Title: Real Life Fairytale
Fandom: Stargate SG1
Pairing: Cameron Mitchell/OC
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Start of season nine to be very safe.
Word Count: 982
Sometimes, despite the obvious differences of job and family life, Penny feels a little bit like Cinderella. Not that Cinderella ever spent two days without sleep during a paediatric residency, but she did almost miss out on going to the ball, were it not for her fairy godmother.
Penny doesn’t have a fairy godmother to allow her to join the rest of her family having a ball at her cousin’s wedding (and she’s honest enough to admit that she and Chloe were never that close, and she’s not sorry to be missing Uncle Mike’s drunken rendition of “The Town I Loved So Well”) but when the senior resident tells her that she can go down to the cafeteria for a coffee break, she’s inclined to wonder if he has fairy wings hidden underneath his white coat.
And when she pushes open the cafeteria door, she’s sure he does.
Because standing there, in full Air Force blues, is her husband. Who had sworn blind that he wasn’t going to be home for at least another two weeks, and that was if the Air Force didn’t send him somewhere else in the mean time.
She’s so shocked that she can’t speak, a first for her, and Cameron grins that cocksure grin of his, the one that drove her crazy for their first year of college when she couldn’t stand him, the one that’s made her weak at the knees ever since then.
“Honey, I’m home,” he drawls, exaggerating his accent, and the words break the spell, restore her movement, and she’s running towards him, throwing her arms around his neck.
Laughing, he scoops her up in his arms, spins her around, and she’s laughing too, all the more so when a group of punch drunk orderlies strike up a rounding chorus of “Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong.”
It sure beats the hell out of Cinderella.
>*<*>*<
In her lifetime, Penny’s been in literally hundreds of hospital rooms, with hundreds of patients. She’s read charts and drawn IVs and talked to families and friends, giving them hope where she could, comfort where she couldn’t.
It’s different, she finds, when you’re on the other side.
When you’re the one sitting by the bed, waiting for your husband to wake up.
She thinks it might be made harder for her by the fact that, as a doctor, she understands in graphic detail Cameron’s injuries. She knows that he’s by no means out of the woods, that when (when, not if, she’s insisting on that) he wakes up, there is the possibility of brain damage, and if paralysis is almost certainly ruled out, there are long months of physiotherapy ahead of him. She knows Cameron, knows his temperament, knows that the next few months will not be easy.
As long as he wakes up.
It’s harder too because she doesn’t know
what caused the accident in the first place. All she knows is that it was some
kind of test flight, some kind of accident somewhere in the
She’ll ask him, if he ever wakes up.
Until he does, she’ll sit here and wait.
>*<*>*<
It is the middle of the night by the time Penny gets home, and to say that she’s tired might just be the understatement of the century. It took a half a cup of very strong coffee (or what passes for coffee in the hospital cafeteria) before she felt ready to drive home, and she’s never been so grateful that the drive is a fairly easy one. Easy, but still requiring concentration, and by the time she finally pulls into her driveway, her limbs feel heavy, like she’s moving through quicksand, her eyelids as if they’ve got lead weights inside them. Finding the keyhole is harder than it should be (thank God she didn’t have to do surgery) and negotiating the stairs is an adventure all of its own, but when she finally makes it to the bedroom, she still manages to smile.
The door is ajar, and the landing light gives her enough illumination to see Cameron lying asleep, half on her side of the bed, half on his own. Lying on his stomach, one arm is thrown out, stretching to the other side of the bed, where she would normally be, and she wants to lie down beside him so much it is literally a physical ache.
Still smiling, she goes to the bedside locker, snaps on the lamp, wincing even at the dim light of the bulb. He blinks in his sleep, his face crumpling up in a frown, and she turns away, heading towards the dressing table. She would crawl into bed fully clothed, and at the risk of stern words from her dentist, she’ll go without brushing her teeth, but there is one thing she simply must do.
She stands in front of the mirror, working more by touch than vision, long habit and practice making short work of the hairpins that keep her waist length hair up and out of the way. From behind her, she hears a sniff that means Cameron is awake, and the bed creaks as he sits up, meets her eyes in the mirror.
A sleepy smile crosses his face. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair…”
She resists the urge to roll her eyes at the line that he’s used a thousand times, ever since she was a shadow-eyed med student and he was trying to take her out for the evening.
After all, it might be an old line, but it’s always been successful.