Sometimes she had answered their calls, all except for Daniel. The food Sam left outside her door was always taken in and replaced by an empty tray from the last meal. They made sure she had everything she could need, despite her never asking for anything. Once or twice, Daniel had been lucky enough to be looking at the security camera at just the moment her arm reached out for her tray and dragged it into her quarters. There was nothing more, though. She no longer sought his companionship or anyone else's. It seemed Vala had found her own pit of despair and thrown herself in headlong.

Daniel had been the last to see her. They had argued. Well, no, Daniel had yelled and Vala had gone quiet in perfect synchronization to the rising tone of his voice. He had seen her tears and scoffed at her futile attempt to sway him into believing there could be more to their relationship than merely friendship. She was a flirt, a tease, and what many saw as playfulness, Daniel took as an attempt to make him jealous.

And this whole flirty sexual thing that you do, that's just your way of having a laugh at my expense.

No one was laughing now.

Daniel had several conversations with an open com-line. He knew she was there, hearing him drone on and on, hoping to elicit a response from her. But she never answered. Not once. His subtle cajoling was meant to be an apology of sorts, but whether it was the stretch of loneliness that had seeped into his very core, or pure frustration at her lack of response, he always ended up snapping at her stubbornness. Somehow, and far beyond his better judgment, the harsh words that had driven her from his quarters all those days ago, seemed to bubble to the surface and across the radio waves.

Don't act like you're hurt.

Eventually, and for his sake as much as hers, Daniel stopped calling and let the others deal with her pouting.

When she no longer answered them, they forced their way into her quarters.

Vala was gone.

They found her curled up on her bed, one arm hanging limply over the side of the mattress and the other tucked under her cheek. She was cold, her blue lips slightly parted as her open eyes stared lifelessly out at the stars.

~oOo~

"Oh, come on, it's driving me insane!" Teal'c regarded Vala Mal Doran with something akin to abject curiosity. "You know," she continued on heedless of his silence. "Technically, there would be no danger of creating a time paradox because we've already changed future events. You wouldn't be altering the future by telling us about something that's not going to happen anymore!"

"Then why do you care?" He remembered her cold, lifeless eyes and he remembered the note he had found on her nightstand after the others left her room on the Odyssey. The stars don't move and I wonder if they are trapped right along with me.

"Fifty or sixty years? Something interesting must have happened. Obviously I hooked up with someone."

Teal'c smiled and blew out another candle, hoping he had adequately disguised his own grief in such a simple action. Fifty years was only a fraction of the vast lifespan afforded to a Jaffa, but it was almost a lifetime to his companions. Even less for some. Vala had passed quietly, a victim of her own grief. Daniel Jackson followed her only a short time later. It was many years later when what was left of SG-1 said their final farewells to General Landry. Losses Teal'c could not bear. While he would live on for many decades to come, his friends would not be so fortunate, and it was this thought above all that made his choice to stay old-and ensure history never repeated itself-an easy one.

"Was it you, Muscles? It can't have been Mitchell, can it? General Landry?"

Teal'c headed out the door with Vala following closely behind. She would continue to pester him-it was her nature-and he would have it no other way.

The End