Protect Me from What I Want
By: sorrel_rowan
CATEGORY: Humor, Romance
WARNINGS: None
SEASON/SPOILERS: Season 10. “The Shroud”
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Yes, it’s another little scene that came into my head and I just had to write it. Daniel/Vala, with SPOILERS for The Shroud. Meh, this one isn’t that good, guys. It feels a little less than it should be – I’m not so good with the Jack-characterisation as Daniel.
Contrary to what the fic says, the title is actually the title of a Placebo song. I’m going through a phase of them at the moment.
AUTHOR’S WEBSITE:
http://www.fanfiction.net/~sorrelrowan
Vala sat in the commissary, picking at her food and trying to block out where she’d spent the morning. Sitting her fork down with a sigh, Vala stopped and remembered it in all its agonising glory.
From the calm and steady repetition of proverbs and rhetoric to the way his head had snapped around as he raised his voice. From the deep, shuddering breath she’d taken before walking into the isolation room to the shouting match she’d goaded him into, ending up inches from each other with the silence crackling around them. Thank god something had been normal. And finally, painfully, some shutter slamming down in his eyes and the neutral expression returning to his features.
Vala didn’t want to remember it. But to do less was to run again and Daniel deserved better.
Protect me from what I want.
The thought was sudden and harsh, making her catch her breath. It was a proverb from the book of Origin, one of its less abstract lessons all about giving up pleasures and luxuries for the higher purpose of Origin. A man, choosing a day in bed with the village headman’s daughter rather than attend prostration, was made to spend days on end in his village square. That is, until, ‘the hunger and thirst of the body became the hunger and thirst of the soul and he saw the Ori as the way to salvation.’
At this point, he was cut loose and collapsed to his knees, praying and begging for the Ori to ‘protect me from what I want…’
Vala remembered it as one of the racier passages in the book of Origin, noting the lack of punishment for the young maiden and thinking that the man falling to his knees was more about actual hunger than repenting. Thinking of her own experiences of Ori prostration, she had to agree with him. If you simply had to get a sore back or knees, Vala could easily think of more fun ways.
She hadn’t lied to Tomin. She still remembered the look of surprise on Daniel’s face when she’d started spending her spare time in his office, sitting silently in a corner with her head buried in the damn thing.
From the corner of her
eye, she saw him put down his pen and look over.
“You’re not
converting, are you?” The voice was light and teasing, the opportunity to talk
sincere.
Vala had adjusted to
the soothing quality of the office, his voice washing over her in an indistinct
but steady and comforting rhythm as he spoke into the little recorder about his
latest toy.
“Have you read this?”
Vala had asked, eyes blazing and brandishing the book like a weapon in his
direction.
He had nodded, eyes
thoughtful as she emerged from her corner by the bookcase, leaving the jumper
she’d been sitting on in a crumpled heap. She began to pace in front of the
high desk in the middle of the room piled high with books and files.
“What’re you looking
for?” Daniel had asked after a few moments.
She had shrugged, not
sure how to put it in words. She realised why this disjointed, moralising,
patronising, badly-written and overlong book was holding her awareness ransom
as she read it for the second time in a week.
“What they see,” she
had answered, fighting to keep the emotion from her voice.
The next afternoon
Vala made her way to Daniel’s office, the book of Origin in her hand. She found
a third of the desk cleared, a spare notepad and pen sitting in front of a
second chair. Daniel never said it, but he started to bring two cups of coffee
and left anything about the Ori or Origin in a pile for her once he had
finished with it.
Slowly and hesitantly,
Vala began asking questions. Daniel answered them thoroughly, stopping what he
was doing and giving her his full attention. Before long, he was asking her
opinions and questions of his own.
“Protect me from what I want,” Vala said under her breath, smiling slightly.
“What’d you say?” A rough voice said, sitting opposite her. She looked up and found the general. He raised his coffee cup in a mock toast and intoned, “Hallowed is the caffeine.”
Vala smiled in spite of herself as she asked, “Progress?”
He shook his head as she sighed. “Not after you left, anyway.”
Vala’s head jerked up, eyes a little wider than normal as she expected Sam or Teal’c to have sat down beside her. She was pretty sure he wasn’t talking to her.
Turning to look at him, he nodded at her. “Carter said you could annoy the hell out of Danny-boy even more than I could. She was right.”
“I’m not entirely sure if that’s a compliment, Jack,” She said without thinking. Wincing, she looked at him from under lowered lashes. He tilted his head in a look that said he’d been told about her and that wasn’t going to work. “Can I call you ‘Jack’? This whole military title thing doesn’t work for me.”
He nodded in a ‘whatever’ fashion.
“Besides,” Vala said brightly. “Calling you ‘general’ is rather strange considering all I ever hear from Daniel is Jack this and Jack-” She stopped, biting her lip for a moment.
After a beat of silence, Jack pointed to the stapled pile of paper at her elbow. “What you reading?”
With a dry smile, Vala held up a mission report from the anthropologist assigned to SG-16.
