The Salt of the Earth
By: sorrel_rowan
CATEGORY: Romance
SEASON/SPOILERS: Season 10 “Unending”
WARNINGS: None
AUTHOR’S WEBSITE:
http://www.fanfiction.net/~sorrelrowan
“There's too many dreams in this wasteland for them to leave us all behind.”
- The Enemy, 'You're Not Alone'
“We're almost out of chocolate.”
Anything else she had said would have fallen on deaf ears, but not this. He looks up from his desk, fumbling for his glasses. “What?”
Vala leans against the door-frame, mouth twitching at the left and her hands rubbing the points of her elbows against a chill they can't seem to get out of the ship corridors. She simply repeats what he missed. No smart comment, no gesture or smirk. “We're almost out of chocolate.”
Daniel sighs and nods. “We didn't bring much.”
“More important storage space to be used,” Vala nods, rolling her eyes. “As if chocolate isn'tvitally important, Daniel. Don't you know it cures everything?” She smiles gently and sobers. “And we didn't know we'd be on this god-forsaken ship for so long, in any case.”
“Do you want to come in?” Daniel asks after a moment. He doesn't want to reply any other way; it would start a cycle of questions and answers he's heard or had with every single individual on the ship. He doesn't question why it's a blow that the chocolate supplies are running low as he can well imagine how he'll feel on his last real biro.
“How's Cameron?” Vala asks, still leaning by the doorway.
“Bored,” Daniel answers with a smile. “I called the infirmary a little while back and he was swearing like a trooper.”
“It was a rough landing,” she states. It's an empty statement – they both know it was a rough landing because they both watched it and her statement has unnecessary emphasis.
Silence falls, and Daniel debates whether to take notes on the Asgard database in his notepad (paper, ink)or on the computer (storage bytes, power). Sam is always telling them that every little thing and every little counts when it comes to conservation of resources.
“Sam says she wants to cook sometime soon,” Vala remarks
offhand, wandering unheard to the bookshelves. Daniel finds himself reaching to
them every now and again, then closing his fist slowly with a sigh, realising
that the exact text – and more importantly, the exact handwritten note in the
margin of page seventy-five – that he's reaching for is in his lab at
“I suppose Mitchell's beginning to learn patience,” Daniel remarks, his tone lightly ironic.
Vala walks from one end of the bookshelf to the other, noting the titles. Making a Living in the Middle Ages, Christopher Dyer. The Meanings of Things, Ian Hodder. The Dawn of Slavic, Alexander M. Schenker. A Peaceful Jihad, Ronald Lukens-Bull. Dream Angus, Alexander McCall Smith. A slim green volume catches her eyes, and she tilts her head as she runs a finger down the spine. It's cloth, not leather, and plain, not stamped by this university or that journal. It sits next to another, similarly bound in brown, and Vala knows something isn't right in the connection. She lets her hand drop.
“I mean, it's not like we have much left to cook with,” she states with a small smile. “Although it reminds me of a television programme with the red tomatoes, green peppers and improbably fast cooking. At least the celebrities didn't dance on that one.”
Daniel frowns at a line in the text he's picked up. “The infinitive form of 'to believe'-”
Vala raises her chin to catch a glance at the symbols and quietly interrupts with the appropriate goa'uld dialect. He meets her eyes and thanks her before they quickly disengage gazes. Vala turns back to the bookshelf.
They all refer to Earth as the point of reference, the present tense, and they all talk in circles that orbit it but never break atmosphere nor land. Daniel tries not to and is always surprised that Vala does. He likes to think that it means she's here to stay, and they're not her last resort.
“Mitchell's hoping for visitors,” Daniel puts in.
“Mitchell should say what he means,”comes the reply, and the small smile. “Sam wants to know whether you want porridge with defrosted cranberries or raspberries.”
“Either's fine.” Daniel expects her to leave – but less and less – to deliver the message, but she simply replaces the book she has in her hand carefully into the hollow space and continues.
