So Comes Love
Apr. 10th, 2011 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stringertheoryTitle: So Comes Love
Rating: PG
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Daniel/Vala
Word Count: 3770
Categories: humor, drama, angst, romance
Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-series, callback to series finale, "Unending".
Summary: A version of how Daniel and Vala, with a little nudge from Teal'c, finally get together.
let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go
let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
the neithers - you must let them all go they
were born
to go
let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear
so comes love
- e. e. cummings
It was half-past noon and Daniel was contemplating switching his lab to full lockdown. Inconvenient, to be sure, but at least it might buy him a bit more peace and quiet. Any peace and quiet.
“Please, Daniel?” Vala begged. She stood opposite him, the workstation between them, and employed every ounce of persuasion she possessed in the pout she threw his way. Unfortunately, the effort had little effect given he didn’t see it.
“No,” Daniel replied, not deigning to look up from his work. “Why don’t you ask Sam to take you shopping?”
Vala gave him an odd look. “Sam left on the Hammond two days ago, Daniel.”
He glanced up at that, brow furrowed. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”
“So, as you can see, I really don’t have any other options,” Vala said. She absentmindedly rifled through one of the books on the table, eliciting a deep sigh from Daniel. “I mean, let’s face it, it’s not as if I would come to you first for this—you aren’t exactly the most personable... person—”
“Is this your sales pitch?” Daniel asked dryly.
“—but with Sam gone and the base on pins and needles over this little get-together—”
“Presidential inspection and intergalactic meeting—”
“—no one else is available. And as I am still not allowed to wander off base alone—”
“No, you still aren’t allowed to drive. Anywhere. Ever.”
Vala rolled her shoulder. “It was one little MP! And I didn’t actually hit him. He jumped.”
“And broke his leg.”
“A most unfortunate side effect of his inability to properly execute a roll.” She waved aside Daniel’s attempt to interject. “My point is: I need you to take me off base.” She capped her statement with a winning smile.
“No."
The smile dropped off her face and Vala stamped her foot. “Come on, Daniel! I have to get out of this place.” She leaned on the workstation and met him face to face. “I’m going nuts here.”
“I know how you feel,” Daniel replied with a bland stare.
“Please, Daniel.”
“No.”
“Da—”
“No.” He pulled off his glasses to rub at his eyes, exasperated, a common side effect of Vala’s presence. Replacing his glasses, he leaned on the workstation and sighed. “Look, I’m really busy right now, so why—”
“That’s what you always say!”
“And it’s always true."
“Daniel!” she whined.
“Vala!” he mimicked, to her annoyance.
They glared at each other across the cluttered workstation. Daniel was about to either have Vala forcibly removed from the room—and then implement the lockdown he’d dreamed about—or start searching for earplugs, when Teal’c walked in.
“Teal’c,” Daniel greeted him.
Teal’c nodded to Vala before answering him. “Lunch, Daniel Jackson?”
“Oh, thank god,” Daniel muttered. Tossing a pen down to mark his place in the mammoth tome he had desperately been trying to read, he headed around the workstation. Vala’s voice stopped him just as he reached Teal’c.
“Oh, I see,” she stated, coming to stand with them near the doorway. “You’ll drop everything for Muscles here,” she said, jerking a thumb in Teal’c's direction, “but me? I get the brush-off. Every time.”
“Well, Teal’c doesn’t follow me around all day, interrupting my work, distracting me with inane chatter, driving me crazy in general...”
Vala looked incensed. “Well,” she huffed. “I see I’m not wanted here. But know that I know that you know that you miss me when I’m gone,” she advised, punctuating her point by poking Daniel in the chest. Then, with a toss of her hair, she flounced out of the lab.
Daniel watched her go with a frown on his face. The frown deepened when he turned to find Teal’c watching him with an air of definite amusement.
“What are you smiling at?” Daniel asked as they began their trek to the commissary.
“A very familiar conversation,” Teal’c replied.
“I believe I would classify that more as an ‘argument’ than a ‘conversation.’"
“For the two of you, they are one in the same," Teal’c said sagely.
“True,” Daniel agreed. “But what can you expect of oil and water?” He caught Teal’c’s confused expression. “It’s an Earth adage,” Daniel explained. “Because of the composition of oil and water, they don’t mix. With most liquids, if you put them together in one container, the components of each liquid combine together to become one substance. Oil and water don’t. One will just sit on top of the other. They don’t mix unless they’re shaken up, and even then they don’t actually combine; given time, they’ll separate again."
