Midnight's Children

by mudgems

What they were really deciding here was to accept, on their own terms, that they may not get out of this alive. To control the manner of their own suffering by refusing to play the game. To face the worst of what their captors could inflict upon them before they became too weak not to break. She could be strong if he could. They would do this together.

10. Chapter 10

Title: Midnight's Children (chapter 10)

Rating: R

Genre/pairing/warnings:Daniel/Vala, Drama, Action-Adventure, mentions of torture in some chapters

Setting: Post-Ark of Truth

Word count: 4,878

Summary: Daniel and Vala, captured and held prisoner, struggle to survive a dark and painful ordeal. Not to mention each other. The bonds forged through hardship may prove to be the strongest of all, if only they can see them.

~o0o~

Daniel lay on his back, his eyes roving the impenetrable blackness cloaking the ceiling above him.

The muted thud of soft-soled heels impacting a hollow surface echoed in his head.

He remembered his first days here almost fondly. Especially those days when they'd left a torch burning in the tunnel outside, the faint glow enough to pick out grainy features in the cell around him. The slight curve of the brick walls. The outline of his own hands. The worn channel along one side of the cell that carried effluent out into the corridor beyond.

Daniel hadn't been sure at the time which days he'd preferred. The darkness had been intolerable; seeing the limits of his prison had been worse.

Now, he thought wistfully of a low flickering flame.

Lacquered fingernails drummed a light, demanding rhythm on a table top. He tried to ignore it.

The darkness, the silence, the solitude - it caged him. It was a physical barrier that turned his thoughts in on themselves and left him nowhere to hide. If he didn't already know what madness felt like, he'd swear he was losing it. Perhaps he was, only slower this time.

He closed his eyes.

The flashes behind his eyelids still tormented him, a legacy of the long hours of punishment he'd endured.

His body was no longer his own. His muscles twitched and spasmed with a lactic burn, ghostly remnants of current licking through his nervous system.

It turned out he hadn't killed the men after all. Not quite. The irony of that was not lost on him; if he'd made sure to finish the job he might have been spared the zealous retribution of the humiliated.

On the other side of the cell Vala sighed, impatient for his attention. Always so dramatic.

He should drink something.

He still tasted blood.

It was in his nature to fight them. He'd prolonged the torture with his insolence and bitten his own tongue, but the spit he'd landed had made it worth it. They'd continued long into the night, driven him to the edge of madness, laughed, got bored, and left.

They'd left him alone in the dark.

Alone with his doubts and fears.

Alone in his head.

For a while he'd been torn between a bloody-minded will to live and a spiteful desire to just die, to starve himself to death and deny them this final game.

But Vala would want him to hold on, to keep going. That had made the decision easy. He was rationing it, but he'd decided to drink the water.

She'd told him to. Pointed a toe towards it and suggested, oh so reasonably, that he might feel better if he did. He'd refused to look her way and crawled painfully to the water in his own good time. He'd convinced himself it had been his own idea, had been nothing to do with her. She'd praised him anyway like a recalcitrant child, then promptly disappeared.

Now she was back.

So far she'd said nothing.

She regarded him thoughtfully, legs swinging, leather-clad rump perched on the edge of an imaginary desk in a way that seemed to defy gravity. She wore one of the skin-tight outfits she'd long set aside, her hair piled on her head in an elaborate twist, one lone pale streak like a go-faster stripe painted along one temple. She was sex appeal and danger and mischief, a suggestive package done up in buckles. She was the promise of excess, of the loss of control.

"I told you I'd always come back, didn't I?"

Daniel let the corners of his lips curve into a tired smile, and he was rewarded with a multi-watt grin that lit up Vala's face. This was his secret picture of her, a guilty pleasure he indulged in every now and then. The one he would never admit to, even under threat of torture and death.

