Unending – The Return
By: BkWurm1
CATEGORY: Alternate Universe, Romance
SEASON/SPOILERS: Season 10 “Unending”
WARNINGS: None
CHAPTER 1: Restoration Part 1
The Odyssey fled the remaining Ori vessel and before their enemy fired another shot, they swiftly slipped into hyperspace. General Landry immediately contacted Col. Carter to discover what had happened. “Col. Carter, report.”
“Sir, I’m still finding out all the details. Teal’c suddenly appeared and well, we’ll be on the bridge in a minute to explain.”
Mitchell frowned and looked around, “The big guy was here a
minute ago, I swear.
Daniel put down the fire extinguisher and nudged back his glasses. He was still looking around in similar confusion when the lift doors opened.
Vala exited first and met Daniel’s raised eyebrow with a shrug and a shake of her head. Sam nervously walked to Landry and Teal’c serenely followed. A swath of white hair boldly tapered from his right temple. Vala leaned on the console next to Daniel and whispered, “You are never going to believe it.”
Daniel gave her a sharp look before smirking and whispering back, “Want to bet?” Daniel doubted much of anything could surprise him anymore. He redirected his attention to Sam’s explanation of why they were on their way home, rather than paused as planned inside a time dilation field.
Daniel’s jaw actually dropped when Teal’c revealed fifty years passed before they discovered the solution to escaping the bubble without the blowing the Odyssey apart permanently.
Vala grinned and chucked him lightly under the chin. “Told you so.”
Too stunned by the ramifications to speak, he continued to stare glassy-eyed at Teal’c. Vala leaned closer to whisper directly in his ear, “I win.” His body tensed.
She felt his awareness return to her. “So,” she purred, “are you my prize?” Her sultry voice sent shivers down his spine. Daniel furrowed his brow and attempted to form a coherent reply when what he could only describe as a wave, washed out in a circular pattern from the center of the bridge.
His mind tried to command his mouth to issue a warning to the others, but he was frozen, helpless to struggle as the wave widened and bathed them all with its energy.
More waves pulsed from the center of the ship, washing over
them faster and faster until an intense blue light flared and sound, as
thunderous as the waters crashing over
Teal’c saw the energy pulse wave ebb and disappear at the same time silence retook control of the bridge. General Hank Landry slumped to the side of the command seat, unconscious, and the rest of Sg1 were likewise incapacitated and passed out on the floor. Only he seemed unaffected by whatever had transpired. No alarms sounded, the sensors read normal and their course remained unchanged. It seemed the ship’s circuitry was equally unaffected.
Before he could take further action, they began to stir.
Teal’c provided a hand to Sam, while Daniel and Vala were
mutually assisting each other to stand.
The General leaned forward and rested his head in his hands.
General Landry gingerly raised his head and looked around, a frown pulling his eyebrows together. He stared hard at Sam and Mitchell before becoming distracted by his hand. He held it out in front of his face and rotated it slowly, seemingly extra fascinated with the back of it. “No spots.” He pinched himself and winced. “I’m not dreaming. Sam must have done it,” he said in wonder.
“Sa-am.”
Sam rushed to the General who grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her into a bear hug. “You did it, you never gave up,” he said proudly.
Sam stood stiffly in his embrace. “Sir, you are behaving very oddly, something must be wrong, I need you to…,” she stopped as a flood of memories swirled through her mind, including the time General Landry took his last breath. She dug her fingers tightly into his forearms as her eyes began to well up. “Oh, sir! You’re alive!” She cried before returning his bone-crushing hug.
Cameron twisted away from the bizarre tableau. “Teal’c, give it to me straight. Is, is it me?” He put the back of his hand against his forehead, testing for temperature. “Am I going…,” suddenly fifty years of images, thoughts, sounds, tastes, smells and temper tantrums zipped into place, “crazy?” He ended on a whisper.
