Rating: R (for non-descriptive mentions in passing of abuse, underage sex, and prostitution, and some slight violence)
Genres: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Romance (Daniel/Vala), Friendship (Vala/Sam).
Summary: A visit from Vala's past prompts her to (reluctantly) share with Daniel and Sam the horrors of her childhood....
Spoilers: up to "Counterstrike"
Length: over 7250 words -- about 16 pages
Notes: Part of my "Getting to Know You ..." universe, AR from "Memento Mori" onward (and therefore blatantly at odds with "Family Ties"). Takes place after the events in the fic Solace, but can be read on its own if you just accept that Daniel and Vala are together. Takes place prior to the events in the fic Influence and Rabid, but this is a complete story, so it is not necessary to read those after. WARNING - SAPPY & EXCEEDINGLY INTROSPECTIVE!!!
Feedback: You may post feedback to this fic either at LiveJournal or devianART, or .
DISCLAIMER: Daniel Jackson, Vala Mal Doran, Samantha Carter, Cameron Mitchell, Teal'c, Hank Landry, Sha're, Jack O'Neill, the Ori and their Priors, and Stargate SG-1 ©/TM Stargate (II) Productions, Kawoosh Productions, The SCI FI Channel, Showtime/Viacom, Sony/MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. Pedroc is my own creation. This is not a licensed story, and no profit is being made from them by the author.

If you've reached this fic from outside my site, please visit Stargate: Kismet for more of my Stargate SG-1 fanworks.

"Slow down, Vala, the Gate's not going anywhere!" Daniel laughingly chided his companion as she nearly ran into yet another person in the hall.

"I can't help it, I'm so excited I can't sit still!" she told him happily, bouncing a little. Though she'd been out with the team before, she was going on her first official mission -- as a paid operative, no less! She had once been desperate to join the team in order to have a reason to stay near Daniel; she never realised how proud and accomplished it would make her feel in its own right, to be a part of something so important and earn an honest living! And the funny thing was, she no longer needed to be a part of SG-1 in order to stay near Daniel: she'd won a hard-earned place in his life -- and his heart -- before she'd even gotten the patches that now proudly adorned her sleeves! It was enough to make her forget about the Ori -- and Adria. Mostly, anyway.

She and Daniel had only been "together" for a little over two weeks, but Vala felt like it had been a lifetime already. A happy lifetime. A new lifetime.

She'd even found herself growing more and more tolerable of Daniel's studies. Well, she was trying to, anyway. Now that she knew he cared for her, she didn’t feel the need to constantly seek his attention, the way she had not so very long ago at all. She knew she didn't have to fight for it anymore. And besides, how could she want him to stop something that was such a quintessential part of him and still claim to love him? No, she was learning to curb her insecurities and just bask in the presence of him when he was enthralled by a text or an artifact. He seemed to want to have her around then, if she was quiet and didn't fidget. And he talked more to her as he studied than he used to, telling her about his findings, talking out his theories and conjectures to her rather than mumbling to himself. Okay, so maybe she didn’t really care so much what some dreary people on such a dreary little world had done a few thousand years ago, but she loved the sound of his voice, and loved how adorable he was when he was really excited about something. That was her Daniel.

She also realised something else about him; while he no longer got so absorbed that he forgot all about her -- well, not so much, anyway -- he did tend to get wrapped up enough that he would lose touch with what was going on around him. A week prior, when they were in some old ruin and he was doing a rubbing of some of the glyphs there, he failed to notice the grinding of stone above him; if Vala hadn’t knocked him out of the way, he would have been crushed. This observation gave her a new purpose. Boring or not, Daniel's work was important -- with her new-found maturity, she understood that now -- but the man needed looking after while he did it. That wasn't just her self-appointed task now, either; she'd spoken to Landry about her concern, and he seemed to agree that, with her background, she would make an excellent bodyguard for Dr. Jackson. She suspected that he really had given her a task because he wasn't really sure what else to do with her, but since it meant it was now her duty to stay near Daniel, and she had Landry's orders to back her up on that point, she wasn't going to complain. Thankfully, Daniel didn’t either, seeming grateful that he could now pay even less attention to potential danger from hostiles.

Now they were heading to yet another planet, looking for more clues to the whereabouts of Merlin's weapon. Colonel Carter met them in the Gate Room; Mitchell and Teal'c were with Landry and Bra'tac, trying to smooth over Jaffa/Tau'ri relations. Vala was actually glad Carter was coming along; so long as they were quiet, Daniel didn’t mind if Vala chatted with Sam, which made his studies all the more bearable for her.

They hadn't been in the Gate Room more than a minute when the sirens sounded and Walter's voice called out "Unscheduled off-world activation!" over the loud-speakers. "It's SG-8!"

