The General. The guy was in Cameron's life all the time, whether he was physically there or not. At first it had been weird, but like everything else about SG1 that had started out as weird it had quickly become every day normal. The General has too much a part of the lives of the rest of the team, part of their history and memories.
No matter how many family secrets they let him in on, the man Daniel casually called Jack, Teal'c called O'Neill and Sam affectionately called 'sir' would always be the General.
The General. The man was always going to have a place on SG1 whether real or as a phantom presence; more felt than ever seen but there nonetheless.
So when the guy walked into the infirmary at some ridiculous hour of the morning, wearing rumpled olive drab fatigues, with his hands in his pockets Cam started automatically to jump to his feet.
The same thing happened every time. Cam would try to stand and O'Neill would wave him off, ordering him with a gesture to sit back down. Except to cast Mitchell one brief look of tolerant appreciation for his continued attempts to show him all manner of respect and a hint of hard assed warning to knock it off, Jack had no attention to spare for Mitchell at all.
"Stand down, Mitchell," O'Neill said and he sounded horribly exhausted and Cam hoped that had more to do with Atlantis and the Asurans than with Sam.
"Yes, sir," he said, sinking back into the chair gratefully.
O'Neill went to stand beside Sam's bed and stood for a moment just looking at her, staring down in a kind of mute reverence.
"She's going to be fine, sir," Cameron said, softly, wondering if the General could hear the implied 'I'm sorry.' "Dr. Lam was in here earlier to check on them. The poison is completely neutralized, almost out of both of them in fact. They're just keeping them sedated so they rest."
O'Neill nodded. "I know. I talked to her already." He hooked a foot around one of the god-awful infirmary chairs and sat down close to Sam. Softly he added, "Not your fault Mitchell. Let it go."
Okay, so the man was smart and very little got passed him. O'Neill continued, "There isn't an SG team leader who brought his team back unharmed every single time through the Gate. That includes me."
Cam had read the reports. He knew that. He lifted his chin and squared his jaw and said, "Yes, sir;" and even though he knew exactly who he was dealing with, Mitchell went on, "I was just hoping to be the first. Sir."
"Kind of blew that almost getting Daniel killed the first time out, didn't you?" Jack spoke softly but he looked away from Sam long enough to give Cameron a hard, direct look.
"With respect, sir, that was an 'almost'." It was true; Daniel had disappeared but had yet to actually die on Cameron's watch. He held his breath and returned the steady stare until he saw the tug at the corners of the General's mouth and knew he'd hit a nerve, a common bond of smart-assery that Jack recognized. "Still, you asked me to watch out for them and I kind of blew this one."
O'Neill shook his head. "No one could have seen that coming. There are a whole lot of things that happened to Sam that I'd give a lot if they'd never happened. Getting snaked is one of them. Yeah, it kind of gave her a super power, but we could have done just as well without it. Then crap like this wouldn't happen."
"Yes, sir," Cameron said, and then he looked at Vala and couldn't quite stop a sigh. "But it would still have happened to Vala." He got lost for a long moment, watching her sleep.
When he became aware of O'Neill again he was the victim of renewed scrutiny. There didn't seem to be much point in denying it, how he felt about Vala. Sam and the General had shown Mitchell an enormous amount of trust letting him in on their secret. So he let something slip in his eyes, not anything that would show up on a security tape, mostly hidden by the set of his head.
Jack grunted an acknowledgment.
"It doesn't affect the team," Cam said, stubbornly.
"Never thought it did," Jack said, "Got some personal experience with that actually."
"She's married, sir," Cam replied, because there wasn't anything else to say really.
Jack leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees and paused a bit before saying, "You know how they say most women would rather just cuddle than have sex?"
Cam blinked and tried to focus because damned if that wasn't the last thing he'd expected the General to say.
"I've heard that, yes," he said, very slowly.
"You know, the thing is, I've discovered it's actually true."
Cameron stared at the stain on the floor for a moment and then said, "Is there a point I'm missing, sir?"
"Sometimes a relationship isn't about whether you can have sex," Jack answered, "It's about being there. I wasn't all that keen on having Mal Doran in the SGC. I'm still not sure. But she's here and she can be an asset. She's got potential; but not if she get broken in the meantime. She's been through hell, Mitchell. She was attacked and forced to have a child from that attack and for some reason she's the one trying to atone for that; and I'm not sure what twisted childhood issues may have been brought up after that crap with Jacek. Look, my advice, one team leader to another? Maybe you should be assessing what her needs are and not your own. Maybe what she needs from you is more than something between the sheets. Maybe she needs to find out that her worth to you isn't as a bed partner…. Unless that's all it really is."
"No," Mitchell said, quickly, but he was just now grasping that it wasn't.
He was prevented from saying anything else when Vala stirred – probably from hearing her name mentioned, a survival instinct honed over time.
"Mitchell?" She said, trying to open her eyes, wincing at the light and then finally succeeding. "What the hell happened?"
Cam leaned forward, reached for her hand. He held it for a moment, stroked a thumb over the strong bones and fair skin. "Baby," he said, "That is a long story. A really long story…."
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