Disintegration
i.
"What's that?" She taps the window where a moderate-sized piece of metal has broken away from the ship.
"It's nothing, Vala," Daniel calls from across the control room. He hasn't dragged his nose out of that book since before they left for this futile journey, which is just an excuse so that the Odyssey \doesn't rust away in a hangar somewhere.
A quick glance around the room proves that no one is paying attention to her. Again. Sam fiddles with controls, still learning the technology the Asgard's left behind, Teal'c appears like he's monitoring output on the atmospheric panel, but really, he is meditating, and Cameron is still trying different seating positions in the big chair.
Another piece snaps off the back of the ship mutely through the window and she taps again, with more fervor. "There are pieces falling off of our ship."
"I told you to bring a book to distract yourself." Daniel again doesn't remove his face from the text.
Sam's approach is warmer as she turns away from the dialled panels, "Vala, if there were pieces falling off the ship, there would be an alarm—"
An alarm interrupts her.
ii.
Gravity goes first and suddenly they're all thrust up into the air like a cargo ship nosediving through the outer atmosphere of a planet. She senses every single rotation of the Odyssey, the pressure of space outside, the relatively thin metal walls crushing in, and the sickening rocking of thrusters and then only one thruster, then all and then none.
Daniel throws up and it becomes buoyant, Mitchell frantically tries to pull himself back into the big chair he never wanted to sit in to begin with.
"Dammit, Jackson."
"I'm sorry," Daniel burps, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. "I just didn't—I was never good with roller coasters."
The alarm still blares, and they can barely hear each other. Sam fiddles at the control panel trying to reinstate some order to the chaos of them, and Daniel's lunch, floating all about. Teal'c hasn't moved, too deep into meditation.
Mitchell hooks his boot under the arm of the big chair, never removing his eyes from the floating mass of Daniel's vomit. "Sam, we could use some gravity here."
"I almost—there." Presses a bright red button and they all rain back down. Daniel lands on his face, his vomit landing on his back. Mitchell's legs land on either side of the chair arm catching him in a very sensitive spot. She doesn't see what happens to Sam, Teal'c lands on his feet, and she gets the hard corner of a control panel in the front and side of her head.
"Everyone okay?" Mitchell squeaks out.
Daniel groans, not from pain, but from disgust as he shucks his jacket, flicking his arms to disrobe causing the vomit to sprinkle down on them.
"Sam? Teal'c?"
She's seeing stars at this point, not out the window where more pieces fall from the ship, all the way up to one thruster, but the beautiful little bursts of color behind her eyelids. When she opens them all she sees are color spots and a metal panel that tilts in her vision until she wrenches her eyes closed again.
"Vala?" Someone touches her shoulder, and then the pressure lifts off her chest compressed against the floor under most of her weigh. Fingers press on the back of her neck up to the bottom of her skull. Her eyelids flutter, no not flutter, more like shudder, and when the first blink of light sneaks in it's so bright it hurts.
"Can you hear me?" Daniel asks, his breath and clothing smell like vomit.
Shades her eyes with her hand and pushes her other against his arm trying to sit up but slipping back down. "Yes—it—what—what happened?"
"She's awake." Her eyes focus in on his face as he shouts over his shoulder. One of the lens in his glasses are cracked.
Shoves against him, almost knocking him off his footing, and he catches her wrist before she lands a second blow. "What the hell are you doing."
"I don't—I—"
"Hey there Sleeping Beauty." Mitchell squats just behind Daniel's shoulder, hands on his knees, and his legs wide. "You won the wake-up race."
iii.
Sam doesn't wake up. Or rather, doesn't get a chance to wake up. They have one smaller Tau'ri flying vessel that can only seat two of them, and only one teammate that knows how to fly it. She believes it's agreeable that Sam is in the worst shape of them all. Apparently, she sort of flipped over the panel and came crashing down on the top of her head, her back smashing the edge of solid metal.
Mitchell carefully situates Sam in the passenger's seat as Daniel holds most of her weight with an arm slung around her back so they can wave goodbye.
Teal'c still hasn't moved.
iv.
More pieces of the ship float off into space with jitters of the ship's mastication. They're shaking and roiling. Daniel stands at the console Sam was usually hooked too trying to figure out the main relays and how to keep vital functions on.
Outside a chunk of metal from the rear of the ship spins by. There was no open fire, no replicators, no parasitic space thingy, just the ship being ancient without the capital, and she vomits without warrant.
It's been either an hour or a day since Mitchell left.
"Vala, hey." His hand claps to her back, rubbing up and down her spine with ease and she thinks she's supposed to say something now. Something about his touch or, no, the piece of the ship that—she throws up again.
"Sorry." Is what she says because now there are three piles of vomit in only a moderate sized room. She doesn't know how many there should be, but three seems like too many.
v.