Vala takes out a paperback, modern and with a brightly illustrated cover. She suppresses a bubble of laughter at the idea of cartoons related to archaeology, anthropology or that other subject. Philology. She assumes it would be funny for someone - most likely the man quietly working behind her. Something about the cover makes her pause. Clouds. A representation of a blue sky with clouds laced across it. Birds. Animals in the clouds, in the sky. The clouds are only worm-like pencil drawings of white and the animals are only approximate silhouettes, without eyes, without lips, without voice, but they dance across the sharp-edged cardboard. Somehow the connections it fires in her mind bring two-dimensional shadows to vivid life and Vala smells smoke beneath her nose. She closes her eyes and opens them quickly.
“'That was then, this
is now.'”
Vala starts and doesn't turn, slowly replacing the book as she had the book on Java moments before. She freezes, one hand on the shelf.
Daniel's voice is unsteady on the first beats of the bar, and Vala swallows. “It's a- the book, the one you were holding. Dream Angus. It's split into sections. That's one of them. It's- I like it.”
Vala doesn't react – if she's honest, she's not sure how. Chocolate, they're running out of chocolate, and Daniel's hand always hovers between his pen and his keyboard. It's totally psychological, and she blames the tau'ri for it. Not Daniel, not the rest, just Earth and everyone on it. For an instant, she smelt smoke under her nose despite the beam missing, despite the planet being forsaken in the vacuum of space across innumerable miles...soundless, senseless but through other filters and screens, she keeps telling them.
“Maybe I should read something,” Vala states, his meagre supply of books holding her awareness captive. She finds her eyes wandering back to the space between the thin green and the thin brown. It looks like leather, the brown, but it's not. She knows that it's cloth from the touch.
They're running out of chocolate; they're running out of sugar, cocoa, skimmed milk powder, lactose, demineralised whey powder, vegetable fat, emulsifiers (e442, soya lecithin) and flavouring.
She distracts herself: Daniel doesn't care about conserving space on his bookshelves. In fact, contrary to the books in his lab, these are spread out across two shelves but would barely fill a box. She knows better than to accuse him of ornamentation. It's an illusion that the spaces aren't as big as they are; an illusion that they can be encroached upon from the margins. He does it because spaces (black, white and grey) are the only things they have enough of, and the only things that they're gaining.
“Did Landry get through?” Daniel asks quietly, looking up.
“Nothing. I expect Carolyn will be going slowly mad,” Vala replies, forcing the words out. She turns with a bright smile, “I hope we find a way out soon, you know. Otherwise this might drive me crazy, and you with me.”
Daniel looks quickly back to his text, not wanting to bear
the full weight of that smile – too bright, too surreal. They're in limbo,
doesn't she know? They don't smile; they don't weep – 'all night beneath the ruins, then their sullen flames faded emerge
around the gloomy king.'
He knows every book on the shelf by heart. They have better things to do with limited core power than print new ones, and he knows it wouldn't be the same.
“Daniel?” He looks up, and the smile isn't searing because it's gone - but her eyes are. She's holding the slim brown volume and walking to the desk. Standing on the opposite side, she pulls it from the case, keeping the ribbon out of harm's way with one finger and thumbing the delicate pages with the other. “Why do you read this?”
He takes a breath. She's never asked that before.
“It's not for studying, is it?”
Daniel doesn't answer, only takes it from her hands, leaving
them hollow and still. He thumbs the pages the way she did, holding the ribbon
away from the motion the way she did, until he reaches the page he is searching
for. “Blessed are they that mourn,”
he reads quietly, posture rigid, smelling smoke under his nostrils, “for they shall be comforted. Blessed are
they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled,”
he sees her feet beneath the desk, knows she's standing up straighter, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall
obtain mercy.” He looks up, knowing it by heart, knowing he gives it away
from the creases on the old Bible, “Blessed
are they which are persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Vala's slim fingers slip along the base of her forearms to grasp her elbows. “I didn't know you believed.”
“There was a time I wasn't sure.”
