Unending ficlet - Part 3
Days of Our Lives
Disclamer: Don't own them. Just for fun.
Spoiler: Unending
Category: General
Rating: PG
Summary: A few selected moments from fifty years.
This one takes place right after the infamous scene. Maybe, a few hours later.
Beta'd by DJGirl. Thanks a lot, dear.
Feedback is love!
(a few hours later)
Vala was playing idly with the edge of the sheet as she rested peacefully between Daniel’s arms. They had been in the same position without talking since the second strike of lust left them sprawled on his bed, boneless, tired and satisfied. Oddly, it gave her a sense of normality even if the circumstances was nothing but normal. A part of her mind was trying frantically to make sense of things as the other part was quite content with the latest progression and didn’t want to dwell on why.
She had always known that Daniel was a very passionate person. Whatever he felt, whatever he believed. She had always known when she got behind his barriers; it was going to be something spectacular, something unique. But she couldn’t have guessed for the life of her that it was going to be something like that. Something that raw, that hurtful. As she sprawled between his arms, she couldn’t help but wonder how long he had been building all that up inside him.
She felt him fidgeting under her, but still making lazy circles around her torso. She tucked her head under his chin and smiled against his skin. He pulled her against him tighter, his loosened arm around her waist was now wrapping tightly around her bare flesh. He leaned forward, and whispered into her ear. "We have to talk."
His breath was hot against her skin and she felt as if she was still burning inside. She shook her head, still under his chin. They were great now; she didn’t want to ruin the moment. "I don’t want to." She mumbled, kissing his neck.
"But we need to." Daniel replied, getting tense under her wet kisses.
"You need to tell me that you were such a fool for constantly denying me?" She asked sultry, her tongue still licking under his chin. He shuddered from constant teasing as her sultry voice made him want to hurl. However, not for desire, for her still-on games. There, he thought they were behind that now. He pushed her on to the bed with a force that caught her by surprise and she looked at him as if he had struck her.
"Stop it." He said flatly. "We need to talk."
She straightened up from the bed with an exaggerated sigh. "I didn’t say that we didn’t, Daniel. I just said I didn’t want to." She rested her back against the bed’s head and threw a glance at him. "Wanting and needing something are quite different." She added gloomily. He caught her glance and kept looking to her without breaking the silence. Almost one minute had passed before he finally spoke.
"I just don’t get it, Vala." He brought his hand over his eyes, rubbing them, as his voice was heavy with weariness. "I know it’s one of your defense mechanism, but I thought we passed that stage now." He waved his hands between him and her at the bed, indicating their current situation. "Why do you keep doing it?"
"Everyone has a way to protect oneself. You have invincible walls around yourself, and cut yourself off from every possible danger that may make you emotionally hurt." She raised her head up and looked at him through her lashes. As she saw him about to reply, she hurried along. "I do swing my hips, smile brightly, and throw bunches of innuendo. I'm not saying it's right thing to do. I'm just saying it's my way. But it doesn't make yours more right than mine. Maybe better, but not more right." She started to get up from the bed and wrapped the linen around herself. She stood still for a moment and a shadow of a grin played on her face. She was showing modesty. She wondered briefly if Daniel had ever noticed. Probably not, she answered her own silent question mentally. Sometimes for all of his brilliancy, Daniel couldn't realize the most obvious things.
She began to pace serenely towards his study, one of her arms still keeping the linen around her body. Once she arrived at her destination, she pulled one of the big drawers of his study and took out an old scotch that she had brought to his room in vain hopes that it would made him a little too tipsy, a little too unguarded, a little too relaxed. As she opened the untouched tap of the bottle, she gave herself a silent smile for her own stupidity, and for his stubbornness. She took a glass as well from the drawer, and poured an interesting amount of liquor down into the glass and drank all of it once. She grimaced as the liquor burned her throat; she then looked at the empty glass as if it bore the meaning of life stuff inside. She pursed her lips at the mere thought. She was definitely spending a little too much time at Daniel's side.
