Title: The Moon as Seen from Venus

Disclaimer: Stargate Universe and all characters are the property of MGM.

Character Focus: Sharon Walker, Camile/Sharon

Summary: Sharon and Camile, across the great divide.

Context: Season one, with some references to Pathogen.

Notes: Assumes Camile popped home a couple more times between Life and Divided, and that Sharon had some level of clearance before the series began.

"I believe you're missing something," says the major whose name Sharon can't recall, hand extended over the threshold of the house she shares with Camile. A silver chain dangles from his fingers, circular charm catching the light like a summer sun.

Both of them feel naked without the necklace, the way people do when they slide off a ring and find the skin marked by absence, blinking white at the world. It's what Camile claims to miss most about her own body, when she's here in someone else's.

She'd forgotten to return it, and there was always so much to say, and so little time to say it, that Sharon had forgotten to ask.

"Yes," she says, nodding her thanks, expecting her voice to crack beneath the weight of the word. One hand rests on the hollow of her throat, as the major pools the necklace into the palm of the other. She wonders how many different doorsteps he's had to stand on in recent weeks, returning things and people to the places they belong.

"Good day then, ma'am," the major says. Peterson, Sharon sees from his uniform, though the names are something she tries, every time, not to.

"See you next time," she tells him, and sees his face twist in what might be fatigue, or resignation, or worst of all, pity, in the second before he tugs at his cuffs briskly, and turns his back to leave.

She can't get rid of the chair, however often Camile returns home, and reminds her.

If things start changing now, she's worried they won't know where to stop.

It's not uncommon for Camile to be away with work. But still there's a cover story, for the people in their lives lacking clearance. Sharon recites it by rote whenever anyone asks, and sometimes when they don't. Family, friends, the mailman; even the neighbours, who daren't question the parade of women, escorted to her door, but enquire after Camile every time she takes out the trash.

"She's fine," becomes her standard answer, with a smile that sets her teeth on edge, and hurts her heart to maintain.

"She's not fine, is she?" she asks Carl Strom, Camile's boss, meeting him one sunny morning in a verdant park, further from her workplace than his. He'd intimated on the phone that he had something important to discuss, leaving her nerves in tatters, and her hands shaking with a dread a legal document forbids her to share.

And then she'd found out what he'd really wanted to talk about: the possibility of adjusting Camile's salary, to what some heartless bean counter has deemed a more 'appropriate' level for her circumstances. She should be angry, but she's more amused by their gall: not only to think of it, but to sound her out first.

Budgetary pressures...economic downturn...nothing personal, you understand...

"On the contrary," says Strom, sounding surprised. "She's holding up marvellously well. Keeping busy..."

"Good. That's good. She likes that." She smiles fondly, picturing Camile on the day they moved in: doggedly directing boxes, staring out furniture, as if iron will alone could make the world arrange itself the way she wanted.

"We have regular briefings. There's always plenty to discuss." His eyes narrow, seeking permissible examples. "Crew morale...requests for clearance...the leadership on the vessel. Such as it is..."

Sharon hears the words, but all she feels is a stab of jealousy: that Camile returns so often to him, and so little to her.

"I'm worried about her, Doctor Strom."

"Camile is a very capable woman," he says. "The IOA has every confidence in her abilities."

It's another stock answer, straight from the diplomat's handbook. The tightening of his jaw betrays the truth. He doesn't believe it, any more than Sharon believes Camile is fine, lost in space, someplace so far away she might never see her face again.

"And I," she says, tilting her chin defiantly, "have every confidence in her."

"Of course."

"So the answer is no."

"Of course," he says again, and for the first time since he posed the question, looks almost ashamed of having had the temerity to do it.

"And Camile would say the same. We still have a mortgage to pay... And a retirement to plan for."

Strom's expression shifts to sympathy, less for her loss than the delusion. Camile has always disliked the man, but Sharon just feels sorry for him. He'd never seen Camile's worth when she was here – if he'd only given her that promotion, maybe she still would be – and he's equally as incapable now. Reliant on her as he is, his eyes and ears in a distant galaxy.

"She's coming home," Sharon tells him. "I don't know how, or when – but I'll be waiting for her. However long it takes."

Strom opens his mouth to mutter another 'of course', but she raises a hand and cuts him off.

"She needs to know that her life is waiting for her. Just the way she left it."

A cloud steals a slice from the sun, casting shadow across them. The light dims, hazy yellow turned static grey, and for a moment the world looks cold, and wrong, and a very different place.

Sharon shivers and hugs her arms across her chest, willing it back to the way it was.

