Fic: Falling, Backwards
Rating: PG-13 (because... that sounds cooler than just PG; and, also, I used a CURSE word! *gasps abound*)
Disclaimer: Stargate: SG-1 is not mine in any way, shape, or form. And also, I'm poor. But, if you were to try to sue anyways, sue Nat, because this is all her fault.
Summary: He’s spent a lot of time these past few weeks (when he’s not digging his way into a hidey-hole of denial, that is) going over everything in his head and trying to find the beginning. An exploration of Daniel's head space in Unending, and a look at just how he got there.
A/N: This is my first Stargate fic, my first d/v fic, and the first thing I've written since I was about 11 (excepting essays). I didn't think I could do it, but I did (and, even though I lost a bet with Nat in the process, I did still do a happy dance with Chariots of Fire playing in my head upon typing that last period). So, let me know what you think and hopefully you enjoy!!
As the Odyssey begins its journey to the Asgard home world, SG-1 scatters to different ends of the ship. Having successfully resisted the urge to supervise the initial jump to hyperdrive, Sam bustles off to check some readings and generally hover over Major Marks’ shoulder on the bridge. Shortly afterwards Cam and Teal’c leave to spar in the gym, and Vala retires to her quarters, offering a highly suspicious explanation for her departure that involves the phrase “self-reflection.” This leaves Daniel sitting in the commissary alone, idly toying with a pair of salt and peppershakers and debating how long he ought to wait before making sure Vala isn’t doing something illegal and/or monumentally scandalous.
Experience tells him she can get herself into trouble pretty quickly when she puts her mind to it, so he sets off after her almost immediately.
When he arrives at his destination, he finds Vala sitting on her bed.
Her head whips upward at the sound of the door whooshing open. “Daniel!” she exclaims, quickly shoving a pile of several brightly coloured somethings behind her. “What brings you to my arm of the forest?”
He squints at Vala appraisingly for a moment, decides to forgo correcting her flawed figure of speech, and asks the necessary question: “Vala? What was that?”
“What was what?”
He gives her a look and she sighs heavily, wide-eyed innocence morphing into a caught-out pout. “Oh, fine. If you must know, I thought I’d throw myself a little birthday party.” She pulls out a bundle of what he can now see are cardboard hats from behind her back. She dangles one in front of her by its elastic chinstrap. “You see? Harmless.”
“It’s not your birthday,” Daniel is compelled to point out, even as he takes the hat and turns it over absently in his hands.
“Well, no, but no one else has to know that,” she wheedles. “Please Daniel? This ship, while admittedly very nice, is going to get boring very quickly and I’ll need something to entertain me. And since you’re too prudish to step up to the task…” Here, she pauses to see if he’ll contradict her (he doesn’t) and gives him an outrageously lecherous once over. “…Why not throw a little party?”
Despite himself he feels the corners of his lips tip upwards. He hands the hat back to her, and Vala visibly puffs her chest out like a smug bird at the implied victory.
“You didn’t answer my question, by the way.” She tosses this over her shoulder a second later, as she gets down onto the floor to stow the hats in an under-bed compartment. Daniel just catches a glimpse of streamers, noisemakers, and balloons before she slides the drawer shut again with a soft snick and stands up.
“What?” he asks distractedly, a little busy trying to fight off the disturbing revelation that he’s found this entire exchange unbearably cute. Then he says, “oh,” as his brain recovers from the trauma and he remembers: right, why is he in her arm of the forest. Unable to tell her the truth, because it would probably annoy her to know he was checking up on her, Daniel searches for something to say. Then he remembers the small, tissue-wrapped package he’s been carrying around with him everywhere for two weeks.
“I wanted you to have this,” he says, digging a hand into his pocket and pulling out the object in question. He stumbles a bit as he tries to explain himself, because he never really meant to give it to her, and so hadn’t thought much about what he’d tell her if he did. “I know it’s been hard for you lately, what with Adria and…well, everything. I thought maybe you could use something to cheer you up. So, here.”
She accepts the package with a mildly gob smacked expression on her face.
“It’s nothing special,” he hastens to add. “Just something I picked up off the base.”
