Bring it all Back
Chapter 8
Morals
The monks miraculously agree to see them again. Despite the Jacksons' drunken tabletop dance and the raining of sacred wine over a certain gorgeous teammate, and then somehow collecting her panties int eh confusion, he still doesn't understand that part, the monks are willing to overlook everything in the name of peace which it probably what makes them monks.
The downside is it's a two-week mission because the planet is falling into something like a lunar new year, but it only happens every two decades. That means gate travel during the event is limited in most places but prohibited in areas of religious importance, like a monastery, so when SG-1 go they won't be coming back until the celebration is over and he, well he doesn't like that.
"Do you want me to bring you back anything?" She sits in his lap as they watch television from his bed, body going slack as she fights sleep. They've been watching reruns of old sitcoms, trying to find one she might like, but so far she thinks all of them are stupid.
"Just bring yourself back in one piece by the gate without dragging something else through there with you."
She tenses and tries to twist in his arms, but he's playfully keeping her in place, keeping her fingers from jabbing at him. "Oh, so now you're a laughy man, are you?"
His chest thumps hers when he laughs, his hands sliding down her arms and hugging them to her. "Comedian, the word you're looking for is—"
"Maybe I just won't come back." The way she says it, the bluntness of the sentence in the middle of a playfight, stills him.
"What?"
His arms loosen around her and she spins towards him in the bright light of a 90s sitcom streaming from the tv. "Maybe I'll just stay there among my new monk brethren."
"Then maybe I'll just have to gate in there after you." His tone still holds the playfulness they abandoned, but the grin falls of his face.
"And in this reality the monks are letting you through the gate during their little celebration." She stretches out her back, and the angle of her body against him is entirely on purpose. Her knees knock against his hips and her fingers slide over his shoulders.
"In this reality they let you through the gate. Twice." His hands slope down the curve of her back to cup her ass. She dips her head and he kisses her softly at first, then with growing intensity when he remembers the trip is two weeks. Two weeks where he's going to have to pen himself into his mountain bedroom and make things interesting by switching to his other hand. Maybe he'll finally find a sitcom she'll like.
"Remember to keep the Daniels from the wine." Reminds as he tightens the straps on her backpack. He's fawning over her, knows he's doing it and can't really stop it. Wants to grab her and give her a big, romantic, 1940s movie send off Casablanca-style, but then he'd have to kiss his job goodbye. Lately the two things don't balance like they used to.
"Very covert, Mitchell." Daniel One scoffs as he brushes by Daniel two who's loading something onto his data tablet. At first, he thinks One's referring to his not covert at all preening of his beautiful girlfriend that he's about to send back into the field with two Daniels, a Teal'c and a hell of a lot of monks. Then he understands it was a blast at his lame joke attempt, which really wasn't a joke at all.
She's staring up at him, with that wide hopeful grin actually waiting to hear his rebuttal, and he has to copy Teal'c's hands-behind-the-back pose to not touch her again. "If they do their Coyote Ugly routine again, just offer one of them up as a sacrifice."
"Coyote Ugly? What the hell—"
"You couldn't have chosen something more topical? Like, I don't know—Cocktail?"
Picked Coyote Ugly because she was obsessed with that movie for two months about a year ago and he expected to have to sweep up a lot of bottle glass, but she caught every single one she threw, and then she bit her lip and raised her eyebrows at him and they didn't make it to the bedroom. "Try to pawn them both off as a two-for-one special or something."
"And with those inspiring words from our team leader—"
"Perhaps, we should limit the amount of whine the Dr. Daniel Jacksons are allowed to embrace."
"Big Guy with the jokes." Claps a hand to Teal'c's hard shoulder while both Jacksons roll their eyes.
The chevrons lock into place and he takes a step back, not like he used to, did he even make it to two-hundred missions over an almost five year period? It gets him a bit nostalgic, a bit envious as he watches them line up, gear in tow and they still look excited to travel, well except for the Jacksons who look pissed.
"Lighten up Jacksons, two weeks with monks should be summer camp to you."
"Two weeks away from you is a good enough reward."
"Yeah." He rubs at the back of his head. Two weeks is a long time. "Try having to deal with two of me."
Vala throws up her arms just after the kawoosh bursts through the room. "Everyone's a laughy man."
The first three days go by without a hitch. He settles into paperwork. Rodriguez is requesting another transfer because apparently Major Dumas has some leadership styles that he doesn't quite agree with. Jacques also has requested a paternity leave starting at the end of the year, and they're losing soldiers to family, which is better than the alternative he supposes. Maybe this will let him get back out into the field a bit.
On the forth day, he's sipping his mint tea because Lam keeps giving him shit for drinking coffee because it gives him bad indigestion. Next she'll tell him to cut out alcohol, then fast food, then sugar. Something will break him eventually, but not while Vala still regularly sneaks into his office planting a plastic cup of coffee from the cafeteria, two cream one sugar the way he likes it, on the corner of his desk and presses a kissed fingertip to the point of his nose.
The tea isn't awful, but it doesn't give him the same kick, sort of like how he's been using his other hand. Not awful, still gets him off, but it doesn't moan back to him.
"Colonel Mitchell." His perky office assistant pokes her head into his office, bright red lipstick and red-dyed hair bouncing in curls.
