Again
Title: Again
Timeline: Unending
Pairing: Daniel and Vala only
Word Count: Under 700
Summary: A few final thoughts go through Vala’s mind
To die to live again.
Eternal night cloaked the Odyssey but Vala still closed her eyes when she leaned forward and rested her forehead against her beloved Daniel’s wrinkled brow. What they’d done for more than fifty years was not living, but waiting. Waiting for the day when their real lives would begin again and yet, life did not stop and what she’d found - what they’d found - was truer than anything that came before.
Love.
A word so trite as to be meaningless until the day it wasn’t and then it became everything. Daniel was everything and as they clasped each other’s hands and waited for their world to be undone, she silently sent out one last plea to the universe.
“Please, please let me find this again.”
Home. If this worked, they were going home. Funny that she had found a real home at the SGC, a luxury she hadn’t indulged since her mother was alive. Not just a place to rest, but a place to be more than what she’d been before. She’d lived among good people in the past, but always apart, separate. Her life had been about survival, on the run almost since the moment she’d learned to run. Slowing down meant allowing the world to hurt you. And then there came Daniel.
He was the reason she went to Earth, part of the pull that brought her back and when she was lost, the one who held her still long enough for her to remember she wanted to stay. Three months frozen in a moment was all the time it took to wear down denials, push past civility, and admit to the truth. Three months in, she’d dug for a scrap of gold but instead uncovered the entire chest. And now they were a heartbeat away from reburying the treasure they’d unearthed.
How could she go back to living without this feeling, this elemental knowing, this joyous pain of connection? No part of her doubted Daniel’s feelings or those that she had for him, but if they’d not been locked together in a pocket of reality with no place to hide, how long would they both have blindly believed the other couldn’t care?
She believed in Sam. In seconds, Teal’c would travel back and prevent them from becoming trapped in the time dilation bubble. They’d escape the Ori’s deadly energy beam and return home to Earth and Stargate Command as if all that had happened to them over the last half century never happened. It will have never have happened.
Hot tears burned behind her eyelids. It couldn’t all be lost, could it? A bond like they’d shared had to have power. The rote devotion of brainwashed humans could empower beings on another plain of existence. Surely the erasure of the all encompassing connection she and Daniel shared would leave a vacuum in the universe needing to be refilled?
As if he could read her disquieting thoughts, Daniel squeezed her hands and gently brushed his temple alongside hers. She inhaled and absorbed his warmth.
Her beautiful, beautiful Daniel.
Her Daniel wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t worried that they’d find one another again. He called it inevitable. Vala exhaled and let her fears dissolve. A smile curved her lips. Daniel’s faith had that kind of effect on her.
They existed in an infinite universe. Life would always be too short, but they would dream and dream big, packing into their time together not just one, but two lifetimes worth of love. She could feel the truth of it. What they’d created could not be wholly erased. It had strength. It had power. Rediscovering the truth about their feelings might take longer than three months, but she and Daniel would find a way back to each other and when they did, the waiting would finally end.
To die to live again.
Sam’s voice crackled over the intercom. Their long wait was over. Vala swayed closer to the other half of her soul. She was ready.
Time to live again.