Title: Midnight's Children (chapter 12)
Rating: R
Genre/pairing/warnings: Daniel/Vala, Drama, Action-Adventure, mentions of torture in some chapters
Setting: Post-Ark of Truth
Word count: 2,550
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~
Stargate Command, four days later
The words flowed over her without finding purchase, meaningless and best ignored. No turn of phrase, no speech, no label could be applied to the suffering she had seen. She didn't want to hear it defined or described. Malnutrition. Dehydration. Atrophy. All of it, unnecessary noise.
Sam allowed her eyes to slip closed and wished she could close her ears to Dr Lam's incessant, dispassionate drone. Clinical terminology, clinical delivery. As if the people she described meant nothing to them. Mildly interesting perhaps, but warranting no familiarity or warmth. As if they where strangers.
Maybe now they were.
They'd only just made it in time. And the price had been high. On reaching the surface, their carefully planned surgical extraction had descended rapidly into a firefight they were ill prepared to win with a medevac team and casualties in tow, and the delay had almost cost them everything.
All this, and still almost too late.
Vala had crashed on the ramp. Only the swift efficiency of the medical staff had saved her life, though whether she would pull through was apparently still in question. Her survival hung by a thread, her emaciated body held together by a frightening collection of whirring machinery, chemicals and bloody-minded willpower. The looks in the eyes of the nurses foretold that she may never be the same again. Sam didn't want to admit to herself that she felt the same fear for Daniel as well.
The debriefing began to come to a close around her, her participation automatic. She felt no inclination to register the expectant pauses, the significant shared looks, the barely disguised concern. She rose from the table when required, made all the appropriate noises. Left the room as quickly as she could. She had a phone call to make.
~o0o~
She hadn't allowed herself to cry during the long, six month search and the wait for news, nor since they'd escaped that disgusting planet. The need to get out, the rush for the 'gate before discovery and before too many reinforcements could come to drag them back, the stitching of the dirty laceration to her leg, the clean up and med checks; all of it had taken precedence over her need to absorb and process the outcome of the mission.
She'd felt shuttered, closed off from herself, from the horror she'd witnessed, from what she'd been forced to do. Couldn't find tears for Vala, pale and fragile and buried in tubing, wires snaking from every surface of her body, machinery insisting it found evidence of life despite her deathlike appearance. Couldn't find them for Daniel, silent, unresponsive, trapped and unreachable in a waking nightmare, even harder to look at now that the dirt was washed away, too difficult to talk to when eyes wouldn't focus, unable to react to anything around him. Wouldn't find them for herself, a luxury undeserved in the face of her failure. Failure to find them in time, to make things better, not worse. Failure to be stronger for all of them.
But when Jack stepped out of that elevator, when he was finally just there, a minuscule hammer tapped on the faintest crack of the base of the dam and it spidered up and out, spreading, crumbling, bursting and gushing, and she was pulled into his arms before she could utter the first despairing sound. For some time there was nothing but the pain in her chest and the forceful releasing of wet breaths. The quaking of shoulders. The scrambling of spasming fingers on crisp, starched uniform. Only vaguely aware of others around her, clearing the corridor, responding to a general's unspoken order. Guided without conscious thought to sit, the memory of the journey to the chair a blank.
She cried herself out for time unmarked. Until she felt emptied, hollowed, spent. She wasn't rushed. Wasn't pushed to talk. The culmination of six month's worth of stress and tension released in the violence if a single outburst. As the initial choking urgency to expel every last breath in her body passed, she allowed herself just to cry, weak with exhaustion, but for the first time in half a year, feeling a little of the crushing weight lift from her shoulders. Surely, half the battle was won? Please God let this at least be the worst of it now.
There was no wise crack about the dry-cleaning bill. No quirk of the mouth and tilt of the head, inviting her to laugh at herself. No pat on the back that said 'enough now, time to pull your shit together'. Just his presence next to her, another tissue offered when the last threatened to disintegrate into a wet mush in her restless, wringing hands.
