FIC: Midnight's Children (chapter 2)
Sorry y'all for such a long wait. I hang my head in shame. *grapples with muse and ties it down securely*
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Title: Midnight’s Children (chapter 2)
Rating: R
Genre/pairing/warnings: Daniel/Vala, Drama, Action-Adventure, mentions of torture in some chapters
Setting: Post-Ark of Truth
Word count: 2,960
Summary: Daniel and Vala, captured and held prisoner, struggle to survive a dark and painful ordeal. Not to mention each other. The bonds forged through hardship may prove to be the strongest of all, if only they can see them.
Previous: Part 1 here
Undesignated planet, five months, three weeks earlier
The side of his hand thumped rhythmically against something warm and firm. In a distant land far, far away, he could just make out the wap wap wap of rubbing fabric which, if he concentrated very hard, merged to keep time with each swing of his hanging arm. The supreme effort required to connect these two simple pieces of information -- the soft sound with the hypnotic motion, the cause with the effect, the action with its reaction -- invited razor sharp lightning to arc from his eye socket, snap across the top of his skull and ground itself somewhere between the deep joints of his neck. He stopped thinking altogether for a while and allowed the merciful darkness to soften his edges.
The concepts of time and space dimmed and fluctuated around him. A trickle of something warm and wet snaked its way across his brow and began to drip at a peculiar right angle from his cheekbone. The sensation felt strangely wrong and was just distracting enough to prevent complete surrender to unconsciousness. He fixated on its ticklish caress, hoping it would guide him back down towards that welcoming nothingness, but found that he couldn’t fully escape the incessant throb of pain vying for his attention. It was voracious, an untamed, sentient agony that emanated from somewhere behind his temples and expanded to impossible proportions, pushing out from the confines of his skull and swamping everything in its path. It was too magnificent and terrible to examine and he shied away from it, fled blindly and desperately before its promise of madness.
The friendly rivulet diverted course and spread warmth in a broader swathe, curling gently towards his chin. Nothing to fear here. This was not pain, only sensation. He welcomed it. He focussed on it with all the attention he could summon.
“Wait, we need to stop,” a voice said from the other end of a long, echoing tunnel.
The comforting rhythm and susurrus of movement stilled suddenly. He mourned its loss; the silence and stillness beckoned the pain ever closer. Without those distractions, he couldn’t keep the pain contained. It was breaking free. Breaking out. Fracturing and shattering him. He’d let his attention slip and it was dragging at his edges, pulling him in. Yearning for the safety of dark oblivion, he felt himself falling. The world performed a sickening pirouette around him which seemed to do the trick, and he sank gratefully into the yawning pit that swallowed him.
---
Percussive blasts and multi-coloured darkness. Overwhelming pressure and throbbing, relentless pain. Disconnected sensory input. His thoughts flew apart in a shatter of bright fragments when he tried to follow even the simplest of threads. Best not to try.
Cool moistness passed fleetingly over the side of his face. Sounds filtered in and out of their own accord, unwelcome and irritating. A low murmur that insisted on recognition. If he’d been capable of anything quite so sophisticated as movement, he’d have swatted the nuisance away. As it was, he wasn’t yet entirely certain he existed beyond a general sense of miserable discomfort. He vaguely longed for whoever was being summoned to hurry up and answer the disembodied voice and make it stop. Then the sounds faded for a while and he decided he could stop worrying about it.
Time must have passed. It was cold. Cold enough that he couldn’t ignore it anymore. And his head hurt. Why did he hurt so much? He couldn’t remember. Thinking in general was a laborious and uncomfortable process. He experimented with a simple command to what should have been his hand; he wanted to rub away some of the pain from his head. His motor control lacking, the attempt resulted in a heavy slap of dead weight in the general vicinity of his face. The jarring, self-inflicted blow loosed a grunt and sent sparkling star bursts dancing across the insides of his eyelids. The pain was breathtaking. He rode it out, a powerless passenger tossed and slammed against the confines of his own mind. Only when he was a little more confident the black was receding again did he try once more to master the offending limb.
His clumsy fingers bumped against something bulky along his hairline. His instinct was to investigate and then remove the alien object, if only his fingers would cooperate. Before his sluggish brain could order the attack, a strong hand snared his own and thwarted his efforts.