"Open the Iris," Sam ordered in Landry's stead.

The Stargate was flooded with the shimmery, water-like blue light of the Gate's Event Horizon. The "water" expanded outward, as if someone had thrown a boulder from the other side, then crashed back, signaling that it was ready for use.

Just a single soldier stepped through at, at first; Vala recognised him vaguely, having seen him in the halls. His expression seemed oddly vacant, in a familiar sort of way. Just as she placed how precisely it was familiar, another man stepped through.

Her good mood was abruptly and savagely rent into infinite, incohesive particles.

The man was dressed as a Prior, but that wasn't the only -- or even the main -- reason she was upset.

"Daddy?" she whispered in disbelief.

Daniel whipped his head towards her so hard that he pulled a muscle in his neck. Ignoring the excruciating pain and somehow keeping his weapon level the whole time, he turned his gaze back to the Prior approaching them. He remembered suddenly, and quite forcefully, that Vala still hadn't told him anything of her family life; he wasn't angry with her over it, though. Instead, he was mad at himself for not asking her, and for apparently still not putting her at ease enough to volunteer the information herself.

Soldiers rushed in, rifles raised.

With their arrival, Daniel's curiosity quickly shoved his guilt in a corner, as he contemplated the man before them. The Prior, a very elderly man, had the same sickly-white complexion as his fellows -- and nothing, that he could see, in common with Vala. Could she be mistaken?

"Hallowed are the Ori--" the man began, before Vala stepped forward and opened fire, narrowly missing the blank-eyed soldier standing before the Prior.

Stunned into momentarily immobility, Daniel could only gawk as his lover fired shot after shot. After stopping short mere inches before the Prior, the bullets fell harmlessly to the floor. Vala kept firing anyway, approaching quickly as she did as if hoping a lesser distance would make the bullets more effective. The Prior held his staff before himself and stood unflinching before her with the bittersweet, pitying smile of the righteous.

Her clip finally empty, Vala gave a shriek of rage and threw the gun at the Prior. "GET OUT OF HERE, YOU BASTARD!! GET OUT!!"

Her words snapped Daniel into action: he ran up the ramp and caught her in his arms, whirling her to the side and brandishing his own gun at the Prior again, all too-aware of its uselessness. He struggled to drag Vala, kicking and screaming, back down the ramp, out of the way of the other soldiers and their equally-useless artillery.

"You can't have her," Daniel told the man, for there was no doubt in his mind that, father or not, this Prior was after Vala.

"If we wanted her as a prisoner, we'd have her already," the Prior responded. "I am here to talk; nothing more." He lay down his staff on the floor for emphasis.

"What are you all waiting for?" Vala asked incredulously. "Kill him!!" she shrieked, trying to take Daniel's gun herself.

Daniel quickly handed the weapon off to Sam, wrapping his now-free arm around Vala too, holding her tight from behind. "Vala, calm down!" he pleaded.

She responded by trying to break his nose with her skull, which he narrowly avoided by turning his head just in time. Next, she tried kicking; it hurt, but not enough for him to lose his grip. Finally she sagged, defeated; he didn’t trust that for a second, continuing to hold tight. "I'm sorry," he whispered in her ear, his breath caressing her neck so that, for a small moment, she could almost forget where she was and pretend she was still lying in his arms in their room. "It's just ... we need to see what's happening here, first. We might be able to use him against them somehow, and we can't afford to lose any opportunities. All right?"

That convinced her; if there was anything Vala Mal Doran knew, it was how to take advantage of an opportunity. She nodded reluctantly.

It wasn't like she had any idea of how to kill the man right now anyway.

"Can we at least talk to him somewhere private?" she asked through her teeth. She knew there was no way they would leave her alone with the Prior after what she'd tried to do to him, but at the very least, she didn’t want to risk her father broadcasting her personal history to everyone on the base....

* * *

The passage of roughly five minutes' time found Vala, Daniel, Sam, and the Prior situated in the briefing room, with guards both in and outside the door. The Prior sat at one end of the long table and Vala at the other, with Daniel and Sam to either side of her. It wasn't nearly far enough from him. If looks could kill, the man would have been incinerated a hundred times over with a single glance.

Vala's father regarded her fondly for a moment. She wanted to rip his face off. "Truly Blessed are the Ori, for guiding me to you at long last, my daughter."

The world turned red. A snarl on her lips, Vala started to push to her feet, but a hand on her arm from Daniel steadied her, allowing her to bank her anger until it was only smoldering instead of blazing. "One..." she began, shaking in both body and voice, "the Ori are anything but blessed. And two ... I am not your daughter, Pedroc."

"Child, you cannot deny the blood that runs in your veins is at least half mine, any more than you can deny that your's is the only blood that runs in Adria's."