He breaks the gaze and places the book gingerly back into her hands with a small shake of his head and a wry smile. Vala doesn't press the issue, even if the questions hang in the space between them and in his hollowed hands. When? When did that change? Why? The Ori? Eternity? Then, quickly as they appeared, he turns his hands over as though a small shudder has gone through his body and is back at his work. The movement changes the moment, brushes away the smokescreen of questions hovering in the air and the lens falls in between, clear but present.
Vala takes the small book and stares at the page. Matthew, chapter 5. “You missed some of it.” It's not a question, but his option is there to answer it.
He smiles slowly, eyes on the desk in front of him and he nods.
“Blessed are the meek,”
Vala reads, tone inquisitive, questioning. “For
they shall inherit the Earth... Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of
God.”
He hears the wheels turn in her mind, can feel the associations trembling in the air – thin lines of connection he needs no map to follow – interrogating the text.The book she's holding contains an origin myth of a culture- his culture – and a myth that he knows will resonate in her ears like a myth of Origin.
“It's different,” he states, opening his mouth to continue but stopping. “It's different.”
Vala looks at the words in their tiny print and closes the book. She turns it to the side and notes the red staining to the side with a wave of revulsion then looks at the worn cover. She wonders what people see when they look at books (texts, manuals, volumes, tomes etcetera). A source of knowledge, a production or construction – something changeable or not? A symbol? Vala doubted the power of books once, but moments like this,seeing static clouds drift across silhouette animals convinced her otherwise. She remembers the gaze that Daniel brought to it – his focus, that frightening moment when all he was fell into place below his skin, briefly because it isn't really made for it anymore, and when he brought it to bear on the page. She turns back to the page, and sees the comfort in it for even one such as he is – barely human, barely here, scattered across time collecting the shards of once-unified individuals with a compassion that only ever incidentally extends to his own being. Blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are they which are persecuted.
“Because you believe it?” She doesn't mean it to be harsh, and for once it isn't. The emphasis falls somewhere softly between the 'you' and the 'believe', leading him to look up and tilt his head with that smile that says she's 'doing fine', in Cameron's words.
He looks away, and Vala feels it almost a relief. She knows she's asked something beyond simple, beyond his wife's name (even if that had been neither simple nor easy), beyond most things she's ever asked.
So she turns back to the page, unaware that she's pulling herself beneath the skin to lift the page to the light. It's a fragile thing of thin type, a porous ground for faith of any kind when a sharp tug could rip it to shreds with only the sound of mist going past produced. She rationalises; she's left with that. It's a series of propositions, stamped in ink with authority, that Daniel treats with reverence and freedom. He's a paradox, so why should his approach to this be any different? He never could make anything easy. He accepts some of the statements and not others. Her mind finds this, grasps it, and then applies it. He accepts some, but not that blessed are the meek, blessed are the pure, nor blessed are the peacemakers. There's more, she knows that, but those are the ones she is aware of him consciously having omitted in his reading – in what he presented to her.
“Looks like Mitchell's not the only one learning patience,” Daniel remarks, “You don't let silences linger this long by habit.”
Vala smiles. “There's no point in asking a question if I don't give you time to think of an answer.”
“I'll answer, don't worry,” Daniel replies, turning back to his work.
As unremarkable as it is, it sparks a small epiphany, an answer to a question he hasn't yet answered himself. The book (paper, string, ribbon, ink) isn't for study. She knows it the way that a person knows a bell is ringing by feeling it resonate in the gut, even if they happen to be deaf to the sound. The book isn't for study – he doesn't see it from a scholar's point of view, nor a soldier's, nor that of an interested cultural tourist – he sees it from his. The book, his interpretation, his acceptance (conditional – even this won't be accepted on anything beyond his own terms) stands in one position, Daniel in another and a single line runs between. He accepts blessed are they that mourn; he denies blessed are the meek. He chooses his interpretation and denies that which cuts too close to burn but provides no salve. He denies the peacemakers and accepts the hunger because he doesn't look for significance, indications or meta-narratives in this – he looks for comfort, and enough people call him 'pure' or 'peacemaker' for it to burn in what he perceives as its falsity.
