My contribution to brightclam's Stargate fic exchange on Tumblr! I drew delennsnuggler who requested Daniel/Vala angst, finally confessing feelings.

I've never shipped Daniel/Vala especially, and I was initially planning to write for a different prompt, but Paper Rings by Taylor Swift came on at work and I realised how absolutely it screamed Vala, so here we are. I read a lot of Daniel/Vala fic to prepare for this and I think I see your point.

Anyway, this isn't what I planned to write, but it's what happened somewhere between my brain and the keyboard, and I kind of like it.

Hope you enjoy, Bryn!

"Daniel," Vala sing-songed, launching herself through the doorway of his office – the formerly closed doorway, Daniel observed, irritated – and flounced down in his spare chair, disregarding the paperwork piled on top of it.

"Can't you go bother Mitchell?" he demanded, glaring at her from deep within a hefty file of research fresh from Atlantis, earmarked for him by Sam with a lengthy note that didn't quite make up for the fact that she wasn't here.

"He went home hours ago."

Daniel glanced at the clock – oh. He supposed it was later than he'd thought. "Why don't you do the same?" he grumbled.

Ten years ago on this night and every year since, Sam had shown up at his lab with two huge coffees and her laptop, and they'd worked together until dawn, making great discoveries and speaking one another's language, burying themselves in the comforting reality of science - his science that was ever-changing and hers that was solid, dependable facts. And just because they weren't young anymore, just because Sam was all the way off in another galaxy, didn't mean he couldn't at least approximate their standing arrangement. It was what they'd always done.

Of course, that would only work if Vala would leave him alone. She was glaring at him now, fidgeting with the box on his desk that probably held the key to the universe or something, Daniel didn't know, but he was never going to find out unless she - "Put that down!"

"You are incredibly boring," she informed him, "don't you know how to have fun?"

"No! No, I do not want to have fun! I want to do my job, Vala, not be distracted with stupid games, okay, so will you please, please, please go and bother somebody else?"

Vala stared at him, and for a second Daniel thought she might actually give in. Then she spun around on the chair and leaned backwards, pushing off from the floor and tilting until her shoulders rested on the edge of his desk.

"Are you crazy?" Daniel demanded, leaping to his feet, and manhandled her back into a sitting position, rough and brutish. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Somebody has to provide the entertainment around here, darling."

Something about that smirk always did make Daniel's blood boil. He grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her out of the chair.

"This is just exactly the problem with you, Vala, you know that? You get chance after chance after chance, and you seem to be doing so great, and then, just like that-"

She smiled at him, catlike, and wrapped feline hands around his biceps, daring to enjoy this. Well, he could fix that.

"I was perfectly happy before you came along and screwed up my entire life. Why don't you just leave me the hell alone?"

Finally, she fell silent. Daniel glared at her for a long moment.

Vala blinked back a few crocodile tears. "Well," she said, slowly. "I'll leave you to it, then." She pointed herself at the door and began to slump her way out.

For God's sake. "Vala, wait," he conceded, "I didn't mean that."

She turned back and gave him a smile, a real one, bitter. "Oh, come on, Daniel. It's too late to start lying to each other now."

"Vala."

"You needn't worry about disappointing me. I didn't expect anything."

He knew she was guilt-tripping him and he wasn't going to bite. She slunk out of the room, letting the door bounce, closed and open behind her.

Finally. Daniel turned back to the computer and –

I didn't expect anything.

– oh, damn her.

Daniel got to his feet and made for the corridor. "Vala, listen, come back – damn it – Vala!"

She wasn't that far ahead of him; she slipped into the elevator and hammered on the button, somehow, even with her back to the doors. He ran for it; eleven years' experience had given him an edge in the art of running through the SGC's corridors, but Vala was too fast. The door slid shut in his face.

Daniel closed his eyes and let his face bang against the door.

The SF on duty blinked at him. "Uh… sir?"

Daniel turned and narrowed his eyes at the uncertain guard. "Don't say anything."

"No, sir."

He closed his eyes again and reached out blindly to slam his hand to the call button.

It wasn't really his fault, right? Vala was just like that. She was energy and enthusiasm and always, always in the way. He was trying to work, damn it, it wasn't his fault.

It wasn't his fault that he'd lost his enthusiasm.

There were days when Daniel felt he wouldn't trade the last eleven years, his new family, their victories and their camaraderie, for anything – but of course that wasn't really true; he'd trade his life, and his world, and he'd let all of Planet Earth crumble into dust if it meant one more day with…

… no, he wouldn't.

And he had to live with that.

At last, Daniel reached the lifeless grey door in a row of lifeless grey doors that marked Vala's quarters. He hovered – almost turned around – but after ten years of facing down Goa'uld and Replicators and Ori, Daniel Jackson was many things, bitter and jaded and empty but not a coward. He raised his hand and knocked.

The door sprang open immediately.

"Hello, Daniel!" Vala exclaimed. He blinked at her. He'd only been thirty seconds behind her, but somehow, she'd already changed into a nightgown and had bunched her hair up into an untidy bun.

"Uh… hi," he stammered.

"Yes?" she prompted, all cheerful innocence.

"Can I come in?"

