Two Birds, Two Stones
Chapter 21
Day Job
He missed the welcoming and warm lit hallways on Moya, the familiar face of Noranti as she bobs along behind him spouting half words and tangled meanings as he ducks into his room—well his, Aeryn's, and Deke's room, only to find that woman, the lookalike, Vala kneeling on the ground with Deke resting against one of the fur blankets. His legs aren't really kicking yet because he's only a little over a month old, but they sort of jiggle as she removes his diaper, setting it on the ground beside her.
He stops walking, stops pulling the shirt that his wonderful, beautiful, firstborn son—the one to carry his hyphenated name on through the galaxy—blew chunks on—not just chunks, but basically everything he'd ever eaten—dark green and yellow blobs of sour puke just soaking into another one of his shirts.
He clears his throat, intent on making her leave so he can change in peace, maybe actually get off his feet because it still feels like his one leg has been through a bear attack or something.
Vala only glances up briefly, before darting her eyes back down, wiping the baby, whispering things, tickling his feet while she pins down another space diaper.
Is this what Aeryn does?
Just constantly get covered in puke, then change her and the baby while still being head over heels for the kid? Gently tug a onesie on him and coo how good he looks?
Is this what Aeryn is like with Deke?
She's not like that with him.
Never helps him clean off the puke that their kid manages to get all over every single piece of clothing he owns. Never smiles like that at him, like she's actually happy to see him, like he's all that matters. Never coos, saying soft words of love into his ear while she snuggles him.
"Did you need something?" Vala glances up, after guiding Deke's arm through the sleeve of the onesie. His son has stopped crying for now, but he's sort of sniveling, hiccupping, like he's not done puking or like he's still upset.
"Yeah, I want to change."
"Oh." She fastens the last button and pulls Deke to her chest as she stands. He's whimpering a bit, an obvious frown on his face. She holds him facing forward, his head a little higher than her chin, and as she bounces him, he seems to relax. "The showers are down the hall to the left."
"I know where they are." Sort of snaps because it was a long day before it was a long night. Before he got his shoulder plastic wrapped. Before he dragged his wife out of the wreckage of a lab explosion. Before he found out he's going to be a dad again.
Before he found out just now, that might not be a good thing.
"Then what—"
"I want to change in the privacy of my own room, Vala." Not so much a snap this time as it is tense words seeping through his clenched teeth.
"I'm sorry." He knows this apology, has heard it tons of time from a woman he fears more than her. He knows it's not done. "But after you thrust your recently exploded son into my arms and ran, someone had to ensure he was clean."
"Great." Bends at a huge mountain of all the clothes he and Aeryn have ever worn. There are some suspenders in here and he thinks back to when she used to wear them, to when she needed them. Now she's all plain black tee and leather pants. Now it's all babies. Just all frelling babies. "He's clean, can you get out of here?"
There's a pause, another thing he's used to, and he doesn't make eye contact with her because she might be doing that frigid glare Aeryn gives him when he does something really stupid. One that isn't even undone by life threatening situations or bodily harm or sacrificing. The one that she holds until she's too tired and then only her sleep cycle washes it away.
"Fine." It's a little too snooty to sound like Aeryn. More like a high-class scoff. She zips over to the space bassinet. "I'll leave him here for—"
"Take him." Briefly glances over his shoulder, and there's a tight pull against the skin there as well. What the hell has this colonel gotten himself in to? Whichever body part he moves, there's just a jolt of pain.
"What?"
"Take him down to command. I'll be there in a few seconds and we can try and figure out what happened."
She halts laying Deke in the space bassinet, using a hand behind his head to guide him back to her shoulder. His son is actively screaming now. "Are you upset because he threw up on you?"
"No, I loved it." Rolls his eyes, turning away from them and back towards clothes mountain to find another suitable shirt.
"He's been throwing up a lot lately." Vala bounces his son, not enough to upset an already sensitive stomach, but enough to distract him, quell the rage tears he's about to scream.
"Well, babies do that."
There's another long pause and since his back is to her he figures she must have just read the room and left like he asked.
"I'm sorry, are you upset with me for some absurd reason?"
"No."
She starts pacing back and forth in a short line with an overdramatic twist at the end, talking with emotion now, if she wasn't holding Deke, he's sure her hands would be flying around for emphasis. "Is this because I was kissing you when you showed up? Because it's not like I could control that—"
"It's not—"
"—and I stopped as soon as I realized you weren't Cameron—"
"It's not because of—"
"If anything, you should be apologizing to me."
Stops rummaging through the pile for a clean shirt, any clean shirt, and turns around a bit too quick forgetting that one of his legs is basically MIA. The seriousness, the bit of aggressiveness that leaks into his voice means nothing when he can't even balance on his own borrowed two legs, and he has no idea how this Mitchell guy deals with her. Last time it was only three hours, and he was more afraid of her frying Aeryn's body than anything else, but now that there's no threat and she's starting to be a Chiana level of annoying.
