A/N: Please note this chapter follows a three (solar) day passage-basically by the end of the chapter everyone has been switched for five days.
Two Birds, Two Stones
Chapter 10
Better Than None
After three solar days, the need to be reunited with her son does not decrease.
However, she begins to grow calmer despite the situation, despite the temperature constantly infiltrating her body, forcing a more exhausted and fatigued state, negating her usefulness.
Through the burden of her powerlessness, trust begins to form with the military employees she interacts with routinely, the gentle blonde colonel, the gruff general, the rambling doctor, and the big one who speaks less than she does. She still ignores the pleasant chitchat they make to fill the silence as it is not a prerequisite for a successful mission, and their questions quickly evolve into concerning her physique, why exactly she finds this heat nearly unbearable when they simply discard their jackets and roll up their sleeves. Questions about her race, where she was born, how they should address her, what her abilities are, if any.
Ignores them because questions such as these are not expediting the reunion with her son.
The colonel dresses the information gathering as bonding, speaking about her son as if they've met, as if she was present for his traumatic birth, as if this colonel has a single idea of the roiling occurring in her body from the separation.
The doctor feigns curiosity, boasts his prowess in multilingualism, speaks to her in languages that three solar days ago, she would have translated automatically. He flips between languages like they're pages in one of his large texts. Books, that when he won't embrace the silence, she wants to beat him with.
The general notes that fact-gathering is part of any mission, part of sending her back to Moya, her friends, her son, her climate-controlled room that allows her the simple pleasure of sleeping through the night before she birthed a boisterous baby.
The large one says nothing, but nods or bows civilly. She prefers him the most.
She does not answer the majority of the questions, instead leaving them for John.
The bond between them is growing strong once again, allowing them to combat their apprehensions together. Revived the first night they shared a bed in their assigned room where he woke with her, shared the burden of her weakness to the heat, slumped on the tiled floor beside the basin she sat in, filled once again with ice, and chattered to her as he fought sleep.
Held her hand as she relaxed into the comfortable temperature, but when she became too listless, her movements lagging as the cold temperature superseded the hot, and the sleepless nights from caring for Deke added to her grogginess, and she closed her eyes, he shook her awake immediately, shoving his hands through the ice and whisking her up and into a stiff towel. Talked to her in that worried ramble as he rubbed heat back into her shoulders and held her upright when her eyes closed again.
He apologized for her weakness to her, wished he knew of a better way to help, and embraced her.
After that night they reduced fluid levels quite frequently, more often then on Moya, even before Deke was born.
More often then on Talyn.
Finally, although stranded in another universe, she felt their relationship mold into what it was meant to be, felt completely connected to her husband and trusted him implicitly. Knew he wouldn't divulge too much pertinent information concerning her biology.
It is the start of the fourth solar day as they lay in bed, post-coital, sheets rippled and piled at their feet. He holds an ice pack to the back of her neck, under the hair he fanned across the pillow, and purposefully places another across her exposed navel, enjoying her jump and gleefully accepting the shove she delivers into his shoulder with a deep laugh, catching her hand on her recoil and placing individual kisses upon each of her fingertips.
The device on the nearby table rings, not the one meant to rouse them from sleep, but the one that releases some form of klaxon. John instinctively know what to do, reaching and retrieving the handle, the alarm stops as he brings it to his ear.
"Yeah?" He grunts into the receptor—he's explained the purpose of the device before, a comm of sorts, but immobile, tethered to the wall. "Well, that's good."
He rolls away from her, his attentions on the comm conversation, and when she shifts from the bed, his hand instinctively reaches behind him for her. A clumsy gesture, but a sweet one. She takes pity on him, directs his hand to cup her cheek as she relaxes back against a mattress, and two very watery bags of ice.
"All right, we'll be up in a few microts—minu—whatever." He crashes the handle back onto the remains of the device, his free hand drifting to her hair, pulling, massaging as she nudges up against him, her chin against his ribs, feeling his dramatic inhalation as she rests her cold hands against skin.
He rolls over on his back, kisses her, then again, longer, harder, prolonged and interestingly, with that cheeky grin. She breaks the embrace, keeping cool fingers at his temples, grounding him. "What was that about?"
But, he flips her into his lap, runs his fingers tantalizingly slow over her hips, then higher to her ribs, her neck, before sitting up and popping a final kiss on her lips. "They think they might have found a few planets that could have stones on them."
Apparently, this is what these people do.
