FIC: Adagio for Odyssey
My humble apologies to anyone waiting on an update for Midnight's Children, which has unexpectedly morphed into a monster that has been eating my brain for the last month and a half. Insert excuses here.
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Title: Adagio for Odyssey
Rating: PG
Genre/pairing/warnings: Daniel/Vala, Angst
Setting: S10 Unending
Word count: 510
Summary: She'd wondered if a piano was too large for the matter converter to conjure. He'd only smiled sadly and told her he'd not played in a long time.
It was a scene they'd revisit over and over, the comfort of routine often, on her darker days, all that Vala could find to recommend the long stretch of years ahead of them both.
He would find her on those forlorn evenings when even the lure of discovery couldn't fully dispel the quiet ache of despair that none of them wanted to examine too closely. The sense of loss -- of life continuing on without them -- was a fallacy, of course. Barely the blink of an eye had passed in what Vala had come to think of as her real life, trapped somewhere out there while she lived this traitorous half-existence, so full of joys and sorrows and a roaring emptiness none of them could fill.
Daniel would come to stand behind her, their diaphanous reflections embracing as they would look out at the frozen stars. His hands would ghost down her arms, past her elbows, thumb and forefinger circling the taper of each wrist. He'd coax one arm to bend, bringing it up, leaning slightly to press his lips tenderly to the delicate surface along its inside. A delicious shiver of pleasure would trace a path from that contact to her shoulder, along her collar bone and up her throat, and she would turn to him, accepting the offered distraction.
They would sway to the snatches of music that would find them, the sounds riding on the currents of recycled air being circulated around the ship. The mournful tones of Sam's cello always seemed to echo along Odyssey's vaulted corridors and resonate somewhere behind Vala's ribs, a bittersweet requiem for the lives they'd left behind.
They would spend hours together curled at the base of those windows, wrapped back to chest against the chill of the cavernous room behind them. His movements prompted by the melody, Vala would lose herself to the soft pressure of Daniel's hands, long fingers stroking invisible keys on the muscle of her thigh.
This was a language as indecipherable to her as the ghostly symbols of the Asgard core; enigmatic, inscrutable, but just as exquisitely beautiful. She had asked him once if he could read the flowing script of Sam's sheet music, that tantalising glimpse into the haunting melancholy she wove, the sounds picked out in dots and flicks.
She'd wondered if a piano was too large for the matter converter to conjure.
He'd only smiled sadly and told her he'd not played in a long time.
An unworthy jolt of jealously would sometimes torment her when she'd think of Sam sharing in that intimate knowledge of chords and quavers, crotchets and clefs, in an understanding Vala would never have. Vala had the time to learn if she cared to, she knew. She chose not to pull back the curtain on the magic and expose its secrets. She didn't wish to name the notes or predict the movements of those precious hands.
She was content simply to be the instrument, guided to music by his faltering mastery.
A silent music for her ears only.
END
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Title: Adagio for Odyssey
Rating: PG
Genre/pairing/warnings: Daniel/Vala, Angst
Setting: S10 Unending
Word count: 510
Summary: She'd wondered if a piano was too large for the matter converter to conjure. He'd only smiled sadly and told her he'd not played in a long time.
It was a scene they'd revisit over and over, the comfort of routine often, on her darker days, all that Vala could find to recommend the long stretch of years ahead of them both.
He would find her on those forlorn evenings when even the lure of discovery couldn't fully dispel the quiet ache of despair that none of them wanted to examine too closely. The sense of loss -- of life continuing on without them -- was a fallacy, of course. Barely the blink of an eye had passed in what Vala had come to think of as her real life, trapped somewhere out there while she lived this traitorous half-existence, so full of joys and sorrows and a roaring emptiness none of them could fill.
Daniel would come to stand behind her, their diaphanous reflections embracing as they would look out at the frozen stars. His hands would ghost down her arms, past her elbows, thumb and forefinger circling the taper of each wrist. He'd coax one arm to bend, bringing it up, leaning slightly to press his lips tenderly to the delicate surface along its inside. A delicious shiver of pleasure would trace a path from that contact to her shoulder, along her collar bone and up her throat, and she would turn to him, accepting the offered distraction.
They would sway to the snatches of music that would find them, the sounds riding on the currents of recycled air being circulated around the ship. The mournful tones of Sam's cello always seemed to echo along Odyssey's vaulted corridors and resonate somewhere behind Vala's ribs, a bittersweet requiem for the lives they'd left behind.
They would spend hours together curled at the base of those windows, wrapped back to chest against the chill of the cavernous room behind them. His movements prompted by the melody, Vala would lose herself to the soft pressure of Daniel's hands, long fingers stroking invisible keys on the muscle of her thigh.
This was a language as indecipherable to her as the ghostly symbols of the Asgard core; enigmatic, inscrutable, but just as exquisitely beautiful. She had asked him once if he could read the flowing script of Sam's sheet music, that tantalising glimpse into the haunting melancholy she wove, the sounds picked out in dots and flicks.
She'd wondered if a piano was too large for the matter converter to conjure.
He'd only smiled sadly and told her he'd not played in a long time.
An unworthy jolt of jealously would sometimes torment her when she'd think of Sam sharing in that intimate knowledge of chords and quavers, crotchets and clefs, in an understanding Vala would never have. Vala had the time to learn if she cared to, she knew. She chose not to pull back the curtain on the magic and expose its secrets. She didn't wish to name the notes or predict the movements of those precious hands.
She was content simply to be the instrument, guided to music by his faltering mastery.
A silent music for her ears only.
END