Golden by Friendshipper (Backstory Challenge)
Title: Golden
Author: friendshipper
Rating: Teen/PG13
Word Count: 1340
Characters/Pairing: Caldwell/OFC
Summary: He's not the only sailor who's ever visited a sweetheart in a foreign port of call, not even the only one he knows about on the Daedalus.
Notes: takes place shortly before 3x20, First Strike. Speculation and one spoiler for First Strike.
Golden
The light is the color of molten gold when he slips into her tent. It is afternoon, the village of New Athos drowsing under its new binary sun. In the village square, a few local men and some of the teenage boys and girls are overseeing the distribution of crates: medicine, spare parts for the radios they've obtained from Atlantis, books and other things that the Atlanteans promised them and the Daedalus has been obligated to deliver.
He doesn't have a lot of time before he has to return to the ship. It's harder now than it was when the Athosians lived on the mainland -- harder to slip away, harder to find excuses.
In the back of his mind, he knows he doesn't have to hide. Given the way that the Atlanteans live here, he imagines that no one would care if they knew. He also imagines that it's ludicrously optimistic to assume that they don't know already. He's not the only sailor who's ever visited a sweetheart in a foreign port of call, not even the only one he knows about on the Daedalus.
But old habits of secrecy and propriety die hard.
She is asleep with her daughters against her side, dreaming through the hottest part of the afternoon, as many Athosians have taken to doing on their new, hotter world. He taught her to say siesta on his last trip, and now the word has spread through the village; it made him smile when he heard one of the villagers use it as they unpacked the crates. So this is how languages change, he thinks as he sinks down beside her. This is how cultures change.
She stirs sleepily and her lashes flutter, and for an instant he is caught in a powerful sense-memory of Marilyn -- warmth and softness against him, morning light on her cheekbone, endless Sunday afternoons lazing together before he had to ship out again.
Cancer took Marilyn long ago, although the stresses of his career took most of their marriage first. It is a richer light that bathes Jaina's face than that distant memory of Earth's yellow sun, a light sliced into bars by the seams of the tent, slipping through the crude lacings and painting her face in alien tattoos.
"I did not expect you already, my love," she whispers, curling into him. Her daughters, left fatherless in the initial Wraith attack on the Athosian village, sleep heavily against her. They do not stir when she moves to bring her hand up and lay her palm against Steven's face.
"We left Atlantis early. Things are getting tense at home; they want the Daedalus back in the Milky Way."
She nods and listens as he speaks of a war she doesn't understand in a place she can't imagine. As he tells her of his life, his hand strokes under her shirt, tracing smooth circles around the full breasts that have begun to sag with the weight of nursing four children -- the two that lived, the two that died.
Jaina told him once that she is considered middle-aged. This made him laugh: "You're what, thirty-two or something like that? You must think I'm ancient."
"Among my people, age is thought to be very beautiful," she told him then, standing on tiptoe to nuzzle his cheek with hers. "And you are a very beautiful man."
He still doesn't know if she was teasing him or not. Her people are subtle, their sense of humor glimmering beneath their reserved surface. The first Athosian that he met was Teyla, and he remembers thinking her very cold. It took him a long time to realize that public displays of emotion are considered obscene by her people. She has relaxed a great deal since he first met her, a consequence of spending time on Atlantis, he supposes. Jaina is a more traditional woman of her people, and everything of consequence that she says must be approached sideways.
Another thing that is not done among them is to introduce serious personal topics at the start of a conversation, so in deference to that, he does not mention the thing that weighs most heavily on his mind. Instead he strokes down her body in small circles, pausing as his hand passes across her belly. It is noticeably swollen, and he can't help a small, startled jerk. His first thought is kwashiorkor -- protein deficiency, a disease whose victims he's seen on some of his deployments. Or parasites, maybe -- there's no telling what kind of things they have out here. A shudder passes through him at the thought.
"Oh," she whispers, in a tone of soft delight, and then the other, even more terrible possibility occurs to him just as she catches his hand and brings it back to rest on the soft swelling above the waistband of her pants.
Marilyn's joy was more open, but no less infectious, on that long-ago day when she first brought his palm to rest below the buttons of her maternity blouse.
"Jaina ..." he begins, and trails off, because he can't find words, and all he can do is think of all the times they've been careless over the last year -- all the times he forgot to bring condoms, all the times she assured him that she always knows where she is in her monthly cycle and that the Athosians know of teas that will prevent pregnancy. But the thought had never occurred to him that one must drink the teas, that one must desire not to get pregnant. He has never specifically asked Jaina, not lately, and in her subtle Athosian way, she has not brought up the subject herself.