Dress in tan, or black, or dark green outfits, and strap themselves down with weaponry, the 'essentials'—Peacekeepers would snort at the opulence—and leave this version of Earth to any number of unexplored planets eager to explore.
They're allowed to view an arched sculpture carved with ornate symbols, and she's knows this is the device they call a Stargate. When the colonel mentions it is a controlled wormhole, John guffaws. She rolls her eyes and steps away from the doctor, who purposefully took a step closer.
Afterwards they file into a meeting room, with a large table and several chairs. The colonel blathers off a list of five planets, which is almost too perfect a number as there are five of them, but when John reads her intuitions and presumes everyone is to go to a separate planet, the colonel and the doctor just laugh.
"No, we all have to go to each one together," the colonel clarifies.
John crosses his arms, and straightens his back, the positions he tries when attempting intimidation which never work on her because she can read through to the same cheeky grin. "Wouldn't that take a hell of a lot longer?"
"Yeah, but it would be a hell of a lot safer," the doctor counters, and mirrors John's stance before taking a direct look to her.
Safety is also what these people do.
It is surprising that she and John have been allowed to roam through the complex as freely as they have.
Much more surprising after the requirements before gate travel are explained to her.
The rest of their fourth solar day is spent proving themselves to a team of humans who have no idea what it is like in the rages of space.
They're taken to something called a range, which in her mottled English, she confuses for an oven, and told to fire at targets to prove their abilities with weaponry, which everyone, including the general agrees is a waste of time.
They both have a sparring session with the large, silent man, to prove themselves in hand-to-hand combat. John is immediately knocked off his feet due to his bantering, but she is easily able to seize the upper hand. She suspects the man was withholding his full force. Perhaps because she's a woman. Perhaps because she resembles his friend, whom, she's been frequently told, she acts nothing like.
Lastly they're sent to a doctor to clear them medically. It's the simplest out of all the processes, yet it by far requires the most time. Once the doctor is made aware they're not from this Earth and have had prolonged exposure to the affects of space, she wants to run tests before inoculating them against anything.
A blood test, a swabbing of their mouths, and some form of Diagnosian scan for the entire body.
John argues, not really seeing the point, and she flat out refuses, using the little bit of English they know she has, she crosses her arms, leaning back in her chair and reiterates, "no."
"The scan might be beneficial to you." The colonel takes the seat beside her, nearing her, but never touching her directly. However, she refuses to even offer eye contact. "It may be able to tell us why your so susceptible to the heat."
"No."
"It might allow us a method to bypass your response to the heat." The doctor is approaching her, and from behind him, John jolts awake, taking giant strides to be at her side first.
"Her and I know why she's susceptible to the heat, which is enough." He grasps her hand, starting to grow too hot again in the bright lights of the medical unit, and starts to draw her away and to the door.
"So, you're just going to give up on finding stones?"
"If it means keeping her body private, then yes."
"But these stones can get you home—Officer Sun, they can get you back to your son."
"I will not allow my body to be subject to another slew of invasions and tests." Speaks it in perfect English, to the whole room which falls silent. The two humans from surprise at her prowess with words, and John because he knows the situations she's referring to, knows she will not be taken prisoner again.
As the doctor tries to stutter out a sentence, John keeps hold of her clammy hand, directing her attention to have a dialogue with only him. "What about just the swab and the blood test. You did it when you were on my Earth. You didn't care much about them."
She has her convictions and, under normal circumstances, holds herself to them as a method to ground her, to give her strength and direction when she feels so lost—holding a child that will not stop crying, yet now in the absence of his weight, his noise, she finds her convictions bending.
"I'll do it too. We can get it done at the same time, like matching tattoos." He tries to lighten the mood, swings her arm in a mock dance and wears that lopsided grin their son inherited. But something still feels dangerous about the situation, allowing bits of her biological material, even a small portion to be processed for examination—she may end up turning into Pilot again.
But John draws her near, and the voices of the others fade away until she can just hear his breathing, feel the hot puffs of air against her cheek, and he mumbles, "we gotta do this honey, we gotta do it for Deke."
Obligations and restrictions force a separation upon them.
Since John is human, despite his marginalization from belonging to another galaxy, his tests prove simple to follow. She sits beside him as they swab his mouth and cap the small bit of material that absorbed his saliva. His hand cups her thigh while they tie a tourniquet around his arm and draw blood from a vein, something he says he's never been good with, explaining getting needles and shots and how his mom would take him out for a milkshake after.
