Title: Being Found
Author: Milena D.
Rating: T for now
Genre: Romance/Action/Adventure, etc. Daniel/Vala all the way ;)
SPOILERS: Up to Prometheus Unbound which is the 12th episode of Season 8, I believe. And although I'm not using any parts of Seasons 9 or 10 yet, I am taking the creative liberty of bringing the team together to include Daniel, Teal'c, Sam, Cameron, Dr. Lam and General Landry. Jack will be making an appearance too!

Summary: What if Daniel and Vala had been reunited soon after Prometheus Unbound, before any of Season 9?

Author's Note: Sorry for the delay, a stomach flu got in the way…that totally rhymed, cool :D

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Chapter 12: Full Disclosure
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Cameron closed the door as he walked back into the cabin. The General had them up at the crack of dawn to fish but at least they had half a dozen beautiful trouts to show for their efforts. Cameron, despite being the rookie fishermen, had actually caught a fish after only two hours and in his great joy had generously offered to clear their gear from the dock.

Cameron took off his boots and lugged the bucket of fish into the kitchen where Sam, Jack and Teal'c were having coffee and preparing breakfast. He threw a glance at the stairs and put the bucket on the floor beside the counter.

"They still asleep?" he asked checking the clock on the stove.

"It would appear so." Teal'c said.

"If they didn't have separate rooms, I'd say something was up." he chuckled and Sam turned her head away to conceal a grin.

"You know what, Mitchell? It's almost 9:30, it's high time they get their butts down for breakfast, why don't you go wake them?" Jack suggested all too casually.

"Ah…sure, si-…I mean, I'll just go." Cam stumbled and left quickly for the staircase, not bothering to quiet his clamber up.

"Why are you picking on him?" Sam reprimanded Jack with a grin.

"What? He's part of the gang now isn't he? I torture you guys the same, it's not my fault he doesn't understand my particularly genius sense of humour yet." Jack defended himself as he got the eggs out of the fridge.

Sam and Teal'c shared a grin and waited patiently for a cry of shock from upstairs.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

For the first time in as long as she could remember, Vala didn't shoot out of unconsciousness. Instead, she slowly drifted out of the surprisingly comforting embrace of sleep and felt absolutely peaceful when she opened her eyes. She was on her side, facing an unfamiliar wall but she was also warm and content, happy to stay perfectly still, close her eyes and wait for sleep to claim her again. She squirmed a bit to snuggle into her pillow and when her warm cocoon suddenly tightened around her she realized that she wasn't surrounded by a heavy comforter but by a strong chest at her back and a solid arm over her waist. It didn't alarm her though, and she opened her eyes as she happily remembered just exactly who was wrapped around her.

Vala turned slowly from her side to lie on her back and her eyes widened with surprise when she found Daniel to be very much awake. His bright blue eyes were open and staring at her with tenderness.

"Good morning." he murmured quietly, not wanting to disturb the peaceful atmosphere of morning. He'd been up for some time now but hadn't been able to muster up the motivation to remove himself from his place around her so he'd simply kept still and felt her breathe evenly against his chest as she slept.

"Morning, darling." she smiled and Daniel was startled by how intensely his heart reacted to the simple gesture. "Sleep well?" she teased and he grinned at her.

"Never better. Did you?" he asked seriously, remembering her nightmares.

"Quite well." she smiled shyly and he was pleased to find no hidden shadows in her eyes this time. "You make a very comfortable pillow." she continued as she turned fully into his body. His arms shifted around her automatically and his leg trapped her own between his but she didn't seem to mind.

"Well I do aim to please." he quipped as she settled her head on his bicep. She smiled and pushed back his sleeve to lay a kiss to the skin beneath it and a shiver ran through him at the contact.

"And oh how you succeed, my Daniel." she grinned back coquettishly, wrapping her arm around his waist and closing her eyes.

"You're still tired?" he asked her with surprise. The corners of her lips drew upwards but she didn't open her eyes.

"Not so much tired as blissfully lethargic." she said, snuggling deeper into his arms. He let out a quiet laugh but joined her in relaxation, he closed his eyes and tucked her head under his chin.

"We'll have to get up eventually." he murmured against her hair.

"Now, you see? I don't agree, I think this is exactly how we should remain for eternity." she replied.

"Hmm. No work, no distractions, no food." he added deliberately. Vala's eyes snapped open.

"Well, night comes everyday you know…we don't necessarily have to prolong it indefinitely, there are other things to life." she said and he laughed at her.

"You are adorably predictable." he chuckled.

"As long as I'm adorable." she returned with a kiss to his stubbly chin.

