"Our Lives As Happenstance" - Epilogue
Title: Our Lives As Happenstance
Author: Milena D.
Rating: T (PG-13) for now
Genre: Action/Angst/Romance
Pairings: Daniel/Vala, some Cam/Sam can be seen as shippy
SPOILERS: HUGE SPOILERS FOR CONTINUUM.
Summary: A divergence in the lives of our team from one of the last scenes of the movie causes their future to change radically and permanently. Daniel/Vala and HUGE spoilers for CONTINUUM.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Stargate Continuum, the Stargate Series, any of the characters, I don’t even own the premise which is the plot from the movie. Basically I own nothing and am making no money so please don’t sue.
Author’s Note #1: I usually reply to reviews before posting the next chapter but we’ve reached the 4th day since the last chapter and I haven’t slept in quite a while so I apologize profusely but I will be replying to all of you very soon! For now: THANK YOU!
Author’s Note #2: This is the last chapter of this fic. I’m kind of a little sad to be seeing this end, surprisingly. :P I hope it has at least part of what all of you were looking for, and that it’s a good send-off for all of you who’ve been waiting for this end for so long. A very big thank you to all of you who’ve been so patient in waiting for its return, so generous in leaving reviews, and so incredibly supportive and welcoming upon my return to ficcing recently. This is for all of you.
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8
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Chapter 9: Epilogue
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Daniel ducked and rolled to safety as he was repeatedly targeted by enemy fire. Cam, Sam and Teal’c were nowhere to be found and he couldn’t hold off the enemy indefinitely. He was down to his last reserves, completely exhausted, done with, done for. None of them could have seen this coming, it was night and day, heaven and hell...this was the hell part, definitely.
“Holy mother-Jackson??” Mitchell!
“Mitchell, do something!” He yelled over the enemy’s firing. Instead of sudden relief, he felt a large body colliding into his.
“Are you on corn?” Cam glared at him. “I am not getting in the middle of that.” Daniel swore and tried to peer over the edge to see their status when a new weapon was launched into the mix.
“What the hell is that?” Cam asked, his head tilting to the side as the object landed at his feet.
“I think it’s part of the centerpiece.” Daniel said, poking the thing to confirm its benign nature.
“That’s part of your centerpiece?” His teammate replied incredulously, throwing the offending object to the side.
“She was in an arts and crafts phase a few months ago when she started nesting and now she’s too sentimental to throw anything away.” Daniel sighed, leaning against the back of the sofa. “Watch out for your place settings by the way, they’re unfathomably sharp.”
“Noted, thanks.” Cam said, his face conveying just how very disturbed he was as a head of lettuce flew over their heads and exploded on the far wall. “She’s got an arm on her.”
“She does, she does.” Daniel replied, staring into space, his eyebrows raised high.
“So...this, to you, is a better option than joining full-time with the Jaffa Rebellion against a horde of snake-heads... Explain that to me?” Cam posed sardonically as he watched his friend sigh and rub his face with both hands.
“Well, there’s only a small chance of my dying in this house...in the beginning anyway. Also, it’s due in barely a few weeks and she’s made it quite clear that if I’m not there during delivery for her to cuss me out, she’ll find me and kill me anyway.” Daniel explained, his head bobbing.
“Ah ha.” Mitchell said, grinning knowingly. For a moment the chaos got quiet and Drey’auc could be hear talking to Vala in very soothing tones, hopefully calming the irate woman down. “Got any names yet?” Mitchell continued before the tell-tale sound of a certain dinner piece being thrown and penetrating the adjacent wall caught them off-guard.
“That is a knife, Jackson. What did you do to her?” Cam asked, mildly panicked.
“What did I do?? She’s the one being irrational! She’s the one throwing cutlery!” Daniel replied heatedly, completely affronted until what sounded like a metal pan barreled into the sofa and sprung back onto the floor.
“Jackson!”
“Alright! She mentioned not liking her choices in clothes this morning and I may said - completely innocently - that it was a shame that I...um...wouldn’t get to see her in her leather outfits like in our timeline.” Daniel admitted quickly. “That she took that to mean she’d gotten too big to ever fit into them again is COMPLETELY HER OWN INFERENCE!” He finished yelling in the direction of the kitchen. A string of curses came back and he rolled his eyes. “I DO UNDERSTAND GOA’ULD, YOU KNOW!”
“Do not provoke her more!” Cameron smacked him in the arm. “That’s it? That caused all this?”
“Well, not exactly,” Daniel continued awkwardly, “I may have said that she never used to be so irrational, to which she replied I never knew her before and that if she wasn’t what I wanted I should have built the damn machine and gone back to her.”