It seems to please her anyways, because when she looks up at him her eyes are twinkling. She absently traces a gentle finger over the jeweled barrette, and he can see genuine thanks written on her face even as she says, “Just so we’re clear, this doesn’t get you out of buying me a birthday present. I’ll expect something shiny, and by that I mean it had better be gold or contain some sort of precious gemstone.”
“You’re a little delusional, aren’t you?” He aims for a dry, point-of-fact tone, but only ends up sounding amused.
“And I’m all yours, darling.” She waggles her eyebrows and grins at him.
“Yes, I know. Every day I question what I’ve done to deserve that.”
He’s thankful for the joking, because it distracts him from everything he’s not saying, and is trying really hard not to even think. Like how the colour of the hair clip reminds him of the shirt she wore on their not-date. Or how he bought her a present merely because he could, because she’s safe and sound and whole - because when she was trapped inside that infirmary with Adria, all he could think about was that he didn’t know what he’d do if he could never bicker with her again.
* * *
That night Daniel lies in bed wide awake, listening to the low hum of the ship and wondering just when he got to be so stupid. He’s spent a lot of time these past few weeks (when he’s not digging his way into a hidey-hole of denial, that is) going over everything in his head and trying to find the beginning. He never succeeds, though, because whenever he gets close he remembers yet another innocuous, unremarkable moment that suddenly isn’t so simple any longer.
Tonight, it is this memory that has him stuck:
It’s been half an hour already, and even Daniel can admit that Woolsey’s “Hurry Up Before We All Die a Blue, Glowy Death” spiel is kind of tedious and redundant, so he’s not really surprised when Vala nudges his elbow in an attempt to draw his attention away from the briefing. He opts for shooting her a half-annoyed, half-disapproving look, and really hopes that will be the end of it. Because, yes: tedious and redundant. But the IOA’s bleak assessment of the Ori situation is entirely accurate, too. If SG-1 doesn’t locate Merlin’s weapon soon…well, then they probably will all die a blue, glowy death. The weight of reality is beginning to rest heavily upon him at this point in the meeting, and he’s not in the mood to be anyone’s source of entertainment.
Unfortunately, Fate decides against granting his wish to be left alone. Just as he’s settling back into his comfortable pit of doom, gloom, and boredom, Vala huffs in frustration and executes her next move.
She jabs a finger into his ribs. Hard.
Daniel lets out an ‘oof’ that makes Mitchell look up at him with raised eyebrows, momentarily abandoning his diligent note taking. Or, at least, whatever is masquerading as note taking. Cam’s goody-two-shoes, spit-and-polish soldier routine is currently a bit suspect in Daniel’s eyes. At the end of a similar meeting just last week he caught a glimpse of the other man’s so-called “notes”. The only thing on his yellow legal pad was a rather detailed drawing of five stick figures dancing happily around a downed Ori mother ship.
“What?!” he hisses sharply at Vala, after offering Cam a huge, plastic, ‘as you were’ smile. Mitchell rolls his eyes and goes back to his (let’s be honest, now) doodling.
Vala points - probably with the same finger that has undoubtedly left a bruise on his side - at what is written in her own notebook. Daniel peers at it.
‘Knock knock,’ it reads.
Feeling ridiculously like he has been transported back to grade school, he scribbles, underlining a few choice words, ‘Do you honestly think that now is the best time for this?’
‘Yes. Now, don’t make me poke you again.’
When he scowls at her, she raises an index finger and waves it at him threateningly. Resigned, because his ribs actually still kind of hurt and no one’s paying attention to them anyways, he tugs the notebook closer and writes, ‘Who’s there?’
He doesn’t have to look to know that a triumphant grin has spread across Vala’s face.
‘Boo.’
‘Boo, who?’
‘Don’t cry, it’s only a joke!’
It’s not really all that funny, and of course he’s heard the joke before, but Daniel finds himself smiling helplessly back at her nonetheless. There’s something contagious about Vala’s obvious amusement with the Taur’i joke, and he feels lighter for it, as if they haven’t just spent the better part of an hour being reminded that the fate of the world balances on their shoulders.
It is only in retrospect that he thinks to question why the knots of tension in his back suddenly eased after that. And he does question it, right up until he finally drifts off to sleep.