She turned back to Daniel, facing him as he merely watched her. "But still you kept asking yourself why I'm doing it." She stated, putting the empty glass down. She returned her glance to his uncharacteristic silence figure and leaned back over the edge of his study. She imagined that how the hot liquor was running into her blood, trying to gett her dizzy to no avail. She then wished for a zillionth time that the liquor had succeeded in its task, getting her tipsy, getting her careless about everything. Instead the alcohol was going to counter her strengthened immune system, not even had a change to mix into her blood. She remembered herself in a booth in a dark, nosy place, somewhere far away, wishing the same thing in her youthful days, trying to escape into sweet oblivion. It was a simple thing that normal people did. She remembered herself drinking, and pretending that she was normal.
She shook her head at her depressed thoughts. If there was something she learned from all of her experiences was that there was absolutely no good for stressing over the things couldn't be changed. "I’ve read things about Qetesh in the books that I had borrowed from your library." She began as Daniel lifted his brow to her mentioning of borrowing. "Your culture decided that she was a love and fertility goddess." She laughed humorlessly as her index finger caressed the edge of study idly. "I’ve never ever heard any statement wronger than that." She drawled, pursing her lips. "A mother loves her child, a man loves a woman, a child loves a dream. It’s pure and a marvelous thing. It could make you do the things that you wouldn’t imagine yourself doing. It gives you the strength you’re not aware of it. If it wasn’t more, Qetesh hated love. And fertility," Her voice was pitched with disdain. "She didn’t give a damn about fertility. She saw herself more than being a vessel of their offspring." Her forehead wrinkled as she focused on her thoughts.
"But what did she represent?" She asked curiously at herself as her gaze pinned down Daniel who was still in awe. His eyes were big and full of curiosity and were aware that he was witnessing something unique. "All of us have our moments of insanity. When our desires, our passions, our cravings get the best of us. When the desire of our hearts gets the best of our common sense. Here, Qetesh was the goddess of that moment. She represented our desire, our passion, and our flesh and blood weaknesses." Her eyes were sparking with unshed tears, and her voice was heavy with remorse. She moved her free hand over to her nose, and rubbed it. "To her, humans were nothing but live-sized dolls in flesh and blood. Like how a child plays with its new shiny toy, she played with their lives until they got broken or she was bored with them. She believed humans belonged to her because they were nothing but the slaves of their own desires. She never really care about power, or the absolute rule over the other System Lords, or anything else than her own game. She ruined actual lives for a laugh, for trying to show the others that whatever they thought we were belonged to her, only her." She hastened the sheet under her arms and both of her hands moved to her eyes to dry them.
"I’m not telling you these things now for earning your pity, or your compassion, Daniel. I’m telling you because I need you to understand me." Her voice was shaky and her body began to tremble slightly. "I had lived with her for more than a decade. I had witnessed all the things she had done. It wasn’t me but it was also me. The blending process was strange and too complicated even to me. I felt everything what she felt as if they were mine. After I was freed from her, the feeling and the memories stayed with me. Even if my mind did its best to suppress her to protect me, in my mind there wasn’t -still not-- any border where I knew for sure what was mine or what was hers." She threw her hands frantically as she kept talking. The linen around her body loosen up and skimming over to her breast. She pushed it up again, and tied a tight knot under her arms. "It was just a chaos of erratic feeling and memories, trying to come to surface in depths of my sanity. In the past, I did very ethically questionable things, and wondered so many times whether it was me or it was Qetesh. And the worst part, I had no answer." She put her head on her hand, head bowed down. "I had no answer." She then felt Daniel’s arms wrapping around her tightly as he apologized for the things that weren’t his fault.
She jerked away erratically from his tight grip and tried to calm down. "Don't. If I stopped now, I couldn’t finish it again." She breathed deeply, and stayed still until she composed herself again. "One day, I had figured out that I wouldn’t have kept going on like that." She tilted her head to the side, and continued. "So one night, instead of fighting with her constantly, I accepted her remnant inside me as a part of me, and moved on. Because frankly otherwise, I would have lost my mind or I would have killed myself."
