Author's Note: Hello! This is my third story and I'm still getting the hang of putting my thoughts down, something I'm not good at...so be warned!

This story is complete and to be truthful, didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it but after spending three weeks writing it, i thought I might as well go ahead and post it.

Please let me know your thoughts. Constructive criticism is welcomed and appreciated but please only that! There is already so much hate and negativity in the world, let's not add to it!

Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Stargate SG-1 or its characters, not do I make any profit off this story. Just letting my imagination run wild..

Chapter One

The Ori were gone, defeated, destroyed, and Adria was now gone too. Though technically her daughter, Vala didn't know how she was supposed to feel about Adria and all that happened. She was relieved in many ways. Adria had been evil and needed to be stopped, but she still was her daughter in a bizarre way. Even though she had renounced the Orici as her blood, Vala still felt the sadness at the loss of her; she mourned mainly for what could have been. If only, there were so many if only's. Vala cursed the Ori for doing this to her, for impregnating her only to give her a daughter she could never truly have. But what's done is done, nothing more to it, or left to do other than help those affected by the former enemy recover.

And that's where she was, on another planet where the Prior plague had affected the natives quite badly. Many worlds experienced the same, many were left without enough hands to keep the farms and crops going in order to feed their planet, so the SGC tried to help find solutions. Many people came from other planets to join with other worlds affected as badly as theirs. Many had to leave the only home they knew, but it was for the greater good of the people and their families. Many children were left orphaned as well by the plagues and other Ori tricks and they were the SGC's main priority to find homes for.

The planet the Tau'ri had designated as P8Y-616 was familiar to her. Her mother used to bring her here as a child before she died. The planet, Lyria if she remembered correctly, used to have the most amazing market where they sold the most delicious treats. As she walked down the streets that use to hold several of its vendors, she was saddened to find it much smaller than it used to be. True, the people were trying get back on their feet and to get the market back to where is used to be, but many were still recovering from whatever the Ori and the Priors had done.

"You okay?" a voice beside her asked.

Vala turned to Daniel and smiled at her friend. "Of course! Why wouldn't I be?" she inquired cheerfully.

"You looked a little…I don't, sad?" he said/asked.

"I'm fine, darling," she assured him, "just remembering the times my mother brought me here when I was a girl. It's so different now, thanks to the Priors."

"Should we be worried about running into a former acquaintance?" he half joked.

"No," she said quietly, "I haven't been here since I was a little girl, since before her death."

"Sorry," he grimaced, "that was uncalled for."

"Not entirely."

"You've changed, Vala. You're a different person now," he argued gently, "you've grown since you came to Earth and are no longer that person. I shouldn't have said whether it was uncalled for or not."

"Thank you, Daniel," she said sincerely, "that really does mean a lot."

His reply was cut off before he could even open his mouth when one of the children they helped rehome came running up to Vala, demanding to be held. The young girl excitedly told Vala and Daniel all about her new home and parents and Daniel watched how Vala interacted with the child. She was good with kids, really good, and watching her with them made Daniel's heart hurt for her, knowing that she never had a chance with her own daughter. Vala hid it well, but Daniel now knew her better than to trust her demeanor and accept her words at face value. He saw it when the Tok'ra had come to remove Ba'al from Adria, saw it when Adria was dying from the toxin the symbiote had released, and no matter how much she denied it, Daniel knew Vala grieved for her child and the life they never got together.

Vala had been dealt a hard and crappy hand and it was something Daniel often forgot.

"Daniel take her," Vala suddenly said, her voice shaky, and she shoved the six-year-old into his arms before she stumbled away.

"Vala?" he called out in concern.

When she didn't acknowledge him, he quickly found the girl's new guardians, handing them their new charge, before following Vala. He had already lost her in the crowd and the various turns of the former market. He blindly went through the market and down different paths to find her. Something was off and he needed to know if everything was okay. After another wrong turn, he stumbled into the rest of his team.

"Jackson, ready to head out?" Colonel Cameron Mitchel asked and then his brows furrowed, "Where's princess?"