He curled his arm around her waist and drew her up to his level to kiss her properly but loud knocking down the hall interrupted them and they looked at each other quizzically.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

--THUMP--THUMP--THUMP--

"Jackson! Wakey wakey, time for breaky." Cameron shouted through General O'Neill's door, waiting for a response. When Cameron heard nothing, he pounded on the door again but still no one answered. The door down the hall creaked open and he looked over to greet Vala but a sleepy-looking Daniel poked his head out instead.

"Mitchell, what the hell are you doing yelling at this hour?" Daniel griped amiably, feeling slightly sympathetic for the Air Force Lt. Colonel who stood gaping down the hall.

Cameron's eyes shifted from the door he stood in front of to the man in sleepwear standing in Vala's doorway and nodded.

"Yeah, I'm uh…waking you up. Good morning." he replied eventually.

"Morning, would you keep it down?" he requested with a half-grin. Cameron began to nod instinctively to be polite but he remembered the General's orders.

"Yeah, sure but the General wants you to come down for breakfast." he said, finally recuperating from his shock. It wasn't the attraction between the archeologist and the alien woman that surprised him, that had been obvious; it was just that seeing Daniel Jackson walk out of the woman's room was not a sight he expected to witness.

"You think Vala would miss the opportunity to eat? We'll be down in a few minutes." Daniel said before walking back into the room, closing the door behind him.

A few moments later, Daniel could hear Cameron walk slowly back down the staircase and he turned to face the bed to find that Vala had already fallen back to sleep. The sight of Vala dozing, wrapped around his pillow on the bed they'd shared excited every sensory organ in his body. His eyes drank in the sight greedily, his ears honed in on the rustling of the sheets as she squirmed slightly within them, but he wanted to touch her, he wanted to smell her and he really wanted to taste her…so he did.

He walked briskly back to the bed and whisked the pillow from her arms, waking her in the process. She rolled onto her back, keeping her eyes closed, and he climbed onto the mattress to follow her. He lowered himself on his side beside her and leaned in to kiss the crook of her neck and shoulder. She hummed her approval but kept her eyes closed.

"I've decided to spend the day falling asleep so you can wake me up." she said, lazily threading her fingers through his hair as he kissed her temple.

"We could do that, I'm not even hungry yet." he said with a smirk. Her fingers stilled in his hair and her eyes snapped open.

"That's right! Breakfast! Daniel, get up." she said, shoving at him enthusiastically.

She pushed him straight out of her room so she could get changed and he went to his to do the same. He switched into day clothes slowly, relishing the feeling of relaxation that had taken him over. He couldn't remember feeling this light in a long time. He opened his door to head downstairs and was surprised to see Vala dressed in jeans and a pink long-sleeved shirt leaning against the wall across the hall, twisting her hands.

"Vala? What's wrong? I thought I was going to find burn-marks on the floor from your haste to breakfast." he quipped, taking her hands.

"You can see them from my door to yours." she returned with a grin "I was just…on my way down and it occurred to me that, yesterday evening, you told me you were a very private person in terms of relationships…and I was just wondering, I mean, with the others…" Ah ha, he understood why she looked so self-conscious and wondered why he wasn't feeling the same, why he was feeling so solid, so confident.

"Vala, I basically told Mitchell just now that we were sleeping together and Jack knows I didn't come back to our room after I went to you last night so I think it's fair to say the cat's out of the bag." he said and grinned when she looked confused.

"It means the secret is a secret no longer but…the same way I'm not a rushing kind of guy, I'm not very big on PDAs." he apologized and was met with another confused look.

"Oh, uh, that's public displays of affection." he clarified and she looked mildly bothered, she wrapped her arms around herself.

"So we're to act as a…couple…in private but just friends in view of the world?" she asked with evident distaste. He approached her, unwound her arms from her waist and replaced them with his own.

"No, that's not at all what I mean. Just don't be surprised if I don't throw you onto the kitchen table and ravage you over breakfast." he reassured her and she nodded deeply.

"I see, well that's perfectly understandable really. What about lunch?" she asked seriously and he laughed.

"We'll see." he replied "Now how about going downstairs?"

And with those magic words, Vala took hold of his hand and they flew down the stairs. When they reached the kitchen, she tried to slip her hand out of his but he held on.

"Let's just take it by situation, k?" he murmured and she nodded with a smile. They entered the kitchen and saw the rest of the team already sitting at the table, eating an assortment of scrambled eggs, bacon and pancakes. While Vala roamed her eyes eagerly over the tons of food and took a deep breath to inhale the delightful aromas, Daniel gave his friends a warning glare not to start anything. He got nothing but innocent faces and that was never a good sign.