Even during her most infuriating, exasperating, blind rage-inducing moments - the ones that made his fingers itch with the need to reach out and throttle her, or smother her, or pull her closer and make her just be quiet, by whatever means necessary - she maintained a hold over him that he was powerless to fight. And all because of this, this right here. She was nothing less than stunning. This was the Vala he could summon whenever he closed his eyes. This was the Vala that visited him in his dreams.

She posed for him as he watched her, his eyes drinking her in, and purred in that throaty way of hers. She exuded confidence. Eyes locked on his, she arched her back and tipped her head to one side, exposing the long expanse of her throat.

He knew this game. They'd played it often enough. Funny that it didn't rile him now like it once did.

Her eyes twinkled, the rise of her breasts straining to escape the confines of the shiny black material encasing them. She brought her elbows in, pinching her upper arms closer together and encouraging the break out.

Several moments of silence passed, and Vala was the first to break. A snuffle of mirth burst from her and she abruptly gave up the act. Her feet went back to describing childish circles in the air beneath them.

He blinked and she changed. In place of the straps and clasps were loose-fitting BDU pants and the ubiquitous black t-shirt, fluffed out pigtails bouncing from each shoulder. Her radiant smile mellowed and she eyed him speculatively, an undercurrent of self-consciousness to her bearing that she tried hard to hide. This was the real Vala. His Vala. The one he held dear. The one she trusted him to see when she took her defences down, when she set her armour aside. He cherished this side of her, because he knew just how few people were permitted to know it.

"You're beautiful," he whispered, and her eyes were liquid with feeling.

Another sharp twang of current arced across his nerves and he scrunched himself tight. He hoped to God that she'd escaped this, that she was safe and whole and well, wherever she was.

"Why, Vala?"

The sounds were rough and scratchy, but she heard him. She tilted her head sadly and waited for him to catch his breath.

"Why did you do that?" he asked her again, and he could see immediately that she knew he wasn't referring to her game.

"I don't know what you mean," she said anyway, her nose raising haughtily with feigned indignation. It took her longer to summon the bluster these days, he'd noticed.

"You waited. You shouldn't have waited."

She tossed her head with an unladylike snort and leant back on her hands. "It's like you don't know me at all," she said.

Of course she wouldn't have gone. She'd said as much to him. He just needed to understand, to make her understand what a mistake it was to risk herself for him. He didn't want that burden.

"You might have made it," he continued stubbornly, but she only shook her head.

"You'd have done the same thing," she assured him. There was nothing he could say to that.

Daniel thought back ruefully to the discussions they'd had like this, the ones that had revealed just how similar they both were, as much as he'd tried to deny it. He'd come to some rather uncomfortable conclusions about himself since.

"What are you thinking about down there, darling? I can see the wheels turning from here." Vala affected a husky cadence and propped her chin in her hand. "You know it would be rude to ignore me. I've come all this way."

She was right. He'd summoned her here, after all. And he needed to get this out.

"You were wrong before," he said carefully, voicing a realisation that had been hard to come by. "I do trust you. It's myself I don't quite trust."

"What do you mean?" Vala's voice turned serious, her lingering gaze certain. "You'd never do anything to hurt me."

"That's just it. I think I could, without even meaning to." Vala cocked her head to one side and he rushed on before she could interrupt. "I don't entirely trust myself not to destroy this thing from the inside out. It's what I'm good at, Vala. It's what I do. And it would kill me. If I let myself really want this - want you - and I end up driving you away? I don't think I could handle that."

Vala hopped down from her seat and came to crouch beside him. A single fingertip wandered lazily along his arm, over his shoulder and up his neck, terminating in a tap to his nose that made him wrinkle it.

"Want to know what I think?" she said, her voice solemn. "I think you don't really believe that. I know it. I know you. You're afraid something will happen, something out of your control."

Daniel considered this, entertaining and then discarding a hundred different rebuttals. Vala watched the indecision war on his face, then nodded to herself decisively.

"You're not afraid you won't want this enough. You're afraid you'll need it too much."

