burn the shoes and boil the rice

by SleepyMaddy

Summary:

Five times Daniel and Vala got married, and one time they didn't.

Notes:

• For DotyTakeThisDown.

Thank you SO much to my wonderful recipient for this request; I can't even tell you how much fun I had writing this (but it was a lot. a /lot./). Your letter was extremely inspiring as you have excellent taste in tropes; I hope you enjoy the result 💕

Title from Getting Married Today, for obvious reasons

One

Daniel hadn’t agreed to this. 

“I didn’t agree to this,” Daniel announces, to no one in particular. 

The words echo beautifully, reverberating off the ornate marble and crystal walls. The room is studded with gold and silver; flecks of precious metals, embedded in every available surface, reflect the candlelight and give life to the carvings and sculptures that embellish the room. From what he’s seen, he’d say there are influences at work that mirror those of Ancient Greece — with a hint of Achaemenid inspiration that is frankly fascinating and makes him long for a notebook and something to write with.

The result is breathtaking, both on an aesthetic and intellectual level. Beyond that — the knowledge of how special this room is to the people of this planet makes the experience even more exceptional. Part of him can’t believe he gets to see this, gets to be privy to such a core part of this planet’s culture, as an outsider.

The other part of him, however, is a lot less awestruck. More like awfully irritated.

“Yeah, well,” Mitchell says, and his expression is neutral, but his tone carries an amusement that makes Daniel squint at him, “fortunately, your agreement is neither asked for nor required.”

“I feel like in this case, my agreement is kind of the point of the whole thing,” Daniel retorts pointedly, and then adds: “Ow.” when something pointy digs into his shoulder.

“Apologies, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c says, and adjusts the bright pink flower he’s just pinned to the shoulder of Daniel’s ceremonial robe — or, maybe, to Daniel’s shoulder itself, because ow. “Master Warden Crichtaron insisted that the ornaments should be well-secured.” With one more — painful — press of the pin into the robe, Teal’c turns back to the wide array of ornaments laid out on the nearby shelf.

“Hm, I see how you’d think that, Jackson,” Mitchell continues, and yes, he’s definitely smiling as he studies one of the fruit plates that were left on a nearby table. “But it turns out that on this specific occasion? Not the case.” He hesitates for a moment, before taking a bite of something that looks like a pale blue strawberry. He chews thoughtfully for a moment then concludes: “Call it the diplomatic exception.”

“Diplomatic?” Daniel repeats, maybe a little incredulously. “Diplomatic?”

Mitchell looks undeterred. He hums and then makes a face as he swallows. “That’s right.” Something in Daniel’s expression must catch an edge because he shakes his head, and raises his hands slightly, in a peace-making gesture. “C’mon, Jackson. Just… look at the bright side.”

“There is no bright side.”

“Sure there is.” Mitchell gestures vaguely at their surroundings. “This is super exclusive, right? They don’t show this room to any old visiting hick. It’s special. Really important to them. And if this wasn’t happening, you’d probably never see it at all. So, really, this is a good thing. Think of it as a great cultural opportunity.”

“A cultural opportunity,” Daniel says, as scathingly as he can manage with flowers pinned to his robe, “would be to be invited to the ceremony. A cultural opportunity,” and he gestures at the room around them, “would be to be allowed to observe, or maybe respectfully mirror the participants. What is not a cultural opportunity,” and he picks up the heavy, flower-shaped crystal pendant that had been looped over his neck by a delighted Master Warden and waves it in Mitchell’s face, “is to take part as the groom.”

Mitchell rolls his eyes, and goes for another piece of fruit as he leans back against the wall. “If you didn’t want to get married,” he says lightly, “then you shouldn’t have picked up the matrimony thingy.”

“I did not pick it up.”

Mitchell shrugs. “You were holding it when the guy in charge looked at you. You were both holding it.”

Daniel tips his head back and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. “We were holding it,” he says through gritted teeth, “because I was trying to stop her from stealing it.” He drops his hands and looks back at Mitchell. “She was about to pocket the sacred matrimony token, so I reached over, and I took it from her to put it back where it belongs.”

“Same difference for that Warden guy, though,” Mitchell points out with another shrug. He carefully inspects a slice of something pink before putting it back down on the plate and going for another blue strawberry. “And so, same difference, really.”

“Very big difference actually,” Daniel says acidly. “Very. One of those things means, yes I’ll marry you, and the other means put that back before we get arrested.”

“Well, maybe you just… see it as a lesson then,” Mitchell says philosophically.

“What lesson?”

“Stop —” and he points at Daniel with a half eaten strawberry — “touching stuff when you don’t know what it is or what it might do.”

Daniel frowns. “I don’t do that.”

Teal’c, who is in the process of attaching what seems to be a flower garland to the left sleeve of Daniel’s robe, looks up at him. “You have,” he says neutrally, “on many occasions done similar things, Daniel Jackson.”

Mitchell points at Teal’c with a see? kind of expression.

“What? No, I haven’t.” Daniel can hear his tone pitching up into offended territory, but can’t help himself. “Name one time I did that.”

Teal’c gives him a neutral look that somehow manages to convey about a decade’s worth of having witnessed Daniel touch things he shouldn't have.

And… Well, he’s not wrong, probably. Daniel lifts a hand. “Okay, nevermind, forget I said that.”

Teal’c inclines his head. “As you wish.” With no further comment, he pins the garland to Daniel’s wrist cuff.

“Look,” Mitchell says, and pushes away from the wall, starting a slow perimeter around the room. “These guys are so happy you’re taking their traditions seriously. We’re not going to let them down now. I mean, come on, Jackson! They’d be crushed.”

“We are literally lying to them. Right now. That’s crushing.”

Mitchell raises a finger. “It’ll only be crushing if they find out.” He traces a shimmery vein in the marble wall as he walks. “But right now? They just think you’re being super culturally sensitive, and they’re delighted. I mean, did you see that guy’s face? Master… Crichton, or whatever—”

“Master Warden Crichtaron,” Teal’c supplies, and starts on Daniel’s right sleeve, wrapping a garland of purple flowers around the fabric.

Mitchell snaps his fingers. “That guy. I mean, I thought he was gonna start crying.”

“Apparently,” Teal’c continues, “the traditions have lost their importance to the younger generations. Master Warden Crichtaron is particularly worried about the preservation of such traditions. He has, on many occasions, struggled to convince his citizens to partake in the traditional ceremonies upon their union.” 

Uh oh. That doesn’t bode well for the upcoming ceremony — not that the dozens of flowers attached to his person were a particularly encouraging sign. “Can I see that list of ceremonial rituals he gave you?” Daniel asks, with a tentative reach for the cream-colored parchment that was entrusted to Teal’c.

But Teal’c only holds it to his chest with a pointed look. 

Daniel clicks his tongue and closes his eyes. “Nevermind.”

“See, Jackson?” Mitchell has paused next to yet another plate of local delicacies and is studying them intently. “It’s a matter of cultural preservation.”

“I feel like there are better ways to preserve culture than to marry me against my will.”

“But it’s going to make them all so happy.” After careful deliberation, he selects a small pastry and sniffs it suspiciously. “And since they’re going to be super happy, they’ll also be super happy to discuss the trade agreement for all that naquadah their planet has and that they’re not using.”

Daniel rolls his eyes.

“Whereas, if we were to tell them the truth…” Mitchell takes a small bite of the pastry, chews, and then, with a twist of the mouth, slowly puts the pastry back down, “they would be extremely upset. And upset people do not tend to make good negotiation partners, which means they might not want to discuss the trade agreement. And that would make General Landry very upset, which would in turn make everyone very upset.” Mitchell points his finger at Daniel. “And so: you’re getting married. For the greater good.”

Daniel gives him a blank look. “The greater good as in, letting the American military-industrial complex get a fresh supply of naquadah?” he deadpans.

“Exactly,” Mitchell says with a click of the fingers.

There are a few things Daniel could say to that, but this is the point at which Teal’c starts affixing hand-sized blue flowers to the neckline of his robes. The scent tickles his nose, sweet and overpowering.

“Ugh,” Daniel says, and bats a hand at the petals. “Is this really necessary? I feel like that’s enough flowers, maybe.”

Teal’c gives him a grave look. “Master Warden Crichtaron was very specific concerning the importance and significance of each ornament, Daniel Jackson.”

“Right,” Daniel says, trying to be as conciliatory as he can with pollen slowly colonizing his airways and impending unwanted matrimony. “Of course he was.”

Maybe some of his misery — or upcoming allergies — comes through in his tone, because Mitchell shakes his head. “Come on, Jackson, it’s not that bad.”

Daniel settles for shooting him a pointed look amid the growing garden around his neck.

A corner of Mitchell’s mouth twitches, but he holds his neutral expression. “Well for a start,” he says and counts off one finger, “it’s probably not legally binding.”

“Probably?”

“And second,” Mitchell continues, ignoring him as he gestures vaguely. “A wedding isn’t so bad. I mean, you never know. She could have been stealing a fertility thingamajig.”

Oh God. Daniel feels his eyes widen — bad move, with the amount of pollen in his immediate vicinity. “Don’t even go there.”

“I’m just saying—”

But whatever Mitchell was saying is interrupted when the engraved, silver-lined doors to the chamber fly open with a gust of flower-scented wind that makes Daniel’s eyes water and the candles flicker. Sam walks through, dressed in the light blue robe of this planet’s equivalent to a maid of honor, and, with a conspiratorial smile, gestures behind her with a grand sweep of the hands. Daniel’s gaze follows the movement, catching a glimpse of a silhouette marching in after Sam and—

Oh.

Vala tosses her flower-studded hair over one shoulder and strikes a pose, chin tilted up, one hand on her hip. “Well?” she says, expectant and smug and delighted.

Daniel opens his mouth. She’s wearing ceremonial robes, same as he is, but the silver, flower-embroidered fabric seems to float around her, effortlessly framing her and offering shifting glimpses of her shoulders and legs. Small, elegant flowers have been pinned all over her, and braided through her hair, in all colors of the rainbow — but somehow, the effect is charming, rather than garish. Some kind of silver powder has been applied to her cheekbones — her collarbones — her eyelids, reflecting the light better than the jewel-studded carvings around them could ever hope to achieve. 

She’s…

She lifts a pointed eyebrow, and her other hand goes to her hip. “Yes?” she asks, drawing out the word emphatically.

Daniel closes his mouth. It’s probably his safest bet.

No doubt taking advantage of Daniel’s sudden immobility, Teal’c quickly steps up to him and, with a dexterity that speaks to years of training, affixes a large, heavy flower crown to the top of Daniel’s head.

Daniel sneezes. Hard.

“Well,” Vala says, droll and dry. “I suppose I’ll take it as a compliment.”

 

Two

The distant slamming of a door startles Daniel out of sleep.

Well — he thinks it was sleep. It might have been unconsciousness and-or a semi-comatose state, at this point. Every cell in his body hurts, which isn’t unexpected but is still decidedly not ideal.

There isn’t much light in this dungeon, but the flickering wall torches are enough to make his already excruciating headache worse. He squeezes his eyes shut and curls up a little tighter in the corner of his minuscule cell. The air is cold and damp this far underground, and seems to have seeped all the way into his aching bones during the night.

He sighs and lets his forehead drop onto his knees, his back to the icy, rough stone wall. The metal circling his wrists pulls painfully at his skin as he hugs his knees to his chest. 

You’d think he’d have learnt by now — over a decade of Stargate traveling and assorted questionable decisions should have presumably taught him some things, right? Maybe some things like don’t get so carried away researching that you end up leaving the alien planet you’re on to check out an address on your own because it sounds interesting. Or, more pragmatically, how to be less affected by extensive torture by means of Goa’uld painsticks.

Unfortunately, neither of these lessons seem to have been retained over the course of his employ within the SGC. If he felt inclined to cut himself some slack, he’d argue that the System Lords fell over two years ago, and so that he’d be justified in not expecting to get captured by armed Jaffa upon stepping through the gate.

But as he is, locked up in a crappy dungeon on the supposedly-historically-interesting planet that no one knows he’s gone to, sore and aching from multiple rounds of torture… Well. He doesn’t really feel in a very slack-cutting mood. In fact, if he had the energy for it, he’d probably roll his eyes at himself.

On the plus side, he seems to have discovered a Goa’uld enclave planet that’s somehow managed to miss the whole Fall of the Goa’ulds thing and therefore still operates as normal, complete with human slaves and Jaffa. Not that it’s a good thing, but it means that, at least, once he gets out of here, he and his team can help the people trapped here free themselves and live a better life. 

On the minus side, it does mean he strolled into a Goa’uld stronghold with no backup and nothing but his hat, a notebook, and a set of pencils. So.

But it’s not all bad. For one, his absence must have been noticed by now, and for two, he did leave word of where he was going with the local archivists, so, hopefully, rescue should be imminent.

He just hopes it’ll be before additional torture starts to seriously threaten his grip on reality.

Another door slams in the distance, echoing along the narrow, stone-walled corridor he can glimpse through the bars of his cell. This time, however, the noise is followed by the unmistakable sound of footsteps, hurried and out of time — a dull thudding sound and the sharp click of heels on stone. The sound grows closer and, with it, fragments of voices start drifting to him, too indistinct to make out.

Daniel hugs his knees a little tighter and tries to melt into the darkened corner of his cell. If the previous days are any indication, he shouldn’t yet be due for another session with his uncharacteristically taciturn torturer — they haven’t even been asking him anything, which implies the torture is purely for their amusement instead of information. 