* * *
Getting over Shar’e is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.
He knows his heart broke a little when she was taken from him, and that every day thereafter fine tendrils crept outward from that initial crack. Slowly, riddled with fissures, he crumbled apart piece-by-piece, sunset after sunset, until his heart was shattered altogether upon her death.
That’s why, after Shar’e, he thought he would never be able to love again. For months he awakened, still expecting to see her face, only to remember in a crippling flash that he would never see her smile again. Nor hear her laugh. Nor feel her arms around him, or her lips under his.
Then one morning her absence no longer surprised him, and it hurt just a little bit less to breathe.
The pain of losing Shar’e is now a ghostly, dull ache that comes and goes before it can truly begin to hurt. It still hits him, sometimes, and deep in his gut he suspects he will never be entirely free from her memory. Doesn’t really want to be. But somehow, he understands, he has managed to pick up the pieces of himself and fit the jagged edges back together.
* * *
Daniel is staring down into his coffee mug and willing a raging headache away when Cam and Teal’c arrive for breakfast the next morning.
“Wakey, wakey, sunshine!” Mitchell singsongs, setting his food tray down across from him. “What’s shakin’?"
“You’re annoyingly cheerful,” Daniel observes darkly. “You know that, right?”
Cam looks affronted. “Well, yeah! Dude - we’re flying in space. This is cool. ”
A particularly sharp pain slices across Daniel’s forehead, and he can’t help but wince and reach a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Teal’c inclines his head in concern. “Are you unwell, DanielJackson?”
Daniel waves it off. “No, no…I’m fine, I just, you know, haven’t had enough coffee yet. Two more cups and I’ll be fine.”
The truth is, he’d had a terrible sleep, waking up twice in the night to find his legs tangled in the blankets and his pillow on the floor. It took him longer to fall back into unconsciousness each time.
They pass idle conversation for a while, until Cam says around a mouthful of scrambled eggs, “I wonder where the lovely ladies of the band are?”
“I believe Colonel Carter is on the bridge,” Teal’c says.
Cam nods in acknowledgment, and then looks at Daniel. “And Vala? What’s she up to?”
Due to lack of sleep, or maybe it’s the throbbing in his head, Daniel bristles. “Well, contrary to popular belief I’m not her keeper, now am I? And in light of that: guess what! I don’t know where she is every second of every day!” And, okay, that came out a bit snappy, he thinks. Even Teal’c is looking at him kind of funny. Great.
“Whoa, there. What crawled up your butt and died?”
* * *
Mostly, he’s angry with himself for letting this happen.
On rare occasions, he’s angry with her - for being so unexpected, for elbowing her way into his life, for not being what he needs.
Foremost in his mind, the memory he can’t shove away no matter how hard he tries, is this one:
Dr. Lam insists that he stay under her watchful eye for at least 48 hours. She’s still worried about the effects Merlin’s consciousness may have had upon his brain. Or, maybe she’s afraid he’ll turn white again and start trying to convert the SGC. Really, though, he just wants to go to his own quarters, or even back to his rarely used apartment. He needs to be somewhere real, not stuck in the infirmary. Here, it feels too much like limbo. He can’t be sure that he really is back.
When Vala wanders in at around 2:00 in the morning, he’s still awake and staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Daniel?” she asks in a hushed voice, so as not to alert any of the nurses or, God forbid, Dr. Lam to her presence. His visitors - Vala amongst them - had been shooed, chased, and ordered out several hours before. “Do you mind if I just…” she gestures toward the uncomfortable-looking plastic chair at his bedside, and bites her lip with an endearing uncertainty that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen from her before.
“Vala,” he says, bemused, “you can sit on my lap while I’m being held prisoner, but now you need to ask permission?”
“Well, you can’t blame a girl. How could I resist when you were all tied up like that?” She winks at him then, and her hesitance disappears so quickly he’s sure he must have imagined it. She bounds forward to plop down onto the bed, apparently abandoning her plans for the chair.
Daniel blinks up at her, now mere inches away, and then shakes his head. “You’re a fruitcake,” he mutters. She just beams at him, so he shifts over to give her more room. He tries to muster up a suitably grudging facial expression, but it’s hard to manage against the rebellious, tiny bursts of happiness going off in his chest.
