A/N:Just a quick FYI, I'm up to chapter 19 in this story, but writing will probably slow down as, again, I have no clue what I'm doing. I've exercised all the plot I had, and can't write more until I think up more to write.
Two Birds, Two Stones
Chapter 13
Celestial Bodies
Aeryn starts screaming.
He's in the bedroom—yanking on the uniform they insist he wear even though he's not a part of their happy space program stating it's for safety—it's not, it's for conformity—and his wife starts screaming bloody murder from the bathroom.
She never screams.
Well, if she's having a kid—or if she's being tortured.
But she's screaming—almost high-pitched.
Almost girly.
"Aeryn?" He yells back, fumbling steps as he tries to yank on pants one leg at a time that are too loose after only wearing leathers for the last four years. He trips, catches himself with the tips of his fingers against the floor, and pushes himself up into a full scramble as he tears open the bathroom door. "Aeryn, what—"
She's standing in the corner, her chest pumping, her hair and body dripping water all over the floor. She's sort of hunched over, each of her hands covering delicate features that he knows inside and out—that he's friends with, that he would gladly invite to poker night. There's more water on the floor than there is in the tub where ice cubes still float languidly—he slipped in a bag, got the tub ready for her, smiling and satisfied after their shower excursion and tried to keep his mind in that headspace instead of thinking of spending the better half of the day with the team again.
He chances a step forward, an amused grin tugging on his lips. "Honey, what—"
"Mitchell, what the hell are you doing?"
"You screamed like a banshee so I—wait, Mitchell?"
"While I understand I'm the content of your dreams." She's shivering back against the wall now, visibly shaking as lazy drops of water still streak down her arms. "Can you put that aside for a moment to find me something? A towel, a blanket, perhaps dirty laundry."
He can still see the scar on Aeryn's stomach, the place she was stabbed by Larraq—or the virus formally known as Larraq—and it's Aeryn's body. Like he's said, he knows her dips, her hips, and her nips intimately.
"Mitchell," her voice is parsed by her chattering teeth. "Please."
"Holy frell." It's more of a mutter to himself, but he repeats it, just so she can hear. "You're not Aeryn."
"No, I'm not, and I'm freezing off my—"
"Oh God." Realizes that there's someone possessing Aeryn in the bathroom—nude. Probably woke up in the shock of an ice bath. He opens the cupboard and yanks out two towels, tossing one to her, which like Aeryn—because she is Aeryn—he thinks she's a she—swallows up most of her body.
She sighs, body still high-power shivering, as he approaches her with the second towel. "Who are you?"
Her face scrunches into confusion, and he's never seen Aeryn make that face in all their time together, a little disgusted, a little playful, and it makes him chuckle. "I'm Vala, who else would I be."
"Well, Aeryn for one."
"Aer—oh Office Sun?" Turns towards the mirror, wiping the remaining water off her face with the towel she snagged from him and he didn't even notice. "Really Mitchell, we have to talk about your conduct. This voyeurism of yours has taken on an identity far to—" She stops herself midsentence and turns back to him just watching her. Her body moves differently, not as stiff, not as beaten down. More musically, like dance, steps light and bounce, lips pink and grinning, eyelashes fanning and blinking with those Bette Davis's. "You're not Mitchell are you?"
She sounds vaguely concerned because, well, he did just see her naked, but technically, it's not cheating or even lecherous, because that's his wife's body that she's hijacked—right? "Are you the look-a-like?—the chick that classicist is obsessed with?"
Clasps her hand together for a sec, showing all her pearly whites, and then bouncing by him. "Daniel talked about me? Did he miss me? What did he say?"
She's surveying the room now, the unmade bed, the discarded clothing Aeryn didn't get around to picking up. She gives him a suggestively cocked eyebrow.
"The doctor really remains neutral to bad on the things that he says about you, but he doesn't stop talking about you, or checking out my wife for that matter."
"Oh, he checked me out?" She clasps her hands again, and the towel starts to slip.
"Hey, Wardrobe Malfunction." Ducks his head away, not even really knowing why now, but it still feels like the right thing to do. "Maybe grab some clothes?"
"Excellent idea, Darling." She follows his finger where he points, tugging open a drawer and finding only t-shirts and shorts, because it's all Aeryn can stand. "This is not her attire—is it?"
"Yeah, she has a sensitivity to the heat."
"That's why your quarters are so cold."
His quarters with the two-bed—that stupid tiny bed and the space bassinet for his son that doesn't stop crying and— "You've been there."
"Yes."
Turns his back as the thump of the towel hits the ground and the ruffling of shorts against her legs echoes in the room. "Is Deke okay?"
"Oh, he's a wonderful baby. He has your wife's eyes you know."
