Green Wires
Chapter 3
A Full Yellow Pad of Paper
"How are you feeling today, Cameron?"
"Oh, you know," sighs and stares longingly at his coffee parked on the side table. The one he can't even think about without his lips and jaw throbbing. "I've been better."
"Yes." Dr. Hu doesn't check an eyebrow at him, but with the tone of his voice—again, eerily similar to his momma's—he might as well be, words all condescending in length with just a hint of a sigh, like Hu expected him to get a better grade in organic chemistry—like his momma did—but knows he missed two weeks because of mono.
Hu knows that too.
Because there is basically no fucking part of his life that he hasn't recounted.
Has spoken about the plane crash, the pain of becoming mobile again, of standing flat on his feet and wanting to scream because the steel rod they shoved in him hurt so bad. Spoke of how he felt when he met everyone on SG-1 for the first time, of how he looks forward to Thanksgiving in Auburn but hates it because his brother has a great wife and two great kids and all he has is a metal rod that goes off when he goes through airport security.
Hu knows all this because it's been a little over three weeks now and by not shutting up during these sessions, they've allowed him small benefits—like not having to check in with Lam every single day. He's also able to go for jogs outside now instead of firing up one of the treadmills and running until he's worn the groove away on the machine, the tread ending up looking like a skunk.
Hu knows all this.
Everything.
Almost everything.
Because he's still hush about that day.
It's starting to become far enough removed from his mind that his memory is allowing bits to fade away. What he and Teal'c talked about on their way to the Lucien Alliance facility, the song he hummed to Vala while she lay unconscious beside him, but he still remembers the exact order he cut the wires in.
"Would you care to explain?" The Doc hunches over a small sink at the end of wall cabinets, refilling the kettle. When he doesn't offer an answer, Hu gives him a half-lidded expression over his shoulder.
"Explain what?"
The kettle settles on it's base, and Hu flips it on with a switch, immediately the soft grumbling of boiling water bubbles into the room over the nature soundtrack of the day, light rain on metal, barely audible, almost ambient, almost real if they weren't storeys under a mountain.
"What happened in the cafeteria a few hours ago."
"Oh." Yeah, that would probably be a good subject to talk about today. Part of him considers that he might have started the rumble on purpose just to have a conversation topic that didn't revolve around him directly indirectly killing a teammate. "That."
"Yes." Hu hunches, retrieving his little white ceramic cup from a cupboard. "That."
"Teal'c and I met in the caf for lunch—neither of us were really up for our spar session—"
Hu sweeps away the seat of his big wingback chair, and flips through a file drawer until retrieving the yellow pad that is just full of all his psychological fuck ups. "And why was that?"
"I don't know if you noticed," voice terse at being interrupted too quickly, is that even ethical for therapists to do? "But moral's been down a bit."
"Fair enough." Hu lets him have the win in order to concentrate on the bigger picture. "Who started the fight?"
"Well," groans as he shifts his bruised body against the harder-than-normal couch cushions. "That depends on partiality, I think."
"Allow me to simplify: who threw the first punch, you or Teal'c?"
"Surprisingly, Teal'c," almost chuckles at it because after working with the Big Guy for five years, he's only seen him react in physical violence from rage or distress twice—well three times now. "It was granted though, I was running my mouth off."
"You said something he didn't want to hear?"
The kettle reaches it's crescendo, its whistle slicing through their conversation, boils with such force it almost rattles on the base. The hot air. The anger pent up in all three of them because they need someone to blame and they can't agree who because they're not allowed to talk. The way he didn't even see Teal'c's fist in time to dodge it, and the solid burst of pain from the force behind his punch split his lip immediately, spilling his blood on the floor.
A betting man would have expected one hit to be enough, sent him back staggering, but it wasn't. Two then three, his sneakers slipped in his own blood and he crashed against the table bench. His vision blurred, but knew Teal'c still loomed above him, his fingers scrambled at the plastic seating, but slipped, again in his blood.
"I said something about Jackson. Something that I probably shouldn't have."
The pen is already scribbling away, Hu give him a glance from over his thin rimmed glasses. "What did you say?"
