Angels Among Us
Author’s Note: Written For The Ancient Obsessions Advent Challenge – December 9 (Snow Globe With Village Scene Inside)
Daniel Jackson hadn’t spent Christmas at the same house since his parents died three years ago.
His folks had never been too into the holiday, so he really didn’t miss any sort of family traditions too much, but he still felt the absence of his parents more keenly this time of year.
His mother had always tried to bring some sense of normalcy to her son’s life, even when stuck in remote areas for the holidays. She always managed to find some nominal way to celebrate the season that swept folks back home completely away with its trees, gifts, and decorations.
Daniel remembered the silly things she had done, like making a Christmas tree out of bamboo sticks one year and presenting him with local sweets early in the morning the next year.
He missed her.
And all of the ‘Christmas miracle’ and ‘Christmas is for family’ messages that permeated the entire culture in which he was now immersed made him sick. There was no family for him.
And none for Chris or Johnny, either.
They were the only family he had, and vice versa.
And that, thought Daniel, was pathetic.
Sure, he’d been in this foster home for longer than he had been in any other, and it was a vast improvement over the others in many ways, but it was still a foster home.
And while Chris and Johnny had been with him almost the entire six months he’d been here, they were still only foster kids just like he was, not a real family.
Mrs. Fuller, a widowed empty-nester who was kind enough to take in those society had thrown away, tried her best to make her house a home for her three disparate boys, but Daniel still felt out of place. Chris and Johnny were both only one year older than Daniel, but they had been raised the same way as all the other boys in his school. They didn’t understand why Daniel had never believed in Santa Claus at all or why he was more interested in reading books about ancient Egypt or Peru than the Jets or the Giants, the two professional football teams in the area.
But while he didn’t always feel that he fit in here, Daniel was still a young boy, and so were Chris and Johnny. They still roughhoused and played like all boys of their age did.
And it was this play that led to the most memorable Christmas of Daniel Jackson’s childhood.
It had started innocently enough.
It was Christmas Eve. The boys were out of school for Christmas break, and there was a raging snowstorm swirling outside. Mrs. Fuller had demanded that they stay in the house.
She should’ve known better.
Three tough as nails foster kids in New York could’ve survived a snowstorm. Even Daniel, with his very warm-blooded tendencies, had learned to deal with the winter well. But inside, well, inside those same three boys could wreak havoc in mere seconds.
And today was to be no exception.
It started early.
Chris and Daniel run through the house like monkeys on speed. Chris holds a small leather bound book high over his head in one hand and sticks his tongue out at Daniel as he runs.
“Give me that!” yells Daniel.
“No, way!” Chris shot back.
“It’s mine!”
“Well, you shouldn’t leave it laying around then! Finders keepers!”
Johnny takes this moment to pop down from the upstairs bedroom he shares with Chris and join the circus.
“What’cha got, Chris?”
“One of wittle Danny’s pwecious wittle books.”
“Lemme see.”
“No. I found it. It’s mine now.”
“Aw, come on. What do you want with it, anyway? Lemme see.”
“No. You’ll just give it back to wittle Danny.”
“No, I won’t. Lemme see.”
“No!”
Johnny and Daniel both reach for the book then at the same time, and Chris jumps up in the air to move it out of their reach. The bodies of the three boys all jostle together, and Chris lands several inches from where he jumped. He loses his balance. He falls, and six eyes widen in fear as he does.
Not because he’s falling, but because of what he’ll land on when he hits the ground.
Daniel and Johnny each grab one of Chris’ arms to try to stop his fall, but gravity is too much for them.
They fall, too.
An earth-shattering crash rings out through the house as their fall is slowed by the coffee table.
All three boys end up in a tangled heap of arms and legs on the floor.
The coffee table is destroyed.
It was an ordinary table. One of those wooden box ones with a glass top. Nothing too extravagant or hard to replace. The boys know they’ll be in trouble for breaking it, but if it wasn’t Christmas, things might not have been too bad for them. They’d done things equally bad (and sometimes worse) before and come through them ok.
But it was Christmas.
And Mrs. Fuller collected those little ceramic houses that people display during the holidays.
The coffee table had been the town square of her little village.
