Runs in the Family
Chapter 1
Carte Blanche
It's well worth the wait. That's all it is.
"Beatrice." Calls her daughter over the boiling pot on the kitchen stove. The house isn't too grandiose, but not entirely a shack, a small cottage on the outskirts of the village, far enough away that the school is hardly a fifteen-minute walk.
The eggs are perfectly boiled and cooling on a cotton towel against the ragged countertops. She checks the clock over her shoulder, and then rolls her eyes. "Beatrice, you are going to be late."
"I'm here, Momma." Her daughter steps out adjusting the straps on her pack, one of her light brown curly pigtails caught.
Wiping her hand on the front of her apron, she turns off the dial on the stove and approaches her daughter. She has his eyes, light blue and piercing from halfway across the grand room. "How did this happen, my darling?"
Little shoulders shrug, but she never turns away, confident in her abilities. "I dunno"
Keeps her warm smile and lifts the padded strap to untangle her daughter's hair, letting it return over her back.
Beatrice's soft eyebrows raise and nonchalantly she explains, "I don't really want to go."
With a sigh, she straightens out the wrinkles in her daughter's shirt, then tugs her into a strong hug that only works to make more wrinkles. "I know, darling, but you have to try."
"Why can't I stay with you?" The small voice is muffled against her shirt sleeve.
"Because education is important, and your father would have wanted you to go to school and excel." It's becoming an overused answer at this point, but it simply has to do. She's tired of playing good cop and bad cop, of having to love and discipline for two parents.
Of having to worry for two parents.
When she returns from walking Beatrice to school, both reluctantly separating as the bell rung, she finds the house empty.
After ten in the morning and she's already finished her daily chores, weeded through the vegetable garden and done the washing up, polished furniture, made the beds and vacuumed all the rugs. The only difference now it's that her hair is a bit dishevelled and her heart is very heavy.
She sits on the couch, not bothering to turn on the television and lets her worry stew in the pit of her stomach. Tries to combat the horrible visions of her daughter crying or being led astray by a stranger with her learning and finding friends, not being so isolated, not taking after her mother.
As she unstrings her apron there's a knock at the thick wooden door. Assumes it's another toe-headed housewife eager to welcome her and show off her lack of prowess with a power mixer and sprinkles. The neighbors are close knit in this area and having only recently arrived on this planet, she's just been allowed to commune in activities like book clubs, where all the books are boring, or bake sales, where everyone else's sweets taste like trash.
But when she opens the door, two men in green army fatigues await her. "Mrs. Mitchell?"
"You boys cannot leave well enough alone." Left Stargate Command a little over a year ago with a then four-year-old, now five-year-old daughter as she tried to find a planet homey enough to get them situated. The SGC did not want her to leave, didn't go so far as to beg her to stay, but offered her basic freedom outside the mountain as long as she agreed to stay within Colorado Springs, all while still paying her out Cameron's benefits, but the whole situation became so tiresome.
"Mrs. Mitchell, you need to accompany us back to—"
"Well, I no longer work for the SGC, so I'm afraid your request has fallen on—" Ducks behind the door, closing it.
But there's a thump and she meets the resistance of one of the men's boots jammed in the opening of her doorway. Tries not to let her face display too much of the latent fear she's always feeling because one day she ignored the warning and one day he didn't come back. "Dr. Jackson gave us very specific orders Ma'am."
"My daughter is at her first day of school, and if you think I'm about to pull her out so we can go back to that chaos where she has no interactions with children or sunlight, then—"
"Ma'am, he's back."
Sits in a cold metal room, just like old times, although it's not exactly a brig, more of a holding cell for transferring. She's very suspicious and would be more vocal about her fears if Beatrice wasn't curled asleep with her head in her lap. She runs her fingers through her daughter's hair, pulling out bits of leaves and other debris she managed to get caught in it in only a half day of school.
The door whooshes open and she doesn't even acknowledge it, because every second that ticks by is just more validation that she's fallen for their trap of anchoring her back on Earth because perhaps she's too useful, or perhaps she knows too much.
"You don't seem as excited as I thought you'd be."
"That's because I've dealt with your people before, Daniel." Keeps her voice completely level, her fingers never missing a strum over her daughter's soft hair. His hair.
He perches on the bit of bench she's left available, his knees bumping hers and Beatrice mumbles in her sleep. "He's here."
"And I'm his wife, and I've yet to see him."
"You think he's not asking for you?" Daniel laughs, his eyes disappearing into many more lines on his face than she remembers. "He's still being examined by medical, and he's about one test away from ripping out the IV and taking off down the hallway."
"What if he's too different?"
"Do you love him?"
"I never stopped."
"Then I doubt that'll be a problem."
Daniel shrugs off his BDU jacket, and drapes it gently over Beatrice, who twitches in her sleep but still doesn't wake.
"What if I'm too different?"
His hand clasps over hers and then bounces against her knee. "Vala, I think you could be a completely different species at this point and he would just shrug it off."
Daniel leaves, going to check on Cameron, her husband whom she hasn't seen in four years, while she sits with her daughter who has no memories of her father aside from the ones she's planted in her head.
Nervous and hopeful.
Anxious and scared.
"Momma?" Beatrice draws her blue eyes up from her lap, fingers tracing the wrinkles in her slacks. "What if father doesn't like me?"
She grins softly, ignoring the vernacular, how it's reminiscent of a daughter she's failed before and reassures herself that this is a different child. A daughter born of love and whose parents sacrificed everything to ensure her safety, that she never know fear. At least not until now because aside from her cunning and her confidence, a bit of her self doubt has worn off on her child.
