(A/N: Originally posted on livejournal in 2009)
Vala lay crushed back into him, breathing heavy, fingers clenching his. Her hair sprawled over his face but he couldn't do anything about it. And sight wasn't even an option, only dark-green shadows and the creaking thunderous sounds of the space closing in.
"Killer moss, Daniel," she gasped out, that dry snark still behind the panic. "Next time, can we believe the natives, please?"
Daniel couldn't move his hand and he wished that they had brought someone a little less afraid of tight spaces.
"Okay, we're not finished yet..." he managed to get out.
Another loud creak sounded right by his ear and Vala jerked back against him; it knocked the little air he had left out of his chest. Something brushed by his hand, and Daniel shivered, his heart drumming away faster than was useful.
Blood pounded in his head and his limbs lay tangled and squashed in this ever-tightening green space. Daniel hoped the words he'd just managed to say had been accurate at all...
Ten hours earlier
"Teal'c, where are you off to?" Vala called as she and Daniel walked towards the elevator down past NORAD.
But their oft-reticent friend merely smiled and ducked his head back under the wide-brimmed hat that accompanied his brown trenchcoat.
"Uh-oh," Daniel murmured at her side and continued to glance back as they walked onwards.
Vala chuckled. "Oh, it's probably another acting attempt that we'll see on the iTube in a matter of hours..."
"YouTube."
She flashed her teeth at him. "Got you."
"Oh, I'm supposed to believe that?"
"Absolutely, darling."
Daniel used the friendly-yet-mocking snort he'd perfected, but Vala didn't stop grinning.
They made it down to the SGC as usual, Daniel stopping off at the mess hall to grab a coffee, Vala to grab a powdered doughnut.
"Is that a new style?" the server asked her as she reached across the counter for a napkin. Vala often wondered if it was worth doing menial food work if one was doing it in a secret underground base. (She had a feeling that those Batman fangirls she'd seen when Daniel had taken her to the comic convention would say 'hell yes'.)
Vala cocked her head with a smile and put a hand to the newly straightened hair that framed her face. "Oh, no, old old old. This has been out of all the worlds I frequent for centuries, but when I used it to fake an older age here, all your people seemed to think I was aping youth. What laughs!"
The server grinned. "Well, you pulled off hair sparkles last year, this is hardly going to ruin your streak."
Vala wrapped her doughnut in the napkin as she smelled the dusty sweet scent. "Exactly." She waved it in the server's direction as a farewell.
Meeting up with Daniel and his substandard-but-familiar coffee in his favorite mug, Vala linked her free arm in his as they continued on to the briefing room.
"You could have told her it was because it's safer off-world to have maintainable hair," he said in a low tone and leaned his head towards her as he said it.
"I still rather like my fashionista reputation." Vala snuck her doughnut for a brief dunk into Daniel's coffee as he turned to pull his chair closer.
If he noticed the floating white powder, he didn't comment. They took their seats, a few more minutes passed, and finally Landry walked in.
"This is odd." Daniel glanced around at the empty table.
"Oh, weren't you informed?" Landry's eyebrows attempted to occupy all of his high forehead. "All your comrades took the next few days off."
"Together?" Daniel asked at the same time as Vala said, "Without us?"
Landry gave a snorting laugh. "No need for indignance, they all approached separately. It was your initial report about this planet that inspired them, Dr. Jackson, so if you're missing out on anything you have only yourself to blame."
"Hmmph." Daniel grunted, then took a sip of his coffee.
"What did Daniel write?" Vala asked curiously as she flipped open the blue folder that Landry passed down the table.
"Well, we met with some natives who hadn't been to this planet in over fifty years." Daniel's tone easily switched into teacher/messenger mode. "We—meaning me and SG-13. They said that their people had fled because of—and I quote—killer lichen."
"Yes, I read that," Landry said.
Vala blinked, her fingertip resting over the words she'd just tried to scan.
"They seemed pretty certain that the plant was, uh, deadly and had overtaken their village." Daniel continued to reference his notes with casualness that was just slightly over-the-top.
Vala gave him a look that she knew he would decipher immediately, since he had obviously thought very clearly about how to get back at her for saying that initial reports were far less interesting than even the most boring missions.
"So none of them could remember exactly how the plant was deadly, and the original generation had all died, so you guessed allergies," Landry concluded for him. "Yes, I read the report."
"It's not unfamiliar—well, not for us—finding alien plantlife that has adapted away from being suitable for the humans that the Goa'uld originally settled on these planets," Daniel said with a shrug.
Vala chuckled. "And you didn't opt out of this mission, Daniel?"
"My antihistamine medications have been perfected over many years of gate travel," Daniel answered smoothly.