Johnny, Chris, and Daniel were surrounded by little ceramic bits of townspeople, houses, and churches.
Wood and glass from the coffee table mixed with the remains of an entire civilization.
Daniel might have laughed if he’d thought of things like that, but he was too worried that he and the others would be kicked out into the snow for this one to think of much of anything.
All three boys stared at each other for about five heartbeats in abject terror before they could move.
By the time they started trying to dust themselves off and get away from the scene of the crime as quickly as possible, old lady Fuller came flying into the room to see what the commotion was.
‘Well, there goes my twelfth birthday,’ thought Daniel resignedly. Mrs. Fuller was going to kill them all. He just knew it.
Mrs. Fuller’s initial reaction was just as the boys had expected. As they slipped and slid on the remnants of their accident and tried to stand up to accept their fates, her arms flew high into the air and she let out a scream that could’ve woken the dead. Her face was a mask of shock and anger.
“Oh, my God! What have you boys done? Come here, all of you. Get up. Get over here. Now. Be careful, boys! Watch out for the glass! Come on, then. Line up, right now. Get over here.”
The three boys finally managed to stand and they slowly scuffled over to Mrs. Fuller with their heads hung low. It was time to pay the piper. Fuller had never punished the boys physically before, but all of them had had enough whippings in their lives to know what was coming. They were dead meat.
Johnny reached their foster mom first. As her hand reached out to touch his head, he involuntarily flinched away, expecting a blow that never came.
As Mrs. Fuller gently parted his hair this way and that, looking him over for cuts and bruises, Johnny’s eyes, which had clenched shut, slowly opened again in surprise.
It was then that all three boys noticed the blood.
It was all over the floor, mixed with the other evidence of their mishap.
Daniel and Chris began to run their hands over their own bodies looking for injury as Fuller continued to examine Johnny.
Chris’ hand came away from the back of his head covered in blood.
Daniel’s right eye was rapidly swelling shut from an impact with some unknown assailant.
And Johnny had a pretty sizable cut along his left bicep.
Fuller sighed, then shook her head.
“Well, you boys sure know how to make Christmas interesting, I’ll give you that. Come on, get your things. I’m no expert, but I think we need a few stitches here.”
Twenty minutes later, three boys and one bedraggled middle-aged woman were loaded into her car.
Johnny had an Ace bandage wrapped tightly around his upper arm, while Daniel and Chris had ice packs pressed against their heads.
They all wore their winter coats, boots, and gloves, but none of them had even changed out of their pajamas under their winter garb.
The snow was still falling outside, but the roads had already been plowed, and Mrs. Fuller was a native to New York weather. She carefully backed the car out of the drive and headed to the nearest emergency care clinic, which fortunately wasn’t too far away.
Daniel, Chris, and Johnny were silent the entire trip, which was a very rare thing indeed, but the fact was that they were still terrified of the fate that awaited them after they got patched up at the doctor’s.
The emergency room was crowded when they arrived. Vomiting babies, elderly people with the flu, and victims of countless holiday accidents crowded the waiting room.
Three young boys with relatively minor injuries weren’t exactly high on the priority list.
They waited for what seemed like forever before a young nurse ushered them into a curtained off area that was designated for lacerations. An intern sat there, looking like if he never saw another kid with a cut in his life it would be soon enough.
Johnny’s wound was the worst, so he cautiously made his way to the doctor’s table first.
Chris went next, and finally even Daniel received two stitches in his eyebrow.
Between them the boys had twenty-two sutures, and they would have been proud to show off their battle scars if not for the stern looks they were getting from Mrs. Fuller in the corner and if not for the CPS officer who had shown up just as Daniel had hopped up onto the examination table.
These boys knew CPS, or Child Protective Services, and they knew what was happening here. Mrs. Fuller had presented not one, but all three boys in her care to an emergency room for lacerations. CPS would have to investigate to be sure Fuller was not abusing the boys or hadn’t allowed them to become injured out of negligence.
When the doctor finished with Daniel, the CPS officer turned to the boys, and they all knew what came next. The officer’s words were unnecessary.
“Boys, I’m going to need to you come with me for a moment, ok?”
The boys nodded and then followed the man one at a time into a private room off one side of the waiting room.