A folder appears in her lap - funny, he hadn’t even noticed it when she walked in - and she announces her intention to catch him up with what’s been happening on Earth. Most of the information she relays takes the form of disjointed babble about her favorite soap operas, the number seeming to have multiplied in his absence. But, every so often, she pulls out a carefully clipped newspaper or archaeological journal article from the folder. These she reads to him word for word.
He falls asleep listening to the steady rise and fall of her voice, and thinking that he probably should’ve said, “I missed you.”
Because he really had.
A part of him truly wants to believe in what this memory tells him. But, he knows, he would give her everything and receive only pain in return. The cold hard reality is that if he’s a mess, then she’s a complete disaster. She has nothing else to offer him.
* * *
Daniel runs into Vala later that afternoon as he’s leaving his quarters. He desperately ignores the way his breath hitches when he sees she’s wearing the hairpin he gave her.
“Daniel! Fancy meeting you here!” He stares at her and doesn’t respond to that little gem of ridiculousness. Vala, who grows uncomfortable with the silence quickly (just as he knew she would), drops the game and states her purpose: “I’m bored.”
“And you want me to do what, exactly, about that?” Thankfully, his headache hasn’t faded all that much even after three cups of coffee, and it’s not very hard to put up a mildly annoyed façade.
She gives him a look that is probably supposed to win him over, but only manages to make her look a bit diabolical. “Help me plan my party?”
He says no on principle, steps around her, and continues on his way. She follows him, calling out all the reasons he should assist her, starting with “I’ll let you have one of my presents,” and ending with “we can have sex after!”
* * *
It’s early morning, and they sit in the briefing room side by side. It seems almost normal, except that it isn’t because not a word has been uttered since Vala first found him there. It’s not until Daniel’s watch beeps the hour that she finally whispers lowly, “I didn’t think I’d be this scared.”
Daniel glances up from his book and tries not to stare at her too intently as he searches for something to say. Ultimately he comes up empty, because there simply are no words of comfort that he can offer. In an hour or so she will undergo the procedure to alter her memories, and then be left as Orici bait on some disreputable planet. He can’t tell her not to be scared, because he is, too.
“Now, don’t get me wrong,” she adds quickly. “I can handle Adria, just like I said, and I’ll be fine on that planet alone. I won’t let you down - ”
“I know,” Daniel interrupts, nodding slowly. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Vala will do everything she can to come through for them. It’s been a long time since he’s doubted that.
“It’s just…this is going to hurt, you know?” He notices her eyes are suspiciously bright. “I start thinking about how it’s going to feel, believing you all…well.” She stops talking then and looks down at the table. After a second, she brushes a shaking hand over both cheeks, clears her throat, and finishes simply, “Just promise me you’ll bring me home, Daniel.”
He reaches up to cup her cheek without thought, and in a blinding moment of clarity that strikes just as her eyes flick up to meet his, he understands what this is. What that warmth in the pit of his stomach means. He drops his hand as if burned, heart tripping over itself in a thudding panic. Then he presses his lips together tightly and hugs her because he doesn’t know what else he can do. He wants to run away; go back to his quarters, bang his head off the cement wall, and ask himself over and over again what he could possibly be thinking. But she called this - him - home. She deserves the comfort of her friend, regardless of whatever crisis of sanity he is suffering.
He wishes he could go back in time, erase this epiphany, and return to a happier state of just not getting it.
* * *
Daniel knows he could fall in love again. If he were to be brutally honest with himself, he would admit that he’s already begun his descent.
The problem is this: there’s just far, far too many ways Vala - amazing, strong, beautiful and completely crazy Vala - could blast apart his carefully glued together heart once more. So, he has no choice but to go on pretending to himself that he doesn’t fall further into her gravity every damn day.
He’ll go up to Jack’s cabin for a ‘guy’s weekend’ and not wish she could be there, and certainly he won’t be a little lonely without her. He’ll work late into the night and not be a little less stressed when she comes in and sits on the edge of his desk. He’ll not secretly enjoy it when she makes him watch her soaps with her, just because the couch she’s commandeered for her room is so tiny that their arms end up pressed together.