"I know."
She grins to, pointing to him. "He has that smile too."
"So what's the good word from the SS Moya—"
But she's too preoccupied preening herself in the mirror—trying to make the shorts and the shirt longer—to hear him. "Does you wife really get to waltz around in such little clothing? I'm not allowed to run out of my room in my jammy jams when I have a bad dream and need to know the world's not ending—"
"Can you just tell me—"
"But Mrs. Cretin can just bounce around—"
"It's Crichton and she doesn't bounce—"
"With little shorts and more of a selection of shirts than I've ever received—"
Moves with a hop in her step towards the closet, tugging out one of the zip-up sweaters with the military insignia on it.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Scantily clad may work wonders for your wife, but as soon as I step my behind out of this room, at least a dozen people will go tell me to change." She closes the closet, which bangs against the mound of hangers sticking out, the door still ajar.
"You're going to overheat, you're in my wife's body—"
"Really?" She glances down, spinning, examining, and then presses by him. "How can you tell?"
"Scar right hip." Birth mark on the sweet spot of her left, but that's just something for him and Aeryn.
Without hesitation, she yanks down the shorts, causing him to flinch and spin with his back to her again.
"Huh, you're absolutely right. We must have switched temporal positions and not physical ones."
He stops in the doorway of their bedroom, watching her open the minibar fridge where they keep cooling packs and bags of ice. "You know about the transferring?"
"Oh Darling, I'm the resident expert." She stands, and pouts, and it's another face he's never seen Aeryn make, so innocent, naïve, bratty. "Is there a reason this food receptacle is full of ice?"
"I told you, Aeryn has sensitivities to heat she needs—"
"It is rather hot in here now that you mention it." Fans the collar of her sweater, glances at the ducts in the ceiling. "Have they not fixed the heat yet?"
"You know damn well that they're never going to fix the heat."
"Hmm," she hums, slipping by him and into the small living room, knowingly punching in a code on the door. "Perhaps they're more concerned with collecting their two marooned operatives."
The door opens and she slips out into the hallway fast enough to almost disappear in a crowd of uniformed clad men. He jogs to catch up with her, slowing at her side like an old farm dog. "I think they're keeping it hot in here to keep Aeryn under control."
"Don't be ridiculous." She waves him off, stopping at the elevators and fanning the still zipped sweater collar. "It's still hot because the Tau'ri are completely inept when it comes to prioritizing."
"You think they got bigger fish to fry?"
"I think that in the matter of days, they will realize it truly needs to be seen to."
Is gonna ask the what exactly she means, because it's cryptic enough to be mildly threatening, but the elevator doors ding open with the classicist standing inside, his nose so deep in a big old book that his glasses are threatening to fall off.
"Daniel." She beams striding into the elevator with her arms wide for an embrace. "I heard that you were checking me out."
He's about to grab her, tug her away from the good old doctor—it is still Aeryn's body, after all—but surprisingly the doctor keeps her at arm's length. She huffs out a laugh, but by the sound of her voice, no longer commanding and upbeat, she's obviously hurt. "Didn't you miss me at all?"
The classicist ignores her completely, instead speaks directly to him, "What's going on?"
"This is your girl, Vala." He drops a hand on her shoulder, mostly to sneak around her and actually into the elevator, but also to gauge her heat, which is climbing, but not yet dangerous. She doesn't seem to notice or care that much. "In Aeryn's body of course."
The classicist's eyes dart from him to her—she's got that bright grin again—then back to him. "You're kidding me."
"Perhaps you'd like me to recite one of your credit card numbers?"
"Alright, enough Vala." The doc adjusts the glasses on his face, his nose a little shiny with sweat. "When did this happen?"
"About half an hour ago." She turns her back to the classicist, now uninterested, watching the numbers count down instead and suddenly he feels like he's watching a soap opera play out before him.
She's dramatic as hell and he's a massive jerk, and they're already butting heads.
They have to have slept together or are sleeping together now.
"Half an hour? What have you even been doing?"
"If you must know, I've been situating myself, galaxy jumping isn't exactly easy work, Daniel."
"Were you even going to bother telling me you were back? Or were you saving that for when you were more situated?"
Not this guy. At least not with his wife's body.
Without missing a beat, she glances over her shoulder, her face as stoic as Aeryn's, and she deadpans, "no, I was going to come find you after I ate, why do you think I engaged the button for the commissary level?"
He doesn't know much, but he's starting to like this lady.
"Vala?"
Realizes he's dozed off, the lights have been lowered and the privacy curtain engaged. At the foot of the bed, Deke switches between snoring and gurgling, and as long as he's not crying, the kid can make whatever noise he wants.
"Vala?"