Each child told his story, and when Chris, who went last, was finished, the officer emerged from the room and addressed Mrs. Fuller.
“Well, Edith, it seems the boys all say the same thing, and this looks like a simple, albeit rather unique accident. You know the drill. Someone will come round after the holiday to drop off the requisite forms and whatnot. For now, get these boys home, and have a Merry Christmas.”
Fuller nodded and thanked the officer. “Thanks, Joe.”
The officer nodded back. “No problem. You’ve been around a long time, Edith, and things like this are the reason you got approved for nine to twelve year old boys anyway, remember?”
Edith smiled. “True. They are a handful, aren’t they?”
Daniel, Chris, and Johnny shared an indignant look as the adults kept talking.
“That they are, Edith. Most of our fosters stay away from this age group. Then again, most of them would have panicked this morning. You do neither. This will work out fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Edith nodded and then clapped her hands at the boys.
“Well, you heard the man. Let’s get home. Get your hats and gloves on. Come on, then. Let’s go.”
The boys obliged and with a final wave to Joe, Mrs. Fuller took her surrogate family home.
Home was still a mess when they got there.
As the boys stepped out of the snow and into the house, their fear about their punishment returned as they observed Mrs. Fuller’s sad little sigh as she looked down on the remnants of her holiday village.
They’d really screwed up this time, and they knew it.
But after a moment, a very strange thing happened.
Edith Fuller began to laugh. It was just a little giggle at first, but it soon became a chuckle, then a full body laugh.
Daniel, Chris, and Johnny exchanged concerned looks. They thought that surely Fuller had lost her mind.
Finally, Chris, the most outspoken of the group, asked what they were all thinking.
“What’s so funny?”
Fuller looked down at the boy and wiped a single tear from her eye. She smiled a broad grin, and this confused the boys even more.
“Oh, it’s nothing, boys. It’s just…well… this reminds me of something I did when I was a girl. My brother and I were always fighting and wrestling and carrying on, and once we did something almost exactly like this. My brother’s been gone fifteen years now, but I still think of him sometimes. This is one of those times. We had so much fun together… but man did we get it for breaking mom’s china! Oh, she was hot.”
Chris swallowed a mighty lump then and looked up at Mrs. Fuller nervously.
“I guess we’re gonna get it now, huh?”
Fuller smiled in an understanding kind of way. “No, child. I’m not going to punish you. It was an accident. These things happen.”
Three pairs of eyes grew wide in disbelief at her words, and Daniel muttered a response for the group.
“What?”
Edith’s eyes found Daniel’s and she smiled again. “I think stitches all around is punishment enough, don’t you?”
Daniel nodded vigorously, amazed at his good luck.
But Fuller wasn’t done.
“Oh, and you will have to clean all this up, or course.”
The boys started to groan a protest, but it was silenced by a look from their caretaker. They all knew they were getting off light.
Mrs. Fuller smiled to herself as she turned and left the room. “That’s what I thought. You boys know where all the cleaning supplies are. Mind the broken glass, and be careful. I’ll be right back.”
Fuller stepped into the kitchen for a moment, then returned to find the boys right where she’d left them. She put her hands on her hips and looked down on them with the most intimidating look she could muster.
“Well? That mess isn’t going to clean itself up. Snap to it, boys!”
Six legs carried three boys out of the room and to the cleaning closet as fast as humanly possible.
Daniel, Chris, and Johnny returned with a broom, a dustpan, trash bags, and a vacuum and began their clean up as Fuller watched from the couch. She helped when the boys needed it and made sure they didn’t cut themselves, but this was their mess, and she thought it only fair that they take care of it themselves.
It took a long time to clean up the mess they had made, and the carpet would need a good shampooing later, but the boys finally finished their task as the afternoon sun sank below the horizon.
As they finished, the boys looked to Mrs. Fuller for approval.
She smiled at them and nodded. “That’ll do, boys. Now, what say we get some dinner? I’m sorry to tell you that due to our little adventure today we’re not going to have a Christmas dinner tonight, because I couldn’t start it on time, but I think the pizza place is still open. Does that work for you?”
All three boys nodded.
The pizza place was open, and the snow had stopped enough that they were even delivering.