"Stop it." She jabs back at him, the sole of his shoe pressing flat against her knee. Has a blanket wrapped around her body. Why—why did. He shoves her with his foot again and when she opens her eyes, the light still hurts. "Stop."
"You can't go to sleep."
"Then you take the first watch and let a girl get her beauty sleep." Tucks her head into her shoulder and instead of finding a down-filled slumber bag, finds a weak army-issued blanket. Opens her eyes and there is no light, well a red floodlight leaking in from a ring around the top of the room. "Where are we? What happened?"
He shifts closer and touches her chin tipping her head forward, staring into her eyes and this might be a dream, one of those dreams where he kisses her instead of spitting some form of verbal venom back at her. "The ship is falling apart. Mitchell left with Sam to bring back help."
"Why don't we just beam down to—"
"System's offline." His thumb begins strumming the bottom of her chin and tarries a bit down her jaw.
She shivers, not from his touch, when she exhales it comes out in little wisps. "It's so cold—"
"Climate control's offline."
Her eyes pinch closed and then relax for a second before he shakes her awake again. "Stop doing that, I'm tired."
"You can't sleep."
"Why not, who is possibly—"
"You have a concussion."
vi.
She doesn't know when she sleeps and when she doesn't, only that the ship's locking mechanisms have confined them to this room. Daniel says that Teal'c is caught outside the door because he woke up and was helping reinforce the room when it happened. She didn't even remember he was on the ship until Daniel reminded her.
He carries a prying bar dug out of somewhere and he uses it to pry at the meeting doors. She carries the same bloated headache that makes her topple when she stands. Intends to search for food, for communication, perhaps it's a problem with the crystals. She fixed it the last time by doing her lucky blow and shove.
The bar jangles as it drops, Daniel leaving smacking down the door to stabilize her wavering body and she touches his cold cheek. "My white knight."
"Don't move around, I know it's hard for you, but just sit still." Directs her back to the cot he must have pulled in for her. She wasn't there before. Where was she before?
"What—"
"The ship is falling apart."
"Why don't we—"
"Beaming system is offline."
"Why is it—"
"Climate control is offline too."
A low growl emits from her stomach, and her fingertips experience the empty rumble of it. "I think I'm hungry."
Daniel's face falls, tight lips loosening and his eyes downcast in what she might misinterpret as shame.
"We're out of food."
vii.
Space is hungry and eating their ship.
In the red darkness he nestles beside her, dropping another blanket over them and letting her droop her head to his shoulder. It's jacketless and bony but anchors her head from floating away.
"Goodnight Vala."
viii.
Her stomach growls again, loud and obnoxious and her face might go red because he might be able to hear it. If he does, he doesn't say anything, just stands at the console, a weak attempt to hold himself up, radioing out for anyone who might hear him.
Only the ship does and the ship groans.
"How many days?" Barely opening her eyes, he snaps his head back to her, and fumbles a landing at her side.
"Vala?" Fingers press into her pulse, and he almost laughs at her.
"What is so funny." She doesn't think those are her words, they're slurred and inarticulate and if she can't understand herself, how is he meant to?
"Nothing, just—" Hand hot on the side of her face as he clears away her hair from sticking to her clammy cheeks and dry lips. Wants to stand and show him that he's using the radio system wrong, that he needs to enter the destination coordinates first before starting the communication, but when she presses herself to stand she doesn't move.
"How many days?"
"Two without food, three in total."
"Have they come back?"
"No signs of Mitchell, but radar system is down. I had to flow the auxiliary power into keeping atmosphere and radio in here. It's all we have."
"Teal'c?"
"Teal'c?"
"What—" labors out a breath and forgets how to labor in one until she gasps out, views him in narrowing vision and pushes down into his hands as he attempts to rouse her but fails.
ix.
Wakes to his words jumbling around the room, him bundled beside her in his dried vomit jacket because it's extremely cold. Wants to touch her bare feet against the back of his knees but she's still wearing boots and socks and her entire SGC outfit. He's not laying beside her, but sitting, reading a book aloud. The text reclines against his tented legs and his hand shakes from the weight of the flashlight.
"Where's Teal'c?" Sighs out her question with her next exhalation and he stiffens.
"Vala, here." Pokes her in the side and something crinkles, something jostles, maybe in her head, maybe in her hand, maybe just the cannibalized ship. Her arm doesn't raise, and she can't find the strength to open her eyes again.
In the darkness, now red hued like the room, the only room in their worlds, something taps her lips and a brief rush of water curls down her parched throat.
"We don't have a lot but Mitchell should be back soon. He radioed in from the Sun Tzu about twelve hours ago so—"
"Mitchell?"
"He left with Sam and—"
"Teal'c?"
The pause is heavy like her head, her headache gestating within her skull, ready to burst whenever she rolls her irises towards him as she does now. Waits. Awake. For a reply.
"Teal'c died three days ago."
x.
