Beggars can't be choosers.
He was pacing.
Better late than never.
Again.
Look before you leap.
On a Saturday no less.
Silence is golden.
It was becoming a habit of late.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
It was time he left anyway.
Life is too short.
"DanielJackson," a deep baritone called from down the hall of Stargate Command. "I have been observing you in front of my quarters for some time now." Teal'c walked toward his door. "And not just today. Many times have I seen you pacing here."
Daniel said nothing; he'd finally been caught.
Teal'c graciously nodded him into the room. "What is on your mind, DanielJackson?"
"Teal'c, I…" Daniel started. Then stopped. He tried to gather his thoughts. "I wanna know…" he trailed off.
Teal'c raised an eyebrow in question.
Daniel felt so stupid. He was suddenly back in high school trying to get his friend Jeremy to ask this girl – what was her name? – if she liked Daniel. As it turned out, what's-her-name didn't like him, well, except for the fact that he could help her with her German homework.
His logical mind begged him to leave this present train of thought alone, the one that had driven him to find Teal'c in the first place. There was no way he could convince Teal'c to tell him anything when he himself knew it was wrong to even ask. Damn. But if he didn't ask… Hell.
"Teal'c, I need to know what happened on the Odyssey." There, he'd said it.
"I believe I have reported on all of the relevant facts of our time on the Odyssey, DanielJackson." Teal'c's eyebrow rose, along with a faint upward curve of his lip. "Is there something in particular you wish to know?"
"See," he channeled his inner teenager, "I knew it was stupid to ask. I knew you wouldn't tell me."
Daniel began to pace around the room. "I know I shouldn't be bothered by it, but I am." At each turn he looked at Teal'c, trying to explain.
"She said something last week, just before the mission. You know, when we were all joking around in the gateroom. It struck me as odd, that that particular cliché would pop out of her mouth. It was something I was going to say, well maybe not say out loud, but I was thinking it," he spoke quickly, betraying his nervousness. "Not that I was thinking about her, but I was thinking it. And apparently she was thinking it too. And I'm just so damned curious to know if we…" he glanced at Teal'c, asking to be understood with a look, "you know…"
Teal'c nodded in understanding as Daniel barely missed a beat and continued, "But what good would it do to know what happened in that," he tried to find the right word, "scenario. I mean, it was a closed and bottled situation, our time on the Odyssey; it doesn't necessarily follow that—whatever happened during those fifty years—that those same events would happen under normal circumstances."
Daniel stopped talking and took a breath. He stopped pacing and took another breath. He looked at Teal'c, then down at the floor and shook his head. "Never mind, Teal'c, I shouldn't have asked. Sorry," he apologized, moving toward the door.
"DanielJackson," Teal'c stepped forward and put a hand on Daniel's shoulder. "I do not believe I have seen you this," he paused, "out of sorts in quite some time." When Daniel turned to face him, Teal'c continued, "You will find the answers you seek. Just follow your heart."
"Well, that was cryptic." He shrugged his shoulders, "But as always, you're probably right."
He headed for the door once again, his logic chiding him for dwelling on the dark-haired, alien woman, but his heart wanted to know where she was. Just as his hand closed around the doorknob, he lowered his head in defeat and asked, "Have you seen her yet this morning?"
"ValaMalDoran? I believe she was with ColonelCarter in her lab," Teal'c replied.
"So, she's bothering Sam now, huh?" Daniel turned the knob and opened the door, shaking his head. He should probably use this quiet, Vala-free time to get some actual work done. He'd been terribly distracted for nearly a week.
Teal'c made no attempt to hide the smile on his face since Daniel's back was to him. "They seemed to be working together…on Merlin's out-of-phase technology, if memory serves."
At this, Daniel straightened up a bit. Working, huh? Together. Oh, maybe she – they – could use a break.
He turned and nodded to his friend, "Thanks, Teal'c. I really appreciate our," he smiled slightly, "talk."
Teal'c simply bowed in response as Daniel left his quarters.