Vala flinched at the use of the name, but she wasn't surprised. If he was a Prior, of course he knew about Adria. "Being a parent means more than sharing blood. I am no more her mother than you are my father." A part of herself declared her mouth a liar. She promptly disowned that part.

Pedroc shook his head patronizingly. "If that were true, I would not be here now. It was for love of you that I sought you out, and for love of you that Adria gave me the means to reach you. I see my granddaughter was right that convincing you will be no easy task, though. No matter; love gives me patience, and the Ori grant me infinite love!"

"So your love isn’t even your own? You're just, what, borrowing it?" Daniel asked snidely, no longer able to stay silent. His loathing for the Ori in general coupled with the evidence that Vala despised her father gave the man very little chance of getting on his good side. "Is this all you came for, then? To give the same old shtick that Adria and every Prior before her has already given us?"

"Like children, you must be told the lesson again and again until you have it learned by heart," Pedroc said gently.

"Oh, we know the lesson," Daniel said rising to his feet. Vala's touch on his arm was less restraining than his had been on hers; it kept him from stepping towards the man, but did not convince him to sit back down. "We know it; we just haven't fallen for it. We Tau'ri have a nasty habit of questioning things," he mock apologised.

Pedroc nodded thoughtfully. "I can see why my daughter has such strong feelings for you, Daniel Jackson -- and why Adria and the Ori have an interest as well."

Vala felt as though she'd been run through by icy-cold steel. It was too late to convince the Ori that she had no interest in Daniel, she knew. Whatever they had planned for him was, doubtlessly, intentended to convert her; whatever happened to him would be her fault! Her fingers closed tight around his arm, in both fear and possessiveness. Once again, she felt an all-encompassing desire to silence Pedroc forever.

"Yeah," Daniel said thoughtfully, "just what exactly are Adria's plans for me, anyway, did she happen to mention...? No? Ah, well, nice to have met you, sir. Now be a good lap-dog and hurry back to your masters," he said with mock sweetness.

For a moment, Sam wondered where the truly sweet Daniel had gone, vaguely feeling some nostalgia for the innocent young man he'd been. Her friend had been through too much. They all had.

"I did not come all this way to be dismissed so easily," Pedroc insisted. You will have to kill me if you want me to leave without Vala."

"And you'll have to kill me if you want to take her from here," Daniel replied matter-of-factly.

Vala's glance at Daniel was the exact opposite of the one she'd given her father. Pedroc might have spoken of infinite love, but anyone who looked at her just then -- like Sam -- would know what it meant.

"That I will not do. But I am certain that I will sway her in time; I will not leave."

"So what, we're going to have a staring contest all afternoon, until somebody gives up?" Daniel asked.

"As I said, I'm a patient man."

"Yeah, well, I'm a busy one." Daniel turned to Vala and Carter. "What say we get back to work?"

"Sounds like a plan to me," Vala said, Sam nodding in agreement as they rose.

They followed Daniel out the door, Pedroc making no attempt to join them.

* * *

"Do you really think it's safe to leave him here?" Sam asked when they were well away from the briefing room.

Daniel nodded. "He wants Vala; he's not going to risk his mission."

"He could threaten everyone here to get me to come with him!" Vala protested.

Daniel shook his head. "If all Adria wanted was to capture you, she'd have done it already. If a promise from you to give lip service to her gods were enough, she would have accepted your offer on her ship. She knows that no amount of threatening will make you truly believe that the Ori are worthy of your adoration, so she's trying a new tactic. You heard her; if she can make you into a true believer, she thinks it will be proof of the righteousness of the Ori."

The hair on the back of Vala's neck stood on end. There was something on the verge of clicking in her brain, thanks to his words, but when she strove for it, it faded.

"So for now, he'll wait, just like he said -- and we'll go on with our mission."

That was fine with her; the further she got from Pedroc, the better.

Unfortunately, stepping through the gate to another planet just didn’t seem far enough.

* * *

The small town near the Gate on this world was welcoming; SG-1 had already established contact a while back. They had legends of a woman of great magicks whom Daniel believed was quite possibly Morgan La Fey. They had directed SG-1 to a distant hovel that the woman had supposedly stayed in whenever she'd come to their world -- or so the stories went.

When they reached the hut, Daniel paused, taking Vala's hand. "You know I'm here for you, right? The books can wait if you want to talk ..." he told her quietly.

She shook her head. "I do, but ... I'm not ... ready. Yet," she explained, hesitantly. When she'd gotten up that morning, the things she had to tell him now were things she'd never intended to say. But he'd put so much faith in her, how could she keep it from him? Wasn't that another form of lying? She never wanted to lie to him, or otherwise give him a reason to mistrust, again -- she'd fought too hard to earn that trust! Besides, he'd shared his history with Sha're with her; how could she do any less for him?

