Write Offs

Chapter 1

Dominant Traits

A broken heart. That's all it is.

She wakes every day long before her alarm, long before the alarm still set to wake him for a jog. Her hands lay ridged at her side, and she stares at the ceiling until the crosshatched pattern in the panels blends with her gathering tears. Until light dims and brightens in the far wall of the room in a simulated sunrise.

Has relearned how to cry silently less the body beside her stir and wake and discover her tears. Doesn't sob or shake, just closes her eyes in what she wishes was sleep, the itchy wetness gliding over her cheeks until she lets out a gasp and wipes them away with the back of her hand.

Then morning comes, and she replaces the masks she created a year ago. The alarm wails at the side of her bed and she smacks it off within a second. Snuffles away her sadness, her sleep, and sits on the edge of the bed, feet flat on the bare metal floor, and after a single sigh, she stands to rouse her bed buddy.

Places a kiss on the back of the tiny head with ashy brown curls and rubs the back pumping in air like the humming birds that would flit through his backyard, breathing a thousand times a minute with tiny innocent heart. "Time to wake up, darling."

Light blue eyes drift open, and disappear as a yawn rakes her body, a wide, lion roar of a yawn showcasing two rows of perfect baby teeth and pink tongue. Soft, warm hands ball into fists as her little one stretches her back as if she's been carrying the world the entire night, and then her feet, lined with an elastic cuff of pajama pants, kick the blanket away.

"That was a big yawn," she laughs as she wants to cry, her hand cupping Beatrice's round cheeks under sleepy eyes. "Did you have a good sleep?"

Her daughter smashes one of the fists into her own eye, rubbing the sleep away and shrugs. "S'okay."

And it hurts because she is so much like him, when she barely knew him at all.

Crouching so they're roughly the same height, she smooths down Beatrice's curls, the ones she'll spend half an hour taming and littering with her pins until her daughter gives her approval. She spoils her, because he's not here to do it when he promised to.

When she sits on the edge of the bed, Beatrice shuffles closer to her, wrapping her tiny arms around her waist, her head hiding against her ribs, which is good because her smile is shaky at best. "I don't know about you, but I'm awfully hungry."

"Mama, I'm starving." Her daughter throws her head back in toddler theatrics that always bring a smile to her face.

"Then let's get ready and go get breakfast." Taps her on the back and they both hop off the side of the bed.

Beatrice stands at the dresser, yanking out the bottom drawer and rifling through for clothing. Her head turns over her shoulder and with a stern look she questions, "Can I have Fruit Loops?"

She flicks the comforter in the air, clearing it of any wrinkles. "If they have them, darling."

"What if they don't?"

"Then we'll have to have a contingency plan." Floats the comforter over the pressed sheets and tucks the corners in.

"What's that?" In her tiny arms, Beatrice carries over enough clothing for at least four outfits and then flops to the ground in the pile.

"A backup."

"Okay."

As her daughter giggles, rolling in the clothing she's splayed out, she catches her trembling lip between her teeth. It's been a year and it hurts like it's the same day.

The same day they said he didn't come back.

"That's the Eye of Horus." Daniel balances her daughter on his lap as she leans her elbow into the table, staring at the ancient text half bored and a little finicky. He, however, is thoroughly entertained in trying to teach a two-and-a-half-year-old how to decipher symbols littered on Earth by the Ancients. "See how the stylization in the line strokes differed from the Eye of Ra."

"Daniel?" Beatrice's chubby cheeks pillow against her fist and the way she speaks his name sounds more like 'Dannel'. If he was here, she would probably already be calling Daniel some variant of Sunshine.

He stops his lesson, his finger pressed to the page, but he turns his attention towards Beatrice. "Yes?"

Her tiny hand moves to his cheek and pats it once before she explains, with her nonchalance and honesty. "I don't care."

Daniel rolls his eyes and takes her tiny hand in his before picking her up and setting her down on the ground. "Of course you don't."

As Beatrice bounces away into the corner of the office, once Daniel's pristine archeology office, then her shared office with him, now the office housing Ancient artifacts and very rare texts along with a wicker basket of preferred toys and a drawer full of crayons, she raises her head from the computer where she's doing what she does everyday. "Why do I somehow feel that that insult was directed at me."

"It wasn't an insult." He chuckles and wipes his glasses clean of bitty fingerprints and when Beatrice appears beside him with a box of crayons, he takes it from her with a grin, opens it, and hands it back. He watches her bound off again to fall flat on her stomach on an activity mat he never really agreed to put in his office, but Beatrice scrapped her knee once on the hard tile and he didn't argue after that. He grins again watching her rage color across the page, just fanning the red crayon back and forth ignoring all lines within the book. "She's just so much like you."

