Into the Dark
By: sorrel_rowan
CATEGORY: General
SEASON/SPOILERS:
Season 10 “Dominion”, “The Shroud”, “Unending” and “
WARNINGS: None
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Inspired by a rather beautiful Sparky video by Psyche07 on YT… Which has since been taken down, I hate this Viacom law suit, I really do.
Title and lyrics from Death Cab for Cutie. Dedicated to BkWurm01, because it’s also partly inspired by your recent one. And as always to the sparkling discussion over on GW’s Dala thread.
AUTHOR’S WEBSITE:
http://www.fanfiction.net/~sorrelrowan
“Love of mine,
Someday you will die,
But I’ll be close
behind,
I’ll follow you into
the dark.
No blinding light,
Or tunnels to gates of
white,
Just our hands clasped
so tight,
Waiting for the hint
of a spark.
If Heaven and Hell
decide that they both are satisfied,
And illuminate the NOs
on their vacancy signs,
If there’s no one
beside you when your soul embarks,
Then I’ll follow you
into the dark.”
- ‘Into the Dark’, DCFC
The Ori threat was over. In two years, they’d become such an integral and cataclysmic force in the galaxy that it was hard to believe, hard to accept a new reality where they were no longer part of a minority, or an underground. The armada, what was left of it, gone through the super gate. The troops, feet no longer in unison, helmets off and looking like the crowd of farmers and townspeople they once were, walked onto the ships.
And strangely anti-climactic, to be walking down the ramp, Vala thought. They should have come home in a blaze of glory from their far flung adventures, but instead they came home muddy, tired and subdued. Quiet in the universe at last and all that. It didn’t explain why her throat burned, or why she wanted nothing more than to watch one of those sap-fest films she’d been putting off. Love is never having to say you’re sorry, etc. and so on. It’d be an excuse if nothing else.
Landry and the other personnel of the SGC were standing in the gate room, looking at them with the same quiet relief. Landry was congratulating them, welcoming them home, happy they were alive.
They were home, tired and broken. But it was home at least, Vala thought, letting herself be pulled numbly into hugs from people who’d presumed them dead and accepting congratulations. Yes, she was one of them now. As much as Teal’c was after Apophis’ attack on Earth.
It didn’t stop her excusing herself ‘for a shower, because hugging me right now cannot be good for you’ at the first polite opportunity.
She hadn’t lied. She’d gone straight to a shower, stripping off clothes stained with mud from light-years away, a galaxy away. Then she turned the shower on and stepped in, turning the heat just higher than she could stand, feeling the very hot water impact various little cuts and bruises, the staff graze above her shoulder that didn’t merit stitches and the muscles that hadn’t sat down or rested in a long time. Muscles that had been wound tight for months relaxed only slightly as she pushed her hair off of her face and felt the side of her fist impact the tiles at the burning of her cuts being cleansed.
She sat in her armchair, knees pulled up to her chest and
feeling surprisingly brittle for an official world saviour and now war hero.
She’d wanted to be part of it, in the thick of it, and she’d gotten it. She’d
always wanted – an egotistical part of her – others at the SGC to look at her
the way they did the rest of SG-1, even Cameron for the
Vala had seen that in their eyes as she accepted the embraces and the thanks, as she’d been presented with that other patch, the little Air Force one that made her an official member of not only the SGC and Stargate Command, but something else very important, apparently. The Air Force flagship team or something. Now there was no difference between her patches and status to the others of SG-1.
Her team badges had caught her off-guard and she’d bounced for days after receiving them, rather deliberately and somewhat immaturely wearing greens at all times on the base so that she could wear them. The second patches she accepted with a tired smile and a shy nod to General Landry before excusing herself.
A quiet knock on the door, and Vala slowly stood up and opened it, smiling broadly.
She raised an eyebrow. “There’s victory cake?”
Daniel nodded with a smile, holding out the paper plate with what looked to be the curve of an Origin symbol on it and gesturing to his own. “You left before the cooks had time to wheel it in.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Vala apologised, “They even made it chocolate.”
“Yep,” Daniel replied, sitting on the edge of her bed as she sat down in the armchair again. “Feeling better after a shower?”
“Much. I know mud does wonders for the skin but I can live without for a little while,” she answered, lifting the remote and pausing the DVD.
“Because mud is why you left,” Daniel repeated, raising an eyebrow and pinching the corner of icing that she put to the side of her plate.
Vala smiled tiredly and nodded. “And I felt a bit beaten up after that last fight. My muscles were in need of hot water.”
“M-hmm,” Daniel repeated quietly, “And it had nothing to do with wanting a little quiet.”
“Maybe a little,” She admitted, “It was just so noisy. And so fast.”
