Never
Ending by Betty
Bokor
Sam/Daniel. Vala has a secret and Sam has promised to help
her. This story tags Unending and is kind to Vala and all the other
characters in general.
Spoilers: All seasons, including 10 to the
end.
Disclaimer: The Stargate original characters belong to
MGM/Showtime, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Film Corp. This
was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt at
copyright infringement has been made.
Never Ending
Chapter 1
Sam saw Vala walking toward her with a worried expression and wondered what was going on. In the last months they had, surprisingly, become good friends. Sam was not used to having girly girlfriends; not that Vala was exactly girly, but most of the women she had befriended along the years had been military women. The closest of all had undoubtedly been Janet Fraiser, but, after her death, Sam had not gotten that close to anyone else. That is until Vala came in. Whether Sam wanted it or not, Vala had decided that they were going to be best friends.
At the beginning Sam had found it difficult to trust her new teammate and she had even felt a little bit of jealousy at the way Daniel seemed to always be there for her. Slowly she had realized that Vala was starving for friendship and just mere kindness and that she had found very little of either before joining the S.G.C. Then Vala had proved that she was willing to sacrifice herself for them and that she could be useful in their battle against the Ori. More intimately, she had showed a warm and vulnerable side that Sam had not known how to react to, and, before she had even realized, she had started trusting Vala and in some cases confiding things to her that she would not even dare tell Daniel. It felt strange; it was as if Vala had the power to allow her to let the high barriers that surrounded her go down and show her own vulnerability. Among many other experiences they had shared, the fact that Vala had also been a host for a Goa'uld was one of the things that had permitted Sam to open up with her about Jolinar. She had never had an opportunity like that before, and, in spite of all the years that had passed since the incident, it was only after discussing it with Vala that she had really felt she could put it behind her.
"Hey," she greeted as soon as Vala was close enough. "What's going on?"
"I need to talk to you," Vala answered and gestured as if to show she had something serious to say.
"Let's go to my lab," Sam started suggesting, but Vala grabbed her arm and stopped her.
"No, not here. We need to get out of here."
"Out of here? You mean out of the base?"
"Yes, out, away from the mountain," Vala replied with clear determination.
"Okay. Let me get ready and I'll meet you at the surface in ten minutes," Sam said and walked away.
Half an hour later they were walking down one of the trails of the Cheyenne Mountain State Park. Vala guided Sam toward a small picnic area where there were some stone tables and benches.
"Let's sit here. Are you sure this is secure? Nobody can hear us?"
Sam smiled and assured it was secure. Vala sat down in front of her and seemed undecided as to how to broach the secret she was about to share. Sam tried to help her.
"What is it, Vala? What do you want to talk about?"
"It's something serious, very personal."
"Have you done something? Are you in trouble? Maybe if we call Daniel we can see if there's any way to help you-"
"Well," Vala interrupted, looking hurt, "though I can see why you may think that I'm in trouble, it's something entirely different."
Sam felt bad that she had misjudged the situation so fast, but Vala smiled widely and added, "Come on, Sam, I'm joking, as you say. I want to talk about something serious –and I understand that's not fairly common for me– but I cannot keep this a secret any longer."
"Okay. Tell me what's the secret," Sam asked.
"It's hard to explain…" Vala doubted for a second. "It has to do with that whole mess during our trip to the Asgard world."
Sam immediately looked around, worried that someone could actually be listening to their conversation. "Shouldn't we have talked about this in the base and not here? If it's classified-"
"No! We cannot talk about this in there. This is very personal, I told you."
Sam gestured for her to continue and Vala tried again. "You know how Teal'c is supposed to be the only one who remembers what happened while we were in the time dilation field, just because he's the only one who didn't go back in time and all that…"
"You mean he's not the only one? That's not possible, Vala. We can't remember something we haven't actually been through-"
"But we did go through it; we just went back and undid it or not did it or-" She stopped because she felt she was not making sense and tried to gauge Sam's reaction.
"Okay, I understand what you mean, but, seriously, at least in theory because no one has done this before and we can't prove it, none of us should remember anything, except Teal'c."
"But I do remember!" She emphasized.
"You do? What do you remember?"
"Not the whole thing; just bits and pieces. And it's not truly remembering. It's more like dreaming about it."
"You have dreams about that time? How do you know they aren't just dreams and not memories? They could just be ideas about how you imagine those years could have gone by and-"
"No; I know they're memories. They're very clear and they never contradict each other."
"I see. Still…" She was ready to object again, when Vala's sad expression stopped her. "So, what do you remember?" Sam asked again.
"I remember that you modified the Asgard beaming technology and you transformed matter in things we needed to survive, for example."