"You guys haven't seen her?" he asked rhetorically, deflating a bit. "She was fine one minute and the next she… I don't know, she got weird and ran off."

"Weird?" Colonel Samantha Carter repeated. "How so?"

Surveying the surrounding area, he responded distractedly, "I don't know! She was fine one minute and the next she just wasn't!" Daniel caught a flash of raven hair and standard issued olive BDUs and hurried to follow it. "Vala!" he called out, hoping it would stop her.

Daniel heard his team follow behind him as he rushed through the streets. When he turned the corner, he found Vala frantically looking around her, stretching her neck and arching her feet as to get a better look, as if she was trying to find someone.

He grabbed her arm and turned her around. "Vala, what the hell?" he snapped and the noticed she looked pale and almost frantic. He was instantly worried. "What's wrong?" his voice going soft.

"I, I…" she tried to get out and kept looking around her for something or someone, "I thought I saw someone I knew," she admitted, her voice wobbly, and Daniel could see her eyes becoming a little shinier.

"Good someone or bad someone?" Cam asked warily.

I…" her breath caught as she spotted something over Cam's shoulder and rushed toward it. Maybe I'm not crazy, she pondered as she sprinted towards the flash red she had seen. As she got closer, she was sure she was indeed correct and not imagining things. "Junia!" she shouted out, hoping to stop them before she lost the trail again.

The figure halted and turned their head in Vala's direction. The young woman with fiery red hair gazed at Vala in disbelief. The woman stepped forward cautiously, as if Vala wasn't actually there. "Vala?" she whispered in both shock and amazement. "Is it truly you?"

Vala half sobbed half laughed and closed the distance between them and locked the woman into a tight embrace. "You're alive?" she breathed out. "I thought you were dead."

Junia returned her hug with the same intensity. "We thought you were dead!" she told Vala in disbelief. "We waited and we even looked for you since we couldn't stay at the meet up places for long. When you didn't show, we feared the worse."

Vala snapped back from her. "We?" she whispered incredulously. "Is…is Kenan, is he alive?"

Junia's face softened at Vala's hopeful yet hesitant question. "He is, Vala. He is alive and eagerly awaits your return each day."

A stray tear slipped from Vala's eye and hurried to wipe it away. "Does he…he," her voice broke and she couldn't go on.

Junia seemed to know what her friend tried to say and responded, "Of course he does! How could he not? We talk of you often and he has never lost hope that he'd see you again. His love for you could never fade; never doubt that."

Vala couldn't stop the sob that had built up in her throat or stop it from being released. She put her hand over her mouth to try and stop herself from completely balling outright, but her heart wouldn't let her quench the sobs; relief and happiness were too strong within her.

Daniel and the rest of SG-1 had watched the exchange, all of them bewildered. Vala had never mentioned a Junia or a Kenan before. Though by her reaction to the news that Kenan, whoever he may be, was alive had Daniel on edge. Just who was this guy and why was she so relieved? When Vala started openly crying, Daniel grew concerned and was at her side in a flash. She never cried in front of them, much less in public, where anyone could see her. The few times he had caught her, she did her best to shrug it off and carry on as if nothing had happened.

Wrapping an arm around her, he pulled her into him. "Vala, what's going on? What's wrong?"

"You truly thought we all perished?" Junia whispered sadly, eyeing the stranger who held her friend.

"I, I looked for you," she mumbled into Daniel's shoulder before pulling away and hugging her friend instead. "I searched but never found any trace of you. Though I had all but given up hope of ever finding you, I still searched for you and him on every planet I went to."

"Oh Vala," the woman said brokenly, "we have found each other now and that's all that matters. Would you like me to take you to Kenan?"

Vala flew from Junia's arm. "He's here? On this planet?"

Junia smiled big. "Yes! We settled here about two years ago and we have a farm! Come, I'll take you to him!" and she pulled the hand she snagged from Vala with her as she hurried from their corner of the market.