Sighs, relaxing into the weight of her daughter on her lap, the softness of her hair, the gentle rise and fall of her chest. In very precise, very clear words she explains. "Your Daddy loves you more than anything in any other galaxy. There is no way you could possibly disappoint him."
She goes in alone at first, not wanting to overstimulate either Cameron, who is still not cleared medically, nor Beatrice who walked down the old corridors like she was walking through a field of mines. Daniel agreed to sit with her and brought out the old Ancient Egyptian glyph texts. After kissing her daughter and ready to be escorted from Daniel's lab, she did not miss the familiar eye rolls as he began to explain the importance of lines in depictions of the Ra's Eye symbol.
Two soldiers stand at the door to the medical suite which whooshes open with a gust of cool, sterile air as she walks in. Expects him to be asleep, to be beat up and covered in wires and tubes and to have a few moments to collect her own thoughts and emotions while holding his hand. Just a few seconds to reassure herself that this wasn't another dream.
But he's sitting up in bed, darkened from the sun, from smudges of dirt now stained onto his skin. His face thinner and it makes him look irrevocably ill. They only manage to stare at each other from across the small area before under his breath he whispers, "You're even more beautiful than I remember."
His arms are frail and sunburnt, and he smells of open air and moss when they embrace. She buries her face in the crook of his neck while he cradles her because despite striving to be optimistic, she thought this reunion would never happen. When he peppers her skin with kisses, caresses her cheeks and arms, she cannot stop staring at him because the weight of the fear that's been holding her down for the last four years has fallen flat from her, and she takes her first real breath.
Lays with him as he explains his capture by a slave trader and his pivotal roll in causing the uprising that would eventually lead to his freedom and a drawn out return back to the SGC. Nods against his chest at every word he utters, listens to his heart thump, his stomach gurgle. His words soak into her hair and her eyes close, reveling in his warmth, his familiarity, the complete and utter trust of another being.
"When they told me you weren't here anymore, I figured you ran back to stealing ships and making shady deals halfway across the galaxy."
"I never stopped looking for you." Her own voice is far away, and he guides a blanket higher up to cover her shoulders.
"I know you didn't, Princess."
Reluctantly separated from him as Dr. Lam insisted he get a night of rest before the reintroduction of his family, of a little girl who was barely speaking and only toddled the last time he saw her. Would have put up more of a fight if his weakness wasn't obvious in his constant naps, which appear more as bouts of unconsciousness.
So she spent one final night holding her daughter in the room where they lived for three years, stroking her arm and retelling all the stories she's ever told about Cameron.
"She's very worried of what you'll think of her." Pets a hand through his hair while he slowly sips at his soup. Foods have been reintroduced to his diet today as they try to wean him off the IV instated for malnourishment.
"Honey, at this point I think she's got carte blanche until she starts dating."
"All right." Nods and tugs on the lobe of his ear once, watches his bright smile emerge before he slurps up another spoonful of basic broth. Her arms clasp around his head as she kisses the top of it, her body jittering with his chuckles. The spoon clanks back into the bowl and his arm slides around her waist. "I love you."
"I love you too." Soupy lips press to the inside of her bicep. "Okay." Taps her bum and drops another kiss to her wrist as he untangles her. "Enough waiting, bring me my kid."
Beatrice's hand tightens around hers as the whoosh of cold, sterile air puffs them both in the face. Despite all the reassurances she's offered to her daughter of how her father fell in love with her when she was no bigger than one of the brambles he plucked from her hair, she still plucks her steps precariously and keeps her eyes wide.
Big feet are on the ground at the side of the bed despite Dr. Lam's demands that he remain reclined for at least another day. He's changed from the medical gown to the blue scrubs they've all had the pleasure of wearing so often, and at his very first glimpse of their daughter his face brightens, and his posture straightens. "Holy shit, she looks exactly like you."
Perhaps pure flattery because she's never had that clear of eyes, or that light of hair, or those innocent chubby cheeks. But maybe he sees the parts of Beatrice that are her, just as she sees only those that are him. "Oh Bea, you're beautiful."
When he reaches a hand for their daughter, she ducks behind her legs, and she's certain his pained expression isn't caused by an overworked body. The commonality between them, she stoops, settling on her knees and taking both of Beatrice's hands in her own. "It's okay to be a little scared, Darling."
"What—"
Lifts a hand to silence him, and then hooks it onto the back of his shin. "But I promise you, your Daddy is a good man, he will always protect you, and he's never stopped loving you."
Beatrice's eyes float over to him before stretching out a hand to trace the wrinkles at the bottom of his pant leg. He reaches his hand down, slower than before, now knowledgeable of the damage he may do to their daughter's trust, but the worry is unwarranted as she sets her tiny hand in his palm.
Less than a minute later Beatrice sits in his lap, traces the wrinkles deep set by the sun in his cheeks and under his eyes as he tells her stories about cupcakes and Goose, then listens intently as she recounts how in three hours at school she managed to get into just as many fights, with boys nonetheless, and he offers her nothing but adoring support.
An hour later she's fallen asleep laying across his chest, and he moves his arms around her careful not to tangle any of the tubes.
"What do you think?" Questions from her stoop at the end of the bed, leaning back against his legs, against one of his feet tapping rhythmically against her hip.
He plants a kiss on the crown of Beatrice's head, tucking her tighter against him. "I think I was right when I said that she would be the greatest thing to ever happen to either of us."