But how will he see me when he knows? She didn’t think he'd leave her; he wasn't that kind of guy. But what if all he could see when he looked at her afterwards was what had happened to her back then, rather than who she was now? Unlike the situation with Adria, her history wasn't something he could truly empathise with. Could he look at her after and still see "Vala", or would he see only the abused girl she'd been forevermore? If, heaven forbid, he ever fell out of love with her, she didn’t want him to stay with her just because he felt sorry for her!

Besides, she'd told a lot of stories in her life, but the true story of her life had never been one of them. She just didn’t have the words for it yet.

* * *

Eight hours of Daniel studying the home's many books while Vala and Carter searched every inch for hidden rooms had them all pretty discouraged. But there were still books to go through, so it was decided that they would stay the night. The truth of the matter was, none of them was eager to go back to SGC and deal with Vala's father. For the moment, they were starving, and dug heartily into the simple fare the villagers provided for them.

Well, Sam and Daniel, did, anyway. Vala ate slowly, stirring the contents of her bowl more than consuming it. Her companions exchanged a number of concerned glances through the course of the meal -- Vala without an appetite was like a lion without a roar. All too soon, Daniel and Sam were done with their portions, and just stared at her, expectantly.

Her last spoonful was like a giant rock going down her throat.

Wordlessly, she turned away from them. She reached for a book and started thumbing through it.

Daniel let out a quiet sigh of irritation, which Vala mistakenly assumed was aimed at her, but was really meant for himself. He had no idea what to do for her. Why didn’t she trust him enough yet to share her life? What was he doing wrong? Should he push her? He was truly terrified that she'd start running again if he tried to corner her. He went back to the pile of books he'd gathered, trying hard to absorb the material, but his eyes kept skipping over the words and images to the back of her head.

Sam got up, chose a book, and sat down right next to Vala, shoulders touching. The two women had been slowly becoming good friends over the months; Sam hadn’t realised how much she missed having a female to hang out with. (Dr. Lam was nice, but she just wasn't as approachable as Janet had been or Vala was.) And now that Vala had so eagerly confided in Sam about how things had suddenly and blissfully changed between her and Daniel, Sam had, in turn, confided her confused feelings for Jack O'Neill. She'd been a little wary of doing so, but Vala seemed to cherish the trust Sam had shown her, and had, thankfully, kept the secret even from Daniel, near as Sam could tell -- something Sam hadn’t really expected her to do. And even more shockingly, Vala had proven a good listener.

Now it was Sam's turn again.

The book Vala had picked up turned out to be a storybook, one that was vaguely reminiscent of one she'd had as a little girl. It seemed a lifetime ago -- or like it had happened to someone else, like she'd stolen the memory. Had she truly every been that young, that innocent?

A splash of water fell on the page, startling her. She actually looked up at the ceiling, thinking there was a leak in the roof at first, though she heard no rain.

Sam looked at her, concerned. "Hey," she said softly, laying a hand on Vala's arm.

"Sorry," Vala laughed. "It's so ... dry and dusty in here." She wiped at her eyes. "Funny, this being here," she added, closing the book. "What would Morgan La Fey want with a children's story, anyway?"

"Children's story?"

Vala nodded. "I had a book much like this once; the art even seems similar. My parents used to--" She stopped, the stone once again in her throat.

"Read it to you?" Sam prodded gently. "Don’t take this the wrong way, Vala, but I have a hard time picturing you as a child!"

I don't at all, Daniel mused, pretending to read as he listened. Vala seems like a little girl every time she smiles for real...

"Heh, I don’t blame you; I have a hard time remembering my girlhood, really. But no ... I wasn't always like this." She seemed to get lost in the thought.

"Vala," Sam began finally, "why ..." There was no polite or tactful way to pose her question. "My dad and I had a long period where we wouldn’t even speak to each other...." Her eyes stung a little at the memory; so much time wasted, and now he was gone... "But even when we weren't speaking ..."

Vala nodded slowly. "You want to know what he could possibly have done to make me hate him enough to want kill him." It wasn't a question. She shrugged. "Maybe I'm just that bad a person."

"If we believed that, Daniel and I wouldn’t be here, Vala," Sam assured her with a light note of impatience. She wanted to be sympathetic, but besides the fact that the fate of the universe rode on figuring out why Adria thought Pedroc might succeed in converting Vala, Sam simply didn’t think a pity-party was ever very useful.

Vala bit her lip. "You haven’t known me as long as Pedroc did before I ran away."

"So ... he said that to you?"