When she could finally lift her head again, she found that his was propped back against the wall, eyes fixed on a point far ahead. She knew that look. It asked when this would end. When they'd see the last of the soul-sapping torture brought on by the wait, the unknown of a friend in danger, the unspoken blame and guilt for not being there. He may not have been with her in the field or on base during the search, but she reminded herself that these last six months had been just as long and frustrating for him as they had been for her.
God, how did he ever do this? How could he stand to be so close to them all when this insidious pain was waiting, just out of sight, lurking just beneath the surface, biding its time.
Sam wasn't sure what had been worse: the pressure of the task, weighty and overbearing and suffocating in its immensity; or the growing realisation in the eyes of her teammates that she may not be up to it, that this time, perhaps Sam didn't have the answer.
How did he not crumble under the repeated pressure of missing teammates, death and failure? Why had she allowed herself to assume that mantle of responsibility, when clearly it was several dress sizes too big for her shoulders? She couldn't have passed it to Mitchell. Wouldn't have been fair, and he doesn't know them, not like that. Not like eight years of struggle and victory and death and change. Not his fault, of course. It would come to him in time. Sam had accepted that until then, she would be the one to step up, to be the one carrying the combined weight of this dysfunctional family's emotional investment in each other, to be the one hardest hit when things went wrong. She felt cowardly and relieved to be able to step back into Jack's commanding shadow, if only for a short time. Just a few days to lick her wounds, then she could be strong again.
The last of her shuddering breaths subsided and she raised her eyes to the ceiling, blinking rapidly. She took a smooth, deep gulp of air. Yes. She was done.
"Are you ready?" he asked her. She nodded.
~o0o~
Don't expect too much, they had been warned, but that didn't stop the suffocating squeeze in her chest as Sam watched the dismayed disappointment steal across Jack's face.
She recognised the emotions, the ugly train of thought. Recognised the self-loathing that quickly followed those very reasonable human expectations; for needing something, anything, just one small sign to assuage the guilt, to confirm the effort and to find comfort in; anything at all from the broken person in the bed, the person least able to give anything more, yet still feeling cheated by its lack. She'd danced these steps already.
Daniel had been utterly still and silent since his return, and but for the opening and closing of his eyes had reacted to nothing and no one around him. Sam had accepted this for herself, but a secret part of her had counted on Jack. A foolish hope, she knew, but she reserved her right for a rare indulgence in irrational thought when circumstances allowed.
Together they had talked to him. Assured him he was safe. That Vala was here, that she was nearby. How glad they were to have found him and how hard they'd been looking. That they'd not given up and knew he wouldn't either. That they were here for him when he was ready to come back to them. That it was okay to take time, to be sad.
After three days with no change, Jack had needed to return to Washington, and Sam knew it cut him to leave with so little.
~o0o~
She found Mitchell at Vala's bedside, feet crossed at the ankles and propped languorously on the edge of the bed. For all his attempts at casual impropriety – the slumped posture deep in the plastic chair, the florescent orange stress ball passing back and forth between his hands with nervous frequency, the way his head was tipped back listlessly over the rim of the seat's back rest – Sam could detect the undercurrent of frustration and anger in his bearing.
"Hey," she greeted softly as she approached. He didn't attempt a smile.
The whooshing of the ventilator was a rude intruder in the quiet between them that Sam had to consciously ignore. Vala's skin was an unhealthy milky white, her cheeks hollow. Her eyes, taped closed, were dusted a dark grey in the perfect rings of her sockets. Her striking dark eyebrows cut harshly across her otherwise colourless features.
Sam ran a single fingertip over the uneven surface of Vala's scalp, tracing the jagged sections of black bristles. The woman in the bed was almost unrecognisable without those luxurious tresses. Slight to begin with, hunger had left her fragile and child-like. She was so much smaller without her most defining feature.
"She'll be pissed," Mitchell murmured behind her, his mirthless chuckle not quite passing muster to Sam's ears. She turned to him with a wan smile that she knew didn't come anywhere near her eyes, but he wasn't looking and she let it fade away.
~o0o~
He came back to them all at once on an unremarkable afternoon.
