Bring it all Back
Chapter 2
Water Bug
Since teams ten to fifteen have been drafted to Atlantis to help protect against the Wraith attacks, the rest of the teams are spread pretty thin. Daniel's still finishing up his research on the Clava Thessara Infinitas, and still can't tell him if it's actually real or not. When he asked Vala about it last night while the football game played in the background she shrugged, wearing his jersey, and kept eating more than her half of the nachos. Sam is on Atlantis trying to keep Woolsey, Shepperd and McKay from spontaneously combusting before the Wraith invasion, leaving Teal'c and Vala to tail other teams when they require an extra member or two.
This time they return as a team, and with no injuries. He greets them in the gate room because he's sort of the boss of all the teams now and while he's glad no one died, and they completed the task he doled out, he doesn't hold the same loyalty to them as he does with team one. Nods at her and her slack face grows into a small grin, both her and Teal'c look exhausted, but they've been pulling the duties of several teams for the last week.
Happens to be finishing up some paperwork outside of the medical bay, approving the paternity leave of an SG-7 member, knowing that she's going to have to fill that spot sometime, and the probability becomes higher that one of these days he's going to send her out on a mission that's going to kill her.
She exits and almost walks straight by him, until he reaches out his hand and clicks his pen against her arm. "How'd the medical examination go, Princess?"
"Cameron." She startles a bit after his sentence, her movements are languid, like she's swimming through water, very thick water. "I'm sorry darling, I'm just a bit tired right now."
Slows his pace to walk beside her, swerving around cadets running to meet the shift change. "Other than that, everything okay?"
"Dr. Lam took some blood, but the cultures came back as negative." She does her best to grin up at him, but it's not toothy, it's not true and it makes him more cautious. "I think we're all feeling the effects, it was five days in a boggy river."
"Yeah the big guy looks like he could stand to catch a few Zs too." His voice echoes into the stairwell and the stomping of their feet drowns out any conversation they could have.
However, once he opens the door to her dorm floor for her, she bats her eyes at him, still wearing the half smile, and asks with the falsest innocence he's ever heard, "why Colonel Mitchell, are you telling me I don't look good?"
When she presses by him to turn into the hallway he leans in, making sure his breath is hot in her ear. "You always look good to me, baby."
She giggles, and he wants to take her hand in his, tug her close and kiss the top of her head, but if they're found out it's either the job or her, and her job or him and if they both don't choose the same thing, then they're kind of screwed.
"I still have a few hours of paperwork to do." She fumbles for her cardkey at her door and he grabs his pass, doesn't have much pull, won't have any alien space crafts named after him, but he can tell the passcode guy what to give him access too. He scans it and in a lower voice adds, "can I drop by after?"
"I will definitely be asleep by then, darling." Her hand raises, reaches to touch the side of his face, probably the area where he didn't shave quiet as well because five days with a check-in once a day is a long time to wait. But she catches herself, and the corner of her lips tick. "I wouldn't mind."
"I'll see you then. Goodnight, Princess."
He's going through an approval to switch teams, apparently Rodriguez and Walton from team six have been butting heads and causing all kinds of annoying problems by being buttkisses. One put in a requisition to transfer to team one and he laughs, thinking of how Teal'c would end him with a glare. Instead he transfers one out to team ten on Atlantis and the other one to team nine that is currently helping clean up PXF-294 after a cyclone hit a major city hard. He pulls out the next form, which is another request for parental leave from SG-7. What exactly are they feeding these boys?
He approves it, then redoes the forms for Rodriguez sending him to SG-7 instead of 9. He tidies up the papers, setting them in his outbox for the peppy office assistant to grab, when his phone goes off. It's already ten o'clock and when he sleeps in Vala's dorm he's got to be out by three in the morning at the latest. Landry is an early riser, and once commed him over the PA system when he didn't answer the private line in his room.
"Hello." Tries not to groan into the phone but it's late and he doesn't hold it in well.
"Cameron?" Vala's voice is clear but shaky on the other end.
"Yeah, honey, I'm sorry I'm on my way down. I hope you didn't wait up for—"
"Cameron, I have a problem."
She can't see. None of SG-3 can. He jumped through her door as it opened and spent the next few minutes alternating between waving his hand in front of her eyes and flashing Morse code at her face with he flashlight on his cellphone. The final time he asked if she could see, her voice cracked, and the first tear fell.
"Hey, it's okay. It's gonna be okay." He cradled her head to his shoulder and wiped away the tears on her face. "I think we should get you to Lam."
Held her hand through their jaunt in the hallway. It was late without many personnel around, but if anyone questioned him, he'd explain about her sudden medical issue. Her steps were precarious as she learned to trust his directions, when to stop, when to turn.
By the time they made it to the medical bay most of the other team members from the last mission, including Teal'c, were already present. Most of Vala's eyes had glazed over white and he tried not to stare.
"Cameron." Wrapped her cool arms around his pressing palm flat in the space between her legs. Almost everyone in the room was blind, and everyone else was medical staff concerned with the six blind soldiers, so it didn't matter much right now. "What if I don't get my sight back."
"You will." He reached behind them, stealing a blanket from a supply cart and draped it across her shoulders.
"What if I don't."
"We'll get you a seeing eye dog." His arm fell to her shoulders trying to warm her. "No that's too ordinary. How about a seeing eye pony."
"A pony?" She lit up, the top of her head just missing his chin as she bounced. "Do you promise."
"I promise if you can never see again, I will personally buy you the pony."
When she starts to fall asleep on him, that's when he notices it, the bump. At this point, he knows her body pretty well, they've spent enough time fooling around in the dark for him to be able to tell when a bone is jutting out too much, or when a curve is present and shouldn't. This one is new, and bulky and it doesn't move when she moves her neck.
Points it out to Lam on her next pass, the doctor still showing good face despite being exhausted, and at first, she balks at the idea of a connection, but when it's warm to touch she's drawn like a moth to a flame.
One CT scan later and they find it. A parasite, some sort of water bug/tick hybrid that clamped onto their spinal cords during their nights in the bog. The bugs have to be removed with surgery, but it's brief and takes more time to anaesthetize Teal'c than it does to remove the bug.
She wakes up first, as she volunteered to be the guinea pig and be put under first, and her eyes are the same beautiful blue, or gray, that they always are. He's the first thing she sees and despite his entire night without sleep he greets her with a big goofy grin. "Moring Princess."
"Dammit." His hand tightens on her knee, afraid the surgery didn't take, but she swoops her head quickly pressing her lips to his in a blink of a kiss. "I really wanted that pony."