"Good morning, everyone!" Vala chirped cheerfully as she sat down and the whole gamut of morning greetings was thrown around the table. She started scooping food out of the central dishes and covered the mountain on her plate with a plethora of condiments. Daniel took his time and began with a cup of his addiction, coffee. Everything was comfortably quiet until Jack apparently passed his limit on good behaviour.

"Sleep well?" he asked almost innocuously. Daniel threw him an exasperated glare and Vala looked up quickly from her feast before smiling wide.

"Very well, thank you." she replied simply, restraining herself from going into details.

"What about you, Daniel? Sleep well? I couldn't help but notice you weren't in the room when I woke up. Looked all over the place for you, we were all really worried." Jack continued mercilessly and for once Daniel decided to exploit his new-found confidence and one-up his friend.

"You obviously didn't check in Vala's bed, could have saved you all that anxiety." he retorted. Vala beamed at the explicit acknowledgement while the rest of the table reacted with different levels of shock at Daniel's bluntness, including Sam almost choking on her bacon. Jack was surprised too, sure, but he smiled with joy to see this carefree side of Daniel reemerge, this was the man he had last seen ten years ago at mealtime around an Abydonian campfire, kissing his wife.

"But we didn't have sex." Vala said earnestly, wanting to clarify the issue to the table for Daniel's sake and Jack grinned as Daniel's head almost dropped clean into his eggs. Oh yeah, this was definitely a good thing.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

After breakfast, while the others did various chores, Vala used the healing device – under Daniel's watchful eye – to finish healing her shoulder. When she was done there wasn't a single mar on her shoulder's skin to indicate it had ever been wounded.

"See?" Vala said pleased, pulling down the front of her shirt to reveal her shoulder. "Not even a scratch."

Daniel inspected closely, feeling the smooth skin with the pad of his thumb.

"You're sure it doesn't hurt anymore?" he asked with concern.

"Not even a twinge, darling." she assured him as she twirled her arms in big, exaggerated circles.

"Glad to hear it." he told her as he put the device away in the desk drawer in the corner of the room, not noticing the special attention she gave it.

"So what are we doing today?" Vala asked him excitedly as he sat back down beside her. Daniel pulled a face.

"Jack wants us all to go into town to help him find a new barbeque for the cabin and pick up a few things we forgot on the way." he groused.

"All of us?" she asked and he nodded.

"Yeah. Well, Teal'c is staying back, I think, he didn't get his training in this morning when Jack pulled them all out of bed to fish at the crack of dawn." he said with a sly grin, remembering how much more pleasant his morning had been. He tried to kiss her but she spoke again.

"What about Sam? Is she going too?" she asked quickly and he gave her a mildly questioning look.

"Yeah, Jack wants her opinion as a theoretical astrophysicist on which barbeque would be the most efficient…or most powerful probably." he replied sardonically. "I'm sure you two can split off for a bit and go do something else if you want."

"Actually…I'm a bit tired from the healing, that's why I was hoping she'd maybe stay here and keep me company." she answered and he looked concerned.

"I can stay with you, I doubt my expertise in languages and archeology will come in useful when deciding on which machine will make the biggest flames while keeping the steaks juicy." he replied, suddenly looking forward to his morning a lot more.

"No no," she admonished "you should go with your friends, feel manly finding the biggest piece of machinery the store carries and when you come back I'll be all refreshed and ready to really enjoy you." she murmured as she honed in on his lips. It sounded a lot like she was sending him off but those thoughts disappeared when her lips approached his.

"Does this count as a…P.D.A.?" she said suddenly, remembering the term. Daniel looked around to the empty living room.

"It can't be a public display of affection without a public, now can it?" he smirked.

"I love your logic." she whispered as she pressed her lips to his. Before they could get any further however, the front door opened quickly and Jack bounded in.

"Alright kids, get in car, we're going shopping!" he ordered. Daniel grimaced at his enthusiasm and turned to Vala.

"You sure you don't want me to stay with you?" he whined and she smiled at him pityingly.

"I need sleep, Daniel, and you excite me far too much at the moment. Go." she told him and with a long-suffering sigh he got up and moved slowly out of the cabin to the van.

The others said their goodbyes to Vala and Teal'c and sped off to town.

"Bye!" Vala waved from the porch until the van disappeared from sight. She waited a moment longer and then she turned to the silent Jaffa next to her.

"Muscles, I need your help." she pled.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

In the end it only took about an hour to return to the cottage. This was partly due to Jack and Cameron's excitement over the first barbeque they'd found that Sam had approved of, and partly due to Daniel's eagerness to return to Vala. He'd left the gang at the store to go pick up the groceries they were lacking and they'd been back on the road in half an hour.