“Shaken up,” Teal’c repeated to himself. He remained quiet as they reached the commissary, filled their trays, and took seats at one of the empty tables. Once they were settled, he spoke.
“Perhaps you should spend more time with Vala Mal Doran.”
Daniel looked up at him in surprise. “Why?”
“I believe the two of you have more in common than you realize. Spending time together might encourage a better understanding between you and build the foundation for a more... amicable relationship.”
“Have you been reading Dr. Phil again?"
Teal’c gave him a bland look.
Daniel poked at his food, brow furrowed in thought. He glanced up at Teal’c, doubt clear on his face. “What makes you so certain there’s anything there for us to build on?”
Teal'c shrugged. “Perhaps I have a unique perspective on the situation.”
“How so?” Daniel asked, receiving only a stare in reply. He eyed Teal’c shrewdly, a possibility forming in his mind. “You’re talking about the Odyssey, aren’t you?”
Teal’c raised an eyebrow, but otherwise remained impassive.
“Did something happen between us?” Daniel asked, more than a little shaken by the notion.
Teal’c smiled enigmatically. “There is a saying among the Jaffa: Truth cannot be contained in only what is visible.” His expression grew serious and he caught Daniel’s gaze. “Do not let what you think blind you to what you know, Daniel Jackson.”
There was a pause as Teal’c held Daniel’s gaze with an intensity that unnerved him. Then the moment was lost. Teal’c leaned back in his chair, picked up his fork, and looked down, disheartened, at his food.
“I believe that we should venture off base on Thursdays from this point forward.” Teal’c pushed at the poor excuse for beef stew that currently occupied his plate. “The offerings appear to decrease in quality every Thursday.”
Daniel made a noncommittal noise, still puzzling over what Teal’c had said, what he had hinted at. He was unusually quiet for the rest of their meal and returned to his lab in a somewhat distracted state. Teal’c had given birth to a thought that lodged in his mind and wouldn’t let go. It stayed with Daniel the rest of the day, a steady distraction that could be ignored but not forgotten. Persistent and nagging, it colored his dreams that night and he woke up the next morning with his mind full of half-forgotten images and the echoes of subconscious emotions.
Could he and Vala actually have a relationship? The question had never really crossed his mind. Truth be told, it wasn't so much an issue of attraction as it was of intention. He had never been unaware of her attractiveness—to others as well as himself—and he believed she honestly found him attractive, but a true relationship? He shook his head at the thought. There was too much muddy water under the bridge for that, even if they had somehow gotten over it in some other time.
But still the idea haunted him. He was used to getting lost in thought, wandering from point to point to point and winding up deep into whatever he happened to be studying, but now he kept coming back to one topic: Vala. Sitting down with a stack of reference books, he would find himself an hour or two later with the subject at hand completely forgotten and the details of a relationship that had never happened filling his mind. Proximity to his distraction’s physical form only accelerated the problem. Any time he was around Vala, it was as if the speculating part of his mind went into overdrive and it was all he could do to focus on the here and now.
The others noticed, too. Particularly when he completely zoned out around them.
“Dr. Jackson.”
Daniel started slightly, pulled from his musing by Landry’s address. Glancing away from Vala, he found the rest of the table watching him expectantly. They had apparently been attempting to get his attention for a while. Daniel cleared his throat and turned to the general.
“Sir?”
“The notes you had? About the inscriptions on the walls of the ruins on P76-324?”
“Uh, right —right.” Daniel shuffled through the papers in front of him and found the notes.
He quickly got his mind back in the briefing, but he would catch the others looking sideways at him ever so often as he presented his findings. He made a point not to meet Vala’s eyes for the rest of the meeting. She was watching him closely and he had no desire to field the questions he could sense brewing in her head. As soon as Landry released them, he made a beeline for the door before anyone could waylay him.
Whether consciously or subconsciously, he began to avoid her and he couldn’t blame it on annoyance or exasperation; he was uncomfortable. Daniel didn’t know what to do with himself and wound up being uncharacteristically awkward, unsure of what to do or say—or not do or not say—and frustrated with himself for being unsure. He made an effort to avoid places where she could catch him alone, and when they were out on missions, he volunteered himself to pair up with Mitchell or Teal’c before he could be sent off with Vala. Doing so made him feel childish, but he didn’t know what else to do. Whenever he was around her, he tended to tune out on reality and would wind up staring at her, wondering about what might have been. Or he spent the entire time on edge, trying to avoid the same. Either way, he wasn’t himself and he knew it showed, so he avoided her.
