Hello! I know I haven't posted a story in a bit. I have recently been diagnosed with Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. My joint pain is better, but I still sleep pretty much all of the time I'm not at work. Sigh. So no promises on how often the updates will come.
-The Choice-
"Hey, where are you going?" Daniel asks, skipping down the hall after Vala.
"It's not like anyone was listening to me," she says, walking just as deliberately.
"Well, I'm listening now."
She smiles, "I'm going to get into a cargo ship, and use it to complete the circuit."
"What cargo ship?" he interrupts, screwing his face up.
"The clocked one that the Jaffa left behind to watch us," she explains.
"The cargo ship will never be able to survive that kind of power," he tells her.
"I'm counting on it. It should short out the system," she says, turning down the hallway.
"And kill you," he says, with the exaggerated roll of his eyes that he saves just for her.
"I'm going to ring out before that," she says.
"I'm not letting you do that alone," he says.
"Daniel, it's a one-person job, there is no reason for both of us to risk our lives," she says stepping into the rings.
"This is what it's like to be a member of a team," Daniel tells her, as he steps onto the rings next to her. She presses the button, and they find themselves on a cargo ship.
He doesn't know much about technology, and he knows even less about alien technology, so he doesn't try to help. Time is short, and he's fully aware that his helping could just as easily be hindering. He just stands back and watches her work. A lithe little space pirate pushing buttons.
She senses his eyes on her, and protrudes her butt to give him a better view.
He focuses his eyes on the planet below.
She focuses hers on the buttons before her. "Stand on the rings, darling. I'm almost done."
His finger hovers over the button. She runs toward him. He grabs her by the waste and pulls her the last few centimeters before hitting the button with all that he has in him.
-Another man's wife-
Tomin's mother had always told him not to walk after dark. There was nothing there but mischief, she used to say. But he was only walking. He needed the exercise, and it was too embarrassing for him to walk in the daylight when other people were looking at him. He was cursed by the gods. He limped.
There was the sound of rings activating. Something that only happened during religious ceremonies.
He walks toward the rings to investigate.
Two figures are laying on the rings. There is a man with is arm wrapped around the waist of a woman. They are wearing matching clothing. The woman was not wearing a dress, but the clothes of men. She had her hair in pigtails, as if she were a child, but she was all woman.
He kneels before her, ignoring her husband on the other side. "Ma'am," he says softly. There is no reaction. He cups her shoulder. She still doesn't react. He shakes the shoulder with a bit more vigor. Then his heart beings thumping in panic, he feels for the pulse at her neck. As soon as the pulse reaches his fingers, he pulls away in bashfulness.
She's alive, and spending more time outside on a night like this won't be good for her, so he scoops her up by the knees and back, and carries her gently toward his house, limp by limp. Her head falls against his chest.
This might be the closest he ever gets to a woman, and it's another man's wife.
-Dreams-
They are both having dreams.
His are a lot more pleasant. He's remembering his wife. The way it felt to be married, and wake up with a woman snuggled against him every morning. The way she put her hand over his every time he ground the flour wrong to show him the right way (even though she knew he did it wrong on purpose). The way her eyes smiled at him, even when her mouth was too lazy. He was remembering the way she trembled whenever he kissed her neck.
She was dreaming of a fire face above the bed, lowering down onto her.
She wakes with a start, and feels something tickling her neck.
She swats what she thinks is a bug, but finds a much more human head behind it.
"What the hell?" a voice asks, and she realizes in a flash that it is Daniel's.
"I'm sorry…I didn't realize it was you," she stammers.
He's rubbing his nose, and sitting up. He doesn't seem to know quite where he is, which is frankly a relief, because she has no idea where she is either.
"What did you do?" he asks.
"Well, I felt something on my neck, and I hit it. Wait? What were you doing nuzzling my neck anyway?"
"I don't know, how did you get me into bed?" he asks enraged.
"Get you into bed?" she retorts.
Tomin comes into the room, drawn by the bickering. He's one of those people who is terrified of any type of interpersonal conflict.
"You're awake?" he asks softly, holding up a tray of tea.
Vala and Daniel stare at him, suddenly remembering their last minutes, jumping in a ring transporter.
"Where are we?" Daniel asks softly.
"You are in my home. I found you on the ring transporter, and brought you here to recover," Tomin offers.
"Recover from what?" Vala asks, hoping that whatever comes next will explain her wave of dizziness and nausea that she's felt ever since she woke up several minutes ago.
"Your journey from the gods," he explains with a faint smile.
"Thank you," Vala says with a smile, taking the tea.
Daniel can't understand how she not be flabbergasted at his words.
"I hope you don't mind that I took your husband and yourself to my house. I didn't want you to lay out on the rings all night on a day when it is a cold as this," he explains, somewhat bashfully.
Rings, Daniel thinks, okay, that makes a whole lot more sense. Then the second part of the first sentence bursts upon his mind, "Wait, we're not married," he says.
Vala doesn't support or refute his claim, but just casts him her widest most mischievous grin.
"When I found you were touching the woman, so I just assumed…" Tomin stammers.
"T… t… touching her?" Daniel has horrified. It's not terribly surprising to him that might have done something like that though. After all, Vala is a beautiful woman, and it has been a really long time for him. He woke up kissing her neck, so what surprise was there that he'd done something else… before he'd woken up. A person couldn't be blamed for something that they did in their sleep could they?