Vala nodded. "Oh, I know, people aren't perfect, and even the best of parents will say horrible things to their children when angry and not really mean it. Believe me, I wish that were all there was to it. It's easy enough to believe I would be petty enough to run away over something like that." She sighed heavily. Sam had told her about her father before; she owed her a bit of her own life too, just as she did Daniel.

She turned to face Sam, hugging her knees close. "You want the life story? I'm warning you, now: despite what an grand adventurer I've become, my youth was no fairytale." Her voice was old and tired, far more mature than she generally seemed capable of being; it was the voice that she'd had the day they'd thought Adria had died.

"Real fairytales are usually pretty dark, though," Sam told her.

"Point taken," Vala conceded with a smile that was a Stargate's jump from her eyes. She bit her lip, then began. "My mother died when I was four. My merchant father and I were alone for six years, and in that time he taught me more than a few tricks about how to watch people and make a good deal -- including how to swindle." She almost sounded proud.

"Then he met Adria -- my stepmother, I mean. Now, I don’t know how it is for the Tau'ri, but on my world, marriage is more of a ... business arrangement, than anything. Merging of property to increase the wealth of both parties, and so on. My father, though ... he genuinely loved Adria. He had to have, to marry a pauper. I'm not being arrogant or snobbish or anything in saying that!" Vala added quickly. "I'm just ...stating a fact, though I admit I have plenty of reason to be biased....

"Adria and I did not get along, at all. Any time we had a disagreement, my father would take her side. When she hit me, he wouldn't believe me when I went crying to him later; instead he believed her lies about me having fallen or something. If she broke something, she would blame me, and then my father would hit me for troubling her.

"When our country went to war and my father's business started doing poorly, he still bought her any and everything she asked for. We got further and further in debt. When money got tight enough that he had to fire our housekeeper, my stepmother made quite sure I kept the place ship-shape, but never would lift a finger to help me.

"She started finding every little excuse to send me to my room without supper, even making stuff up. I suspect now that she did it so that she and my father could continue to eat as well as they had before times grew hard and pretend nothing was wrong. It got to the point where I considered myself lucky if I got to eat more than once a day -- and some days I didn't eat at all. She'd lock me in my room, too, so it wasn't as though I could sneak out and scrounge much outside. And I didn’t dare eat much when I was free to roam the house, even when she wasn't looking, 'cause she watched the larder like a bloody hawk."

Sam knew Vala wasn't beyond embellishing the truth, even unintentionally; despite Vala's insistence that her youth was no fairytale, this sounded exactly like one. And yet ... there was none of the drama, none of the inflections and hand gestures that usually accompanied Vala's stories. Could it really be she was telling the truth? The whole truth, and nothing but? She glanced at Daniel, who was staring at book -- was he really reading, or was he listening in? If he was listening, did he believe Vala?

Oblivious to Sam's doubts, Vala continued. "Anyway, since my father traveled a lot, he wasn't there to witness most of the things she did to me, and thought I was exaggerating or lying outright when I tried to tell him. Adria insisted to him that she gave me food in my room, and that she never kept me in there for long. But oh, I was such a wicked child, I needed discipline she claimed. It was her word against mine.

"Now, girls on my world are not usually taught anything useful, but thankfully, when I was still young and he only had me for company, my father had taught me how to read. I snuck books from our library into my room, and they were all I really had for company for years."

Daniel wondered if that was why she hated books so much now, because they reminded her of those lonely times and what she'd been denied....

"Then I met a boy."

Daniel stared openly at those words, but Vala didn’t notice, her eyes on her brightly-painted toes.

"I was fifteen. Maarc was an errand boy I knew from the grocer's; when he made a delivery to the house one day, he asked why he didn't see me around so much anymore. My stepmother wasn't home, so I poured my heart out to him. He figured out how to get into my room through the window, and started to bring me food and keep me company. He was my savior, so when he kissed me, I was happy to let him. And when he started doing more and more, I let him do that too, thinking finally, someone loves me again. I guess I was starving for love as much as food, and I thought he brought that too. And who knows, maybe he did." She shrugged. The rock was back in her throat.

It was a long moment before she spoke again, and by the time she did, her eyes were shining with unshed tears. "He made the mistake of staying late when my mother was at a party. My father came home that night, bringing a business associate, Brade -- the man he intended me to marry. So he unlocked my door, and he and my prospective husband found me in Maarc's arms. He--" she choked back a sob,"he killed Maarc." She remembered the blood, how it seemed to hang in the air before spraying across her. How she'd felt each drop like acid against her skin. She took a deep, shaking breathe. "By the laws of our land, my father had every right to do it. He owned me, and Maarc had spoiled my market value. So of course Brade wouldn’t marry me then."