Sam and Vala had been bouncing ideas off each other for hours, working on a way to create a large enough field to shift the entire planet out of phase, without using up all the power generators in North America. Sam had to admit that Vala did have some really good ideas—some of the time. She recalled suddenly Cam's mission report on P4M-328 and how Vala had used a naquadah bomb to power the gate in order to dial out manually. Physics wasn't one of her stronger suits but she seemed to grasp the concepts pretty easily. And she really did want to help and learn and be useful around the SGC. It had taken Sam a while to trust Vala but she did, with her life. And in this line of work, that was saying a lot.
Vala was resourceful, but she was also fun to be around. Over the course of the past year, Sam felt like she had found a good friend, a lot like Janet had been. Early on, she'd gotten the impression that Vala felt like a tag-along. The simple code of sisterhood in a predominantly male environment compelled her to do as much as she could to put the woman at ease. Hence, their weekly girls'-day-out or girls'-night-in. Whether it was shopping, mochacchinos, and pedicures or pizza and a movie, Sam would never miss an opportunity to hang out with Vala and just be 'one of the girls.'
"Hey," a familiar voice spoke from the doorway.
"Hi, Daniel," Sam replied, looking up from her laptop. "What's up?"
"Oh nothing. I was actually looking for Vala." He peered around the room as he walked toward Sam, unsuccessfully hiding his disappointment when he didn't see any sign of a certain pigtailed space-pirate. "Teal'c mentioned that he saw her here earlier."
"Oh yeah," she glanced back at her laptop, trying to hide her smirk. "We were brainstorming a few things, but then Cam walked in and reminded her of their F-302 lesson."
"She wants to be a fighter pilot?" Daniel asked, incredulously. "Would wonders never cease?" he mumbled under his breath.
"No, I think she just wants to be prepared." She looked up at Daniel, wondering how much she should explain, wondering why he couldn't see the obviousness of it. "It was something Teal'c said about our time on the Odyssey, you know, how one of the plans to escape the Ori blast was to fly out on the F-302s. Vala said something to Cam and I a few days ago about wanting to learn to fly them, just in case either of us wasn't around or unconscious or whatnot. She wants to be useful, Daniel. She wants to fit in, can't you see that?" She shook her head at him and went back to work.
"But she does fit in," he shot back, a bit too defensively. "She's a member of SG-1 now. She can fly ships as well as Teal'c; she knows a lot more about how the stargates and DHDs work than me or Mitchell. She even came up with that incredible plan to capture Adria, and it would've worked perfectly if Ba'al hadn't shown up." The steam in his voice fizzled out. "She doesn't have to prove herself anymore, she already fits in."
Turning from her laptop to Daniel so she could focus directly on him, Sam chose her next words delicately, "Well, look at it this way, Daniel. She might feel as if her usefulness is running out since Adria ascended. She still knows a lot more about the followers of the Ori than the rest of us, and that intel is invaluable…but what happens when the crusade is over? She might feel as if she isn't needed anymore. And my guess is, she's found a home here, something she hasn't had in a very long time." She paused, letting her words sink in. "The more I get to know her, the more I admire her. Coming to a new planet, not knowing anything about us or our customs or our technology…and she wants to learn, she wants to fit in. And not just here at the SGC," she finished subtly.
Daniel looked down at his boots. Sam could tell he was thinking over her words and she let him have the quiet moment, but just a moment.
"Daniel?" Sam rested her elbow on the table and her head in her palm.
"Yeah? Oh, sorry," he stuffed his hands in his pockets, "I've just been so busy with…well, at first trying to locate Merlin's weapon and then the aftermath of that and then the latest threat to Earth…I guess I hadn't noticed what she's been doing around here…or how she might be feeling."
Sam reached out to touch Daniel's arm, coaxing him to look her in the eyes. "Hey, it's okay. I shouldn't have jumped down your throat. It's just that," she sighed, "I mean, I didn't know why she was around at first last year, and I may have judged her a little before I really got to know her. But I've started to get to know her this year and she's really not all that bad." She gave Daniel half a smile. "She's kinda quirky, but everybody needs a little quirky in their lives, especially us. I think we're very lucky to have her here."
"Yeah. Guess I'll let you get back to work." He turned toward the doorway and she swiveled in her chair back to the workbench, trying to remember where she'd left off. "And, Sam," he added over his shoulder.
