(originally published on Livejournal)
It all happens too fast
First, Adria's just the hint of a somebody when Vala's monthly doesn't come, and Vala completely believes that something this disastrously impossible would happen to her, especially in a place where there's no cure.
She wonders what her mother felt like, wanting Vala to come into the world.
Next, Adria's barely bigger than Vala's hand, and the only sound she hears from the outside is when Tomin croons to her, all soft and tender in a way that Vala can never imagine herself being to any child. Vala can barely touch her expanding belly without hesitation.
"Can you believe it's another six months?" Tomin asks, standing behind with arms curled around her, nuzzling her neck as if he still loves her, nervous and swollen and sick like she is. "I can't imagine how long it must seem for you."
But it's going too fast for Vala, and yet she's not sure if twenty years would be enough. Tomin's anticipation of the length slows everything down just a little, and when she smiles at him and tries to appear as if her worries are normal, she wonders what her father was like for her mother. Was he even there? Did her mother care, since the child growing inside her was cherished?
Next, Adria is big enough to move around, even though Vala would swear that there's no space for them both in her body. A kick here, a turn there, up until the last weeks—Vala wonders what she was like as a baby. She can't remember that far back, and her mother was gone before she could tell her. Vala wonders if someone will be there to tell Adria about the months before her birth. It's the first time she thinks of Adria as a person, and it terrifies her.
Everyone else acts as if a day has finally come, but Vala cries out "Already? No—wait!" when her water breaks on the Ori ship. She's no stranger to pain, whether combined with torture or pleasure, but this is something else entirely. It's work, and work for something that Vala realizes halfway through that she desperately wants. Maybe if Adria is in her arms, maybe she'll be able to recall the feelings she imagines her own mother feeling.
Adria is taken away and Vala almost cries for reasons she can't define, and when Adria's brought back, Vala realizes that her panic at time flying by was premature. This little girl really does grow up too fast.
Vala sits in the room where she's been left with her half-Ori daughter, trying not to blink because Adria might sprout up another inch and Vala will have missed it. Somehow she knows that she's only going to get a few hours before the war will begin, and something terrible will happen to Adria. Vala feels like an irrational part of her is still trying to reach out, as if that will save Adria, when all it will do—she thinks, she knows—is break Vala with the inevitability.
She wonders, if her mother had known what would happen to Vala, if she would have bothered loving her at all.
"Thank you, mother," Adria says matter-of-factly as Vala helps her into a too-tall chair, but there's a tiny smile that she offers.
Vala returns it, and she wonders why Adria hasn't asked for any love. Her first memories of her own mother are burying herself in her large comforting arms, bringing her wildflowers, asking for her favorite meal on her birthday. It's part of growing up to be so vulnerable. Adria is taking it too fast, skipping too many parts.
"I need to focus," Adria tells her, another year on her face an hour later, squinting her eyes shut and trying to breathe.
Then why did you ask for me to stay here? Vala wonders as she takes a plush seat, breathing in, breathing out, watching.
Adria's face alternates between tense and calm, as she tries to figure out things that are far beyond her years. And yet, Vala realizes, in another couple hours, Vala will have been with her longer than Vala's own mother was with her, going by physical age. It yanks Vala from her almost-detached thoughts.
Like Adria, her eyes squeeze shut. Like Adria, her face tenses even as she tries to calm it. Adria is trying to grow up, Vala is trying not to remember when it started happening to her.
She was ten, or eleven maybe. The Lord Ba'al came to her world with his new "consort" Quetesh, a cold-faced goddess with eyes that saw through everything. Vala was shy and clung to her mother, but her large eyes flitted upwards at just the wrong time. Quetesh looked down, stroked her chin with the sharp tip of her glove.
"She will be a striking host in a few years," Quetesh purred, and Ba'al nodded. "Mark this world for a return, then."
Vala wonders if her mother knew what she was doing when she stepped in front of Vala, declaring that no such thing would happen. She had to have known. She was grown up, she knew everything. But did she know what it would do to Vala to watch her mother shot down by Quetesh's First Prime, scorched flesh replacing the soft bosom where Vala had been cradled so many times?
Vala opens her eyes and Adria's face is steady, her hands clasped loosely in her lap. For a moment, she thinks that she would never do that to Adria. The next moment, she knows that it wouldn't matter what the cost, as long as Adria was alive. Her life has gone by so fast already, Vala will do dangerous, terrible things to keep Adria's life going on.
Standing up, walking slowly back and forth, blue gown swishing in a way that reminds Vala why she hates dresses, her hands clench as she feels the price of growing up.
At some point that day she can't forget the rest of Adria, the part where she is a pawn of the Ori who will dominate the universe, if allowed to do so. Daniel is there then, and Vala's mind is distracted, back to managing the chaos of her own life so that she gets to keep it. There's a plan; they'll get Adria away.
Vala always wished that her mother had waited just a few more years, stolen Vala away and taken her somewhere that Quetesh wouldn't find her, instead of providing Vala's first lesson in the course that explained that being brave and standing up for others just got you killed. It was a necessary course to take, she figured out later, but Vala could have waited a little longer before growing up that much.
Now she's trying to distract Adria, smiling at her, saying more of the things that Adria seems to approve of as motherly. Her little Adria. Growing up too fast. Vala's going to steal her away to give her a little more time. And maybe like her own mother might have, she's bothering to love her even knowing what the future will do to that love.
But Vala's own life starts crashing around her, and Tomin and Daniel are at odds, and Vala realizes that if growing up is about learning lessons, then she hasn't finished yet. Neither had her mother. She steps in front of the blast, not thinking what it will do to any of them if it's her last move. Standing up for others is going to get her killed.
And then as they all rush to her side, she looks up into Adria's eyes and she isn't crying. Vala's heart breaks a little as she remembers sobbing and screaming over her mother's form as her eyes dimmed one last time. Part of growing up means accepting that pain and death happens, but Vala had only been a child then, after all. Adria is perfectly calm as she heals Vala, and it almost hurts more that way.
Adria grew up too fast.