Daniel felt his mouth go dry. If he'd had the energy left to move away from her, he'd have got up. Instead he lay where he was and closed his eyes.

"We live dangerous lives."

"Any job has its hazards," Vala countered.

"We work together. We need to stay sharp. Feelings compromise things, get in the way. It would be stupid."

He imagined Vala arching a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Yes. Because we've done such a great job of staying detached."

"You don't understand…"

"That you've lost people? That you never want to have to go through that hurt and loss again? That you're protecting yourself from being let down again? Please. Give me some credit."

He had to steer away from this, from a wound still too raw to probe. He couldn't bear for anyone to see the depths of the sorrow he still carried, even if that person wasn't real.

"Personnel files are confidential, Vala."

"Pfft. I don't need files to tell me that."

He gave her a look.

She rolled her eyes.

"Oh, all right. I may have skim read. And then inferred the rest. What's that Tau'ri phrase? Reading between the words? And I've known small children to hide secrets better than your SGC. They were practically begging to be rifled through."

"It's your SGC now too, you know."

She waved him off. "Anyway, you're avoiding the point."

Damn her. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"How about the truth? Come on. If you can't say it to me now, when will you? We can call this a practice run. Go on. See what happens."

He was losing an argument with his own subconscious. What the hell?

Vala rose from her crouch with a lithe grace he envied and walked from his field of vision. It made it easier, somehow, to address the darkness in front of him. Easier even than talking to a figment, because having her eyes on him was like having his inner most thoughts laid bare for all to see, like having the darkest, most shameful parts of himself on display when he wanted to hide them, push her out of the way and shield her from them, to nurse them jealously in privacy and darkness.

His throat worked soundlessly to swallow down a painful rise of emotion. "I just… I think it's too late. I think I'm too broken."

He lay a heavy arm over his eyes, painfully dry eyes that no longer had the moisture for tears. He heard Vala move to his shoulder and thought maybe he could feel gentle fingers in his hair.

"I know what bereavement is like," she murmured. "I know how hopeless it can make you feel."

He shook his head, a weariness settling over him that he knew would soon defeat him. "Grief I can do. That I'm good at. I've had a lot of practice, and I got an early start. It's what comes after I can't face again. The rebuilding, the carrying on. I just don't think I've got it in me to do that any more."

Vala broke the quiet that stretched with soft words. She'd moved away again, closer to the door. "Maybe you won't need to."

"You can't promise me that."

"No. I suppose I can't. But I can promise you this: if you let fear of the future stop you from trying for something more, you may as well stay stuck in this cell. Because you'll still be a prisoner, just with see-through walls."

It was an effort to drag his arm away, to angle his head and find her again, inexplicably standing straight and tall and as clear a vision as daylight through a window. She was waiting for something from him, something he no longer had to give. Couldn't she see she was better off without him?

"I just don't think I can do this. I'm sorry."

Vala offered him a sad smile. "Probably a moot point anyway, I expect. I'm likely already dead, right?"

"You're not dead."

Vala cocked her head to one side. "How do you know?"

"I just do."

"Hmm. Well, what about you? Not to sound morbid or anything, but you're not looking so great yourself."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." It was starting to hurt to talk.

"I just mean that you're, you know." She waggled her fingers vaguely to either side of her head, puffing out her cheeks and crossing her eyes.

"Wonko?"

"Talking to a dead woman."

"I told you. You're not dead."

Vala gave him a sympathetic look. "All right, darling. If you say so."

He hated it when she humoured him. She did it so rarely that it usually always meant he was compromised in some way, or in need of that special brand of coddling only Vala seemed able to pull off. He squashed the instinctual need to argue. He didn't want to fight with her. He didn't want her to leave.

"Stay?" he pleaded, but she was already turning towards the door.

"You don't need me," she told him, and blew him an affectionate kiss. "I'll see you soon."

And then she vanished.