Drops her eyes from him and her daughter, who's kicking her legs through the air and humming a song to herself. "It's not as if she has someone else to imitate."

"Vala," he sighs, but he understands, his anger towards her, his shortness diffused once she had Beatrice, perhaps even a bit before when she was plagued with multiple sicknesses while humongously pregnant. But his attitude cemented in place when Cameron went missing. His hand slides towards hers. "That's not what—"

When his fingertips touch her skin, she tugs away her hand, returning to the keyboard as she scrolls through a list of over a thousand gate addresses. In a year she's gotten it down from nearly half a million. Everyday she cross-references the planet of his last known whereabouts with similar planets in the system and the list of last dialed addresses.

He was ambushed, pressed the rest of the team towards the Gate but didn't make it through with them. Made it off the planet, but by the time they accessed the DHD, more than fifty other dialling attempts had been made wiping the memory. He's been captured, living as a prisoner, and she wakes up in her room in the complex in a nice bed every morning because she refuses to live in his house without him.

Not really employed by the SGC anymore, rather living off his benefits as after the year they declared him as dead. Landry allows her to stay and search, perhaps because he's taken a shine to her or perhaps because her daughter has her smile and he can't refuse them both.

Daniel leaves his hand stationary and flat on the table beside her laptop. "We'll find him, Vala."

"I'll find him," she corrects, poking her head around the computer screen to check on her daughter because she's being too quiet. The toddler is drawing on the white tiles with wax crayons, using each square as a separate tableau. "You've stopped searching."

"You know that's not fair. I have other priorities in—Beatrice, no!" Daniel jumps from his chair removing the crayon from her hand and stepping on her lovely picture. "We don't—"

Beatrice breaks into tears, yanking her hand free from Daniel's and fleeing to her arms. She encircles her daughter hoisting her up onto her lap and petting the curls away from sticking to her cheeks. "It's alright."

"Vala she has to learn—"

"And you could be gentler with her," she snaps, as her shirt dampens with her daughter's tears. "It's alright, darling. Daniel was upset because you were drawing on his floors."

"I was—" There's snuffling and sniffing and one hiccup. "I was making it pretty."

"Daniel knows that darling, but he really likes his floor plain and ugly." She hears him sigh behind her as she rocks Beatrice a bit, while an algorithm runs on the computer to narrow down the gate addresses further.

"It's ugly."

"I know, but it's his floor." Wipes the chubby cheeks, his chubby cheeks, free of tears and stares at light blue eyes that are not from her. "So you should apologize."

"I'm sorry." Beatrice seeks him out, apologizing, but leans her head against her shoulder still for the comfort as she rocks them a bit in the squeaky office chair.

"I'm sorry too, Beatrice." He pats her head and retrieves a piece of plain paper from the printer. "Do you think you could draw me a picture instead?"

She nods and moves to hop off her lap but stops, instead staring at the list of green symbols and numbers on the screen. "What's that?"

"That," she inhales deeply, her eyes meeting Daniel's albeit briefly, and she rolls her chair closer so Beatrice can see. She sits her daughter forward and feels the thump of her heart beneath her palm on her back. "That is a list of places your Daddy might be."

"Mama?" Beatrice sits on the bed, the covers pulled down and welcoming for another brief night of sleep, while yearning for a man who sacrificed everything to save their team and she hates him for it.

She hates him for it.

"Yes, darling?" Shuffles to the doorway of the ensuite, an upgraded room, with a small bathroom facility. Offered to give her one of the guest suites with more than one room, but they've always slept in the same room, and if they didn't, she would be up all night with a secondary concern.

Her daughter closes the picture book before her, signalling a serious conversation. "You don't talk about Daddy."

He promised he would come back and then he never did. He held her in the doorway of the gate room as she held their fussing, year-old daughter who missed her afternoon nap for family time because the mission was going to take a week, and Beatrice would cry for him. He kissed her on the forehead and played with the ring on her finger and told her he loved her, loved them, and would see them in a week and he lied.

He lied to them and she hates him for it.

Hates him because she loves him so much and now such a large part of her is empty because he's not here, because he promised her marvellous things which he delivered, but then disappeared and she can't let him go.

"Because it's hard." She could have lied to their daughter, but she knows how it feels. Knows the emptiness behind it, so instead she sits on the side of the bed and feels the mattress shudder with a toddler's four-legged crawl to sit beside her. "Because Daddy disappeared very suddenly."

"He coming back?"

"Eventually."

Beatrice taps her on the leg twice, and with his straight lips and stern eyebrows she answers. "Then you just gotta wait."