"I did?" Sam asked, seriously doubting such achievement. Vala nodded and Sam added, "Well, we surely would have needed a lot more supplies than we had in the ship. That would make sense. I could look at it tomorrow and-" She stopped herself and looked at Vala. "You do really remember things, don't you? What else?"
"You learned to play the cello," Vala revealed with a smile.
"I've always wanted to learn… Wow! I'm starting to believe this. Tell me something else."
Vala smiled. "Cam was miserable most of the time and Landry grew his own garden."
Sam sat back and pondered what she was hearing. "Are you going to tell General Landry?" she finally asked.
Vala had been waiting for that question and for Sam to take in everything she had said. "No. I'm not telling anyone else. You said in the ship that it wouldn't be good. That we would one way or another get to the same place on our own somehow."
"Well, not exactly. We'll steer our lives in the same direction, but it can't be the same, even with Teal'c's help. The circumstances have changed and our lives would never be the same as those once we got out of the ship."
"I understand," Vala said sadly.
Sam was surprised by the new tone and asked, "So, why did you tell me? Is there something bad going to happen to me? Are you trying to warn me?"
"Yes, I'm trying to warn you, but not about your death or anything like it. It's about Daniel."
"Daniel? What about Daniel? Is he going to die?"
"No, that's not it. I told you; it's complicated. Daniel and… Daniel-" she tried again, but it was hard to say it out loud.
"Come on, Vala; Daniel what? Did he get hurt?"
Vala could see that Sam was getting more worried by the second, so she finally dared put it into words. "Daniel and I got together," she said softly. Sam became immobile; all possible reactions were swiftly hidden behind her most unrevealing expression. "We were together almost the whole time; up to the end…" She stopped and looked at Sam, but nothing was coming from her. "As a couple; do you understand?"
Sam nodded slowly, but still kept quiet. She was genuinely unable to comment on what Vala had just revealed. She had thought about the idea of Daniel and Vala being together now and then, especially at the beginning, while she was working at Area 51 and her friend was literally bound to the alien woman. However, Daniel had denied the possibility so many times that she had finally convinced herself that it would never happen. She was not sure if the notion had ever made her happy. On the one hand, it was a good thing for Daniel to find someone who loved him and Vala had showed that she was deserving of a man like him. On the other hand was the scaring fact that once Daniel started his own family, he would slowly fade away from her life. Sam had lost many friends that way before, but she had never had such a deep connection with any of them as she had with Daniel. Not even with Jack or Teal'c. Not even with Janet.
Vala did not interrupt Sam's thoughts. She allowed her to remain quiet and process what she was trying to explain. Finally, after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, Sam came up with something to say. "I'm glad that you weren't both alone. God knows Daniel has been alone long enough, and you too deserve-"
"That's not all I remember," Vala interrupted. "I know more."
"But you said that the reason you're telling me this was the two of you-"
"I know; that's part of it. There's more."
"Okay. Tell me. I was just wondering if you have talked about this with Daniel; if you're going to pursue this," Sam said in a rush, trying to let the words come out before they hurt her inside.
"No, I'm not telling anyone else. Only you."
"You want me to help you get Daniel to realize that he should be with you?" Sam offered, already feeling the pain of the loss that would follow such an action.
"No, that's not it either," Vala said calmly. "Listen to me, Samantha, because this is one of the hardest moments of my life."
Sam tried to ask why, but Vala did not let her interrupt.
"Let me say all this at once. It will be less difficult that way." She sighed and went on. "I'm in love with Daniel. I have been for a long while now," she confessed looking at her hands on the stone surface of the table. "I cannot explain how it happened. I've always found him very attractive –since the day I kept him in the Prometheus– and I still do." She smiled softly and looked shyly at Sam.
Sam smiled back, understanding.
"But it wasn't that. It's something about him. I know he's not a saint, as you say here, but there's that thing about him. It's the way he relates to others, I think. Sometimes I believe he can see through people, but he doesn't always see all the nastiness that can be inside someone. He can far more easily find something worth saving in everyone. That's why he stayed with me."
"I'm sorry, Vala, but I think that you're mistaken," Sam said at the first chance she got. "Because Daniel is the way he is, he would have never gotten together with you if he didn't love you."
"Oh, he loved me, I know he loved me, precisely because of the way he is. I have dreamt about the day when we finally decided to give it a try many, many times. It always happens the same way. I ask for sex, as usual, and Daniel refuses, as usual. But, then, he goes beyond that. He finally explains all the reasons why we shouldn't get together, why we would be bad for each other, why even sex isn't an option. He tells me what he felt after his wife died and how he's ready to try again with someone else, but not me, not me-"
"So, what changed? How?" Sam can hear the pain in Vala's words.
"He saw it, Sam. He looked at me and saw it. He saw how hard I had fallen for him, how his words had hurt me. He realized how much I had changed, because before him, I had never allowed myself to fall for anyone, not even for Tomin. I did love Tomin and I still love him in some way, but it was more of a grateful love. For Daniel, I would do anything."