"So, she bribed you?" Her voice is coy, but she lovingly strokes a hand through his hair as the doctor cocks a curious eyebrow at them before bandaging up his arm.
"No, she gave me something to look forward to. I had to get the needle, but she made me think of a good thing instead of being afraid."
She feels an unbalance within her, equating to knowing that she wants to do that with Deke, that when he faces hardships, she wants him to focus on the good that will be birthed from the suffering, not the pain and strife to achieve it.
But the notion isn't just the yearning for her child, it's equally terrifying in a different but oddly familiar way.
John sits with her while they draw her blood and she doesn't flinch. She waits as they tourniquet her arm in the same manner, and tell her to make a fist, which she does in defense, until he lowers her arm gently away from threatening the doctor, holding it with his hand. She wants to watch as they draw her blood, the same way they did with him, the small vial growing dark, but he tips her head up, his eyes resting on hers and he talks to her so softly, that she doesn't realize they've finished until the pressure relieves on her arm.
"See that?" Caresses her cheek and grins at her, the same lopsided one that sometimes graces their son's face. "You did great."
Wants to tell him she wasn't worried about getting her blood drawn, or about getting her mouth swabbed, although she didn't enjoy the process. Is more worried about the pinch inside of her, the something growing heavy but still unnervingly familiar.
Her test takes longer to run due to unknown variants in her blood, and after already researching and waiting for three days, the humans are getting restless and wish to start exploring other planets in search of the stones. Since nothing extraordinary appeared in John's medical samples, the doctor clears him to travel off world.
She, however, must remain behind.
Promised it would only be the day, as she may be needed to answer any questions the doctor may have.
She already knows she will not.
Eventually they relent, because John can help more, and the planet they choose for their first mission is what the colonel calls 'tropical', which John explains indicates the temperatures are higher than average, meaning she wouldn't be of any use anyway.
Jealousy invades her as she stands stagnant in the room after kissing him goodbye and watches him march through the blue eye of the gate. The general stands beside her, reading the sudden falling of her face as concern for her husband, perhaps the undulating concern for her son, and careful not to touch her, he states matter-of-factly. "He'll be fine, P3J-222 is a beach resort of a planet."
But her sick expression wasn't for her son a galaxy away, or her wormhole enthusiast husband who cheered as he walked through the gate leaving her behind, but because her microbe-less mind finally translated the unsettling notion within her, the ever constant pinch not strong enough to pose her discomfort on the same level as the irritating and nauseating heat.
She swallows harshly and stares at the gate, unable to do anything else, until the doctor summons her back to the medical lab.
"Your swab was fine." The doctor, a brash speaking woman, is always preoccupied, always buzzing around the small exam room, straightening canisters or smoothing out sheets. "But your blood test gave me some cause for concern."
"I know."
The doctor ignores the firm nod she gives, and drags over a chair, continuing her monologue. "There's a few hormones that are high, in humans it's indicative of—"
"I know what it means."
"Well." The doctor pulls her lips tight and sets her hands on her knees. "I'm sorry to inform you, but you'll have to be grounded to the complex for the remainder of your stay."
The void expression on her face straightens, replaces with full outrage. "Please tell me I mistranslated something—"
"It's standard military practice." The doctor scratches something onto a clipboard. "Unfortunately, you're a liability, and if anything happens to you or—"
When the doctor stands, she imitates the action, both pushing their chairs back with a screeching slide. "You know nothing of my physiology—"
"Because you won't tell us."
"You, therefore, know nothing of my reproductive cycle. This information can't be allowed to—"
"Officer Sun." The doctor holds up a hand to silence her, which only proves to provoke her more, creates more friction. "Because of doctor/patient confidentially, I cannot discuss your medical issues with anyone but you. So this information isn't going anywhere else." She slips the writing implement behind her ear and slaps the clipboard once against her leg. "And because of your pregnancy, neither are you."
The old woman, whom she is still hesitant to fully trust, herds them into the room they arrived in, the control room, or command room, or some other bravado name when it only consists of a poorly constructed table and large windows to open space.
Noranti's third eye opens, glowing green as she munches on clippings from a small satchel tied around her wrist and points emphatically at the empty slots where the stones should be. "I believe I know where you can procure a stone you're in search of."
Mitchell stands beside her, his arms crossed, and his jaw set all manly man. She's not quite sure, but she thinks he's placed himself between her and the old woman, who is still jigging around the table extremely happy, on purpose.
"You know where to get the stones, Wrinkles?" Chiana slips by them, prowls to the other side of the table, opposite of the old woman.