Her eyes still on her toes, she missed the looks of horror that Sam and Daniel exchanged. She also failed to notice when he came to sit near her.

"Father told me that I'd ruined the family's best hope of getting back on its feet. Adria was pregnant at the time, and unless I wanted her to miscarry, I would have to do whatever was necessary to earn my keep and support the family. I seriously doubted the child was my father's -- I mean, why had it taken Adria so long to get pregnant, you know? But I couldn’t let a child die. I wasn't that cruel -- not back then at any rate. It was my fault my father had lost all that money, and I had to make it up somehow.

"Turns out, though Brade wasn't willing to marry me, he was perfectly willing to pay a small sum for a night with me -- as were quite a number of my father's friends," she added with false pride, her voice little more than a whisper now. Tears fell freely now with the flood of memory's river.

Sam felt like she was going to be sick. She understood that different cultures had different views of right and wrong, but that was just too much. There was a line, things you just didn't do. It was why they'd fought the Goa'uld before, and why they fought the Ori now. To her mind, Pedroc was now no better than slimy parasites, something to be crushed under a boot. A very heavy combat boot.

Unwilling to disturb Vala while she'd been getting the story out, Daniel almost pounced on her now, his restraint broken the moment there was a lull in the story. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, rocking her gently as he wept silently into her hair. Like Sam, he too felt ill -- and, beneath that, enraged. He half hoped Pedroc would tire of waiting and not be at SGC still when they returned -- the man's being a Prior having very little to do with why he hoped such.

Vala sobbed for the loss of the girl she'd been, but also in relief; she'd been afraid that, if she ever told him about her upbringing, he would see her as "damaged goods." Not because she'd had sex -- she'd made it abundantly clear that she had -- she just thought he would think her too scarred and fragile to ever hold her again.

The grip he had on her now assured her otherwise. Even Sam rubbed her back soothingly. Through their mutual comfort, Vala quickly regained her composure, pulling herself upright. Daniel kept an arm around her, and Sam took her hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

Valas was surprised, when she gave Sam a grateful smile, to find anger burning behind the sympathy in the woman's eyes, her lips tight. On her behalf? Sam cared that much? And yet, now that she thought on it, she thought maybe Teal'c and Mitchell, even Landry, would care, would be just as angry with Pedroc. Vala felt a rush of warmth. It had been so long since anyone had cared so much about her well-being, and now suddenly it seemed she had a wealth of people in her life who did.

Why had she been so afraid to tell them? She felt so much better now; the secret had festered like a wound, and with the telling was now drained and healing. In Daniel's arms, she found the strength to finish her tale.

"My father saw a second purpose for selling time in my bed to his business associates: I was instructed to listen to them, put them at ease so they would tell me their secrets, which I in turn told my father. The war ended, and he prospered again. But it wasn't enough to save Adria -- she died in childbirth, along with my baby sister. It was ... a relief."

Daniel was reminded of the way she's said that word in regards to her own daughter, and knew that even though she was telling the truth, there was still pain behind that relief -- probably grief for her sister. Daniel thought, for a vindictive moment, that he'd like to dance with her on her stepmother's grave, himself.

"After that, since I no longer had a sibling's welfare to worry about, I convinced the next man who paid for a night with me to ... buy me off my father. I had gotten very good at using sex to manipulate men, and ... well, let's just say that I put my lessons to good use. Eventually, Aetos came to adore me so much that he was willing to make me his wife, despite my social status."

Daniel remembered the first time he'd met her, when, after fighting with him, she'd tried seduction. She's tried it again and again after that day, too. She remembered when he'd found her in his bed, and he'd accused her of being a solitary, transient woman who used sex as a weapon. He knew he'd been right, but it was more than he'd thought -- she'd used sex as a weapon to keep herself from ever being dominated by men again, turning their lust against them. How he wished he could take those words back now, wished that he had been utterly wrong in the first place. And now he worried: did she still view sex that way, as a means of control, something to seize before someone else did?

No. Thinking of the way she responded when he held her, he already knew the answer. There was no more sense of domination in her touch towards him than there was from him towards her. There wasn't submission, exactly, either, just a mutual meeting of desire, on equal terms. She didn’t see him as just another male monster trying to use her, nor did she still see him as something to be conquered -- if indeed, she ever truly had.

"And then the Goa'uld came." Vala continued, drowning out his mental musing, "and you know what happened then. I was possessed by Qetesh for a while, before a Tok'ra saved me. I pretended to still be a Goa'uld for a while on P8X-412, and tricked its inhabitants into mining the naquadh for me. Being treated as a goddess was nice -- really nice -- for a while, but I got restless ... Then one of the men I sold the naquadah to asked me to help him with a con he was running. It was ... well, okay, I had fun with him, so we stuck together. He taught me a lot before he got himself killed on a heist. Then I went it alone. And ... that's how I became the woman you see before you today, I guess." She shrugged and gave a tightlipped smile, her eyes apologetic.