Of course, there’s always the chance that they’ve decided to change it up and make the sessions more frequent, but he hopes that’s not the case: the pain from the previous round hasn’t started fading yet, and he can still taste blood at the back of his mouth.

Unfortunately, the sounds don’t fade, instead growing louder as the people responsible presumably get closer to his cell. His assessment of the footsteps seems correct — there are two voices, a hushed, quickfire low tenor, and a commanding, lilting alto that keeps interrupting the first speaker. 

He presses his face into his knees and works on being as unnoticeable as possible.

“—please, you can’t—”

“I can’t?” The voice, which sounds like it might belong to a woman, pauses with enough aggravation that Daniel reflectively winces for the person on the receiving end. Even the footsteps stop for a moment. “Who do you think you are?”

“I— No, I mean, that is—” the second voice falters and fumbles, and then the footsteps resume, faster and clearer than before. “Please, onak kal’ma, this place is not fit to welcome you—”

“Correct.” The word rings out like a slap, echoing off the walls. “And yet, due to your incompetence, it seems it must. Now be silent.”

There’s… something about the voice. With the echo and the headache trying to pry his skull open, he’s having trouble putting his finger on it, but it’s there all the same, nagging at him. Something in the cadence, or maybe the intonation; something that almost seems familiar.

It doesn’t bother him for very long. Barely a few seconds later, the footsteps resolve into clarity and then quiet, with an immediacy that suggests that they’ve stopped just in front of his cell. With one last internal sigh, Daniel lifts his head a fraction, just enough to squint at the newcomers.

Between his headache, the dim lighting, and his lack of glasses, it takes him a few moments. Well, that, and how improbable the sight that greets him is.

Huh.

Maybe he has lost his grip on reality, just a bit. And honestly, after the last few days, who could blame him?

Vala Mal Doran smiles at him. “Hello, darling,” she says, slow and so Vala he blinks at her. “Terribly sorry I’m late.”

He stares. The lost his grip hypothesis is looking increasingly likely.

The person outside his cell certainly looks like Vala — but aside from the sheer improbability of her leading a rescue, well. She’s not exactly dressed for it.

In fact, she’s wearing an awful lot of gold. And jewels. And glimmering fabric, weaved into a floor length gown that alternatively clings and flows, and generally settles into something extremely flattering that Daniel is No Longer Looking At, Thank You Very Much. Her hair flows freely around her shoulders, gold thread and sparkling stones weaved between the strands, and she’s wearing ornate makeup, all shimmering gold and inky black lines that make her eyes look impossibly wide and bright.

The effect is striking — if not very in line with SGC regulations, to say the least. 

And then, there’s the fact that Daniel’s torturer is standing next to her, head bowed reverently, shoulders hunched, like he doesn’t dare look at her, even as he speaks: “Is this him, onak kal’ma?”

The warmth in Vala’s expression melts away, replaced by unyielding steel as she turns to glare at the man. “I believe,” she says, icy and commanding in a way Daniel has never heard her sound before, “that I instructed you to be silent.”

To Daniel’s astonishment, the man bows his head a little lower in something that might be a nod. 

Vala turns back to Daniel, and her expression softens minutely, until he can see something that looks like a glimmer of worry in her eyes as she scans him over. Then again, he must make a pretty pitiful picture, if the cuts and bruises he’s accumulated over the past few days look as bad as they feel.

She wraps one (perfectly manicured, ring-laden) hand around one of the iron bars, and tilts her head towards the cell. “Open the door,” she says, in a tone that leaves absolutely no room for argument.

But the guard hesitates, inching his head up a fraction to glance at her. “It’s—”

He’s silenced with a look Daniel can only describe as lethal. His head swiftly bowed again, he shuffles forward with the key and, with the clink of rusted metal, the door unlocks and slowly swings open.

Vala sweeps forward in a swish of glimmering gold. Her gown flares out around her and over the dull stone floor as she crouches in front of him, one hand resting delicately on his knee. The flickering light of the wall torches reflects off her jewelry, her makeup, giving her a glow that makes it all the more difficult to believe she’s really here.

“Vala?” he asks, voice cracking. His throat feels parched and raw, with dehydration or disuse or both.

“Shh,” she breathes and casts a practiced eye over him, no doubt taking in his (many) injuries and torn, blood-stained clothes. Her mouth flattens into a tight line, and something flares in her eyes, bright and powerful and matching her regal attire to the letter.

No part of this situation makes any sense.

“What’s—” he tries again, but trails off when she leans forward, her hand delicately landing on his cheek, her index finger under his jaw, her thumb carefully avoiding the cut stinging over his cheekbone. 

This isn’t really clearing anything up. 

“Um,” he says, blinking, trying to put the pieces together into something coherent, failing miserably. “Vala, what are you—”

His attempt to put together a decent question comes to a swift and final end when she crosses the space between them to kiss him.

For a fraction of a second, he goes back to the theory that he’s just lost his grip on reality entirely and is currently vividly hallucinating.

But her hand is on his face, and the other on his shoulder, and she’s leaning against him, and she smells like jasmine flowers, and nope — nope, this is not a hallucination, this is definitely, absolutely happening. Somehow. 

Despite her proprietary hold on him, her lips are soft against his, a barely-there pressure that almost fades into nothing. Out of pure instinct, or maybe torture-induced delirium, he finds himself leaning forward a fraction, pushing back, looking for more and—

There’s something against his lips. Small, maybe the size of a breath mint, but smooth and hard and with a sharp metallic tang against the split skin of his bottom lip.

The pieces finally click. Vala’s trying to sneak him something without the guard seeing.

God. Mitchell really, really needs to stop showing her so many movies.

The object presses against his lip a little more insistently and, with an internal eye roll, Daniel lets it slip inside his mouth to land on the tip of his tongue. 

With one last breath of a kiss, Vala pulls back, keeping her hand on his shoulder. There’s a hint of a smile in her expression, which quickly turns into an insistent eyebrow lift.

Daniel suppresses the urge to shake his head, but obligingly turns the object over in his mouth. It is metal, a tiny, flat cylinder with grooves dug into the surface and, maybe, four small legs sticking out of the sides? He frowns, pressing it up against the roof of his mouth to try and feel it out better and—

“Ow.” The sound escapes him when the four legs dig into the roof of his mouth, affixing the object firmly and painfully. 

But Vala, clearly having anticipated his reaction — of course she would — is already leaning over him, her thumb over his lips, muffling the sound so the guard doesn’t hear. It has the additional benefit of hiding his expression, which is probably good, because Daniel has no doubt it’s not quite as reverent as it should be.

He tentatively tries to prod at the device with his tongue, but all he gets for his efforts is a sharp spike of pain and a quick peck on the lips that somehow manages to come across as chiding. 

The guard outside clears his throat.

Vala pulls back, and glances at him over her shoulder.

“Onak kal’ma,” he says, and his neck has to hurt with how bent his head is, “may I then infer that he is your lazla’tar?”

The words prod at Daniel’s hazy mind, the syllables familiar, though not necessarily when put together like this. Lazla — the word carries the connotation of choice, of selection, of one among many. As for tar…

Vala stands, her posture straight and elegant, her chin tilted up a fraction. “Oh,” she says, cool and unflappable, “I care very little for what you may infer.” She brings a hand to her chin in a deliberate, thoughtful pose. “Shall I perhaps tell you what I’m inferring?”

The man shrivels and hunches in a way that implies he’s not particularly keen to find out, but Vala doesn’t seem to be deterred. Instead, she takes a few deliberate steps forward, the click of her heels sharp against the stone.

“I’m inferring,” she says, glacial, “that your incompetence is beyond bounds. That your ineptitude has resulted in my lazla’tar being treated as so much common dirt.” She pauses, a step or so away from the guard, and pointedly digs her index finger into the metal plate he wears over his chest — the man flinches minutely. “I am inferring,” she says delicately, “that your punishment shall be equal only to the disgrace you have caused.”

The mention of punishment seems to give the man a sudden burst of courage — or maybe desperation. He tilts his head up to look at Vala, who’s towering over him with her heels and her sheer presence. “With all due respect, onak kal’ma, all checks were performed upon his arrival and—”

“All checks,” Vala repeats, her voice edging into shrill territory. “All checks?”

The man blanches a little, but he nods. “He wasn’t wearing a mark. Onak kal’ma.”

“Wearing?” Vala scoffs, and tosses her hair over one shoulder. “What, were you expecting it on his forehead?”

“It is the conventional way—”

Vala steps up to him, uncomfortably close, and runs a finger down the man’s armored chest. “Tell me,” she all but purrs, with enough threat behind her voice that Daniel has to repress a shudder. “Do I strike you as conventional?”

To his credit, the guard doesn’t step back. Instead, he swallows hard and continues. “He was unaccompanied—”

“I like them independent.”

“—and our checks revealed no marks,” he says again, “visible or otherwise.”

Vala straightens back up. “Is that so,” she says, flat and honestly a little scary. She blows out a long breath and then, with a broad sweep of her hand in Daniel’s direction, leans back against the bars of his cell. “In that case, I’m sure you won’t mind scanning him again.”

The guard almost drops the device he’s pulling off his belt in his haste to do as she asks. With a quick nod, he presses a few buttons, and aims it at Daniel. There’s a second of regular beeping and then—

His face falls. “It’s not possible,” he whispers.

Vala hums, making a show of examining her nails. “Isn’t it?” she asks, pointedly polite.

“The checks were run. They’re always run. I don’t understand—”

“Shall I explain it to you?” she offers, sweet and deadly as arsenic-laced honey. Her smile is a pure show of teeth.

The guard straightens, and then bows when he remembers who he’s facing. “Deepest apologies, onak kal’ma. I must report this and verify the data.” He pales a little. “It might take some time…” he starts, like he’s expecting to get torn to shreds over the delay.

But Vala only waves a distracted hand, the picture of queenly grace. “Go,” she says. “I’ve seen enough of you.”

The guard scuttles off without being asked twice. For a few moments, there’s nothing but the sound of his quickly receding footsteps and Vala’s hard gaze as she watches him go.

And then she spins to face Daniel, her face split into a bright grin. She tilts her head, one shoulder coming up and forward in an affected pose. “So?” she says, like she’s expecting applause. “What do you think?”

Daniel, who’s followed at most ten percent of the previous conversation and still isn’t completely convinced any of this is happening, stares at her. “...What?”

She deflates a little. “The outfit, darling?” She examines her arms, where the silky gold fabric twins itself into the matching, bejeweled arm bands she’s wearing. “It’s a little last minute, but I think it works quite nicely, don’t you agree?”

Daniel blinks, trying to pick one question out of the mess in his head. Eventually, he settles on: “What just happened?”

Her mask drops a fraction, just enough to let him catch a flash of a small, genuine smile, before she steps into the still open cell and drops to her knees next to him.

“Well,” she says, drawing out the word as she reaches up and pulls… a long hairpin out of her hair? “There’s good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first?”

“Any?”

Vala, as she often does, seems completely impervious to his sarcasm. With dogged determination, she starts digging the hair pin into the keyhole off the metal cuff locked around his left ankle. “The bad news,” she starts, conversational, “is that you’ve managed to accidentally wander into the most selective group of terrible people that might have ever existed.” She pauses what she’s doing to shoot him a dry look. “You really can’t be left alone for more than two minutes, can you?”

He ignores the dig. “I thought they were Goa’uld,” he says, turning the pieces over in his head, “but…”

“They’re not,” she confirms, frowning as she works the pin into the mechanism. “Or at least, not anymore.”

“What?”

“They used to be,” she says, making a face when the lock resists her efforts. She reaches up, pulls a second pin out of her hair, and gets back to work on the lock. “This city is restricted to former hosts only. They scan for bloodstream naquadah upon arrival, as you might have noticed when they didn’t find any in your blood.”

“Onak kal’ma,” Daniel repeats under his breath in realization. “That’s what he called you. Child of the gods, sacred child…”

“Or,” Vala says, and delicately places one of the pins between her teeth, “leftover by the gods. Remains of the gods. And so on. You get the picture.”

He does — but that doesn’t mean any of it makes sense. “But they live like Goa’ulds.” He’d seen it, before he’d been caught and summarily dumped in the dungeons. “Slaves, and Jaffa, and—”

“Bit of a stickler for tradition, this lot,” she says airily. “Ah ha!” The lock clicks, and the cuff springs open. Vala wastes no time working Daniel’s foot free before she moves to his other ankle.

“But… that makes no sense. Former hosts should be the last people trying to recreate this.” The sheer cognitive dissonance of it is making his headache worse. “Hosts, of all people, know how cruel and inhumane the Goa’ulds were.”

Vala seems intently focused on his cuff, but a muscle twitches in her jaw. “Mhhm,” she hums noncommittally. “As it happens, some Goa’ulds liked to select hosts who were… willing participants, of a sort. Created an entire culture around the honor of being chosen. It wasn’t a popular movement, but it was common enough. And in those cases, well — on the occasions where the Goa’uld would leave the host without killing them, having served as a host would confer a certain status. Which is what these people are clinging to.”

“But…” Daniel shakes his head. “What about…”

“Bodily autonomy?” Vala supplies, her tone light, but without looking at him. “A small price to pay for a lifetime of recognition, I suppose. For some.”

