Two Scenes – the first from just before the credits roll on The Pegasus Project and the second just after. This was posted in a much longer form at Sunshine and Shadow as Chapter 285. I am including it because it shows the continued understanding growing between Vala and Jillian. The conversation in towards the end is not mine. It comes from the episode's writers.
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Daniel was brooding; Jillian knew that he was. The conversation in the dining hall was almost continuous. The group at their table was talking animatedly about the staggering victory the Odyssey had achieved against two of their enemies in one fell swoop. It all swirled around Daniel, who sat staring at a point just in front of him without focusing on it and didn't touch the tray of food in front of him. She knew the tension in his shoulders and the dangerous stillness of his body.
Seated beside him, holding JD on her lap, Jillian whispered, "Daniel?"
He glanced at her. His face was cold as ice. His eyes glittered. He looked so brittle she was afraid he would shatter into icy particles if she asked him to speak.
He wasn't angry with her. For that she was grateful to the bottom of her soul. She never wanted to make Daniel that angry. But he was angry at the Ancients who had Ascended and that had always been a problem between them.
He looked away from her and pushed some mashed potatoes around on his plate. He stopped, paused again and then abruptly stood up and left. A few people glanced up when he did but no one moved to stop him.
Jillian stared after Daniel trying to figure out whether to go after him when JD suddenly broke off his animated and very one-sided conversation with Elizabeth to whine and struggle in Jillian's arms. She sighed. It was time for him to eat and not just the crackers they had been giving him. She was biting her lip and reaching for the backpack that held all of JD's stuff when she caught Vala's eye.
Vala had been flirting outrageously with whichever male happened to be seated beside her, having taken a liking in particular to John Sheppard. When Daniel left she had turned to John and asked if he could get her some more tea.
When John got up, she leaned forward across the table and asked very quietly, "Do you want me to go after him?" She meant go after Daniel. Jillian was silent as she dug out a jar of Nature's Best sweet potatoes and apricot blend. Vala spoke into the uncertainty, "I can feed JD if you want to go."
It was true. In the weeks aboard the Odyssey Vala had worked out a lot of her thwarted motherhood needs by bonding with JD in a way that surprised everyone. The baby adored her with the same unabashed joy he gave to all the members of both his parents' teams. Jillian knew that she could leave and go after Daniel and JD wouldn't notice – at least not as long as someone was feeding him. But…Jillian sighed inwardly.
"He needs to nurse too," Jillian said, just as quietly, holding a private conversation in the midst of a noisy group of people.
"Well I can't do that for him, unfortunately," Vala complained. She gestured towards the bag. "Don't you have...?"
"No," Jillian answered. She sounded short-tempered and she knew it. But she didn't like being caught between her son's needs and her husband's. Picking up on her mood and reacting to that as much as to his hunger, JD protested more loudly.
He attracted a few anxious glances from around the table, but when it was obvious that Jillian was taking care of it, the occupants all went back to their conversations.
Vala reached over and opened the jar while Jillian dug a spoon out of a plastic bag. Her eyes met Vala's again as she shifted JD around to offer him the first mouthful. She desperately wished that Sam or Teal'c or Cameron was there with them. She would have sent anyone one of them after Daniel without a second thought. Any one of them would have gone without asking and Jillian would have felt nothing but relief. None of them had a history of fighting with Daniel over the true nature of the Ascended.
But then neither did Vala, who was just getting to know them. Jillian suspected that given her treatment at the hands of the Ori, and now having got her first taste of dealing with this galaxy's version, Vala was probably going to come down firmly on Jillian's side.
But for now she could only look at Vala in helpless defeat. "Go see if you can find him?" she asked, pleadingly.
"What should I do with him? Try to get him back here?"
"Just try to stop him from doing anything stupid."
"Stupid?"
Jillian sighed again in frustration. "I'm pretty sure he knows how to Ascend all by himself, without any help. Just try to keep him talking and living on this plane of existence?"
Vala's gray eyes flew open in shock. "What do you think he might do?"
Jillian shrugged and tried not to look at anything but JD. "In pursuit of something to keep us safe? In pursuit of justice and what he feels is morally right? I have no idea what Daniel might do and that scares me more than anything."
Shock flared briefly in her eyes at the idea of Daniel taking his case directly to the Ancients, by whatever means necessary, and if he failed to convince them, retrieving the weapon himself with the knowledge he would gain. Vala nodded, looking – for once in her life – sober.
When John came back with her new glass of iced tea, Vala had already gone. John looked at her empty seat for a moment and then shrugged and offered the glass to Jillian. She forced a grateful smile and reached for it with a shaking hand.
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After a considerable time spent frantically looking, Vala found Daniel standing on a balcony high above the night-lit city of Atlantis. This was the Daniel she had first met and was most familiar with. This was Daniel cool and aloof and never to be touched. His proximity to a long and very deadly plunge to the ground made her hesitate for only a moment before walking up beside him and saying, "You left before dessert."
Daniel glanced over his shoulder at her before looking back out at the city.
"Where's Jillian?" he asked, flatly.
"Did you expect her to come after you?" Vala asked. It made sense. Only Jillian made the other Daniel appear – the one that was warm and open and smiled in a way that was genuine.
"Yes."
"Your son was hungry in ways only she could take care of." Vala kept her tone very light.
Something flickered across Daniel's face that might have been regret. He would never make his wife chose between them, not under normal circumstances. Whether it now occurred to him that he was being a selfish bastard or not, Vala wasn't sure. But some of the tension drained out of him as he stared into the night.
"She should find me just say 'I told you so'," Daniel said, cryptically.
"I don't understand," Vala admitted.
Daniel inhaled and said, slowly, "You said that you understood why I came back, that you wouldn't have enjoyed their company either. But that's not why I came back. I'm here because a day – an hour – of the life I have here is better than an eternity of Enlightenment. My coming back didn't have anything to do with the reality of being Ascended. It was only that I love Jillian and the life I created here more. I have always believed that there were enough of the Ascended like Oma, and now like Morgan Le Fay, that if they just banded together they could be so much more. Jillian has always hated them. She acknowledges that without Oma I wouldn't be here at all and I think she is grateful to her for that. But she argues, correctly, that Oma was the exception and not the rule. The rest of them are devoted to their strict rules about noninterference."
Vala digested that for a moment and then said quietly, "She did what she believed was right, Daniel. How badly can she be punished for that?"
Daniel looked at her sadly. He looked as if he wanted to offer her some kind of consolation or hope but instead he admitted, "I don't know."
Oddly, the attempt to console came from Vala. With forced brightness she said, "Maybe she'll just get a slap on the wrist. Or be forced to write 'I will not interfere in the affairs of humans again' ten thousand times."
It did nothing to improve Daniel's mood. She didn't get even the smallest attempt at a smile from him. "Yeah, I doubt that," he said, sourly.
Vala sighed. She really had no experience in trying to cheer someone up. "She said you had your answer. We found out the two addresses we came here for. Can you at least…smile about that?"
"I suppose," Daniel admitted, grudgingly. "But we did find out something else, too."
She had never known a man could sound so chilling just by speaking a few simple words. Daniel was the most brilliant man she had ever met. His ability to connect random occurrences and see things that evaded everyone else left her breathless. "What?" she asked, cautiously.
Sadly and ominously Daniel said, "They're not going to help us. We're in this alone."
The words hung, brittle and fragile in the air and Vala hardly dared breathe, wondering if Daniel had ever truly believed they would.
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