“No, leave that alone,” a mildly impatient voice admonished. His tightly shut eyes scrunched up in an involuntary wince and the hand on his squeezed gently.
God, it hurt. It hurt to think. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to be. He had a vague anxious feeling that he should be doing something, that there was something important he was missing, that something had happened. He absolutely could not risk opening his eyes, even if he’d had the strength to complete such a strenuous task. He couldn’t bear even the slightest stimuli. He had to be still, quiet, dark. He had to just stop.
He went away again for a little while, and when he came back he realised there was something pressing uncomfortably over his pain’s ground zero. He reached a fumbling hand towards it and found its course firmly diverted by a warm, reassuring pressure. He wanted to protest, but the small sound that emerged only encouraged the distant drone of a voice to come closer. Too loud. Too much. Please, stop.
The white hot, radioactive agony was beginning to expand again, this time accompanied by a high pitched tinnitus whine that rose in insistent, nauseating volume to block out all other input. It grew, ravenous and deafening, until it crested in a flare of brilliance and whited out the world.
---
Daniel came back to himself slowly, a piece at a time. Warmth. A gentle, spreading heat suffused through his body, travelling the length of each limb, tingling over his skin, wrapping the exposed nerves twanging in his head in cotton softness, dulling the shrieking agony. Relief. A reprieve from the most urgent of the pain, at least. Some of the muzzy tangle overlaying everything receded somewhat, and sounds began to take shape around him.
“Enough,” a voice commanded, the single word a threat and a jeer all at once.
“What? No--"
He heard the unmistakable sound of struggling somewhere above him and the warm glow abruptly ceased. The conversation around him faded out momentarily as the full force of the remaining pain made itself known. He’d been foolish to think it had been banished entirely. It was still there, waiting. Pushed back, further away, banked and quiescent beneath a heavy burden of lethargy, but waiting to flare back into life at the slightest provocation. He was unwilling to test its wrath and he hid from it, casting dazedly for an anchor against the swirling currents pulling him back towards that slumbering monster.
“Wake him.” Something nudged him none too gently in the ribs, the force rocking him some of the way over onto his side. He dropped back down again heavily. He was dimly aware of a bloom of pain where the object had connected, but given the competition, it warranted little attention.
He heard a heavy sigh and sensed a tense moment of hesitation. Was that irritation? “I can’t. He’s still too badly injured.”
“Then he’s of no use to us.” An ominous clicking sound preceded the insect whine of a priming weapon.
“Wait.” The second voice took on a falsely confident tone. “There’s no need to be so dramatic. I told you, I need him to help me figure out the read outs. He’s our expert on Goa’uld dialects. I may be the mechanical and mathematical brains of this outfit, but usually he or Teal’c helps with the squiggly lettery bits. Just give me a little longer with that device and I can have him good as new.”
A harsh bark of laughter cut the speaker off. “Do you take me for a fool? If you think to escape…”
“No! No, of course not. But if you want our help, I’ll need him in better working order than this.”
“You test my patience, woman.”
“I know, and you’re being very accommodating.” There was a pause, followed by a choked gasp.
“Do not mock me. He talks, or he dies.”
A forced chuckle and a pained rasp pushed past a closing throat. “Well maybe if you hadn’t hit him quite so har--“ There was the fleshy smack of a fist against bone, and the dull thud of a body hitting the ground.
“We move in one hour. Displease me further and I will withhold your device when we reach our destination.” Heavy footsteps retreated.
“Foul-smelling, toad-featured dullard,” came a mutter, followed by a tentative spitting sound.
Daniel allowed his head to roll to one side and blinked blearily at the unfocused shape shuffling around in his field of vision. The light was thankfully, blessedly muted, all colour leached from the scene. The world was canted at an angle and soft around the edges. The movement in front of him was making him dizzy, and he struggled to find a point to concentrate on. Features and patterns gradually registered with him and he built up a piecemeal picture of his immediate surroundings.
A dark-haired woman was sitting at his side, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped awkwardly around them. The oversized poncho cinched tightly round her throat and shoulders was slick and shiny, fat raindrops running freely down its sides. Its hood framed her pale face and overhung her eyes. Stray tendrils of long hair had escaped its confines and lay stuck and sodden against her cheeks. A cut across her bottom lip bled sluggishly, a pink-tinged streak dissipating through the rain slick on her face.