"Why should I apologize?"
"Because you were being adored by me and you weren't the man I intended to shower with my affection."
"Hey—" stabs a finger at her and hobbles around the pile, finally sighting a clean shirt. He does a golfer's stoop and hooks his finger into it, his hand still on his aching thigh. "I'm the one who shoved you off."
"You were also the one who knew you weren't where you were meant to be." The kid is wailing again. One of her hands go to the back of his head, cradling him as she nuzzles her cheek against the top of his head. "Now can you stop arguing? Your screaming is upsetting—"
"I'm not screaming," he screams, and she stops moving, he stops moving, and Deke continues to cry over everything. He sighs, wiping a hand across his eyes, forgetting to late that there's dried puke between his fingers.
"You—you do have a problem with him, don't you?"
"No—"
"Do you think he's not yours?" She may be annoying as hell, even more so than Pip, but she's more intuitive than almost anyone he's ever met. Should ask when he gets back if she can read minds, it's probably why the good ol' doc doesn't like her because she can see all the dark thoughts in his warped mind. "Because I can tell he is. You and him, and Cameron in fact, share the same stupid—"
"I—" He throws his hands out to the side, trying to redirect some of the energy he's feeling, trying to get his mind off the fact that Deke isn't his—not fully his—and all he does is cry, and he might have heat delirium or growing pains, and it's all because of his stupid genes that didn't factor in right—not to mention the fact that his babysitters incapacitated Pip, and didn't bother to get baby food when they were out at the market.
"I just want you to leave so I can get changed." Takes a big inhalation, trying to breathe out the pain, but it doesn't work. He shoves the heel of his hand into his hip, then his thigh, then gives up, spreading his hands and leaning forward facing against the bed. "Hey Grandma?"
"Grandma?"
"Noranti!?" Bellows into his comm, knowing that lady is snooping around the corner somewhere.
"Yes. Yes." As if on cue, she shuffles into the room, completely unfazed by the mountain of clothing, or the dirty diaper a DRD is trying to drag across the floor. "I've concocted more of the salve for both of your area burns. I suggest waiting longer between application to allow yourself to become acclimated with—"
"No, Noranti—" he huffs pushing himself up and away from the bed, trying to keep his voice louder than Deke's but also trying not to scare the kid. "Do you have anything I can take for my leg?"
"Well, I suppose I have some different herbs that—"
"You're not actually suggesting taking narcotics, are you?"
"That's exactly what I'm suggesting." At the end of his sentence, he rips his eyes away from her. Hobbling forward on a bone that doesn't feel connected, a bone that doesn't feel real, reels like it's scraping away at the inside of his leg, like a spoon against an ice cream carton. "Noranti, just go get the drugs."
Vala sidesteps in front of dear grandmama before she has a chance to answer. Her brows are drawn together, and he's getting that same death glare Aeryn is so fond of sending his way. "You can't put narcotics into Cameron's body."
"I just need to be able to walk—"
"Cameron walks just find with his sustained injury."
"I'm not him, okay?!" He's closer to her now, not entirely in her face because she is a woman and she is holding his son, and his mom is somewhere out there watching him, and he still has the intentions of doing her right. He sighs, trying to relax a bit, trying to think of what Aeryn would say in this situation. What would D'argo say? What would Zhaan?
"Look—" tries for a second time to remember his calm and cool demeanor. Is this what it's like when he's apart from Aeryn? Sure, they drive each other crazy, but they're also crazy about each other. The thought of her a galaxy away, pregnant, mirrors her leaving a little over a year ago, smuggling out pint-sized Deke and he hates it.
Hates feeling so helpless, like everything he does isn't enough. Hates that he loves his son, but when he holds him, and he gets thrown up on, that he can't siphon the bad feelings away from the good, that he can't just accept that the him aboard Talyn is gone. Laid the dirty work and fled—well died.
Why can't he just accept it?
"Colonel Mitchell sounds like a good guy, a boy scout even—but he's been living with this injury for years now. I've been with it for a little more than four hours." Again, tries to massage the pain out of his thigh, but it's deeper than he can reach, under what feels like layers of scars running in grooves over his fingertips. "My thigh is killing me."
Her voice drops in tone at least and octave or two, and he doesn't know how he hears her over Deke, but he does. "That's not your thigh."
"Well, I'm the one who—"
"When I was inhabiting your wife's body, I listened to your guidance, didn't I?"
"Yeah but suffering from heat delirium—which can turn my wife into a vegetable by the way—is a little different than trying to walk with what feels like a bear trap around my leg."
"Who are you to judge what goes into Cameron's body?"