Absorbed as she was in the report in front of her, Sam almost missed the slight movement in her peripheral vision. Her fingers stilled on the keys, the laptop scorching a patch through the denim of her thigh.
Daniel blinked a couple of times, a small frown forming between his eyebrows, and turned his head to look at her.
A watery feeling fluttered in her gut. She allowed a tremulous smile to break free.
"Hi."
Daniel seemed to search her face for a moment and she held herself still. The urge to reach out and touch him was almost too strong to resist.
She wasn't sure what he saw there that made the frown deepen. Perhaps it was the mixed emotions in her eyes, the sorrowful taint to her smile, the worry and the hope, the poisonous thread of guilt running through her still.
We left you behind. I'm so sorry.
Perhaps it was as simple as confusion.
He took in the room around them in dazed slow motion and she made herself wait, to hold back. Her lungs burned with the need to breathe, to exhale with relief and joy and heartbreak.
When they returned to hers, his eyes were fearful, his voice hesitant and small.
"Sam?"
She crumbled. She couldn't answer, only nod and smile painfully through the tears, her hands finally freed to reach for his, mindful of the tubes and wires, the catheter taped to the back of his hand, its point beneath paper white skin.
She was alarming him with this display of emotion, but she found she didn't care. Couldn't have stopped herself if she had wanted to. She grasped his fingers tightly and shook them gently. She swallowed back her sobs and smiled at him again, her hand moving tentatively to sweep across his temple.
Mastering herself, she made herself meet his eyes again and leaned towards him conspiratorially.
"You had us worried for a while there," she confided as playfully as she could manage, but couldn't prevent the tremble of feeling in her voice.
Where did you go?
She watched him lower his head to examine the bed, his eyes tracking slowly over the trail of wires and tubing, his other hand raising to bring the mess of tape and bruising at its back into focus. She waited while he took in his surroundings, realisation slowly dawning. Waited for him to ask her what had happened, where he was.
She saw it register in the widening of his eyes, the way his body stiffened against the pillows propping him upright. Saw him struggle to sit up further, arms already moving to lever himself forward.
"It's okay," she said. It was frighteningly easy to push him back down again.
She almost had to look away from the desperate appeal, from the unguarded vulnerability she saw in his face. She felt like an eavesdropper. To witness something so raw, so unintentionally naked felt wrong.
"Would you like to see her?"
A single tear rolled down Daniel's cheek.
He nodded.
~o0o~
Daniel was shaking with exhaustion by the time they'd moved him into a chair, with the help of a reluctant nurse. Sam had cut off the first words of a hesitant objection with a silent look that had put an end to the matter, and had wheeled him into the empty corridor without comment.
It was a short distance to the isolation room, yet a long enough journey for her to witness the almost imperceptible tightening of Daniel's grip on the chair's armrest at the echo of a distantly closing door.
Teal'c looked up from his vigil as they entered the room, his stoic expression slipping momentarily when he saw them. He rose to his feet, but Daniel had eyes only for the room's other occupant.
Sam met Teal'c's questioning look and he accepted the unspoken explanation. Without needing to be asked, he slipped quietly from the room.
She pushed the chair as close as she could to the side of Vala's bed.
"She's just sleeping," she explained clumsily. "They took her off the ventilator yesterday."
Daniel said nothing.
This wasn't what she had expected. In her mind's eye she'd imagined him reaching for Vala's hand, pressing Vala's fingers to his mouth, an appeal for her to get better, to wake up. She'd imagined tears. She'd imagined anger.
Instead Daniel sat silently, his gaze resting on Vala's face, his hands folded in his lap.
She turned to go, to give them what little privacy she could offer, but soft words at her back stopped her.
"Stay. Please."
He didn't turn to look at her, didn't move at all, but she did as she was asked, not quite returning to his side.
She wasn't sure how long she waited there in that silent room, her concern slowly growing. She'd almost worked up the courage to say something when she saw him lift his hand and reach out towards the side of Vala's face. He stopped short, and after a moment's consideration, abruptly withdrew his hand.
"I'd like to go back now," he said to his knees, and with only a short, uncertain pause, Sam did as he had asked.
