[SG1] Lieutenant Colonel Mom 2 (2/?)
Aug. 21st, 2013 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dontwantmebackTitle: Lieutenant Colonel Mom 2 (2/?)
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: None
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Length: 1821 words
Part One
Cameron and Vala quickly came to fall into a new sort of rhythm, just the two of them. He dropped her off at school in the mornings, drove over to the academy and teaching, did it all again in reverse at the end of the day. He helped her with her homework at night and took her to skating twice a week and a sleep over with her friends every other weekend. Cameron tried to patch up the scarred relationship with Daniel and Sam, managed to get them to a place where by the time Christmas came around they were able to have a little get together, at Vala's insistence, before Cameron carted them off to his parents'.
The conversation about what had happened to the other two, repeated about a hundred times to various family members over the holiday, was an awkward one. There was nothing Cameron could share with anyone, except that he'd said from the start he didn't know how long they would be with him, confessed that he was just lucky he got to keep Vala, told his father in secret about how afraid he really was that Vala would disappear from him as suddenly as the other two had.
So maybe he wasn't completely healed, maybe he never would be, but he was as close to it as he was ever going to get and that was fine.
Everything went smoothly from then on out. Cameron let Vala try to stay up for New Year's, ended up picking her up and carrying her to bed just after 10:00, and then listened to her complain at him for half the day come morning because she'd wanted him to keep her awake. He made up for it a few days later by buying both her and Princess Liana new dresses, matching of course, and it was promptly forgotten. The whole thing was probably just a ploy on her part, but Cameron spoiled her more than usual now that she was the only one left so he was willing to let it pass.
The ending of winter brought a new level of hectic to their lives. Cameron's cadets were able to start getting into the air, under his watchful eye, and he spent long hours outside his normal schedule with them, sitting backseat in small planes and talking them through basic controls. The kind of things that were still second nature to Cameron were a lot more difficult for the trainees and he wanted to give them whatever leg up he could. So he relied heavily on Jon for Vala's care, some days only seeing his daughter for an hour before taking her to school in the mornings.
And Vala was preparing for some sort of skating show. Her lessons doubled and Cameron managed to see about half of one practice out of every ten. He made sure that one time that he told her how good she was getting, which was true, that he was proud of her and he couldn't wait to see the show, promised up and down that he would be there to see it no matter what. And Vala just beamed at him like she couldn't be happier, sat on his lap with her little arms around his neck and talked endlessly about what she was performing and how much better than the other kids she was going to be.
Cameron was up in the air late the night of the performance, right at the end of the semester and about halfway into spring, a student having particular difficulties and he wasn't about to let anyone fail on his watch. He sent a text to Jon before he went up, saying he'd meet him and Vala at the rink, definitely wouldn't miss her performance. But by the time they landed it was already started; Cameron swore and took off running, sending another text that he was on his way, sped the entire way into town, got pulled over for it halfway to the rink and had to sit another twenty minutes while he got ticketed. He managed to get into the parking lot just in time to see people start pouring out. He fought his way against the stream of parents and children, all of them bubbling over with happiness, to find Jon and Vala sitting quietly in the stands.
He was apologising before he even got to them, felt even worse than he had before when he got close enough to see Vala was crying, hair done up with ribbons and glitter smeared across her cheeks.
"You promised," she accused, all fire beneath her tears.
"I know," Cameron answered, and scooped her up into a hug before she could protest, mindless of the way it smeared glitter across his uniform. "I'm so sorry, honey."
"I won a prize and you promised and I hate you." She wrapped around him though, like she always did, and buried her face in his collar.
Cameron just sighed and held on tightly, kissed her hair and looked over her head at Jon, who looked entirely too understanding and just held up a video camera, quietly said: "I made a recording just in case."