He couldn’t avoid her entirely, though. They did work together, after all, and she would pop into his lab when he least expected it, or run into him in the labyrinthine hallways of the SGC, or invite herself to his table in the commissary, as she did one day when he and Mitchell were having lunch.
She plopped down at the table with a cheery hello and set about peeling her orange. Mitchell, who was in full swing about a recent recon he had run with SG-12, paused mid-sentence to return her greeting before continuing with his story. Daniel, for his part, barely restrained himself from dropping his head in his hands at Vala’s arrival. Taking a deep breath through his nose, he made a valiant attempt to focus entirely on Mitchell. That failing, he turned his attention to the pudding cup he was eating. His mind had other ideas, though, and he found himself staring at Vala across the table, lost in thought, Mitchell’s voice washing over him like white noise.
Daniel couldn’t help but imagine how it might have been, on the Odyssey, how it could be, now. Would it be so much different from how things already were? It didn’t feel like it would be. He wasn’t sure if that fact pleased him or worried him more.
“You’re doing it again.”
He blinked at Vala, pulled from his ponderings by her voice. “Huh?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Staring at me.”
Daniel played innocent. “No, I’m not.”
"Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you were,” Mitchell cut in. Daniel cut him a look.
“It’s like you’re studying me,” Vala said, her tone contemplative, “or trying to figure out what I’m thinking.” She smiled mischievously. “All you have to do is ask. There’s no need to stare.”
“Gazing in your general direction while lost in thought does not constitute staring at you,” Daniel replied somewhat tersely.
Vala eyed him closely and Daniel forced himself not to fidget under the gaze. “What’s going on with you?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He glanced at his watch and stood. “I have to go. I’m supposed to meet Balinksy in half an hour and I still have to pull the files I need.”
“Oh,” Vala said. “Well, we’ll see you later, then.”
“Yeah, see you," Daniel replied.
Forgetting his tray on the table, he headed for the door. Had he glanced back, he would have caught the look that passed between Vala and Mitchell as they watched him leave. As it was, he was grateful for the excuse to get away.
Lately it took more than he could manage to keep his head about him around Vala. He did his best to be nonchalant about things, his conscious (and unplanned) observations, his avoidances and bouts with awkwardness. His biggest concern was that she would figure out the source of his consternation. There would be no living with her after that. Probably wouldn’t be any living with himself, either. So he was careful with his words and tried to be as normal as possible in their interactions, wary of tipping her off to the fact that something was amiss, that his perception of their relationship and been irreparably altered.
Every little thing she did gave him something else to reflect on, to pick apart for clues. Maybe that particular tone of voice she used with him was laced with real sincerity. And perhaps the way she titled her head sometimes and just looked at him wasn’t meant to agitate; it was just her way of taking him in. And every once in a while it seemed that her smile held a little something else that kept him wondering.
The Vala he had escaped with on the Odyssey was the same Vala he had fallen for there, however the timelines might have diverged. That was the thought keeping him up at night. They had been in an alternate timeline, not an alternate reality; up until the point of divergence, the personalities of the individuals had been exactly the same in both timelines. The Valas were the same; so were the Daniels.
He wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to explore too deeply what, exactly, that might mean. Every time it plagued him, he pushed the thought aside, reminding himself of the reality. He and Vala would never work as a couple; the idea was ludicrous. They were so opposite, so wrong for one another. Time might have brought them together on the Odyssey—time and confinement—but that was a fluke, a one-in-several-thousands fluke. The players might still be the same, but the situations, the timelines had changed and there were no factors here to bring them together out of loneliness or lack of options or whatever else might have contributed to their ship-bound romance. They wouldn’t work together and that was that.
The problem with that capstone was that it wouldn’t stay in place.
At the slightest provocation it would slip and all the thoughts Daniel had buried would come to the surface again. No matter how he tried to dismiss the notion, the fact that he and Vala had been together kept clawing its way to the front of his thoughts. The distraction was adversely affecting his daily life, to say the least, and it didn’t seem that there was much he could do about it. Finally, after another hour wasted staring at the walls of his lab, he decided to confront the source of the problem.
He found Teal’c in his quarters, meditating. Candles covered every available surface, the flames flickering in the draft as Daniel barged into the room. Teal’c calmly looked up from his place on the floor.
“Daniel Jackson,” he stated, watching his harried friend pace the width of the room. “Are you in need of assistance?”
“I’m in need of answers,” Daniel returned, halting in front of Teal’c, who rose to his feet.
“What are your questions?”
“Why did you tell me about the relationship on the Odyssey?”