And, if his heart slams into his ribs every time she smiles at him, he’ll just ignore that, too.
Disclaimer: Stargate: SG-1 is not mine in any way, shape, or form. And also, I'm poor. But, if you were to try to sue anyways, sue Nat, because this is all her fault.
Summary: He’s spent a lot of time these past few weeks (when he’s not digging his way into a hidey-hole of denial, that is) going over everything in his head and trying to find the beginning. An exploration of Daniel's head space in Unending, and a look at just how he got there.
A/N: This is my first Stargate fic, my first d/v fic, and the first thing I've written since I was about 11 (excepting essays). I didn't think I could do it, but I did (and, even though I lost a bet with Nat in the process, I did still do a happy dance with Chariots of Fire playing in my head upon typing that last period). So, let me know what you think and hopefully you enjoy!!
As the Odyssey begins its journey to the Asgard home world, SG-1 scatters to different ends of the ship. Having successfully resisted the urge to supervise the initial jump to hyperdrive, Sam bustles off to check some readings and generally hover over Major Marks’ shoulder on the bridge. Shortly afterwards Cam and Teal’c leave to spar in the gym, and Vala retires to her quarters, offering a highly suspicious explanation for her departure that involves the phrase “self-reflection.” This leaves Daniel sitting in the commissary alone, idly toying with a pair of salt and peppershakers and debating how long he ought to wait before making sure Vala isn’t doing something illegal and/or monumentally scandalous.
Experience tells him she can get herself into trouble pretty quickly when she puts her mind to it, so he sets off after her almost immediately.
When he arrives at his destination, he finds Vala sitting on her bed.
Her head whips upward at the sound of the door whooshing open. “Daniel!” she exclaims, quickly shoving a pile of several brightly coloured somethings behind her. “What brings you to my arm of the forest?”
He squints at Vala appraisingly for a moment, decides to forgo correcting her flawed figure of speech, and asks the necessary question: “Vala? What was that?”
“What was what?”
He gives her a look and she sighs heavily, wide-eyed innocence morphing into a caught-out pout. “Oh, fine. If you must know, I thought I’d throw myself a little birthday party.” She pulls out a bundle of what he can now see are cardboard hats from behind her back. She dangles one in front of her by its elastic chinstrap. “You see? Harmless.”
“It’s not your birthday,” Daniel is compelled to point out, even as he takes the hat and turns it over absently in his hands.
“Well, no, but no one else has to know that,” she wheedles. “Please Daniel? This ship, while admittedly very nice, is going to get boring very quickly and I’ll need something to entertain me. And since you’re too prudish to step up to the task…” Here, she pauses to see if he’ll contradict her (he doesn’t) and gives him an outrageously lecherous once over. “…Why not throw a little party?”
Despite himself he feels the corners of his lips tip upwards. He hands the hat back to her, and Vala visibly puffs her chest out like a smug bird at the implied victory.
“You didn’t answer my question, by the way.” She tosses this over her shoulder a second later, as she gets down onto the floor to stow the hats in an under-bed compartment. Daniel just catches a glimpse of streamers, noisemakers, and balloons before she slides the drawer shut again with a soft snick and stands up.
“What?” he asks distractedly, a little busy trying to fight off the disturbing revelation that he’s found this entire exchange unbearably cute. Then he says, “oh,” as his brain recovers from the trauma and he remembers: right, why is he in her arm of the forest. Unable to tell her the truth, because it would probably annoy her to know he was checking up on her, Daniel searches for something to say. Then he remembers the small, tissue-wrapped package he’s been carrying around with him everywhere for two weeks.
“I wanted you to have this,” he says, digging a hand into his pocket and pulling out the object in question. He stumbles a bit as he tries to explain himself, because he never really meant to give it to her, and so hadn’t thought much about what he’d tell her if he did. “I know it’s been hard for you lately, what with Adria and…well, everything. I thought maybe you could use something to cheer you up. So, here.”
She accepts the package with a mildly gob smacked expression on her face.
“It’s nothing special,” he hastens to add. “Just something I picked up off the base.”
