Your Death is a
Number and I Can’t Count that High
By: sorrel_rowan
CATEGORY: Angst
WARNINGS: None
AUTHOR’S NOTES: The POTC3: At World’s End rip off, as promised. Dedicated to my fellow gushee Isabel, who did me the immense honor of betaing. Thanks dude. Contains major spoilers for POTC3! And actual dialogue thiefage and often. Title lyric from Malcolm Middleton, “Death Love Depression Love Death.” It’s actually rather catchy.
“Vala!”
Vala didn’t move, looking at the stars overhead. At this edge of the Daedalus, perched on the very edge of the window, she could almost forget it was a ship and that she wasn’t just floating in space.
She felt something in her gut twist at his voice.
“How long are we going to keep not talking?”
She wished he’d shout. She had a temper; she’d give in and shout back, tell him why she couldn’t talk to him right now, why for once he was the last person she could trust with this.
“It’ll be fine when we get Marlen back.”
She thought she saw him blink and sigh as she walked past him.
* * * *
Vala watched the man she’d almost married pace the gate room, feeling the eyes of her team on her. He’d given the information they’d rescued him for, and they would duly run off on it… ‘wheel’s up in one hour’ as always. But for now, Marlen was discovering exactly who had rescued him. And he was not amused.
“Why should I go with you? Four of you’ve tried to kill me!” He directed this at SG-3, standing nearby and eyeing him with suspicion after a trade deal gone sour the year before. He turned and tilted his head at Vala with a rather malicious smirk. “One of you succeeded.”
Vala saw Daniel’s head whip around to stare at her, eyes wide. She only blinked languidly and raised her head to meet Marlen’s eyes. “Yes, I did, didn’t I?”
* * * *
Daniel found her sitting on a disused set of stairs, eyes boring holes into the wall opposite.
“Did Qetesh-?”
“I had no choice,” Vala broke in quietly, not looking at Daniel. “But it wasn’t Qetesh. We dumped him in a sarcophagus and ran.” She shook herself and looked at him with a too bright grin. “But it’s okay, he’s rescued now.” She looked at him a little more closely, tilting her head slightly and putting her hands on her hips. “You thought I was in love with him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Daniel asked, taking a step towards her and neatly sidestepping the question.
Vala lifted her head and gave him the same look she’d given Marlen earlier, the one that spoke of hard choices with no easy answers. “It wasn’t your burden to bear.”
She made to leave, but Daniel crossed her path with his arm against the wall. She met his eyes, realising only inches separated them. He swallowed and answered, “But I did bear it, didn’t I? I just didn’t know what it was.”
She lifted her chin again, meeting his eyes unflinchingly. “When I killed him, I was someone I never want you to meet.”
“And who are you now?” Daniel asked intently, “And how can I trust you if you make your choices alone?”
“You can’t,” Vala shot back, voice carrying less bite than she wanted it to.
Daniel’s jaw worked under his skin and his eyes seemed melded onto her own. Vala blinked quickly and ducked under his arm to walk up the stairs and away. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately.
* * * *
“We’re almost there,” Sam informed Vala, sitting across from her at the table with a sigh. Vala simply nodded. Sam touched her wrist briefly. “You okay?”
Vala nodded silently, sitting down her fork. “This…weapon the Lucians found. What does it do again?”
“Wipes out all living tissue within the blast radius. It’s a little like the weapon on Dakarra, except in the form of a bomb rather than a console.” Sam looked at her.
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
Vala nodded again, emphatically. “So…if it’s a bomb, what do we hope to find left to study?” She sat her bread down and looked at Sam. “The Lucian Alliance stumbled onto a piece of Ancient technology. They’re stupid enough to set it off and kill themselves before they sell it to the highest bidder.”
Sam shrugged, sighing again. “We have to try. It’s a long shot but we need information on this weapon of theirs. God help us if they figure out how to use it or duplicate it.”
When Sam was finished, she stood to leave then fixed Vala with a look. “Get some rest or get the doc to check you out, Vala. You look like your ghost.”
Staring at herself in the mirror, with skin a pale grey and circles under her eyes, she could see why Sam would say that. She’d committed crimes and killed more than Marlen, but the act of killing him to free herself and the others had been different. She had essentially shot him in cold blood and abandoned him to the goa’uld.
