And I Promise to Climb Back Up Here to You
By: sorrel_rowan
CATEGORY: General
SEASON/SPOILERS: Season 10 “Company of Thieves”
WARNINGS: None
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Dedicated to and inspired by crit for Strays Don’t Sleep, fhartman and isabelqc I so owe you one for this. Oh and to isabelqc in general for the challenge.
AUTHOR’S WEBSITE:
http://www.fanfiction.net/~sorrelrowan
"I believe the
faithful fell, didn't know their way back,
So far away from home, but brother you're not alone."
- La Rocca
Vala's being off with me, and I don't know why. It's not anything huge, just a little thing now and again. Sam's taken command of the ship until we get home, and Vala's walking on eggshells around me.
Maybe it's Emerson being killed. And I wasn't exactly helpful in the cargo ship.
"
I blink and turn to Mitchell, sitting across the mess table.
"Is the space you're staring into more exciting than the NBL?"
Space.
God, sometimes I'm proof a PhD doesn't make you smart.
I put down the fork, make some form of excuse and walk out, ignoring Mitchell and Teal'c's puzzled looks.
"Hey. What's up?" I ask, finding her where I almost expected her to be.
"Oh, I'm fine."
"There's mousse going up there, you know."
"Oh, I know."
I nod and look around the room before leaning on the bevelled ledge, mirroring her posture.
"Good people died today," I say quietly, "I get that Vala, I do."
"Oh, I know," she repeats, turning piercing grey eyes on me. "But people died here too, Daniel."
"This is about him?"
"Who?"
Finally, a sentence that doesn't start with 'oh.' Next step: more than three words in a row.
"The man we-"
"You can't remember his name, can you?"
"Emerson had a wife," I shoot back hotly, turning my back on her and then looking back again. "He had children. I know their names."
"Does that make up for not knowing his?" Vala asks quietly, waving a hand out of the window.
I know in my head it's a different solar system. We're in hyperspace. There's no way we're even near the Lucian's floating body, but that doesn't explain why it floats in front of my eyes looking out of the same window. But, as quickly as I can blink, it's gone.
"His name was Anateo."
For someone trying to make a point about emotional detachment - I'm not so dense I can't see that much - her voice could be dripping ice.
"He was... a distinctly unpleasant individual. Unsavoury, bad hair life and a tendency to shoot people when they didn't do what he wanted. A bastard, you might say, but even that is insulting to the illegitimate children of the universe." She might be talking about the disadvantages of single cream over whipped for all the feeling in her voice, ticking off a murderer's flaws like a shopping list.
"This being why we aren't holding a memorial for Anateo," I deadpan. "Emerson was a good man and a good soldier. Anateo was a lowlife of a thief."
And when she turns with an eyebrow raised, I realise how incredibly far down my throat I just put my foot. Far enough to kick my own ass if she doesn't do it first.
I blink and keep my eyes closed as I drop my head a little. "You know I wasn't talking about you."
"I know that."
And that's it? I'm off the hook already? More than anything else, it hits me about then that something's really bothering her.
"You might have been, you know. If I'd been just a little poorer and a little less principled-"
I'm getting better at this. I don't laugh at this point, because this is a serious conversation and she'd punch me.
And I'll tell myself that until I can't deny her morals, as unobtrusive to her daily life as they sometimes are.
"- I might have taken that job Anateo and the Lucian Alliance offered me a few years ago."
"Why didn't you?" I'm curious, as always, about any hint of a past she hasn't already shared. I've always been this way - if a door has a lock on it, I scrabble in the sand until I find the key.
She gives me an impressively disparaging look.
"They weren't willing to pay enough. And they're scum." Her mouth arches into a small smile. "Lowlives. Thieves. Would I be in that company, darling?"
It's my turn to raise an eyebrow. Even if I deserved that one.
She places an index finger on my chest before turning back to the window. "I was a thief, Daniel, but that doesn't mean I socialised with many of them."
The past tense doesn't escape my notice and it makes me smile, as though I can count on her being in mess for more than the next morning and the one after that.
"And don't think that the wandering from the point slipped past me," she adds after a pause.
I lean on the window edge, back to the stars as she stares out at them. "I admit to being confused about the point."
"The point is that I can't put you in a box, Daniel, and it's annoying me."
This hits me on several levels. I'm perversely glad that I'm not the only confused one in a room with two people in it, particularly immaturely pleased in that I confuse her. I'm angered that I'm a trivial concern worthy of mere annoyance. I'm confused as to why I have such an instant and mixed reaction that kicks in the gut with the strength of a particularly grumpy mule.
This would be the time to say these things, this little grey room that plays host to our sins being a place of strange directness.
Of course I don't say it. "What have I done that's confused you?"
Given her mixed signals? Maybe. Had mixed emotions that sparked mixed signals? Well, yes. Mixed generally describes most of my feelings towards Vala. Mixed but never ambivalent or apathetic.
She looks at me, frowning slightly and pointing at me. "When you found me in that warehouse, you trusted me not to shoot you. You could have shot me with that zat straight away." She pauses and then looks at me again, speaking slowly as if she isn't sure what she wants to say. "You trusted the best of who I am for no reason. You tried to convince Ghannis La'al to help."
I drop my head. I suddenly know why I'm confusing her. Sam and the others are used to this particular fracture in my personality, even Mitchell, but sometimes I forget what Vala hasn't witnessed.
"You-" I try to explain, but find myself lacking the words to. "You're trying," I get out finally. Sam, Jack and even Teal'c - we all started this together, we've all been hardened over the years and it's a silent contract not to call each other on it. More to the point, we're used to it in each other. "I trust you because you've earnt it. But I don't have much trust or any of that left for much else. He hurt Sam, he killed Emerson." I shrug.
It doesn't make sense to me because what I really want to say is that I don't have compassion left in me for a lot of things anymore, and that I can't stand that about myself. I have people left that I have, and the things that harm them are beyond chances. I should tell her about now that somehow she's become one of that group.
There's times when I wonder how opposite we are, since I've never met anyone I need to spell things out to quite so much. And there's times when I wonder how opposite we are because unlike even my best friends, Vala more and more hears what I mean to say and not the garbage I end up saying.
She nods tiredly, and when she meets my eyes I know she has the same fracture. She'll do what she has to do, but it won't be okay because the girl in that unnamed village couldn't stand it. The utopia-searching archeologist I was couldn't stand half the things I do now.
We have the same fracture, the same standards and the same damn indellible knowledge that we can't meet them anymore. But she just managed to make me think about it and no one's done that in a while. And she's still bothered by it in herself, so maybe we're not beyond chances yet.
** The End **
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