"So we need samples for the botany team?" Vala asked with a sigh and slight roll of her head. "I want to say 'oh joy', but I'm not sure it's appropriate."
"No, that works." Daniel nodded with wearily raised brows.
"You can head out in a few hours, then, once the sun rises on that world," Landry said.
Vala raised her eyebrows as Landry excused himself from the table. "Why do I bother getting us out of bed some days?"
"Because you're becoming a frighteningly good citizen." Daniel pinched off a piece of her doughnut.
"Oh, Daniel, it sounds so much more interesting when you say it," Vala said, and decided to ignore his doughnut thievery.
Five hours later
"It's not so bad," Vala said hopefully as she finally took the hazmat helmet off. She gulped in the fresh air, however, and tried to fluff out her hair from where it had plastered to her head. In the hot sun, she seemed to glisten.
Daniel stood up with the sample containers in his hands full of the clear solution signifying non-poisonous material. His glasses had not fogged up, thankfully, and after removing his hazmat helmet and feeling the muggy cloud dissipate he wondered how that was possible. The world around them seemed just shy of rippling with heat, but at least the air flowed around them. "Nothing killer, that's for sure," Daniel exhaled slowly.
"Apparently the natives were all allergy sensitive." Vala shrugged. She stretched a little, then sat cross-legged in the grass. They were both hanging around in the first clearing they'd come across with a high concentration of the infamous lichen—moss, really, though not quite, it was actually a mislabeling—they'd heard about.
Daniel glanced around, but then joined her in the sitting. He breathed in deeply.
"No throat swelling or hives?" Vala looked in his direction.
"All clear." Daniel slapped his hands lightly on his crossed-legs as emphasis and thought that maybe their teammates had had the right idea in avoiding this mission. Other than the enjoyable atmosphere, this planet was exactly the sort of dull that had made so many SGC personnel ask for transfers to the Atlantis base.
"Let's get down to business, then," Vala said and turned with much more attention to the backpack. Out came a brown paper sack, and Daniel had to grin.
"Picnic lunch, Vala?"
"Be prepared," she quoted succinctly, and handed him a wrapped sandwich.
It was tuna, with the eggs cut instead of mashed, just how he preferred them. Making a pleasant humming noise as he took his first bite, he leaned back against his pack, closed his eyes and soaked up the sun. Days like these he could almost miss Abydos.
Twenty minutes later, well-fed and far too comfortable, he took an indulgent moment to lay with his back on the soft moss and grass. One arm behind his head, the other sprawled out so Vala could use it as a pillow, he seriously considered taking a nap.
"They aren't expecting us in less than an hour, right?" he heard Vala murmur.
But he didn't have time to answer before drowsiness dragged him down into the blissful sunny warmth of this safe planet.
Four hours later
It showed how much these Tauri people had corrupted Vala when almost the first thought after waking (even before opening her eyes) was that it was probably against mission protocol to take naps in the sun on SGC missions. Obviously she had lost her mind.
Still, she'd felt so tired. Yawning, she could sense something on her forehead and grimaced. This new hairstyle had been specifically chosen to keep her hair out of her face. But her eyes snapped open once her fingers found the offending strands of—moss?
"Daniel!" she said, voice a little cracked as her vocal cords seemed to be waking up still. The grassy knoll they had taken their picnic in was suddenly only a quarter of the size, and either they had shrunk or the moss had tripled in height. Vala wasn't ruling out miniaturization as a principle, of course, but then why would the plain itself look smaller?
"Hmm?" Daniel jerked upright. His hand came to his face to fix his gently-askew glasses. "Oh."
"Oh?" Vala said back, tone high. "Just oh? And you call yourself a linguist!"
Daniel's head darted around the circle, and he half stumbled to his feet to brush the stray green strands off his pants. Vala likewise stood up, and paranoia might not be entirely appropriate for employees of secret government agencies, but she felt herself fidgeting at the way the landscape had changed.
"That's...weird," Daniel said slowly. He raised a finger before Vala could say anything. "Which is the only word that fits at the moment, since I don't have any facts at hand. What the hell happened?"
"Oh, just naptime for the Jacksons." Vala waved her hand with the same dryness as her tone.
"Hmm, yeah, not such a good idea, I'm thinking," Daniel said, and frowned.
Vala had strange vibes all over, seeing the way the tall brush seemed to have encroached heavily on their picnic area. Then, curiosity struck her, and her eyes darted to the picnic bag she'd brought. Half-buried, contents and paper bag both. "Daniel..." she trailed off, not knowing what she wanted to ask or say.
"Yeah..." He stood with an ominous look on his face, then gestured with his hand. "Gate?"
