Chapter Text
They don’t heal immediately, but they do heal naturally.
Start to connect on a base-level instead of through shared trauma.
Stop tiptoeing around each other so much and start to actually have genuine conversations about what she’s reading and whether she likes the story or not, it doesn’t really matter though because she’ll read anything.
Apparently, literacy was a rare trait for women on her home world.
She lays against him as they watch historical documentaries, asking him questions, still not fully understanding the concept of television, of what’s true and what’s fake. He’s tried to explain the rating system to her, to let her know that some programs are for kids, and some have violence, and some are just fantasy.
She doesn’t understand that everything seen on the tv is fake to a certain extent, and so she thinks there are really wizards and mutants out running around—that there are really men beating each other in wrestling rings, that there are giant yellow birds who have equally giant imaginary friends.
When he tries to explain the concept to her, she then thinks that everything is fake, that there is no wrestling ring and no audience, that the news about car crashes, terrorist threats, and natural disasters is cooked up in the same fashion as the monster movie of the week.
So, when he watches a documentary on World War II and she asks the inevitable question about how real the information is, he has to sit there and explain to her what happened. He has to use his laptop to look up specific questions she asks that the film doesn’t answer. Has to hold her while she weeps because of such a loss of life.
After that he only watches historical stuff when she’s asleep, or when she’s in one of her memory lapses and has locked herself in the bathroom—he always makes sure there’s nothing in there that can hurt her. He always has an extra key on him that he never uses out of respect for her, even though he keeps waking at night and finding her isolating herself in the shower.
She always plays it off as waking up with a hot flash, something hormonal in the lapse of what the SGC did to her—something he still doesn’t know the extent of.
He thinks it’s the only place she can go to cry alone, so he tries to not pry.
She’ll talk when she wants to.
For their first Independence Day together, only a month after they move in together, they have a picnic in the backyard, mainly because he doesn’t know if being around all the people at the park cookouts would make her uneasy. She’s said before that she doesn’t like crowds, and as much as he wants to set out a blanket and camp out with her while huge blooms of fireworks dance across the sky, watch her as she stares at them with wonder, as their designs burst vibrantly across the pitch black and reflect in her eyes, he thinks it’s best to stay at home for this one.
As much as he wants to offer her all the freedom he can, they need to be safe about this.
The SGC has been anything but forthcoming concerning her, and he would love to know that she can walk around the block by herself, in peace. Would love to teach her how to drive—she’s very astute at flying, so she’ll probably pick it up immediately, but then she would have to get a license somehow and they’re still waiting for her doctored birth certificate to get mailed to them.
Hates how she has to stay cooped up in the house when he leaves to start his new job as an expert on military operations for film and tv. Thought it was going to be hard to find a job after the SGC—not that they would black ball him, but he knows a few guys, his old man included, who found it hard to work after leaving the military because nothing was the same.
In his last conversation with his dad, they talked about how leaving the military was like coming out of prison with everything changed around them—that they have access to all this information people who lead normal lives have no idea about.
It’s a large burden to bear, and his dad carried it for as long as he could.
Once they were settled, he called his mom to her about going down for a big Thanksgiving. Usually, she flies out west to have Thanksgiving with his aunt, but he’s hoping if he gets to her early enough, that he’ll be able to convince her to do the home cooking for once.
Part of him is excited to introduce her to Vala, to show her the woman he loves so much, but part of him knows she’s going to ask about grandkids. That she’s going to ask where Vala is from, what her job is, and they need to be on the same level to answer the questions. They need to rehearse all the way to Auburn to ensure there’s no hesitation in her answers to make anyone suspicious.
But that can’t happen yet because sometimes she’s barely herself.
He’s seen her—when she thinks that he’s not home, or she’s alone—grind her teeth and ball her fists like she’s trying to suppress a rage, like she’s remembering everything that’s happened to her, and he wishes winter would get here already so he can take her for a stroll in the park like he promised.
They go at night instead, when the lamplit paths glow a welcoming yellow haze and the June bugs swirl around the bulbs. He attempts to make small talk, asks what she did at the house all day while he was gone consulting on a soon to be blockbuster smash—maybe he’ll take her to see it, if she can navigate fantasy from reality by then.
She talks about the books she read, about the tv she tried to watch before growing bored and fatigued. The nap she took.
He realizes that she’s living on Ver Isca again. That she can’t leave the house without him. That she’s resolved to doing chores to keep herself busy and he hates it, because he wants her to be stimulated, to think and solve and laugh and grow.
They’re sitting at the small dining table one night, silently eating dinner when he glances up at her, the way her fork scratches against the bottom of the plate while she mostly just pushes her food around. He wants to ask her if she’s still enjoying Earth. If she ever did. If she regrets everything that’s happened in the last two years.
Wonders if she would leave Earth if she could.