And so it came to pass that within the hour, three boys and one middle aged woman sat down to a fine Christmas Eve dinner of pizza and breadsticks.
While they were eating, Chris and Johnny chatted idly about sports with Mrs. Fuller, but Daniel was silent and wore a slight frown.
Fuller noticed. “Daniel?”
Daniel looked up from his plate. “Yeah?”
“You ok, hon?”
Daniel nodded. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
Daniel shrugged. “Nothing. It’s stupid.”
Chris couldn’t help but agree. “Yeah, like all your little books.”
Daniel kicked him under the table. “Shut up, Chris. This is all your fault, anyway.”
“Ow! Is not!”
“Is too!”
Fuller sighed and clapped her hands. “BOYS!”
Both Chris and Daniel fell silent. Johnny shoveled more pizza into his mouth and wisely stayed out of things, as was his habit.
“Chris, Daniel’s books are not stupid. And don’t let me catch you taking his things again, even if he leaves them out. Understood?”
Chris nodded while still glaring at Daniel. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, Daniel, next time he takes your books, please come and tell me. Don’t go chasing him all around my house wreaking havoc. Ok?”
Daniel nodded reluctantly, even though he knew that would never happen.
“Now, Daniel, what were you thinking about? You’ve been awfully quiet.”
Daniel shrugged again. “Well, it’s just… well…”
“What?” queried Fuller.
“The houses aren’t broken that badly.”
Fuller’s forehead wrinkled like a raisin. “What are you talking about, Daniel?”
“The houses. I could fix them. Most of them, anyway.”
Fuller blinked twice at the boy in front of her and didn’t respond for a moment. Her silence was enough for Johnny to chime in.
“He’s right. Most of them just broke into a few big pieces. We could fix them.”
Fuller looked to the third boy at the table.
“What do you think, Chris? Up for some gluing?”
Chris looked at his plate for a moment and pushed his food around on it before finally mumbling an answer under his breath.
“I dunno. Might be kinda fun.”
Fuller smiled. “You’re right. It might. I think I’ve got some glue around here. We’ll give it a shot after dinner.”
The rest of dinner passed without incident.
When the plates were cleared and things put away, Daniel and Johnny retrieved the plastic wastebasket that held all the ceramic pieces of the Christmas village.
The rest of the evening was probably one of the most unique Christmas Eves ever.
Shards of ceramic were soon spread over the kitchen table, and glue was distributed to everyone. Three boys laughed as they attempted to put unmatched pieces of houses together, creating bizarre structures that no one could have ever imagined. A middle aged woman was young again as she joined them in their fun.
The dinner that was supposed to have been prepared for an evening meal for Christmas Eve was started in preparation for becoming a Christmas Day feast. And when all was said and done, a village emerged again.
It wasn’t the same village it’d been before, but it was a village.
Of the thirteen houses that had formed the town square before, nine returned. The church wasn’t so lucky, but its spire was glued on the schoolhouse, so the townsfolk still had a place to worship.
The catastrophe somehow managed to spare the citizens of the town, and the only fatality was the horse that pulled the carriage through town. He was laid to rest in the new pet cemetery the boys made on the outside of town.
They only stopped working on their village when there was nothing left to do.
It was long after midnight when the shards of ceramic were too small or too unrecognizable to be saved. All three boys were starting to wilt with fatigue, and Johnny was beginning to complain that his arm hurt.
Mrs. Fuller glanced at the clock and nodded. “Ok. Alright. It’s time for bed, boys. You know it’s a busy day tomorrow. But wait here for a moment. I’ll get you something for your arm, Johnny.”
Edith returned with three doses of children’s Tylenol and made each boy take one for their new wounds.
As they swallowed their pills, all three boys made faces of disgust, then trudged off to bed without protest. They were tired. It had been a long day, and a longer night.
In the morning, the boys would wake to a clean house and find a few meager gifts under the small Christmas tree. They’d tear into them as all children do and then spend the rest of the day at the youth center Christmas party across town. Mrs. Fuller’s dinner dishes would be devoured with gusto by the group there, and the boys would even get to watch a movie that evening with the other children while the adults got some well-deserved time off.
All in all, Christmas Day would go well for the little group, but when asked later about the holiday, every one of the boys and even Mrs. Fuller would retell the story of Christmas Eve.