It seems to please her anyways, because when she looks up at him her eyes are twinkling. She absently traces a gentle finger over the jeweled barrette, and he can see genuine thanks written on her face even as she says, “Just so we’re clear, this doesn’t get you out of buying me a birthday present. I’ll expect something shiny, and by that I mean it had better be gold or contain some sort of precious gemstone.”
“You’re a little delusional, aren’t you?” He aims for a dry, point-of-fact tone, but only ends up sounding amused.
“And I’m all yours, darling.” She waggles her eyebrows and grins at him.
“Yes, I know. Every day I question what I’ve done to deserve that.”
He’s thankful for the joking, because it distracts him from everything he’s not saying, and is trying really hard not to even think. Like how the colour of the hair clip reminds him of the shirt she wore on their not-date. Or how he bought her a present merely because he could, because she’s safe and sound and whole - because when she was trapped inside that infirmary with Adria, all he could think about was that he didn’t know what he’d do if he could never bicker with her again.
* * *
That night Daniel lies in bed wide awake, listening to the low hum of the ship and wondering just when he got to be so stupid. He’s spent a lot of time these past few weeks (when he’s not digging his way into a hidey-hole of denial, that is) going over everything in his head and trying to find the beginning. He never succeeds, though, because whenever he gets close he remembers yet another innocuous, unremarkable moment that suddenly isn’t so simple any longer.
Tonight, it is this memory that has him stuck:
It’s been half an hour already, and even Daniel can admit that Woolsey’s “Hurry Up Before We All Die a Blue, Glowy Death” spiel is kind of tedious and redundant, so he’s not really surprised when Vala nudges his elbow in an attempt to draw his attention away from the briefing. He opts for shooting her a half-annoyed, half-disapproving look, and really hopes that will be the end of it. Because, yes: tedious and redundant. But the IOA’s bleak assessment of the Ori situation is entirely accurate, too. If SG-1 doesn’t locate Merlin’s weapon soon…well, then they probably will all die a blue, glowy death. The weight of reality is beginning to rest heavily upon him at this point in the meeting, and he’s not in the mood to be anyone’s source of entertainment.
Unfortunately, Fate decides against granting his wish to be left alone. Just as he’s settling back into his comfortable pit of doom, gloom, and boredom, Vala huffs in frustration and executes her next move.
She jabs a finger into his ribs. Hard.
Daniel lets out an ‘oof’ that makes Mitchell look up at him with raised eyebrows, momentarily abandoning his diligent note taking. Or, at least, whatever is masquerading as note taking. Cam’s goody-two-shoes, spit-and-polish soldier routine is currently a bit suspect in Daniel’s eyes. At the end of a similar meeting just last week he caught a glimpse of the other man’s so-called “notes”. The only thing on his yellow legal pad was a rather detailed drawing of five stick figures dancing happily around a downed Ori mother ship.
“What?!” he hisses sharply at Vala, after offering Cam a huge, plastic, ‘as you were’ smile. Mitchell rolls his eyes and goes back to his (let’s be honest, now) doodling.
Vala points - probably with the same finger that has undoubtedly left a bruise on his side - at what is written in her own notebook. Daniel peers at it.
‘Knock knock,’ it reads.
Feeling ridiculously like he has been transported back to grade school, he scribbles, underlining a few choice words, ‘Do you honestly think that now is the best time for this?’
‘Yes. Now, don’t make me poke you again.’
When he scowls at her, she raises an index finger and waves it at him threateningly. Resigned, because his ribs actually still kind of hurt and no one’s paying attention to them anyways, he tugs the notebook closer and writes, ‘Who’s there?’
He doesn’t have to look to know that a triumphant grin has spread across Vala’s face.
‘Boo.’
‘Boo, who?’
‘Don’t cry, it’s only a joke!’
It’s not really all that funny, and of course he’s heard the joke before, but Daniel finds himself smiling helplessly back at her nonetheless. There’s something contagious about Vala’s obvious amusement with the Taur’i joke, and he feels lighter for it, as if they haven’t just spent the better part of an hour being reminded that the fate of the world balances on their shoulders.
It is only in retrospect that he thinks to question why the knots of tension in his back suddenly eased after that. And he does question it, right up until he finally drifts off to sleep.
* * *
Getting over Shar’e is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.