She nods eagerly, her hand pressing his against her hot flesh. "I was not sure the last time you were here, so I did not speak," she whispers. "Now there is no doubt. I asked the old women to throw stones for the signs, and all the signs say that it will be a boy -- the first son I have ever borne."
Looks like it'll be a boy, the doctor had told him and Marilyn, pointing to blurry patches of light and shade on the ultrasound. That boy is nearly Jaina's age now, and he and Steven haven't spoken in years.
"Jaina..." The words die in his throat: I'm not coming back to this galaxy. They're giving the Pegasus run to the Apollo -- a newer, faster ship. They're reassigning me to the Milky Way; they're sending me to fight the Priors and their ships. His dream assignment: no longer a glorified courier for Weir's bunch, instead able to take real, tangible strides to protect his world and fulfill his oaths of service. Until a few minutes ago, he'd been riding high on a wave of emotion. Now the wave breaks, taking him down with it.
Something in his posture must have alerted her to his mood. She pulls her head back; her wide dark eyes, flecked with green, search his face. "Are you not happy?"
He cannot speak. Instead, he buries his face in her neck, shutting out the golden light of an alien sun and drowning himself in the smell of her. Marilyn always smelled of perfume and soap. Jaina, he knows, bathes once every ten days as is the custom of her people, and her scent is a heavy musk, a woman-smell nearly overwhelming after so many weeks on the ship. He drinks it down, savoring it against the endless drought to come.
"You must think of a name while you are gone," Jaina murmurs into his shoulder. "When you return, we will make that decision together."
"Okay." His voice is so soft that even he can barely hear the words, and he knows then that he won't tell her, that he'll give her the presents he's brought from Earth and leave with the usual promises to think about her often and return swiftly. Maybe she'll think that he was killed in the distant war of which he's spoken. Maybe she will ask the Atlanteans and learn the truth. Marilyn left him forever, to the sound of a pulsing heart monitor and the wail of alarms, and he never told her goodbye. He isn't good at farewells, never has been. "Okay. When I come back."
Author: friendshipper
Rating: Teen/PG13
Word Count: 1340
Characters/Pairing: Caldwell/OFC
Summary: He's not the only sailor who's ever visited a sweetheart in a foreign port of call, not even the only one he knows about on the Daedalus.
Notes: takes place shortly before 3x20, First Strike. Speculation and one spoiler for First Strike.
Golden
The light is the color of molten gold when he slips into her tent. It is afternoon, the village of New Athos drowsing under its new binary sun. In the village square, a few local men and some of the teenage boys and girls are overseeing the distribution of crates: medicine, spare parts for the radios they've obtained from Atlantis, books and other things that the Atlanteans promised them and the Daedalus has been obligated to deliver.
He doesn't have a lot of time before he has to return to the ship. It's harder now than it was when the Athosians lived on the mainland -- harder to slip away, harder to find excuses.
In the back of his mind, he knows he doesn't have to hide. Given the way that the Atlanteans live here, he imagines that no one would care if they knew. He also imagines that it's ludicrously optimistic to assume that they don't know already. He's not the only sailor who's ever visited a sweetheart in a foreign port of call, not even the only one he knows about on the Daedalus.
But old habits of secrecy and propriety die hard.
She is asleep with her daughters against her side, dreaming through the hottest part of the afternoon, as many Athosians have taken to doing on their new, hotter world. He taught her to say siesta on his last trip, and now the word has spread through the village; it made him smile when he heard one of the villagers use it as they unpacked the crates. So this is how languages change, he thinks as he sinks down beside her. This is how cultures change.
She stirs sleepily and her lashes flutter, and for an instant he is caught in a powerful sense-memory of Marilyn -- warmth and softness against him, morning light on her cheekbone, endless Sunday afternoons lazing together before he had to ship out again.
Cancer took Marilyn long ago, although the stresses of his career took most of their marriage first. It is a richer light that bathes Jaina's face than that distant memory of Earth's yellow sun, a light sliced into bars by the seams of the tent, slipping through the crude lacings and painting her face in alien tattoos.
"I did not expect you already, my love," she whispers, curling into him. Her daughters, left fatherless in the initial Wraith attack on the Athosian village, sleep heavily against her. They do not stir when she moves to bring her hand up and lay her palm against Steven's face.