“Please, God, tell me you told her that was totally not what you wanted.” Cam pled, his stomach clenching in fear when his friend looked down. “Jackson!”
“I said if I’d known what a horror show we’d turn out to be I would have sacrificed the decade trying to rebuild it.” Daniel confessed morosely.
“Jackson!” Cam was appalled, his face twisted in incredulity.
“I know! I didn’t mean a word of it, obviously!” Daniel yelled back, his eyes distraught. “But I haven’t slept in over a week! She’s never comfortable, she’s always on me and she’s got hot flashes hotter than Sokar. She has cravings I have to tend to at every single hour and god forbid it passes without her having been satisfied! I’m going out of my mind, Cam!” Daniel lowered his face into his hands and breathed deeply. When all he heard from his friend was rustling material, he glanced over to find his former best friend trying to get his white tank top off.
“What are you doing?” Daniel glared at him, his eyes conveying the threat should Cam carry on with his plan.
“Look, I’m sorry, Jackson. You drop us in front of the Goa’uld, the Replicators, in front of the entire damn Ori army and I have your back unconditionally, I will take a bullet for you without a question. But if Sam gets here and finds out what happened and sees that I took your side? Uh uh, no way.” Cam said, fisting his freed tank top and waving it into the air as a makeshift surrender flag. “Vala! Jackson told me everything and he’s an idiot! I’m coming out! Don’t shoot!”
“Cam!” Daniel whispered harshly, trying to hold his friend back. “Cameron!” With a grumble in his throat, Daniel pursed his lips and sat back against the sofa. He would be here for a while.
When Sam and Teal’c finally arrived from their meeting with the Jaffa resistance an hour or so later, it was to the scene of massive cleaning. A very pregnant Vala came to give them warm hugs and kisses and then promptly gave them both cloths to pitch in.
“What happened here?” Sam whispered to Cam as she busied herself with an imaginary spot on the table. He didn’t reply beyond shaking his head and giving her a look that said he’d debrief her when the slightly-more-hormonal-than-average woman wasn’t within earshot.
A sense of uneasiness settled deep inside her and, refusing to be kept out of the loop when it concerned her closest friend, she began to take stock of the environment. Vala, after her cheerful greetings, seemed to have fallen into a slum of sorts and a smile would have seemed foreign on her lips. Drey’auc, whom they’d hastily grabbed from Chulak with Rya’c and Brayt’ac before all hell really broke loose between the Goa’uld and the rest of the galaxy, seemed perplexingly amused despite the chaos as she kept preparing food for supper. Teal’c slowly made his way to that side of the kitchen to greet his wife properly and to inform her that their son and friend would be late. It was a necessary evil but staggering entrances and departures was one of the many ways the Rebellion members managed to keep their secret.
Aside from the occupants in the room - of whom there was one notable exception - the place itself was a mess of bits of food, glass, ceramics and...was that a scorch burn on the doorframe? It looked like the place had been ransacked and if not for Drey’auc’s cheer she’d be worried that Daniel had been abducted after a fierce struggle. Although...when she let her eyes wander to the next room, the splatter patterns on the far wall would suggest exactly where her missing friend was to be found and she had to stifle the sudden onset of laughter and smug pride. After all, she had been the first to point out that Daniel and Vala living together, in confined quarters, not part of the bulk of the Rebellion action, would be a recipe for relentless catastrophes. She was positive that the only reason she hadn’t walked into this very disaster before was because of Drey’auc’s calming influence. Apparently, that had a limit.
Armed with a better understanding of what might have gone down, Sam dropped her cloth and made her way over to Vala, who’d taken to violently obliterating carrots and the wooden chopping board underneath them. With a gentle hand to steady her friend’s madness, she disarmed Vala and was ready with open arms when her face crumpled and tears welled in her eyes. Subtly, the other people filed out of the kitchen, the men a touch more quickly than the woman.
“He’s right.” Vala sniffed, trying with all her might to get herself under control. “I never used to be like this.”
“You never used to be pregnant.” Sam pointed out gently, guiding her to a chair. The trio from the original timeline had agreed that certain parts of the original timeline could be...forgotten. Amongst those were Vala being burned alive and being impregnated against her will to deliver the Ori spawn.
“Ugh.” Vala derided. “I never wanted to be one of those women: barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, blaming their insanity on hormones.” Sam said nothing but when Vala looked down to notice she had no footwear or socks on, the tears came back to coat her lash line. “I couldn’t put them on myself because of my stomach and that endlessly useless idiot, wasn’t around.”
Resisting the urge to laugh, Sam just patted her friend’s hand.
“I think it’s completely justifiable for you to be feeling a little more emotional than usual.” She declared, silencing Vala before she protested. “No, listen. For one, yes, you are pregnant and you’re facing being a mother to a child for the first time in your life. Second, you are stuck here while we’re out there fighting and things have been heating up lately. You never know who could not be coming home for the holidays.”