Teal’c raised an eyebrow. "I do not believe I told you of any such thing.”
“Now is not the time, Teal’c,” Daniel warned. “You intimated that Vala and I had a relationship, whether you outright admitted it or not.” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Why would you do that?”
“Are you having a problem, Daniel Jackson?”
“Yes! Yes, I am!” Daniel cried. “I can’t work because I’m too distracted. I can’t sleep because my mind won’t shut off. I can’t be around Vala because all I do is stare at her. Even though I know it’s wrong, that any relationship we might have would be doomed to the kind of destructive failure that would most likely take down everyone around us, the reality that we were together keeps telling me that’s a lie. It’s taken me over. The merest idea of the possibility of a relationship with her has my mind in overdrive and I can’t shut it down. I’m second-guessing everything I do, everything I say—”
“Are you second-guessing what you feel?”
Daniel shook his head. “No, I—” He stopped mid-sentence, realization dawning on his face. He turned to Teal’c, who stared stoically back at him. “No.”
“Then is there a problem?” Teal’c asked.
“No,” Daniel said. “I have to go."
Teal’c bowed, smirking slightly. “Have a good day, Daniel Jackson.”
“Yeah, you too,” Daniel replied absentmindedly as he headed out into the hall.
He wandered the hallways with no destination in mind, head spinning. After all the contemplation, the observation and speculation, the comparison of the time that was and the time that had never been, there remained one constant: he cared for her. How deeply and in what ways was simply a product of circumstance, and that was something he could change, if he wanted to. But did he?
When he found himself standing outside Vala's door, he knew the answer. Steeling himself, he knocked, and entered at her beckon. He closed the door behind him and turned to face her, resigned and, despite himself, curious. She sat cross-legged on her bed, reading a magazine. When Daniel continued to stare at her in silence, she raised an eyebrow.
“Daniel,” she greeted him expectantly.
“Vala,” he returned. “I—I wanted—” he began, but was distracted by his own gesticulations. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he tried again. “I’d like to take you out—”
“Shopping?” Vala interrupted hopefully. She bounced up to her knees on the bed, tossing aside the magazine to more fully focus on Daniel.
“No,” Daniel quickly replied. “Yes—I mean, we can go shopping if you’d like, but what—”
“Can we go to the new boutique downtown?” she asked, clambering off the bed to come stand in front of him. "I saw an advertisement for it on the television, and they have some of the nicest things I’ve ever seen and—considering that I’ve seen the better part of what, three galaxies now?—that's saying something.”
Daniel attempted to cut in. “Vala—”
“And not just girl things, either,” she continued. "Quality men’s wear as well.” She toyed with the buttons on his shirt. “Maybe I’ll be able to talk you into some thing or two. I’ve seen your wardrobe and it definitely needs help.”
“Vala.”
“Oh! And there’s this other place, they just opened—even you should like it—”
“Vala!” Daniel took hold of her wrists to both get her attention and stop her from fiddling with his shirt. He looked down at her, exasperated. "I’m trying to ask you to dinner.”
“Oh." She blinked up at him for a heartbeat. “Like a date?”
“Like a date."
Her expression turned wary. “And we’re going to be in agreement that it is actually a date this time?”
“Yes.”
“Well, okay then.” She stepped back from him and Daniel let go of her wrists.
“How’s Saturday?” Daniel asked. “We have the day off, so I thought it would be best.”
“That sounds perfect.”
They both avoided the other’s gaze, glancing around the room nonchalantly. There was a sudden tentativeness to their interaction now that, at least on Vala’s part, was something entirely new. Daniel had crossed a line, he knew, one that had defined their relationship for years. There would be no going back now. He hoped neither of them would want to.
“We can leave in the early afternoon, if you’d like, so you’ll have time to do your shopping.”
Vala glanced at him then out of the corner of her eyes, almost coyly. “You really don’t mind?”
“No,” Daniel replied, a little surprised to find that he meant it.
Vala nodded. “Okay. How about we leave around two?”
“I’ll pick you up here?”
“Alright.”
An awkward silence filled the room as they stared at each other for a moment. Then Daniel turned around and pulled open the door.
“I need to get back to work,” he said, glancing out into the hall. “I think Dr. Lee had something he wanted to show me and—”
“Daniel?”
He turned to find Vala watching him closely, expression serious.
“You better not be messing with me.”
He held her gaze for a long moment. “Two. On Saturday.”