“Ah,” Jack replied, drawing out the sound. He looked at his plate. “If I talk about the pie, can we avoid talking about the Ori?”
Shaking her head, she replied, “Believing isn’t enough for them anymore. They’ve started the planets they converted early on building monuments and temples. So far, they’re focussing on the planets they’ve held the longest, but the harsher version of Origin is beginning to seep further through.”
“
Vala unwillingly looked away from the page as he added, “Looks more like an igloo to me.”
“No, that they use to burn people to death,” Vala replied quietly. She looked at him, puzzled. “What’s an ‘igloo’?”
Jack carefully slid the page back under the file, handling it like a dangerous snake. He looked at her with a grin, and then at his plate of mashed potatoes. Picking up a fork, he began to mould the potatoes into a model of an igloo. “It’s a small house built of snow,” Jack answered, “And it looks a little … like … this.”
Vala, who had been watching him curiously, looked at the small ‘house’ of mashed potatoes on his plate. Tilting her head, she wondered where she’d seen it before.
“Wouldn’t it melt?” She asked distractedly.
With a smile, he replied, “They build them in very cold places.”
“How does it keep you warm? If it’s made out of snow, I mean,” Vala asked, still staring at it. “And what’s the point of a house in a cold place if it doesn’t keep you warm?”
Jack paused, looking around the room. “It traps the heat,” he said confidently, nodding. “That’s why it’s that shape.”
“Strange,” Vala said, taking a drink of her water and studying the ‘igloo.’ “I thought it would be that shape because it needed gravity to hold it together, like a bridge.”
“That too,” Jack said quickly, pointing in her direction. “I was getting to that.”
She looked at him suspiciously and narrowed her eyes. “You’re making this up, aren’t you? Tease the new girl with your-” Vala waved a hand at the mashed potato igloo. “Pretend snow houses no sane person would live in.”
“Igloos exist, ask anyone,” Jack defended himself. “The rest … ask Carter. She’ll know.”
A beat of silence later and it clicked. “Penguins!” Vala exclaimed.
Jack looked around the commissary, noting that no-one stirred. Must be used to her by now, he thought, amused. What’s Daniel gotten himself into with this one?
“You were lying to me,” She said triumphantly. “Humans don’t live in these. Animals called penguins do. I saw it on television.”
Jack stared at her and then realised what she meant. Fighting to laugh very hard and promising himself he’d tell Daniel about it later, he looked at her very slowly. “The… television program you watched…”
Jack realised in the next few seconds – which Vala managed to fill with a surprising number of words – exactly what Daniel had meant when he’d called during the bracelets debacle.
“So you have to stay
within spitting distance of a gorgeous woman and in this galaxy,” Jack had
said. “You said you had bad news.”
He’d listened to him
rant about how she was ‘a thief, a liar, a con artist…’
“What’s really
bothering you about her?” He’d broken in, knowing Daniel well enough to know
when he was dodging the issue.
There had been a beat of
significant silence. “She talks, Jack. She talks a lot. About anything.
Everything. And by a lot, I mean never stops.”
“Of course!” She was saying, snapping her fingers. “It was when I came back from … PX3 832, we’d had that funny wine they make. Wouldn’t have been polite not to. It was about seven in the morning here and I put on the television and it was a documentary about a family of penguins, at least I think it was a documentary.” She looked at him. “I was tired, it was early, or late … Do you ever get used to that? It being mid-afternoon there, you come back, it’s midnight-”
She broke off, tilting her head and looking at him with a slightly bashful grin. “It was pretend, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “It’s a children’s show – a cartoon.” Seeing an opportunity, he looked at her. “But if you like cartoons, you should try the Simpsons. Teal’c has the box sets. Don’t think he watches them much.”
“He showed me Star Wars,” Vala said with a nod, looking faintly puzzled. “Choking by telekinesis was a bit too familiar for fiction. I don’t think I liked it as much as he did.”
“Few people do,” Jack replied with a smile. He paused and looked at her. “Will you talk to him again?”
Vala looked at him and nodded. “I’m just not sure why.”
“You got through,” He replied. “You wheedled, you annoyed and you talked and talked and talked-
Shrugging, Vala broke in, “I tend to do that. You’ll get used to it.”
“-And then you talked. We got flashes of him back when you did,” Jack finished.
“Like when he told me to shut up?” Vala said, grinning. She’d almost slapped him and then almost cheered.
“Exactly,” Jack replied. He paused for a moment, looking at the file. “You know, when Daniel lost Sha’re and Skaara…” He met her eyes. “He read everything he could get on the goa’uld. I mean literally every word. Had to drag him out of his office most nights. Kept himself so busy it took him six months to get an apartment.”
“Tomin wasn’t my Sha’re,” Vala said as she met his eyes. “And Adria certainly isn’t your Skaara.”
“No,” Jack countered, “But he was a family of sorts to you, for whatever reason. He was kind when you were in a bad place. And just because you don’t have a child anymore doesn’t mean you don’t feel like a parent.”
Vala looked at him, her eyes frank and sensing a story behind his comment. For once, I know when to leave it alone, she thought. If- When we get Daniel back, I’ll ask. Not now.