As if someone was slowly turning up the volume, Daniel began to register the continuous rattle of spattering rain that was bouncing from his own waterproof covering. Icy splashes pelted his face with relentless glee, each new assault a miniature shock that he couldn’t escape. Something was digging uncomfortably into the small of his back and under his left hip. His limbs felt like lead. His skin was numb and cold. And his head… His head was pounding so hard he felt sick.
His tongue was sticky and too big for his mouth. He licked his lips, and the movement attracted the attention of the woman next to him. She leaned towards him and the world swooped and dived. There were sounds, low and soothing. They eventually separated themselves from the background soundtrack of hissing rain and coalesced again into words. He couldn’t quite grasp their meaning. Something hard was pressed to his mouth and instinct took the reins, shoving him impatiently from the driving seat to accept the water trickling over his chin. Some of the overspill snaked its way insidiously beneath the neckline of his shirt and the chill sharpened his focus.
He found he was somehow propped upright, a warmth at his back and an arm steadying him. The canteen was taken away and his poncho snugged more tightly about his neck. He leaned back gratefully into that bracing weight and tried to block out the insistent sounds that started up again by his ear.
“…aniel?”
Searing waves of pain were slamming into the backs of his eyelids and he screwed up his face against them.
“…listening?”
He couldn’t escape. Couldn’t move. This was too hard. He groaned.
“I know you can hear me. Open your eyes.”
He struggled weakly in defiance of the unreasonable voice. “Uhn,” he forced out. That’ll show her.
The chest behind his back expanded slowly with an exasperated sigh. Its accompanying voice began a low grumble that vibrated through him with every word. “What is it I’m supposed to ask?” it muttered distractedly. “Your birthday or something. But since I don’t know when that is… Or what about mine? No, too many to choose from. And I’ve already told you your name, so that would be cheating. Um, your world leader’s name? Wait, that’s not right…”
The support behind him jolted as it shifted position and Daniel grunted. All this noise and movement was making it harder to drift away.
“Sorry,” the voice continued, and a hand ran apologetically up and down his arm. “Alright then, how about an easy one? What’s my name?”
Daniel wondered idly if he would be allowed to sleep now that the voice had stopped talking. He was beyond tired and the warmth soaking into his back was a nice change from the cold, wet floor. After a few seconds of silence it became apparent that something was missing. Worry nagged at him and he felt sleep slip away from him again. The voice had been talking to him. Was that it? It was expecting an answer. Daniel’s eyes snapped open with the realisation and he sucked in a panicky breath. God, what was the answer? What was the question?
The hand on his arm resumed its soothing motion until he calmed, and the voice patiently repeated the question. “Daniel? Do you know who I am?”
He cast about for some sort of clue, but his mind was frighteningly blank. He could feel his breathing speeding up and struggled to bring his racing thoughts under control. This shouldn’t be so hard. He wasn’t sure about much, but he knew that was true. What had happened to him?
“Shh, it’s okay,” the voice assured him, although he thought he could detect a note of doubt in it somewhere. Or was that fear?
He wanted to try again and reassure the voice. He wanted to get the answer right. He wanted to actually know something. He knew this. He knew he did. He concentrated on the feel of the slight fingers caressing his arm, the memory of dark hair caught out in the rain, the familiar scent of coconut oil just detectable when the person supporting his weight moved. The coconut aroma of the high end shampoo Vala had proudly displayed to him after a rare trip away from the confines of the base with Sam. A shampoo she’d bought especially because he’d mentioned a liking for the fragrance in passing. A gesture he’d tried not to read too much into. She had paraded around his office for days afterwards, flinging her fragrant hair in great wafts of scent at every opportunity. The vigour with which she’d applied herself to the effort had irritated him for some reason, a reason he’d been loathe to examine too closely. Vala had to play these infuriating little games. Why was she so hard to get a handle on? Wait.
“Va… Vala?”
The arm around his chest squeezed him. “Yes! Yes, that’s right. It’s me, and you’re you. Thank all that’s good.” She released an explosive breath of relief. “Please don’t do that to me again.”
