A/N:I hope you enjoyed the story. I'm on chapter 3 of the next story in the Addendum series. Again if you have any episodes you'd like to see scenes added on to, please let me know
Also, fun fact: I had to look up rib sizes and orders. Psychological trauma covered without research, but meat cuts need a hardcore googling.

Memento More-y

Chapter 6

Full Rack of Ribs

It's after midnight when he wakes up from the impromptu nap he took in his dorm. Blinked his eyes a few times at the familiar, but no less alarming gray ceiling, and shoved his glasses back on.

No rest for the weary

Although they had a great time out, some team bonding as Landry had called it, then the General promptly found a valid excuse on why he couldn't make the party. The barbecue joint was kitschy as hell, loud country music, monumental booths made from the most uncomfortable wood he's ever sat on—there might have even been straw glued to the wall.

But it was all worth it.

Her demeanor returned to bright smiles and bouncing around—at one point resting on her knees beside him, and he doesn't know how she did it, not just wreck her knees on the hardwood—he heard them crack at one point—but just return to who she was around them after being lost for two weeks.

She wasn't dressed up this time—some jeans and a t-shirt Sam gave back to her after the cleanup crews raided the back of the diner, clearing out any evidence of her. She and Teal'c spoke of earth experiences as a non-native born, and Mitchell threw back his first mug of beer.

Sam leaned across the table to him, fingers just shy of touching, to not draw the others' attention, and mouthed, "are you okay?"

He nodded, his head resting in his hand, pretending not to hear Teal'c suggest they teach her how to drive a car because she's already deadly enough.

"What's wrong?"

The conversation beheaded by Vala's concern, her arm stretching out from where she was trapped by the end of the table, fingers curling around his leather jacket, the one that still smelled a bit like her—he never noticed her particular smell, floral with a small hint of aromatic herbs, until she got sucked through the supergate and out of their lives.

He pulled a grimace at Sam, like they were tossing notes back and forth in class, and her toss got him caught.

In return she gave him a weak smile and shrug.

Turning back to Vala, her face stretched tight with concern he forces a grin. "I'm just tired."

"Oh."

It wasn't the truth.

Not at all.

The relief from getting her back alive and relatively unscathed—the cuts and the bruised wrist from the car accident were still prevalent, at least to him—but she doesn't' remember when they put her in the chair, when they had to—

But Mitchell remembered, giving him a stern expression as he waved down the waitress for another beer. "Jackson's sorta been running on fumes since you disappeared."

"Oh," her intonation was higher, sweeter, her smile brighter. She ducked her head to hide it, and continued talking about the utilitarian aspect of a gas pedal or gear shift.

But when her food came, her full rack of ribs—because this was a kitschy barbecue place so of course they're going to offer up half an animal as a single dinner—her voice disappeared, and her skin grew pale. It was only a moment and before he could ask her what was wrong, she joined into the laughter of a joke he knows she didn't hear and began to eat.

Barely ate more than him though, which is characteristically not like her. He ate three ribs, just kept thinking of her in that chair getting her memories back, and what they had to do to do it, and when he forced himself to forget, he thought of her medical files that popped back in his recollection.

There were only so many things he could eradicate from his mind at one time.

It's close to one in the morning as he takes a leisurely stroll down the hall to his lab.

Offered to drive her back to the mountain with Teal'c, while Sam drove Cam, drunk and under the care of pain medication from a gun shot wound, home. The three of them said their goodbyes from the elevator as she burst forward onto her floor as soon as the doors opened.

Not unusual for Vala, but it wasn't a skipping gait.

It wasn't a happy gait.

"Do you think she remembers?" He asked Teal'c as the doors closed, he sent a checked eyebrow to his friend, who only remained staring ahead.

"There is no doubt in my mind that she does."

"Then why isn't she saying anything?"

"Perhaps that was not the worst thing she's ever experienced."

When he got back to his room, he threw up, then fell asleep.

The light under his lab door is on, and when he opens it, he finds her sitting at the table, hunching over the Goa'uld text, still perched on the stool as if the last two weeks hadn't happened.

She jumps at his entrance, rocking the stool but never falling off, and tucks a piece of her hair back with her non-dominant hand. "Oh my—Daniel, you certainly know how to give a girl a scare."

His name from her voice, the cadence and tone so familiar, so relaxing as he drifts towards her, behind her to his designated stool. "I could say the same for you."

"I hope my disappearance didn't throw a hammer into your plans to much, Darling."

"It's wrench," he sighs as his ass hits the chair again and almost immediately falls numb. Leaning closer to her, not entirely in her space, but close enough to garner her attention he adds, "and you can drop the act."

"What act?" She does the innocent eyes, the doe-eyed ones that he hates, that usually make him cave eighty percent of the time.

"You barely ate."

"Neither did you."

"I was preoccupied."

"As was I."

About to offer her an exchange, her bad feelings for his, and he doesn't want to be the one to bring it up, the one to remind her, but if she already has the lingering memory of him and Mitchell holding her down in the chair as she fought against them, begging them to let her go, that she didn't need her memories as Sam pasted the electrodes onto her temples.

How she started crying because she didn't feel safe, how she had trusted them and they tricked her, how her wrist was bruised under his intense grasp and not from a car crash as it says in Lam's medical report.

How he read about the obvious healed broken bones she had, how her psychological assessment stated there was definite signs of previous abuse of multiple kinds.

"The food reminded me of the banquets Qetesh would hold upon a battle victory. Having all my memories back simultaneously, when you've caused as much harm as I have, isn't such a blessed thing."

Still feels her wrist under his fingers, feels her struggle and her doe eyes weep, and him telling her to settle down, just settle down as Sam, her face green, got a hesitant nod of approval from Mitchell, and flipped the switch.

Her scream roared, it was voracious and echoed through the room, through his head, and when she came out of it with her memories, she put those doe eyes on him and with a shaky voice asked, "Daniel?"

Asked for him out of everyone.

"Well." Reaches forward, a reversal of the monumental table at the restaurant, and his fingertips settle lightly on her wrist. "Sometimes memories are overrated."