She throws away the chair, eventually, because she said she would, and it's what Camile wants her to do.

There's a yawning void in the room where it used to be. She stares long and hard at the circles of clean flooring, wondering if she'll ever get accustomed to the space.

It would be wrong to compare it to bereavement, since Camile is – thank God – alive and well. Long-distance relationship would be more accurate, but there's still little correlation between that and this. Lovers are normally separated by miles, not a universe of light years; they share the same stars in their sky, and the comfort of knowing both of them can see them.

The only comfort in this is the visits: always too short, and since Sharon has a life to maintain while Camile is gone, destined to be shorter. They had hours together, the first time; closer to minutes, the second and third. There is so much to do on the ship, and so many people to think of. There are only so many communication stones, and hours of the day in which to use them. She's storing up vacation time, but it's more out of hope than expectation. Camile has never been back long enough for her to need to take it.

Days drag past, dilated. Every tick of the clock becomes a special kind of torment, carrying her closer to a next time, and ever further from the last.

She's not sure how she'd explain that her partner can come home only by switching bodies with someone else, even if she were permitted to. The stones are a miraculous device, but they're not compatible with everyday life. She thinks half-seriously about giving up her job; more seriously about finding something where she could work from home, but dismisses both ideas as quickly as they come up. The last thing she wants is more time on her hands. The last thing she needs is more time alone, in a house she used to love and is slowly starting to hate.

It's not really a home, without Camile. It's just four more walls to stare at.

It's almost fall, leaves forming mosaics of scarlet and gold as the season prepares to change. One rosy morning, Sharon is dressing for a meeting at work when she gets a call from a Colonel Telford, telling her the rota has been rearranged, and Camile is coming home. She's not sure why a colonel is doing the grunt work, acting like Ahab directing traffic to the whale, but she's grateful, nonetheless. Excitement mounting, she calls in sick and waits in, as morning turns to afternoon and then to evening, for a knock on the door that never comes.

When Telford calls again – to put her mind at rest, he says, though it sounds more like he's received good news and just wants to share it – she discovers the reason why. There's been an uprising on the ship, against Colonel Young. Planned and instigated by the lead scientist, Doctor Rush, and self-appointed head of the civilians, Camile.

Sharon traces the curve of her necklace, not sure if she's pleased she's taking the reins at last – or annoyed at her timing.

She joins a book club, since it gets her out of the house one evening a week, and gives her something else to think about.

She's scared she might go crazy, if she doesn't.

Nights are always the hardest, locked alone in an empty house, in a cold and empty bed. Sometimes, when she can't sleep, Sharon gets up and watches the world from a window; nothing looking back but her own reflection. The image reminds her of the stories she used to weave as a child, of the girl who lived behind the glass. They could never touch, no matter how hard they pressed their fingers to the surface, and pretended.

More often than not she just lies there and gazes up at the shadows, creeping across the ceiling, her every thought leading back to Camile. She tries to imagine what she's seeing, and doing; tries to picture her face.

Camile has been short and tall, freckled and smooth, hair every colour from polished mahogany to the whitest shade of blonde. Every time she's come home, everything about her has been different. Yet, somehow, it's always all the same. The wave of her hand, the set of her lips, that sound she makes, sweet and low in her throat, when she's being kissed in just the right way – it's all, undeniably, Camile.

To stare into the eyes of a stranger and see the woman she loves looking back is wondrous enough. To baulk at the process that makes it possible would feel like kicking a gift horse in the mouth. Whichever face and body Camile has come home to her wearing, Sharon has never passed comment, and tried her very best not to care.

If it's a test of her love – if the depth of it can be measured by how easily she can overlook something as shallow as an appearance – then she's determined to pass it.

And then Camile comes home in a wheelchair, breathing through a ventilator; and for the very first time, Sharon feels like she's starting to fail.

She would do anything for Camile. Wait for weeks, or months, or the years she's now resigned to. Believe in the impossible; see the soul, and not the shell. She would tend to her, every hour of every day, whether the body in need of care was the one she was born with, or a total stranger's.

But she can't stay in the house a single second longer.

She feigns reluctance when Camile insists she go grocery shopping. But when the moment comes, she grabs her purse and keys, and eagerly makes an escape. The air outside is refreshingly cool, a soothing caress on her face. She lifts it to the sky as she walks, eyes half-closed, feet taking independent steps; not really sure where she's going, except that it's away from here.