"Yes?" Then he realizes he doesn't know her name. She's been assigned to assist him for almost a year an a half now, as long as he and Vala have been together. He thought it was Landry's idea, sort of force him to get with the office assistant because Landry's not stupid, can read between the lines, the multiple lines of his signature claiming responsibility for her as he drives her away from the base and watches her face light up when she sees billboards and city lights.
"They want you in the gate room." Office assistant snaps her gum at the end of her sentence and how old is she exactly? He's starting to think less of Landry's tastes as the days drag on.
"Why?"
"I dunno." Shrugs her shoulders and then drops a handful of internal, sealed letters onto the cabinet by the door.
"Great." Quickly scribbles his stilted signature on the bottom of Jacques request but denies Rodriguez's again, then tails—his office assistant—out the door.
Skids into the gate room control booth and barely gets to utter a 'what' at Walter before gate bursts to life and she appears, a Daniel hooked at each of her arms, dragging her away from the iris. She digs the heels of her boots into the ground offering up resistance, marking up the clean white tiles.
Abandons Walter and skips stairs until he's on the same level, but the time he gets to them, the Jacksons have tossed her onto the floor. She flips from her hands and knees to sitting, staring at them with the dirtiest look he's ever seen from her.
"Easy Sunshines." Jogs up next to her, offering a hand, which she takes while watching the smugly receding Jacksons. "What the hell happened?"
"Oh nothing," the first one sing songs sort of rocking on his feet.
The second one follows cue and picks up the sentence. "Except for Vala trying to depose the religious hierarchy of the planet."
She pops up beside him as he squints at the Jacksons, then back at Vala who adjusts her jacket. "Okay, that's exaggerating it a little bit."
"No, darling, that's about the gist of it."
Jams the palms of his hands in his eyes that need glasses, that Lam keeps telling him to get glasses for, that he got glasses for, but they look so stupid on him. "Vala—"
And thank God she cuts him off, because he was about to call her 'honey'. "It's easy to try and depose a planet when they run on the enslavement of women."
"What?" Glances at her and then to the Jacksons, neither refute her. "Someone please tell me what's going on."
"Basically that." The first one points to Vala. The second only nods in agreement.
"So, the enslavement of women—"
"Second class—"
"Third class," she interrupts, her arms crossed tightly as she glares.
"Fine." The second Jackson rolls his eyes at Vala but continues, "third class citizens used for menial labor, cooking and cleaning, with no real rights."
"Like the 1950s?"
"What?" Vala darts her eyes to him.
"A little worse than that." Jackson one confirms, holding his fingers about an inch apart.
"Tell him Daniels, tell him about the sex."
"The sex?" Now he's on guard again, his eyelids lowering as he observes the scoff and stutter of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.
"Well, the sex isn't exactly—"
Vala all but pushes them out of the way as she circles around in front of him. "They're used, Cameron, and this festival is basically a Bacchanal of—"
"Speaking of which, we sort of have to—" The first juts behind him to the gate.
The second nods. "They're sort of holding the gate for us."
Ignores the twins and turns back to Vala, still clearly upset. "How bad, princess?"
She cups a hand over his crossed arm, her voice low and serious. "Stop it, Cameron."
"Cameron?" One Jackson whispers to the other.
He nods, doesn't draw his eyes away from hers as he gives the command, "Go get Teal'c and come back here immediately."
"Mitchell, you're really going to destroy a chance at having a political ally because—"
"If they're using women as sex slaves, then hell yeah I am."
Jackson two steps forward, boots thumping down the ramp. "They have a lot of information on—"
"I don't care." Turns his back and starts walking away not interested in doing a stare down with an archeologist or two. "Go get Teal'c and come back here."
"But—"
"That's an order."
Signed her out again, and at this point connecting the dots is meaningless because the dots are so close they just make the line to the damn picture. She leans against his knees, one arm hugging the peaks as she traces his scar. They're watching a sitcom about a radio station that has a lot of pratfalls which she enjoys. Bodily harm humor, along with the rampant sexual drive, he thinks are left over from Qetesh?
His hand strokes through her hair, soft drifting between his fingers and he feels the muscles in her jaw loosen as she falls into another bout of laughter. Could ask her about the planet, the four days she spent there as a third-class citizen, but knows that Teal'c and the Jacksons protected her. Knows that she protects herself better than anyone he's ever met. If she wanted to talk about it, she would have mentioned it, painted the picture of what he thinks it a huge, lavish hall in burgundies and whites and golden chains, talks sometimes about wearing golden shackles when she was Qetesh and he knows why she likes him to wear the fuzzy pinks and not her.
Doesn't really matter what happened to her to make her the way she is now. There were definitely more bad things than good, but she took it in stride, stitched it into her personality and used the broad flirtations to cover any faults. It worked for awhile, he sees them, he just doesn't care because that's her. She knows and that's why the innuendos with him are few and far between.
Wants to ask her one question. Why she chose him. Why, when she cast out all the flirtatious lures, and he bit back, why she started falling for him the way he did for her.
But she laughs again, hollow in her chest because someone in the radio station broke a coffee pot and he's never seen her reel in laughter before so he lets her and maybe she doesn't forget about the horrible things she witnessed for four days while she single-handedly tried to overthrow a religious dictatorship, but maybe she doesn't think of them right now.
Strokes his hand through her hair again and she glances back at him, one of his t-shirts hanging off her shoulder and beams in the darkness.