She gave him a small smile, which he returned. Then, with a final glance, he disappeared into the hallway.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Daniel/Vala
Word Count: 3770
Categories: humor, drama, angst, romance
Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-series, callback to series finale, "Unending".
Summary: A version of how Daniel and Vala, with a little nudge from Teal'c, finally get together.
let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go
let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
the neithers - you must let them all go they
were born
to go
let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear
so comes love
- e. e. cummings
It was half-past noon and Daniel was contemplating switching his lab to full lockdown. Inconvenient, to be sure, but at least it might buy him a bit more peace and quiet. Any peace and quiet.
“Please, Daniel?” Vala begged. She stood opposite him, the workstation between them, and employed every ounce of persuasion she possessed in the pout she threw his way. Unfortunately, the effort had little effect given he didn’t see it.
“No,” Daniel replied, not deigning to look up from his work. “Why don’t you ask Sam to take you shopping?”
Vala gave him an odd look. “Sam left on the Hammond two days ago, Daniel.”
He glanced up at that, brow furrowed. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”
“So, as you can see, I really don’t have any other options,” Vala said. She absentmindedly rifled through one of the books on the table, eliciting a deep sigh from Daniel. “I mean, let’s face it, it’s not as if I would come to you first for this—you aren’t exactly the most personable... person—”
“Is this your sales pitch?” Daniel asked dryly.
“—but with Sam gone and the base on pins and needles over this little get-together—”
“Presidential inspection and intergalactic meeting—”
“—no one else is available. And as I am still not allowed to wander off base alone—”
“No, you still aren’t allowed to drive. Anywhere. Ever.”
Vala rolled her shoulder. “It was one little MP! And I didn’t actually hit him. He jumped.”
“And broke his leg.”
“A most unfortunate side effect of his inability to properly execute a roll.” She waved aside Daniel’s attempt to interject. “My point is: I need you to take me off base.” She capped her statement with a winning smile.
“No."
The smile dropped off her face and Vala stamped her foot. “Come on, Daniel! I have to get out of this place.” She leaned on the workstation and met him face to face. “I’m going nuts here.”
“I know how you feel,” Daniel replied with a bland stare.
“Please, Daniel.”
“No.”
“Da—”
“No.” He pulled off his glasses to rub at his eyes, exasperated, a common side effect of Vala’s presence. Replacing his glasses, he leaned on the workstation and sighed. “Look, I’m really busy right now, so why—”
“That’s what you always say!”
“And it’s always true."
“Daniel!” she whined.
“Vala!” he mimicked, to her annoyance.
They glared at each other across the cluttered workstation. Daniel was about to either have Vala forcibly removed from the room—and then implement the lockdown he’d dreamed about—or start searching for earplugs, when Teal’c walked in.
“Teal’c,” Daniel greeted him.
Teal’c nodded to Vala before answering him. “Lunch, Daniel Jackson?”
“Oh, thank god,” Daniel muttered. Tossing a pen down to mark his place in the mammoth tome he had desperately been trying to read, he headed around the workstation. Vala’s voice stopped him just as he reached Teal’c.
“Oh, I see,” she stated, coming to stand with them near the doorway. “You’ll drop everything for Muscles here,” she said, jerking a thumb in Teal’c's direction, “but me? I get the brush-off. Every time.”
“Well, Teal’c doesn’t follow me around all day, interrupting my work, distracting me with inane chatter, driving me crazy in general...”
Vala looked incensed. “Well,” she huffed. “I see I’m not wanted here. But know that I know that you know that you miss me when I’m gone,” she advised, punctuating her point by poking Daniel in the chest. Then, with a toss of her hair, she flounced out of the lab.
Daniel watched her go with a frown on his face. The frown deepened when he turned to find Teal’c watching him with an air of definite amusement.
“What are you smiling at?” Daniel asked as they began their trek to the commissary.
“A very familiar conversation,” Teal’c replied.
“I believe I would classify that more as an ‘argument’ than a ‘conversation.’"
“For the two of you, they are one in the same," Teal’c said sagely.
“True,” Daniel agreed. “But what can you expect of oil and water?” He caught Teal’c’s confused expression. “It’s an Earth adage,” Daniel explained. “Because of the composition of oil and water, they don’t mix. With most liquids, if you put them together in one container, the components of each liquid combine together to become one substance. Oil and water don’t. One will just sit on top of the other. They don’t mix unless they’re shaken up, and even then they don’t actually combine; given time, they’ll separate again."
“Shaken up,” Teal’c repeated to himself. He remained quiet as they reached the commissary, filled their trays, and took seats at one of the empty tables. Once they were settled, he spoke.
