The Greater Good
i.
He welcomes her into his ship a few years after. Never the space-faring General, but just out on a routine expedition and happened to be in her leg of the galaxy.
The showy Tau'ri spacecraft is no longer pristine and is now decorated with more plants, he prefers the one with braiding branches.
His rotund form has added a few extra pounds, and his head of hair, with only bursts of gray before, has adopted an almost white construction. When he sits in the commanding chair, something he never had a problem with, he lets out a groan with both his knees cracking.
Doesn't ask about her garb, or her hair, or the scar embedded fresh on her chin.
Just grins contently, his eyes still disappearing in the mirth.
Among all the beeping and button pressing he announces, "Carolyn had a baby last year."
She stares ahead at space, at stars and planets and vastness, allowing herself a weak grin. "How do you like being a grandfather?"
He adjusts in the chair, his smile enveloping more of his face, more that good nature pouring from him. "Kid's a little devil. I keep telling Carolyn she was the same way. She named him after me you know."
"That's quite a compliment."
"It is until you've heard little Henry is ripping through the women's lingerie section of a department store."
They both share a laugh, one that is more forced, particularly on her end, and when the bleating stops, the room resumes the same silences interjected with beeps and button pushing.
ii.
A few years back she single-handedly stopped a monastery from being sold to a particularly devious magistrate who wished to destroy the temple and keep the land. After a particularly boring night of sub-par sex, she dug up information on the magistrate's less than legal drug ring while he slept, exhausted by her prowess.
Within a week he'd left the town.
It was one of the only times she didn't accept a payment. Usually lived by the skin of her teeth, just eating enough, just sleeping enough, just getting enough love and attention that she didn't wilt away. Instead she sought a favor that she pocketed until one of her stints as a free agent went awry and she needed a safe haven.
She's been there less than a week when he shows up, perhaps chasing the same penance she is. The white in his hair wide spread in a solid band consuming the middle, a few more wrinkles under his eyes. Still feels guilt at his accelerated age, what he gave up to get them all home safely those years ago.
Still walks with his hands clasped behind his back, his pace slowing to match hers as she's in no rush. "You look well, Vala Mal Doran."
Assumes he's talking about how her hair is still the same stark black, how she hasn't collected any wrinkles under her eyes due to years of sarcophagus misuse. "You as well, Muscles."
"I traveled to this planet as I heard their religious freedoms were in peril a few years ago. However, walking these grounds, I can see that order has restored itself."
Kicks her boots through orange and brown leaves crinkling in their wake as they walk in semi-silence through the monastery's orchard. He doesn't ask why she's there or if she's okay. Just accepts her lack of words as a form of their own conversation.
Outside of the gate she sees him off. When he pulls her into a tight hug, she mumbles with a grin she cannot help, "It was good to see you, Muscles."
"Indeed."
iii.
"You simply must have some." Drags Samantha along, her hand clasped tightly within her own, through the crowded marketplace and into a pub located on the corner. The one where she's been spending her free time the last week as a bar maiden while gathering intel on an Ancient device worn around one of the patron's wrists.
"Vala," Samantha is tense, but she laughs, finally alleviating the hesitancy in her step. "I haven't seen you since Dan—"
"It's your birthday, Darling." Slams into the counter, clearing a space, and raising two fingers at the bartender who rolls his eyes at her, but grunts and retrieves the tumblers. "It's this finely aged nectar that—"
Samantha's hand plummets from her own, and the smile drops from her lips. "What happened with the b—"
She grabs the drinks as soon as the bartender finishes filling the glasses and forces one, slopping it around, into her friend's hand. "Here."
"Vala," Samantha sighs, glancing down at the drink, then back at her with pitying eyes, the same pitying eyes, one of four pairs, that made her leave. "It's okay if you don't want to talk about—"
"The only thing I want to talk about is you, and your birthday, and the circumstances that brought you to celebrate it on this planet." Holds up the glass in a silent cheer and Samantha, with a teensy bit of reservation, clinks their glasses together.
She throws her drink back, dropping her empty glass to the counter top while Samantha sips it, gagging. "Or how awful this beverage is."
In Samantha's defense, she does knock back the drink, but almost drops the glass from the burst of aftertaste. She catches the tumbler while her friend tries to catch her breath, coughing, "why is it so bitter?"
"It's been distilled for ten years. Anything left alone for that long is guaranteed to be bitter."
iv.
They aim their guns at each other in the storage unit of a museum.
She was just short of ransacking the room for an ancient device she's been hired to pilfer, when the door flung open and he targeted her in a swooping flashlight beam. On instinct she whipped her pistol out, arm unwavering, finger tickling the trigger.