It had been a good night, despite how the day had started, but such things do not last.
The investigation into the boy’s injuries went fine, and Mrs. Fuller was not charged with any wrongdoing in the affair, but things change rapidly in the foster care system.
Chris was gone by Valentine’s Day.
Johnny left around Easter.
No one came to take their place.
And finally, one day a few weeks after his birthday, Daniel bid a tearful goodbye to Mrs. Fuller, too.
Her mother had fallen ill, and Edith was needed elsewhere. She wasn’t going to be able to foster children for a while.
Daniel would never see her or Chris or Johnny again.
He’d spend time in several more foster homes before he reached adulthood.
But he’d never forget his time at his favorite foster home, or the special Christmas eve that had earned him two stitches and what he considered his very first solo archeological expedition.
He’d never forget how that night had made him feel like he had a family again, if only for a moment.
Nearly twenty years later, a thirty year old archeologist stood apart from his friends.
There were several people in the room, and they were all chatting and drinking and generally having a good time.
It was Christmas, and this was a Christmas party.
Daniel had been socializing with his friends for the better part of the evening when something on the mantle over the fireplace had caught his eye. He felt his feet drawn toward the object and didn’t realize he’d separated himself from the rest of the group as he walked to the mantle.
It was time to eat, and almost everyone else was making their way into the kitchen.
Everyone except one man, who sat in the oversized chair in the corner of his home and watched as Daniel Jackson picked up a snow globe on the mantle and turned it over twice in his hand before setting it back down. As the pretend snow fell on the scene in the globe, a small smile of wonder flittered across Daniel’s face like a beam of light.
The observer smiled and pushed himself out of his chair. He quietly made his way to stand behind Daniel. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, but it still startled the younger man in front of him.
“Hey.”
Daniel jumped. “Hey, Jack.”
“What’cha doing?”
Daniel shook his head. “Nothing. This just reminded me of something.”
Jack looked at the little globe on the mantle more closely. He didn’t remember where he’d gotten it. It was just a little cheap snow globe with a village scene inside. A few little ceramic houses and a church comprised the interior of the globe. Nothing special.
But Jack could tell that it meant something to Daniel, and his interest piqued. “What?”
Daniel’s smile grew. “Long story.”
Jack huffed out a small laugh. “Aren’t they all? Tell me later. Come on, food’s getting cold.”
Daniel turned to Jack and grinned. He saw his other friends over Jack’s shoulder in the kitchen, and he nodded his assent to Jack’s suggestion.
“Sounds good.”
Daniel turned and rejoined his friends, reminded of emergency rooms, stitches, ceramics, and how all those things had come together to form a very bizarre Christmas Eve long ago that had given him a family again, if only for one magical night.
As the evening went on, Daniel pushed the thoughts of that strange night away from his mind and enjoyed the company of the present. Laughter and liquor flowed through the house easily. Jack, Sam, and Teal’c roped him into a game of charades at some point, and soon Daniel found that he didn’t have to be reminded of family.
He had his right here.
But still, when it was quiet, in the lulls in conversation, Daniel’s eyes would wander to the snow globe on Jack’s mantle, with its little ceramic houses, and he’d wonder what had become of his friends from that night so long ago.
Sometime between Christmas and New Year’s of that same year, Major Samantha Carter stepped into Daniel Jackson’s lab and handed him a sheaf of papers. “Here’s the report you wanted, Daniel.”
Daniel lifted his head from his current project. “Thanks, Sam.”
“What did you need this for, anyway?”
Daniel shrugged. “Oh, just curious about something.”
Sam shrugged back, knowing that Daniel wasn’t telling her the whole story but accepting that for now. She turned and headed back to her own lab.
When Sam was gone, Daniel stood and walked to the door. He quietly closed it and then returned to his desk to read the papers Sam had given him.
As he read them, a smile that could’ve powered a small city spread over his face.
Shortly after New Year’s, a package arrived at the Saint Adelaide Senior Center in New York City.
It was addressed to a resident of the assisted living community that surrounded the center.
The orderlies delivered the package and promptly forgot about it.
It wasn’t until one of their most mobile elderly women came nearly running into the main social room waving some pictures about that they remembered it.