Never before had Cameron appreciated Jon so much. Jon was someone who understood that things didn't always work out to plan and that as much as Cameron might think it did, getting caught up in work didn't necessarily make him a bad parent. It was Cameron's rule, though, his personal rule from the advice his father had given when the children had first come into his life: never miss a game, a competition, a performance. No matter how busy he was or how crazy things got. He was supposed to be there for everything, the way his own parents had done for him. And he'd gone and missed it all for thirty extra minutes in the air with a fourth-year cadet who just wasn't meant to fly.
He mouthed his thanks all the same, got Vala ice cream on the way home and let her stay up late like it could in any way make up for letting her down. They watched Jon's recording, Vala curled up into Cameron's side and commentating for him, and Cameron just smiled, told her she was amazing and apologised again for missing it. Calmed down, Vala gave him a smile that was too old for a seven-year-old girl and told him it was okay.
"Did you teach the cadet to fly?" she asked him, eyes wide and curious, and Cameron just laughed quietly, ruffled her hair.
"Yeah. I think I did."
"It's okay then. But you have to come next time or I'll hate you forever."
"Deal," Cameron agreed, and stole a bite of her ice cream, much to her annoyance.
The incident was quickly forgotten. The cadets graduated and Cameron moved on to training new fighters at Peterson, a lot of them cadets he'd taught a year before, and Vala did her thing at school. Still, though, Cameron made even more of an effort than ever before to be around for things. He made sure he clocked out in time to pick her up almost every day, tried to take weekends off completely as often as possible. His commander at Peterson had children of her own, understood when he explained that Vala was seven and he was the only parent she had. Not strictly true, that, Jon was around enough even when Cameron didn't need him to be that he was practically another parent to Vala, but it had worked to keep his schedule as kid-friendly as could be managed.
He skipped going to base entirely the day the school had a little completion ceremony for second graders, just as stupid as it had been for first grade, but Cameron was right there applauding when Vala got her certificate.
A couple months later she was turning eight, and still no sign that she might be turning back into an adult. Even nearly a year since it had happened to Sam and Daniel, Cameron still lived in the fear that he would wake up one day and his little girl wouldn't be so little anymore. But at happily eight-years-old, Vala insisted she have a princess themed party, but it couldn't be just pink stuff and plastic tiaras, it had to be real princess stuff. Cameron had no idea what that meant, and Vala was absolutely no help when he asked, so he ended up just calling up Sam and recruiting some over-the-phone advice from his sister-in-law. Between the two women they managed to get Cameron organized enough to actually throw a party, a dozen girls Vala's age crammed into their little apartment with their mothers and Cameron mostly just wanted to hide out in the kitchen until they all went away. Too many women in one place at one time and only him to face them all was pretty much his definition of a nightmare, but Vala declared it afterwards to be probably the best birthday ever.
It was worth it.
The remainder of summer was quiet, but with every day creeping closer to the one-year mark of losing Sam and Daniel as his children, Cameron was more and more nervous that the end was coming. Like somehow that day had some sort of special, magical significance. He got Vala checked out at the mountain, now a strange and foreign place, full of faces he didn't recognize and people who didn't know him, just to make sure and Doctor Lam, thankfully still there, assured him that there was no sign in Vala's test results to indicate she might be about to change.
They thought they understood how it worked, though, she told him, were working on a way to reverse it, in case it happened again, but weren't looking into any way to utilize it. As far as they could tell, there was no way to control the degree of reaction; it was six or nothing.
Cameron took Vala down to find Teal'c for lunch. His former teammate as stoic as ever but with an impressive head of hair the likes of which Cameron never would have imagined he could even grow. Vala announced that he looked funny, and Teal'c just smiled and told her that not everyone could age as gracefully as she was. He gave her some alien trinket as a belated birthday gift, over which Vala squealed like she had never seen anything so amazing. They popped in to see Sam on the way out, didn't get a chance to see Daniel since he was off-world, and it was almost not awkward at all.
The day Cameron dropped Vala off to her first day of third grade, he almost felt like he could relax. Like he wasn't going to lose her suddenly. Like they maybe could just live like normal people from there on out.