Daniel brought in the groceries while the other three unloaded their precious master broiler barbeque. If he hadn't been so focused on seeing Vala again, he might have found it odd not to see Teal'c working out in the yard. Daniel placed the bags on the counter and only unloaded the items that needed to be frozen before searching the cabin for Vala.

She wasn't in the kitchen, obviously, nor was she in the living room and he hadn't seen her outside so the only logical place to search next was their bedroom…her bedroom he corrected himself. He bound up the stairs and walked quickly down the hall to open her door quietly in the likely event that she was sleeping. The sight that assaulted him took his breath away…and not in a good way.

Vala sat on the edge of her bed, shirtless with her bra undone in the back and Teal'c sat close behind her. As soon as came into sight, Vala's eyes widened dramatically and she made a mad scramble to find her shirt, always holding one hand to her chest to make sure her bra covered her entirely.

"Daniel, quick shopping trip was it?" she said with difficulty as Teal'c found the missing shirt and gave it to her.

"Yeah, they found one right away…what's going on?" he asked, trying to keep his mind from racing to ugly conclusions. He might not know Vala as well as he should at this point but Teal'c was a loyal friend, he'd never do anything like what this scene proposed.

"Um…" Vala's eyes raced to every corner of the room trying to find something to say but Teal'c decided to force her into the truth. He lifted an object from the bed and gave it to Daniel on his way out.

Daniel stared down at the Goa'uld healing device in his hands and shot the Jaffa a questioning glance that remained unanswered as Teal'c left the room and closed the door behind him.

"Vala, what's going on?" he asked, trying to keep his voice low and stable. He saw her face crinkle into a distraught frown and he stepped closer but kept a good couple of feet between them. Whatever she was hiding, it obviously pained her very much. He looked again at the healing device in his hands and had nothing but questions, she looked pale and there was sweat on her brow indicating she'd been using it but all her wounds had been healed, what had she been up to and why would she need Teal'c to do it?

"Vala, why are you still using the healing device? Did you hurt yourself while we were gone?" he walked towards her but she got up from the bed and backed away from him. Okay, that hurt.

"You're starting to scare me Vala, what's going on? Are you hurt?" he demanded. She blinked anxiously at him, standing a few feet away, still holding the shirt to her undone bra but he could see her hands shaking where they were bunched around the shirt.

"No!" she told him finally when he took another step towards her "I'm not hurt."

"Then why are you using this?" he demanded, holding up the device. Her eyes were glued to the floor as she answered.

"Because soon it'll be too late to fix them." she mumbled and he approached her again, this time she stayed put.

"To fix what, Vala?" he asked softly and his heart clenched with fear when she bit her lip with apprehension. He placed a finger under her chin and she was startled but he needed to keep her eyes from avoiding his.

"Fix what, Vala?" he repeated and she sighed anxiously. She took a step backward but she wasn't running away anymore, she was just making some room. She took another deep breath and handed him her shirt, keeping a hand on her bra. Then she looked into his eyes and turned around slowly. When she heard him inhale sharply, her eyes slammed shut with shame.

Daniel was horrified. Almost the entire expanse of Vala's back was deeply scarred with criss-crossing lashes. He raised a trembling hand to her flesh, hoping he was only imagining the angry marks embedded in her skin. Her muscles contracted quickly when his fingerpads touched her bare skin but she relaxed as his hand began to move across the expanse of her shoulder blades. There was a long patch of smooth skin near the small of her back and he finally understood the scene he'd walked in on.

"Teal'c was helping you reach back?" he asked quietly. She nodded without speaking but he heard her swallow thickly in the silence. He laid his entire hand flat on her back and she shivered.

"I would have preferred Samantha but Jaffas are pretty good secret-keepers." she quipped without much humour and he turned her around to face him.

"Why would you need to keep this a secret? I've helped you with all your other wounds." he asked softly.

"I didn't – I didn't want you to see them." she said, keeping her head ducked.

"Hey," he called lowly, again raising her chin to meet her eyes "why couldn't you tell me? I thought we'd been doing well with the revelation-type discussions, and I think this would definitely count as a 'getting-to-know-each-other' topic." he tried to grin to lift the dark mood but it didn't work very well. She shook her head quickly.

"I don't know, I don't know. I just – whenever I thought of telling you or letting you see, I just couldn't. I didn't want you to know." she repeated and Daniel laughed humourlessly.

"Vala, I was there when we picked you up, it was a little hard not to notice the completely blood-soaked back of your shirt." he noted and she looked at him with a blank face.