Vala scurried to grab their things and stuffed leftover food and blanket alike into the bag. Careening across the field brought them to the circle of brush within seconds, yet it took only a moment after that to realize that they weren't getting off so easily. The brush seemed to be matted together, impassable.
"This is not good," Daniel declared the obvious, nodding, and Vala could almost see the buzz and hum of his rapid thoughts as his eyes scanned the tough greenery.
She swallowed, looked around, then up. "Daniel, the sun is at midday's height. We slept for hours."
"Maybe it wasn't allergies after all, maybe the villagers came to places like these," Daniel trailed off.
"They said the plants were deadly," Vala shot at him, discomfort quickly turning into panic. "Are you saying they were eaten by plants?"
To her horror, it took him a full few seconds to answer, "I'm not saying that yet!"
"Oh this is fantastic." She spun around and dropped the bag, then put her hand to her face as if to brush back the bangs she no longer had. With no hair to muss with, her hands clenched and unclenched and felt more awkward than ever. "Moss, Daniel! You—we—are—moss!"
"Incredibly fast-growing moss, and really it just looks like what we call moss," Daniel corrected, and took a step back from the border, licking his lips nervously. "Vala, we're stuck here. And unless it's been six hours, no one's coming for us. This moss grew way too fast for the SGC to get here before it's engulfed us, assuming that's what it's headed towards."
"So how do we get out?" Vala asked and reached for her pack. "Do these come with flame throwers? Machetes? I never actually looked in the equipment bag before."
Daniel gave her a look, but it was less incredulous and more regretful, as if he wished she hadn't had to joke about the flame-thrower.
Vala, mouth dry, kept glancing at the edge of the brush-barrier that appeared to be moss on steroids. Or mossy bushes. From this far out, the twiggy structure almost looked like teeth at its edges, and Vala was not in the mood for that.
"All we have are the pocketknives and the lunch knife," Daniel sighed.
"So we're doomed?" Vala asked, and it came out quietly and fell like a stone into the middle of their shared pool of tension.
The ripples dragged them down, but not fully. "Not yet," Daniel said, going for his pack. But he didn't do it like he meant it. "Let's see if we can figure out why it went after us, because it can't be an accident..."
The desperation in his voice just made her heart drop a little more, but it fueled her determination enough. Shivering her shoulders to loosen them, she started wracking her brain for anything she'd ever heard about botany.
Half an hour later
About twelve feet of grass was all that remained around Daniel and Vala, crouched in the center with their supplies around them. Vala's hands kept shooting out to grab at Daniel's notes, some piece of equipment, anything that might help in her mind. But since Daniel had no ideas of his own, he couldn't blame her, only feel worried for them both.
The "moss" was growing rapidly, as if the moss had been its infancy stage and it was always meant to be a...killer bush? It didn't make sense, though, when the rest of this planet seemed so normal. As the brush encroached ever nearer, and there was no way for them to contact anyone else, Daniel felt his mind spiraling down into a neverending circle of pointless thought.
Vala gasped a little, and scooted closer to him, a tendril of a bush having grazed at her back. "How is it doing that? What is it eating? We didn't feed it."
"Not physical food," Daniel answered, instinctively looking behind him, and his heart leapt at the sight of only a few feet left. He slid back, drawing Vala with him, until they had an equal distance on all sides. She was looking into his eyes, terrified, but focused and waiting for him to finish his statement. "Maybe they don't eat food. Maybe they don't use photosynthesis."
"What?"
"Using sunlight for growth."
"How does that have anything to do with creating pictures?" Vala demanded in her panicky non-sequitur way. "And what do they eat that needed us like that? Happy thoughts? Sleep?"
Daniel shook his head. "It doesn't make—I don't know. There's so many possibilities, but it's not my area..."
"With only a few inches between us and something that will do, what, B-movie horror things to us? Daniel, you know what that means," Vala declared, eyes sharp.
She'd gotten the reference right, but Daniel didn't notice. "Okay, okay. So it put us to sleep so it could keep us here, but it wasn't for our food. It's not needing water either, since we saw a stream on our way."
"Not heat," Vala continued, nodding quickly and pointing up at the sun still shining, even as the brush started to curve over, almost forming a bubble surrounding them around and above.
"Static!" Daniel said finally, just as something touched his back and he jerked forward, shoulder smacking into Vala's.
"What!" she said, whipping her head around as if for a new threat. "Daniel!"
"No, I mean electricity," Daniel said, at her wide-eyed look. "Our bodies make a static charge, more than anything in nature other than other animals. Maybe the plants..." Again he trailed off as the plants moved in closer, growing too fast for normal nature, tightening its green grip around the two SGC people in its grasp.