"No, it isn't," Daniel said softly. "You didn’t finish the story."

She looked at him quizzically, a tiny spark of amusement in one corner of her lip. "What did I leave out that you're so eager to hear?"

"You forgot the part where you met me and the rest of SG-1, and, despite us trying to turn you away time and time again, how you stuck by us anyway."

"Well, I didn’t exactly give you a reason to want to keep me around!" she protested.

"You also forgot," Daniel said over her, "how you risked your life to save us by destroying the Supergate. You forgot how you made a conscious effort to change your ways and live an honest life, and earned your own place in SG-1." And in my heart. But he just couldn’t say that in front of Carter. "That's the woman I see now. A brave, courageous woman with a lot of love to give." He kissed her brow tenderly, again wishing Carter wasn't there, so that he could do more to show her just how much she'd come to mean to him.

"Daniel's right, Vala," Sam said. "Nobody stays the same forever; we're always learning and growing. If we couldn’t change for the better, I don’t know that life would be worth living. Who you are now? ... is someone I'm proud to call a friend and glad to know has my back."

The smile Vala wore now was the first Daniel had seen since Pedroc's arrival that wasn't tinged with sadness; he was suddenly very glad Sam was there.

"I never had a real friend growing up," Vala confided. Then she had a thought, her eyes lighting up. "Can we get a pair of those necklaces where the pendants connect together and say 'Best Friends Forever'?" She'd seen them on a sitcom.

Sam laughed. "Sure. We'll go on a 'girl's day out' and find a set." Silly as it sounded, she rather liked the idea. And if it helped Vala understand that she did indeed have friends now, well, all the better...

"To the mall?" she asked hopefully. She'd seen those on TV too, but had yet to go.

Laughing again, Sam nodded. Then she yawned. "Ooh, sorry!"

"I think we're all a bit tired," Daniel admitted, and Vala nodded her agreement. They lay out their blankets on the floor, staying close to the fireplace for warmth -- though Sam was careful to give her companions a bit of space.

* * *

The next day's search wasn't any more fruitful. As the time for them to return to SGC and face Pedroc drew nigh, Daniel grew more and more anxious. Finally, in a fit of frustration, he threw the book he was reading against the wall and cradled his head in his hands.

"Daniel?" Vala asked tentatively.

"I'm sorry," he sighed.

"It's okay, you didn’t hit us."

"No, I mean ..." he gestured to the endless piles around him and grimaced. "I mean I'm sorry I've failed to find the information we need. Again. God, if Morgan hadn't hesitated, if she'd just come out and said where the device is, we'd have it by now."

"Daniel," Carter gently chided, "You should know better than anyone why she was so reluctant to tell us."

"Well, not really, since they made me forget it all," he remarked with a frown.

"Who made you forget what now?" Vala asked, taking a bite out of a power bar.

"Oh! Daniel here was Ascended for a while. He couldn’t stick to the non-interference rule, though, so they kicked him out of the club. They took away his memories of that time, too, so we still don't know quite why the Ancients do or don’t do anything."

That something that had been on the verge of clicking in Vala's head finally did it. A wave of cold washed over her.

Sam noticed her disturbed expression. "Vala? What's wrong?"

Vala looked to Daniel. " So ... when you Ascend, you become an Ancient?"

Daniel felt his own flesh shiver at her expression. "Yeah... well, something like that. Why?"

"The Ori are ... contemporaries of the Ancients, right?"

He nodded uncertainly.

"So ... if becoming Ascended means you can join the Ancients, it means you would be able to join the Ori, too, right?"

"Well, I suppose theoretically, but the Ori don’t share Ascension with their followers." He pushed his slipping glasses up his nose, as if for emphasis.

"No, not with their followers ... but a good gambler knows you have to be willing to sacrifice a little to gain a lot later in the game. And if Adria takes after her mother, she'll be a great gambler," she added bitterly.

Daniel and Sam shared confused looks.

Vala threw her hands up in the air. "God, for such geniuses, you two can be really thick, you know that? They’re going to make you into an Ori, Daniel! That's the big plan they have for you!"

Carter almost laughed, until she realised Vala was serious. "What? No! They can't do that, it's not how Ascension works ... er, is it?" She looked to Daniel.

His mind was racing, but it wasn't turning up any answers. If Ascension could be "helped", as his was, maybe it could be forced. But even if it were, could they alo force him into the mindset of the Ori? Could an Ascended Being be brainwashed -- or enslaved? He looked at Vala, his stomach flip-flopping at the fear he found looking back at him. He wanted to tell her no, but the truth was, he had no idea. As much as he wanted to comfort her, he couldn’t lie to her to do it. "I honestly don't know. But even if they could, what purpose could it serve to do so?"