“That’s true.” Vala nodded readily, biting her lip. “I do worry.” Completely a falsehood - she had every faith in their abilities and their devotion to keeping each other safe - but she was willing to latch onto something that made her seem less of a senseless wreck.
“See? You’re not irrational at all. This is a completely rational reaction to external pressures and stresses. You’d have to be inhuman to react any differently.” Sam concluded, succeeding in pacifying her hormonal wreck of a best friend.
“And it can’t be any easier with the thought that I have doubts about us.” A voice full of shame added from the doorway. Seeing Daniel half-hiding behind the wall, Sam quietly got up, squeezed Vala’s hand and left to find the others to get the real story behind all this.
Daniel stepped slowly into the room and was about to take the chair Sam had been sitting in when the lovely mother of his child kicked it into the table and put her feet up on it. As if she feared she wasn’t communicating her feelings loudly enough, she also crossed her arms and looked away.
“Vala...” Daniel paused, reconciling with the fact that he’d screwed up in a major way and would have to grovel big this time. Holding in his sigh, he lowered himself to his knees beside her chair, earning himself a fraction of a glance. “I am so sorry I said what I did.” He whispered, his heart lifting when she allowed him to take her hand but crashing again when it remained limp in his.
“Vala, this is ridiculous.” He was trying not to sound admonishing, really he was. “You’ve thrown things, I am more sorry than you could possibly know. Please, just forget everything I said.”
“What does it matter that you said it? You simply voiced what I’ve had in my mind since you found me over a year ago.” She said in a monotone voice, her eyes staring into nothingness.
“What?” Daniel said incredulously, his voice still gentle. With his other hand, he curled her fingers around his and held them tight. “Vala, how could you think that? That I don’t want to be exactly where I am? I was the one fighting for us to stay here against everyone - Cam, Sam, the entire Tok’ra race.”
“ ‘How?’ ” Vala parroted, her brows coming together. “Daniel, you barely knew me when you decided to stay. You barely know me now.” She said, her voice anguished but soft. “You fell in love with the Vala Mal Doran of your time and you didn’t want to let her go. I understood that, even back then, but I was so desperate to feel safe, to feel loved again that I didn’t care. ...I care now.”
“Vala,” he breathed, feeling as though he’d been shot in the chest. “I...I guess we don’t know each other like we should.”
Vala’s chest hiccuped silently and she tried to pull her hand out of his but he wouldn’t let her go.
“If you knew me like you should, you’d know that I would never have made a life with you here, I never would have told you that I love you, I certainly never would have made a child with you, Vala, if I wasn’t completely in love with you. Never.” Daniel proclaimed heatedly. “And if I knew you like I should, I wouldn’t have spent the past year and a half completely ignorant to how you’ve been feeling. And I am so sorry for that, too.”
A tear slipped down her cheek and she went to scrub it away but he beat her to it, gently using the pad of his thumb to absorb the bead of salty water, and lingering on the soft skin under it.
“To be perfectly honest, I did have feelings for the Vala of the other timeline.” Daniel said, hating that it caused her eyes to close firmly, the pressure releasing another tear. He was ready to catch it. “But I didn’t know her at all. For two years I worked with her, rebuking every advance she made, making almost no effort to know the real her, and realizing entirely too late what I felt.”
“And I’m the consolation prize.” She whispered bitterly.
“No!” He protested vehemently, shaking his head and her hand strongly, trying to find a way to express himself properly. “The only true things that I could love about her were the only things I allowed myself to see, only barely what was on the surface. These lips that smile at me so bewitchingly.” He traced the edge of her bottom lip with the same thumb that had caught her sorrow, causing her to swallow heavily. “These eyes that change colour with your every mood - that part I never noticed on her.” He traced her cheekbone. “The effortless way she could rile me up, which you proved you could do the second or third day we’d known each other.” The corner of her mouth barely twitched and his thumb moved down to encourage it.
“But that was all I ever got to know of her, Vala, and what killed me when we were thrown into this timeline is that I knew I’d missed out on so so much because I’d been scared. When we were able to finally get you back, I was still scared but there was no way in hell I was going to miss out on the chance to know you, to love you, ever again. That’s why I needed to be with you, yes, but it’s no reason for why I stayed with you.” He pointed out, a loving smile on his face. “It’s your quirks I find adorable and sometimes infuriating. It’s your trusting me with yourself, your past, your secrets that makes me feel so...honoured. It’s you who showed me what it meant to give yourself wholly to someone again. You are the one I fell in love with, Vala, no one else.”
