Close as He Is
Rating: PG
Title: Close As He Is
Pairing: Janet/Kawalsky
Spoilers: Point of View
Notes: For Azar’s Rare Pairing Challenge. I know I’m late posting this, but since I was at a con where I was meeting Kawalsky, I figure I’ll be forgiven!
Working in the SGC, Janet has seen a great many things that defy rational human explanation. She’s seen diseases and injuries that she could never imagine; she’s stepped through a metal circle and walked on another planet. She’s seen aliens, has treated aliens, even adopted an alien child, loves her as if she’d given birth to her. Through it all, she’s taken everything in her stride, has been the consummate professional, has run Medlab with an iron fist, taking no bullshit from anyone.
Not once has her hand shaken.
Not once has she ever come close to turning on her heel and walking away, refusing to treat a patient.
Not until today.
But that, she thinks, is to be expected.
After all, she’s never treated a ghost before.
And he is a ghost, even if he’s solid and warm and far more real than any ghost has a right to be. He’s a ghost who looks like Charlie Kawalsky, and talks like Charlie Kawalsky, and even bitches about doctors and their medical treatments, just like Charlie Kawalsky.
But he does it all looking at her without the slightest flicker of recognition, so she knows that even though he’s Charlie Kawalsky, he’s not her Charlie Kawalsky, and that makes all the difference in the world.
“Doc?”
She starts at the word, because it sounds wrong coming from him. Charlie used her title only a handful of times in the course of their relationship; the first day she met him, thereafter only if they were around other military personnel. Otherwise, she was “Janet” on the rare occasions that he was being serious, “Red” when he wasn’t, and how that nickname, even when said with extreme amounts of fondness, used to drive her nuts…
“Doc?”
The name comes again, and this time she turns, realises that she’s zoned out, had been staring at her notepad for who-knows-how-long. She meets Charlie’s –not Charlie’s, she tells herself firmly, Major Kawalsky’s – narrow-eyed stare, fights the blush that she feels forming on her cheeks, but words, for the moment, are beyond her.
“You ok there, Doc?” he asks, and adrenaline pumping through her veins reaches her brain, gives her the impetus to seize an answer.
“I’m fine,” she says, smiling brightly, then looking down at the various test results on her trusty clipboard. “These results… it’s just amazing; I’ve never seen anything like it before. Your readings are identical to the records we have on file for Major Kawalsky.”
A smile touches his lips. “For a minute there, I thought you’d found something I should be worried about.”
It’s the kind of thing Charlie would have said, and the thought makes her swallow hard, makes her tap her pen against the clipboard, all business. “Nothing so far,” she says, laying down the clipboard and pen, picking up her penlight. “Just a few more things…”
“I guess this is one of the crazier things you’ve seen?” he guesses as she peers into his eyes. “Me and Sam just up and appearing out of nowhere?”
She smiles, but without the slightest bit of humour. “I’ve seen my share of strangeness,” she allows. “But this is hard to beat.” She leaves out that she hopes she never experiences anything like it again, because she swears her heart stopped beating when she found out who the two mysterious “visitors” were. And, at the risk of sounding like Cassie, who’s currently going through a melodramatic teenager phase, seeing him for the first time, her dearest wish came true, her heart literally leaped, only to break again when he looked, not at her, but through her, because evidently, not only were that Charlie and his Janet not lovers, but they’d never met at all.
“Been there,” Charlie murmurs, more to himself than her, she thinks, and she narrows her eyes reprovingly at him when he shakes his head. “Sorry.”
He sounds sincere, and she can’t help replying, “Don’t worry about it. Compared to Colonel O’Neill, you’re a model patient.”
He splutters at that, a sound that makes her smile. “Guess there’s some things don’t change,” he observes. She straightens up, tilting her head and smiling in acknowledgement, which is when his eyes narrow again, and he looks at her curiously. “How long’ve you been working here?”
“A little over two years,” she tells him, not even having to think about the length of time. Then, just because she’s a sadist, isn’t in enough pain, she finds herself asking, “I take it that, in your universe…”
“You’re not in the SGC.” He answers her question without her even having to complete it, something else her Charlie always used to do, something that now makes her throat ache with tears. “We’ve got Doctor Nimzicki… you know him?”