"Because they think they need me to be a true believer!" Vala insisted. "Oh, I haven’t loved my daughter enough to convert, or my father, but you? Adria knows how I feel for you! How I believe in you!" How devoted I am to you. Maybe even how I’d contemplated killing her to keep you safe.... "But like you said, they don’t give power over so easily, so they thought they'd try my using my father first."

"But you hate your father!" Sam protested. Hell, I hate him. "Surely Adria knows that?"

Vala shook her head. "I kept my thoughts under pretty tight lock and key -- she never did realise I hated her namesake." I wasn't careful enough -- she figured out my feelings for Daniel .... Or maybe the Ori knew already, from our fist visit? "But even if Pedroc guessed as much and she gleaned it from his head, she would still take a shot at it." Never waste an opportunity.

"Or maybe she wasn't after you -- at least not this time," Daniel wondered aloud. "Maybe it was just an excuse to get him into SGC, and close enough to me, to take me."

Vala paled. That seemed an even likelier explanation. "So we need to get him out of there before we can go back!"

"Not necessarily," Daniel said, thinking. "Vala, you’re going to go through the Gate first when we go back."

Vala scowled. "What are you going to do?"

"Never mind."

Vala tried to protest.

"Trust me, okay?" he told her.

Vala raised a brow. "The last time you said that, I almost got executed."

Daniel flushed crimson. "Yeah, well..."

She gave him a rueful smile. "All right, I trust you. Well, we have an hour left before we're due back -- shall we get back to the books?"

"You two can. I've got a little 'Kel-no-reem'-ing to do." And he immediately set to it.

Vala and Sam shared confused, pensive looks, but decided not to disturb him. Vala picked up the children's book she'd found the night before and, on a whim, stuck it in her pack. Sam saw, but said nothing, only smiling sadly.

* * *

And hour later, just as Daniel directed, Vala walked through the Gate into SGC and down the ramp, where her father was waiting. She took a step past him, and he laid a hand in her shoulder. She just barely kept from decking him.

Daniel showed no such restraint. Coming to stand directly behind the Prior, he said the man's name to get his attention, then, "This is for Vala." He slammed his fist into Pedroc's jaw, knocking a few teeth free in the process. Pain blossomed in his knuckles, but it couldn’t dull the savage satisfaction Daniel felt.

"Walter, dial-up P7X-832. We've got some trash to take out."

* * *

Pedroc woke up to the sound of an explosion, debris raining down on him. Looking around, he found himself in a strange wilderness. The DHD of the Gate before him was nothing but charred remains. He found a piece of paper on the ground beside him, a note written in Ancient:

We know what you were really up to. Better Luck next time.

Sincerely,
Daniel "No-way-in-hell-I'm-becoming-an-Ori" Jackson

P.S. She's MY Vala.

* * *

Walking safely back out of the gate and into SGC, Daniel wiped imaginary dust from his hands, smirking in satisfaction. Vala raced up the ramp, into his arms. "They want either one of us, they're going try a helluva lot harder than that," Daniel promised her.

"I'm surprised you were able to hit him," Carter commented.

"That was why I wanted Vala to go first, to distract him," Daniel explained. "I used the Kel-no-reem to clear my mind, so he wouldn’t sense my intentions."

"So ..." Sam began as they walked out of the room. She wasn't sure she should even ask her next question, but from a tactical standpoint, she had to know, "why didn't you--"

"Kill him? Oh, I wanted to," he said with a conviction. "But no killing should ever be done without remorse -- and I'm not sure I could have felt anything besides satisfaction if I had. Besides, I left a timed explosive to destroy the DHD, so he won't be back anytime soon." Maybe never, if the Ori couldn’t find him, particularly since the Gates were one-way -- even if Pedroc were found, his finder would be stranded too.... "We'll just have to take new precautions to make sure no Prior can come back this way again." What precautions precisely, he had no idea -- Gate use would have to come to a screeching halt until they figured something out.

The bloodlust in Daniel's voice disturbed Vala -- particularly since it was because of her, after a fashion, that it was there in the first place. Eager to change the subject, she declared, "I'm hungry!"

Daniel grinned, all anger and violence in his demeanor evaporating in the heat of his feelings for her. He put an arm around her, and was satisfied when she did the same to him. "Let's go take care of that," he told her. Then a thought struck him: the fact that she'd been starved by her own flesh and blood for years was very likely the reason she was so fond of food now. He made a silent promise to her that she'd never go hungry -- not for food or love -- ever again.

~ FINIS ~