"So, you have to fight for it," Sam said encouragingly.
"No. That's why I don't have to fight for it. Listen, Sam. You have to understand this. Daniel was the first man, the first person ever to trust me in spite of everything I've done in my life. Believe me, Daniel knew much of the worst part of me, right from the beginning, but when I needed him to trust me, when it finally really mattered, he did. In spite of all of his protests, he did. I don't know why. Anyone knows I didn't deserve it, but he did and that changed my life. I have loved him since then. And then, when we were in Ver Egen and I was… burned, you know, he held me. I woke up in his arms. His pain was genuine; his joy was too. I couldn't not have loved him. Now, every time I dream about those fifty years on board the Odyssey, I can feel how happy he made me."
"I'm sure you made him happy, too."
"I'm sure, too, because from that very first day when we got together, he decided that he was going to love me. He decided that he was going to make me happy and that he was going to be happy, too. I'm sure that by the end he was completely convinced that it had been always that way."
"That's not something you decide, Vala."
"Yes, it can be. Daniel has known both what it means to be deeply loved and what it means to be so alone in this world that just waking up in the morning is painful. I'm sure he didn't love Sha're from the moment he met her, but he left his life behind for her, because he saw the potential there. The potential for happiness. The right conditions to invest all his feelings and gain much from it. Do you know how many couples in the universe don't choose each other, but end up living together for the rest of their lives because of the decision of their families, because of social pressure, or because of many other, worse, reasons? In spite of it, many of those couples lead happy lives and trust and love each other. They learn to love one another because they think it's the right thing to do. Daniel can do that. I'm all for falling, suddenly, madly in love. He can do both."
"If you're right, he's always done the first, not the falling madly…"
"That's where you're wrong. There are many other things that I can remember from those days. First, let me say that Daniel was always faithful to me, that I never believed he could betray me, but there were those little sighs, those furtive looks, those hands that couldn't stay away for too long, even if it was just for a tiny touch. Whenever his brain was not fully in control and his heart took charge, all those gestures would come to light without him even noticing. Nobody else noticed, not even you, just me."
"What are you talking about, Vala?" Sam asked genuinely puzzled.
"I believe that years ago, I'd say right around the time when he descended for the first time, Daniel was too vulnerable, too raw to escape from feelings that had been kept at guard and controlled for years. I've read the reports, a short while ago, after I realized all this, and now I'm sure."
"You'll have to explain it more clearly, because I'm completely confused. What reports? What are you talking about?"
"Vis Uban. O'Neill said in his report that when you approached Daniel for the first time in Vis Uban, he rejected you very hastily. I think that's when it first hit him."
"What?"
"His feelings for you." Sam sat back with a gesture of dismissal. Vala continued. "We've talked many times about him since I met you. I've even asked you if you had feelings for him or if you had ever had had something."
"And I've always told you that there's been nothing but a great friendship between us."
"I know, and maybe that's really how you feel, but have you thought that he may have had other feelings for you?"
"No. That's not possible."
"I, on the other hand, have no doubt."
"He hasn't told you anything like that, has he?" Sam asked, starting to feel dizzy.
"No. I put it all together on my own," Vala admitted with a smile. "I think that very first day you two met, in that Cartouche Room on Abydos, he realized he had met his soul mate. He saw himself in you; the genius he would never admit to himself, the hunger for discovery, the love for knowledge. All the intellectual fuel that he needs to keep going in a world that has not given him much of the emotional kind. In the whole S.G.C. you are his only true equal. I think that he was starving for that after a year on that planet. No matter how bright, how loving, how giving Sha're was, she'd have never even comprehended half of what was brewing in one minute in his mind. You can. You can take his ideas and carry them further on your own. You can meet him at his level and keep climbing with him. I think that as soon as he realized that, he fell hard for you, like he had never fallen before."
"He never said anything like that," Sam tried to dismiss it.
"He didn't get to even accept it himself. That lonely feeling, that euphoria that rushed inside him as he talked to you, soon vanished and was replaced by furious guilt as he realized Sha're was lost and it had happened while he was rejoicing in your intellectual feedback."
Sam was about to object again when Vala continued.
"He had to crush that feeling then. He owed all his passion to his wife, the woman he felt he had betrayed, unburying the gate, leaving her to go with O'Neill and you, discovering the joy of being understood. I don't think he ever allowed himself to consciously go back there. He transformed you into something unreachable, untouchable, harmless, safe. A best friend. That is, until he descended and all constraining memories were taken away from him. He saw you there, walking toward him, about to touch him, and every repressed feeling rushed to the surface. He must have felt overwhelmed. He probably panicked. He rejected you and run to hide until the rush had passed."