Figures she's got him made, but he snaps his fingers and points at her. "You ate chicken nuggets."
"So?"
"Aeryn is allergic to them, or something."
"Or something?" She shakes her head, laying Deke down in his crib, using her pinkie to curl away the hair from her face, still carrying on a conversation with him as she swaddles the baby. "Your knowledge of your wife's medical conditions are of no importance to me currently—however, if I had known she had an aversion to chicken nuggets—say, if you told me—I wouldn't have eaten them out of respect for her body."
He groans, staring towards the ceiling as she finishes bundling up his son. "You're really going to be a stickler on this, aren't you?"
She shrugs but holds a sly grin as she stands, walking towards him and placing Deke in his arms "Maybe Cameron has an aversion to narcotics that we don't know about."
Doesn't respond, just low-level glares at her as she turns, finally leaving, but sticking him with a kid and the shirt full of dried vomit he's still wearing.
At the doorway she throws him a wave and offers a final parting point as her voice echoes down the hallway. "How awful would it be to die of an easily avoidable allergen leaving Cameron marooned in your body."
Sam's shooting her techno babble at them, trying to piece together what happened, while using a handy diagram of a long-range communication device—a thing they've seen so much of, a thing he never wants to see again in his life.
Looking back, he can't believe he thought bringing one into the SGC was going to go smoothly. How in the world did he think that he could bring a device that's fucked them over twice—one he knows is dangerous—through the gate and into a nice Area 51 stasis chamber or something, and then go to bed and then wake up with a stiff leg because he didn't get to go for a jog, and a stiff something else because he was still ignoring his dreams at that point.
Vala was way beyond right on this one—doesn't know why after four years he doesn't listen to her more, because she's right most of the time when it comes to other planets and alien devices.
Sure, she brags.
Loudly.
Never lets them live down how she saved them by destroying the supergate. Has told him how she was burnt alive so many times, sometimes he mumbles the words with her. But maybe she does it because she's tired of not being taken seriously. Maybe the way him and Jackson and Sam treat her—
Man, he misses her.
He's been here all of three hours but that's how long she was gone, and while they keep trying to formulate a plan of attack, trying to dissect what exactly happened, he keeps hoping that he'll get zapped back to a dim lit living ship that has the constant background noise of a rotating fan where he gets to see what life would be like as a space explorer.
What it would be like to raise a family—shed some light on the thoughts he's been having since he first saw her in that leather get up, and in that Qetesh dress, and then in her own version of the stargate uniform.
Knew that his thoughts weren't just physical in nature when she overtook Jackson and found him in the change room, eyeing him and it took two seconds to figure out it was her.
Knew they were dangerous when she told them she was pregnant, and his stomach dropped half out of envy, half out of worry because no one was helping her a galaxy away.
Oddly, the same way he felt when Officer Sun let it slip that she has a bun in the oven.
He doesn't have a direct connection to the woman, aside from fostering her son for the last nine days, and maybe that she looks exactly like a woman he has interests in. Investments in. A woman he would slap a stone back into that goddamn device for in a second.
Still feels concerned for Officer Sun, strangely like Vala, a galaxy away from anyone who really cares for her, and pregnant.
Sam's still spitting words that he doesn't understand and by the look on Officer Sun's face—if it's anything like the one Vala gets— she's telling him she's about to lose it.
"—What we can tell from the fluctuation of the field being emitted by our pseudo device is—"
"I'm sorry."
There's the interruption.
Officer Sun's eyes are tired, dark rings beneath them as she holds a hand against her forehead. She looks pasty but space will do that. She looks sick and exhausted. If he concentrates hard enough, he can make out the slight slant of her eyebrows, the one she's trying to hide, the way her teeth keep scratching at her lip, and her pinkie keeps twitching.
All Vala tells.
Things she does when she's worried. Won't hold eye contact, will let her gaze drift around the room, will try to fight the outward appearance of concern, the tears that wet her eyes as she scrambles to find the location of Jackson when he was taken by the Ori. As she demands he hand over the salve so she can work it into his wound as well.
"My English is not idiomatic, and—" she sighs into her hand, her chest heaving, another tell, but she straightens right away, opens the eyes she forced closed for too long, and blinks her way into an emotionless state "—I am losing my patience."
"Well we wouldn't want that." Jackson huffs from where he's fighting to stay awake a few seats away from her.
When he transferred here, found himself in Commander Crichton's body mid piss power stream—after the shock of being somewhere else, sometime else, and figuring out he was back in the SGC by seeing his reflection in the mirror, but knowing it was someone else's body because for the first time in years, there was no dull ache in his thigh—he snuck out of the room where Officer Sun was lightly snoring in the bed and it was like tiptoeing through a sleeping lion's den, and found Sam in her lab.
Sam believed him without much convincing and sent him to the conference room while she found everyone—who unfortunately were all asleep. Thinks she pulled Jackson from a desk nap in his office.
