"And what do I do with this, exactly?" Vala asked, eyebrows raised, as she looked at the brown-plastic-covered object in her hands.

"It's an MRE," Daniel said, already ripping his open from his place sprawled against a tree. (That particular sort of tree, she knew, was prone to shedding seedpods like it was the season's change and the leaves were coming down. She was seated against a rock, with Cameron Mitchell beside her.) "You eat it."

"What, like this?" Her eyes widened, completely surprised.

There was a soft chuckling from beside her. "No," Cameron said, "you open it. And then you eat what's inside." He eyed her package. "You've got spaghetti with meat sauce. Now me, I'm partial to the beef ravioli, though the spaghetti's almost as good." He showed her what to do and in two minutes she was happily chewing the sub-standard spaghetti – even the food in the commissary was better – as Cameron told her about the MREs he'd eaten.

"Darling," she said, her head lolling on Cameron's shoulder, "what does MRE mean? Is it similar to MRS?" Daniel choked on his Chicken Pesto and Pasta when she said "MRS."

"No," Cameron drawled, "no it's not. MRE means meal ready to eat. MRS is how you spell missus, which is what married women are called."

Now, normally, this would've been a splendid opportunity for Daniel to jump in and give the history of the word 'Missus' and how it had degenerated from 'Mistress' and be condescending to both of them from his Cloud of Scholar-ness. Instead of that, he just kept being sulky, prodded his food with his fork, and glared at it when it squelched.

She wished she could ask Jack or Sam, or Teal'c what was going on, but the team had split into two groups: one to go gather intel (Jack, Sam, Teal'c) and one to study the "interesting-looking ruins" the plane-scanner thing had seen. So far, nothing was interesting and everything was very ruin-y. And she had discovered that Cameron had an excellent sense of humor and that she was more turned by Cameron brushing the back of her neck with his nose and whispering in her ear than she had been by anything else in years.

She also found out that whenever this did happen, and she giggled aloud, she'd look up to see Daniel giving her a very indecipherable look. The first time she saw him do it, she thought he was jealous, but upon further thought, she cast that into the realm of "Probably Not Going To Happen Unless Humanity Depends On It, And Only Then Under Much Protest." Then again, he did actually growl when she put her sleeping back next to Cameron's.

Vala wished she could go with her gut instincts about Daniel – since her gut was rarely wrong, especially concerning men – but Daniel was different. There were normal men and then there was Daniel. With him it was as if it were a game, but it was your life at stake and he wasn't going to tell you the rules and there was only two minutes left. She felt confused and tossed around by him, which didn't seem fair since she was always the one to make men feel that way about her.

Thankfully, the mission went quietly – except for the staff blasts that followed their mad dash to the gate after their rendezvous with the other three.

()()()()

One morning, the day after the newly-adjusted SG-1's fourteenth mission together, Vala skipped down to Daniel's lab. He'd gotten a new (or old, really) artifact from SG-12 and had requested her help with some of the translations.

Daniel had quickly realized – even in his prolonged sulky mood, which no one would elaborate as to why he was that way – that Vala was a quick learner. Extraordinarily fast, actually. She read and spoke Goa'uld better than Teal'c and could multiply four-digit numbers in her head. So he acted swiftly, not even waiting to be prompted by Jack, and started to teach her Latin as a precursor to Ancient. She was taking to it like a fish to water and always asked him for extra things to read or translate in her quarters, even when he was ready to quit.

Most things about Vala surprised people. She could fight with a staff, though not as well as Teal'c; was proficient in math, despite her dislike of it; and had an unquenchable desire of knowledge of, well, everything. Her surroundings, the history of the Tau'ri, and gossip magazines. Everything held interest for her, and she was constantly asking questions about anything she was curious about.

Usually around three o'clock, Cameron would come in and drag Vala off to lunch. But one day, Daniel looked up and noticed it was three-fifteen and the other man was nowhere in sight.

"Where's Cam?" He looked over at her. Vala was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest with a Goa'uld tablet balanced on them, a notepad and paper next to her.

"He had to go to some conference," she said, making a note on the pad. "Something to do with… pilot skills, connections, and I believe that they're giving him a medal, though General Hammond told me not to tell him that." She looked up at him. "Why? Did you need him, terribly?"

Daniel shook his head and, about to go back to work, suddenly blurted out, "No. You just always go to lunch with him, and I was wondering why not today." He could tell he caught her by surprise because her wide blue eyes actually looked faintly shocked and innocent.

"Really." She tilted her head minutely. "So you do care, Daniel."

"I never said I didn't!" He winced as his words echoed back in his head. He sounded far too defensive.

Her lips grew thin and she placed the tablet carefully down on the desk and then crossed her arms. "Of course, you never say anything you're feeling, Daniel."

"Who told you that?"

She shrugged. "Is it important? I would've figured it out anyway. I'm not here to play games, Daniel. I've already played enough of those in my life, and in other people's." Vala's eyes hardened and she looked away from him, over his shoulder at the picture of Sha're. "I mean, it would be cruel for me to come in and mess around with you, Daniel, especially after you lost your wife."

"Do not say anything about my wife! You don't know anything about her – you have no right to discuss this!" His knuckles were white and his nails broke the skin of his palm, his hands were clenched so tightly.

She glanced at him for a second and then looked back. "It must have been hard," she said, hugging herself, "losing your wife like that." She paused. "To a Goa'uld."

His teeth were grinding together and he knew he'd have a headache later. "Shut up."

She blinked and a tear fell out of her eye. "We've all lost people, Daniel." Now Vala looked him full in the eyes as she spoke to him, voice steady though her eyes were filling. "I lost my youth, my innocence." She glanced away, and then back. "And, the reason I came here? I lost my daughter." Giving a short, humorless bark of laughter, she went on, "In another galaxy, actually. Isn't that funny? To people with powers, powers I've never seen before. They scared me, Daniel. So I came to find your people, who have fought the Goa'uld unlike anyone ever had before."

Vala stood, still hugging herself. She wasn't looking at him, though, and he barely heard her voice. "So that's my sob story, Daniel. You may have lost your wife, but I lost two people: the woman I could have been and the only piece of my heart I can't take back."

"You- you lost your daughter?" His voice cracked as he said this and she turned around.

"Yes," she said. He knew she was telling the truth. Underneath it all – his distrust of her and her constant shielding and misdirection – he always knew when she was speaking the truth. There was something about her eyes, he thought as he stepped towards her, wiping his bloody palms on the seat of his pants. She couldn't lie to him.

He put his hands on her shoulders and started to draw her to his chest and for a moment she let him.

Then she wrenched out of his grasp, let out "No, Daniel," and dashed out.

She wouldn't open her door to him when he tried to talk to her that night.

The next morning, he saw her smile at Cameron.

He felt his heart ache, and that surprised him. It hadn't felt that way in…

Years.