"Vala?" Asks, uncertain and disbelieving, squinting in the weak light.
Doesn't answer, just keeps her steady aim.
"You gonna shoot me, Princess?"
"Well that very much depends on if you're going to shoot me." Her voice isn't accusatory, or sarcastic, or vindictive. Just empty.
Immediately he disarms himself, tossing his weapon to the side in the darkness of the storage room. She pauses a few seconds before holstering her own pistol. As she does, he bursts forward, grin on his face, holding the light to hers. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Turns from him, fingers resuming rifling through index cards to find the proper location of Ancient device A-47-329. "I could ask you the same question."
"Stopped by on the Odyssey—I'm in charge of it since—whatever, that's not important. We just heard someone was trying to steal from—"
She reaches back, ensnaring his wrist, maneuvering it and the flashlight in his hand to help her see. After a few more flicks, she finds the proper code, and snatches the card from the box.
"Vala?" His tone taking a deep grumble, the chiding of her yesteryear.
"What?" Questions while tucking the card into her brassiere cup, adjusting it, making him look away. Always a gentleman.
"See, now I'm thinking it's you that we're supposed to apprehend."
"And why—" When she turns the beam of light slaps her right in the face, making her squint away.
Making him reach forward, taking her chin in his hand. "That's one hell of a scar. How'd you get it?"
"I upset the wrong men." Wrenches her head away from him, dusting off her shirt, before slipping sideways down the nearest aisle.
Only he manages to snatch her by the collar of her jacket and haul her back into the open. "You're gonna piss off the wrong people if you don't come with me."
Shimmies out of her jacket, leaving it hanging from between his crushed fingers. "I'm not going with you, Mitchell."
"Vala, just—"
"In fact, you're going to turn and leave now."
"Oh, I am?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you owe me one." Wags her fingers at him, gesturing for the return of her jacket.
He sighs, stepping forward, holding it for her to slide her arms through. Can feel his breath hot on the back of her neck. In a low whisper he clarifies, "this is really what you want to waste your get out of jail free card on?"
Pulls away from him, from his enticements of a safe and kept environment. "It has to be."
"Why's that?"
"Because you won't be seeing me again."
v.
"I bet I'm the last person you expected to see."
Rolls her eyes at him, because honestly, he always got on her about her theatrics, how she loved attention, causing mishaps and using the most dramatic method to complete tasks, how she flashed skin and a grin and knew she had the eyes of half of the SGC soldiers on her.
But he is more dramatic than she could ever be.
He's dramatic in twenty-six languages.
"And I'm sure you have questions."
"No." Shakes her head at him, bringing shackled hands up to peruse her hair, and retrieving a clip that she slips between her lips, mumbling, "I think I got it."
"What are you—"
There's a click from the shackles as she raises her bowed head, spitting the clip back into the palm of her hand, and wiggling it back into her hair. "It's not complex, Daniel. You ascended."
"Yeah, okay—" watches her with furrowed brows as she crosses the jail cell. More of a well, a long chimney room with the top exposed to the elements, but she could ever climb the wall. Instead she pounds on the door with her fist. "But I'm human now, and I'm—"
"That explains how you waltzed through the door moments again." Pounds the door again, huffing a strand of hair loose from her face.
"And you don't have questions?"
"It seems fairly obvious that you descended again."
"And you don't want to know why?"
"I just assumed they kicked you out again. What I question is why they let you back in. But you seem very much the—"
When the door opens, she slams a hand into the guard's stomach, and then a knee into his face, retrieving his gun and before Daniel has a chance to speak, to answer her question, to tell her to stop, to promise her things he never delivers, she blasts a hole in the guard's head, and guns down the one that follows.
And for once Daniel doesn't speak. Just simply stands with his mouth agape in the middle of the cell as she holsters her new gun in the waistband of her pants and tucks the stray strand of hair behind her ear again. "I, however, have changed."
As she marches through the door, searching for a way out of the tower, the one the magistrate or kinds or monks placed her in, he trails her, their shoes crunching over bits of rock and dirt. "Vala, what happened?"
"You did what you do best, take care of yourself." Cranes her head around a doorway, lowering her voice at the sound of running footsteps.
"I ascended for the greater good of—"
Rips the gun from her pants, shooting two more guards and slipping by them just as they hit the ground. There's still smoke, still discharge, no blood yet. Daniel doesn't move this time. Doesn't follow her into the mouth of the corridor, where she knows she needs to enter the third door on the left to retrieve her mark. He shakes his head at her, eyes still wide in disbelief.
She rolls her eyes at him, shaking her head back because honestly, this man and his drama. "Look at what the greater good did."