Mrs. Edith Fuller was usually a quiet woman, but she still had her mind, and it was sharp as a tack.
She wasn’t prone to outbursts or odd behavior.
But today was apparently an exception.
She burst into the rec room and started telling anyone who would listen that one of her boys had sent her a package.
The orderlies on duty shared a look that clearly said they thought old Mrs. Fuller had finally lost her marbles, but kept silent. She wasn’t hurting anyone, and while they knew that Edith had no surviving children, they figured there was no harm in letting her ramble on about some imaginary son.
After all, Edith’s two daughters had been killed in the same car accident that had taken her husband long ago. She deserved some measure of happiness in her old age, and if an imaginary son did it for her, they weren’t going to argue.
Those sorts of things happened all the time here.
It wasn’t until Fuller sat down and started spreading out pictures on one of the empty tables that they really took notice.
Another resident wandered over to Fuller and gaped at the photos there.
“He’s handsome,” remarked another pretty mentally stable patient.
Curiosity got the better of the nurses then and they wandered over, too.
They were amazed by what they found. Spread out in front of old Mrs. Fuller were several pictures of a handsome man who appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties.
“Who is he?” asked one of the nurses.
Edith turned her still sharp eyes on the younger woman and smiled.
“One of my boys.”
The nurse blinked and started to feel a little sad. She hated this part of her job. She hated telling people things they should already know but that had somehow slipped away from them. “Edith, you know you don’t have any sons.”
Fuller snorted. “Shows what you know.”
The nurse sighed.
Edith couldn’t hear as well as she could when she was young, but she read the nurse’s body language and pinned her with her sharp gaze again.
“I know you think I’m crazy, but I’m not. This is one of my boys.”
The nurse nodded. “Ok, Edith. Whatever you say.”
Fuller wasn’t done. “I had a lot of them. Foster children, you see. All boys. Thirty-two in all.”
The nurse gaped at Fuller. Could the old lady be telling the truth? Thirty-two foster children? All boys?
Edith continued. “Yes, siree, missy. Thirty-two young lads. All between nine and twelve years old. No one else wanted them, see. Hard age to deal with. But I didn’t mind. Most didn’t stay long, but some stayed a while. This one, I remember him. Stayed more than a year. He was my last. My youngest boy. My baby.”
By this time, the nurse’s hands had flown to her mouth and tears had sprung to her eyes. Could this possibly be true?
Edith looked up then and met the nurse’s eyes. She smiled, then nodded her head gently. “It’s true.”
The nurse couldn’t argue, and even if she could’ve, she didn’t want to. The idea that this might be true was too lovely to let go of, and so she simply nodded her head in agreement.
Edith showed her pictures off for at least an hour to anyone who would look and listen, then carefully put them away again.
She waved good-bye to the nurses and other residents and made her way back to her apartment in the surrounding community.
That night, a little old lady would carefully fold a single sheet of paper around her precious photographs and place them back in the envelope that had carried them to her from Colorado.
The paper was a hand-written letter, and she already knew its text by heart.
Edith would carry the envelope to her dresser and carefully slide it under a very odd looking ceramic building that sat there.
The staff was always onto Edith to get rid of the ugly little model, but she would always just smile at them and shake her head no.
Some thought the building was a church.
Some thought it was a school.
Both groups were right.
Edith Fuller would read the letter from under the ceramic building many times, and she’d eventually take her favorite picture out of the envelope and place it against the church/school so she could look at it whenever she wanted.
Her neighbors would visit and ask about the man in the photo.
And she would tell them the story of a Christmas Eve long ago.
A Christmas Eve largely spent in an emergency room.
A Christmas Eve that allowed her to be young again, if only for a night.
A Christmas Eve that had given her a family again, ever so briefly.
Edith Fuller would live for many more years.
She would write back to the man in the photo, and he’d return the favor.
One day, she’d even receive a visit from him.
They would become fast friends, despite their age difference.
But eventually, as such things always go, Edith would leave this world.
She would die suddenly in her sleep.
She’d die alone, but in peace.
And on this Earth she would leave thirty-two souls that had been touched by her generosity.
Including one Doctor Daniel Jackson.
The End