~o0o~

It was nice of Jack to keep him company, really. These long, lonely days were stretching, and he was in desperate need of a distraction from the gnawing hunger, the ever-present thirst and the unwavering, suffocating monotony.

He wouldn't say anything at first. Which was just as well really. Daniel had lost the ability to reply with anything more than a painful croak some time ago. And what was there really to say? It was just comforting to have him there sometimes, to catch a glimpse of him lounging against the far wall of the cell, or standing in that way of his, hands clad in fingerless gloves resting lightly over the weapon strapped to his vest, cap pulled back and sunglasses obscuring the mischievous glint in his eye. Daniel wanted to ask him how he managed to stand comfortably in such a cramped space, how he could be so clear and defined in the near solid darkness of the room.

He was thirsty all the time.

Sam came too sometimes. And sometimes Teal'c. And once, his old roommate from college, which he hadn't expected. He didn't think the guy had liked him all that much. He'd thank them if he didn't suspect that would be faintly ridiculous.

"Come on, Daniel," Jack said to him and nodded his head towards the door. "Time to go already. Up. Let's go."

I want to, Daniel thought as loudly as he could. He couldn't seem to get his feet under him properly.

"Time's a-wastin'," Jack continued, checking over his shoulder for something only he could see.

He'd better get a move on. He knew Jack could be impatient with him, that it was better to humour the man when he could and store up credit for those more pressing times. Times when he absolutely had to have those few extra minutes, when he had to weigh carefully the pros and cons of arguing with the boss. The Colonel. The Man. If only he could get himself up. There was something wrong with his legs.

"Carter'll be pissed. She made waffles."

There it was. The playful, wheedling tone. Daniel's favourite kind. The one that said Jack was in a good mood. That Daniel hadn't done anything yet to piss him off. The one he used when he could afford to be generous, when there was nothing too pressing, too life-threatening, too Earth-in-peril-and-we-need-to-go-now that he couldn't spend a minute or two to tease. That was nice. Jack never did get to kick back often enough.

Funny, how it didn't seem to fit.

Jack turned to go, the wound at the back of his neck glistening wetly.

Don't go. Wait for me. "I'm coming." It was a croak, no more than a whisper really. But it was too late. Jack was gone. Daniel missed him whenever he went.

He had to get up. He didn't want to be left behind, not here. He rolled himself over onto his side and tried to clear his blurred vision. Something must have happened to his glasses because he couldn't see a damn thing.

"J'ck?" he called, then tried again, panic lending him the force he needed to summon a bit of volume. "Jack?"

Then he remembered. He couldn't go yet. He had to wait. He had to wait for Vala.

He let his head sink slowly back to he floor, his eyes still tracking the route his friend had taken, hoping to get one last glimpse.

"Later, Jack, 'kay?"

He didn't think Jack heard him.

~o0o~

Mitchell lay on his side, his head propped on one hand, the other draped casually along his flank and a bored expression on his face. Sam knelt beside him and examined his insides, hushed exclamations of delight escaping her as she discovered his inner workings.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

"That tickles," Cam complained as Sam removed a length of wiring from a gaping hole in his midsection.

Daniel watched as Sam pulled, her hands working one over the other, coils of wire gathering at her feet. Cam twitched as the line caught on something, but with an impatient tug it came free, and Sam continued her task. At one point she stopped, reaching into the space she'd excavated and removing a clockwork organ of some kind, its wheels and cogs rotating in perpetual, synchronistic motion. Sam peered at it, fascinated, balancing it delicately on the ends of her fingers like a fragile, sacred treasure. Then she tossed it casually over her shoulder, its pieces separating and tinkling into the dark corners of the cell.

"I'll find a way to get you out of here," she said as she continued to pull on the wire, her movements stronger now, her focus absolute.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Daniel realised sluggishly that she was talking to him, not to Mitchell, who had begun to help Sam with the plunder.

The distant ticking sound grew louder, and Cam looked up with alarm. "Hurry, Sam," he urged.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

"I'm going as fast as I can," she groused.

