Title: From a Certain Point of View
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Rating: PG/K
Spoilers: General for Seasons 9 & 10. I suppose in particular Crusade/Flesh and Blood
Characters/Pairing: Team, Vala-centric, Daniel/Vala. Three lightly used OCs...although what do you call an OC that's a canon character? He just hasn't been named.


There are times Vala is glad she became a host. Not glad glad, but happy with the way things went because of those ten years of hell. Well, most of it anyway. There are still a few things that if she could get it removed from her life, she would. But for the most part she's happy.

If she hadn't become a host, she'd be married to Darien. It would have been a comfortable marriage, but lukewarm. He'd be elected to council; she'd be lending a hand at the library cataloging what they found in the digs. She never told Daniel that what she did when she was younger was about the closest thing to an Archeologist as her planet would have had. She saves that for her personal amusement. Although she did tell Sam once during one of their girl nights.

They would have had two children, most likely boys who would grow up to follow their father into local politics. She would watch them grow up, praying each day that the Goa'uld did not need them to be hosts. She would see them get married and have their own children. She didn't know if her being a host changed anything with the downfall of the system lords, but she would have liked to know it wouldn't. That her other self, the one who got to keep some of her innocence, wouldn't live her entire life under their rule.

According to Sam, there are an infinite amount of alternate realities. Maybe in one of them that life is what she was able to have.

But in this reality, she did become a host and Darien was dead, by her hand even. Her planet still exists, somewhere, but she hasn't seen it since she left there as Qestesh's broken host with the Tok'ra. She has nothing there to bring her back. Her mother has died and she really has no reason to seek out Adria or Milena, her father's third wife.

What she does have is a new home. One where she has a purpose that's not just a title. She goes on adventures every day, comes home to shopping sprees and pedicures with Sam, basketball with Muscles and bowling competitions with Cameron. And of course she comes home to Daniel.

They still fight all the time, although it's tempered down to good natured fighting and banter. They finally got a house together and moved off base (and Jack's got a bet going on how long Daniel can manage to keep the house this time) and she's very happy to have personal space that is bigger than a single room. And hearing something other than her own breathing is nice as well. The walls at the SGC blocked out the busy hallways and alarms for the most part.

She has the two kids, although one's a girl. There is Nick who's eight and like neither of them, and Katie who's three and really the best combination of both. They are both growing up too fast and she knows it won't be long before they are going through the gate on their own adventures and she'd worry again about what's out there.

She tries not to think of Adria, but sometimes it still hurts to think she was almost a mother back then. She's gotten to the point where she can look at it and realize that she was merely a surrogate, but there is a part of her that still is begging to hold her baby girl.

She's happy. She's got a home, a life, a family. Everything she wanted when she was an innocent girl who hadn't seen the evil of the world. But now she has, and she conquered it. And there might be more, and she'll continue to fight. But as she watches her son do his homework and her daughter playing in the sandbox in the backyard trying to dig for buried treasure (not sure if that is her or Daniel coming out there), she knows that sometimes you get a lot of good in life, even if you have to go through the very bad.