He knows his heart broke a little when she was taken from him, and that every day thereafter fine tendrils crept outward from that initial crack. Slowly, riddled with fissures, he crumbled apart piece-by-piece, sunset after sunset, until his heart was shattered altogether upon her death.
That’s why, after Shar’e, he thought he would never be able to love again. For months he awakened, still expecting to see her face, only to remember in a crippling flash that he would never see her smile again. Nor hear her laugh. Nor feel her arms around him, or her lips under his.
Then one morning her absence no longer surprised him, and it hurt just a little bit less to breathe.
The pain of losing Shar’e is now a ghostly, dull ache that comes and goes before it can truly begin to hurt. It still hits him, sometimes, and deep in his gut he suspects he will never be entirely free from her memory. Doesn’t really want to be. But somehow, he understands, he has managed to pick up the pieces of himself and fit the jagged edges back together.
* * *
Daniel is staring down into his coffee mug and willing a raging headache away when Cam and Teal’c arrive for breakfast the next morning.
“Wakey, wakey, sunshine!” Mitchell singsongs, setting his food tray down across from him. “What’s shakin’?"
“You’re annoyingly cheerful,” Daniel observes darkly. “You know that, right?”
Cam looks affronted. “Well, yeah! Dude - we’re flying in space. This is cool. ”
A particularly sharp pain slices across Daniel’s forehead, and he can’t help but wince and reach a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Teal’c inclines his head in concern. “Are you unwell, DanielJackson?”
Daniel waves it off. “No, no…I’m fine, I just, you know, haven’t had enough coffee yet. Two more cups and I’ll be fine.”
The truth is, he’d had a terrible sleep, waking up twice in the night to find his legs tangled in the blankets and his pillow on the floor. It took him longer to fall back into unconsciousness each time.
They pass idle conversation for a while, until Cam says around a mouthful of scrambled eggs, “I wonder where the lovely ladies of the band are?”
“I believe Colonel Carter is on the bridge,” Teal’c says.
Cam nods in acknowledgment, and then looks at Daniel. “And Vala? What’s she up to?”
Due to lack of sleep, or maybe it’s the throbbing in his head, Daniel bristles. “Well, contrary to popular belief I’m not her keeper, now am I? And in light of that: guess what! I don’t know where she is every second of every day!” And, okay, that came out a bit snappy, he thinks. Even Teal’c is looking at him kind of funny. Great.
“Whoa, there. What crawled up your butt and died?”
* * *
Mostly, he’s angry with himself for letting this happen.
On rare occasions, he’s angry with her - for being so unexpected, for elbowing her way into his life, for not being what he needs.
Foremost in his mind, the memory he can’t shove away no matter how hard he tries, is this one:
Dr. Lam insists that he stay under her watchful eye for at least 48 hours. She’s still worried about the effects Merlin’s consciousness may have had upon his brain. Or, maybe she’s afraid he’ll turn white again and start trying to convert the SGC. Really, though, he just wants to go to his own quarters, or even back to his rarely used apartment. He needs to be somewhere real, not stuck in the infirmary. Here, it feels too much like limbo. He can’t be sure that he really is back.
When Vala wanders in at around 2:00 in the morning, he’s still awake and staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Daniel?” she asks in a hushed voice, so as not to alert any of the nurses or, God forbid, Dr. Lam to her presence. His visitors - Vala amongst them - had been shooed, chased, and ordered out several hours before. “Do you mind if I just…” she gestures toward the uncomfortable-looking plastic chair at his bedside, and bites her lip with an endearing uncertainty that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen from her before.
“Vala,” he says, bemused, “you can sit on my lap while I’m being held prisoner, but now you need to ask permission?”
“Well, you can’t blame a girl. How could I resist when you were all tied up like that?” She winks at him then, and her hesitance disappears so quickly he’s sure he must have imagined it. She bounds forward to plop down onto the bed, apparently abandoning her plans for the chair.
Daniel blinks up at her, now mere inches away, and then shakes his head. “You’re a fruitcake,” he mutters. She just beams at him, so he shifts over to give her more room. He tries to muster up a suitably grudging facial expression, but it’s hard to manage against the rebellious, tiny bursts of happiness going off in his chest.