Part Three
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: None
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Length: 1821 words
Part One
Cameron and Vala quickly came to fall into a new sort of rhythm, just the two of them. He dropped her off at school in the mornings, drove over to the academy and teaching, did it all again in reverse at the end of the day. He helped her with her homework at night and took her to skating twice a week and a sleep over with her friends every other weekend. Cameron tried to patch up the scarred relationship with Daniel and Sam, managed to get them to a place where by the time Christmas came around they were able to have a little get together, at Vala's insistence, before Cameron carted them off to his parents'.
The conversation about what had happened to the other two, repeated about a hundred times to various family members over the holiday, was an awkward one. There was nothing Cameron could share with anyone, except that he'd said from the start he didn't know how long they would be with him, confessed that he was just lucky he got to keep Vala, told his father in secret about how afraid he really was that Vala would disappear from him as suddenly as the other two had.
So maybe he wasn't completely healed, maybe he never would be, but he was as close to it as he was ever going to get and that was fine.
Everything went smoothly from then on out. Cameron let Vala try to stay up for New Year's, ended up picking her up and carrying her to bed just after 10:00, and then listened to her complain at him for half the day come morning because she'd wanted him to keep her awake. He made up for it a few days later by buying both her and Princess Liana new dresses, matching of course, and it was promptly forgotten. The whole thing was probably just a ploy on her part, but Cameron spoiled her more than usual now that she was the only one left so he was willing to let it pass.
The ending of winter brought a new level of hectic to their lives. Cameron's cadets were able to start getting into the air, under his watchful eye, and he spent long hours outside his normal schedule with them, sitting backseat in small planes and talking them through basic controls. The kind of things that were still second nature to Cameron were a lot more difficult for the trainees and he wanted to give them whatever leg up he could. So he relied heavily on Jon for Vala's care, some days only seeing his daughter for an hour before taking her to school in the mornings.
And Vala was preparing for some sort of skating show. Her lessons doubled and Cameron managed to see about half of one practice out of every ten. He made sure that one time that he told her how good she was getting, which was true, that he was proud of her and he couldn't wait to see the show, promised up and down that he would be there to see it no matter what. And Vala just beamed at him like she couldn't be happier, sat on his lap with her little arms around his neck and talked endlessly about what she was performing and how much better than the other kids she was going to be.
Cameron was up in the air late the night of the performance, right at the end of the semester and about halfway into spring, a student having particular difficulties and he wasn't about to let anyone fail on his watch. He sent a text to Jon before he went up, saying he'd meet him and Vala at the rink, definitely wouldn't miss her performance. But by the time they landed it was already started; Cameron swore and took off running, sending another text that he was on his way, sped the entire way into town, got pulled over for it halfway to the rink and had to sit another twenty minutes while he got ticketed. He managed to get into the parking lot just in time to see people start pouring out. He fought his way against the stream of parents and children, all of them bubbling over with happiness, to find Jon and Vala sitting quietly in the stands.
He was apologising before he even got to them, felt even worse than he had before when he got close enough to see Vala was crying, hair done up with ribbons and glitter smeared across her cheeks.
"You promised," she accused, all fire beneath her tears.
"I know," Cameron answered, and scooped her up into a hug before she could protest, mindless of the way it smeared glitter across his uniform. "I'm so sorry, honey."
"I won a prize and you promised and I hate you." She wrapped around him though, like she always did, and buried her face in his collar.
Cameron just sighed and held on tightly, kissed her hair and looked over her head at Jon, who looked entirely too understanding and just held up a video camera, quietly said: "I made a recording just in case."