The second cuff clicks open and is swiftly removed — but Daniel reaches for Vala’s arm, stopping her before she can start working on his wrist cuff. “So they… what? Act like they’re some kind of chosen ones? Carry the traditions forward? Torture everyone who isn’t a chosen one?”

Vala breaks free of his grip and determinedly starts picking the lock on his left wrist. “Something like that,” she says, clearly aiming for airy, landing about a mile off. “The longer one was a host, and to the greater Goa’uld, the more status one can claim.” She leans forward, her hair falling in a curtain, obscuring her expression. “Which, in this particular case, was useful to get me in through the door, as it were.”

Daniel hesitates, thrown by the tension in her voice. “I—”

“Having to witness yourself committing atrocities for decades has its perks, at least,” she says, and her tone is so determinedly light that it pulls at Daniel’s heart, tightens his throat.

“Vala—” he starts, not sure where he’s going.

But it doesn’t matter: she doesn’t let him finish. Instead, she clicks the cuff open with a victorious tilt of her chin, and moves to the last lock.

“Which brings me to the good news,” she says, looking up at him with a flirty smile that’s only belied by the way her eyes gleam a little too brightly, “which is that we technically just got married. Congratulations!”

The words take a moment to register in his brain. “We what,” he repeats flatly.

A glimmer of real amusement shines in her gaze. “Well,” she amends, deftly working the pins in the lock, “I suppose it depends on your definition of marriage. But I’d argue this qualifies.”

The guard’s words come back to mind, the syllables still as annoyingly familiar, yet out of reach. “Lazla ‘tar,” he says again, dry and suspicious. “As in…”

“Lazla, chosen,” she says, and there’s a real smile pulling at her mouth now, which she’s not bothering to hide, “and ‘tar, as in taur’, as in…”

“Tau’ri,” Daniel completes as the pieces click together, with mentions of marks and claims. He closes his eyes briefly. “Chosen human. So, what, it’s some kind of… lo’taur? A human favorite?”

Vala makes a face. “Well, a lo’taur is a confidant. A potential host, an advisor… They’re trusted, and listened to, and valued, and—”

Yeah, okay. “And a lazla’tar?” he interrupts, asking even though he gets the feeling that he already knows.

“Well.” She shrugs. “They’re valued, also. Just maybe more on an… aesthetic level?”

“Great.”

“Well, I say aesthetic. It’s more about… sensuality. An appreciation of—”

“That’s okay, thanks. I get it.”

“It’s—”

“Nu-uh.” Daniel holds up a finger when Vala opens her mouth, and speaks over her when she tries to continue anyway. “So the thing that stabbed me in the mouth is…?”

Vala shakes her head despondently, but answers anyway. “A Claim. Well, a fake one. It gives off the same readings as the device the Goa’ulds used to mark their lazla’tar. But it’s temporary, and without the deadly naquadah radiation dose when you try to take it off.”

Daniel blinks. “Right. That’s… good.”

She gives him a pointed look. “See, I thought so. Had to call in a lot of favors to get my hands on one in an expedient manner, I’ll have you know.”

“Well… thanks?” He frowns as he watches her struggle over the last lock. One part of this still isn’t really making sense. “So, if you’re getting me out of here by posing as some kind of high-status onak kal’ma—”

She lifts a finger. “I don’t pose, Daniel.”

He rolls his eyes, but goes with it. “Right. Well, if you’re using your very legitimate status as a highly-regarded former host and claiming me as your… whatever, then why are you picking the locks on my cuffs?”

“Hm?” Her expression is determinedly neutral, in a way that makes alarm bells start to go off in the back of his head.

He squints at her. “That guard is going to confirm there was a Claim, right? And then he’ll come back and uncuff me with the key? To let me go?”

There’s a pause.

“Vala?”

She hums, pointedly distracted and pointedly not fooling anyone, least of all Daniel.

He closes his eyes. “What’s going to happen when he checks the data?”

“Ah,” Vala says, and gives him a tight smile. “Well, you’re right. He’s going to confirm you’re a Claim, and my status as former host of Q’tesh.”

“... And then?”

“At which point he will return.”

“...To let me out?” Daniel suggests, though he has his doubts.

They quickly turn into certainties. Vala makes a face. “Not exactly.”

He reaches for her wrist, immobilizing her and forcing her to look at him. “Not exactly?” he repeats with a small, very unamused smile.

She sighs in annoyance. “Well, there’s a slight chance he’ll be a bit less… reverent.”

Daniel doesn’t say anything.

“As in,” Vala continues, like she’s conceding a major point, “he will maybe have been made aware that my status within this community is less recognized as he might have originally assumed. And maybe a little more… notable?”

“Notable, as in…” Daniel prompts.

Another sigh. “As in,” she says, dropping the coy tone, giving him an irritated look, “when I was first made aware of this community, I might have used the opportunity to…” she trails off, apparently at loss for the right word.

“Rob them blind?” he offers.

“Something like that.” She pulls her wrist free and holds up her lockpicks. “And so, it would be best if I uncuffed you and we got out of here before that information comes to light. If that’s alright with you.” The words positively drip with sarcasm.

That actually does sound like a good idea. “Be my guest,” he says, dry and mild.

“Thank you.” 

He expects her to work the lock in silence, but to his surprise, she speaks again after a moment, her face once again hidden from view by her hair. “I didn’t like it,” she says, and it’s barely audible.

Something tightens in his chest. “What?” he prompts, trying — and failing — to catch her expression.

She’s quiet for a moment, and then: “They found me, after— After the Tok’ra helped me. These people, I mean. They searched out hosts, and they found me, and they brought me here. They explained… how they worked. They said I could stay.”

There isn’t a trace of the act she usually carries in her voice. Daniel stays very, very still, not wanting to break the moment.

“But I didn’t like it,” she whispers, the words more breath than voice. “How it worked. How they’d… recreated it. It didn’t… I just didn’t like it.” She clears her throat. “So I helped myself, and then I left.”

The pin slips out of the keyhole, snapping in half, and she curses in a language he doesn’t recognize. Her hands shake, ever so slightly, as she reaches for another pin from the multitude seemingly stored in her elaborate hairstyle.

“I’m surprised,” Daniel says, quiet, matching her tone.

She stiffens — shoulders going rigid, hands stilling, breath halting.

Dammit. “Not…” he starts, backpedaling, not sure how to phrase what he actually means. “I don’t mean… I’m not surprised you didn’t like it. That’s not what I meant.”

“Isn’t it?” and it’s light and airy and hurt, in a way that is so obvious it has to be unintentional, in a way that makes him wonder when he learnt to read her so well, under the coyness and the masks. “After all, it’s easy riches; wealth, recognition, status…” She breathes a short, sharp laugh that makes him wince. “I’d be surprised too, if you’d told me I’d turned that down.”

“No,” he says, gentle, but firmer. “That’s not what I meant.”

She looks up, evidently startled. Her eyes gleam in the candlelight, startlingly honest from underneath the dramatic, theatrical makeup.

“I meant,” he explains, holding her gaze as kindly as he can, “that you seem to have a knack for… reclaiming things that happen to you. For turning them into something that works to your advantage.” He smiles at her, small and genuine. “For finding resources, and resilience, even in the worst of situations.” He lets his expression grow lighter, a little more teasing. “I meant that I’m surprised they would have you on file as anything other than a well-respected onak kal’ma, which would have allowed you to continuously rob them blind, instead of a one-off thing.”

The smile that slowly pulls at the corners of her mouth makes something ache in his chest. 

“Well, you know,” she says, low, like maybe she doesn’t want him to notice her voice is shaking, “I was still fairly young, back then. Finding my feet, as it were.” She sniffs, and tosses her hair over her shoulder. “I certainly wouldn’t make the same mistakes these days.”

He shakes his head, unable to suppress the fond smile he’s certain he’s sporting. “Of course not.”

The lock finally springs open under her hands, and she grins at him, wide and impish and delighted. “I sense doubt,” she says, one eyebrow up, and holds out her hand to him. “Shall I demonstrate all the ways in which I’ve improved since then?” She spreads the fingers of her free hand in a vaguely theatrical gesture. ”Today's lesson: the undetected liberation of treasure.”

He rolls his eyes, unmoved by the compliment, but takes her hand and lets her pull him to his feet. 

Ow. All his injuries, cuts and bruises and burns, flare to life in one blinding blaze of pain, unbalancing him. Vala catches him before he can topple over, and it takes them a moment to find their balance.

“Are you alright?” she asks, expression growing serious as she scans him over.

He makes a face. “Well, you know. Torture. So. Not really. But I’ll be better once we get out of here.”

She smiles at him, and brings his arm over her shoulders to steady him. “Then get out of here we shall.”

 

Three

“Will you stop that?”

The only response he gets is a swish of Vala’s hair and another pointed tug of the cuff — no, sorry, sacred union token — around his wrist.

He hisses as the ornately-wrought metal digs into his already much-abused skin, and pulls back with a sharp tug of his own.

Vala stumbles, unbalanced, and shoots him a glare. “I wasn’t aware,” she says, words lethally sharp, “that I needed permission to move my hair out of my face, Daniel.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “You do when this—” and he tugs his wrist again, pulling the silver, jewel-studded, foot-long chain linking their wrists together taut — “is happening.”

She stops walking, which in turn forces him to stop walking, and shoots him an impressively imperious look. “And what is ‘this’ exactly, remind me?” she demands, in a tone that makes him want to dig his fists into his eyes — except that he can’t even do that right now.

He settles for glaring at her instead. “You know exactly what.”

“But I want you to say it,” she says, chin up, stepping right into his personal space.

He leans into hers with zero hesitation. “This,” he says, with as much poisoned politeness as he can muster, “refers to the fact that we are, as you well know, currently, and quite literally, much to my unending horror and constant consternation, stu—”

“Is everything alright?”

The voice interrupts his litany with a gently concerned tone, startling him and Vala into looking forward. The Chancellor, a short man in colorful robes and with a frankly impressive mane of snow-white hair, is looking at them, a worried frown creasing his forehead. His hands are at his heart, like he’s terribly afraid something awful might have happened, but his eyes are kind.

That’s a theme, really, for the people of P4X-398. They’re very kind, and welcoming, and wanting to make them feel at ease. That’s a good thing, because their library of Ancient texts is like none Daniel has ever seen before and, he thinks, might hold the only complete set of the Cantascendis, which he’s been looking for pretty much since he’s learned of its existence. 

It, however, also has its drawbacks. 

“No problem at all,” Vala says, with a wide, fake grin that makes him want to elbow her. “Daniel was just telling me how…” she hesitates for a second, before recovering gracefully with, “stunned we are with this palace.” She gestures — with her other hand, thank god — at the marble halls and flowering gardens that surround them. “It’s breathtaking.”

The Chancellor smiles, looking touched and pleased and completely taken with Vala’s enthusiasm. “You are too kind to us, Ms Mal Doran. This is humble, compared to your wonderful foreign lands, I’m sure.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” she mutters, and this time Daniel does elbow her — but discreetly.

She steps on his foot, so sharply that Daniel can’t help an audible oof.

The Chancellor immediately turns a solicitous look on him. “Dr Jackson? Are you well?”

“Yes, darling, are you alright?” Vala presses the back of her hand to his forehead — he leans back, barely resisting the urge to bat her hand away. “You look a bit peaky.”

“I’m fine,” he grits out, and then turns his best smile on the Chancellor. “This is wonderful, Chancellor. Thank you. It’s… everything I hoped it would be.”

And, in a way, it is — the people of this planet are polite, their aesthetic delicate and clearly heavily Ancient-inspired. The citadel they’re touring, in particular, is filled with scholars and historians, people who are experts in their fields and would love nothing more than to share their knowledge with him. He’s been looking forward to visiting this planet for months, ever since the SGC made contact with a MALP, and in all aspects, it’s proven to be just as wonderful as he hoped.

Save, of course, for one notable exception.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” the Chancellor says. Again, he raises a hand to his heart and, horrifically, his smile turns conspiratorial. “Of course, don’t let the ramblings of an old man bore you. I know how… enthralling young love can be.”

Vala opens her mouth but Daniel takes a pointed step in front of her before she can speak. “No,” he announces quickly, still smiling politely. “Definitely no… enthralment happening here. In any way. Not at all. Please, Chancellor, just… carry on.”

“Of course.” If anything, he looks even more amused. Daniel would swear the man winks at him before he turns to move forward. “This way to the musical gardens, please.”

Daniel follows, not bothering to check if Vala keeps up — the fact that his wrist stays attached is indication enough that she does. 

For a couple of minutes, he gets to enjoy the sights in blissful silence, presumably as Vala pouts — which he wouldn’t know, as he is looking at the architecture and not at her.

But, of course, the silence is short-lived. “I really don’t see what you’re complaining about,” Vala comments, her left hand swinging in tandem with his right. “After all, this entire situation is your fault.”

Daniel opens his mouth, takes a deep breath, and closes his mouth. Maybe, just maybe, if he ignores her, then she’ll stop.

Predictably, she doesn’t. “I mean, seriously,” she continues, with a little pull that jolts his wrist and makes him grit his teeth. “If you didn’t want to get married—”

“Not married,” he can’t help but correct.

She rolls her eyes. “Right, sorry. If you didn’t want to take part in the ritual binding ceremony of the union tokens, which is the thing couples do around here when they want to spend the rest of their lives together—”

Deep breaths. He’s being baited, he knows it, and he is not going to fall for it.

“— then you could have just slept on the floor.”

“I was not going to sleep on the floor,” Daniel hisses, completely falling for it and painfully aware of it. “It’s all freezing stone.”