Thank God. Maybe he wasn’t quite as far gone as he’d feared. And he’d managed to take away some of that distressingly strained quality to the voice speaking to him. Vala’s voice, he corrected himself. Pleased with his progress, Daniel decided to build on his success and attempt another question.
“Wha’s…?”
“What’s going on? Well, to borrow one of your indecipherable Earth phrases, Daniel, we are currently in a boat without a paddle.”
What? They were in a boat? That would perhaps explain the bilious rolling of the surface beneath him. He obviously wasn’t doing as well as he’d hoped.
Just thinking about the rocking of a boat did strange things to his pounding head. A menacingly familiar surge of dread heralded a rush of heat and icy sweat. It swept upwards from his gut, tightening his throat and making his mouth water unpleasantly. Uh oh. He knew this feeling. Nausea rapidly became his whole world. He gulped and groaned a warning. “Guhna… sick…”
He felt himself hastily lowered back to the ground and rolled onto his side, where he proceeded to do exactly as he’d predicted.
“Urgh,” Vala commented for him with a sympathetic pat. He couldn’t have agreed more. “I’m glad I won’t be carrying you.”
Daniel felt a flush of shame creep up his neck. Despite everything, he felt embarrassed for Vala to see him like this. He couldn’t even roll back over under his own power.
Magnanimously refraining from commenting further on his condition, Vala rearranged the folds of his poncho for him and began a series of steady circles at the small of his back. The grey edges were making a reappearance, and if he listened carefully he thought he could hear snare drums beating an ominous, military tattoo on some distant parade ground.
Vala was talking again. “I’m not going to lie to you, Daniel; we have definitely been in better situations. I’m not sure where we’re going exactly, but I think we should play along for now. They want me to fix something. And they have a healing device. The really ugly one seems a bit slow, and I’m sure I can come up with something once we’re out of this rain. You just leave things to me.”
Vala wasn’t making a lot of sense. She didn’t seem to expect any kind of response, which was just as well really. Daniel felt increasingly disconnected from his body, a sensation he wholeheartedly welcomed. He closed his eyes and did his best to escape the miserable reality of his situation. By the time their captors came for them, he’d already given in to the cold and fatigue, and was blissfully unaware of the indignity of being hauled away for transport.
Part 3
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Title: Midnight’s Children (chapter 2)
Rating: R
Genre/pairing/warnings: Daniel/Vala, Drama, Action-Adventure, mentions of torture in some chapters
Setting: Post-Ark of Truth
Word count: 2,960
Summary: Daniel and Vala, captured and held prisoner, struggle to survive a dark and painful ordeal. Not to mention each other. The bonds forged through hardship may prove to be the strongest of all, if only they can see them.
Previous: Part 1 here
Undesignated planet, five months, three weeks earlier
The side of his hand thumped rhythmically against something warm and firm. In a distant land far, far away, he could just make out the wap wap wap of rubbing fabric which, if he concentrated very hard, merged to keep time with each swing of his hanging arm. The supreme effort required to connect these two simple pieces of information -- the soft sound with the hypnotic motion, the cause with the effect, the action with its reaction -- invited razor sharp lightning to arc from his eye socket, snap across the top of his skull and ground itself somewhere between the deep joints of his neck. He stopped thinking altogether for a while and allowed the merciful darkness to soften his edges.
The concepts of time and space dimmed and fluctuated around him. A trickle of something warm and wet snaked its way across his brow and began to drip at a peculiar right angle from his cheekbone. The sensation felt strangely wrong and was just distracting enough to prevent complete surrender to unconsciousness. He fixated on its ticklish caress, hoping it would guide him back down towards that welcoming nothingness, but found that he couldn’t fully escape the incessant throb of pain vying for his attention. It was voracious, an untamed, sentient agony that emanated from somewhere behind his temples and expanded to impossible proportions, pushing out from the confines of his skull and swamping everything in its path. It was too magnificent and terrible to examine and he shied away from it, fled blindly and desperately before its promise of madness.
The friendly rivulet diverted course and spread warmth in a broader swathe, curling gently towards his chin. Nothing to fear here. This was not pain, only sensation. He welcomed it. He focussed on it with all the attention he could summon.
“Wait, we need to stop,” a voice said from the other end of a long, echoing tunnel.