"We left Atlantis early. Things are getting tense at home; they want the Daedalus back in the Milky Way."
She nods and listens as he speaks of a war she doesn't understand in a place she can't imagine. As he tells her of his life, his hand strokes under her shirt, tracing smooth circles around the full breasts that have begun to sag with the weight of nursing four children -- the two that lived, the two that died.
Jaina told him once that she is considered middle-aged. This made him laugh: "You're what, thirty-two or something like that? You must think I'm ancient."
"Among my people, age is thought to be very beautiful," she told him then, standing on tiptoe to nuzzle his cheek with hers. "And you are a very beautiful man."
He still doesn't know if she was teasing him or not. Her people are subtle, their sense of humor glimmering beneath their reserved surface. The first Athosian that he met was Teyla, and he remembers thinking her very cold. It took him a long time to realize that public displays of emotion are considered obscene by her people. She has relaxed a great deal since he first met her, a consequence of spending time on Atlantis, he supposes. Jaina is a more traditional woman of her people, and everything of consequence that she says must be approached sideways.
Another thing that is not done among them is to introduce serious personal topics at the start of a conversation, so in deference to that, he does not mention the thing that weighs most heavily on his mind. Instead he strokes down her body in small circles, pausing as his hand passes across her belly. It is noticeably swollen, and he can't help a small, startled jerk. His first thought is kwashiorkor -- protein deficiency, a disease whose victims he's seen on some of his deployments. Or parasites, maybe -- there's no telling what kind of things they have out here. A shudder passes through him at the thought.
"Oh," she whispers, in a tone of soft delight, and then the other, even more terrible possibility occurs to him just as she catches his hand and brings it back to rest on the soft swelling above the waistband of her pants.
Marilyn's joy was more open, but no less infectious, on that long-ago day when she first brought his palm to rest below the buttons of her maternity blouse.
"Jaina ..." he begins, and trails off, because he can't find words, and all he can do is think of all the times they've been careless over the last year -- all the times he forgot to bring condoms, all the times she assured him that she always knows where she is in her monthly cycle and that the Athosians know of teas that will prevent pregnancy. But the thought had never occurred to him that one must drink the teas, that one must desire not to get pregnant. He has never specifically asked Jaina, not lately, and in her subtle Athosian way, she has not brought up the subject herself.
She nods eagerly, her hand pressing his against her hot flesh. "I was not sure the last time you were here, so I did not speak," she whispers. "Now there is no doubt. I asked the old women to throw stones for the signs, and all the signs say that it will be a boy -- the first son I have ever borne."
Looks like it'll be a boy, the doctor had told him and Marilyn, pointing to blurry patches of light and shade on the ultrasound. That boy is nearly Jaina's age now, and he and Steven haven't spoken in years.
"Jaina..." The words die in his throat: I'm not coming back to this galaxy. They're giving the Pegasus run to the Apollo -- a newer, faster ship. They're reassigning me to the Milky Way; they're sending me to fight the Priors and their ships. His dream assignment: no longer a glorified courier for Weir's bunch, instead able to take real, tangible strides to protect his world and fulfill his oaths of service. Until a few minutes ago, he'd been riding high on a wave of emotion. Now the wave breaks, taking him down with it.
Something in his posture must have alerted her to his mood. She pulls her head back; her wide dark eyes, flecked with green, search his face. "Are you not happy?"
He cannot speak. Instead, he buries his face in her neck, shutting out the golden light of an alien sun and drowning himself in the smell of her. Marilyn always smelled of perfume and soap. Jaina, he knows, bathes once every ten days as is the custom of her people, and her scent is a heavy musk, a woman-smell nearly overwhelming after so many weeks on the ship. He drinks it down, savoring it against the endless drought to come.
"You must think of a name while you are gone," Jaina murmurs into his shoulder. "When you return, we will make that decision together."
"Okay." His voice is so soft that even he can barely hear the words, and he knows then that he won't tell her, that he'll give her the presents he's brought from Earth and leave with the usual promises to think about her often and return swiftly. Maybe she'll think that he was killed in the distant war of which he's spoken. Maybe she will ask the Atlanteans and learn the truth. Marilyn left him forever, to the sound of a pulsing heart monitor and the wail of alarms, and he never told her goodbye. He isn't good at farewells, never has been. "Okay. When I come back."