Sam lifted her hands to her face and softly rubbed her forehead as if she were hurting. "You know, Vala, I understand what you're saying and I also understand how you could have reached such conclusions, but I'm pretty sure that's not how Daniel feels. If he had really felt that way, he would have just told something after he descended, at least."
"He never said a word?"
Sam quickly answered, "No," but a few seconds later she remembered the odd question Daniel asked while they were in his tent on Vis Uban. "No," she repeated. That had only been a logical response to her praises of him.
"In any case, I don't care if he said anything or not. Maybe he thought you belonged to O'Neill, like mostly everybody else in the base."
"I told you there was nothing there when you asked me before."
"That doesn't mean that Daniel didn't feel there was something or that there were other reasons why you were beyond his reach. Perhaps he simply couldn't afford another heartache, but somewhere along the line, he thought he had a shot with you. That's what he was talking about when he said he was ready to try getting close to someone again."
Sam shook her head. She still could not believe that Daniel could have any of those feelings for her. "Look, Vala. You think you spent those fifty years with him and that both of you were happy. Why would you not try to relive that? What does all this that you think he feels for me have to do with anything? There's nothing between Daniel and me, just as there was nothing between Jack and me. No matter what others think, that's the only truth."
"He doesn't need to learn to love me if he already loves you."
"He doesn't."
"Well, why don't you ask him and if he says that he doesn't, I will tell him what I feel."
"What about what I feel?" Sam looked at her with a little bit of indignation.
"Oh, well, we both know that you love him already, so-"
"I don't love him!" Sam almost yelled. Then she closed her eyes and gestured impatiently with her hands. She reopened her eyes and tried to look calmly at Vala. "I do love him, but not that way."
"Sure?"
"Sure," she stated with conviction.
"Sure, sure, sure, sure?" Vala asked again with a small smile.
"Yes," Sam replied, but this time a little doubt crossed her mind. "Ah, no, you're putting ideas in my head."
"Okay then. Promise me you'll do something for me and then everything will be okay."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Ask Daniel."
"If he's in love with you?"
"No; if he's in love with you."
"I can't ask him that."
"You said that he's your best friend, that you trust him with your life, and you cannot ask him a little question?"
"It's not a little question. It's something that could hurt him. What if he says yes and I have to tell him that I don't feel the same?"
"Ah… so you think there's a chance that he will say yes."
"No. There's no chance."
"But you just said-"
"No, really. There's no chance at all."
"So, you can ask him and there won't be any problem, because you won't have to tell him that part about you not feeling the same way. You can just say something like "Great, because I'm not in love with you either," and you can both live happily ever after." She stood up and added, "So, we're in agreement now and you'll let me know right after you ask him." She smiled brightly and waited for Sam to stand up.
Sam slowly left her bench trying to think up a good reason why not to ask such a question to Daniel, but too many ideas were fighting in her head and she could not come up with anything. A couple of days later, as she was picking up the dinner plates and putting them in the dishwasher, she tried to gather enough resolve to ask the question and end the whole ridiculous situation.
Daniel had just finished putting the leftovers in the fridge and was cleaning the table. He enjoyed fixing dinner for Sam. She had a way of taking pleasure in every bite when they were not rushing to eat the cafeteria food at the base, that made it worth spending hours shopping for the right ingredients and later fixing the meal.
They finally sat down to drink some coffee in his living room and she decided to go ahead and ask.
"You know, Daniel, how all these years we've been friends and we've told each other most of our secrets…"
"Yes?" Daniel asked with curiosity.
"Well, there's a question that I'd like to ask you, but I wouldn't like you to feel offended or hurt, I don't know… I'd just really want you to answer truthfully and then we can forget it. Please, I don't want it to get awkward between us."
"Okay," Daniel accepted without hesitation
"You're not, I mean, you've never been in love with me, have you? I know how much we love each other, but that's another kind of love and what I'm asking about-"
"Well, the truth is," Daniel started and lowered his head slightly, so as not to have to look at Sam eye to eye, "the truth is-"
"Oh, my God!" Sam gasped. "You have! You are? That's crazy. I can't believe. I can't believe we both feel that way," she finished without one bit of mental restraint.
Daniel looked at her and smiled widely. He looked very surprised, almost shocked, but amused at the same time. "You do? You're in love with me, Sam?"
Sam was about to answer when the whole conversation replayed in her mind and she realized two fundamental facts. First, Daniel had not said he loved her and, second, she had said she loved him, even though she had been completely sure until five minutes ago that she did not. Now she was not able to deny it even to herself. She tried to calm down and bravely looked at Daniel's eyes. "Please, just tell me the truth and we will leave it at that, okay?"
Daniel was still smiling. He was overwhelmed by Sam's revelation. Now he had to find the courage to reveal his feelings. A friendship like theirs was too much to risk.
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