The comforting rhythm and susurrus of movement stilled suddenly. He mourned its loss; the silence and stillness beckoned the pain ever closer. Without those distractions, he couldn’t keep the pain contained. It was breaking free. Breaking out. Fracturing and shattering him. He’d let his attention slip and it was dragging at his edges, pulling him in. Yearning for the safety of dark oblivion, he felt himself falling. The world performed a sickening pirouette around him which seemed to do the trick, and he sank gratefully into the yawning pit that swallowed him.
---
Percussive blasts and multi-coloured darkness. Overwhelming pressure and throbbing, relentless pain. Disconnected sensory input. His thoughts flew apart in a shatter of bright fragments when he tried to follow even the simplest of threads. Best not to try.
Cool moistness passed fleetingly over the side of his face. Sounds filtered in and out of their own accord, unwelcome and irritating. A low murmur that insisted on recognition. If he’d been capable of anything quite so sophisticated as movement, he’d have swatted the nuisance away. As it was, he wasn’t yet entirely certain he existed beyond a general sense of miserable discomfort. He vaguely longed for whoever was being summoned to hurry up and answer the disembodied voice and make it stop. Then the sounds faded for a while and he decided he could stop worrying about it.
Time must have passed. It was cold. Cold enough that he couldn’t ignore it anymore. And his head hurt. Why did he hurt so much? He couldn’t remember. Thinking in general was a laborious and uncomfortable process. He experimented with a simple command to what should have been his hand; he wanted to rub away some of the pain from his head. His motor control lacking, the attempt resulted in a heavy slap of dead weight in the general vicinity of his face. The jarring, self-inflicted blow loosed a grunt and sent sparkling star bursts dancing across the insides of his eyelids. The pain was breathtaking. He rode it out, a powerless passenger tossed and slammed against the confines of his own mind. Only when he was a little more confident the black was receding again did he try once more to master the offending limb.
His clumsy fingers bumped against something bulky along his hairline. His instinct was to investigate and then remove the alien object, if only his fingers would cooperate. Before his sluggish brain could order the attack, a strong hand snared his own and thwarted his efforts.
“No, leave that alone,” a mildly impatient voice admonished. His tightly shut eyes scrunched up in an involuntary wince and the hand on his squeezed gently.
God, it hurt. It hurt to think. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to be. He had a vague anxious feeling that he should be doing something, that there was something important he was missing, that something had happened. He absolutely could not risk opening his eyes, even if he’d had the strength to complete such a strenuous task. He couldn’t bear even the slightest stimuli. He had to be still, quiet, dark. He had to just stop.
He went away again for a little while, and when he came back he realised there was something pressing uncomfortably over his pain’s ground zero. He reached a fumbling hand towards it and found its course firmly diverted by a warm, reassuring pressure. He wanted to protest, but the small sound that emerged only encouraged the distant drone of a voice to come closer. Too loud. Too much. Please, stop.
The white hot, radioactive agony was beginning to expand again, this time accompanied by a high pitched tinnitus whine that rose in insistent, nauseating volume to block out all other input. It grew, ravenous and deafening, until it crested in a flare of brilliance and whited out the world.
---
Daniel came back to himself slowly, a piece at a time. Warmth. A gentle, spreading heat suffused through his body, travelling the length of each limb, tingling over his skin, wrapping the exposed nerves twanging in his head in cotton softness, dulling the shrieking agony. Relief. A reprieve from the most urgent of the pain, at least. Some of the muzzy tangle overlaying everything receded somewhat, and sounds began to take shape around him.
“Enough,” a voice commanded, the single word a threat and a jeer all at once.
“What? No--"
He heard the unmistakable sound of struggling somewhere above him and the warm glow abruptly ceased. The conversation around him faded out momentarily as the full force of the remaining pain made itself known. He’d been foolish to think it had been banished entirely. It was still there, waiting. Pushed back, further away, banked and quiescent beneath a heavy burden of lethargy, but waiting to flare back into life at the slightest provocation. He was unwilling to test its wrath and he hid from it, casting dazedly for an anchor against the swirling currents pulling him back towards that slumbering monster.
“Wake him.” Something nudged him none too gently in the ribs, the force rocking him some of the way over onto his side. He dropped back down again heavily. He was dimly aware of a bloom of pain where the object had connected, but given the competition, it warranted little attention.