He whipped his head around; taking in Teal’c’s look of dawning comprehension and seeing Sam laugh and wipe away happy tears. He saw Landry smiling at Sam, his chest puffed out, beaming with pride as if she was his own daughter. He saw Jackson and Vala wrapped joyously together, just as they had been for the last fifty years, only young again.
Everyone was young again and the ship…it was vibrating and thrumming with life. It was moving -they were moving– they had evaded the Ori’s blast and slipped into hyperspace and were now racing toward home.
Home, they were… He could not quite believe. He ran to the nearest port and saw space streaking by and no trace of the energy beam that defined their outside world for fifty years.
“She did it. She did it!” He threw head back and let loose a joyful cry. “Wahoo!” He whooped and danced around the bridge. “Superman flew around the world!” He threw his arms around both Daniel and Vala at the same time and squeezed. “She did it!” He shouted and hopped over to Teal’c and thumped him on the back. “T, my main man! My, oh, my, oh, my! You did it! Mr. Turned back time!”
He bounded back to Landry and swept Sam up in a madly twirling hug. “Why didn’t you tell us we’d still remember everything?” He demanded, grinning like a fool.
Sam waited to find a solid surface beneath her toes before answering. She brushed back a loch of hair and seemed surprised by its short length. “The chance of this happening was so remote I didn’t even finish calculating the odds. It could have been due to the resultant damage by the first blasts. If enough energy spiked and gravity was within the ratio of curvature while expending a shower of vanheloxiom particles, then the subsequent force…”
“Sir, I am officially challenging you to the ultimate chess tournament rematch. Last time we played, you bailed before we finished, and as I recall, I was ahead by two games.”
Sam’s jaw dropped, aghast at his comment. She smacked him on the arm. “
“Death! Ha! This is Sg1 and the head of Stargate command! We don’t let a little thing like death or aged decrepitude get in the way. Do we sir?” He clapped the General on his back.
Landry shook his head and dryly drawled, “Glad you haven’t lost your enthusiasm Mitchell, but you were behind by two games in our last chess tournament.” He grinned. “I’m going to kick your butt all over again.”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!”
CHAPTER 2: Restoration Part 2
Smiling, Sam left
He inclined his head formally, but smiled as he replied, “I am well, and far more content not being alone with my remembrance of our life aboard the Odyssey.”
She squeezed his hand. “Its funny though, now that the initial rush of memories is over, I still remember, but I have a clearer memory of saying goodbye to Thor and what I ate at the commissary the night before the Odyssey departed than I do of instructing you on the use of the crystal. It’s almost as if those experiences are being stored further back in my chronological memories.”
She ran her hand through her shortened locks of hair and this time didn’t notice anything odd about its length. “These current memories, the ones that should be before our time on the Odyssey, are so clear. Protocols and procedures for the SGC, rules I’m sure I’d forgotten before I was fifty, I can again now list by rote.”
Teal’c tilted his head and lifted an eyebrow, waiting for her assessment.
“Well, that will make settling back on the base easier,” she said philosophically.
He nodded regally, noting Samantha Carter’s sensible outlook as Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran walked over to them, hand in hand. A hint of a smile touched Teal’c’s lips.
Much knowledge of great value had accrued during their time on the Odyssey, but none was of richer fortune than the understanding achieved between this pair.
Pity, though. Notions of how they would again rediscover one another had entertained him. Some things are meant to be. Daniel Jackson had lost and suffered much, but the universe fittingly delivered the piece to repair and complete his soul.
Teal’c remembered the fist time he had been in the company of both Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran.
Daniel Jackson had thrown pillows.
He felt the ghost of a smile deepen into a smirk. The universe worked in mysterious ways.
Sam greeted Daniel by throwing her arms around his neck and giving him a quick hug before repeating the gesture to Vala. She grinned happily for them and, for the first time in decades, without even the tiniest bit of resentment. She was past envy. Her life was an open possibility again.
Life.
Not simply work.
Though her former self wanted to tremble and protest that she was too late, Sam knew better. Where there is life, there is hope and now there was time too. The chances she had been afraid to take in the past still remained. She had time and she would not waste any more of it.
