fan fiction: finding home chapter 4
Chapter 3 is here, if you need a refresher. :)
Chapter Four-Revelations
She was here. She was really, actually here. Five years, and they'd finally found her.
And she'd been here on Earth the whole time. Daniel shook his head in disbelief, words escaping him completely. So much he needed and wanted to say, and none of it would come.
So Mitchell spoke instead, his grin wide. "Good to see you, princess. We've sure missed you."
That brought her head around. Vala stared at them open-mouthed. "You...you missed me? After what I did?"
Mitchell snorted. "What, saving our asses?"
"I betrayed you! I took Matthias up on his offer and left with him!"
"Yeah, so he'd let us go! You can't have really thought we fell for your little act. Hell, Vala, we all knew you were playing the dude!"
Her expression was stunned. There was no other word for it. Vala looked utterly stunned. "You...you knew."
Daniel finally regained powers of speech. "Yeah, we knew. We've been looking for you all this time."
"You have?" Her voice was filled with wonder, even as she shook her head in disbelief. "If I'd known that...I could've come home as soon as I got away from him? I'd have been welcomed?"
"Of course." Daniel strode over to her, cupping her cheek.
She placed her hand on top of his, eyes glassy. "Oh, Daniel."
Enough of this. It had been five bloody years. Touching her cheek and her hand just wasn't going to cut it. He pulled her into his arms and held her tight. Maybe if he held hard enough and long enough, she'd stop shaking.
After a few minutes, Mitchell interrupted. "All right, Jackson, quit hogging her. You got first dibs like you wanted; it's my turn now."
Vala laughed and stepped out of Daniel's arms to hug her former team leader. "I've missed you, Cameron."
"Likewise, darlin', likewise." He patted her back.
Teal'c entered the room. "Vala Mal Doran. It is good to see you well."
"Muscles!" She flung herself at him, and he caught her easily. "Where've you been?"
"Securing the perimeter."
That made her laugh. "Of my apartment building?"
"Indeed. We were under the impression that Matthias might be here."
"Oh. Right. No, I got away from him after about six months. I arrived on Earth shortly afterward. I've been here in the city ever since. Cameron, my ship is cloaked not far from your parents' house. I check on it from time to time, but so far no one's bothered it."
Mitchell laughed and shook his head in disbelief. "You are something else, girl."
Vala scrunched up her shoulders in a sheepish shrug and stepped away from Teal'c. "So who else is here? Samantha maybe?" Her tone was hopeful.
"Yep, she's in charge of the Hammond, which is how we got here. However, I'm betting that if we let her know we've found you, she'll put somebody in charge of the bridge and beam herself down here." Mitchell spoke into his comm. "Hey, Sam. We've got our girl."
Sure enough, Sam arrived via white light a few minutes later. "Vala!" She hugged her friend, then pulled away to pick up a strand of long blond hair. "What's this?"
Vala reddened slightly. "Part of my new identity. I've been a blonde the last four years or so."
Sam grinned and patted her back. "It looks good on you."
Now that the others had had their "turn" as Mitchell called it, Daniel reached for Vala again. "Now you know we don't hate you. Will you please come home?"
Vala bit her lip. "Well, there's Bryce. I can't just walk out on him..."
Daniel jerked back like he'd been burned.
She gave him a pleading look. "He's a good man, Daniel. He was kind to me."
"Oh, now this sounds familiar..."
"He was! He gave me a home and a job and eventually even an official identity! He kept me safe, and he kept me from being alone!"
"You wouldn't have needed him to do any of that if you'd have just come home!"
"I didn't know I could!"
"Why on earth would you think you couldn't? Why would you think we'd buy your stupid act?"
She glared but didn't back down. "Do you actually remember that day? Do you remember how furious you were as you yelled at me not to do it? Yes, I thought you believed me! Why else would you have been so angry?"
"Because I was worried about you staying behind with that guy! Because I didn't want you to sacrifice yourself for the rest of us! Because I didn't want to go without you!" Daniel took a deep breath, trying to calm his raging emotions. It must have helped a little, because his next words came out gentler. "We're a team, Vala. We stick together."
"Oh, right, like you did that time with Adria."
Aaaaaand he was right back to riled up. "That was different!"
"Why? Because it was you?"
"Because there wasn't any other choice then!"
"There wasn't any other choice with Matthias either! I knew him, Daniel. He'd have killed us all, as painfully as possible and without a shred of remorse. He knew getting rid of SG-1 would put him right at the top of the Alliance hierarchy. And when I called in the favor he owed me to get you all free, he wanted revenge for losing out on that top spot. That's why he made me betray you and why he made me stay to work for him."
"Yes, and we knew all that!"
"But I didn't know you knew!"
"Kids. Time out." Cam shook his head in fond exasperation. "Geez, you two haven't changed a bit in five years."