She shrugs. “It’s marble. Could have been worse.”

“I was not going to sleep on the marble floor,” Daniel says, incorporating her amendment without missing a beat. “Not when there was a perfectly fine bed the size of Canada.”

Vala gives him a narrow-eyed look, presumably as she tries to work out what size Canada is supposed to be. “In that case,” she says, and slows her stride just a little, probably only to force him into awkward half-steps to keep up, “you could have just told the dear Chancellor we were already married.”

Her voice echoes in the ornate halls, and Daniel shushes her, glancing around to make sure neither the Chancellor, nor the passersby heard her. Thankfully, everyone is giving them a respectfully wide berth, either because of their status as aliens, or because of the ornate chain keeping them linked together. 

Vala rolls her eyes, but lowers her voice. “It really would have been the simplest option,” she says with a shake of the head. “Especially when he opened the conversation by asking how long we’d been married.”

“I wasn’t going to lie to him,” Daniel pushes through gritted teeth, while simultaneously smiling and nodding his head at the Chancellor, who’s glancing back at them with a knowing smile. 

Vala scoffs. “Right, of course. What was I thinking? The virtuous Daniel Jackson would never lower himself to such moral depths.”

“Some of us don’t default to lying whenever we find ourselves in an awkward situation, Vala,” he whisper-hisses at her out of the corner of his mouth.

She hums. “No, you don’t. Instead you get married to avoid a diplomatic incident. Much more rational. You’ve convinced me. I’m turning over a new leaf.”

“Not married.”

“Take part in ceremonies that symbolize life-long commitment and matrimony, then,” she hisses back, her tone matching his. “Rational, and honest of you.”

She’s kinda got a point, much as he might hate it. He does his best to breathe, trying to let the beautiful surroundings bring him some measure of calm. “It’s complicated.”

She snorts, which does not help him hold on to any measure of calm. “How is this in any way complicated, Daniel? If this was about honesty, then you could have just told him the truth, which is that we were not married, nor were we planning to be.” She gives him a raised eyebrow look. “Hm? Tell you what, how about I start on this new leaf thing and just tell him right now—”

She starts speeding forward towards the Chancellor, forcing Daniel to wrap a hand around her arm to hold her back — except he does it with his right hand, which sends the cuff pulling painfully at his wrist, and makes the both of them wince. “Don’t.”

She spins on her heel, pinning him with a blaze of a look. “Don’t what, Daniel? Be honest? Tell the truth? I thought you were against lying as a general rule.”

He rolls his eyes and pulls her back to his side before the Chancellor can notice them. “Fine, you win. I’m sorry I said that about you.”

Vala’s chin remains tipped up defiantly, but some of the fire in her gaze cools down. “Thank you,” she says, prim and insufferable.

“But,” he continues with a warning glance, “this isn’t… Lying. It’s— aligning ourselves with the cultural norms.”

Vala’s eyebrow about disappears into her hairline. Okay, so maybe that’s taking it a little far.

He backtracks a little. “What I mean,” he says, trying his best to suppress his instinct to gesticulate as he talks, “is that this is about blending in. As it happens, these people have a whole thing around sharing beds and marr…” He cuts himself off just before he can say the word. “... long term partnerships,” he says instead, trying his best to keep his dignity. “If we told them that we’re not actually together even though we slept in the same bed, well, that would be a cultural faux pas.” 

To say the least. He still remembers the Chancellor’s expression at breakfast, after Daniel had told him that he and Vala weren’t married. It had held so much scandalized horror that Daniel had briefly been transported back to his fifth birthday party, facing an indignant great-aunt Christine when he’d failed to wear the knitted sweater she’d made for him.

And so, when the distraught politician had immediately suggested that they were of course to be married soon, well — he’d gone with it. What harm could it do? 

Of course, the answer to that question had become much more apparent when, delighted, the Chancellor had suggested that, as a symbol of their cultures’ alliance, they should absolutely and immediately partake in the local union ceremony. 

In hindsight, the immediate part had probably been to try and mitigate the scandal of two unmarried alien ambassadors sharing quarters. 

He shakes his head. “The point is,” he continues, keeping his voice low and his gaze on the Chancellor’s back, “that if we’d told them the truth, there is an extremely strong chance they would have refused to deal with us entirely. It could have jeopardized this entire first contact. We couldn’t take the chance.”

Vala looks unmoved. “Right,” she says slowly, drawing out the word. “So it has nothing to do with the fact that these people happen to have that boring old book you’ve been looking for for ages in one of their many dusty little libraries, then?”

God damnit. “The Cantascendis,” he hisses, “is arguably the work of most import in the entire Ancient corpus. It represents the culmination of thousands of years of history and—”

“—and definitely doesn’t consist of boring, obscure metaphors scribbled over dusty parchment,” Vala finishes, talking over him with a grandly aggrieved tone. 

He feels his expression twist in offense on behalf of the document. “It’s—”

But Vala turns fluidly on her heel, forcing them to stop walking, and presses a finger to his mouth to shut him up. “Daniel,” she says firmly, “I don’t care what silly old piece of paper you want to fawn over. I don’t care if you lie to get to it — actually, I think it’s great that you’re lying! I’m really proud.”

Daniel rolls his eyes.

“But,” she continues, pressing her index into his lips a little more firmly, “I am however asking you for one thing. One single, simple, easy thing.” 

She holds the pause, presumably to draw out some dramatic tension. He sighs, and waits.

“Next time you decide to sleep in my bed—”

“Not your bed,” he mumbles indistinctly against her finger.

“— and then lie about getting married to avoid the consequences,” she continues stubbornly, ignoring his interruption, and steps closer to him “then please do it somewhere where the local wedding tradition doesn’t involve being tied—to—each—other—for—three—days.” She hisses the last few words right in his face, bringing up her cuffed left wrist to shake the chain in his face.

And… yeah. Honestly, that’s fair. There’s very little he can say to that.

She gives him a narrow-eyed glare for a moment, and then takes a step back, dropping her hands — the chain jangles cheerily between them. “And if you must take us to get married somewhere where they do tie newly-weds together for days, then the least you can do — and I do mean the least — is to stop complaining and actually let me use my hand however I shall see fit.”

And on that, she pivots with a flare of dark hair that vindictively smacks him across the face, and stalks forward, leaving him to follow — or get his wrist dislocated, he supposes.

With one last deep breath, he walks after her, right hand extended in front of him, pulled forward by the chain of holy union — only three days to go. 

 

Four

Over the years he’s spent traveling to various planets in this galaxy, Daniel’s found that while culture and people can diverge wildly, some things stay remarkably consistent. For instance, most societies he’s interacted with put together some form of weekly calendar, divided into days, and collated into months — even if the definition of those units depend strongly on the planet in question. Those things form small pockets of familiarity among the alien, which sometimes makes them seem all the more bizarre.

Hospitals, he’s found, are one such thing.

The room is quiet, save for the beeping of machinery. Its walls are a soft off-white, its floor a pale blue linoleum, and the air carries the clean, sharp scent of disinfectant. If not for the alien script on the screens and the ghostly outline of the two moons in the sky, shining faintly through the small window, he could be in any old Earth hospital. Even the chair he’s sitting in is remarkably uncomfortable, in that very specific way he’s only ever encountered in infirmaries.

It’s almost comforting. Not that he particularly enjoys spending time in medical facilities, but he’s learnt to associate this atmosphere with the quiet, gentle efficacy of the SGC medical staff, which helps him feel a little better. Well, that, and the fact that Doctor Lam had come through the gate to confirm the local team’s diagnosis and had assured him that these people knew what they were doing. That had also helped a bit.

He sighs, tipping his head back and staring at the faint patterns on the ceiling. His eyes prickle with fatigue, and his burnt forearm itches something fierce under the bandage the nurse put over it. 

Lulled by the regular beeping of machinery, his eyes flutter closed of their own accord. His limbs seem to weigh a ton each and, despite his best efforts, he feels his grasp on consciousness slip between his fingers.

The building shakes with deep, unforgiving quakes. Blocks of stone detach from the ceilings, the columns, the ornate sculptures that decorate the vault, smashing and shattering into the ground, the jewelry, the piles of gold. They have minutes, at best, before the whole thing comes down.

They’re running, into the hall that leads outside, doing their best to dodge the rocks trying to crush them to the ground, leaping over the fault lines. Sam and Teal’c are in front of him — Vala to his left — he hears Mitchell right behind him, yelling at them to get a damn move on. And Julyero—

Goddamnit. Daniel skids to a stop, his heart in his throat as he scans the chaos around them, catching Mitchell as he comes barreling into him.

“Jackson!” Mitchell roars, and pushes him forward. “Move your ass!”

But Daniel doesn’t move, panic rising in his ribcage, spilling over. “Where’s Julyero?” he shouts to be heard over the deafening crash of stone. 

Mitchell’s eyes widen and he turns, scanning the increasingly blocked corridor behind him — but there’s no trace of the young local who guided them to this vault in the first place. Daniel squints ahead, towards the receding shapes of Sam and Teal’c, but he catches no glimmer of red hair, no striped cape.

“He must still be in the central chamber,” Vala says — he hadn’t realized she’d stopped. Her eyes are wide, dark in the ambient dimness.

Mitchell has a grip on Daniel’s shoulder before Daniel can so much as blink. “Don’t even think about it, Jackson,” he growls, pushing him back, away from the vault. “This is a death trap. You won’t make it to the chamber, and even if you do, you definitely won’t make it out.”

Daniel squares his jaw; prepares himself to push past Mitchell’s unwavering grip; turns a blazing look on the man—

But Vala, light on her feet, not held down or back by anyone, springs past the both of them in a blink. Daniel doesn’t even understand what’s happened until she’s already sprinting back into the fray, her hair a dark flare behind her.

“VALA!” he shouts, his voice overlapping with Mitchell’s as the man turns to try and catch her — but she’s already out of his reach, dodging obstacles gracefully.

“I’ll be fine,” she shouts over her shoulder, and jumps out of the way of a collapsing pillar. “Now go, both of you!”

She disappears around a corner — but when Daniel takes a step in her direction, Mitchell’s hand on his shoulder holds him back, drags him towards the exit. “Come on, Jackson,” he says, through gritted teeth and ice-chip eyes. “We need to get out of here.”

Daniel shakes himself free, forcing his way past Mitchell but before he can make any headway, the whole building shakes with a quake that’s twice the strength of all the previous ones.  For a moment there’s only the roar of cracking stone, the raw, scrapping sense of dust in his lungs, and the impacts, vibrating all the way through his bones.

When the smoke and dust clear and his vision resolves, the passage to the central chamber is nothing but a wall of stone, completely impassable.

She’s trapped in there.

Daniel startles awake, hands coming to the arms of his chair in a tight grip as he pitches forward, trying to catch his breath. Almost reflexively, his gaze scans the room, looking for reassurance, looking for what’s real, looking for proof—

He lets out a long, slow breath and sinks back into his chair when his eyes land on Vala. She’s pale and still unconscious, her dark hair a shock against the pale pillowcase and sheets, her face littered with small scrapes and cuts — but she’s here. Alive. Breathing. Not entombed in a forgotten Goa’uld vault hundreds of feet underground.

Daniel closes his eyes briefly, trying to will his heart to slow, absently rubbing his right thumb against his inner left wrist. It’s fine. Everyone is fine. Everyone is—

With a sharp inhale that promptly turns into a coughing fit, Vala jolts into awakeness, startling Daniel out of his considerations.

He’s out of his chair in a flash, by her gurney, helping her sit up as she tries to catch her breath. “Easy,” he says, slow and, hopefully, calming. “You’re okay. It’s alright.”

Vala blinks a few times, seemingly trying to get her bearings. Her eyes gleam in the low light of the bedside lamp, wide and startled. One of her hands wraps around Daniel’s bandaged forearm, apparently out of pure reflex as she stares at their surroundings, trying to catch her balance. 

He waits her out.

Eventually her gaze finds him. Some of the tension seeps out of her shoulders. “Daniel,” she breathes, voice cracking with dehydration.

“Hi,” he says, giving her a small smile, giving her space to adjust. 

A corner of her mouth twitches up. “Hi,” she says in a small, amused voice. “What—” but she trails off into another coughing fit.

He goes to reach for the glass of water left on the bedside table, but at the movement, Vala’s grip on his injured arm tightens reflexively. He hisses softly at the flash of pain it sends through his forearm, and she lets go immediately, turning wide, watering eyes on him.

“You’re inj—” she starts, but breaks off into more coughing.

“Hold that thought,” he says, and uses his newly freed arm to pass her the glass of water. He waits to see if she’ll need help, but she drinks unaided — which makes him feel a little better.

“Thank you,” she says, sounding a little more like herself. She shakes her head briefly, clutching the empty cup in her lap, and her gaze falls back to his arm, a frown creasing her forehead. “You’re injured?”

“I’m not the one in the hospital bed,” he counters, keeping his tone light. “You don’t remember anything?”

Vala sighs and rubs the heel of her hand into her eye, like maybe her head hurts — there’s a strong chance it does, after all. Eventually, after a few quiet seconds, she drops her hand and turns tired eyes on him. “Lakshmi’s vault,” she breathes resignedly.

“Yep.” He sits on the gurney next to her, careful not to jostle her. 