"Honestly? I don't remember." He doesn't. Not the exact words—that his memory working on his side again, fading away things that make him feel embarrassed or ashamed or panicked. All he knows is the subtext of his words—that Jackson inadvertently sabotaged the mission. "I think I was blaming him."
"For what?"
"For getting snatched up on that nice little hole of a planet." His tongue darts out, tapping against the tear in his bottom lip for the fourth time since the session started. He keeps forgetting about the stitches because of course he needed stitches, getting punched by Teal'c was like getting hit in the face with a frying pan. "They didn't have much technology, but they had tons of corn and sometimes all you need is a good bonfire and some fresh corn."
The leafy smell of concentrated green tea filters into the air, and with the rain soundtrack almost seems like there's wet pavement just outside the office door. "Then how did he manage to get himself and Vala abducted?"
"He got a tip from a villager that there were ruins at the bottom of the hill, about a fifteen-minute hike down. Jackson wanted to go check it out, I said to wait until morning. Jackson pressed, I said, 'no' and then Vala got into it, siding with Jackson, whining about never getting to explore—"
It still makes him angry, to be underminded by a guy who has been through the gate more than him and has more experience off-world than he does, but no military experience, no training in exploring new locations, scouting out where's safe and where potential hazards could come from. It's what his old man did for a living, it's ingrained in his blood from being a farmer, from being a soldier—always keep his eye on the flock. Always know where the danger lays, and after midnight on a planet they'd only been on once with people they'd only known for a few hours, leaving the safety of the group seemed like a big fucking danger.
"But once Vala starts in there's usually no end to it unless you give her what she wants, or unless she falls asleep. I couldn't deal with both of them complaining so I let them go."
"Then it's your fault, isn't it?" Hu's not wearing the cheeky grin he senses. It's one of the Doc's goals, trying to catch him in a trap, web him up in his own words because he's become too loose lipped.
"Partially my fault, yeah." Leans in on his elbow, trying to seem relaxed, unphased, but remembers too late about the bruise blossoming on his jaw and winces. "My fault for letting them go, Jackson's fault for not letting it go."
"And what about, Vala?"
"What about her?"
"Do you blame her?"
"No. Why would I?"
"She begged to go to the ruins along with Dr. Jackson, it seems she's just as complicit in being abducted."
"No, she's not."
Hu hums a sound of interest that falls in with the soft rain and if he hadn't been here so often, he might have missed it. "Why is that?"
"Because all Vala wants is approval—usually Jackson's approval—but any approval is usually good enough."
"Would you care to extrapolate on that?"
"Vala didn't whine because she wanted to go to the ruins to investigate, or to learn something, or to explore, or even to try to steal whatever she could get her hands on."
"She did it to back up Dr. Jackson."
"No," he chuckles this time, wagging a finger at the impatient doctor and shifting his weight to his other hip. "She wants it to seem like that to him, wants him to think he's got her all wrapped up when really it's the other way around."
"All right." The cuts of pen across paper sound like a skipping album, strokes so deep and heavy and fast. "Then why do you think she protested?"
"She did it for attention." Tosses his hands to the side because he knows his team, he's been working with her just as long as Teal'c and he can tell when she gets anxious or antsy, when she needs help and won't ask for it, when she asks for help and doesn't need it, when she presses something important, and when she's doing it for a little spotlight glow.
Knows when she's telling him the absolute truth, mumbling barely cognitive with her face turned into the ground and blood crusted into her eyelashes, that cutting the yellow wire can save them all.
"If you knew the motives behind Vala's actions, then I still don't understand why she isn't responsible."
"Because I could've given her something else to do. I could've asked her to survey the area and find any people she thinks might be suspicious, I could have sent her in to mesh with the village women and come back with information the men wouldn't give up, I could have just told her to hold tight for a second, but I didn't. That's on me."
"So because of your and Dr. Jackson's actions, she was tortured for three days by—"
"I don't want to talk about this anymore."
Saw her when he got there, and it felt just like Teal'c punching him in the face. Stomped down the shock, the worry, the rage while his inept fingers tapped on the comm, talking to them, watching as Jackson angled his head up towards the camera to carry a conversation and how she barely moved, how she barely made sense when usually she's talking circles around him.