Even if her life, her personal life, did not go in the direction she hoped, she could try.
She felt light and free. For fifty years, she’d attempted to mend her mistake, never really forgetting that ultimately it was her actions that were responsible for putting them in living suspension. It didn’t matter that no one else held her responsible. Her own feelings of guilt kept her from reaching out and connecting as anything more than a colleague and friend.
There had been moments where possibilities could have been explored, but she’d chosen the safe route. What route would she chose now? Not knowing excited her. A touch on her arm brought her out of her speculation.
“Sam,” Daniel began, but paused to frown and furrow his brow in that way he did when he was especially nervous about something. His agitation surprised Sam. She glanced at Vala to see if something was wrong.
Vala stood silently next to Daniel, worrying her bottom lip
between her teeth. Sam recognized that
her silence spoke volumes to the depth of their mutual concern. “What is it?
What’s wrong?” Sam’s voice echoed
through the bridge.
“Sam, what’s happening?”
“Are you unwell Daniel Jackson?” He asked with concern.
“No, no. Physically I feel fine. Fine, I mean, apart from physically manifesting symptoms associated with nerves…” Vala place her free hand on his forearm and with a light touch, forestalled a verbal ramble.
They exchanged looks, the kind of silent communication developed after decades of intimately knowing and loving another person. Daniel took a deep breath and started again.
“We’re physically fine, but worried.”
Sam shook her head in confusion and asked again, “What is it?”
Daniel asked a question instead of answering hers. “Regaining our memories of our life on the Odyssey, this wasn’t an anticipated side effect of reversing the time field, was it?”
“If you’re asking did I expect it? Then no. But the chance existed, however minutely.”
“But are they permanent?” Vala rushed to ask. Sam suddenly realized the source of their worry, but before she could speak, Daniel jumped in, exposing his naked fear.
“If they are temporary, there has to be something we can do to preserve them, to hold on to them.” He broke off. His jaw worked furiously and he swallowed hard. His eyes had a bright sheen to them. When he spoke again, his voice was raw. “Sam, I don’t think I could handle saying goodbye a second time.”
Sam reached for Daniel and Vala’s free hands. She squeezed them and looked in turn into their eyes. “Based on my earlier research into this possible phenomenon and barring traumatic head injury, there is no reason why you will ever altogether lose those memories. You are no more likely to forget our time on Odyssey than anything else that has happened in our lives.”
She let her gaze fall and linger on the remaining members of her team and on their commander. A long time ago, before she ever boarded the Odyssey, Daniel and Teal’c had become more than just team members. They had become almost like family.
She looked around the room and realized there was no distinction any longer, no almost. She might have tried to hold back out of a misplaced sense of remorse, but it hadn’t mattered in the end. These people were her family. She smiled and wiped away a tear at the same time. “Those fifty years on the Odyssey, that’s a journey I never intended to make. But now, I’m glad I didn’t have to lose that voyage. I can promise all of you, those memories will forever be a part of who we are.”
CHAPTER 3: Affirmation
As soon as all systems were determined functional and their route home was confirmed, Daniel requested Vala assist him in verifying that his temporary workstation aboard Odyssey hadn’t suffered during their fight with the Ori ships.
They left the bridge of the Odyssey before Landry or the other team members questioned his flimsy excuse and then managed to only wait until the elevator doors shut behind them before falling ravenously on one another.
He speared his fingers through her jet-black hair and hungrily took her mouth while she ran her hands up and down his back. He needed to get closer and stepped forward, pushing her against the wall; his body flush to her flesh and feeling every delicious curve and valley. It was not enough to taste her; he needed to breathe her, to savor her, to lose himself inside her.
He’d almost lost her.
Worse.
He almost never knew what he had.
He couldn’t think, just feel and react. He needed to prove she belonged to him.
