Green Wires

Chapter 4

A High Pink Blush

"How are you feeling today, Cameron?"

"Pretty shitty, Doc, how do you think I feel?" He's thrown into the corner of the couch, slouching back, his bent leg bounces, agitated, against his bad thigh, jolting it with each movement.

He barely feels it.

"Yes, I heard about the announcement which is why I suggested moving up our—"

"Unfortunately for you, I don't want to talk about how the IOA's dumbass decision is making me feel." Which is the whole rainbow of emotions—rage-fueled blind anger, cheated, hurt, abandoned, confused—basically any emotion except happy.

Not happy because humor didn't help this situation one fucking bit.

"I thought you might find solace in a familiar, quiet environment."

The room is anything but quiet—if he concentrates hard enough he can make out the sounds that Hu is right, are familiar to him after five weeks. The grumble of the kettle starting to boil, the drip from the loose kitchen faucet, whatever background ambiance he's chosen today—it sounds like it's the singing bowls again—something he didn't existed until they had a whole conversation about them one day so he didn't have to talk about what it was like to watch Jackson die, or how he felt when he saw Vala beaten.

"I should've known it was coming." His jaw is very tight, almost aching, and he refuses to sit straight, to make eye contact, to form more than a sentence at a time because every time he thinks back to the conference room, him sitting closest to the head of the table where Landry would sit and Vala shuffled in—her hair still a frizzy, uneven mess, her arm slingless but still all chewed to hell. She plopped next to him, elbow angling in on the table to rest her head, until the pain of her shoulder snuck up on her and she jumped back, lolling in the half rotation of the chair.

Only her rotational squeaking entertained the room before she cleared her throat. "How is your lip?"

"It's doing better, stitches came out yesterday." He sat perfectly still while one of the new nurses plucked at the thread holding his lips together. Was left with a white, jagged line through his lip, similar to the one she has under her eye.

New skin.

When he half turns to her, his own chair squeaking, she's coddling her arm against her chest—her casual lean hurt more than she let on. "How's the shoulder."

"Oh, it still bites a bit." The grins he gave him was pleasant and a conversation ender, apparently she didn't want to get into details.

"After my accident, the physiotherapists set up a schedule of exercises to do to increase the mobility of my legs, my neck. If you want, we can hit the workout room after this, see where you're at physically."

She rotates away, then swings back again, slouching down in the chair, her grin growing smaller, but more genuine. "As lovely and compelling as that offer sounds, Dr. Lam has warned me against overexerting the muscle."

"There wouldn't be any exerting, just stretches."

"I find it more interesting that you're so keen on getting me into the workout room."

She's right.

Why does he want her to go with him so badly?

Why does he need to be the one to help her with her injury when they have qualified medical professionals on staff?

Why does he actively seek her out, wanting to talk, but then shuffle back soundlessly into the dark edges of the hallway when he finds her sobbing over Jackson in his lab, holding his glasses and swiping away tears?

Why didn't he comfort her?

It's gotta have something to do with her being the only one to come back alive from the Lucien Alliance. Of him risking his own hide to pull hers out of there. Working the good cop/silent scary cop routine on the villagers with Teal'c and then commandeering a rundown cargo ship to save her ass—their asses, meant to save two. Maybe that's why he's trying to nurture her and protect her through this—because she spent three days getting hit and cut up and her shoulder dislocated, and he brought her out of it.

"I dunno, Teal'c's been pretty scarce lately and I need a workout buddy."

Ceases her rotations, both her hands pressing flat against the conference table as she leans in towards him, no smile, no tears, straight-faced with stern eyebrows. "Darling, Teal'c hasn't been here for some time."

"What do you mean?"

The kettle whistles over the echoing bowls, imagines dozens of them floating in a stream of water, clanging together, singing out that same ominous tune. Hu has his back turned, preparing his tea. "From what I understand, the disbandment isn't permanent—"

"Doesn't matter." Shakes his head, leaning it back against the couch for support. He rubs at his bottom lip, the new skin, the scar a heavy groove under his fingertip. "It's never good when the bosses want you to break apart."

"Well, how much conference were you really keeping with the other members?" Hu dusts away the cushion to his chair and plants the yellow pad down the side as he sits, cupping the tea in both hands. "You weren't really talking that much with one another."

"I wasn't allowed to because of the ongoing investigation."

"The IOA told you not to speak of Dr. Jackson's death, but all other topics were allowed."

"Well, apparently Teal'c's left the building." Shifts sitting up straight because his back is starting to hurt something fierce, the pain radiating down through his thigh to his hip, and he can't remember the last time he took the pills he's supposed to for pain management.

"Does it upset you that Teal'c left without saying goodbye?"

"No." Pauses and rethinks the situation, of how he's gonna have to spend some time on the Mitchell family farm in Auburn because after everything that's happened, he's gonna need the time away. "Or maybe? I don't know. I know he's the strong, silent type, but I thought we were closer than that."

"What about, Vala?"

He sighs, scratching at the back of his ear. "You always ask about her."

"Asking questions is my job, Cameron."