“Perhaps you should spend more time with Vala Mal Doran.”
Daniel looked up at him in surprise. “Why?”
“I believe the two of you have more in common than you realize. Spending time together might encourage a better understanding between you and build the foundation for a more... amicable relationship.”
“Have you been reading Dr. Phil again?"
Teal’c gave him a bland look.
Daniel poked at his food, brow furrowed in thought. He glanced up at Teal’c, doubt clear on his face. “What makes you so certain there’s anything there for us to build on?”
Teal'c shrugged. “Perhaps I have a unique perspective on the situation.”
“How so?” Daniel asked, receiving only a stare in reply. He eyed Teal’c shrewdly, a possibility forming in his mind. “You’re talking about the Odyssey, aren’t you?”
Teal’c raised an eyebrow, but otherwise remained impassive.
“Did something happen between us?” Daniel asked, more than a little shaken by the notion.
Teal’c smiled enigmatically. “There is a saying among the Jaffa: Truth cannot be contained in only what is visible.” His expression grew serious and he caught Daniel’s gaze. “Do not let what you think blind you to what you know, Daniel Jackson.”
There was a pause as Teal’c held Daniel’s gaze with an intensity that unnerved him. Then the moment was lost. Teal’c leaned back in his chair, picked up his fork, and looked down, disheartened, at his food.
“I believe that we should venture off base on Thursdays from this point forward.” Teal’c pushed at the poor excuse for beef stew that currently occupied his plate. “The offerings appear to decrease in quality every Thursday.”
Daniel made a noncommittal noise, still puzzling over what Teal’c had said, what he had hinted at. He was unusually quiet for the rest of their meal and returned to his lab in a somewhat distracted state. Teal’c had given birth to a thought that lodged in his mind and wouldn’t let go. It stayed with Daniel the rest of the day, a steady distraction that could be ignored but not forgotten. Persistent and nagging, it colored his dreams that night and he woke up the next morning with his mind full of half-forgotten images and the echoes of subconscious emotions.
Could he and Vala actually have a relationship? The question had never really crossed his mind. Truth be told, it wasn't so much an issue of attraction as it was of intention. He had never been unaware of her attractiveness—to others as well as himself—and he believed she honestly found him attractive, but a true relationship? He shook his head at the thought. There was too much muddy water under the bridge for that, even if they had somehow gotten over it in some other time.
But still the idea haunted him. He was used to getting lost in thought, wandering from point to point to point and winding up deep into whatever he happened to be studying, but now he kept coming back to one topic: Vala. Sitting down with a stack of reference books, he would find himself an hour or two later with the subject at hand completely forgotten and the details of a relationship that had never happened filling his mind. Proximity to his distraction’s physical form only accelerated the problem. Any time he was around Vala, it was as if the speculating part of his mind went into overdrive and it was all he could do to focus on the here and now.
The others noticed, too. Particularly when he completely zoned out around them.
“Dr. Jackson.”
Daniel started slightly, pulled from his musing by Landry’s address. Glancing away from Vala, he found the rest of the table watching him expectantly. They had apparently been attempting to get his attention for a while. Daniel cleared his throat and turned to the general.
“Sir?”
“The notes you had? About the inscriptions on the walls of the ruins on P76-324?”
“Uh, right —right.” Daniel shuffled through the papers in front of him and found the notes.
He quickly got his mind back in the briefing, but he would catch the others looking sideways at him ever so often as he presented his findings. He made a point not to meet Vala’s eyes for the rest of the meeting. She was watching him closely and he had no desire to field the questions he could sense brewing in her head. As soon as Landry released them, he made a beeline for the door before anyone could waylay him.
Whether consciously or subconsciously, he began to avoid her and he couldn’t blame it on annoyance or exasperation; he was uncomfortable. Daniel didn’t know what to do with himself and wound up being uncharacteristically awkward, unsure of what to do or say—or not do or not say—and frustrated with himself for being unsure. He made an effort to avoid places where she could catch him alone, and when they were out on missions, he volunteered himself to pair up with Mitchell or Teal’c before he could be sent off with Vala. Doing so made him feel childish, but he didn’t know what else to do. Whenever he was around her, he tended to tune out on reality and would wind up staring at her, wondering about what might have been. Or he spent the entire time on edge, trying to avoid the same. Either way, he wasn’t himself and he knew it showed, so he avoided her.
He couldn’t avoid her entirely, though. They did work together, after all, and she would pop into his lab when he least expected it, or run into him in the labyrinthine hallways of the SGC, or invite herself to his table in the commissary, as she did one day when he and Mitchell were having lunch.
