Elizabeth – caviar and cigarettes
"Did you ever date Daniel?" Vala asked, entering the office that the SGC had given Dr. Weir during her stay on the base.
Elizabeth's head snapped up so fast that she was surprised she hadn't broken something.
"What!?"
"Did you ever date Daniel?" Vala asked again, punctuating each word, looking at the elegant woman sitting in front of her.
To her credit, Elizabeth did not blush or stammer, just stared evenly at the alien woman in front of her. When she had met the woman back on SG-1's trip to Atlantis, she had found her intriguing and amusing, her and Daniel had this odd but interesting rapport with each other, and she definitely hadn't missed the looks a certain Colonel had given the woman. Elizabeth had found the entire experience, for lack of a better word, enlightening. In her entire time at the SGC, before Antarctica and Atlantis, she had found Daniel pleasant, and undeniably cute (she wasn't blind), but she had never seen the more passionate side of the man, or the sadder side. It had surprised her. It hadn't surprised Vala. When she had been stunned into silence, Vala had understood and said what he had needed to hear at the time – that she understood how he felt. Later, she had seen on the balcony, how Vala seemed to be the only one to calm him. Now Elizabeth wouldn't say she was an expert on Daniel Jackson, but she knew people, she knew how to read people, and Vala Mal Doran called to something in the archeologist.
Elizabeth looked straight at Vala and answered, "No, I didn't."
Vala nodded, processing the new information. Elizabeth could practically see the wheels turning in Vala's head, she could also see there was much more to the question than met the eye.
"May I ask why you asked me that?"
Now it was Vala's turn to snap her head towards Elizabeth. "Oh… um… just curious. You seem like his type."
"His type?" Elizabeth titled her head, lips quirking.
Vala sighed and leaned on the corner of the desk. Elizabeth got a flash of a very different person who would do the same thing – she pushed down the feelings of wistfulness that the memory brought.
"You know, elegant, graceful, beautiful, smart, poised, patient, strong, brave, coffee lover, can read and write almost as many, if not more, languages than him, quiet, together. You know, you."
"Oh. I see." Elizabeth suddenly understood exactly why the stunning, yet uncertain raven-haired woman had come here under the veil of snooping. "But you know, I'm not as together or as patient as you might think I am." Vala looked at her curiously. "Let's just say there was this incident with these nanites followed by a couple of days of me wondering and second guessing everything. And as for the patience thing, it's all a clever ruse… inside, I'm counting the minutes until the IOA lets me go back. Everything else is just circumstantial… I doubt I would have to be as 'brave' or 'strong' if I still worked at the UN. I just do what I need to do to keep Atlantis floating."
"You still love coffee, you can read and write Ancient, don't scam, and won't hack into his computer, though it wasn't much of a hack – if you think about it, his password is pretty simple."
Elizabeth smiled softly at Vala; "Well you're right about the coffee, and the Ancient, but honestly, before Atlantis I was more of a tea drinker, the coffee just became a necessary tool to function. And Ancient isn't all that hard to learn if you spend enough time with it. I wouldn't say I don't scam, a lot of a diplomat's work is bluffing to make sure the other side isn't getting too cocky. Trust me, you've probably had to bluff less in your life than I have."
"You don't hack into his computer." Vala countered, despondently.
"The fact that you're allowed near his computer and that you can guess his password says a lot." Elizabeth pointed out.
"I guess…" Then, as if she realized where she was and with whom she was talking to, Vala pushed herself up from the desk and turned to the other woman, shy and nervous. "I… I didn't mean that I wanted to date Daniel, you know. It's just that the man can be so bloody puritanical about sex and the such, gives no fun facts away…" Vala had shifted back to her fun and flirty persona. She nodded to Elizabeth, "Well, it's a shame you didn't date Daniel, you seem like the kind of woman who appreciates the funner aspects of life, maybe you would have loosened him up a bit." Vala winked and left the room.
Turning back to her work, Elizabeth smiled. She missed Atlantis and couldn't wait to go back, but maybe the SGC wouldn't be too bad, there were definitely things that deserved for her to keep a closer eye on.