“We went down, looking for the naquadah signature Sam had picked up,” Vala recounts, frowning a little as she does. “We found the vault. We opened it. Sam deactivated the forcefield around the treasure and—”

“The whole thing came crashing down over our heads, yep,” Daniel completes, and removes his glasses to rub at his eyes. They prickle painfully in the dry, clean air of the room. 

Vala hums. “Goa’uld vaults do tend to do that, unfortunately. They’re ever so prickly about thieves.” She inhales sharply, eyes widening. “Julyero. He stayed behind. Is he—”

“He’s fine.” Daniel watches as Vala relaxes back into the pillow behind her. “Thanks to you.”

Vala lowers her eyes and doesn’t respond.

“They found you both in the central chamber,” Daniel continues, keeping his gaze on her expression, “after… Well, everything. The whole building collapsed, but the chamber turned into a bunker of sorts, apparently. Kept you alive while the rest was collapsing.”

She nods. “Safety protocol. I didn’t have enough time to deactivate the traps Lakshmi left behind, but I knew enough to activate the protective shielding.”

“It was damaged,” Daniel says; too sharply, if the surprised glance Vala shoots him is any indication. He tries to keep his tone under control. “The shielding, I mean. The vault had been dormant for centuries, and the shielding was damaged. It—” He clears his throat against a sudden pressure and looks up at the ceiling. “You were both injured. You, mostly.”

“I feel fine.” Her tone is neutral, carefully so.

He resists the urge to fiddle with his glasses, barely, and puts them back on instead. “Concussion,” he says, “and your left ankle is sprained. And— a lot of cuts. Some burns. That sort of thing.”

“Ah well,” she says, and her voice is so full of bravado that he can’t help but sneak a glance at her, finding her smile tight and her eyes guarded, “nothing a few minutes with a healing device can’t fix when I get back to base.”

“My point,” he says, because he has to, even though she stiffens at his tone, “is that… It was dangerous. Going back like this, I mean. You couldn’t have known the shielding would work. It might not have worked.”

“It did work,” she says, not looking at him. “So I don’t see what—”

“Vala,” he cuts her off, and something in his voice must give him away, because she turns to him, her expression unreadable. “What I’m trying to say — badly, apparently — is that… It was very brave of you.” He gives her a small, apologetic smile. “Going back like that, to help Julyero.”

“Oh.” She blinks at him, like she’s not sure she’s heard him right.

“I mean,” he amends, and tries to keep his voice light — though he’s not sure he succeeds, “it was horribly risky, and I’d love it if you quite literally never did that ever again, because…” he trails off against the memory of the past twelve hours, waiting to hear from the rescue teams as they combed through the ruins for any sign of her and Julyero. “Well.” He clears his throat. “Just… Don’t do it again. Please.”

“Ah,” she says, and looks down at her hands, fighting hard for her neutral expression. “Well, I suppose it just… felt like a waste. Being left to be buried at the bottom of a vault… It didn’t seem right.”

Daniel frowns. “You… are talking about Julyero, right? Not the… gold and jewels that were in the vault?”

“Well,” she says, and turns an impish grin on him, “him too, I suppose.”

He rolls his eyes, but he can’t help his own answering smile — there’s something about the sight of Vala’s grin that blunts the knife’s edge of panic that’s been cutting him up since he saw her disappear around the corner into that chamber.

“So everyone is alright?” she asks, bringing him out of his thoughts. “Sam, Teal’c, Mitchell?”

“All fine,” he confirms. “They went back through the gate to debrief. Doctor Lam dropped by to make sure these guys were competent, and agreed that you shouldn’t be moved until you woke up, just to make sure you were alright first.”

“And you… stuck around?” She gives him a curious look. 

Daniel straightens and, as naturally as possible, shifts his left wrist out of her view. “Well,” he says, aiming for reasonable, “they would only allow one person to stay with you, and since the doctor in charge wanted to check on my burn, it just… made sense for it to be me. We didn’t want to… leave you here on your own.”

Something unreadable passes in her gaze, before she shields it beneath a curtain of hair, dropping her head a little. “Thank you,” she breathes. “I appreciate that.”

He’s about to reach for her when the door to the room cracks open, first a fraction, and then wider, as the doctor who’s been monitoring Vala’s state realizes she’s awake.

“Oh,” he says, surprised and jovial. His blonde curls glow in the bright light that filters from the corridor behind him. “Wonderful!” He slips inside and closes the door behind him, before turning a warm smile on Daniel. “I see your wife is feeling much better, Dr Jackson.”

There’s a pause.

Daniel does his best not to wince. He clears his throat, and pointedly does not look at Vala. “Yes,” he manages eventually, and yeah, his voice is way too squeaky for his liking, “yes, she was just telling me she’s feeling fine. Isn’t that right, Vala?”

For a fraction of a second, Daniel has the fleeting hope that maybe she didn’t hear the term the doctor used, or will think she misheard. 

And then she speaks, her voice a low, amused drawl: “Yes, darling. Much better, in fact.”

Daniel closes his eyes.

Thankfully, the doctor takes over the interaction, leaving Daniel to step away to the window as he goes through his checklist and asks Vala a few questions. Daniel does his best to take in the view, but only succeeds in feeling Vala’s gaze on the back of his neck like a tangible warmth.

By the time the doctor closes the door behind him with the promise of releasing her in the morning, the silence in the room has gained a literal, physical weight. 

Daniel turns and leans back against the window, clinging to his neutral expression with his very fingernails. “So,” he says and tilts his head towards the door. “He thinks you’re doing better. That’s good.”

“Mhhm,” she hums, and she’s not smiling, but she might as well be: her eyes are positively gleaming with mirth as she eyes him. “I tend to agree. Husband.”

He closes his eyes. “Okay,” he starts. “It’s not what you think.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” He opens his eyes to find her staring expectantly at him, tapping one hand on the gurney next to her in an obvious invitation.

He goes back to his chair instead. “It’s… an admin thing.”

“Admin,” Vala repeats slowly.

“Yep.” He points at the door, in the vague direction of the hospital reception. “These guys only allow immediate family to stay with a patient, and they wouldn’t make an exception. Even though we’re technically literally aliens.” He makes a face. “I mean, at least they stick to their principles, I guess.”

“Riiiight,” she says, drawing out the word. “And so, you thought the best course of action was to…”

“We didn’t want you to have to stay here alone,” he says, his gaze firmly on his own hands. His thumb is once again rubbing at the skin of his inner left wrist. “We didn’t know when you’d wake up, and—” He tries to think of how to phrase this — not wanting to offend, not wanting to be misconstrued. Not with this. “I know you’re not… the biggest fan of medical environments,” he says eventually, carefully weighing his words. “Especially unfamiliar ones — which is… totally understandable.”

In his peripheral vision, Vala has gone very, very still.

“Not to say anyone would love that,” he continues, “but… autonomy is important. To you, especially. And unfamiliar medical environments aren’t great. For that. So I thought — we thought it’d be better if you weren’t alone when you woke up.”

Silence falls, somehow all the louder for the faint beeping of the machinery monitoring Vala’s vitals. 

When he risks a glance up, it’s to find her smiling at him — a small thing, barely there in comparison to the wide grins she usually favors, but genuine in a way that pulls painfully at his heart. 

She glances away when he meets her gaze, tucking her hair behind her ear in the first shy gesture he’s ever seen her make. “And so,” she says eventually, her tone landing just short of teasing, “you told them we were married.”

Ah.

“Um,” Daniel says, high-pitched and, he fears, extremely transparent.

Vala narrows her eyes at him. “Um?” she repeats dryly.

“Well.” He takes off his glasses, briefly polishes the lenses on his shirt, and puts them back on again. “I did tell them that. But, er. For it to count in their system, it had to be uh. Officialized?”

Vala’s eyebrows are flirting with her hairline. “Officialized, as in…”

“Well, technically? As in we maybe just got married. Again.” He suppresses a wince and turns a polite smile on her. “Like I said. It’s all purely administrative.”

“Of course.” Vala looks like she’s trying very, very hard not to laugh at him — and honestly, he appreciates the restraint she’s showing. He hadn’t expected to be so lucky. 

Her gaze narrows on his wrist, where he’s still pressing his thumb into his skin against the faint itch. He briefly hesitates, and then, with a sigh, holds up his arm — in for a penny, and all that.

“The local traditions,” he explains, turning his arm so she can spot the mark inked on his wrist, “use ink instead of rings, or bracelets, or the like. A married pair chooses the design together, and they get it marked semi-permanently on their left wrist to symbolize their commitment to one another. Of course,” he quickly adds, “I told them that didn’t mesh well with our culture, and they agreed to make ours less permanent — it should fade on its own in a few days, without needing to do an actual divorce ceremony… thing.” He makes a face. “It sounded kind of painful, not going to lie.”

He’s babbling. Obvious, nervous babbling, like a teenager. It takes actual physical effort to stop, and he braces himself for her reaction, for the teasing grin and flirty line, for the joke and the glittering eyes.

But when he looks up, there’s none of that. Instead, Vala’s studying her own left wrist, where the officiant stamped the mark Daniel chose onto her skin. Her expression is carefully neutral, but her eyes are intent as she scans the design, her right finger slowly tracing its contours — delicate, like she’s afraid she’ll smudge it.

After an eternity or two, she looks up at him. “It’s a seashell,” she murmurs, low and almost reverent.

His throat is shut tight. He nods, because no sound will make it through.

When the officiant had asked for a design, he’d blanked for a moment. And then he’d grabbed the pen and paper that they were handing to him and, with the ease of practice, had traced the loop of the shell — the delicate arcing lines, and the gently indented tail at the bottom. 

He hadn’t even realized he’d done it until he’d given the paper back, and once he had realized, well. It’d seemed nice. Fitting. Pretty, without being cutesy. Generic, but not boring. Elegant, and general enough that it would look like a random choice on his part. 

Except… She’s not looking at him like she’s thinking he chose it at random.

Instead, she’s looking at him like, maybe, she’s wondering if it isn’t random. Like, maybe, she’s seeing him, during sleepless nights in his office last year, turning away from untranslated manuscripts on the Ori, trying not to be crushed under the weight of the threat humanity — the galaxy — had been under. Like she can see him, diving instead into his resources on Ancient Egypt and its deities, into the Goa’uld data he’d cross-referenced over the years.

Like, maybe, she can see him researching a forgotten Goa’uld and her territories, before she’d been assassinated and extracted by the Tok’ra. Like she can see him slowly, painstakingly cross-referencing gate addresses and mythology and history, until he finds the story of a village by the sea, favored by its goddess over all others, frequently visited, where sometimes, an inhabitant was raised to godhood itself — a village where seashells were worked into jewels and turned into beauty, for years and years, revered long before a fake goddess decided to make it her home.

Vala looks at him like, just maybe, she sees all those nights, and all those hours, all spent in a search to understand her a little better. Not the mask she’s had to craft, or the shell Qtesh forced her into being — just her. Vala Mal Doran, as she was, before she was remade. Where she'd come from; who she'd been; maybe, deep down, who she still was.

He’s never told her. He’d never meant to.

But he can’t help but think, as he takes in her gentle smile and the delicate, reverent tracing of her finger around the mark, that maybe, just maybe… now he won’t have to. 

 

Five

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Vala sniffs, her chin tilted up, mustering an impressive amount of poise for someone who’s currently handcuffed to her chair. “Honestly? I didn’t think they’d remember.”

Daniel squints at her and pulls on his own handcuffs to demonstrate his point. “I’d say they remembered alright.” They’d managed to take maybe three steps from the gate before every guard in the vicinity had had their weapons pointed at them. 

“It was years ago!” She makes a face. “Actually, I thought the government might have cycled by now. Suppose not.”

“Suppose not, yeah,” Daniel says, dry as sand. He shakes his head. “What did you even do?”

“Oh, I’m sure I don’t know.” Her tone is perfectly casual — too perfectly, in fact.

He gives her a look.

“When I say years, Daniel, I do mean years.” She shrugs one shoulder, looking around the empty, nondescript room they’ve been left in. “But I’m sure whatever it is wasn’t that bad.”

“It was bad enough for them to arrest you on sight years down the line.”

“That is a reflection on them and their inability to let go of past happenings,” Vala retorts primly, “and not on the gravity of my actions or lack thereof.”

Daniel tips his head back with a sigh. “Okay, so you stole something. What.”

There’s a pause, and then. “I believe it might have been… jewels of some kind.”

“What kind.”

Vala shifts in her seat — but the movement is hampered by the short chains linking her wrists to the arms of her chair. “Maybe… crown?”

Daniel stares at her until she meets his gaze. “Crown jewels? As in, for a king?”

“Don’t sound so scandalized, Daniel. I’ve read about what the Tau’ri did to their own monarchs. I for one was never much for the concept of a divine right to rule, if you can believe it.”

“Right. So you stealing the crown jewels was about contesting the monarchy as a ruling system, was it?” He goes to rub his hands over his face, but the handcuffs stop him mid-movement. “Alright, first thing we do when we get back is you give us an extensive list of every gate address that leads to a planet where you’re wanted for some crime or other.”

Vala makes a face. “Every gate address?”

“Every single one.” He pulls on the cuffs again to highlight his point, and Vala makes a fair enough kind of expression.

There’s a short pause, filled only with the cold, slightly damp air of the stone-walled room and the distant sound of people on the other side of the door, and then Vala shifts again, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

“If…” she starts, and trails off, tapping her fingers against the arm of her chair in a quick, staccato rhythm.

Daniel shoots her a suspicious look. “If what?”