"I think that this is going to be a relevant area of discussion for us, Cameron. There's very little that you refuse to talk about—"
"Yeah, so maybe that's a good indication to listen when I say we're not talking about what happened to her in there." Ends his sentence by staring directly at Hu, glare unwavering.
"But you're willing to continue speaking about Vala in general?"
"Of course, she's my teammate, she was there."
"Okay, then perhaps now you'd be willing to tell me who initiated the fight in the cafeteria." Hu checks and eyebrow at him now, lips pulled back tight as he sips at the cup nestled in his hand.
Shrugs because they've never backtracked to a previous line of questioning in a session before. "I told you. I started the fight with words. Teal'c threw the first punch."
"Yes, but that was in the altercation between you and Teal'c." Hu sets down his cup of tea and plucks his pen from between the seat cushion, tapping it only twice against the yellow pad. "I want to know who started the altercation in the whole cafeteria."
Exhales harshly through his nose, the warm burst of air smacking against his stitched lip, and he pushes his hands together to keep from rubbing one over his face. "Vala did."
Hu hums again, eating up his words, writing a small novel about how he just threw her under the bus. "I see."
"She broke up the fight between Teal'c and me—it wasn't so much of a fight as him using me as a punching bag—but she stepped right between us and told him off."
He was about to half gloat, sort of show that humour that's so good at getting him through these tough IOA-interrogating-teammate-dying therapy sessions, but she turned and went off on him next.
"You should be ashamed of yourself." She jabbed a finger at his shoulder and when he grunted on impact, she rolled her eyes and reached down, hauling him back up to stand, dusted off his shoulder and helped him straighten out the wrinkles in his shirt despite the blood gushing from his nose. "You're our leader and you make yourself scarce after Daniel's death like it's not affecting anyone but you, like I'm sleeping fine, like I'm still eating."
"Vala—"
"No!" Her voice boomed, didn't shriek or screech, but silenced anything he was going to say, was pointing at him again with her nondominant hand, the other still slung up. "Grow up, Mitchell."
Thought she was going to walk away and never talk to him again. Thought she was going to leave Teal'c to continue to beat the shit out of him so he would learn a lesson. Thought she was going to get her sling off that day because he was going to help her exercise her arm because he knows what it's like to not be able to use a limb or two for months on end.
Never thought someone would groan in the cafeteria about how Dr. Jackson wasn't even in the military and how his death didn't matter because he was probably going to end up coming back.
She had one hand, her bad hand, and she grabbed the metal tray from the table so quick, that by the time anyone in that room understood what she was doing, she had already smashed it into that guy's face and tossed down the blood splattered tray onto the ground. The swiftness of it didn't bother him, he's seen her reaction time, he's sparred with her and knows that she banks on her unpredictability to get the upper hand on her opponent. What he didn't expect was the sheer violence of it, the bashing equal to her voice cutting down his, the sound of metal impacting was almost sickening.
Clicks his tongue and hisses a bit at the pain he should expect at this point. "Someone said some things about Jackson and Vala reacted."
"I heard her outburst was very forceful."
He turns away, listening to the pitter-patter of fake rain on fake tin, trying to chase the clary smell of green tea.
After a beat with no answer from him, Hu clarifies, "so you approve of her use of violence?"
"Well, maybe us air force guys just need to watch the way we speak of the dead." He checks the watch he started wearing again because like Jackson's lab, there is no clock in this room, just the watch on Hu's wrist and he's not ready to just let him elongate these sessions without his consent. "Our time's up."
As he stands, rusty legs and blunt for trauma head making it hard, Hu raises an index finger, taking care to close up the yellow pad of paper and tuck it neatly beside him. "Can I leave you with a thought?"
"As long as it's quick."
"Re-evaluate your team dynamics, take a closer examination to the relationships you've formed."
Shakes his head, not entirely aware of his homework assignment. "They're all the same relationship, Doc, they're all my teammates. They're all my family."
"Then why are you more upset about Vala's torture, than you are of Dr. Jackson's death?"
