olivia, and the two girls all in one place, I might go into estrogen overdose without anyone to act as a buffer... Ow! Hey, no need to get violent about it.” Jack didn’t have to turn around to see Olivia’s response to her brother’s comment - he could hear the smack all the way on the other side of the kitchen. “Daaaaad, Livi hit meeee...”
Jack laughed and shouted back without stopping, “Your just lucky Aeryn wasn’t standing close enough to agree with her.”
Laughter from both his son and daughter followed him the rest of the way down the hall, and Jack couldn’t seem to stop grinning as he opened the door to the garage and started digging around for the charcoal. It was an old sack, probably still left over from their last family gathering. Jack hadn’t grilled much at all since the traditional Memorial Day picnic had moved to someone else’s back yard, so he wasn’t even sure if the stuff would ignite anymore. But, it was a place to start. If all else failed, he’d just run down to the nearest gas station and hope it was the type to keep outrageously overpriced small sacks of charcoal somewhere in the store.
He found it, and tossed the half-empty bag over his shoulder. He was amazed at the surprising turn the day had taken, and all within the last half-hour. A day that had started out sad and lonely was turning into one of the happiest days of his life, and god help him, Jack found himself whistling as he carried the dusty sack back through the house.
The smell of roses and tulips wrapped around him as he walked back into the kitchen, and Jack had to stop for a moment as the reality of all that had passed over the last thirty minutes sunk in. He set the bag of charcoal on the white linoleum floor just inside the door, watching through the double-paned glass of his patio door as his children passed down a family tradition to his grandchildren.
John knelt in the grass with Little D and Jacob, showing his son and nephew how to grip a bat. Aeryn knelt in front of them a few feet away, tossing a soft Nerf ball for them to swing at with John’s guidance. Olivia sat behind them, helping Leslie and Ro into a pair of tiny baseball gloves, tossing another softball back and forth between the three of them once the gloves were in place. Jack didn’t think there could be a more perfect family reunion.
Flashbacks of family gatherings decades in the past flooded his mind as he stood there, and Jack’s heart swelled with pride and happiness as he watched his family come back together after so many years apart. A tradition unpracticed for far too long was being rekindled, and Memorial Day had become something special again. It was still a day for remembering, but the memories that had weighed so heavy on his heart and soul seemed lighter somehow, and for the first time since his wife’s death, Jack was ready for the celebration to return to his life - a celebration he reached out and grabbed with both hands before it got away from him again.
The old, dusty, half-empty sack of charcoal was left forgotten on the kitchen floor as Jack ran out to embrace the life that had been left behind so long ago. He paused only long enough to grab his own slightly cracked but well loved mitt from where someone had left it sitting on the kitchen counter next to the flowers before running out to join the baseball tutorial already in progress.
It was Memorial Day; a day for remembering and a day for celebrating. He had the best of both worlds - the celebration of his soldiers returning home, safe and sound.
*cosmologists: The study of the physical universe considered as a totality of phenomena in time and space.
a. The astrophysical study of the history, structure, and constituent dynamics of the universe.
b. A specific theory or model of this structure and these dynamics