Note: This chapter is a little intense. I'm still rating it w/ T (PG13), but just wanted my lovely readers to know what's coming :)
Chapter 9
She felt her before she heard her. Jonas seemed to sense her too as he froze only steps away from the stargate's event horizon. Vala turned around. The soldiers had stopped firing. So had Jonas's friends. Everyone was looking around seemingly startled by the intensely eerie atmosphere that had just taken residence in the room. It was heavy, stifling, and very warm. And Vala could feel herself getting sick with its suffocating textures.
Adria was here just as she had known Tomin was in danger back at the base. She could feel her daughter's presence. She could feel it in every bone in her body.
She seemed to sense Vala's realization immediately. Her voice sounded as if it was exiting from every pore in the surrounding walls. "Hello, Mother."
Vala didn't take the opportunity to look at Jonas's expression of disbelief. Without a second thought she drove herself fully into Jonas and Tomin. Jonas didn't have a chance to recover before being hurdled into the wormhole with Tomin still in his grip. Vala fell on her knees, just short of the event horizon. She scrambled to get to her feet but was knocked on her back by a rush of hot air. She looked up.
Flames burst forth from the ceiling of the gateroom. She knew she wasn't dreaming it this time. She could hear the fearful cries from the soldiers who were witnessing it from the other side of the room. And then, just like her nightmare on Ver Isca, a skull formed and pressed itself out of flames in her direction. It lingered there and jeered at her a moment, before shaping itself into a face more familiar.
"Adria," she whispered in sick horror.
"Mother, you look surprised." Eyes still ablaze, her pretty face lit within the flames. "You witnessed my ascension. One would have thought you would have expected this."
"I think any mother might find it difficult to see their child appear to them by means of a ceiling of flames," Vala remarked with a hollow laugh.
Adria smiled at her reply. "Don't worry, Mother. I don't plan on trying to convince you to follow the Path to Enlightenment."
"Well, that's a relief," Vala replied and smiled prettily, realizing if she was going to survive this turn of events, it was best to just play to her snark. "Now I can show you off to all my friends."
"I have come to an understanding as of recently," Adria continued, ignoring her mother's comment.
Vala couldn't manage to sound impressed. "The dead Ori have been quite enlightening, have they?"
"Yes," she replied with another warm smile. "Apparently I've been much too tolerant."
"Tolerant in the sense that you haven't wiped out enough civilizations with your viruses and weapons or tolerant in that you haven't bored them enough with your rhetoric?"
Vala sounded far more unaffected than she really felt. Inside, she was beginning to feel frantic. This was not the Adria she had given birth to on an Ori ship. Beyond the flames and pretty face, there was a menace to her tone that was downright disturbing.
In her human form, Adria had been evil and frightening, of course, but there had been a piece of innocence and compassion hidden within her evil makeup that the Ori had been unable to tamper with. It was her humanity. While Adria had exhibited little intentions of being swayed from her beliefs, Vala had always believed, deep down, this underlying empathy would someday give her the opportunity to show her daughter another life. But now, the flaming essence above her seemed to render a different portrait. The expression above her was devoid of any humanity, and Vala couldn't ignore the raw fear beginning to settle in the pit of her stomach.
"I've been tolerant of you, Mother. Patient to a fault, trying to make you see the Path to Origin as the only true way to a blessed, infinite existence for you beyond this life. I have been kind. I have loved you because you are my mother. But I have finally realized in my ascension you never intended to open your mind or your heart to Origin."
"Really? Did the Ori inform you of that? I thought I had been quite up front with the whole thing."
"I know now that my time was wasted showing affection for you. Trying to show you the Path, when my focus could have been on other, more pressing matters."
"Well, there you go then," Vala said with a wave of her hand, sitting up. "I suggest following that first inclination. Let me go and no more of that time can be wasted on little old me."
"Oh, but I still have plans for you." She smiled sweetly, if flames could be described in such a way.
Vala forced a wide smile. "Darling, do these plans include a cruise to an island locale? I've heard that cruises can be quite nice this time of year. And I could afford a bit more color."
Adria only stared at her expectantly in amusement.
Vala sighed, "Wasn't housing you in my womb for nine months, enough? I believe I served my purpose. Must your Ori use me in some ridiculous plan again to take over the galaxy?"
"We don't intend to use you, Mother. We already have your galaxy."
Vala paled at the explanation. We? What did she mean, we already have your galaxy?
But Adria moved on. The flames in her eyes flickered and darkened. "You watched them inject me with poison on the Odyssey. You would have allowed them to kill me."
Vala's hair on the back of her neck rose swiftly. "We didn't have a choice," she said defensively.
Adria smiled darkly. "'Everyone has a choice.' Isn't that what yourDaniel preaches."
Vala couldn't contain her shiver. It was the first time she had ever heard Adria speak about Daniel. She could tell by her face that, in whatever time Adria and Daniel had spent together, his betrayal had left a far more bitter taste in her mouth than anything Vala had ever done. Well, maybe except for the whole letting her die part.
She could sense Adria's patience was waning. She tried to explain, her eyes serious. "Ba'al had released toxins into your system, Adria, when we tried to remove him. You were already going to die. We were only trying to make it quick and less painful."
Flames licked the sides of her face as Adria's smile began to turn into a sneer. Her face continued to change, reverting to the hideous skull-shaped form that had first graced Vala's presence in the fire, but her voice sounded the same. "I disagree. I think you wanted me to die," the skull said in cold accusation.
Vala retreated, but the skull leaned in further, an awful blistering grin spreading across its face. "Do you know what it feels like, Mother? Dying?"
Even in the heat, coldness spread through her insides. "Yes," she whispered, remembering.
"Ah, yes," the skull leaned back. "Before I was born. On Ver Ager. Hmm…let's remind you."
Before Adria's words could sink in fully, the skull exploded, raining its fiery depths on everyone in its path.
The flames moved quickly, far quicker than Vala could have ever imagined. She didn't have a chance to even react, much less run before she felt her entire body overcome by her daughter's flames. She'd done this before. How did this repeat feel so twisted and brand new?
Amid the flames, Vala's eyes fell on a figure standing across the room, standing untouched while the bodies around her pulsed and buckled under the heat. She stood there silently while the blue shield her necklace emanated protected her in the violent environment. Adria, the Adria Vala had known in human form, was watching from across the room as her mother burned.
When had she arrived? Had she been there the entire time while the ceiling had erupted in her form? Had the flames above only been a trick? But Vala knew the fiery path burning up her body felt too real. Whatever Adria was, or was showing herself to be, had become unimportant. Only the fire consuming her body and mind mattered now.
She couldn't scream at first. The fire had captured her voice before she could use it. Keeping her silent, it burned through her clothes, her hair, and her skin at such an angry pace that her thoughts were lost. Her skin blistered and peeled. Her insides bubbled. Reds and oranges burned her retinas until everything went black. She didn't see the Ori soldiers or Jonas's friends burn like she did. She didn't see the furious flames take on the stargate, metal and naquadah starting to melt the gate into shiny puddles.
But in the darkness as she waited for an unwanted but now expected end, pain reared its ugly head. It wasn't familiar. It was angry and destructive. It was far worse than anything she had ever experienced on the fire altar. She could feel every lick of fire that ate away at her body. It was unimaginable. Indescribable. She was helpless to its devastation as her body easily capitulated to it.
All she had left were memories of Daniel to comfort her as her life gradually drained away.