She clears her throat. “If the government really hasn’t changed at all, and the same people are still in charge,” she says, with a determinedly neutral cast to her voice, “then there’s a small chance that…”

Daniel raises his eyebrows when she trails off again.

She coughs a little, this time very clearly uncomfortable. “There’s a small chance,” she repeats, avoiding his gaze, “that the crown jewels aren’t going to be the only thing that comes up.”

That does not sound encouraging in the least. “What other things would you say might come up, then?” he asks, doing his best to cling to a polite tone.

She winces. “It’s, ah— A little complicated to explain.”

“Try.”

“Basically, I might have—”

But whatever explanation of what she might or might not have done evaporates when the door to their holding room flies open with so much gusto that it slams into the opposite wall with a deafening crack. Daniel flinches, bracing himself for furious guards, or maybe an irate king demanding immediate execution—

“Vala!”

…Except that’s not quite what he gets.

Instead, a young man strides into the room, thirty years old at the most. He’s got golden, wavy hair, bright green eyes, and striking features, all turned in an expression of delighted surprise. He’s wearing a cape, which is so ridiculous that it takes Daniel a second to also notice the sword strapped to his belt and the crown circling his forehead, all gold and rubies. 

He also decidedly does not seem to be interested in executing anybody, if the way he falls to his knees in front of Vala and grabs her right hand is any indication.

“Vala,” he says again, breathy and ecstatic, his eyes wide, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. “My darling, I feared I’d never see you again.”

Vala clears her throat awkwardly, not looking at Daniel. “Prince Hadrian,” she says, her voice a solid octave higher than it usually is. “What a… wonderful surprise.”

Daniel can feel his jaw hanging open, but there’s very little he can do about it right now. 

Hadrian clutches Vala’s hand in both of his, like he’s afraid she’ll slip through his grasp and disappear — which is honestly fair enough, considering this is Vala they’re talking about. “Stars above,” he says, and god, is he crying? Daniel isn’t completely sure what’s happening. “What gods or deities might I have pleased in such a way that my betrothed is at last returned to me after so long?”

Hang on a minute. 

“Betrothed?” Daniel half coughs, half chokes out.

Without looking in his direction, Vala kicks at his chair. 

“Yes, Hadrian,” she says, and now she sounds the way she does when she’s spinning a con out of nothing but air and charm. “It is so good to see you again. I— Well, what happened is that…” She drags out the word, clearly looking for any kind of satisfactory explanation.

But she apparently doesn’t need to bother. Hadrian’s expression turns somber as he looks at her. “Those horrible people,” he says, full of anguish and anger, “who stole the crown jewels. They took you as well.”

Oh come on.

“Yes.” Vala nods gravely. “Yes, that is exactly what happened.” She shakes her head, and her voice goes back to its more syrupy version. “There were just too many of them, Hadrian,” she says, and now she’s the one with a tear on her lashline — and how does she do that? It doesn’t even fall, just stays there, hovering cinematically. “They took me away, and they told me they’d—” She trails off into a choked sob.

Hadrian squeezes her hand with a despondent expression, which is good, because it means he doesn’t see Daniel roll his eyes hard enough to strain a muscle.

“They told me they’d killed you, Hadrian,” she says, and now the tear falls, rolling down her cheek as she blinks wide eyes at him. “I managed to escape, but I thought it too dangerous to return, if they’d taken your kingdom. And so… I ran away.” Another sob, and she shakes her head. “God, I’m so sorry, I should never have believed them.”

She makes to wipe her eyes, but the chain stops her. Immediately, Hadrian gestures at the guard hovering in the door, and the man steps forward, unlocking Vala’s cuffs with crisp efficiency.

“Um,” Daniel says, pulling on his own restraints, but no one pays him any attention. “No? Okay, that’s… Yeah, I can keep the cuffs, that’s fine, thank you.”

Hadrian hands Vala what looks like a monogrammed handkerchief, which she uses to wipe delicately at her eyes.

“Do not even think,” Hadrian declares, all fiery determination, “of apologizing, my love.”

Oh, so it’s my love, now. Okay.

“I should have never ceased searching for you,” he declares, looking like he’s delivering a speech to a crowd of thousands. “No jewel, not a single thing in this universe, could have been a worse loss than you were.”

Vala clutches the handkerchief to her chest with a teary smile. “Oh, Hadrian,” she whispers, and then blinks, her voice briefly slipping back into her natural register. “Wait, really? Because that was a lot of jewels—”

Daniel kicks at her chair.

Vala glares at him, but Hadrian is standing, beaming as he slowly guides Vala to her feet. “The stars have rewarded us for our patience, my love. Our wait is over, and as such, we shall be wed tonight, my darling Vala.”

Wow.

“Um—” Daniel starts.

“Oh,” Vala says at the same time, eyes wide in unmistakable panic. “Er, Hadrian…”

“Maybe we just hold on a minute,” Daniel says, trying to bring some kind of reasonable vibe to this very, very unreasonable situation.

He’s, completely unsurprisingly, ignored entirely.

Hadrian frowns and brings Vala’s hands up to his chest. “Darling? Is something wrong?”

Vala opens and closes her mouth a few times, before finally landing on: “I… I can’t marry you, Hadrian. I’m so terribly sorry.”

Hadrian looks crestfallen, mouth falling open in princely shock or despair. “What? Why?”

“Because…” and Vala glances over her shoulder at Daniel with a clear help! sort of expression — except that Daniel has no idea what in the actual hell has been happening for the last five minutes, much less how to help her — “Because I am…” a beat — two — three, “...already engaged… to be married.”

There’s a small silence. Hadrian lets go of her hands, turning away, and yep, yep. He is most definitely crying. It’s a very dignified, regal sort of crying, but it’s definitely crying.

“To whom?” he whispers, turning back to look at Vala with enough intensity to set paper on fire.

“To me,” Daniel says, for no reason he can really discern.

There’s a long silence.

For the first time since he walked into the room, Hadrian turns to Daniel, looking him up and down. Behind him, Vala is gesticulating at Daniel in a way that seems to indicate a very intense cut it out! kind of idea, with shakes of the head and a back-and-forth swing of the hand.

“To you?” Hadrian says slowly, and turns to Vala, who stops mid-gesture, her hands flying behind her back, a painfully fake innocent smile pulling at her lips.

She blinks at him. “To him?” she repeats, like it’s a question.

Daniel widens his eyes at her with a come on tilt of the head.

“To him,” she repeats with a grave nod. “Yes, to… that man. Here. That one.” There’s definitely something a little offensive about the way she says it, but Daniel doesn’t get the time to work out what.

Hadrian’s gaze goes from him to Vala in a desperate back-and-forth sweep. “But…” he whispers to Vala, “my love, I…”

Diving fully back into her con persona, Vala steps forward and takes Hadrian’s hands. “I thought you dead, Hadrian,” she says, her voice shaking tremulously. “I had to live on. For you, for your memory.”

It’s a little heavy-handed, if you ask Daniel; but of course, no one does.

Hadrian nods, grave and somber. “Of course, my love,” he says, tracing one finger down Vala’s cheek. “And, no doubt, this man’s kingdom has already learnt to see you as their princess, and is rejoicing at the perspective of your being theirs.”

Okay, what.

But Vala doesn’t miss a beat, nodding with a tearful smile. “Daniel’s realm needs me, Hadrian. But your kingdom has lived on without me.”

This is possibly the stupidest thing Daniel has ever witnessed, but, somehow, it seems to work: Hadrian mirrors Vala, nodding, and then letting go of her hands. “I understand. You have your duty.” He brings a hand to his mouth. “You’ve always been so honorable, so virtuous. Always putting your duty ahead of yourself.”

Daniel about chokes on thin air.

“The gods are cruel jesters, my darling… To bring you back to me only to steal you away once more…” Hadrian brings a hand to his chest, and bows lightly. “But I could not ask you to betray your word.”

“Thank you for understanding, Hadrian,” Vala says solemnly, and bows her head at him.

With one more tearful sigh, Hadrian turns away and back to the door. Vala turns wide eyes on Daniel, with a thank god wipe of her hand on her forehead.

“Betrothed?” Daniel mouths at her incredulously.

She shakes her head, but an amused grin pulls at her lips. “A lady never tells,” she replies, just as silently, and adds a small wink.

Daniel is about to make a rude gesture that definitely doesn’t befit a supposed leader of a realm but before he can, Hadrian, who had only just about reached the door, turns around to face them with a dramatic swish of cape.

“No,” he announces, and dread fills Daniel’s stomach.

That can’t be good.

“Hadrian, darling?” Vala asks lightly, taking a step towards him.

“I cannot abide this, Vala,” he declares, with enough drama to rival even Vala’s most theatrical moments. "I shall not lose you like this.” And then, horrifically, he turns to Daniel. “I challenge you, sir, for the fairest hand this universe has ever seen.”

Oh boy. “Challenge me?” Daniel repeats hesitantly.

There’s nothing hesitant in Hadrian’s demeanor. “To a duel. Today, at sundown. You’ll name the place.”

Wonderful. “A… duel?”

“Yes.” Hadrian raises his chin defiantly. “To the death.”

“To the death?” Daniel shifts in his chair, trying not to look at Vala, whose eyes are so wide they seem to be in danger of falling out. “Can’t it be, I don’t know, to the floor? To the first touch?” He makes a face. “To the, uh. Anything else?”

“To the death it is,” Hadrian declares, and nods determinedly. “I shall make arrangements to find you a witness.” And he steps up to the guard at the door, talking in hushed, precipitated tones.

Discreetly, Vala inches over and sits back down in her chair next to Daniel. “Well,” she whispers conversationally, “that could have gone worse.”

Daniel reflects briefly on the fact that maybe it is a good thing that his hands are still tied, as it prevents him from doing anything drastic — like, say, strangling the woman sitting in front of him. “I’m engaged in a battle to the death for the right to marry you.”

“Yes.” She raises a finger. “But he wasn’t mad at me at all.”

“Maybe he should have been a little more mad at you, actually. That way he wouldn’t be trying so hard to marry you right this second.”

She makes a fair enough face. “Yes, that’s rather inconvenient.”

Daniel lets his head drop forward briefly, closing his eyes. “Can’t I just forfeit?” He opens his eyes and gestures towards Hadrian with his chin. “He seems like a good guy to marry, right? Princely. Very tearful. Blonde.”

Vala kicks his chair. “No,” she hisses. “Don’t you dare. I am not marrying him.”

“You’re the one who got engaged to him in the first place!”

“It’s not. Happening.” Vala’s glare is intense enough to melt lead. 

Daniel doesn’t let it deter him. “Neither is me fighting a guy to the death because of one of your old cons!”

Vala huffs, stands up, and puts her hands on her hips. Daniel thinks he hears her mutter something along the lines of “if you want something done properly” but before he can be sure, Vala sighs, loud and dramatic, and proceeds to fall into her chair in a masterfully executed faint. 

He closes his eyes and sighs.

Hadrian is by Vala’s side in a blink. “My love,” he exclaims, landing on his knees again, grabbing for Vala’s hand. “Are you unwell? I’ll fetch a physician right away. And we must get you out of here, the air is terrible for your lungs—”

But Vala shakes her head fervently, slipping out of his grasp to clutch his hands instead. “No, Hadrian,” she says, breathy and raw, “I can’t let you do this. Your people need you, and Daniel is too important to his realm…” She lets out a sob, bringing a hand to her eyes. “I’d rather die myself than see either of you dead, much less on my account.”

For the love of god.

“Speak not of such evils, my darling,” Hadrian says, eyes wide. “The very thought— No.” He closes his eyes and nods. “Alright. If not to the death… You, Vala, my dear, shall name the method and the means of the duel.”

Vala blinks. “The means. Right. Er.” She glances at Daniel, but unfortunately, he is completely blanking on potential duel methodology. She turns back to Hadrian with a small smile. “Alright. Let’s do… uh…. poetry?”

Daniel takes a long, long breath.

Hadrian is back on his feet with a flash. “Poetry,” he breathes, and Daniel would swear his eyes are gleaming. “That is the perfect choice. You shall name the winner, my love, and the wedding will follow immediately.” He turns a blazing look on Daniel. “As for you, sir, I shall see you at sundown.”

And on that, with one last swish of cape, he vanishes through the door, which closes behind him and the guard, leaving Daniel alone with Vala.

Daniel pulls on his cuffs. “About the untying thing…?” he calls, but doesn’t get a response — not that he was expecting one, mind.

There’s a pause.

“Poetry,” Daniel repeats blankly.

“I panicked.”

“Yes. I could tell.”

Vala straightens in her chair and leans towards him, pulling a long hairpin out of her braid. “Well, it was that or a fencing match, and we all know you’d have lost that.” With a practiced eye, she studies the handcuff briefly, and then starts working the pin into the keyhole.

Daniel turns an indignant look on her. “No, we do not know that?”

Vala rolls her eyes. “Oh, please, Daniel.” She makes a vague hand gesture in his direction. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

Daniel opens his mouth, shakes his head, and closes his mouth. “Shelving that for now,” he says eventually. “You’re sure you can’t just… marry that guy and then we leave?”

A hint of grimness shows in her expression. “If I marry him,” she says with a twist of the wrist that makes the cuff spring open, “he will never let me leave this castle ever again.”

There’s something under her tone that makes Daniel shift uncomfortably. He watches as she moves to the other side of his chair, working on the other cuff. “He didn’t seem that bad,” he comments hesitantly. “Bit intense, maybe?”