"Yeah, Daniel?" she replied, barely looking up from her laptop.
"Thanks."
"Any time." She smiled and shook her head. One of her closest friends could be so dense.
Alright, so Sam thought that Vala was trying to be useful and helpful to ensure that she would remain necessary to the Stargate Program. Was this how Vala really felt? What about the pigtails, the teasing and the flirting? Why couldn't she tell him any of this? Why couldn't she trust him when he asked?
Teal'c knew something but wouldn't say. Sam admired her, more than that she trusted and respected her. Even Landry was warming up to Vala because of the incidents with her father and then with Adria. So what the hell is going on with me? Daniel looked up all of a sudden, not exactly sure where he was in the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain. Every corridor looked the same as any other corridor in the SGC. "Oops, wrong floor." He backtracked to the elevator and rode it up two levels. The 302-simulators were on this level and hopefully he'd finally run into Vala.
The room was large, large enough to hold two or three simulators, each about a quarter of the size of a real F-302. The elevator opened onto a wide platform overlooking the training room, with a circular staircase that led down to the simulators themselves. Daniel caught sight of her at once in one of the 302-cockpits. Mitchell was leaning very close to Vala, pointing at the gauges and controls. She followed his hand with her own and repeated what he said, taking it all in and smiling brightly up at him when she managed to figure out one of the controls before he could tell her what it was. It really was innocent but Daniel felt fire in his blood for reasons he could not explain.
He practically ran down the stairs, but his speed and the curvature of the staircase made him a little dizzy and disoriented when he finally reached the concrete floor. He glared at Mitchell and Vala, yet all coherent thought had fled from his mind. He breathed in and out and closed his eyes.
Fortunately, Mitchell and Vala were unaware of Daniel's internal meltdown. They simply looked at him as if there was some kind of emergency and both asked at once, "What's wrong, Jackson/Daniel?"
"What? Nothing. I just…" he was stuttering, trying to clear his head of, what, jealousy? Okay, I'm making a fool of myself. "I was just looking for Vala." He looked up at her and saw…surprise? He shook it from his mind. "Sam said you were up here learning how to fly the 302s."
"Oh, yeah," Mitchell confirmed, brows knitted. He slowly backed up from the cockpit. "Well, I was just startin' to familiarize her with the systems and controls and…you know." Mitchell took another few steps away from the simulator and looked over at Vala, who was herself standing up to exit the cockpit. "But it can wait until another day, 'kay, Vala? We don't really have that many missions in space. And after our last trip on the Odyssey, I'd much prefer to travel by stargate. So, um…" Clearing his throat, he walked up to Daniel and said quietly under his breath, "Sorry, man, it wasn't anything like it might've looked, okay?"
"Yeah," Daniel let out the breath he'd been holding in and Mitchell strode off toward the staircase and the elevator.
Vala hopped down from the 302-simulator just a few feet above the ground. She looked at Daniel, trying to read what he was feeling from the expression on his face, but he was a jumble of emotions and a suitable course of action did not present itself. Okay, he's obviously flustered, for whatever reason; let's not try to antagonize him for once. "Well, you've found me. What was it that you needed?" she smiled brightly, hoping to calm him further.
Daniel inwardly shook his head, berating himself for his jealous behavior. I am a prized ass! Mitchell wasn't coming on to her; she wasn't coming on to him. What the hell is wrong with me?
He plastered a smile on his face and replied to Vala, "Nothing really." Okay, damage control. "I was just wondering if you were free this afternoon for lunch. I've gotta run a few errands off base and I thought you might want to come along," Daniel grinned sheepishly, trying to make his invitation sound nonchalant, but friendly too.
"Sure! Sounds like fun," she said playfully with a smirk. "I was enjoying the lesson on the 302s, but Mitchell's right, that can wait."
They fell into step easily and Daniel began to relax as they headed toward the elevator. He'd expected her to tease him, to take advantage of his Neanderthal-like reaction. Two years ago she would have easily and oh-so-delicately shown him the error of his ways, right in front of Mitchell too. But she hadn't said a word about his frantic, flustered behavior. Maybe she really had changed.