"You had your hand over her waist," Tomin explains with a blush, when he realizes that his words have been misunderstood.
"Oh, well that's because we're teammates. We work together. I had to pull her into the transmitter at last minute, and… well, were else do you grab a woman without grabbing at something you shouldn't touch?" he asks, causing a snort from Vala and a blush from Tomin.
"I ought not to have put you in the same bed. I'm very sorry. I will tell nothing of this so that no one will assume her purity has been compromised. It has not, has it?" Tomin asks Vala directly.
Vala opens her mouth, but Daniel, terrified of what might come out of it, jumps in, "No, we haven't done anything to compromise her purity."
"I'd offer you another place to sleep, but I don't have any other beds in the house. It's just me, after all, and I don't often have guests," Tomin apologizes.
Daniel stands up, saying, "That's alright. You can show me to another room and I'll sleep on the floor," but his feet give way underneath him.
He's traveled on the rings dozens of times without any side effects, so this is his first clue that they must have gone a lot farther than he thought they had. The supergate was open. They must be in the Ori galaxy. Tomin's clothes seemed to confirm this. It was going to be a long way home then.
Tomin rushes over to help him up. Vala leans over the side of bed to see if he's okay. She doesn't set foot on the ground to help him though, figuring that if his legs won't support him, hers would not either.
Tomin lifts him up by his armpits, and drags him unceremoniously out of the room.
"See you later, Daniel," Vala says, waving from the large bed, and earning herself a glare.
-The Morning After-
After a short nap, Daniel finds himself able to walk, at least by holding onto things. His mind is working much faster than his legs as he walks like a toddler around Tomin's kitchen. He's in the Ori galaxy. How do you get back from the Ori galaxy? The supergate is shut down, and as far as he knows that is the only way back. He could be part of some plan to get a supergate open, but that would be doming his entire galaxy.
He's not that selfish.
He might just have to spend the rest of his life in some tiny village in the Ori galaxy trying to blend in, and pretending that he knows a lot more about Origin that he really does.
"Well, you always wanted to get back to fieldwork," he tells himself.
"Daniel," he hears a quick hiss, and turns to Vala, "I'm in a nightgown. Did you put me in a nightgown?"
"No, you were like that already when I woke up for the first time," he tells her.
"Well, that makes another man who's undressed me when I was unconscious," she says with a roll of her eyes.
"You would have thought he'd be too bashful for that, the way he blushes," Daniel whispers, looking nervously outside at the shed where the man had retreated.
"I think we're in the Ori galaxy," Vala informs him.
"I've put that together, too."
"So what are we going to do about it? How are we going to get home?" she asks.
He squints at her for a long second, surprised by the fact that she thinks of Earth as home. Surprised even more, perhaps, that she is capable of thinking of any place at all of home. "I don't think we can."
"Really? You're a member of SG-1, and you're going to give up on getting home that easily?" she asks.
"Vala, if we find a way out of this galaxy, that would be finding the Ori a way into ours. We already put an entire galaxy at risk when we used the communicators to discover the Ori for the first time. I'm not really willing to do that all again."
She sighs, "So we're just supposed to live out the rest of our lives among these people?"
There is real terror behind her eyes, and he doesn't forget for a minute how things ended here the last time, "I know it must be scary to be around a religion that burned you to death the last time you were here. I don't think you are in any danger, though. We weren't in our own bodies last time, so I don't think there is much of a chance of them recognizing you."
"I'm not worried about them killing me. I'm worried about being bored!" she exclaims with a roll of her eyes.
He sighs, "Well, we've got to come up with a plan, because we are no doubt going to be here for a while, if not forever. So we've got to find someone who is willing to take us in. I don't think that both of us can stay with Tomin for long. Then we've got to find something to do so that we're not just a burden on them. We've also got to learn more about Origin."
"On that last one, I think you mean 'me' by 'we', since you're already and expert on it."
"I'm an expert by Earth standards, I doubt that I know as much about it as people who grew up with it."
"Do you really expect me to have a job? I've never had a proper job before," Vala whines.
He smiles, "Doesn't 'space pirate' count as a profession?"
She pulls herself up the counter, and the motion makes her breasts for a moment protrude toward Daniel in a way that he can't help but notice. "I don't think that's exactly the sort of thing that gets you onto the better business bureau on this fair planet."
"Probably not," he admits.
"What about you? I doubt they have a lot of archeologists in a place where people are forbidden to learn about their own past."
"When I lived on Abydos, I learned some skills. I can make flour, and grow crops, and I'm actually pretty good at whittling."
"Wait, when did you live on a planet as primitive as Abydos?" she asks in shock.
He takes a deep breath and stares past her. This was something that he thought he should share with Vala for a while, because it explained most of why he'd never say yes to her. It was also something he'd dreaded sharing with her. You don't want to be venerable with someone who isn't used to being serious. "I lived there with my wife."
"You're married? You should go home once in a while, Daniel. You spend so much time at the base that your wife must never see you," she teases.
"Sha're died. Years ago. And before that, she was host to a Goua'ld. She hasn't been my wife for eight years, that's a lot longer than we had together."
"Oh," Vala says, staring at the ground. It's hard to be around someone who is vulnerable when you're used to telling jokes.
Tomin enters the room, and Vala jumps off the counter.
"What do you eat for breakfast in your village?" he asks them.
"Anything is fine," Daniel tells him, having no idea what the right answer is.