He heard a heavy sigh and sensed a tense moment of hesitation. Was that irritation? “I can’t. He’s still too badly injured.”
“Then he’s of no use to us.” An ominous clicking sound preceded the insect whine of a priming weapon.
“Wait.” The second voice took on a falsely confident tone. “There’s no need to be so dramatic. I told you, I need him to help me figure out the read outs. He’s our expert on Goa’uld dialects. I may be the mechanical and mathematical brains of this outfit, but usually he or Teal’c helps with the squiggly lettery bits. Just give me a little longer with that device and I can have him good as new.”
A harsh bark of laughter cut the speaker off. “Do you take me for a fool? If you think to escape…”
“No! No, of course not. But if you want our help, I’ll need him in better working order than this.”
“You test my patience, woman.”
“I know, and you’re being very accommodating.” There was a pause, followed by a choked gasp.
“Do not mock me. He talks, or he dies.”
A forced chuckle and a pained rasp pushed past a closing throat. “Well maybe if you hadn’t hit him quite so har--“ There was the fleshy smack of a fist against bone, and the dull thud of a body hitting the ground.
“We move in one hour. Displease me further and I will withhold your device when we reach our destination.” Heavy footsteps retreated.
“Foul-smelling, toad-featured dullard,” came a mutter, followed by a tentative spitting sound.
Daniel allowed his head to roll to one side and blinked blearily at the unfocused shape shuffling around in his field of vision. The light was thankfully, blessedly muted, all colour leached from the scene. The world was canted at an angle and soft around the edges. The movement in front of him was making him dizzy, and he struggled to find a point to concentrate on. Features and patterns gradually registered with him and he built up a piecemeal picture of his immediate surroundings.
A dark-haired woman was sitting at his side, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped awkwardly around them. The oversized poncho cinched tightly round her throat and shoulders was slick and shiny, fat raindrops running freely down its sides. Its hood framed her pale face and overhung her eyes. Stray tendrils of long hair had escaped its confines and lay stuck and sodden against her cheeks. A cut across her bottom lip bled sluggishly, a pink-tinged streak dissipating through the rain slick on her face.
As if someone was slowly turning up the volume, Daniel began to register the continuous rattle of spattering rain that was bouncing from his own waterproof covering. Icy splashes pelted his face with relentless glee, each new assault a miniature shock that he couldn’t escape. Something was digging uncomfortably into the small of his back and under his left hip. His limbs felt like lead. His skin was numb and cold. And his head… His head was pounding so hard he felt sick.
His tongue was sticky and too big for his mouth. He licked his lips, and the movement attracted the attention of the woman next to him. She leaned towards him and the world swooped and dived. There were sounds, low and soothing. They eventually separated themselves from the background soundtrack of hissing rain and coalesced again into words. He couldn’t quite grasp their meaning. Something hard was pressed to his mouth and instinct took the reins, shoving him impatiently from the driving seat to accept the water trickling over his chin. Some of the overspill snaked its way insidiously beneath the neckline of his shirt and the chill sharpened his focus.
He found he was somehow propped upright, a warmth at his back and an arm steadying him. The canteen was taken away and his poncho snugged more tightly about his neck. He leaned back gratefully into that bracing weight and tried to block out the insistent sounds that started up again by his ear.
“…aniel?”
Searing waves of pain were slamming into the backs of his eyelids and he screwed up his face against them.
“…listening?”
He couldn’t escape. Couldn’t move. This was too hard. He groaned.
“I know you can hear me. Open your eyes.”
He struggled weakly in defiance of the unreasonable voice. “Uhn,” he forced out. That’ll show her.
The chest behind his back expanded slowly with an exasperated sigh. Its accompanying voice began a low grumble that vibrated through him with every word. “What is it I’m supposed to ask?” it muttered distractedly. “Your birthday or something. But since I don’t know when that is… Or what about mine? No, too many to choose from. And I’ve already told you your name, so that would be cheating. Um, your world leader’s name? Wait, that’s not right…”
The support behind him jolted as it shifted position and Daniel grunted. All this noise and movement was making it harder to drift away.
“Sorry,” the voice continued, and a hand ran apologetically up and down his arm. “Alright then, how about an easy one? What’s my name?”