Noranti stops her dance, shaking her head. "No. Not at all."
Mitchell raises a hand and crunches his eyebrows, sometimes he gives her the same expression when he doesn't quite understand the level she's speaking at, if she's talking about crystals or in Goa'uld. "But you just said—"
"Stone." The old woman corrects, wiping her lower lip free of what looked to be the nail clippings she was snacking on. "I think I might know where you can find a single stone."
The room stays silent for a bit, Chiana not really interested in the conversation as she cocks her head at the device again. Mitchell sighs and patiently waits for an explanation. Little Deke begins fussing about in her arms, until she adjusts him, facing forward so he can see the long-range communication device as well.
"Well," it's a little breathless because she's still aching from her moontides. The old woman delivered on the feminine hygiene products she required and even gave her a mild pain killer, which she took despite the history between them—she still feels more lethargic than usual. However, she has to keep the optimism up, if no one else will. The baby continues to wiggle, and she bounces him a bit. "I suppose one stone is better than none."
"I'm sorry." Mitchell's arms unfold and he turns towards her, as his eye contact remains with the old woman, his large hands grasp around Deke, and he lifts the baby easily from her arms, holding him forwards, and rocking him gently until his fussing ceases.
The entire exchange is not only flawless, but more so natural, leaving her wide-eyed in surprise.
When he turns back to her, Deke almost cooing in his arms, and offering her a concerned expression, a little flutter jitters through her stomach. "Are we trusting her now?"
"Surely you're not still upset about earlier? I merely—"
"You can't just go force feeding people your dren, Wrinkles."
"It was for a good—"
Mitchell continues to watch her as the disagreement breaks out before them. She glances up at him, her eyes heavy and her smile complimentary. "I don't think we have a choice."
The planet, Valdun, is three solar cycles away, which she loosely translates into days.
Neither her nor Mitchell are particularly pleased about the travel time but use it to familiarize themselves with Mayo. The refreshers, the room in which they do laundry in a glowing pool of blue, some sort of fluid she doesn't remember the name of. She's able to clean Officer Sun's clothes which she wore and were either soiled by her, or by Deke throwing up on her.
She spends time with Pilot, learns more about the mechanics of Mayo because she's never been on a ship she hasn't been able to fly herself. She perches on his desk, or sits before it wrapped up in one of the fur blankets from the bed, and listens to him speak of his home world, his forced bonding to Mayo, how he speaks of the pain he's endured like it's inconsequential, like it doesn't matter.
How his darling voice dips and she knows he can still feel the tremors of pain the way she does sometimes.
He also tells her of Officer Sun.
Speaks so highly of her, telling of her mottled background and how her lack of compassion transformed once she met Crichton. How she visited him once in tears because she feared her child wasn't bonding to her, how being a mother was the most terrifying thing she'd ever done. How he reassured her until she fell into an exhausted sleep in the very spot before his desk that she sits now, and how he silenced everything he could to allow her the peace she deserved.
"Why did you tell me all this, Pilot?"
"Because I believe you know how to keep a secret."
Chiana and her speak more, understand each other better over their shared tattered histories of sexual deviancy. Of being judged by only a scrap of their personalities and not as a whole. By being defined by pasts they try to outrun but never quite can.
On the second night while slinking down the hallway, unnoticed by Mitchell searching for her for baby duty, Chiana tells her of a lost love, and her delightful cat eyes glass over with tears. She holds her while she cries, knowing all too much what it's like to walk away from dying loved ones.
After that, she spends most of her time on an observation deck, sometimes sitting with a novel written in a different language that she can suddenly read or leafing through Commander Crichton's star maps and journals. Sometimes she brings Deke up with her, and they fall asleep under a canopy of stars and planets in beautiful rainbow hues.
Sometimes Mitchell will wake her up for dinner, sometimes his large hands slip around the baby and remove him from her chest or side to go do a feeding or diaper change.
Despite him trusting her more, and perhaps having her back more actively than he ever has, the strain between them grows awkward. They agree, for the sake of the baby and equal workloads, that they will share the bedroom that still lingers around near freezing temperatures—she doesn't know how Deke hasn't caught a cold yet.
She shows Mitchell how to use the waste disposal in the far wall, where the diapers and clothing are located, and true to his word, sometimes when the baby cries at night, she hears him squeak up from the other bed he's dragged in from next door. It just makes more sense, more room to sleep, less intimate, but sometimes her body still tingles when his side brushes against hers in the hallway, or when she's walking too slow from fatigue, and he grabs her hand, guiding her along to see his new discovery on board.