When Vala didn't stop Junia, her team members all called out her name. She halted but didn't but didn't take back her hand from her friend's grip. "I have to go to him. I need to see him. Come with if you want but one and I mean no one is going to stop me from seeing Kenan." And the two women were off again.

The team had no choice but to follow. It was rare to see Vala like this. In fact, they all were positive they actually had never seen her like this before. Daniel's heart sank and felt as though his stomach were filled with rocks when he thought of what this Kenan meant to Vala. He felt like this to a smaller degree before, when Tomin had been at the SGC and when he had asked Vala to go with him. Daniel had always felt some sort of assurance that she would stay on Earth with him since he knew that while she loved Tomin, she wasn't in love with in. She certainly had never reacted to Tomin the way she did to this Kenan.

Daniel could see it was different now, that this Kenan was different. He could see it in her eyes and the way he evoked such strong emotions from her. He suddenly remembered a few years back when she had first snuck into his room shortly after she had bound the two of them together with the bracelets. He remembered after he had rejected her advances and yelled at her that she mentioned she hadn't always been that way, that she had a fiancée. Feeling sick, disheartened, and a bit jealous at the thought that this Kenan was that fiancée. He'd always assumed, if she was indeed telling the truth, that it had been before Qetesh.

The thought was almost too much for him to even consider, to bear, especially given her reaction. For the past few months, since the whole Odyssey incident, he thought they had been getting close, not just as friends but closer in a more romantic way. And maybe they had, and she hadn't been just messing with him; but that was before she found out Kenan was alive. A man she clearly loved. Daniel had missed his moment, his chance, his opportunity with her, and it would be something he now would always regret.

Didn't he know by now that life is too short? Hadn't he experienced this firsthand with Sha're and their short marriage? Well, now he was too late. And his indecision, second guessing, and fear would haunt him for years to come.

They all walked on a well-worn path and Daniel felt every step he took him further and further away from his own happiness. He saw and acknowledge how ridiculous and dramatic he was being, but he couldn't help himself. He was beating himself up on the inside as he watched how eager and determined Vala was to get to her destination, so much so, she had taken the lead by many feet, having been told by Junia that her home was at the end of this path. That left Daniel and Junia at the front with the team behind them as they trailed after Vala.

"So, how do you know Vala?" Daniel broke the silence.

"We grew up together in the same village," Junia replied, fondly remembering those days, "she even stayed with my family after her mother and brother were taken by the illness. She was with us for two months before Jacek make an appearance, with that horrid woman no less."

"Her stepmother, Adria?" he guessed

She looked at him in surprise. "Yes. Forgive my surprise but Vala never liked talking about her and I am astonished that she has to you."

"Only in passing. That's pretty much all I know about her," he confessed, remembering the day she told him about her, the day Adria the Orici was born. He remembered she said her stepmother was a witch of a woman. "I didn't know she had a brother though."

The woman smiled sadly. "Kelson was taken by the same illness as their mother. He was four years old at the time and Vala only seven. Losing both was so hard for her and Adria coming into her life so soon afterwards didn't help."

"I lost both my parents around the same age as her. I know how that kind of loss feels at such an age."

"Yes," she murmured in agreement. "Tell me, how do you know my dear Vala? How did she come to be with people of the Tau'ri? I recognize your uniforms as Tau'ri."

Daniel chuckled nervously, wondering if he should actually tell the truth. "Well, she and I met when she tried to steal one of our ships. Almost succeeded to but escaped shortly after we reclaimed it."

"So she went back those ways," Junia sighed, "I had often feared she would if she believed us all to be dead. I am thankful she has once again turned away from the ways of her father and sought a greater purpose with the Tau'ri."

"What?" he asked, bewildered by her words. "What did you mean that she turned away again?"

"Life as a former host isn't an easy one. There are very few choices for, even less when Qetesh was removed. You either stay with the Tok'ra to be either be a host for one or help them with their cause, try to find a village that isn't as superstitious or lacks the intelligence to know the difference between the host and a symbiote, or become a space pirate as she did. Either way, she'd spend the rest of her life on the ru,n hiding from the Goa'uld. They couldn't allow former host to live and have the power of the gods so to speak. She chose the way her father raised her; to con and thieve her way through life. Most people in that line of work didn't care about your past, host or not."