He wipes his mouth with a napkin, still keeping hold of the beard he had the entire time she was restrained in the brig. He could never be bothered to shave it, and now bits of food keep getting stuck in it.
“That was really good.”
“I just followed the directions on the back of the package.” She stands, her chair groaning over the laminate floor, and starts collecting the dishes on the table, that at the most can seat four.
He knows that cooking on any other planet she’s been on was more complicated—the make bread from scratch type of complication he could never get the hang of, maybe it makes her a better cook here because it’s usually just heating stuff up on the stove.
Wants to know where she learned to cook—from her mom? And how—was it out of necessity? Was it after she got married?—mentioned she had been before.
But he knows she won’t answer his questions.
Maybe she just values the privacy of her unshared memories—since it feels like they do everything together—maybe she just wants to keep something for herself.
Maybe she doesn’t want to dredge up the bad memories she’s kept buried for a reason.
He keeps sitting, just watching her squeeze dish soap in the sink and turn the spray of water on until the suds start to rise. Dropping the dishes in and starting to scrub, but that’s when he sees it—the slight fall of her shoulders, the way her body leans harder into washing a dish, a cup that only had water in it. The way she stares out of the window above the sink and into the backyard trying to keep a reign on her emotions.
Usually after work, she insists that he has a shower or relaxes while she cleans up. Doesn’t know if it’s to get rid of him or because she’s still following the Ver Isca social cues, but even when they were stuck in that backwards place, they never really did follow the rules.
She might do it for more time alone, solitary—without him needling in—asking her what she’s doing when she runs her hands— hooked fingers—through the already full flower beds in the backyard, and she halts her action, rarely ever explaining a thing to him.
He doesn’t know what’s going on inside her head. He never really did, but he knows that it’s not his job to. They love each other—that doesn’t mean that they read each other’s minds. It doesn’t even mean they read each other’s emotions. It just means that whenever one of them is acting differently—is silently calling out for help—the other accepts this and helps in whichever way they can.
Knows she does this for him when they have sex.
Doesn’t know if she’s frightened because of what happened with their daughter, or frightened because of what happened with Lorne, or Anubis, or Ba’al.
Just knows that he shows his love physically, and she shows it in the sacrifices she makes.
Told her that if she didn’t enjoy—if she didn’t want to—that they didn’t need to, but she kept kissing him—he wants it to feel like it used to—not like a task but like a pleasure. Touching her is the only form of solace he gets.
They took his daughter, but they didn’t take his wife.
His chair doesn’t make so much as a groan when he stands from the table, although, he does, his legs still a little wobbly, not from having to support himself, but from the pain in his back.
In the morning it’s hard for him to get on his pants, and he feels much older than he is.
The sounds of her hands submerging in the sudsy water echoes through the room like a brook, and he sidles up beside her, feels her tense as his arms slide around her waist, and he hugs her to him, holds her in his arms, until the tenseness lessens, until her hands breech the dish water.
Until her shoulders slump forward, and she starts to silently cry.
Then outwardly sob.
He loosens his grip on her, allowing her to flip, her head nestling against his chest, the water from her hands seeping through his shirt and licking his skin as he holds her.
He doesn’t say anything, because again, he doesn’t know what to say.
He doesn’t know what’s bothering her or how he can help other than showing her he’s not going to judge her for having a breakdown, or for needing to go into the backyard and put her fingers and toes in fresh toiled dirt.
Once he found her underneath the kitchen table, and the thought she might have been in distress, but she told him flat out that she just needed to be under the table to calm down and somehow he understood exactly what she meant.
He grabbed his mug of coffee from the counter, and carefully tried not to spill it as he squatted down, leaning against one of the kitchen chairs. He slapped a hand to the top of the table, grabbing the paper, and did his morning reading on the ground beside her—not acknowledging her in any way but his presence.
Thinks that maybe she reacts better to passive support than active.
“Birdie.”
Withdraws slowly from her, trying not to be judgmental, but not understanding the importance behind the single word. Turns a bit to check out the kitchen window, thinks that maybe songbirds have found their way into the newly cultivated backyard—he tried to have everything ready to make what he thought would be a perfect house, tried to think of everything she would want done—he wanted done—because this house was built with the blood of their daughter.
So, he had the backyard landscaped, bright green grass mowed to perfection—it almost has that checkerboard pattern, something he’s never been able to perfect no matter how hard he tries—there’s edging and stones, and bright flowers—specifically told them bright flowers because he knew she’d have to be corralled here most days, and he wanted her to have something to look at, to examine.
Turns out she was more interested in the dirt.
There are no songbirds flitting around outside the kitchen window, on the patio, or even re-enacting a game of chess on the perfect grass. There’s nothing outside but a high humid wind that’s jangling the neighbor’s chimes wild. At first it was refreshing, to have such a docile, familiar sound to keep him in the present—let him know where he is—but now it’s verging on irritating. He’s never realized how windy it was here before.