A tremulous joy tugged Vala’s lips higher and higher despite the falling tears and when Daniel tugged gently on her hand, she willingly went into his arms and held onto his as tightly as she could.
“I’m not going anywhere.” He whispered into her hair as she burrowed her face into the crook of his neck.
“Promise me.”
“If they gave me a ready-build time travel device tomorrow, I would not only refused it but I would zat them and blow it up.” He vowed, to her and to himself. “This is where I belong now, and no one is taking this, taking you, taking us, away from me.”
Finding herself unable to quite form words without her hormones getting the best of her, Vala opted instead to allow his lips to gratefully capture hers to make official their return to normalcy.
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“That was nice.” Cam nodded approvingly in the direction of the other outcasts. They hadn’t gone far when they’d left the kitchen, they’d simply passed through the doorway and settled on the floor on either side of it, out of view.
“It was a long time coming.” Drey’auc commented, her fingers laced with her husband’s. There was an overwhelming lack of one-word agreement coming from a certain Jaffa and everyone could feel its absence.
“Come on, buddy, we know you want to say it.” Cam told Teal’c, whom they suspected wasn’t really kel’no’reeming like he said he would instead of eavesdropping.
“Please, he’s been keeping it for for the past quarter hour, you think he’s gonna give up his cover now?” Sam grinned, looking over at their silent friend on the other side of the door frame.
“It’s pretty quiet...” Cam strained his hearing but couldn’t catch anything.
“I believe they are making up.” Drey’auc said with a secretive smile.
“Making out, more like it.” Sam added, just in case Cam wasn’t bothered enough. His disgruntled sigh and restless shifting told her that he was.
“Yo!” He yelled into the air, ignoring Sam’s attempts to silence him. “You lovebirds mind wrapping this up? I have issues with you two getting it on where we make food.”
There was a heavy silence as they listened for a reply.
“If you think this is disturbing, Cameron, I won’t tell you what went on in your room last week when you were on a mission.” Vala’s voice came back with mock-innocent sing-song tones.
“Ugh, come on.” Cam moaned, his face distorting with disgust as the others (including the suddenly conscious Teal’c) got up from their hiding place to rejoin their friends. “That is just sick.”
Now rejuvenated with the reconnection of their friends, the gang made quick work of cleaning up the rest of the kitchen and living room, and before long, the supper was ready and Bra’tac and Rya’c had arrived. The latest of their too-few family gatherings was well on its way and, as it often did as of late, the conversation shifted to the soon-to-be newest addition.
“I just thought I should mention that, in Earth culture, ‘Sam’ is a great name for either a boy or a girl.” Sam added ever-so-subtly as she passed Vala the bread basket.
“Are you serious? That’s nothing but a nickname.” Cameron scoffed from his place beside Daniel. “Now you take ‘Cameron’, that is a full name. It’s robust enough for a guy but edgy and unique enough for a girl.”
“Noted, thank you.” Vala replied dryly.
“Teal’c is also an appropriate unisex name.” Their large friend intoned serenely, his hands folded together expectantly.
“Really? For a girl?” Sam asked skeptically.
“Sure, why not?” Cam muttered. “It’d make a great stripper name...”
Before their burly friend could inquire as to what exactly a “stripper” was, Daniel jumped back into the fray.
“We were actually thinking of something along the lines of Logan for a boy and maybe Elana for a girl.” He announced, bullshitting on the spot. Still, the table seemed to consider the possibilities.
“As long as you don’t call her Adria.” Cam put out before stilling and catching Daniel and Sam’s wide eyes. All three tried to subtly look at Vala to catch her reaction but she hadn’t missed a beat in the production known as meal-time to a pregnant woman.
“You know, it’s funny you should say that.” She said, taking a bite of her dinner roll. “I had a stepmother called Adria, horrible woman. I would never do that to my daughter.”
And with that near-miss, the trio from the original timeline shared a reassured look and returned to their meals.
They had adjusted to this new life, and to these old and yet new friends. Cam had his thrill-seeking adventures as one of the head strategists and leaders of the Rebellion, Sam was over the moon with her various projects to build the latest (new) technology to get the upper hand on the enemy, and Daniel had his work cut out for him as occasional intergalactic mediator and full-time father-to-be to what was sure to be a little hellion. As for Teal’c, he was finally on the way to providing his people with the freedom they’d been promised and denied, and Vala...Vala had been the most surprising to them all. She played a pivotal role in supplying information and strategies to the movement due to her experience as a host but, perhaps due to those very same reasons, she’d been just as eager if not more so to adapt to a certain degree of domesticity.
This galaxy was not quite their own but this was their family. No matter what timeline, time period, or parallel universe they were in, this was their home.
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That’s all folks. It's been a blast! :)