"Yeah but in every session, you ask about her."

"Have you spoken with her about SG-1 disbanding?"

"We might have talked about it briefly." Preoccupied with checking his watch and groans when he finds out that they still have almost thirty minutes left in the session. "Listen—I think I'm gonna call it today."

"We still have—"

He stands, smoothing out the wrinkles in his air force fatigues, taking a step and his leg hitches a bit before his shifts most of his weight to his other foot. "I know, but I think I've been a great guy putting up with answering all the questions I can. I've never ducked out early before, and I just found out that my team, the people I've worked with for the last five years, are either getting shipped off-world, or they're already there."

"If you answer me one question honestly, I will conclude the session and write it off as a full completion."

Halts at the doorway, interested in not having to repeat the session. "Depends what it is, Doc."

"Are you glad Vala survived in lieu of Dr. Jackson?"

"I'm not glad Jackson died—"

Hu raises his hand to stop his forming outburst. "I didn't ask that. I asked if given the choice and being able to only save one, would you have picked Vala."

"I—"

"Don't think, Cameron, just answer."

"Yes."

"Why is that?"

Because—he will never admit it—but when he saw her, all black and white on the security monitor, skin all black and blue and the blue and her eyes, and her shoulder—it got him upset, physically upset enough to fight any Lucien Alliance member that stood in his way, upset enough to pin her injuries onto himself and Jackson.

Upset enough to not feel Jackson's death until the next morning on the Odyssey because he sat in her room for more than an hour wondering if she was going to wake up, if she would ever tell him what happened because he wanted to know the guys—what they looked like, their names—wanted to bomb the whole goddamn Lucien Alliance.

Because after being told that the team was indefinitely disbanding and that he would be reassigned to lead a different team barring a clean investigation and she would be thrown into an off-world liaison for some random planet they did go to the workout room.

He held her arm with both hands, directed and rotated until she hissed in pain, and she talked to him the whole time, but he didn't hear a word because it hard to concentrate on her voice, and her skin, and the tautness of her muscles, and the bruises flourishing from beneath the strap of her black tank top, and her slumped over in black and white.

When she asked him a question and he didn't answer, she shoved him, and he let her. She shoved him again and with her weak, healing arm, pointed her other index finger at him, close to jamming it into his chest, her face flushing, her eyes glassy as she went off on him and he didn't hear a damn thing.

She wound herself down, the first two strikes of tears ripped down her cheeks, and shook her head solemnly at him, then her words rang out clear as church bells. "You're abandoning me."

Then he didn't respond from shock, from hearing her voice raspy from screaming and her expression completely empty of anything but pain.

"You're abandoning me." Arm cradled against her chest like a bird with a broken wing.

When she turned he reached out to bring her back, fingers grasping around her good arm, half turning her back, but she wrenched away.

So he did it again, with more force, with more feeling, spun her back towards him, a hand clamping down on each of her arms, then on the sides of her face, her skin slick and cold and her cheek holding the same scarred grove as his lip and he kissed her. Felt the pressure build up in his lip, not painful, just there, and she was so soft and warm and still cried as his fingers dragged across her cheek and knotted in her hair, pulling out her failed attempt at a ponytail.

Opened his mouth to deepen the kiss and her hand slithered its way between them, shoving him off, pulling apart the warmth they created together.

"This won't help." Her cheeks held a high pink blush and the rims of her eyes were very red, eyelashes clumped together, and her hair stayed down, finally given up.

But in flashes he saw her in black and white, unconscious and beaten, then in his arms as he roused her at the control panel, his cheek nudging against hers, letting her lean back against him as she surveyed the crystals and wires, felt each shallow breath she took against his own chest.

The minute he saw her in that room, that cell, he knew he wasn't leaving that base without—

No.

No, it's not that—

It's because he—alternate him—told him to cut the green wire.

Didn't know it would save just her, only trusted that whatever happened after would benefit him, the team, the SGC, somewhere down the road. She has to be the answer to a bigger problem they're going to have in the future.

"You asked why I fixate on her every time we have these sessions." Hu places his empty teacup back on the side of his desk and it's swallowed up in the shadow of the kettle. The window is still lit up, just like they're in some high-rise building, like there's rain and wind and sun—and some fountain filled with fifty singing bowls—just outside the door like there's no extenuating circumstances to these visits. "I fixate on her because you do."

"I talk about her because she's my friend—"

"She's more than that." The pad isn't even out, and that's what makes this scary, the psychoanalyzing, the laying out his faults for unprofessional purposes. "She's an object of desire to you because she allows you to live out your fantasy of being a white knight."

"She's a friend and a teammate—"

"She allows you to fixate on her rescue, her saving, instead of Dr. Jackson's death and in that way you didn't fail. You didn't allow—"

"I didn't 'allow' any of this to happen. I had to cut a wire and I cut one."

"But not the one Dr. Jackson suggested. Not the one Vala suggested. You chose it, Cameron. You ignored the answers of two teammates, who you've admitted were more knowledgeable than you on the subject, and you cut the wire you wanted."

"I cut it, because I told me to cut it."