Never before had Cameron appreciated Jon so much. Jon was someone who understood that things didn't always work out to plan and that as much as Cameron might think it did, getting caught up in work didn't necessarily make him a bad parent. It was Cameron's rule, though, his personal rule from the advice his father had given when the children had first come into his life: never miss a game, a competition, a performance. No matter how busy he was or how crazy things got. He was supposed to be there for everything, the way his own parents had done for him. And he'd gone and missed it all for thirty extra minutes in the air with a fourth-year cadet who just wasn't meant to fly.
He mouthed his thanks all the same, got Vala ice cream on the way home and let her stay up late like it could in any way make up for letting her down. They watched Jon's recording, Vala curled up into Cameron's side and commentating for him, and Cameron just smiled, told her she was amazing and apologised again for missing it. Calmed down, Vala gave him a smile that was too old for a seven-year-old girl and told him it was okay.
"Did you teach the cadet to fly?" she asked him, eyes wide and curious, and Cameron just laughed quietly, ruffled her hair.
"Yeah. I think I did."
"It's okay then. But you have to come next time or I'll hate you forever."
"Deal," Cameron agreed, and stole a bite of her ice cream, much to her annoyance.
The incident was quickly forgotten. The cadets graduated and Cameron moved on to training new fighters at Peterson, a lot of them cadets he'd taught a year before, and Vala did her thing at school. Still, though, Cameron made even more of an effort than ever before to be around for things. He made sure he clocked out in time to pick her up almost every day, tried to take weekends off completely as often as possible. His commander at Peterson had children of her own, understood when he explained that Vala was seven and he was the only parent she had. Not strictly true, that, Jon was around enough even when Cameron didn't need him to be that he was practically another parent to Vala, but it had worked to keep his schedule as kid-friendly as could be managed.
He skipped going to base entirely the day the school had a little completion ceremony for second graders, just as stupid as it had been for first grade, but Cameron was right there applauding when Vala got her certificate.
A couple months later she was turning eight, and still no sign that she might be turning back into an adult. Even nearly a year since it had happened to Sam and Daniel, Cameron still lived in the fear that he would wake up one day and his little girl wouldn't be so little anymore. But at happily eight-years-old, Vala insisted she have a princess themed party, but it couldn't be just pink stuff and plastic tiaras, it had to be real princess stuff. Cameron had no idea what that meant, and Vala was absolutely no help when he asked, so he ended up just calling up Sam and recruiting some over-the-phone advice from his sister-in-law. Between the two women they managed to get Cameron organized enough to actually throw a party, a dozen girls Vala's age crammed into their little apartment with their mothers and Cameron mostly just wanted to hide out in the kitchen until they all went away. Too many women in one place at one time and only him to face them all was pretty much his definition of a nightmare, but Vala declared it afterwards to be probably the best birthday ever.
It was worth it.
The remainder of summer was quiet, but with every day creeping closer to the one-year mark of losing Sam and Daniel as his children, Cameron was more and more nervous that the end was coming. Like somehow that day had some sort of special, magical significance. He got Vala checked out at the mountain, now a strange and foreign place, full of faces he didn't recognize and people who didn't know him, just to make sure and Doctor Lam, thankfully still there, assured him that there was no sign in Vala's test results to indicate she might be about to change.
They thought they understood how it worked, though, she told him, were working on a way to reverse it, in case it happened again, but weren't looking into any way to utilize it. As far as they could tell, there was no way to control the degree of reaction; it was six or nothing.
Cameron took Vala down to find Teal'c for lunch. His former teammate as stoic as ever but with an impressive head of hair the likes of which Cameron never would have imagined he could even grow. Vala announced that he looked funny, and Teal'c just smiled and told her that not everyone could age as gracefully as she was. He gave her some alien trinket as a belated birthday gift, over which Vala squealed like she had never seen anything so amazing. They popped in to see Sam on the way out, didn't get a chance to see Daniel since he was off-world, and it was almost not awkward at all.
The day Cameron dropped Vala off to her first day of third grade, he almost felt like he could relax. Like he wasn't going to lose her suddenly. Like they maybe could just live like normal people from there on out.
Part Three