Asks again to the space he knows is empty except for his toothless roomie, still happily asleep in the makeshift cot. Tries to remember what happened—the shoot out. Chiana unconscious and banged up—her wanting to sacrifice her damn self again and he doesn't know what happened to make that her first course of action, but he knows it's going to take years to ensure her that she's not everyone's kamikaze plan.
He sits up, ignoring the pain in his thigh, drilling through the spent muscle from carrying Chiana, from dragging Vala, from just booting it the hell out of the cesspool of a marketplace. Why did the old lady even suggest that damn planet? Moves to jab a thumb into his muscles to offer relief, but his shoulder flares up, not bad—definitely not as bad as it was—more like someone slapped his Miami Beach sunburn. It smells like peppermint and vaguely like her—and he doesn't want to know why he knows her scent so well now.
About to stand, go searching for her—said she was going to hold mass over Chiana, but they both knew that was a lie as soon as the words spilled out of her mouth. Figured she was in shock, that maybe the gun show today dredged up some sort of bad memory as Qetesh, or hell, even as her. He's willing to bet she's seen her fair share of bloodshed in battle and covers it with shiny hair things and a bouncy step.
About to go, but the doors hiss open and she hobbles in, her left leg a little stiff, her face devoid of her flashy grin, or her coquettish winks—maybe the shootout today scared her more than she's willing to talk about. Wants to ask her to sit down and talk, but he knows that she'll blow him off, wants to tell her to just lay down, she doesn't have to do or say anything, just settle until she realizes that she's safe.
Wants to tell her that he would never let anything happen to her because she's a member of his team.
It means something, but it doesn't mean everything, and in this case it means nothing because being on SG-1 has absolutely nothing to do with it.
But she ignores him completely, grunting as she marches, heavy-booted towards the sleeping baby.
"Vala, he's still asleep. You shouldn't—"
She whisks him out of the bassinet in a swoop of her arms, her balance off kilter a bit, and as Deke wakes up and starts with the waterworks, she speaks to him not in whispers, but hushed tones. In a language he hasn't heard before, that the gunk hey got shot up with when they got here straightens out and spits into English for him, so he no longer hears the throaty gulps and gasps.
"Vala?"
Deke's tears begin to dry as she brings him closer to her face, her smile wide—but not bright, more tired—she cradles him to her shoulder, caressing the back of his head, and placing a gentle kiss in his peach fuzz hair.
"Hey." He stands, groaning at the weight on his hip, but shifts and it eases up a little. "You want to tell me what—"
She half turns, apparently noticing him for the first time, and a grin—still not flashy—lights up her face. "John." A single laugh as she hugs the baby and hobbles over to him. "How did you frelling know?"
Before he can answer her, she slides a hand to his cheek, frozen fingers licking at his stubble, and pulls him down for a kiss.
This isn't Vala.
She doesn't smell the same.
Whoever this is, realizes it about the same time as him—when tongues come into play. The woman shoves him away and instinctively reaches to her side for what he's guessing is the weapon that Vala felt no need to arm herself with once they returned from Valdun.
"Who are you?"
"It's okay." Raises his hands in surrender, lets her know he doesn't mean harm to her or the baby. The baby. She takes a quick glance at Deke, and he knows, she's his mom. "Officer Sun?"
"It's Sun."
"How did you get back?"
"You will tell me who you are before I have Pilot vent you into space."
"I'm Colonel Cameron Mitchell. I'm—"
Her shoulders relax, her tight grip of Deke loosens a bit. "You're the one who switched with John."
"Yeah."
He rounds the bed uneasily, still wary of her because from what Moya's crew has told him, she could kill him eight ways from across the room right now. "How—where's Vala?"
"Vala?" Speaks the name awkwardly, like it doesn't belong in her mouth. "Forgive me, you all have such stupidly complicated names. Which one—"
His brows drop and his lips straighten into a serious expression as he completes his tour around the bed. "The one who switched with you."
"I've no idea. I didn't see her."
"Did she switch with you?"
"That would be an educated assumption."
He approaches, using cautious steps still, not wanting to impose, especially on a reunion between her and Deke. She grins down at the baby again and he fells compelled to tell her, "we've been taking good care of him. We both feed him and wake up when he cries—well usually."
"Then you have a step up on my husband." She shifts Deke's weight further to her left side and grunts in pain, her back hunching over.
"Hey, are you okay?"
"This is not mine."
"What?" He scurries closer, still worried that she might snap his neck in half, or maybe tear him apart, but he thinks maybe something happened to Deke, got switched with some random SGC baby or something. "What isn't yours?"
When he reaches out a hand to help her to sit, she doesn't take it, guides it away from her, but doesn't slap it from the air. Pulling off the idea that she might hurt a kid that doesn't belong to her—even out of frustration—or that she could drop him from doubling over in what he thinks is pain, he offers, "I can take him while you sit."