"Aren't you gonna help, sunshine?" Mitchell asked pointedly. Cam always called him sunshine. He didn't know where that had come from.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

"It's no good," Sam said abruptly, throwing up her hands in disgust. "If he won't help, this isn't going to work. He doesn't want to fix this."

They both turned accusing eyes in Daniel's direction, and he wanted to shrink back and hide from their scorn. He'd let them down. He knew he had.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He wanted to tell them why, to explain that he had to stay. But he couldn't quite remember, and they were getting up to leave.

Sorry, Sam.

~o0o~

"Come with me, Daniel."

Vala stretched out her hand to him, a warm smile on her face that thawed some of the aching heaviness weighing him down. He lifted his arm towards her and she nodded in encouragement.

No matter how far he reached, he couldn't quite touch her. She moved no closer and waited. He couldn't do it.

He trusted her to know what to do. If she said they could go, then they would go. She wouldn't lie to him, not now.

He let his hand drop.

He had to stay. He remembered that now. He had to wait for her.

Vala's smile turned brittle and she withdrew her offer. She wouldn't help him if he wouldn't help himself.

That thought hurt, made the skin around his eyes prickle, until he remembered it wasn't her.

"You're not real."

Not-Vala retreated backwards into the shadow, the darkness reclaiming her face like liquid.

I'll wait right here. I'll wait for you.

~o0o~

Teal'c wore his Jaffa robes like armour. They seemed to deflect the energy blasts showering all around them, swirling in slow motion as he danced, his body repositioning with majestic grace after every swing of his staff.

Blinding orbs of light were sent flying back towards their attackers, the staff windmilling with a speed that defied the eye, the blur of movement solidifying into a protective shield that no fire could penetrate.

Throughout the cacophony of sound and light Teal'c stood as a pillar, calm and immoveable and imbued with a steadfast purpose. He was magnificent.

The battle ended and Teal'c turned his back on his foes, leaning down to offer a supporting arm and one of his rare, enigmatic smiles. His large hand grasped Daniel at the elbow and hauled him up, catching him as he fell.

Daniel tried to warn him, to thank him and help him and ask him what had happened, but he couldn't find the words he needed. And everything was happening too fast. Teal'c was hurting him, and that wasn't right.

The trusted face of his friend morphed into someone unrecognisable, and the cell regained its form around him in a disorientating swirl of vertigo.

The door was open, and to Daniel's dawning horror, the stranger dragged him roughly from the cell. He blinked in fear at the looming men around him, their incomprehensible barks lost amid a confusion of jostling, flames and pain.

Teal'c!

He found with sick realisation that he couldn't stand, and despite several faltering attempts received a glancing blow for his efforts. It was all he could do to drop to the floor and wrap his arms over his head, an attempt to ward off the unwarranted attack.

Another blow made his ears ring and he cringed away from the fiercely yelling voice. He didn't understand. Brutal fingers dug into his arms and wrenched them from his face and he struggled, crying out when a strong grip twisted in his hair, baring his neck.

There was a flash of metal and he stiffened. It was the unmistakeable glint of a knife. A thrill of purest terror shot through him.

Help me!

"No," Daniel gasped and renewed his struggles, panic lending him strength he didn't think he still had. He wrenched loose of the hold to one arm and swung wildly, connecting with the fleshy midsection of one of his assailants.

"Hold him!" a voice snarled and the restraining grip returned.

He was flipped around and crushed against the corridor wall, a knee at the small of his back and his shoulders shrieking a protest. It felt as though they were trying to dislocate his arms. Even the slightest movement sent sharp stabs of agony through each joint.

His head was once again wrenched back and he tensed. A figure in his periphery moved in for the killing blow.

"Stop. Don't!"

He stilled completely as the flat of a blade was pressed firmly against his cheekbone, its point terrifyingly close to his eye. A face loomed into view and he locked eyes with it, his breath trapped painfully in his chest.