His hands went to the front of her BDU’s and opened the jacket to her waist. He pushed it off her shoulders and with a flourish, peeled the black t-shirt over her head, exposing her heated skin to his gaze before trailing warm kisses over her collar bone and then down the shadowy valley between her breasts. She leaned away, arching her back and offering herself up for anything that would bring her closer to the hot tight ball of pulsing pleasure that wanted to burst through her system.
“More,” she panted. “I need more,” she demanded while sliding her cool palms under his shirt. His chest was smooth and firm and oh, so hot, beneath her exploring fingers, but the shirt and jacket he still wore restricted her access.
“Off,” she commanded, pulling back to help him remove the offending articles. Once he was naked to the waist, she pressed her open lips to his chest, alternating stinging nips with soothing kisses.
The lift doors opened to their selected level, but neither paid any attention and soon they closed again.
Daniel slid Vala’s pants down and she kicked them loose, leaving her in a melon colored tank top and matching panties. He cupped her bottom, molding and squeezing as he lifted her to rest more fully against the bulge between his legs. He ground his pelvis forward and she hissed his name, digging her fingernails into his back. He captured her mouth and swallowed her next cry as he arched against her again.
“Vala, I need you,” he whispered hotly against the side of her face and slid one of his hands under her shirt to cover her breast. He dragged his thumb over her already taunt nipple, making her stiffen and shudder. He slipped his other hand beneath the hem of the bright colored tank top and dragged it off, leaving her fully open to his caresses. Vala shivered, not from exposure - her skin was too heated too feel a chill - but from the intense longing she saw in Daniel’s blue eyes. He demanded everything from her, allowing her to hold back nothing.
He would possess her soul, but she would take his.
His skillful hands continued to tease and arouse while his mouth feasted on her jaw, her neck, her collar before diving to replace his hands. He laved and kissed the sensitive skin surrounding her nipple before latching on and sucking hard, rolling the sensitive bud against the roof of his mouth and causing Vala to cry out and clutch his head closer. He repeated his ministrations before switching to its twin and duplicating his results.
Vala moved restlessly against him, her hands shaking while she tried to undo his belt buckle. He brushed her hands aside and she whimpered in agony before realizing he was attending to the chore himself. She tugged and pulled the belt away and he pushed and stepped out of his pants and boxers in one act. Proof of his desire sprung free and was a huge, hot brand against her stomach.
“Daniel,” she moaned, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Now, please. I need you now.” He swooped in for a hard kiss before sliding his thumbs under the edges of her panties and sweeping away the last remaining barrier. He griped her hips and hiked her further up the wall until she could wrap her legs around his waist. She held on while he positioned himself at her entrance and pushed his way in, sliding heavily into her moist heat. He groaned low and deep and she started keening softly in his ear. He pulled back and then surged powerfully forward inside her molten core.
“Mine,” he growled against her neck.
She twined her legs more forcefully around his waist, trying to draw him even closer, deeper. She sought physical affirmation of what her soul cried out.
They were one.
Her heart pounded and his hammered back against her chest. Their mingled breath came in pants, their lips meeting in an insatiable kiss. He wound her tresses tightly between his fingers, binding their mouths together just as securely as their joined flesh.
Over and over, he pressed and thrust, meeting her trembling body until he felt the tension in Vala wind even tighter. “Oh, oh, Daniel, I’m going to…” His mouth covered hers, silencing her moans and drinking her ecstatic cries as he heaved his rigid member deeper, harder. He felt her insides clench and spasm before lighting shot up his spine and with a final series of thrusts, he released a hot surge deep inside her womb.
Minutes passed. His knees turned to jelly and he could no longer support them both. Still wrapped together, he let them slid down the wall until they rested on the floor with Vala on his lap facing him. Daniel smoothed back Vala’s unruly hair before cradling her head in his hands and staring as if he was trying to newly memorize her unlined face.