But she shakes her head. “He’s… stranger than he looks.”

“And he already does look pretty strange,” Daniel points out.

A corner of her mouth goes up in a small smile. “He does.” She sighs and looks down at her hands. “Why do you think I left in the first place?”

Daniel blinks. “To steal the crown jewels?”

“Come on, Daniel.” She rolls her eyes. “I could have stolen much more than just the crown jewels if I'd gotten married.”

Right.

“Marriage to him wasn’t an option then,” she concludes, and, with a deft movement, breaks open the second cuff. “And it absolutely isn’t now.”

Daniel lets out a long breath. “Fine,” he capitulates, and brings his hands up, rubbing his newly freed wrists. “These guys don’t know Shakespeare, right?”

 

+1

“Come on, Daniel!”

Daniel closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and focuses on trying to pretend this conversation isn’t happening.

Unfortunately, Vala is an expert at making that exact thing extremely difficult. With practiced ease, she perches onto his desk, sitting and elegantly crossing her legs right next to him and, more pressingly, right next to the priceless Ancient tablet he’s been painstakingly reconstituting for the better part of an hour.

A hiss of breath escapes between his teeth, and he reaches forward in his seat, putting his arm on the desk between her and the artifact she’s about one wrong move away from pushing off onto the floor.

“Why not?” she continues, like he’s been replying to her, which he hasn’t, because, as mentioned, he’s pretending none of this is happening. “That’s what I don’t understand.” She picks up the article he's printed on Old Persian cuneiform and fans herself with it.

“Please sit further away from the priceless archeological artifact,” Daniel says.

She tilts her head. “I’ll sit further away if you say yes.”

For God’s sake. “I’m not marrying you,” he snaps, and goddamnit — that’s the last ten minutes spent ignoring her down the drain.

Now that she knows she has his attention, she turns to him like a shark who’s just scented blood in the water. Her hand lands on the edge of the desk, a mere ten inches from part of the tablet, and Daniel winces. 

“Come on, Daniel,” she says, dry and exasperated. “Don’t be such a wet blanket about this.” She shakes her head. “It’s not like I’m asking you to kill someone.”

Privately, Daniel thinks it might have been better if she had.

Outwardly, he sticks to: “It’s not going to happen.” And, even though he knows it’s a terrible idea to indulge her, he can’t help but ask: “Where is this even coming from?”

It’s a fair question. After all, nothing specific had prepared him for Vala cornering him in the commissary while he was mid-lunch to brightly (and loudly) demand that they get married, the sooner the better. Nor for the continued string of proposals that had followed him all the way back to his office, and had kept going for the past hour and change. 

Vala’s… Vala, sure, but even for her, it’d seemed a little random.

“I’m so glad you asked.” She puts the paper down onto her lap with a clap of her hands against her legs. “It’s either we get married, or I go crazy.”

Yeah — seems a little late for that, he pointedly does not say.

“Essentially,” she continues, swinging her legs beneath her, “this temple to bureaucracy you call the SGC seems to have decided to place my administrative file in a ‘holding pattern’.” She, of course, does the air quotes — she’s been very, very quick when it comes to picking up any Earth idiom that involves sarcasm. “By administrative file, I mean the collection of forms and paperwork that dictate when I will be granted a Tau’ri ID and, more crucially, the authorization to go off-base alone. And by ‘holding pattern’ —” more air quotes — “I mean ‘bureaucratic limbo’, which is to say no one knows when it might ever see the light of day again.”

Daniel frowns. That’s… odd, though the SGC is at its core US military, and therefore remarkably slow at times. But all the same: “And this is related to you proposing to me… how?”

“Well, I talked to Camile about this and—”

Hang on a minute. “Camile?” he asks, looking up at her.

Vala raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Camile Wray?”

“Yeess?” She draws out the word.

“Camile Wray from the IOA?”

“Of course.” Vala tosses her hair back over her shoulder. “She’s in charge of administrative procedures for aliens who go through Tau’ri integration protocols, such as yours truly.” She gestures delicately at herself.

“How do you know that?”

She smiles, lopsided and coy. “Oh please, Daniel,” she says, which does not answer his question in the least. “Anyway, I was talking to her about the file and—”

“Camile Wray,” Daniel asks again, the pieces clicking into place with an exasperating sort of familiarity, “who is marrying her partner next month?”

Vala lights up, beaming at him from her perch. “Yes! Sharon. We’re getting drinks and dinner next week, on Wednesday.” She regards him a moment and then adds, with an expression that suggests extreme magnanimity: “You’re welcome to join us, if you promise to behave.”

He really does not want to find out what behaving entails in her view. He shakes his head, turning in his lab stool to face her properly. “Is this about you wanting to get a wedding dress, or, I don’t know, a ceremony, because you’ve been talking shop about Camile’s wedding?”

Vala tips her chin up with an offended little huff. “How dare you.” Her expression melts from offense to a thoughtful kind of interest, her head tilting to one side. “That being said, we did talk about the organization, and Earth weddings sound so delightful. So many adorable little traditions…” She trails off, presumably when she catches Daniel’s expression, and straightens, clearing her throat. “But no. Of course this isn’t about wanting a wedding for a wedding’s sake.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s not. I don’t even need an actual wedding ceremony, because the point,” and she pushes two fingers into his shoulder, “that I have been trying to make through your ceaseless interruptions, is that my file is stuck in the limbo of pending review.” She makes a face. “Apparently, the IOA wishes to review my former activities more in depth before they can make a decision. Which is ridiculous, if you ask me, considering the SGC itself has declared me to be trustworthy.” Her hand goes to the SG1 patch on her sleeve, and she smiles. “But believe it or not, they did not ask me, and so, in the meantime, I can’t get my own ID, my own credit card, or even go off the base unaccompanied.”

Very privately, Daniel can’t help but feel a little for her. As much as he tends to spend most of his time on the base, only rarely going back to his own apartment, he knows it’s a very different situation to be forced to stick around. Cheyenne Mountain isn’t the most welcoming place around, after all, with its fluorescently-lit concrete halls and complete lack of natural light.

That feeling somewhat evaporates as Vala continues speaking: “But what Camile very kindly explained to me is that if my identification were to be needed more urgently, well… that might push my file to the top of the pile, so to speak.”

Ah. “Needed more urgently, for things such as…” Daniel prompts dryly.

Vala shrugs. “Well, there are a few options. Apparently, one needs ID to apply for a fishing license, for example. Adopting a lovely little animal, also.” Her expression turns thoughtful. “Applying to be a candidate in a general election is also an option, but I feel the IOA might have other objections.”

Maybe not just the IOA, Daniel muses.

“But the point of the matter is,” she says, shaking her head, refocusing, “getting married is in fact the simplest, most expeditious way to get my file processed. And so.” She hops off the desk and drops to one knee in front of him. “Daniel Jackson,” she says, and brings her hands together in a pleading gesture, “I ask you again: will you marry me so I don’t actually go stir-crazy while locked up under a literal mountain?”

Daniel swivels his lab stool, leans over towards her, and smiles. “For the fifty-third time today: no, I will not.”

Vala tips her head back with a groan of frustration, before perching back on the table, this time lying down flat on her back next to his Ancient tablet. Pens and trinkets clatter to the floor but she doesn’t so much as shift, her hands over her face in apparent despair.

“Danieeel,” she says, drawing out the word plaintively. She drops her hands and turns her head to look at him. “How can I ever hope to assimilate into Tau’ri culture if I can’t experience it?” Her gaze turns back to the ceiling, her tone going wistful. “Without my own little apartment to decorate, and neighbors to meet, and coffee to make, and dinner parties to throw, and stores to shoplift from, and cars to learn to drive, and—”

“What was that middle one?”

She glances at him. “Dinner parties?”

Okay. He holds up a hand. “Nevermind. But if you wanted your paperworks processed faster, maybe you just shouldn’t have stolen so many things in your life.”

She gives him an unimpressed look. “And how was I supposed to know it would become a problem in this way, hm?”

“Well, then, maybe you shouldn’t have tried to steal the Prometheus the first time you encountered the SGC,” he suggests, a little more dryly. 

The suggestion earns him a withering look, but he shrugs it off.

“It’ll just be a few more weeks, and we’re off world most of the time anyway,” he points out. “You’ll be fine.”

She sits up sharply, turning and planting one hand inches away from the tablet to lean over him. “I will not be fine at all, actually, Daniel.” She gestures vaguely at the ceiling. “Believe it or not, I am a living being who needs to see the sun, every now and then.” 

Her expression turns sly, and she traces the line of his jacket — he bats her hand away. 

“If I’m allowed to go off-base alone,” she says, not letting it deter her, “then I’ll be much less bored, which means I’ll be much less likely to bother you when, say, you’re trying to—” her gaze slides to the artifact — “do whatever it is you like to do down here.”

As transparent as it is, that’s actually the first argument that makes Daniel stop and almost consider it for half a second. 

He comes back to his senses when she continues, reminding him of what they’re actually talking about: “Come on, it’s just a signature.” She gives him an encouraging smile. “We don’t even have to do a party.” A sigh, like the perspective is a great disappointment. “Well, it’s boring without a party but, after all, you are boring, so I suppose it fits.”

Only experience and practice allow him to let that one slide quietly.

“We can get divorced right after,” she continues. “Actually, it’s better if we do. You might need ID to get married, but you really need it for a divorce, apparently, so if some of the paperwork is held back, they’ll have to process it for the divorce.”

Daniel sighs, bowing his head. “Can’t you go bother someone else?”

She clicks her tongue. “Well, I was going to ask Mitchell first, but I don’t want to make things awkward for him with Dr Lam.” She makes a face. “And I think even with the divorce, it might in fact create a little awkwardness. Especially since poor Cameron isn’t exactly suave most of the ti—”

“Wait, hang on.” Daniel blinks. “You wanted to ask Mitchell first?” His brain catches up with his mouth and he holds up a hand, continuing before she can reply. “Nope, wait, I don’t care.” He tilts his head. “But Mitchell and Lam, though? Since when?”

She rolls her eyes. “Do you really not pay attention to anything that’s not an old dusty parchment, darling? He’s been pining for months now. It’s very obvious. Pining always is”

Daniel shifts in his seat.

She continues, not noticing. “I offered my services to help him along, but he didn’t seem interested.”

“Can’t imagine why,” he mutters under his breath.

“Right?” she asks, seemingly missing the sarcasm entirely. “Still, I think I’ll have to intervene if this lasts much longer. It’s getting ridiculous.” Her gaze turns to Daniel, laser sharp. “But not as ridiculous as you are being right now.”

Ugh. “I am not! Marrying you!” He’s not sure how to make it any clearer.

But apparently, he’ll need to work it out, because Vala is completely undeterred, crossing her legs the other way, bringing her hair over one shoulder to toy with the strands. “Come on, we’ve already gotten married a bunch of times anyway.”

She holds up her left arm, where the faint seashell mark is still etched on her inner wrist — apparently, the people of P2X-664 had a different definition of the word temporary than Daniel did, because his own mark is also still visible.

To his surprise, he realizes she’s also wearing the ornate cuff bracelet from P4X-398, sans chain. He’s seen her wear it a few times, and had braced himself the first time he’d noticed, expecting constant teasing — but she hadn’t brought it up. In fact, this is the first time she’s bringing up any of their previous “marriages”.

“This is the same thing,” she says, shaking her arm to make her point. “If anything, it’s even less of a big deal, because it’s not visible and doesn’t require us to stand within three feet of each other at all times for days. It’s just a signature on a piece of paper.”

Daniel lets out a long breath, trying to keep his tone even. “No, actually,” he grits out, “it’s not the same thing at all.”

An eyeroll. “Oh, what, because it’s on Earth?”

“Yes because it’s on Earth?”

She shrugs. “That makes no difference.”

“It makes a lot of difference, actually, thank you,” he counters, and he sounds way too defensive, but come on. “It’s legally binding, for a start—”

“Only on this planet.” Vala looks completely unfazed.

“This planet happens to be my planet, Vala.”

“All those other marriages were also legally binding, you know,” she says, making a show of studying her nails — which are covered in a very not-regulations-abiding silver polish. “Technically, at least, on their respective planets.” She makes a face. “Well, maybe not the lazsla’tar thing, since that was a fake Claim.”

Fake or not, he can still feel the small raised scar on the roof of his mouth, where the device dug into it. It stings every time he eats something even remotely acidic.

“And so,” Vala continues, with the air of someone who’s just demonstrated that two and two is four, “this wouldn’t be any different, so can we please just—”

“No,” he cuts her off, maybe a little too sharp. “No we can’t. We can’t, because it’s not the same. Because this is Earth, and it’s my traditions, my cultural definition of a wedding, and I don’t want it to be—” He snaps his mouth shut just in time, so hard he almost bites through his tongue.

There’s a pause.

After what feels like a short eternity, Vala smiles. It’s practiced, and fake, and makes it hard to breathe. 

With a quick shift, she hops off the desk to stand, pushing her hair back over her shoulder. “Ah,” she says, perfectly neutral. “I see.”

Shit. Shit. “Vala—” he starts, but she doesn’t let him speak.