"You wonder why I keep doing it. Not just my constant flirty, sexual games but why I’m with you here? Why I’m fighting by your sides, didn’t leave for joining Adria? What did keep me still with you after you were done a few hours earlier? Why did I reach to your zipper after you had said ‘life is too short’?" She looked at him; in his eyes, she saw that her guesses were spot on. "Goodness knows that I’m with you here, on this ship, because I care about people. Both of us know that I don’t care about even myself most of times. I didn’t leave your side because I was afraid of getting unhealthy size of attention from Ori believers. You know that I love being the center of things, with all attention on myself." She shook her head again to herself for making herself stayed on topic. "My point is that I could have done all of them. But I didn’t." She touched his cheek with her fingertips lightly. "Last night, I could have come to your side, saying how life was so unfair, how we deserved more." Her voice became a chanted whisper, and he couldn’t do anything but stare at her. "I could have touched your cheek," Her fingers caressed the body in question. "Then I could have moved my fingers towards your lips," Her voice was charmed, he thought. "Then at last, finally I could have kissed you. And we both know that you would have returned my kiss." He closed his eyes on her sensual touches and just nodded.
When he felt her hand drop off, he opened his eyes. "I could have done them but I did none of them. You know why?" She asked somberly.
"No." He whispered back. "Then tell me."
"Because it's me." She raised her chin and her fingers got a powerful grip on his chin, her eyes searching his. "Because I’m Vala Mal Doran and I’m not changing for anyone." She said proudly and left a dumbstruck Daniel beside his study. As she sat on the edge of the bed, Daniel stayed where he was and poured the scotch into empty glass. It was time like these all one needed was a good amount of drink, he mused. Well, even if he wasn't a good drinker.
Once he finished his drink, he went to the bed and sat on it, sighing heavily. "I'm sorry. " His left hand touched lightly her back. "I should have known better." He said remorsefully. She lifted her head to look at him and gave him a genuine smile.
"No. I had it coming. I should have known better too." She rested her head under his chin, sighing with relief. "I'm feeling much better now, like a giant bird raised from my heart." She giggled at her own metaphor. "You know when I said about changing, I exaggerated a little. I've changed. I'm not the same person you met up on Prometheus." She exhaled deeply and confessed. "And I've changed for you. For proving that you were right when you said you could take a chance on me."
"Yeah, but I got the point." He whispered as he felt his heart was about to erupt with his intense feelings, the feelings that woken up by her. He touched her hand, taking it inside his and leaned down to kiss her neck. "But I guess in the end, you can only go so far until one let oneself change. I’m sorry, even though I was right to some degree; I had no right to snap at you like that, especially knowing where you're coming from."
She shook her head, her hair tangled with his. "The problem is...Daniel; I've seen you do amazing things which I've not even imagined that could be done. I think I've got used of thinking of you as sort of hero." She put her fingers on his lips, silencing his coming protest. "You're a hero, to me. But I forgot that you're also a human, like me. I've always assumed that whatever I did, you would have known the truth."
He closed his eyes with a sigh. He wished he could do what she thought that he could, but he was more confused than ever. "Then how was I supposed to know the truth about your feelings when all you kept doing was playing games with me? How should I have known that you were serious when you acted like that you just wanted to get into my pants?"
She shrugged off. "Frankly, I don’t know." She said with a sigh. "You’ve always had a way to see the truth through me." She said shyly, putting a pair of her hair behind her ear. He pulled her to himself with a cry, crushed her lips with his. She wrapped her arms around his neck, responding him as much as she could. Her linen skipped further but this time she didn’t do anything to stop it. It wasn’t important. At that moment, nothing but them was important.
When they ripped their mouths from each other, he rested his head on her. "Oh Vala…You couldn’t know what you mean to me. Trusting you with my life but not be able to trust tyou with my heart. It tainted my mind, my soul, my heart." He whispered throaty. "You should see all the reason I made up for fooling myself why we’re so wrong to each other." He laughed lightly, stroking her hair.
"You know you can be still right." She pointed out. "Daniel, I can’t make a promise for anything because I’ve been trying not to lie to you since I decided that you and SG-1 are my home, my only family. I can’t guarantee anything but I want to give it a try. Because nothing can be worse than asking yourself ‘what ifs’. Maybe it might not work, maybe at the end we might end up hurting each other. However, there is another option. Maybe, we might be happy." She said hopefully.
"We’re going to be happy." He promised instead.