After they've turned in on the third night, after a long conversation with Noranti, who kept jabbing a finger at the device and showing them where to place the stone once they retrieved it tomorrow, stating the symbols on the device dictated this was the one for their galaxy—what symbols she didn't know, and her and Mitchell chuckled about it later—the privacy screens are drawn and the baby is snoring softly at the end of their beds.
She hesitates, but twists from side-to-side, pent up, her back aching from her now dwindling cramps, her body restless, aching and cold in a still somewhat unfamiliar environment.
"You keep doing that, and you're going to wake the baby."
When she flips back to see him, his back is straight against the bed, his eyes closed and facing the ceiling, his words a low rumble.
Tucks her hands up underneath her head which alleviates the pressure in her neck but amplifies the one in her lower back. "I'm sorry, I'm just uncomfortable."
"Well get comfortable."
She rolls her eyes at him, at the same bluntness he's always treated her with, and flips onto her back, staring at the same ceiling indistinguishable in the dark. "Yes, that's helpful."
Assumes he will just ignore her snarky reply and go back to his macho man snoring, that somehow doesn't wake the baby. Instead he chuckles, and turns towards her, stretching his bad leg out from under the blanket. "What's wrong?"
She blinks at him, once, then twice, trying to decide if this is some sort of weird dream from the pressures of space, but then she shifts her hips and the dull pain is still present in her pelvis. A conversation, even in a dream, is better than focusing on the pain, however she still skates over the cause as Sam's advisement to 'never discuss feminine matters public', rings through her head. "Just achy from these awful beds."
"Yeah, they really suck."
"You'd think with the technological advancements, being completely multilingual, eradication of most disease, they would have developed better sleeping implements."
He chuckles again, holding his breathe when the baby stirs.
In the silence she presumes he's fallen back asleep, but in the darkness he poses, with a hint of mirth in his voice, "how pissed do you think Jackson is gonna be when he finds out that we can understand every language now?"
"Oh, he will be positively livid."
They speak more, some words she remembers, most she doesn't as she drifts into sleep. It's late—perhaps the middle of what Chiana refers to as the 'sleep cycle' when she's jolted awake by a wall of warmth, her body initially tenses, staying perfectly still, but the heat slowly works her apart from being curled in on herself.
"Sorry," Mitchell apologizes so closely to her that the word caresses her ear. Her muscles seize again, disorientated mind unable to place herself, to identify the danger. "You were shivering so loud that you woke the little guy."
At the foot of their now combined, three-piece bed, the bassinet remains undisturbed. Little Deke sound asleep inside.
"I fed him half of the juice pouch—" their triple bed shudders as he guides his bad thigh on. They're not as close as before, when they were literally hanging off each other or the edge, but there's less than a person's width between them "—I hummed him some classic rock and he went right out again."
Blinks at him through groggy eyes. "I don't understand."
"I'll explain in the morning, as long as you're okay with the sleeping arrangements." His fingers pluck a strand of her hand from her mouth and she notes the difference in temperature. Her limbs, her bones are sore from the sheer cold. When she shudders again, he tugs up his fur blanket, draping it more over her. "You're okay with this, right?"
Vaguely remembers Mitchell enamored with her and the baby, watching her for him through the slits of an untrained deceiver's eyes. Assumed it hacked into a portion of him he didn't know existed, the one where he wanted a wife and kids—or the one where he strove to achieve the family life she was able to view at his parents' farm.
"You—you were really shaking, Vala." The bed balances out between them as he relaxes onto his portion. Although she's facing away from him, she knows he's turned her way, waiting for an elaboration which she cannot offer. "You feeling okay?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, a creepy old lady fed you playdough."
"I just feel split."
Between enjoying caring for a baby that resembles her, a baby made out of love—one she didn't have to birth, one who is not her own.
Enjoying the people on Mayo, bonding with them over battle scars.
Relieved at the ebbing cramps waning in her pelvis, yet unimpressed with the idea of having to ensure safer intercourse with the boys around the base upon her return.
"Anything I need to worry about?"
And Cameron, who will cross the divide in the middle of the night, keeping her toasty, warming her strained muscles and worn bones. Knowing his arm with lap across her side as a safety precaution when really it's all idle crap and the wanting between them is only growing stronger.
Harder.
"Not right now."
A/N: I actually have the next three chapters written already. I hope to update within a week or two.