“I don’t see any?” Tries to get her talking even if the backyard is completely empty—completely fake. Maybe he should take everything out and let her help him make it. Maybe by trying to make this easier for her, he’s actually made it worse. “Did you hear them?”
“No—” shakes her head and her skin is an interesting color now that he’s this close to her in the daylight, usually he only sees her in the industrial lights, the luminescent, energy-saving bulbs shoved into every socket. Her skin was always pale, sometimes gray, and pallid, but now carries a golden tone, a sparkle, something he can’t define. “No.”
“Well, maybe they flew—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh—what did you mean?”
“Birdie—I—” she pauses, and it’s unnatural. Not in the rhythm of her regular speech but falling between the parsing of her words. It sounds like she’s trying to catch her breath, trying to recover from running or jogging. She draws her eyes back from where she’s been staring over his shoulder—around him, through him—locking on to him before dropping, sliding to the window again. “I named her Birdie.”
He cocks an eyebrow, unsure if her memory is failing her again. If she’s reliving something from when she was Qetesh or before when she was last free. Maybe as a child she had a pet or a toy with the name, but he was sure he introduced her to the word, because he remembers explaining the difference between a bird and birdy.
“Who did you name—”
His mind is so busy trying to fit pieces into slots, trying to make everything look nice—appear perfect—when beneath they’re both struggling to breech the turmoil, that he doesn’t realize who she’s talking about.
Who they both shared.
His voice disappears, and the rocking motion he’s adopted to comfort her stops ridged in his legs. He keeps told of her, but his eyes are wide, like words not meant to be uttered were said, like they’re talking about the one taboo subject that the government hasn’t even given them clearance to discuss.
“You named her Birdie?”
She nods, her chin against his shoulder, but he can feel her breathing start to hitch, she grows hot under his hands, against his chest.
“Why?”
Knows why.
It’s taken almost three months to get to her to speak about what happened in this abstract of a manner, and he wants to keep her talking for as long as she can, because no professional is ever going to help her deal with the pain, with the trauma.
Nothing is going to make the ache in each word she says go away, until they can both learn to cope with it.
“Because—” Her voice cracks, and she clears her throat, still not wanting to look at him, still staring out vacantly over his shoulder. “She loved their songs.”
There’s a deeper meaning under her words. One that he understands—that the birds were free when they never were. That their daughter danced to wild bird chirrups is one of the only things they will ever know about her.
“I—I think—” The pull of the muscles in her face flicks against his neck as she narrows her eyes, seeking, searching for something.
Words, a memory, a feeling, an answer.
“What do you think?” Guides her slowly because memories are a murky and dangerous place for her. He knows next to nothing because that’s what she wants him to know and that’s what he has to be comfortable with.
“They let me hold her.”
He stiffens again, willing his body not to react to the words, to the idea that they will never assuage. Counting fingers. Counting toes. Counting eyelashes. He wants to know everything about how she looked, how she sounded, how she felt.
He can’t have what he wants, but he can live vicariously through a memory.
“She had the smallest tuft of black hair.”
He laughs, but it’s pained, it’s silent, as he leans his face into her hair, the same hair their daughter had.
“Her skin was very soft.—just so—very soft.” Her voice decorates his skin in puffs of air, like every bad experience she’s ever had in her life has been chasing her, and she’s finally stopped to catch her breath. “I could see the blue of her veins underneath—I tried to memorize every aspect about her, because I knew one day I would have to tell you—”
“You don’t have to say any more right now.” Wants her to feel comfortable, but all the hard emotions he had, all the regret, the fear, the despondence, numbs in his body at her words.
How he’ll never even get to see his only child.
“I—I think she had your eyes.” She nods against his chest as if to offer herself the affirmation. “I—never got to see them, but it’s just something I know—”
“She would’ve been a heartbreaker.”
“She was beautiful, Cameron.” Finally, she looks at him as the nostalgia takes her over, her eyes chirpy and bright, her arms dropping from around him, the speed of her speech kicks up, excited to bond with him “Both her feet fit into the palm of my hand. She had perfect little toes with perfect toenails—” as holds her hands out, mimicking the actions she took with their daughter—but her story stops, her hands slowly descending, and when she gazes back at him, her eyes have glassed over again.
“She was cold, Cameron. She was so very cold—”
“Come here.” Pulls her back against him as she starts to sob again, quaking against his chest. He wraps an arm around her neck, holding her, crying with her. His cheek piling against her hair, clasping on to her, until her cold hands, raise and encircle his neck, until her hyperventilating stops, until she calms as the sun sets a brazen orange through the kitchen window, shrouding the kitchen in shadows.