It was the antithesis of all she now thought of herself – she had betrayed him and left him behind, a member of the closest thing she had then to a ‘team.’ It simply wasn’t what she did anymore and it had become anathema. The fresh knowledge that she was capable of it, that it had happened and she had been that person had knocked her off-balance more than she’d thought.
She took a deep breath and left the guest quarters, heading to Daniel’s. He’d been ‘accidentally’ assigned quarters for two, most of the ship knowing about them but Vala hadn’t been speaking to him – and hadn’t explained why. He opened the door in a t-shirt she knew he’d just shrugged on and slacks.
Vala bit her bottom lip, not wanting to explain the entire thought process again. She met his eyes. “I didn’t mean to go away. I’m sorry.”
She remembered why they worked against all the odds when he smiled tiredly and let her in without a word, the way his arm tightened around her telling her he understood. Sometimes words just cluttered things up.
* * * *
“Why are they meeting here again?”
“I think that’s the point,” Daniel responded absently, looking at the monitor over Sam’s shoulder with a frown. “Do you see-?”
Sam nodded, swallowing. “We’re too late. There’s no life signs out there. There’s a few, but they’re fading in and out. I don’t think we’d get to them in time.”
A beat of silence later,
She nodded, eyes wide. “Stretched over hundreds of miles. It might have missed some on the edges, but I doubt it.”
“Is it safe?”
“We should head to the epicentre,” Sam answered after a moment. “We need to see if there’s anything we can use.”
“And watch out for scavengers,” Vala put in.
As the ship glided silently between the rows of dead vessels, Vala stared out of the window and thought numbly that they should have been tilted or something to show the lack of souls on board. She felt a hand slip into hers and tightened her grip on Daniel’s as they came to the edge of the vessels.
Vala leaned over the tech’s shoulder and told him to pause. The ship slowed on approach. Vala walked slowly towards the front window. “That’s the cargo ship we-”
She turned to Daniel, smiling. “It’s my father – we’re out of the blast radius!”
Vala stood very still for a single moment and then shook her head, going to the control screen. “Try hailing him.”
The tech looked to Caldwell and Vala repeated, “Try hailing him,” with more emphasis.
“Beam me over there,” Vala ground
out. As
She locked eyes with
“Are you dead?”
Vala shared a look with Daniel, confused.
“Because I think I might be.”
She shook her head. “Jacek, stop wasting time. You’re not dead yet.”
“I’m losing… air. And don’t you waste time, I’m going to be dead soon enough.”
“Well, that’s just maddeningly unhelpful,” Vala said in a rush, looking between them. “Ring him aboard. Please.”
“Trying,” the tech replied, pressing buttons. “The matter stream won’t transfer.”
“Vala? It wouldn’t mean…much…if I said sorry now, would it?”
“No,” Vala shot back, voice tense, “Because when you get better, you’ll claim it was only oxygen deprivation.”
“There was an auction…” Jacek’s voice trailed off. “It seemed important at the time.”
“It might be the effects of the bomb,” Sam put in. “His body might be losing coherence.”
They heard a sigh on the radio. “I’m sorry anyway-”
Vala shook her head violently, eyes bright. “Jacek, shut up. I don’t want to hear that kind of-”
“And I’m proud of you. Now get out of here. This isn’t the kind of place I want my daughter to be.”
Vala shook her head again and Daniel reached for her hand just as she moved away. “Since when do you have the right to give me orders?”
“Just…go.”
Sam looked at her console and then at Vala apologetically. “We have to go. The cargo ship is losing integrity.”
Vala made to run from the room, but Daniel caught her around the waist and took the blows as she fought against him. She stilled as the cargo ship imploded, then watched as the engine exploded in a silent shower of sparks against the black.
Wrapping his arms around her, Daniel met Sam’s eyes over her head. “Is there any way?”
Sam shook her head.
* * * *
Daniel felt her hands slip around his waist as they lay in the dark.
Her voice was small in the dark. “I can’t do this on my own.”
“Then it’s a good thing you’re not on your own,” Daniel replied, covering her hands with his own.
** The End **
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