He listened to the echoes in his memory and traced patterns by her lips and eyes, noting vanished wrinkles as familiar to him as the lines that had once been on his own face. “So young, we were, no,” he murmured, “are so young.” Vala, in turn, studied his dear features and couldn’t resist nibbling on his lower lip. Daniel let himself drowned in her kiss, intoxicated by a volatile mix of love, tenderness, and unflagging lust.
In the past fifty years, his desire for Vala had only grown, and now like a gift from the mythical gods, he had the stamina to prove it.
Vala touched his cheek and traced his lips. “It feels like forever since I’ve been in your arms,” she murmured. She met his eyes. “I missed you so much and yet I know that’s absurd. The reversed field was instantaneous.”
Daniel leaned into her touch and inhaled deeply, trying to drink his fill of her intoxicating perfume, a scent that essentially was only Vala. He stoked her hair and absently replied. “Like Sam told us, our minds seem to be processing the memories of our time on the Odyssey as if it happened a long time in our past. The freshest memories are from this timeline, the journey here, Thor’s goodbye, the Ori’s pursuit and so on.”
Vala pulled back to look at him mischievously. “Does that mean you’re going to be miffed about that little party I arranged for you the other day or should I say fifty years ago? Because if that’s true, we’re going to have to discuss your ability to stubbornly hold a grudge, it can’t be healthy and causes all that stress and tension.” She began kneading his shoulders.
“Vala, I got over the fake birthday party a long while ago.”
“I suppose that’s true, but what about…never mind.” Suddenly, she was not teasing. Insecurities from a lifetime ago swamped her ability to reason. She shook her head and their eyes broke contact. She stared over his shoulder at nothing.
He felt her sudden tension. He kept soothingly running his fingers through her hair. “What? Tell me.”
Vala bit her lip and spit out her sudden fears. “What about us? Was this,” she said gesturing to their scattered clothing in the elevator, “about getting caught up in an old memory or am I still…, I mean on the ship before we left you said…, but before, I mean now, I know you didn’t think, don’t think I really. Ah, hell,” frustrated, she blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and stuck her hands on her hips, raising her voice as she demanded to know, “Do you still love me?”
She looked like a furious goddess. His heart tripped and sped up. “Yes.” He took her hand off her hip, kissed it and then smiled tenderly, “and you? Do you still love me?” He asked, feeling the tension drain out of her body even as it unexpectedly rushed to his.
“Beyond breathing,” she answered without hesitation.
He cupped her face. “I won’t ask you to choose.”
“Still, would be an easy choice to make.”
“Don’t say that.” He sealed his words with a quick, fierce kiss. “You and I are a package deal; if I’m ever going to get anything done, I need you close by, healthy and alive.”
“It goes both ways you know.” She tried to say it as a joke, but her eyes betrayed her earnestness. “I know the Ori’s fleet is still out there, but I’ll have none of the random dying of which Sam told me so much. I find it irresponsible behavior and completely inappropriate for a role model such as yourself.”
Faintly puzzled, Daniel squinted his eyes and tilted his head to the side, “Role model?”
Vala looked down, seemingly fascinated by the invisible patterns she traced on his chest. For a moment, he wondered if she would answer. When she did, she spoke softly, her voice tinged equally with hope and sadness. “I know that starting a family isn’t practical right away and I know we didn’t talk too much about it and I know that was my fault, but back then, on the Odyssey, it hurt too much.”
An unhealed ache came to life near his heart. She was talking about children. On Odyssey, they both knew children would be unwise, but there had been one close call, one divine accident.
She miscarried before they had even known she was pregnant, but the incident planted a longing that never went away.
“It was fine to fantasize about places I’d gone and things I’d done, those things I learned I could do without, but I couldn’t let myself think about what we were really missing, because I wasn’t sure if then I would be able to do without. But now, I want…need really to know that someday we will meet our…,”
He finished for her. “Children.”
“You would be a wonderful father and I think I could be a good mother.”
“You will be a wonderful mother.”
Vala flushed under his certainty. “I didn’t do so well with Adria.”