She plopped down at the table with a cheery hello and set about peeling her orange. Mitchell, who was in full swing about a recent recon he had run with SG-12, paused mid-sentence to return her greeting before continuing with his story. Daniel, for his part, barely restrained himself from dropping his head in his hands at Vala’s arrival. Taking a deep breath through his nose, he made a valiant attempt to focus entirely on Mitchell. That failing, he turned his attention to the pudding cup he was eating. His mind had other ideas, though, and he found himself staring at Vala across the table, lost in thought, Mitchell’s voice washing over him like white noise.
Daniel couldn’t help but imagine how it might have been, on the Odyssey, how it could be, now. Would it be so much different from how things already were? It didn’t feel like it would be. He wasn’t sure if that fact pleased him or worried him more.
“You’re doing it again.”
He blinked at Vala, pulled from his ponderings by her voice. “Huh?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Staring at me.”
Daniel played innocent. “No, I’m not.”
"Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you were,” Mitchell cut in. Daniel cut him a look.
“It’s like you’re studying me,” Vala said, her tone contemplative, “or trying to figure out what I’m thinking.” She smiled mischievously. “All you have to do is ask. There’s no need to stare.”
“Gazing in your general direction while lost in thought does not constitute staring at you,” Daniel replied somewhat tersely.
Vala eyed him closely and Daniel forced himself not to fidget under the gaze. “What’s going on with you?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He glanced at his watch and stood. “I have to go. I’m supposed to meet Balinksy in half an hour and I still have to pull the files I need.”
“Oh,” Vala said. “Well, we’ll see you later, then.”
“Yeah, see you," Daniel replied.
Forgetting his tray on the table, he headed for the door. Had he glanced back, he would have caught the look that passed between Vala and Mitchell as they watched him leave. As it was, he was grateful for the excuse to get away.
Lately it took more than he could manage to keep his head about him around Vala. He did his best to be nonchalant about things, his conscious (and unplanned) observations, his avoidances and bouts with awkwardness. His biggest concern was that she would figure out the source of his consternation. There would be no living with her after that. Probably wouldn’t be any living with himself, either. So he was careful with his words and tried to be as normal as possible in their interactions, wary of tipping her off to the fact that something was amiss, that his perception of their relationship and been irreparably altered.
Every little thing she did gave him something else to reflect on, to pick apart for clues. Maybe that particular tone of voice she used with him was laced with real sincerity. And perhaps the way she titled her head sometimes and just looked at him wasn’t meant to agitate; it was just her way of taking him in. And every once in a while it seemed that her smile held a little something else that kept him wondering.
The Vala he had escaped with on the Odyssey was the same Vala he had fallen for there, however the timelines might have diverged. That was the thought keeping him up at night. They had been in an alternate timeline, not an alternate reality; up until the point of divergence, the personalities of the individuals had been exactly the same in both timelines. The Valas were the same; so were the Daniels.
He wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to explore too deeply what, exactly, that might mean. Every time it plagued him, he pushed the thought aside, reminding himself of the reality. He and Vala would never work as a couple; the idea was ludicrous. They were so opposite, so wrong for one another. Time might have brought them together on the Odyssey—time and confinement—but that was a fluke, a one-in-several-thousands fluke. The players might still be the same, but the situations, the timelines had changed and there were no factors here to bring them together out of loneliness or lack of options or whatever else might have contributed to their ship-bound romance. They wouldn’t work together and that was that.
The problem with that capstone was that it wouldn’t stay in place.
At the slightest provocation it would slip and all the thoughts Daniel had buried would come to the surface again. No matter how he tried to dismiss the notion, the fact that he and Vala had been together kept clawing its way to the front of his thoughts. The distraction was adversely affecting his daily life, to say the least, and it didn’t seem that there was much he could do about it. Finally, after another hour wasted staring at the walls of his lab, he decided to confront the source of the problem.
He found Teal’c in his quarters, meditating. Candles covered every available surface, the flames flickering in the draft as Daniel barged into the room. Teal’c calmly looked up from his place on the floor.
“Daniel Jackson,” he stated, watching his harried friend pace the width of the room. “Are you in need of assistance?”
“I’m in need of answers,” Daniel returned, halting in front of Teal’c, who rose to his feet.
“What are your questions?”
“Why did you tell me about the relationship on the Odyssey?”
Teal’c raised an eyebrow. "I do not believe I told you of any such thing.”