“I know,” Daniel replied, smiling crookedly. “Sam and Mitchell, I think even Teal’c, like to throw themselves back into the thick of it. It reminds them we made it. I need a little time to take stock as well.”
Vala nodded and returned the smile. “It’s my first time saving the galaxy. Or at least, being around for the aftermath. I’m not quite sure what I’m meant to do. It’s kind of worrying you have routines for it.”
“It’s not always this personal,” Daniel said after a moment and Vala paused, fork halfway to her mouth, his tone freezing her. “Sometimes it’s just garden variety bad. It doesn’t always mean this much.”
Vala swallowed and looked away, sitting her plate down.
“Hey,” Daniel said softly, reaching out and tapping her wrist. “It’s okay.”
It’s not, Vala thought, looking away again. And I don’t know how to explain it.
Before:
In hiding was better than under siege, Vala supposed. Not by much, but better. Their ammo count was stable at the least.
Daniel and Vala shared a look as Tomin came back in from the entrance to the side street. “There’s a patrol coming this way. I don’t think we can avoid them.”
“How’s your ammo?” Vala asked Daniel, checking her own.
“Could be a lot better and last longer,” He answered, eyes concerned and holding up his remaining magazines. She nodded in agreement, passing him one of hers to even out the score.
“You need to find the
“Yes,” Vala answered without bite. “What are you saying?”
“Then find it,” Tomin replied, turning to leave the alley.
“What are you doing?” Vala asked in a surprisingly long-suffering and gently concerned tone, grabbing his wrist.
“I’m a fugitive,” Tomin explained as if to a small child, putting his hands on her upper arms and looking her in the eye. “This will lead them off. Give you the time you need to cross the city.”
“They’ll kill you,” Daniel stated, voice rising and uncertain.
Tomin shrugged and looked at them both with a soft smile, “Your IOC put it correctly. I have a lot to make up for. And I still believe in Origin, and that I’ll be given another chance to make up for my actions in this life.”
Vala shook her head and shot a conflicted glance at Daniel, who was sighing with the same conflict in his eyes.
“You don’t need to take care of me anymore,” Tomin stated quietly to Vala with a nod.
Vala looked away and then back, eyes bright and resolute as she nodded.
There was a moment of awkwardness as he clumsily kissed her forehead, Vala letting herself lean against him very slightly before he was gone, opening her eyes only to see his silhouette leaving the alley and the shouts of Ori soldiers.
She shared another look with Daniel, who took her wrist and pulled her a little further along before she started running by his side. Later, as they crossed the rooftops, they saw Tomin standing in the centre of the square and facing a line of Ori soldiers with their staff weapons raised. Vala took one look at his face, resolute and neutral as he shook his head at the offered hood, and saw the commander raise his hand. She turned her head towards Daniel and closed her eyes, hearing the blasts fired and a dull thump.
A silent moment and inscrutable exchange of glances later, and they moved on towards their destination.
Present:
It’s not okay.
The thought reverberated in her mind but beyond that she couldn’t put into words exactly why it wasn’t, or why she had no appetite. So instead of saying every incoherent thought that she needed to release, she shook her head with a soft smile. Daniel returned it with a tired sigh and briefly, lightly, touched her wrist on his way to her door.
“I didn’t love him,” Vala said harshly and suddenly, voice raised. Daniel stopped, gaze fixed on the steel door in front of his eyes. It hung in the air for a long moment, as if she were defending herself from some accusation of some unfaithfulness, before she continued to trail off, voice quiet and throbbing. “If that’s what you’re wondering, because I didn’t…”
Daniel turned and met her eyes briefly as she blinked, biting the inside of her cheek and looking at the ceiling before meeting his eyes again, expression controlled.
He nodded and sat down on the edge of her bed again. “But there was something.”
“I find it hard to believe you don’t feel something.”
Vala nodded and rested her chin on her knees, waiting until a crowd of people talking loudly and laughing passed beyond her door, her voice taut with suppressed emotion. “He was good to me. And he was…kind.” She looked up with exposed eyes and lowered her voice involuntarily. “That hasn’t happened often.”
“You were happy?” Daniel asked, eyes unreadable, “When you were in the Ori galaxy?”
Vala paused and met his eyes, deciding to be honest. “I wasn’t unhappy,” she clarified, “Not all the time. Sometimes I was…content. There were moments when I cared about him. And I couldn’t watch the Ori corrupt him without feeling something.” She smiled ruefully, “I was scared and confused, so I took light relief where I found it.”
Something in his eyes seemed to dim in the last sentence, and Vala felt the need to clarify for a reason she couldn’t pinpoint. “Light relief is wrong. I played a role for Tomin, the good wife and mother-to-be…it was simpler.”