"Daniel," Vala said shakily, almost in his arms as the space tightened around them. "Are you saying I'm electric?"
Daniel's short laugh was tense, but the quip wasn't unwelcome. Just—neither of them had anything to say.
Neither had anything solid to do.
"I'm trying the knife now," Vala said suddenly, reaching for her pocket.
Ten hours after mission briefing
They were going to be squashed to death by plants, Vala could tell. She couldn't move any closer to Daniel, and any second now and the plants could touch her. It would answer their question of carnivorous or not, but Vala hadn't wanted to be a guinea pig for that.
"Killer moss, Daniel," she gasped out, needing to speak before they ran out of options, but not knowing what to say. "Next time, can we believe the natives, please?" Can we have a next time, please, universe?
"Okay, we're not finished yet," Daniel's voice came from behind her head, but then something made a moving sound, and Vala couldn't even turn her head to see without getting scratched by the approaching twigs on the bushes.
"What?" she asked, after pulling in as far as she could, wishing desperately that she had not inherited claustrophobia. It was Daniel that moved this time. "What?" she asked again.
"Just—never mind," Daniel said. "I can't get to it now, the brush got our pack."
"What is it doing with it?" Vala asked without thinking, trying to remember to breathe. She didn't want to die like this.
"Wait..."
"I didn't mean it, I don't know why I said it," she hurried on swiftly.
"No, wait," he continued, and she wished she could see his face instead of the dark green bushes that were almost burying them. "Electricity. Maybe it wants us for that, but we're not the biggest source."
She breathed in sharply, knowing what he meant. "Zats."
"Vala, can you reach into the brush and grab the zat?" Daniel asked, voice barely above a whisper as the branches started curling around their bodies. Daniel had mentioned something like a reserve food supply that maybe the plants had been saving for this, their arrival, and Vala just hoped it would run out soon, because the plant mass was still coming too fast.
Silently, panting for breath, trying not to hear the pounding of her own heart and the creaking noise of the growing plants, she grimaced and thrust her hand into the green. It felt like a shock, but she only hissed and pushed her hand in further. The backpack—a few seconds later she'd dragged the handle out, then dug her hand into it. Her hand found the smooth metal of the zat, and with as much free space as they had left, as the plants seemed to buzz as they touched them, she pointed it outwards and shot.
The blue buzzing lightning half bounced back, zapping her and Daniel both. But the plants moved.
"No match for this, ha!" she found the words escaping her mouth with the second shot. Again the plants moved back, about an inch.
Daniel's hand squeezed her shoulder, and suddenly they had life running through their veins as Vala zatted again and again. The bushes pulled back, the sun peeped in, and as Vala kept shooting, the bushes kept following, engulfing each zat shot. Vala started scooting back on her hips, shooting still, glancing behind to see that the coast was clear.
"Move, move," she said hastily, breath catching in her throat.
No words were needed. Vala kept shooting, Daniel pulled himself up and then her, and then they turn and darted like mad. Even newly fed killer moss couldn't run.
Sun still shining bright, planet still looking green and normal, Daniel and Vala reached the gate. Daniel got to the controls first and dialed, as Vala held up the zat and watched for any signs of attack.
"Come on, come on," Daniel murmured as the gate locked in the chevrons.
Vala thought she saw a tree move out of the corner of her eye, and her finger snatched at the trigger before her mind realized that it was just a pine tree. Probably. How she wished for passive plants to be a certainty again!
The kawoosh was a happy sound like no other. Punching in the iris code, the last few seconds were like a whole day, and each rustle of the wind sounded like angry plants wanting more electricity.
Finally they could run through the event horizon, and arrive on a beautifully plantless ramp in a superbly non-organic gateroom.
"Shut the gate down!" Daniel called up and waved his hand, just in case.
The control-room did, and as the planet was finally behind them, they could sigh out in relief. Vala leaned a little on Daniel's shoulder and let the zat hang limply, and for all that they'd had to nap for hours on that planet, she felt tired now from all the rush.
"Oh god," Daniel murmured, and put a hand to her head to hold her a little closely to him.
"Killer moss," Vala said to herself under her breath, as SFs began to approach and the questions were about to start.
"I feel the urge to massacre several salads," Daniel said.
Vala knew exactly what he meant. And though it was funny how they always got the ones that needed such drastic measures, they'd survived yet another mission. The luck of SG-1 still ran strong, apparently.
Then Daniel started explaining what exactly had gone wrong, and at the raised eyebrows of all around, Vala felt a laugh coming up. The incredibly weird luck of SG-1 ran strong. This would be such teasing material for the absent teammembers in a couple hours...