She closes the book with a gentle, hollow beat.
He frowns slightly as she slips it back into the case and replaces it on the shelf, then laughs lightly at the realisation of the worn thin green book with no case beside it. The green, the space between and the brown – a paradox and contradiction. She doesn't need to open this one to know what it is.Without contraries there can be no progression. She's read it enough times to know it by heart – the stories, the morals and the conflicts. She knows how deep it runs. The man and his myths, his invitations to interrogate, were her way to the more authoritarian text Daniel placed beside it. She knows no other way to read than to question.
“The prophecies again?” There is a trace of amusement in his voice.
“I enjoy reading about myself, and not many other books on Earth have a character called Vala, Daniel.”
The irony, she realises, reading Daniel as a paradox, a contradiction and a text, is that he is a work in progress. He doesn't even know that he isn't the final version of himself, that he is changing or why he can't express what only his book can for him, and even only obliquely through his selection and omission. He is Blake placed by the Bible – connected, inspired, different, together. He is the negotiation of opposites and the faithful sceptic.
“Porridge,” Daniel frowns, then meets her eyes. It's all right – it's not the full glare of his awareness, a part still tucked away in the past. “Sam's making porridge? With frozen fruit?”
“We have oats in storage – the last of the fresh stuff is going to the infirmary,” Vala replies, back on business, back to safety. He nods.
Vala picks up the pen and holds it up to eye level. “I heard a joke about these and your country.”
Daniel smiles and looks up from his reading. “I'd like to hear it.”
“Well,” Vala walks around and sits up on the desk. “Apparently they use gravity to function, and once upon a time, your countrymen went into space and didn't operate in conditions with artificial gravity. So clearly this didn't work-”
“I spent half my life
studying the written word. Including how various cultures recorded things
through the ages. From hammers and chisels, to quills and ink. But I never
stopped once to recognise the ingenuity of this simple little piece of
technology that we use.”
Narratives, threads, words crash around Daniel – adrift in an ocean of symbolism and meaning that can't be pinned to one word, one joke, one act or person. He defines by difference – the pen is not a pencil and it's not a computer. Porridge is not fresh pizza. Vala is not Sha're.
“-So your government spends millions of dollars trying to make a gravity defying pen-”
“After the first team
left me on
He didn't know Sha're beyond her strength, beyond her
ability in the time beyond her enslavement. He never knew her beyond her
perfect desperation. If he'd seen her shatter, seen her break under the strain
of freedom he might have known her better. He defines by difference: to him,
Vala is no longer Sha're. 'That was then,
this is now.'
“-And what do the Russians do, Daniel?”
He grins, unsure of the burning feeling in the back of his throat as he ducks his head, knowing the punchline already but enjoying this particular performance. Vala intended only to amuse but he decided to attach symbols and meanings that she didn't intend and can't be aware of – Vala is not and no longer can be Sha're.
“They used a pencil.”
They say it together, and somehow that makes it even funnier.
Vala treats a pen sardonically, knows its operations and sees it in relation to the universe, finds amusement and light somehow, somewhere in it. Sha're treated it as a thing of wonder. Blessed are those who mourn.
They're running out of chocolate.
Ink is made of a combination of soluble iron salt with an extract of tannin.
The Asgard technology is needed for everything else.
Vala, looking across the desk, remembers his hesitation earlier and knows the choice inherent in it. She is unsurprised to see him scribbling in a notebook with one of the last biros on board. They're human, for all that exists beyond their skin, and they cling to it. She pauses, the flat pads of three fingertips growing cold against the desktop. She takes a step away, leaving him to his work and going to hers.
She hesitates at the door, looking back at him before walking out.
* * * *
She activates the door panel to his room and slips under the covers, wrapping an arm around his waist. He doesn't protest in the half-light, just clasps a hand clumsily over hers.