He had never thought what life meant as a former host. He had only ever been worried what it would be like recovering from it, not what living in a galaxy where many still viewed you as a god or where former enemies lurked. It put a new look on how Vala chose to live her life after her four years as a host. "What made her stop the first time?" Daniel asked, intrigued.

"Kenan," was her reply, "she gave it all up, every last bit of it for him. She wanted to live an honest life with him and for him. I had suspected she would go back to the only way she knew if she thought we were dead and I am sorry to see she had, but am even more glad that she found a reason to get out of that life once again."

Well that put the final nail into the coffin that held his hope. It was official, he was too late, and it was entirely his fault. He had lost Vala. If he hadn't hesitated and let his fear of being hurt again rule his life, he might have had a shot. But he now no longer did. He may never get over this, losing Vala, not just romantically but from his life. She would probably settle down with this guy now that most of the bad guys were gone. If she didn't leave Earth for him, she'd probably bring him back with her and there was no way Daniel could handle that. He'd have to transfer to Atlantis for good this time and let nothing, not even Vala, get in the way.

"Vala, in the fields!" Junia yelled out as they approached a house in the distance, a field of some type of vegetable or grain not far from the house. Junia jogged to catch up to Vala and said something to her as she pointed to the approaching fields.

SG-1 followed closely behind, falling into step with Daniel and were only a few feet behind the two women. "Daniel," Sam spoke gently, concerned, "are you okay?"

Daniel knew what she alluding to and appreciated the concern, but he didn't want to talk about. Not now and maybe not ever. He watched as Vala stood right in front of the stalks of grain and Junia call out something in an unfamiliar language and a man pop up from below the stalks. He saw elation on the man's face and heard it in his voice when he shouted her name. He saw it in hers and watched helplessly and hopelessly as she ran to meet the man.

"I don't know," Daniel responded honestly, feeling pain like he hadn't experienced since Sha're was taken by Apophis and by death. And you have no one to blame but yourself, he thought ruefully to himself.

"I don't think I've ever seen her this happy before," Cam commented as Vala was halfway to the man and he to her. Sam smacked him – hard, and gave him a look that screamed 'What the hell, man!' Cam winced both at Sam's look and the pain she inflicted.

"No, I don't think I have either," Daniel reluctantly agreed.

He argued with himself, reasoning that if he truly did care for her, he'd be happy for her, that her happiness was all that mattered to him, even if she found happiness with someone else. Well, he was a selfish SOB and wanted her to be happy with him, not someone else. What did that say about him and his true feelings for her? Was he just some shallow, selfish man?

Vala suddenly stopped, still quite a few feet between the man and her, and crouched down. The entire team frowned and looked at each other in confusion. Their confusion grew when she popped back up with a young boy in her arms. She twirled him around, somehow laughing and crying at the same time, and bestowed several kisses all over his head. The team quickly moved to where Junia was at the edge of the field, eager for a better view and more information. They watched as the man embraced Vala and the boy.

"Oh my gods," Daniel whispered painfully. It was worse than he thought.

"I had no idea," Sam spoke, "she never told me. Teal'c, did she ever say anything about a Kenan and having a son with him while on the Odyssey?"

Teal'c broke his vow of silence of the subject matter. "She did not. She has never mentioned either to me before."

"What do you mean?" Junia inquired, curiously and a bit confused.

"We just didn't know about Vala's relationship with Kenan or that they had a son together," Cam supplied.

"You mean the man she is embracing?" Junia clarified and they all nodded. "That is not Kenan. That is my husband, Gaius. Kenan is the boy, her son."

"Did not see that coming."

"Holy Hannah!"

"Holy buckets!"

"Mak lo onak."

P.S Kenan has a few different pronunciations. The one I'm using is pronounced Key-nan or Kee-nan. Let me know if you want any other pronunciations for other characters.