"To be honest," Vala continued, "I think he might have developed a space-phobia. I know Teal'c didn't tell us that many details about the trip, but fifty years. I can just imagine Mitchell going stir crazy. You know," she turned around and looked him straight in the eyes, deadly serious, "he may never step foot on a spaceship again."
Daniel couldn't help but smile inwardly, as the elevator doors opened and they stepped into the car. Vala continued without hesitation, as Daniel pressed the button for the desired floor, "He may need to see one of your base psychologists."
Whether to ease Daniel's anxiety or perhaps her own, Vala kept talking, wondering out loud about their time aboard the Odyssey. "Samantha, of course, was working hard on a solution to the problem. Teal'c? I bet he meditated, most of the time. Probably sparred with me and Mitchell a bit too. And you?" She smiled at nothing in particular and then up at Daniel, "that's easy, you were definitely locked up in the room with the Asgard computers, trying to learn…well, everything," she said, rolling her eyes.
"How very perceptive of you," he laughed with her. How in the world did she know me, and everyone else, so well? he thought to himself. "You know," he observed wisely, "I probably forgot to eat and sleep on a number of occasions even."
"Yes, you tend to do that."
The elevator came to a halt and he followed her out into the hallway toward the base personnel's living quarters. Her room was three doors down to the left, his own was just a little farther down on the right.
"What do you think you were doing all those years?" He really shouldn't have asked, but the question was out. He couldn't take it back without betraying how much the answer meant to him. How would she answer this? Was he testing her? Was that even fair?
Vala was silent for a long time. "Oh, I don't know, Daniel. I…"
They walked the entire length of the hallway and stopped in front of her door before she finally provided him with an answer.
"Daniel, I really don't know. But I can empathize with Mitchell." She folded her hands together and looked down at them. "I don't think I would've handled myself very well on that ship for all that time."
It was a pretty good answer to his very blunt question. Did he really expect her to lay it all out there, all her feelings, as simply as snapping her fingers?
He saw her recover quickly and look up at him with raised eyebrows, "I mean, the three-week trip to Orilla was enough to get me antsy and throw you a birthday party. Can't you just imagine what I'd be like for fifty years?"
Daniel could see the deflection for what it was, a less than subtle attempt to guard truer feelings. He might as well meet her halfway. "I might've locked myself up with the Asgard database like you said, but I doubt I would've had much fun living that way for so long, not being able to share it with anyone." Honesty begets honesty. This was somehow starting to feel…right.
"Dr. Jackson to General Landry's office. Dr. Jackson to General Landry's office." The base announcement system had effectively ruined their little moment.
Daniel looked up at the ceiling, then back down at Vala. "I think Landry wants to know how I'm progressing with the most recent intel from our last mission. That's one of the errands I've gotta run. Go to the library for a manuscript from Old English history," he ticked off on the fingers of his left hand, "my apartment for an artifact I know has gotta be there, somewhere, I've just misplaced it, and lunch of course, not necessarily in that order though." He gave her another half smile when the P.A. announcement was repeated. "I better go. Can I meet you back here in, say, thirty minutes?"
"Yeah, sure," Vala smiled, a nice big one that started with her eyes and lit up her entire face. "See you in half an hour," she waved to him as he walked hurriedly back to the elevators.
Vala knew exactly how she answered Daniel's pointed question whenever she asked it of herself, the many hundreds of times she'd asked herself since they'd arrived home from the Odyssey trip. She had given Daniel the boiled down version just now, but with herself she was honest.
She had always hated feeling restless, useless, and bored. Being stuck on a ship in a time dilation field that she had no way of fixing herself, that had to be the utter definition of being bored and useless. She just knew that she would have tried some way, any way, to be close to Daniel. From listening to him talk about his theories and philosophies, to hiding near the doorway of the room with the Asgard database and watching him work, like she sometimes did here on the base. She could even imagine, if things had gotten bad enough, she might have tried to slap him upside the head in order to force him to see what there could be between them, even though she knew that that wasn't the way to his heart. But in desperation…hell, she wasn't perfect. Fifty years.