A half hour later, still firmly in the grasp of suburbia, reality sinks in. Camile was right – they do need to stock up, since she's grown used to take-out and shopping for one, and having three people in the house for the same number of weeks has left it almost bare. She's going to have to go back, eventually, and she can't go back empty-handed. Camile would know something was wrong, if she did, and the last thing she needs right now is someone else to worry about.

She retraces her steps and gets in the car, hoping with a rush of guilt that the poor young woman Camile has switched with hasn't developed preternaturally good hearing, to make up for the rest.

Sharon takes longer in the store than usual, browsing the aisles with leisurely abandon. She ponders over plump tomatoes and strawberries shaped like hearts; the stained glass display of whites and reds, promising absolution. She picks out the brightest colours and strongest flavours, remembering Camile telling her that nothing in a borrowed body tastes the way it should. And then, while she's weighing up the merits of muesli and organic granola, she sees her.

They've met in person only once. The hair is greyer than it was, the neat, pin tucked figure somewhat rounder than before – but the face is unmistakeable. Sharon is well used to looking at a stranger and seeing Camile: it's much less a stretch to see her staring out from the eyes of her own mother.

Her feet start moving again, free from conscious thought. She doesn't try to stop them. She trails the older woman at a careful distance, peering at her around corners, through towers of cans and gaps in shelving. They don't move in the same circles, or live in the same neighbourhood. They share a sun, and a sky, and that's as far as it goes. Camile holds on to everything, long after it stops being healthy. She's too stubborn to try to make it up, even now, by proxy.

Sharon would never interfere, though it's one of the few things – like taste in chairs – they disagree on. But still, to see her here, so unexpectedly – on a day when Camile is here too – it feels like more than coincidence.

It feels like a sign. And so she toys with her necklace, gathers up her courage, and goes over.

"Hi there," she says, only after it's out wondering if it would have sounded less lame in Mandarin. She clears her throat – her voice is too high, a tremor brewing – and forges on, still in English. "I don't know if you remember me... Well, you probably do... We send you a card every – well, I'm in charge of that one so it's me, really – but I always sign it from the two of us. I've always been a big believer in keeping in touch. Family, staying connected..."

Even as the words are stumbling from her lips, she registers something that looks like recognition, flashing in the woman's guarded eyes. But if that's really what it is, she doesn't acknowledge it, or Sharon. She says nothing, in any language. She furrows up her brow, shrugs her shoulders, and scurries away as if she's been stung.

Later, Sharon will wonder if her mind was playing tricks on her. If she's so desperate to have something of Camile, permanent and not part-time, that she mistook a total stranger for her mom, and made herself see what wasn't there.

Here and now, she clutches her groceries and wonders what on earth she's doing, hiding out from someone she loves more than life, who's strong enough to spend weeks imprisoned in a paralysed body, just to be with her.

Camile would do anything for her, too.

She resolved from the start never to let Camile see her cry, the same way they promised each other, even earlier, to never have secrets, and be as honest as non-disclosure agreements allow.

Camile has held up her end of the bargain, no matter how grim the truth. But lies are sometimes kinder, and it's no longer a promise Sharon is sure she can keep.

It's after dark, the next time Camile comes home, a mistake that sets the tone from the start. Sharon is on edge from a long day at work, and Camile has switched with a willowy redhead who reminds her of a girlfriend she had in college, who left her for a semester in Paris, and never came back. She doesn't offer the necklace, and Camile doesn't ask.

They snuggle up under a blanket in the backyard and watch the stars, twinkling down like diamonds. It's something they've done before, picking out constellations with the aid of Camile's off-world posting, a class Sharon once took on astronomy, and a fascination with astrology that neither would admit to in public.

The night is cold, and the sky is clear. The moon is a huge, gleaming pearl, and patterns are easy to spot. But Camile's thoughts are somewhere far beyond, and her words soon follow.

"He's a loose cannon," she tells Sharon. "A bomb just waiting for a trigger. He's a—"

"Walking, talking cliché?"

Rosebud lips twitch with Camile's wryest smile. "Something like that."

"He must have some redeeming value." She winces at the sharpness of her voice, but continues, "It's not like you; to condemn someone without giving them a chance."

"Sergeant Greer is aggressive and unpredictable. Always has been. Did I mention he locked me in a storeroom and threatened to shoot me?"

Sharon stares at her in horror. "Threatened to shoot—"

"He was under the influence of an alien tick at the time," Camile says drowsily, cuddling closer. "I'm almost sure he won't do it again."