“I had to wait until Walter's team had finished the sweep,” she mutters against the cool skin of his back.
He nods and turns, hand running down her back as she readjusts her position.
Words are incidental, representations of an instance in a curve, an attempt to capture and still that which is gone by the time the sound is heard. A curve in a single wave, when a single wave is one of many thousands drifting, streaking, flying, cutting through the air, flowing along links between people and meanings.
“Chocolate?”
“Gone,” Vala smiles sadly. “I don't suppose the planet we're going to someday has cocoa and ballpoint pens?”
The chocolate is gone; the biros are running low.
“It's the other side of the universe,” Daniel states, running a fingertip across the hollow of her neck.
“So no glitterpens? No white chocolate with raisins?”
It's the other side of
the universe.
“What happened to the chocolate in the end?”
“Carolyn and I gave it to Sam. Better than Mitchell wasting flour on macaroons for her.”
They protect and carry the legacy of a planet.
“Speaking of,” Vala continued, voice losing its clarity as sleep threatened, “when do you think he'll be flying again? I can take his seat, if need be.”
“It'll be weeks, but Sam's already said she'll do it if Teal'c needs more-”
“And Jack's already said no, and that she'll find herself in locked quarters if she considers it.”
They protect and carry the legacy of their planet. She smells smoke under her nose. He smells smoke under his nostrils.
“If you were four months pregnant, I'd be saying that as well.”
She slaps his cheek lightly with a smile, hand staying pressed against his skin.
They knew it was impossible, standing on the bridge of the Odyssey and watching the Ori ships descend on Earth. They had left reluctantly in their ark and should have left the solar system ten minutes before but they all, each and every member of the crew, had to know. It wasn't enough to know the statistics, the odds and the trajectories. As painful as it was, they had to see the ships land. They knew it was impossible but that didn't change the smell that lingered on their senses for a moment. Millions of miles and the vacuum of space in between, and they smelled the cities of Earth burn.
“You could talk it over with Jack in the morning.”
“Mmh.”
“You're nearly sleeping already, aren't you?”
“What d'you expect?” He sees the outline of her yawn. “Stock manifests. Staff team... placements. Plans. Meetings. I didn't sign up for this, you know.”
It's not a real complaint. They could be on Earth. They could be apart. They could be worse, but they couldn't feel guiltier.
“They'll be there.”
Faith. It's suddenly a concern, suddenly a pressing need, because they have to have so much of it for this. General Landry, Agent Barrett, Reynolds and various others are on an overstocked, overfilled Apollo and headed for the same place. Other ships have been hurriedly fitted with appropriate hyper-drives and filled to capacity, then sent along their own roads to the same destination. To start again, to rally.
“They have to be.”
Faith. They've severed ties with Atlantis, with Ori-occupied Earth, likely damned as the runners they are. The universe was weighed in the balance and the paradox resolved; the logic was inescapable. The Ori could not gain the knowledge of the Ancients or of the Asgard. Earth couldn't utilise it in time to stop them taking their home world, but they could escape and save countless galaxies. Blessed are the merciful.
Words are incidental: they carry only instant meaning, plucked from the curve of a wave in an ocean. Any other conversation, spoken by anyone else, would be only what it sounds – two people raising miscommunication to an art form. Their words seem to dance around and over, on other wavelengths entirely, but they take different points in the curve, know the answers are communicated in a far more effective way. Words mean what they need to mean, and words aren't what they're listening to in the first place.
“I know.”
Faith. They're where they need to be, they're together: that will not change.
“I know.”
* *
Author’s Notes: since this is a reference heavy piece:
all the books mentioned exist. Most of them I've either read or endured.
Chemical composition of chocolate can be found on the back of a bar. Ink
composition from Wikipedia. The Bible verses are accurate and from Matthew. The
lines quoted from SG-1 are from Forever in a Day. Blake lines (and the Vala
character I talk about) from his prophecies... Particularly 'Daughters of
Thanks for reading!
** The End **
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