Janet shakes her head, snapping off the penlight, going to put it in her pocket and missing. “Not ringing a bell,” she says, and if this Charlie notices the tremor in her voice, the shake of her hand, he doesn’t call her on it. She’s glad too, because the slightest expression of sympathy from him and she might just break down in tears.
Because this Charlie Kawalsky was never taken over by a Goa’uld.
If that never happened, then Doctor Nimzicki never died at the Goa’uld’s hand, and there was never a job opening for her to step in to. Wherever that universe’s Janet Fraser was, she’d never had to go through the battery of background checks that she had, had never gone for all the interviews, had never made an impassioned plea to General Hammond that she was the best person for the job, not in spite of her relationship with Charlie, but because of it, because no other doctor would work as hard, as long, as she would. To no-one else would it mean as much. Too late she’d wondered if such an outburst would count against her with someone as seemingly curmudgeonly as General Hammond, but not so. They’d never spoken of the relationship, save her first day on the base, where she’d asked him not to mention it to anyone, and if she’d seen him looking at her earlier with a little more concern than was usual for him, she was doing her best to ignore it.
Doctoring good. Sympathy bad.
That in mind, she makes a few notations on her chart, or at least, appears to. In reality, she knows that they are scratches that she can’t read now, never mind later on, and she knows she’s going to have to redo this chart to make it legible. Still, the pretence of doctoring is nearly as good as the real thing, and she’s bright-eyed, and more importantly, dry-eyed, when she looks back to Kawalsky.
“Well, we’re all done here Major… we should find General Hammond and let him know.”
He stands, somehow ending up so close to her that she can smell his cologne. It’s Charlie’s cologne, and she finds herself just the tiniest bit weak in the knees. “After you,” he says, and there’s that look in his eyes, the one that she’s been missing for two long years.
There are differences though.
Her Charlie, on the rare occasions she had to bandage him up – nothing to do with Air Force business mind, and everything to do with some DIY disaster at his place or hers, that he’d either initiated or was trying to clean up – her Charlie would grumble and groan, but he’d do it teasingly, with a smile on his face, eyes sparkling with devilment. And somehow, even though she knew she should have been gazing reprovingly at him, started off doing so in fact, she’d end up laughing too, finally allowing him to pull her into his arms.
She’d found this Charlie looking at her from across the room, but this Charlie looked at her with wary suspicion, and she could hear his thoughts as clearly as if he’d spoken them. “I’m outta here if you hurt me.” She used to catch her Charlie looking at her too, but his would be an expression of deep thought, often with a little smile playing at his lips. And she would know what he was thinking, visual images leaping into her mind as if by telepathy, and then she’d be looking at him and smiling too, more often than not asking, “What?” He’d never reply in words though; instead his smile would widen, slowly, salaciously, unmistakable intent behind it, enough to make her blush.
This Charlie didn’t react to her the way that the other Charlie did. This Charlie stayed still as a statue, and when he did move, it was in a purely perfunctory fashion, designed to get the examination over with as soon as possible. This Charlie tolerated her presence, her proximity to him, but barely. That would have been unheard of for her Charlie, who, much to her once-upon-a-time irritation, couldn’t pass by her without touching her, be it a light touch to her hip, her shoulder, or sometimes, a tug of her hair. Occasionally it annoyed it, occasionally she found it endearing. Now, she just misses it, just like she misses him.
Just as she thinks that, she comes to another realisation, something that has her very nearly coming to a halt, right in the middle of an SGC corridor.
More than likely, this Major Kawalsky and Doctor Carter will be allowed to stay in this reality. They can’t send them back, not to a universe overrun with Goa’uld.
Which means that, like Teal’c, they’ll undoubtedly be serving in the SGC in some capacity.
Which means that she’ll be seeing him every day.
Irony makes her stomach twist, because how many times has she wished Charlie back, wished that she could see him, talk to him, touch him?
Not like this though. Never like this.
Because this isn’t her Charlie. And close as he is, it’s not close enough.