"Please do no offer the idea of removing my son from me, Colonel." It's said in the most removed tone he's ever heard, but the words are blunt as hell.
She shuffles to the bed, laying Deke, who gurgles, now on the brink of sleep again, in the fur blanket he and Vala shared once. She stands straight, her fingers moving curiously over her body, prodding down the side, and then over her hip to the center of her pelvis. Her eyes dart up from the examination. "This is not my body."
"Okay." Keeps a calm tone, still unsure. "What do you mean?"
"For starters this room is much too cold for me, when I know that the temperature is optimal minus two which should be perfect for my body." She flaps out of the long jacket, the red piling against the floor, and her hand moves back to her side with a hiss until she tugs the shirt up.
He would look away, but the action is so quick he doesn't have a chance to—instead he's gets a full view of the navel, the hips that have been guest starring in his dreams for the last few days, and the mass of blistering skin that's puckering and oozing at her side.
"Also," Officer Sun sighs, flinching as she runs a finger against the injury, "my body is not injured."
"What the hell happened?" Rushes to her side again, but she quickly curtains the t-shirt, perching on the edge of the bed with a hiss.
"You tell me, I'm going to guess you ran into Peacekeepers and they had acidic rounds."
"We had a shoot out." He starts tossing things around the room in search of the jar that the old woman gave him with the ointment. "I didn't know she got shot. Why didn't she tell me she got shot?"
Officer Sun grunts again, this time with a hand against her stomach. "Did she also not inform you of her other injury?"
Stops dead in his tracks, turning back to her, and he's sure for once he's as pale as she is. How did she get injured—did she fall off that damn walkway in Pilot's room? Did that old woman do something to her? He sets the jar back down in case the old lady isn't on the level. It's something they need to discuss. "What other injury?"
"She's bleeding."
"Bleeding where?"
"Internally, the organs in her pelvis are in distress."
"What?" Okay he doesn't understand again, but she's letting him get close to her, close enough to tell by her expression, that she's probably on the level. "How do you know?"
"Because I'm fairly certain there is blood expelling from within her—"
"What?"
"There is cramping here, right here—" she touches the area again and it's not exactly Vala's stomach. "And when I stand I can feel the—"
"Oh." Gets it at the last second, and almost throws a hand to his face because he's such an idiot. Sets down the rags he's gathered to stem the blood, although he's not sure, she might need them. When Officer Sun watches him, her hand balled and her knuckles pressing into her pelvis, he explains, "that's normal."
"How is this normal?"
"Well, not the gun shot." He stands before her, holding out the ointment for her to use, she uncaps the jar, smelling it, and nodding with approval, apparently having used this from the old woman before.
"You're telling me that human females just bleed from their—"
"It happens once a month." He turns away from her, as she lifts her shirt over Vala's body, and starts slathering on the salve.
"What frelling purpose could bleeding once a month possibly have?"
He shrugs, a little amused by the whole situation, but he sort of understands her freak out. "It's a fertility thing."
"So, she is incapable of having children?"
"No, it means she can—"
"Bleeding this much, even for one day—"
"It's usually for a week—"
"How is she not dead?"
"You know—" peeks over his shoulder and she's pulled the shirt back down, capping the salve again. "I've asked myself that at least once a day since I've met her."
Deke stirs, and whatever rebuttal Officer Sun has dies in place of her snuggling up to her son. She speaks again, a different language that the translators in his head scramble to give him the English of, little half whispers and words planted in kisses on Deke's face. When she pulls the baby back to her shoulder, she groans and adjusts her back. "This is really uncomfortable."
"This isn't something I worry about."
"You should."
He steps away from straightening the blankets in the bassinet and swallowing awkwardly when looking at the pile of discarded clothing still in a pile on the floor. "Is it that bad?"
"It's manageable, but as her partner—"
"Whoa, let me cut you off right here." Holds both his hands up again, and her eyes scroll away from Deke, to hold his gaze. Vala's big flirty eyes that hold nothing that he can recognize now. "We are not partners."
"Really?" Officer Sun stands, bouncing Deke in her arms, and walking around the room, taking note of the discarded clothing, the blankets slipping off their bed. "Because it seems like you've been bunking together."
He zips to the bed, starting to fold the blankets, cleaning up the place a little too late—maybe trying to get rid of the evidence. "We did it or safety, and to help each other with the baby."
She stops rocking Deke, and turns to him, her eyes heavy, and a twitch of a grin pulling on her lips. One Vala sometimes uses. "You're not partners, yet you're co-parenting my son."
"Well, if you put it that way, it sound incriminating."