“Now is not the time, Teal’c,” Daniel warned. “You intimated that Vala and I had a relationship, whether you outright admitted it or not.” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Why would you do that?”
“Are you having a problem, Daniel Jackson?”
“Yes! Yes, I am!” Daniel cried. “I can’t work because I’m too distracted. I can’t sleep because my mind won’t shut off. I can’t be around Vala because all I do is stare at her. Even though I know it’s wrong, that any relationship we might have would be doomed to the kind of destructive failure that would most likely take down everyone around us, the reality that we were together keeps telling me that’s a lie. It’s taken me over. The merest idea of the possibility of a relationship with her has my mind in overdrive and I can’t shut it down. I’m second-guessing everything I do, everything I say—”
“Are you second-guessing what you feel?”
Daniel shook his head. “No, I—” He stopped mid-sentence, realization dawning on his face. He turned to Teal’c, who stared stoically back at him. “No.”
“Then is there a problem?” Teal’c asked.
“No,” Daniel said. “I have to go."
Teal’c bowed, smirking slightly. “Have a good day, Daniel Jackson.”
“Yeah, you too,” Daniel replied absentmindedly as he headed out into the hall.
He wandered the hallways with no destination in mind, head spinning. After all the contemplation, the observation and speculation, the comparison of the time that was and the time that had never been, there remained one constant: he cared for her. How deeply and in what ways was simply a product of circumstance, and that was something he could change, if he wanted to. But did he?
When he found himself standing outside Vala's door, he knew the answer. Steeling himself, he knocked, and entered at her beckon. He closed the door behind him and turned to face her, resigned and, despite himself, curious. She sat cross-legged on her bed, reading a magazine. When Daniel continued to stare at her in silence, she raised an eyebrow.
“Daniel,” she greeted him expectantly.
“Vala,” he returned. “I—I wanted—” he began, but was distracted by his own gesticulations. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he tried again. “I’d like to take you out—”
“Shopping?” Vala interrupted hopefully. She bounced up to her knees on the bed, tossing aside the magazine to more fully focus on Daniel.
“No,” Daniel quickly replied. “Yes—I mean, we can go shopping if you’d like, but what—”
“Can we go to the new boutique downtown?” she asked, clambering off the bed to come stand in front of him. "I saw an advertisement for it on the television, and they have some of the nicest things I’ve ever seen and—considering that I’ve seen the better part of what, three galaxies now?—that's saying something.”
Daniel attempted to cut in. “Vala—”
“And not just girl things, either,” she continued. "Quality men’s wear as well.” She toyed with the buttons on his shirt. “Maybe I’ll be able to talk you into some thing or two. I’ve seen your wardrobe and it definitely needs help.”
“Vala.”
“Oh! And there’s this other place, they just opened—even you should like it—”
“Vala!” Daniel took hold of her wrists to both get her attention and stop her from fiddling with his shirt. He looked down at her, exasperated. "I’m trying to ask you to dinner.”
“Oh." She blinked up at him for a heartbeat. “Like a date?”
“Like a date."
Her expression turned wary. “And we’re going to be in agreement that it is actually a date this time?”
“Yes.”
“Well, okay then.” She stepped back from him and Daniel let go of her wrists.
“How’s Saturday?” Daniel asked. “We have the day off, so I thought it would be best.”
“That sounds perfect.”
They both avoided the other’s gaze, glancing around the room nonchalantly. There was a sudden tentativeness to their interaction now that, at least on Vala’s part, was something entirely new. Daniel had crossed a line, he knew, one that had defined their relationship for years. There would be no going back now. He hoped neither of them would want to.
“We can leave in the early afternoon, if you’d like, so you’ll have time to do your shopping.”
Vala glanced at him then out of the corner of her eyes, almost coyly. “You really don’t mind?”
“No,” Daniel replied, a little surprised to find that he meant it.
Vala nodded. “Okay. How about we leave around two?”
“I’ll pick you up here?”
“Alright.”
An awkward silence filled the room as they stared at each other for a moment. Then Daniel turned around and pulled open the door.
“I need to get back to work,” he said, glancing out into the hall. “I think Dr. Lee had something he wanted to show me and—”
“Daniel?”
He turned to find Vala watching him closely, expression serious.
“You better not be messing with me.”
He held her gaze for a long moment. “Two. On Saturday.”
She gave him a small smile, which he returned. Then, with a final glance, he disappeared into the hallway.
FANFIC REC: "So Comes Love" by stringertheory (rated PG)
on 2011-06-12 12:19 am (UTC)