"Be still," the face instructed coldly, too close to focus on.

The metal lifted from his skin and Daniel closed his eyes.

The edge touched his throat and he flinched, but instead of the cold bite of the metal there was only a rasping sensation, the familiar nicking of hairs as the blade swept up towards his chin.

An explosion of breath left him on a half sob and the hands holding him down tightened as he sagged. This made no sense. He didn't understand.

He barely registered the few warm trickles of blood and tiny cuts, too intent on the progression of the blade from one side of his throat to the other, up each cheek and along his jawline. Too numb to feel anything but a remote sort of mortification for the tear slipping uninvited into the melee.

The hand in his hair tilted his face as required and he didn't resist. Satisfied with his work, the man shifted, yanking Daniel's head down and forward. Again the blade worked its way around his head, large hanks of too-long hair falling casualty to its appetite.

Daniel stared down at his knees in a daze as his hair fell to the floor around him, every snick-slip of the knife resonating with insidious clarity. His head jerked as each handful was grasped and then cut.

When it was finally over he was trembling finely, his teeth clacking uncontrollably. The shock of cold water dousing his freshly exposed scalp made him gasp, then choke as the unexpected liquid flooded across his face. He was released all at once and brought his hands to press desperately at his burning eyes. The astringent, foul-smelling stuff was not water but a chemical of some kind, and it ate mercilessly into every nick and cut on his skin.

Blinded and disorientated, he was propelled forward from the wall, the heels of his hands scraping roughly along the floor when he tried to break his fall.

"Move," someone ordered with a kick, and with a sick sense of relief it dawned that they were herding him back to the cell.

He was half lifted, half dragged back the way he had come and hauled unceremoniously over the threshold. He scrambled as far as he could from their reach even as the door ground shut behind him and groped for the relative safety of the far corner.

The caustic stuff in his eyes continued to burn and he clawed frantically at them. His heart thundered in his chest. He was shaking. He was an absolute mess.

But he was still alive.

As the full implications of what he was sure he'd narrowly avoided sank in, he moved to draw his feet in close. The toe of one boot clipped an unexpected bundle lying to one side and he froze, paralyzed by the thought that a guard had remained inside with him.

Seconds passed without the slightest movement and he reached out a tentative hand, only to encounter a brushed velvet surface that had no business being in his dank, slimy little universe. He explored further and found skin, warm and clammy.

The bundle coughed weakly.

Vala.

"Vala," Daniel croaked, the sound a pale imitation of her name. His fingers traced the outline of her face, the curve of her neck, the stiff and dirty fabric of her clothing. She whimpered as his hands found her arms, turned her body, pulled her towards him.

Shh. It's okay. It's all going to be okay. I'm here. I've got you.

The sounds wouldn't come.

He swaddled her in his jacket, the effort almost more than he could manage, and willed her to know him, to hear him without his voice.

She lay in his arms and he rocked her, his fingers longing to sweep hair back off her neck, to tuck strands behind her ears, to brush it gently from over her eyes. She felt so much smaller without it, naked and vulnerable and diminished.

This woman was bird-like and delicate and breakable. She was wrong. This wasn't his Vala. His Vala was sharp corners and hard edges, elastic and tensile and resilient. His Vala was indestructible. His Vala took his crap and reflected it right back at him. His Vala repelled sorrow like water on oil. He couldn't bear to see it stick.

He guided her hand to his face, traced the lax fingers over his jaw, down his nose, across his brow. He pressed his lips firmly to each knuckle, turned her hand and repeated the action, this time with the tips of her fingers. He coaxed her fingers to flex and held the palm against his cheek.

The smallest of movements would have been enough, but Vala was still. Her breathing was barely audible, her limbs loose and heavy.

She'd said she'd always come back. She hadn't left him then. But now? Now she was going to break her promise.

Daniel held her close and prayed, the tears slipping silently down his face.

If you leave me here, I'll never forgive you. Do you hear me? Never.