“Not a fair comparison. You know that.” He gathered her closer, and wrapped his arms around her tightly. His whispered into her hair, “I can’t help believing who you are, how much you care, how deeply you love was one of the reasons why Adria had to age at such an amazing speed. If you’d been the one to raise her, had been given time to mold her, the Ori could not have retained their hold on her. But,” he sighed, “you’re right, starting a family right away probably isn’t a good idea.” He felt Vala nodding.
“I feel like I still have a responsibility with the Ori situation.”
“As do I, but,” he pulled back to look at her, “we won’t wait too long, no matter what. Agreed?”
Vala blinked several times and then blinded him with her smile. “Agreed.”
“So,” she said changing the subject at lightning speed. She started to drop lazy kisses on his chest.
“Mmm,” he absently responded, distracted by the sight of a vulnerable spot just below the nape of her neck.
“I was just thinking.”
He smirked, unable to ignore that opening. “I can’t remember. Is that a good or bad sign?” She nipped his chest. “Ow!” He yelped and rubbed the offended flesh. He sighed dramatically. “Go ahead, what were you thinking?”
She sat up and linked her hands behind his head. “Just how detailed will our reports have to be?”
Daniel burst out laughing.
“Good question. I don’t think I
want to explain a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs to the boys in
She smiled provocatively. “From what I’ve head, they know all about them.”
“Vala,” he said her name half-amused, half-exasperated.
She turned serious again. “I can’t completely change, I think you know that. I’m not ever going to be perfect and I’m still going to on the occasion say things that you find embarrassing or stupid,” she hesitated, “and it won’t just be around the team. Can you handle that?”
He cupped her face in both hands again and answered seriously, “I’m still going to get so wrapped up in my work that I miss lunch, sometimes dinner and the occasional breakfast. Can you handle that?”
She smiled softly, “I can work around that.”
“Ok, fair enough and if I need you to be quiet, I will just have to practice my patented technique to stop you from talking. Fifty years and I found only one reliable way.”
“Oh,” she challenged, “and what’s that?”
His eye sparkled devilishly, “Let me demonstrate.”
* * * *
Some time later, Vala pulled back from Daniel’s kiss, “Do you feel that?”
The lift was vibrating beneath them. “It’s nothing to worry about,” he said pulling her back into his embrace, “the lift is just moving.” Daniel froze and Vala’s eyes grew big. He scooted her off his lap, scrambled up, and shouted, “The lift’s moving!” They had just seconds before the doors would open onto the Odyssey’s bridge. Daniel pulled Vala to her feet. He hastily scooped up some of their scattered clothing.
* * * * * *
“I’m telling you, I just don’t believe it.”
“We spent fifty years together and you still doubt me?” Sam asked incredulously.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you’re completely wrong,
just foolish to narrow down all the possibilities to just the…” The lift doors opened. “Aw, crap.”
Judiciously holding a bundle of clothing in front of him, Daniel stood with Vala tucked behind him in the corner. He lifted his free hand in a weird kind of wave acknowledging his state of semi-nakedness.
Seeing their audience, one of Vala’s arms snaked around Daniel’s chest and she nonchalantly held something out to Daniel. “Darling, I found your glasses. They were on the floor beneath your boxers.” If possible, Daniel turned a deeper shade of red, but he just calmly slipped them on said a short thank you. “Any time,” Vala purred.
Sam’s lips twitched as she held out her hand, palm up, to Mitchell. “Pay up.”
Mitchell grumbled as he dug into his pocket. “
Sam took his money grinning, “Never bet against a sure thing.” They let the lift doors glide shut.
Landry shook his head, “Somebody please tell me those two calmed down eventually.”
“Oh they did, sir,” Sam hurried to assure the General. “I’d say they really mellowed during the last, oh, what would you say Teal’c?”
“Five years.” Teal’c provided with a nod.
General Landry groaned.
“Yep,” agreed Mitchell.
“The last five years I almost never caught them naked in the
elevator.” He shook his head and
grimaced. “Good thing I was getting cataracts.”
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