"I know I don't." The General huffs from the head of the table. He's the only one who showed up in full military gear. Sam, Jackson and Teal'c all have their BDU pants on, but different styles of black shirts. He's in a white tank and gray sweats. Not his attire of choice. "She put down fourteen privates the last time she lost her patience."
"I'm sure you have questions." Sam smiles wearily. He's not sure he's ever seen her sleep, but she doesn't look any more physically tired then he's seen her before—it's more like she's tired of the situation, which he would definitely toast to. "What's troubling you?"
Then Officer Sun turns and stares directly at him, and he really gets to see how tired her eyes are, how they stared up at him as he fed her son. How they closed as he moved closer to kiss Vala under the reflecting swirls of space dust. There are differences he can see, like if Vala ever gave him this expression, he wouldn't be this afraid and he realizes it's because he can talk Vala down. Sure she doesn't respect his authority or listen to his judgement most of the time—the way they all do with her—but if she ever looked this close to choking someone, like she did with Noranti, he could guide her away, talk it out of her.
"You're not my husband?"
Her question is simple, but he doesn't know how to answer it.
She knows he's not Commander Crichton, because he told her so in the hallway about an hour ago, before they got the debriefing of a lifetime—Knows how hopeful she is that she's wrong, that maybe her subpar English made her translate something wrong in her head.
Thinks about how Vala felt a galaxy away from them, pregnant, and terrified.
Without a single movement, with a word that's barely above a whisper, he confirms, "no."
"You're Colonel Mitchell?"
This one's a little easier to answer.
"Yes."
She rolls her lips, another nod, she's starting to get into the anxious territory now. "How long have you been back?"
Likes that she says 'back', that she hasn't become too used to living at Stargate Command, but then only a few people could go days and weeks without breathing fresh air and seeing the stars. This is still his home. Still Vala's home even if her gulps of fresh air are few and far between. "Almost five hours."
"Do you know when you'll be transferred back?"
"I'm sorry," Sam interrupts as the question gains her attention, leaning in a bit where she'd taken a seat during the conversation. "But the power of the stones vacillates making the duration of the transferences unpredictable."
"When I was transferred back to Moya, I knew that my stay would be brief."
Sam almost jumps out of her chair for this one, glad someone in this room is excited about the situation because everyone else looks pissed off, fed up, and falling asleep. "How could you tell?"
"I could feel the energy."
"You felt—energy?" Jackson's eyes are either narrowed with doubt, or he's been trying to take a quick nap.
"Yes, the same manner I feel the temperature."
"Okay—except we all feel the temperature." Jackson sighs and he leans forward on the table. He's definitely not fighting sleep as good as he usually can. "It's a basic human sense."
"And as far as I'm aware, so is having a sense of passing time, and passing distance—" while her voice remains flat, there's a flare of threat to it "—but not being human, I experience these sensations differently."
"Differently how?"
Officer Sun actually sighs at all the questions.
From what he's heard and experienced on Moya, she's not the most patient of people and SG-1 have warned him since he's been back that she's not all together helpful, especially when it comes to revealing information about her species.
"I don't see how that is pertinent to the current—"
"But it could be, Officer Sun." Sam interrupts her again, looks like she wants to reach out towards the other woman, but knows better. "We need to know as much about this situation as possible. The more information we have, the more easily we'll be able to—"
"I sense them physically."
"So do we."
"Optically."
"You can see—"
"The energies—yes." Ends the conversation as she turns her attention back to him and for a second he sees that same, vulnerable expression he's seen on Vala when he gets mad, when he reprimands her, when he pushes her away, and the guilt he feels lasts longer than her break in expression. "Why did you engage the stones?"
"What?"
"Why did you engage the stones? For what purpose?"
"I—uh—" He sits back in his chair, and scratches behind his ear "—I didn't touch the stones."
"Then why are you here?"
"I figured that Commander Crichton—"
"Why would he touch the stones?"
"I don't know."
"The last time I saw John, he was in the washroom urinating."
"Yeah. Yeah." Waves her off, because the General and SG-1 don't need to know he started this mission pantsless.
Teal'c, who he assumed was meditating through the whole meeting finally speaks. "I'm sorry?"
"It's not important."
"But Colonel Carter said that all of our personal issues and constructs were of the utmost—"
For a second there, he thinks she's actually Vala, that she's been playing him this entire time because both women have the same sarcastic sassiness in their voice when they've had enough.
"Actually—" Thankfully Sam saves him from a scolding from a wife that isn't his. "What's more important is if neither Cam or Commander Crichton touched the stones, how did they switch?"
A/N: Just an FYI that since I've finished writing the sequel t and finished the Watch the Birdie series, I'll be trying to focus more on this story since you guys seem to like it.