A folder appears in her lap - funny, he hadn’t even noticed it when she walked in - and she announces her intention to catch him up with what’s been happening on Earth. Most of the information she relays takes the form of disjointed babble about her favorite soap operas, the number seeming to have multiplied in his absence. But, every so often, she pulls out a carefully clipped newspaper or archaeological journal article from the folder. These she reads to him word for word.
He falls asleep listening to the steady rise and fall of her voice, and thinking that he probably should’ve said, “I missed you.”
Because he really had.
A part of him truly wants to believe in what this memory tells him. But, he knows, he would give her everything and receive only pain in return. The cold hard reality is that if he’s a mess, then she’s a complete disaster. She has nothing else to offer him.
* * *
Daniel runs into Vala later that afternoon as he’s leaving his quarters. He desperately ignores the way his breath hitches when he sees she’s wearing the hairpin he gave her.
“Daniel! Fancy meeting you here!” He stares at her and doesn’t respond to that little gem of ridiculousness. Vala, who grows uncomfortable with the silence quickly (just as he knew she would), drops the game and states her purpose: “I’m bored.”
“And you want me to do what, exactly, about that?” Thankfully, his headache hasn’t faded all that much even after three cups of coffee, and it’s not very hard to put up a mildly annoyed façade.
She gives him a look that is probably supposed to win him over, but only manages to make her look a bit diabolical. “Help me plan my party?”
He says no on principle, steps around her, and continues on his way. She follows him, calling out all the reasons he should assist her, starting with “I’ll let you have one of my presents,” and ending with “we can have sex after!”
* * *
It’s early morning, and they sit in the briefing room side by side. It seems almost normal, except that it isn’t because not a word has been uttered since Vala first found him there. It’s not until Daniel’s watch beeps the hour that she finally whispers lowly, “I didn’t think I’d be this scared.”
Daniel glances up from his book and tries not to stare at her too intently as he searches for something to say. Ultimately he comes up empty, because there simply are no words of comfort that he can offer. In an hour or so she will undergo the procedure to alter her memories, and then be left as Orici bait on some disreputable planet. He can’t tell her not to be scared, because he is, too.
“Now, don’t get me wrong,” she adds quickly. “I can handle Adria, just like I said, and I’ll be fine on that planet alone. I won’t let you down - ”
“I know,” Daniel interrupts, nodding slowly. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Vala will do everything she can to come through for them. It’s been a long time since he’s doubted that.
“It’s just…this is going to hurt, you know?” He notices her eyes are suspiciously bright. “I start thinking about how it’s going to feel, believing you all…well.” She stops talking then and looks down at the table. After a second, she brushes a shaking hand over both cheeks, clears her throat, and finishes simply, “Just promise me you’ll bring me home, Daniel.”
He reaches up to cup her cheek without thought, and in a blinding moment of clarity that strikes just as her eyes flick up to meet his, he understands what this is. What that warmth in the pit of his stomach means. He drops his hand as if burned, heart tripping over itself in a thudding panic. Then he presses his lips together tightly and hugs her because he doesn’t know what else he can do. He wants to run away; go back to his quarters, bang his head off the cement wall, and ask himself over and over again what he could possibly be thinking. But she called this - him - home. She deserves the comfort of her friend, regardless of whatever crisis of sanity he is suffering.
He wishes he could go back in time, erase this epiphany, and return to a happier state of just not getting it.
* * *
Daniel knows he could fall in love again. If he were to be brutally honest with himself, he would admit that he’s already begun his descent.
The problem is this: there’s just far, far too many ways Vala - amazing, strong, beautiful and completely crazy Vala - could blast apart his carefully glued together heart once more. So, he has no choice but to go on pretending to himself that he doesn’t fall further into her gravity every damn day.
He’ll go up to Jack’s cabin for a ‘guy’s weekend’ and not wish she could be there, and certainly he won’t be a little lonely without her. He’ll work late into the night and not be a little less stressed when she comes in and sits on the edge of his desk. He’ll not secretly enjoy it when she makes him watch her soaps with her, just because the couch she’s commandeered for her room is so tiny that their arms end up pressed together.
And, if his heart slams into his ribs every time she smiles at him, he’ll just ignore that, too.