Vala disappeared back into the room. Daniel took that as an invitation to follow, and closing the door behind him, suddenly realised he'd never been in here before. He'd spent his fair share of time staring at the concrete walls of the base's VIP quarters, but Vala had really added some personality. The colour didn't seem gaudy, just cheerful; the bookshelf was full of framed photographs, shots of the Grand Canyon and a California beach and he guessed that was Vegas – from the road trip Sam had taken her on before shipping off to Atlantis – and a few plants under sunlamps freshened the air and made the room feel like a living, breathing space.

"Wow," he said intelligently, "I, uh, I like what you've done with the place."

"Just because your military does its best to make this place as uninspiring as possible doesn't mean I can't do anything about it," she informed him, flouncing back to the bed and throwing herself down on it ungracefully.

"Well, it's hard to argue with that," he said. "It's nice. It… suits you."

She smiled at him, and now he saw it – the sting still there behind her eyes.

"Hey, listen," he said, "I'm sorry about before."

She shook her head quickly so that her hair wobbled precariously on top of her head. "It's forgotten."

"No, it's not." He sat down on the side of the bed, half-turning so that he was facing her, though his back twinged with the movement. "It's not your fault I'm in this mood. It's just… today."

"Oh." Vala looked at him more seriously then, scrutinising. "What's special about today?"

He found himself opening his mouth to tell her, but then he realised what he was doing, and the words stuck in his throat.

"Daniel," Vala said, "you know I'm not going to think any differently of you."

Oh. That actually… helped.

"This is my wedding anniversary."

"Oh." Vala actually took it in, and nodded, understanding. "No wonder you're so crabby."

"Crabby?"

She softened and reached for his hand. "I'm sorry, Daniel. This must be a very difficult day."

"Yeah, it is."

"And when I demanded that you dropped everything and placed your full attention on me…"

He smiled at her. "Exactly."

"You know," Vala said, "it's alright if it feels differently now than it did when the loss was fresh."

"I, um… what?"

"Daniel, I'm not an expert on losing people, or even on having people. But it seems to me that you're feeling guilty because it doesn't hurt as much as it used to."

"It still hurts," he protested half-heartedly.

"Of course it does. Like when you break your arm and it doesn't heal quite right. But it isn't wrong to recover."

Daniel shook his head, but it was impossible to argue with logic like that. "When did you get so wise?"

"When I started spending all my time with wise people." She flashed him a charming smile. "I am, of course, talking about Muscles."

Daniel grinned. "Of course."

"The point is, Daniel, your wife was a very lucky woman and I know that when the time comes for you, there's going to be a line a mile long."

"And you'll be at the front of it, right?"

"Oh, I tease you, Daniel, but I know you'd never really want that."

There was his out. Exactly there, he could make a joke and she'd laugh, and they'd go back to being friends and he'd never have to acknowledge that he knew there could be something more. That he knew she wanted it.

"I wouldn't say never," he said instead.

Vala's jaw dropped. It would have been comical on a different day. "Really?"

"I mean," he corrected hastily, "not right now. I'm not saying that."

"Because you'd feel like you were betraying your wife."

Was that it? Was that the whole reason he had pushed Vala away since she first got here? Had he denied himself happiness and a future just out of – he couldn't even call it loyalty – out of guilt over Sha're?

But that didn't add up. Vala was right. He was healing. Had been for a long time now.

"I think if… if we were going to try something, it would have to be slow,"' he said. "I mean, in my last relationship, I got married on the first date."

Vala suddenly laughed. "So did I," she said.

For the first time in a while, Daniel found himself laughing, too. He swung his feet up onto the mattress and sat back against the headboard, propped up by a multitude of soft, silky pillows.

"No, but, seriously," he said, pulling himself together. "Is that something you would want? Someday?"

Vala smiled at him, and there was warmth in that smile, humanity, the fleck of personhood that had first suggested to him that this was someone worth investing in, all that time ago.

"There's an Earth term for what you are, Daniel," she said, twinkling at him. "You're a catch."

He wasn't, as many, many people had made clear in the twenty-five or so years he'd been trying to date, but it was nice of her to say it.

Vala grabbed his face between her hands suddenly, pulling him out of the thought, and looked sternly into his eyes. "Don't make that face. You're worth more than a chest full of treasure."

He felt himself soften. Like a wave washing over him, he was drenched in the realisation that he'd been carrying a hardness since the first time he left Abydos. Maybe it wasn't so bad to open that part of himself up. Just a little bit. And maybe it was okay to not always be empty.

"And you," he said, feeling the truth of his words, "are worth more than a repository full of knowledge. I'm sorry if I don't always act like it."

"You don't have to treat me like a queen to keep me around."

Daniel smirked. "That much has been clear from day one."

Vala sat back against the headboard and leaned sideways, resting her head onto his shoulder. He found himself bringing up his arm to wrap around her side without even waiting to take it in. She slung an arm loosely around his stomach and hummed, contented.

Daniel looked down at her and dropped a sloppy kiss in her hair. It was true he'd never be over Sha're. He shouldn't try to be. She was wonderful and special and important to him. But so was Vala.

Maybe he'd be allowed a future, as well as a past.