“We’ll have to kill her, you know,” Vala said aloud. “At some point, she’s going to die and in some way it’s going to be my fault.”
Jack nodded. “Like if you’d went through with those orders?”
Daniel lay on the
ground at her feet. She’d run ahead when he’d made a run for it after they’d
separated him from the staff, diving over rooftops and through side streets blindly
to put herself between the marines and Daniel. But now she was out of time.
SG-9 were coming and they had their orders. And now they knew that he wouldn’t
fight or kill to stop them carrying them out, believing in the paradise he’d
once opted to leave.
She met his eyes as he
stood calmly against the dead end of the alley she’d run him down to.
“Why do you wait?” He
asked slowly as she raised her P90.
Vala heard rushed
footsteps behind and knew she was only going to have one chance.
It wasn’t a choice.
She held out her hand,
lowering the P90. When he hesitantly took it, she dragged him off-balance and
his head into Teal’c reach. Five minutes later, SG-9 found them sitting by a
tied up and unconscious Daniel. The colonel had begun to shout, raising his
weapon and trying to push Vala from between him and Daniel, Teal’c vanishing
from her view under a swarm of green. Jack had walked into the alley and told
him to stand down and shut up, ordering men to bind Daniel to a stretcher and
get him to the gate.
“You knew Teal’c and I wouldn’t,” She said accusingly. “That’s why you gave us that sector of the grid to search.”
He nodded. “I couldn’t countermand the IOC.”
“But you could send us?”
“Something like that,” He said with a smile.
“You trusted me?” Vala asked, cursing her mouth for not asking permission to say stupid things.
“Daniel does,” Jack replied. “That’s good enough. He talks
about you when I call him from
“All lies,” Vala said with an easy smile. “He’s biased because I can beat him up.”
“Then you aren’t brave, smart, funny and fun?” Jack said nonchalantly. “I’m disappointed, I have to say.”
Vala looked at him. “He didn’t.”
“No,” Jack replied as she laughed. “He said … ‘irritating, nosy, infuriating-’”
“Are you going to say anything that doesn’t mean ‘annoying’?” Vala asked, interrupting.
He paused, looking up and thinking. “No.”
Vala laughed again. “Haven’t you heard? I’ve mellowed with age.”
Jack looked at her ruefully. “I tried that.”
“How’d it go?” Vala asked.
“Not so well,” He responded. “Wouldn’t recommend it.”
Vala smiled. “I won’t bother then.”
He nodded and stood up, sighing. “I’d better get back.”
She nodded, expression sober. “I’ll come by later. The general’s asked me to brief a Major something or other on a planet I’m familiar with.”
He paused, about to walk away but turning. “It’s what he doesn’t say,” Jack said to Vala. “He’s always got some story about what you’ve done this time and he always laughs when he tells it. Even when it’s about how much you annoyed him or him ‘letting you cheat’ at basketball. It was good to hear him...”
Vala looked at him, eyes bright and thinking, protect me from what I want when I’m not good enough yet.
“Happy,” Jack finished, nodding and walking away.
Later that day
It wasn’t until she got back to her quarters and closed the door that she broke, leaning her back against the door and sliding down against it.
I should rethink this whole SG-1, sticking around thing, she thought, staring at the wall opposite. I want to cry more often.
Protect me from what I want, she thought fiercely, the side of her fist meeting the door at her back. Then I won’t feel-
She thought of who she had been, two years ago and even later than that. Rushing through planet after planet, deal after deal. Barely setting her feet on the ground before she was running again. But she’d formed connections, gotten swept up in things … Things that mattered to her, people thatmattered to her. She had a reason for what she did, more than one, and it wasn’t getting as rich as possible.
“You came back,”
Daniel remarked quietly in the isolation room, faintly amused and surprised.
“I did,” Vala said
softly, leaning forward. “And I’ll be back until you are. You told me to come
home once. Well I’m here.”
“They will not allow
you to change me,” He replied. “They would burn me as punishment.”
“Then you admit it’s
possible?” Vala asked.
“I mention it because
people might get hurt,” He’d said. “Including you.”
“Unbelievers?” Vala
had shot back.
“People,” Daniel had
insisted.
She wiggled her
fingers in his direction. “Been toasted once, got better. I’ll risk it,” Vala
had sat back in the chair and looked at him. “I’m not going anywhere.” She jerked
her thumb to the observation room. “And neither is he.”
Her eyes flashed to
the observation room, wondering if she’d imagined the flicker of relief on
Daniel’s face.
Jack smiled and
nodded.
“Now,” Vala said with
renewed determination, putting her worn copy of the book of Origin on the
table. “Let’s talk about this, the story of Ibaleth skipping prostration for
some alone time with the local beauty, the naughty boy …”
Looking up at her wall, feeling the tears on her cheeks, Vala smiled, a fierce light in her eyes as her thoughts turned to the man sleeping beneath cameras in a blank room a few floors down.
Protect me from what I
want?
Give it back.
**
The End **
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