“It’s alright,” she says quickly, shaking her head. “I understand. I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” he cuts in, trying to work out how to salvage this before it’s too late, “you don’t understand. It’s not—”

“Real?” She looks at him, her expression a neutral mask, save for her eyes, which are sharp and clever and hurt. “That’s what you were going to say, right? You don’t want it to be real, and a Tau’ri marriage would be too real. I understand.” Slowly, almost unnoticeably, she takes a step back towards the door. “I’ll talk to Camile,” she says, her tone light and paperthin, “and see if there are other ways I can fix this. Maybe the fishing license angle is workable.” She turns towards the exit.

“Vala,” he says, defeated, and she stops. “That’s not what I meant.” He takes off his glasses, digs his fist into his eyes briefly. “Well, it is, but… It’s not.”

“Hmm. You’re really clearing things up, darling,” and the words are right, but the tone is wrong, too high, too tight for the teasing lilt she’s clearly aiming for, and her back is to him, which means she doesn’t want him to see her face, and goddamnit. 

He puts his glasses back on, puts his hands on his desk, watches the tablet without seeing it. “The realness,” he says slowly, “isn’t the problem.” He needs to fix this, needs to find the words that will take away the tension in her shoulders without giving him away completely — because that would be so much worse.

“You don’t have to try and make me feel better, Daniel,” she says, and there’s a hint of sharpness in the words. “I don’t need that from you.”

Frustration rises, too hot and impulsive, at his own inability to say what he means — isn’t he supposed to be a damn linguist? “No! No, I meant… What I was going to say— It’s —” Ugh. “I don’t want it—”

“Yes, you’ve made that perfectly clear.”

“Like this,” he snaps. “I don’t want it like this.”

Silence falls over the room. 

Fuck. Fuck.

Slowly, horrifically slowly, Vala pivots to look at him. Her expression is utterly unreadable; her eyes are gleaming. “What did you say?” she asks, low, quiet, like she’s genuinely unsure whether she heard him right.

Daniel stares at the artifact hard enough to burn a hole through the stone. “Nothing.”

He’s not looking at her, but he picks up on her smile all the same as she starts walking up to him and, god. This might be worse than anything he could have imagined, actually. Literally dying maybe wasn’t as bad as this.

Vala sidles up to him, edging ever closer. “No,” she says slowly, low and lilting, “No, you said, ‘not like this’.” A pause, heavy with double-entendre. “Not like what, darling?”

He does not look up. “You know what,” he says to the tablet in front of him, “I change my mind. Go marry Mitchell. I’m sure you two will be very happy together. Or make great divorcees, or whatever it is you’re actually wanting to do.”

Vala slowly wraps her hands around his arm, and presses up against him. Her hair brushes his shoulder, and she’s smiling, teasing and flirty and light in his peripheral vision, and, yes, this is torture actually. 

“Like. What?” she says again, delicately separating the words.

And he can’t take it. He just can’t. Not with this. Not now. Not after the last few weeks.

He bows his head in defeat, letting his exhaustion show in his voice as he whispers: “Please don’t… don’t do that.”

Vala pulls back slightly, presumably alarmed by his changed demeanor and tone, but she doesn’t let go of him either. “Daniel?”

He uses his free hand to take his glasses off again and puts them down on the desk, rubbing the heel of his hand into his eyes. “Please don’t make me say it.” He drops his hand, swallows hard. “Don’t make me say it, because I will say it, and then you’ll laugh, and then—” His throat closes, but he forces the words through anyway. “I don’t know. I don’t think I can take that. Not now. Not about this.”

He glances up at Vala to find her staring at him, eyes wide, a concerned frown lining her forehead. She squeezes his wrist. “Daniel, what are you—”

He can’t take this. He stands, out of his stool, breaking her hold on him as he steps away, and runs his hands over his face again, through his hair, looking for a calm that remains impossibly out of his reach. “You want me to say it? Fine. Fine, I’ll say it. Why not? Why wouldn’t I? What’s there left to lose?” He laughs, short and sharp and too angry, but he can’t control himself. 

He braces himself against the desk and turns his head to face her. Her expression is stricken; lost and confused, and he has to bite his tongue to keep a semblance of neutral.

“Look,” he says, struggling to bring his tone back to something level. “It was fine, at first. On those planets? It was fine. I mean, some of them were… Not ideal, obviously. I could have done without the torture.” He makes a face. “I could have done without the poetry contest, which was, arguably, worse than the torture, as weird as that might sound.”

His words come fast and brittle, snapping off into shards, and Vala, who must have no idea what he’s on about, almost looks scared in the face of his sudden sharpness.

He hates that. Hates that he’s making her feel this way, and hates even more that he can’t control himself. He starts pacing instead, trying to channel the excess energy into movement, resisting the urge to sweep the desk clean with a wave of the arm and a clatter of notebooks and artifacts to the floor. 

This isn’t her fault. He put himself in this situation, because he should have known better, because he had known better and he’d gone and done it anyway, and now he’s here, and he’s always been an idiot but this is pushing it. Still — she deserves the truth. 

“I could handle it,” he continues, without looking at her, “because it was obvious, you know? That made it easy. Easy to remember that it was all fake. That it didn’t mean anything. It was a joke! Just a joke, nothing more. Didn’t mean anything to you, didn’t mean anything to me, didn’t mean anything to anyone. Totally fine.”

So much for telling her the truth: even that’s a lie. 

It’s a lie, and it’s obvious in everything. It’s in the way he’s been careful not to scrub at the seashell mark on his wrist when he washes his hands — because it reminds him of her expression when she first saw it. 

It’s in the cuff he’s keeping in a box on the top shelf of this very office, because he remembers the way she’d looked, soft and smiling and sleep-rumpled when the first lights of dawn had streamed into their shared room. 

It’s in the sore wound on the roof of his mouth, and the way every time something prods at it, he can see the glimmer of real anger that had gleamed in her eyes as she’d taken in his injuries. 

It’s in the flowered ribbon, pressed between the pages of a latin dictionary, that’d been tied between his wrist and hers, alien flowers that had made her eyes look bluer than should have been possible. 

It’s in the bejeweled hairpin he’s been using as a bookmark, that she’d handed to him after a victorious poetry face-off, as a token to represent the giving of one’s affections — all because seeing it is like seeing her face as she tried not to laugh at Prince Hadrian’s expression while Daniel did his best to recite Shakespeare’s a rose by any other name tirade.

It’s in all the tokens of their fake marriages, which he’s kept as keepsakes of real moments, glimpsed in between. He’s never told anyone — of course not. It was stupid enough to do, much less bring up. Sentimental, in the worst way to be — clinging to scraps, to things that could never mean anything, that were never meant to. He’d known that. But he’d kept them anyway.

He closes his eyes briefly. “But this,” he says eventually, forcing the truth out like pulling out a tooth. “I won’t be able to do it with this. The thing is, Vala… I know those traditions don’t mean any more to you than the others, but they do to me.” He gives her a small, sad smile. “I grew up with them. I know what they mean. Maybe more than most people, because I studied them, and their history, and the people who followed them throughout the centuries. I know what they carry, and it might just be some words and a signature to you, but it’s not to me. It’s just not.” 

He forces a deep breath, braces himself, and dives.

“So, no. The problem isn’t that it would be real — it’s that it wouldn’t be. And I won’t be able to remember that — that it’s fake, that it doesn’t mean anything. That it doesn’t matter to you, or that it shouldn’t matter to me. But I’ll have to remember. I’ll have to keep remembering, and I just—” His vocal chords give up on him, closing with a finality that forces him to whisper the next few words: “I can’t. So please… Please just — don’t ask that of me.”

The silence that follows is the kind he’s heard before — in sealed tombs, opening for the first time in hundreds of years; in devastated, ruined castles, where nature reclaims stone; in churches and chapels, where every footstep echoes with the weight of centuries. He doesn’t look at Vala.

Eventually, its weight becomes too heavy to bear. “You can laugh,” he says, trying for light, landing a star system away. “I know it’s ridiculous. I know it’s—” and his voice cracks. He laughs at himself, sharp, and broken, because, well, god. He’s so stupid, isn’t he?

Vala’s hand lands on his arm, feather-soft, and Daniel startles — but she doesn’t move back. Instead, she speaks, barely audible in the deafening quiet: “I’m not laughing.”

Anger surges, bitter and hot in his chest and his throat and his heart. He makes to break her hold on him but she doesn’t let go. “Why not?” he snaps. “I’m laughing. I’m completely aware that this is laughable. You don’t have to…” and he gestures with his free hand, vague and brusque, “to make me feel better. You were always very clear, you know. This —” and he gestures between her and him — “isn’t serious. It isn’t real. It could never be real.”

She lets go, takes a step back. 

“How could it ever be?” he continues, and he’s getting louder, too loud, but he can’t stop. “I mean, look at you. Look at me. It couldn’t—” His throat is tight, too tight for this. “I mean, you never pretended otherwise, you know? This is on me, not on you, because you were always very clear.”

“Was I?” Vala whispers, the words barely a breath of sound.

“Of course!” He’s gesticulating, he’s upsetting her, and he’s, as always, making this so much worse — but then again, isn’t that his whole thing? He lets out a sharp breath of unamused laughter, rough as glass shards. “I mean, the jokes, and the flirting, and the innuendo — there was never anything real about this; about us, about this... relationship, or whatever it was supposed to be. I just couldn’t—” and fuck, his voice breaks again. “I couldn’t—”

“Daniel.” She’s still quiet, but her tone is firm, cutting through his monologue like a blade. Her hand is back on his forearm, a barely-there pressure clearly meant to ground him.

Unfortunately, it’s not so much grounding as it is excruciating, like a flame licking at his bare skin, and he pulls himself free, taking a step back and turning to face her. “You should be laughing, Vala. You win.”

She frowns. “Win? Win what?”

“I don't know!” He’s not even making any sense anymore, but his eyes are burning and his lungs are too tight, and he is just done. “You wanted to mess with me? Congratulations, you’ve messed with me as much as humanly possible. More than you probably ever wanted to, actually. Sorry about that.” He rubs his fist into his temple, fighting a nascent headache. “So please, just… Laugh, or leave, or do whatever you want, and we can put this behind us. Start fresh. I won’t bring it up again, I promise you that.” He falls silent, and waits.

Except… She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t leave, either. Instead, she steps closer again, and says: “Daniel.” She waits until he’s looking at her to continue, impossibly softly. “I’m not laughing.”

He can’t hold her gaze. He looks down at his hands, at his desk, at anything that isn’t her. “Vala—” he starts, throat tight, eyes aching, an apology burning the tip of his tongue — but he can’t say it. Because for all he’s sorry he went and screwed this up, went and fell for the jokes, for the real moments he glimpsed in between and that she never meant for him to see, he’s not sorry he told her.

“I’m not laughing, Daniel,” she says again, and takes another step closer. “And, evidently, I’m not leaving, either.”

There’s a pause. Something in her tone catches his attention, pries up an edge of the crushing block of misery that’s weighing him down. 

He looks up at her. Her eyes are wide, gleaming too bright in the soft light of the day spectrum lamp Jack got him a few years back. She’s smiling — that small smile he’s only glimpsed a few times, raw and honest and genuine, and oh. Oh.

He swallows against a suddenly dry throat. “You’re not laughing,” he says, finally catching her meaning.

A corner of her mouth twitches up a little, but she nods. “What might we deduce from that?”

“Um,” Daniel says, intelligently. In his defense, there is nothing in his head right now, beyond the way she’s standing closer now, close enough that he can feel her warmth. He looks at her again, and he can feel himself start to smile, just a little. “You’re…” he starts, and has to stop and try again. “You’re not messing with me, right?”

She shrugs, but it’s light, and she says, “Well, I don’t know.” She gives him a look, one eyebrow raised. “Apparently, I’ve already messed with you as much as humanly possible?” 

The words are teasing, but her voice shakes, ever so slightly, and her eyes flick over his face, almost shyly.

He closes the gap and kisses her. 

She meets him halfway, kisses him back and presses closer, pulling at his jacket to bring him to her, backing him up against the desk. His hand is on her cheek, in her hair, and he gives her everything she asks for, because, really, he owes her that much, after all this time. Her other hand sneaks to the nape of his neck, pulls at the hair there, and she grins into his mouth at the sound he makes, pressing impossibly closer, and yet not close enough.

It’s messy, and fast, and everything but fake — it is, in fact, as real as it gets. Not a joke, not a con, not a trick; not for an officiant, or an audience, or a guard; not to sell a ruse, or a scam, or a lie. He’s not pretending to be something he isn’t, not posing as a king or a slave or a husband — he’s just Daniel, kissing Vala, because he wants to, and because she wants him to. The simplest thing in the world — inarguably real, in a way he’d never thought he could get.

They pull away, eventually — just barely, just enough to breathe, still tangled in each other. Vala looks up at him, eyes shimmering, and asks: “Can I take this as a yes for the wedding thing then?” Her voice is low and raw and delighted.

Daniel laughs against her mouth, swallowing the sound in a kiss, shaky and relieved and happy, in a way he can’t remember feeling in years. “Buy me dinner first.”

Vala pouts, presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Such hard work.”

“But worth it.”

She hums, noncommittal, and traces a finger down the nape of his neck, to the collar of his jacket — he shivers. “I think I’ll be the judge of that.”

Daniel grins, pulling her to him again. “Be my guest.”

Notes:

Shout out to my favorite fic for the headcanon regarding Vala's original people and seashells; I love it so much that I can't write Vala without including it. Go read the fic, it will change your life (i'm not even joking)

thank you so much for coming to my Daniel/Vala TEDTalk 😌 💕 I hope you enjoyed, and would love to hear what you thought 💕