"Did you really expect them to?" Sam was grinning.
"Nah, I don't guess so." The colonel's expression turned serious as he looked at Vala. "Hey. I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For failing as your team leader. For you not knowing that we trusted you completely and that you could always come home-that we wanted you to come home. Hell, Vala, we've spent five years searching this galaxy from one end to the other, trying to track down Matthias so we could get you back. Even after the IOA declared it a lost cause and put the official kibosh on it, we were still trying whenever and however we could. But we could never figure out how the guy could actually keep you all this time. We knew you'd've busted out first chance you got." He shook his head. "We...we finally decided he must've just killed you. To learn that you did get away but didn't know just how much you mean to all of us..." He trailed off, his voice cracking. "I'm so, so sorry."
Vala's tears spilled over. "Oh, Cameron." She flung herself at him again.
And Daniel wrapped an arm around her too, and then Sam joined in, and Teal'c stepped forward and enveloped them all.
And they stood there like that, awkward and weepy but grateful to be together again, for a long time.
###
Catching up on the last five years was not something that could take place in public.
So Vala sat between Daniel and Samantha on the couch with Cameron on Samantha's other side. Teal'c took a nearby chair.
Vala told them all about her days with Matthias and how she'd finally escaped and come to New York. She shared her days as a waitress and meeting Bryce and her inadvertent entrance into the world of white hat hacking.
Her former teammates filled her in on SGC gossip and various mission highlights. Cameron had finally gotten up the nerve to ask Dr. Lam out. Now they were married with their first child on the way. Samantha and Jack had a little boy with her blond hair and high intelligence and Jack's dark eyes and sly sense of mischief.
"The President still wants to meet you," Samantha said.
Cameron chuckled. "Yeah, apparently you saved the world or some such thing. I think he wants to hire you full time." He poked her knee. "Tell him no. Tell him you'll freelance around our missions or something."
Vala gaped at him. "Around missions? Cameron, it's been five years. Surely you've replaced me by now."
"We have endeavored to do so," Teal'c said. "However, all our attempts proved unsuccessful."
"Yeah, basically none of 'em ever worked out in the end. Can't say I'm all that broken up about it." Cameron shrugged.
Vala shook her head, eyes filling with tears yet again. She wasn't used to being so weepy, but then she'd also never imagined that after five years she could just pop back into her old life like she'd never left it.
Actually, she probably couldn't do that entirely. Daniel sat stiffly next to her, his expression closed off and tense. No way could their relationship be anything close to what it had been then. He'd said he'd missed her, and she had no reason to doubt that, but she also doubted he'd waited for her all that time. Why would he?
And before Vala made any decisions about returning to the SGC, she needed to talk to Bryce. She owed him that much.
Fortunately, the man himself had just walked through the door.
His eyes widened at the sight of so many people. Bryce knew "Val" as a loner with no family and very few friends. In all the time they'd lived together, Vala didn't think he'd ever come home to anyone visiting her, let alone a whole group of people. "Uh, what's going on?"
Vala stood and walked over to him. "Bryce, I want you to meet some friends of mine." She hesitated, then admitted, "Well, family really. This is Daniel Jackson, Samantha Carter, Cameron Mitchell, and ah, Murray."
Bryce had never been stupid. "Daniel, Samantha, and Mitchell? What the hell, Val? Or should I even call you Val?"
"Val is fine. It's close enough to my real name. And I'm sorry, really. But you've always known I had secrets."
"Yeah. Yeah, I did. But I didn't know your name was one of them. I thought you were really Valerie Daniels from Australia, running from something in your past, and that was how you ended up here illegally."
"Except for the name and the Australia part, that's pretty much the truth."
"So do I get to know anything real about you?" Bryce asked. "Your name? Where you're from? And hell, why didn't 'Murray' get a tribute?"
"I would like that answer as well," Teal'c said.
"My best software program is called Muscles," Vala told him. She leaned closer and whispered, "I also named my fish after you."
"I am most honored."
She turned back to Bryce, placing a hand on his arm. "My real name is Vala Mal Doran. Where I'm from...well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you, and it doesn't really matter. But know that I love these people, and I never thought I'd see them again, and if I did see them I thought they'd hate me, but they don't, so everything's good."
Bryce's face softened. "Okay. I am glad things have worked out for you. You know I only ever wanted you safe and happy."
"I don't think I'll ever be completely safe. I don't think I even want to be completely safe. But I can definitely tell you that right now I am very, very happy."
Continue on to Chapter 5.
A/N: Yay, they're back together! A nice filler chapter before Vala learns that she really, really can't just drop back into her life after five years away. That's a long time, and people change, and circumstances change. But for now, I hope you enjoyed the reunion! :) More to come soon, as Vala gets settled in and they all get reacquainted.