He nodded with a dry smile, “I remember thinking the same, when I came back from,” He gestured to the ceiling, “The land of the glowing. One minute I was in a tent, helping the tribe. The next I was interpreting Ancient on Anubis’ mothership, and I couldn’t help but think the first one was an easier life.”
Vala grinned and ducked her head before sobering and meeting his eyes, hating how uncertain her voice sounded.
“Daniel?”
“Hmm?”
“Do I…have a place here?”
He tilted his head, eyebrows coming together slightly, and Vala shook her head, standing. “Just with the Ori being gone…never mind, it’s not… I… Do you want something to drink? I think I have some juice in the mini-fridge-”
He caught her wrist as she turned to the fridge, still shaking her head as she attempted to pull away but her eyes snapping to his as he tugged on her arm lightly. He gently touched the patch beneath her team badge and looked at her, nodding. “You’ve earned it. You wouldn’t have gotten this otherwise.”
Vala let out a small sigh of relief, something still bothering her abut his response. He put a hand on the door again, stopping. “And we want you to be here. Not just because you won’t steal things or because you’re useful.”
She smiled as he closed the door.
* * * *
“You and me have seen
everything to see,
From
And the soles of your shoes are all worn down.
The time for sleep is now,
It's nothing to cry about,
’Cause we'll hold each other soon,
The blackest of rooms.
If Heaven and Hell decide that they both
are satisfied,
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs,
If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks,
Then I'll follow you into the dark.”
- ‘Into the Dark’, DCFC
It was bizarre, how quiet the SGC was in the aftermath of the Ori fall and the party that followed…and the party, safely off the books, that followed that. The only difference between the last two had been water for beer and lemonade for vodka. Daniel hadn’t stuck around long, noting that Vala had left the minute she conveniently could. That’s usually my job at these things, he thought with a small smile, using ‘checking on Vala’ as an excuse to get away from the noise and hubbub.
Leaving her room, he remembered watching Tomin die, and the way that Vala had turned her head towards his shoulder and closed her eyes. She hadn’t touched his shoulder, but her head had been close, and her hand had moved almost involuntarily in his direction.
“I do feel something.
Satisfaction at watching their plan fail.”
He walked to his office and took out the non-Ori related work that had been beginning to build up in the far corner. It was strange, to be contemplating a return to academia after all the years of front-line fighting. Well, Daniel admitted to himself, I couldn’t give up being on a team. And even though the thought of writing papers again was a strangely warm one, he was realistic to know they potentially wouldn’t be read for decades
Somehow, it didn’t matter. Much in the same way as his work on the Asgard database on the Odyssey during that lifetime he didn’t live wasn’t worthless…just lost.
“I’d like to be
there.”
He dropped the pen and took off his glasses to rub his eyes.
Is it too much to wish my brain could just stop thinking?
It was strange. In a non-romantic way, he felt almost dizzy around Vala. She was maturing and growing at such a rate, absorbing everything earth had to teach her at such a speed, that she surprised him every time he turned around. The one thing that she’d still been holding out on was her emotions, and even that seemed to be beginning to fade.
One thing nagged him.
“I would’ve looked if it had been you.”
Daniel half-smiled, looking up to find Vala standing in the doorway to his office.
“That’s a morbid thought from someone who just saved the galaxy,” He replied quietly.
She nodded, walked over and sat down next to him at the desk. “Doesn’t mean you weren’t wondering.”
“True,” Daniel admitted, carefully moving his glasses to his left as she sat on the stool to his right. Vala just rolled her eyes.
That’s two thoughts I
haven’t had the right to have today, Daniel thought to himself, comfortable
with her just wandering in that he continued to look at the artefact. She went
to his bookshelves and stood for a moment before choosing a battered paperback
Daniel was sure he didn’t own. First I
wonder if she was in love with him, then I wonder what she’d have done if it
were me.
His mind scurried away from that train of thought, but not before it could get to: And I was relieved when she said she wasn’t in love with him.
He let out a sigh, and Vala tilted her head, looking up from her book.
“Why?”
I don’t remember letting my mouth ask that, Daniel thought, suddenly panicked.
“Would you have looked if it had been me?”
Her voice was even and eyes level.
“I wouldn’t let them kill you.”
“Yes.” He answered her quickly, without either a hesitation
or the ability to explain why. Or, he
thought, why it matters so much.
“There you go, then,” Vala answered, smiling softly and turning back to her book.
“I would never let
that happen to you.”
But if their luck ran out, and it was unavoidable… I’d look, because it matters.
The painfully honest part of his mind still prodded at him and wouldn’t leave the matter alone, whether he wanted to be translating fifth dynasty scratchings or not.
I’d look, because… “It’d be the last chance I’d get.”
Daniel didn’t realise he’d said it out loud until he saw the book leaning against the edge of the table and felt a hand creep into his.
He took it.
And for now, that would be enough.
** The End **
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