"I still don't remember much of that time but in any case, I feel like that whole sordid experience is mostly forgotten by now and this is just a truly ugly reminder of it all." she shrugged.

"Mostly forgotten?" he asked incredulously "I haven't forgotten that day Vala, I doubt I ever will. I'll never be able to forget how scared I was walking in your bloodtrail in that goddamned forest or how much I despise Narsin and wish Teal'c had more bloodlust in him, that he might have finished the job. I'll never be able to forget how my hands were stained in your blood after having simply held you for a bit-"

Daniel broke off and tried to shake off the memories he was conjuring up.

"Well I want you to, I want you to forget! I want you all to forget!" she cried, reaching stiffly behind her to reattach her bra and stealing her pink shirt out of Daniel's hands.

"I don't want you to remember how pathetic and weak and deranged I was. I don't want you to remember that, I don't want you to see me like that!" she continued.

"You do remember Plitis." he said suspiciously and she huffed and crossed her arms.

"Yes! Yes, alright? I remember Plitis. I remember being tortured for several days, I remember the guard trying to – and I remember knifing him in the gut! And I remember escaping and attacking Cameron, then Narsin creeping up on me. I remember wanting to throw myself in the river, that's what you wanted to hear?" she asked him but he stayed quiet, letting her rant. "I remember the absolute terror I felt when I thought Teal'c was there to bring me back to Qetesh and I remember how I just fell pathetically into your arms like some wilting flower and held onto you for dear life."

She was yelling at him now but he understood that it wasn't him she was angry with.

"You're angry…because you weren't in prime conditions to fight and be witty after days of torture, broken bones and massive blood loss? Are you serious?" Daniel asked, trying to keep a warm tone. She threw him a dirty look but she didn't seem to have the words to respond.

"That's it? Because you needed help, you think you were pathetic? My god, Vala, the mere fact that you could stand after all that trauma is a testament to your strength and resilience!" he said sincerely. She wore a stubborn frown and let out a deeply troubled breath.

"I've never needed to be rescued before, Daniel, I've never needed anyone but myself." she said quietly as she sat down on the edge of her bed. He followed slowly and took his place beside her.

"Well…whether you need someone or not, I hope you realize that you're stuck with at least one from now on." he told her and he finally got a smile to grace her lips, it was small and shaky but it was something. "And needing help doesn't make you weak." he tacked on awkwardly and she smiled indulgently.

"Fine don't believe me." he sulked, running a hand down her back deliberately "But I don't see these and think how weak you were, as if such a thing were possible anyway; I saw these scars and my first thought was how much you've endured to always come out on top, to survive and not just – not just continue your existence but actually live, which is something I've had a hard time doing for a long time now, before you started reminding me how."

Vala was silent, desperately trying to reabsorb the moisture in her eyes, it really wouldn't do to break down on the spot after his words about her strength. She looked away to keep the sight of her shining eyes from him but he gently guided her face back to him.

"Vala," he smiled softly "it's okay."

He pressed his thumb to the edge of her eye and collected the fat tear hovering there. Busted. She gave him as big a smile as she could manage and he pulled her into his arms, kissing the top of her head. She didn't cry but she wrapped her own arms around him.

"Is that why you made me turn around last night?" he asked suddenly and she gave a small laugh but nodded.

"Although, as soon as I can manage to heal all of them, I'm going to force you to watch me change, there's no reason I should be the only one suffering from sexual tension here." she teased him.

"Ha! Trust me, you do not suffer alone." he assured her but made no move to help them release any of that tension.

He reached down and slipped his hand under the back of her shirt to move across her maimed skin. She tensed under his ministrations, still uncomfortable with his awareness of her scars but he pulled her sideways onto his lap and pressed a kiss to her temple as he mapped her back with his fingers.

"We can fix this if you want," he said softly against her ear, trying to make sure she understood he shouldn't be taken into consideration for this decision "but I won't think of you any differently either way. I admired you and cared about you when I didn't know and I still do now that I do know, maybe even more."

She processed his words and the way his warm hand moved without hesitation over her scars and pulled his face to hers for a long, passionate kiss. When she pulled away, she leaned her forehead against his and answered him softly.

"I looked through the magazines with Sam, the best items at Victoria's Secret don't have solid backs, the scars need to go." she said with a sly grin.

"Well then…that's a good point." he said with wide, eager eyes. She laughed at him and pushed him to fall back on the bed. She placed the healing device carefully in the nightstand and there it was forgotten for a good long while.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Please review, and the action part of this fic is coming back soon for any of you that might be getting bored ;)