Couldn’t Drag Me Away
By: sorrel_rowan
CATEGORY: Drama, Romance
SEASON/SPOILERS: Season 10 “Line in the Sand” and major spoilers for “Ark of Truth”
WARNINGS: None
AUTHOR’S WEBSITE:
http://www.fanfiction.net/~sorrelrowan
“I watched you suffer a dull aching pain,
And now you’ve decided to show me the same,
No sweeping exits or off-stage lines,
Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind.”
Daniel is pretty sure Vala’s forgotten they’re even there, forgotten the window above the observation room. He knows the others are struggling to keep up with the double monologue, knows no one else is still following the parallel threads on either side of the table, knows that Tomin would be on his feet were his hands not bound to the chair.
“I’ll tell you where the ship yards are-”
“What would you do? What would you do, Tomin? Would you have us blow them up?”
“You can do what you want with them!”
“Aren’t they as innocent and deceived as you? What would you have us do?”
“I won’t kill again, Vala! I won’t.”
“What, but you will strike out? You still believe in Origin, you still believe in the Ori. What does the book excuse after all?”
“I wouldn’t hit you again!”
Somewhere in the numbness of his mind, Daniel registers that the others understood that much. The thought that he is suddenly grateful for the binding on the chair, if only because he would find it hard to hurt a man who couldn’t defend himself, is slow to form and still repugnant when it does.
It takes a moment for him to process that Vala didn’t miss a beat but kept talking over Tomin; that this leapt out only to them.
* * * *
Daniel shifts in his bed on base, blaming the mattress that has held him for years for his waking state. Her voice - harsh, demanding, uncompromising, humourless – has crept into his mind and won’t be cast out. She questioned him once, turned that outsider’s insight on him. Uncompromising, humourless, demanding; but only in the way that a pianist teases a melody from out of tune keys. Adjusting, always adjusting to the key they chose.
He can’t deny she’s given all she has, moulding herself to another being, one she could stand and one who could function on Earth.
He knows that if he allows the metaphors to run on, he’ll end with an iron statue of Vala standing at a window, watching uncaring as a piano crashes to the street below in slow motion, so he gets up.
* * * *
He’s surprised to find her asleep, slipping into her room without knocking. He isn’t surprised when she turns over and slowly opens her eyes to find him sitting on the chair opposite, a slice of light from under the doorway illuminating his loosely intertwined fingers and the set of his jaw.
“You left your door unlocked.” His voice is quiet and strained.
She smiles crookedly and narrows her eyes. “I should do it more often.” There is a pause as she tilts her head and teases him. “Are you going to sit there all night?”
“Maybe.”
The way he isn’t asking catches her off-guard and sits up.
“What is this, Daniel? I know you don’t respect much about me, but you’ve always let me have privacy.”
Her smile doesn’t waver.
“Is that what you think?”
She sighs, sits up and crosses her legs, the white top less revealing than her day-to-day clothes and the black cloth catching stray slices of light from under the door. Vala rolls out the muscles in her neck before meeting his eyes. “Do you really want an honest answer to that question, Daniel?”
“I started this.”
“And I don’t know why.”
“You let him hit you.”
“You think it’s the first time?” As before, she doesn’t blink or miss a beat. “I’d love to pretend that my village stoned me with fairy cakes, Daniel, but then it wouldn’t be called ‘stoning’, would it?”
He realises why he’s never asked her about her past. On one level, he respects her enough to allow her those secrets she holds important enough to hold. But that’s superficial.
“I’d tell you that Baal loved Quetesh if I could. I wouldn’t tell you that he was a goa’uld, that he enjoyed inflicting pain, and that my consciousness was used as a buffer between Quetesh and that.”
I didn’t want to know.
Her voice is light, her eyes focussed.
“I didn’t lie.”
“About what?”
“I told General Landry that I did what I had to do to survive, and I meant that, even when it meant doing nothing.”
He’s considered, often and in more detail than he really wanted to, what she’s done. He’s only just considering what she’s accepted and what she’s stood by and witnessed.
Daniel smiles very slightly and meets her eyes, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “How many times?”
She raises her chin and something fierce comes into her eyes. “Once.”
“Once?”
“Once.”
That same harshness is in her voice as before, and Daniel doesn’t know whether it predates her falling in with them or whether it came after. He holds her gaze and knows there is something she isn’t saying. She sighs.
“I didn’t put it in the report because Samantha had just almost died from a staff blast.” She blushes. "And I still wanted you all to think of me a certain way. It didn't help."
Daniel looks at her, his vaguest mental images of the scenario blasted to pieces. Vala, injured at the foot of a stargate. Vala, heavily pregnant and unable to defend herself. Vala, weak from labour. Vala, held by Ori foot-soldiers. It doesn’t occur to him that Vala, a member of SG-1 and in full health, would stand for even the threat of it. Even in the soft light he can see the dilemma in her eyes. It’s the lesser of two evils; she either reminds him of his absence by Sam’s side, or explicitly says ‘it was while you were a prior’ and states his absence at hers.
“And he hit me once, Daniel.” This is the first time she cannot hold his eyes, toying with the edge of the blanket. “But he let me go.”
“Does that make it right?” His voice cracks a little.
Her reply is bitter and carries overtones of a litany. “No. But there wasn’t much I could do.” She smiles, and this time it is both genuine and genuinely bitter. "I've learned to take small victories."
Her reply is a smack in the face - there was once a time when he sold that story to others, the story that small victories could win the day in the end. He assumes he still believes it.
"You don't have to do nothing now," Daniel says into the darkness.
"What would I do? Go into his cell and hit an unarmed man? Feel empowered by the reversal or filthy at how low I've sank?"
Daniel ducks his head with a smile that matches hers for bitterness.
"Why do we do that, Daniel?" Her voice is much quieter, more raw but less harsh.
Daniel sits on the bed and sighs, pulling his legs up and sitting cross-legged. She does the same, facing him.
"Depends what you mean. Why do beings hurt each other when there's no need?"
Vala swallowed and smiled again. "I'd like that answer, too, darling, but I actually meant to ask why we smile more when we're bitter or disappointed. Not that you're often one for smiling."
Daniel raised his head sharply, lifting her chin to force her to meet his eyes. "Is that what you think I am, disappointed?"
Vala jerked her head away.
"I'm not," Daniel admitted quietly. "I wish I'd been there to stop it. I'm sorry I wasn't. It was-" he forced away another bitter smile, "- not the worst you've been through, I know, but it wasn't necessary. And it's why you have a team, now. To stop things like that."
"I wished you were there, too," Vala nodded, smiling genuinely. "I'm glad you're back."
Daniel nodded in reply. "I'm glad we're both back." He tilted his head. "I don't know why. Maybe because we've been out there so long that we know there's only so much we can do-"
"-Or because it's that or cry," Vala finished.
Daniel nodded again, taking her hand and slowly leaning forward. She leaned forward, their foreheads meeting.
"Maybe it's because we're all pretending to be more or less than what we really are," Vala added, voice very quite.
"We like to pretend we can accept things we can't, because accepting them makes us less than we can be?" Daniel replied, forehead against hers and still.
"Something like that?"
"Something like that."
Neither knew, later, how long they sat, braced against the other behind a steel door in a basement away from the universes, or who happened to fall asleep first. And looking back, after the madness to come, they didn't care, they only found they were glad that they had. A carved out space in a timeline lacking them but full of chaos, a moment of sanity and clarity before pretences were resumed - in the limited and new knowledge of their nature - before humour was currency for fear again. It was a small bubble that lasted far longer in the memory than the world, but its existence couldn't be denied.
** The End **
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