Sharon reaches for her wine glass, her mouth gaping open. Camile has had a couple drinks too – and who knows what tolerance this latest body has for alcohol – but the ease with which she's discussing someone wanting to kill her is almost as jaw-dropping as the fact. Camile isn't as tough as she pretends; she must have been scared out of her mind. They're used to living comfortable lives in a nice part of town, where death threats only ever happen on the television, and in another world.

Camile talks some more, and awareness crawls its way up Sharon's spine: that everything she's talking about – taciturn scientists, floating cameras, warring factions – is her world now.

"I thought the ship ran on Earth time," she says, at a loss for another topic of conversation.

"It does. Well, as close as possible. We had some power fluctuations and wound up slightly out of sync. It's lucky the stones are manned twenty-four seven."

"Lucky," Sharon echoes. She watches Camile – Kelly, she saw from the uniform, tried her hardest not to – taking another sip from her glass. "Steady. You don't want the person you switched with waking up with a hangover."

"Everyone who volunteers for the communication stone programme signs a waiver," says Camile, blithely reeling it off. "They're well aware of any possible consequences."

Questions pile up on Sharon's tongue – Have you never wondered what's happening to your body, while you're not in it? What if it gets hurt, or worse? How can you dismiss someone's feelings with a piece of paper? – but she bites them back. It's churlish to question, always has been. And Camile has no answers: the things that concern Sharon no longer seem to occur to her, probably not to anyone on the ship. For them, the stones are part of everyday life; space-age Skype, a chance to see familiar faces. They have no idea what it's like not to be able to.

"I'm thinking of swapping shifts," she says, mouth warm with wine. She makes a mental note, to buy another bottle. "Working nights more often."

"That's a good idea," Camile tells her.

Several silent minutes later, she asks, "Are you keeping up with your drawing?"

"Not really," Camile admits.

"I've still got the sketches you sent me, of the sunset at the base. There must be something out there to inspire you. You always said space was beautiful."

Camile shakes her head. The scent of someone else's shampoo, a medicinal kind of mint, drifts over. "Space is cold. And deadly. Everything else...is just an illusion."

Silence settles over them again, like a winter frost. Sharon feels Camile's chest rising and falling against her; watches her breath mist white in the air. Twelve years, and they've never before run out of things to talk about. There's never been so much to say, and so little idea of how to say it. Distance is opening up between them, as far as that between stars and galaxies, and every bit as difficult to bridge.

Small talk fills the gap, in the end. Camile points out the Seven Sisters, and says she'd have settled for one. Sharon spies the evening star, and wonders if you can see the moon from there, too; if it's even visible at all, across the great divide. When their teeth start to chatter, they go inside, talk thread counts and Egyptian cotton instead, and go to sleep.

When Sharon wakes to the first light of dawn, Camile is gone; slipping in and out of her life as if she'd only dreamed her into existence.

She starts to wonder how the other families are coping, thoughts turning from Camile to everyone who's stranded with her, and those they've left behind.

At least the people on the ship have each other – if they'd only stop fighting long enough to notice.

"Ms Wray asked me to give you this," Major Peterson says, when Sharon sees him next. He extends his hand over the threshold of the house she once shared with Camile, a folded-up piece of paper between his fingers. The black SUV is waiting behind him, camouflage flickering impatiently through the windows.

Sharon takes the paper and turns it over in her hand, spirits soaring, a smile ready to burst from her lips. She should have known Camile would do this. Sketch the wonders of outer space, the way they spoke of; the vista of a planet, or maybe the span of the ship, those metallic storeys and domes that she's spoken of—

There's writing. Camile's careful writing, formed by someone else's hand. So it's a letter, then, a good old-fashioned love letter—

"It's the communication stone schedule," she realises, hoping disappointment doesn't show in her voice. Peterson gives a stoic nod. Her eyes scan the list of dates and times, and names she recognises only because she's heard them spoken. Third from bottom is Camile's, next to a date that is four weeks away, a date she knows from experience is very much subject to change.

Camile is trying to offer her certainty. It's more loving a gesture than any letter or drawing could ever be, even if it means seeing it, in black and white: the snatches of time their relationship has been allotted, and has to learn to survive.

"Good day then, ma'am," Peterson says.

"See you next time," Sharon tells him, the response automatic. They all have their scripts to stick to. The next time she sees Camile, she'll take a deep breath, and stick to hers: smile, take her in her arms, whisper all the right things in her ear. It'll be just the way it was at the beginning, when the only thing that mattered was that Camile was here, and not the chasm of space between them, or the face, and voice, and name.

She watches the major, walking away beneath a sky brimming with unshed rain, and longs with all her heart for a time when she didn't know his.

END