Becomes lucid, very near the end. The thought of it ending, as it has to end, but like this, is almost offending. Would've preferred to be torn apart in the backlash of the supergate, or shot to death on the Ori ship, or in labor with Adria, some sort of respectable death to negate the awful things she'd done in her life. The thieving, the murdering as a system lord puppet, the other murdering necessary to ensure her safety. Has learned life very rarely give you what she wants unless under a very strict helping of irony.
"Vala, please." He's leaning over her, very close to her face, to her throat and her upper chest where her jacket zipper has failed. His words are hot and give her shivers, the kind of shivers she remembers liking.
"Daniel—" Speaking is like carrying around all her equipment for a ten-day journey uphill. It's a labor not worth the effort anymore, but he tried to take care of her, he really did, just failed miserably, they all did.
"There you are," laughs with tears in his eyes reddened by the lights, distorted by the crack in his glasses. Five times as many tears. "Oh God, don't scare me."
He said the same thing once when she hid in his lab closet until he opened the doors and she shouted madly at him, causing him to drop the artifact he was researching, breaking it into dozens of pieces. His skin turned red, not like this red, a different red, and he shouted at her, used Tau'ri curse words, and she shrunk away from him and his berating and his fists shaking at his side with fury, eventually pressing back into the corner hoping he would stop but he didn't.
Mitchell came with Sam and talked him down. A week later when he attempted to apologize after she stopped communicating with him, verbally and otherwise, and she picked up her lunch tray, abandoning him at the table.
Contemplated leaving the mountain, maybe venture out onto Earth, ditching the issued tracker and enjoy life, maybe leaving back through the gate.
But one day she opened the same closet door in the lab to retrieve a text and he jumped out to scare her. She screamed, loudly, and then holding her heaving chest, giggled at him, at the childish action he took to garner her forgiveness. He held out his arms and she hugged him still laughing, his cheek was warm on hers and her chest felt light, her head airy and dizzy but in a good way.
Wants to remind him of the story but has no strength. To look at him is energy she doesn't have. He cups her hand against his cheek and his skin is loose, bones jutting and hollow dips. "You just have to stay awake for a little while longer, okay?"
Wants her hand by her side, but he keeps it in place, nuzzles into her fingertips and the course hairs over his jaw stab at her frail skin. She closes her eyes and he yanks her hand. "No. No. You have to stay awake, Vala, okay? You're too strong for this."
Keeps her eyes open until they roll back and his palm shoves into her shoulder startling her back awake. "Hey remember—remember when you jumped out of that closet at me and I dropped that piece of priceless Ancient technology and destroyed it?"
She doesn't answer, can't really answer, forgets how to get the words from her head out of her mouth, her head where there's a dull hammering constantly, and the sunken pit of her stomach. Her fingers twitch against his cheek, she might cut herself on his stubble.
"I'm sorry I got so upset with you" His body inflates with air and he sobs, muscles and bones quaking. "I'm so sorry, Vala."
Cries into her hand, wet and warm at his mouth and they're back in his lab, she's sitting on the edge of the examination desk, aptly named, and he's standing between her spread legs kissing her with a hand fisted into her hair and she doesn't remember how it happened, or if it even did. It did, and he finally kissed her without the innuendo and the undertone, without her starting it because she was sitting maiden pure, legs pumping, when he, without a word, entered her space, causing her to stutter his name, and he kissed her in perfection. It was late, and his body rocked hers against the table, her fingernails clasping at his lower back, then at his shoulder, him smothering her sounds with his mouth. It was late, and no one was there but them and a broken ancient device and maybe not them even. But it happened because in her dry mouth she still tastes him.
"Just a little longer, Vala, just hold—"
"Not your fault." Her voice like a gust of hot wind in the desert and it's the last little oomph leaving her body, the last thing she can attribute to this ship, his world, her life.
"No, Vala, you—"
A transmission comes over the radio, grabbled in clauses and static, in glottal stops and words she sees and only half hears. Daniel replies staggering words like bricks, is not at her side but is. They aren't on the table. They never were except now and always.
"Hear that?" Hand absorbs her and it's wet and sticky and cold. Talks into her fingertips, his own hand scrolling through her hair, the action is repetitive like the rowing of a water vessel, forgets the Tau'ri word. "Mitchell is less than two minutes out. Just hold on, Vala."
Her hand is no longer cold and wet and breathed upon in vowels and consonants, the pain in her head mutes, deflates, falters and resets to normal, her stomach is full and not concave showcasing ribs. She is no longer losing bits of her body as their vessel loses pieces.
But she still hears him.
Not at the table whispering how much he wanted it, how long he's wanted her, how once they get back from the Odyssey trip they're going to try the dating thing again. Not that. Not those words that he never said while nipping at her ear.
He said them.
He said all of them and more.
It makes her chest light all over again.
"Just hold on."