Daniel wondered idly if he would be allowed to sleep now that the voice had stopped talking. He was beyond tired and the warmth soaking into his back was a nice change from the cold, wet floor. After a few seconds of silence it became apparent that something was missing. Worry nagged at him and he felt sleep slip away from him again. The voice had been talking to him. Was that it? It was expecting an answer. Daniel’s eyes snapped open with the realisation and he sucked in a panicky breath. God, what was the answer? What was the question?
The hand on his arm resumed its soothing motion until he calmed, and the voice patiently repeated the question. “Daniel? Do you know who I am?”
He cast about for some sort of clue, but his mind was frighteningly blank. He could feel his breathing speeding up and struggled to bring his racing thoughts under control. This shouldn’t be so hard. He wasn’t sure about much, but he knew that was true. What had happened to him?
“Shh, it’s okay,” the voice assured him, although he thought he could detect a note of doubt in it somewhere. Or was that fear?
He wanted to try again and reassure the voice. He wanted to get the answer right. He wanted to actually know something. He knew this. He knew he did. He concentrated on the feel of the slight fingers caressing his arm, the memory of dark hair caught out in the rain, the familiar scent of coconut oil just detectable when the person supporting his weight moved. The coconut aroma of the high end shampoo Vala had proudly displayed to him after a rare trip away from the confines of the base with Sam. A shampoo she’d bought especially because he’d mentioned a liking for the fragrance in passing. A gesture he’d tried not to read too much into. She had paraded around his office for days afterwards, flinging her fragrant hair in great wafts of scent at every opportunity. The vigour with which she’d applied herself to the effort had irritated him for some reason, a reason he’d been loathe to examine too closely. Vala had to play these infuriating little games. Why was she so hard to get a handle on? Wait.
“Va… Vala?”
The arm around his chest squeezed him. “Yes! Yes, that’s right. It’s me, and you’re you. Thank all that’s good.” She released an explosive breath of relief. “Please don’t do that to me again.”
Thank God. Maybe he wasn’t quite as far gone as he’d feared. And he’d managed to take away some of that distressingly strained quality to the voice speaking to him. Vala’s voice, he corrected himself. Pleased with his progress, Daniel decided to build on his success and attempt another question.
“Wha’s…?”
“What’s going on? Well, to borrow one of your indecipherable Earth phrases, Daniel, we are currently in a boat without a paddle.”
What? They were in a boat? That would perhaps explain the bilious rolling of the surface beneath him. He obviously wasn’t doing as well as he’d hoped.
Just thinking about the rocking of a boat did strange things to his pounding head. A menacingly familiar surge of dread heralded a rush of heat and icy sweat. It swept upwards from his gut, tightening his throat and making his mouth water unpleasantly. Uh oh. He knew this feeling. Nausea rapidly became his whole world. He gulped and groaned a warning. “Guhna… sick…”
He felt himself hastily lowered back to the ground and rolled onto his side, where he proceeded to do exactly as he’d predicted.
“Urgh,” Vala commented for him with a sympathetic pat. He couldn’t have agreed more. “I’m glad I won’t be carrying you.”
Daniel felt a flush of shame creep up his neck. Despite everything, he felt embarrassed for Vala to see him like this. He couldn’t even roll back over under his own power.
Magnanimously refraining from commenting further on his condition, Vala rearranged the folds of his poncho for him and began a series of steady circles at the small of his back. The grey edges were making a reappearance, and if he listened carefully he thought he could hear snare drums beating an ominous, military tattoo on some distant parade ground.
Vala was talking again. “I’m not going to lie to you, Daniel; we have definitely been in better situations. I’m not sure where we’re going exactly, but I think we should play along for now. They want me to fix something. And they have a healing device. The really ugly one seems a bit slow, and I’m sure I can come up with something once we’re out of this rain. You just leave things to me.”
Vala wasn’t making a lot of sense. She didn’t seem to expect any kind of response, which was just as well really. Daniel felt increasingly disconnected from his body, a sensation he wholeheartedly welcomed. He closed his eyes and did his best to escape the miserable reality of his situation. By the time their captors came for them, he’d already given in to the cold and fatigue, and was blissfully unaware of the indignity of being hauled away for transport.
Part 3