Title: 1st And Amistad, Chapter 2/?
Author: dvshipper
'Verse: Stargate SG-1
Claim/Characters/Pairing: Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: apocafic.
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or its characters, I just play with them. Rob, please don't sue me, because I don't really have much money anyway.
Summary: He couldn't just walk away again. She wouldn't let him.
Table/Prompt: Inspired By 'Songs', You Found Me, The Fray

A/N: This definitely might be becoming a series, depending on the response. Keep in mind, this might be depressing reading for some of you. Not betad.

The bus ride home to Colorado Springs was just a dim reminder of what they couldn't escape. As the miles of scenery went by, they saw all the things that they had failed to save. Homes burned to the ground, fields destroyed by the craters of rogue bombs, shimmering eyes in the dark black of dense vegetation. When the war had started, there was a good cause; a mission. Before long though, it had changed back to the petty rivalries that plague humans wherever they are.

The tension between nations, neighbors, brothers, escalated faster than any other conflict in human history. Word spread and it was only minutes later that the first planes were sent. The world was set ablaze as if the verbal arguments of leaders were pure gasoline and the men behind the computers held a lighter. What was meant to be an alliance for survival ended up destroying more than anyone had expected.

Over eighty percent of population had been killed and Daniel stood by, yelling at the men in charge to take their fingers off the trigger. It didn't do any good though and he certainly wasn't going to pick up a gun to fight back. When you stand in front of a tidal wave, you can't battle it back with a garden hose.

So when the smoke cleared, Daniel and Vala went on the move to find survivors. There had to be people out there, others who had been saved by the same type of tough, underground bunker. It had been months since the fighting had stopped though and many people had probably run out of food and were too scared to venture topside. After so much senseless patriotic killing, it was sad to think that there were others still dying, of starvation.

A group of people had banded together in Colorado Springs however and the couple found them. There couldn't have been a more diverse group of people. A mechanic (Sam), air force colonel (Cam), boxer (T.), commercial fisherman (Jack), and a politician who had somehow ended up there after fleeing Washington (Congressman Landry). The plan was to find other survivors, gather supplies and start fresh. A new civilization built upon the ashes of the fallen one that had come before it. They called themselves Pioneers, homesteading a new chapter in the course of human history.

For a long while, Daniel was more than willing to help out with the cause and do what needed to be done. Other survivors were seeking refuge and helping the cause. Teams were going into the field every day to gather supplies and help anyone they came across. Everything was going fine. That was until new intel came in that there was another group of survivors in the west. Those who weren't interested in a new era. Those who were still fighting for the old. In their eyes, the Pioneers were the disloyal people in the east, forgetting how the world once was. Word was that they had a name for their group: The People. The People were amassing weapons. And at a very alarming rate.

That was when Daniel fled, leaving Vala with the Pioneers to deal with whatever happened next. There was just no way he could be part of the cause anymore. Rebuilding a civilization was no good if it was just going to get destroyed again. Nothing had changed in the world. There was still someone trying to burn down everything he fought for. In his mind, he reasoned that if he had no cause to fight for, maybe he could finally find some peace. Deep down inside him though, he knew that by searching out that quiet, he was leaving a piece of himself behind.

For weeks after that, Daniel wandered aimlessly around North America, or what was left of it. Every once in a while, he'd come across a person, maybe two. Other nomads, like he himself had become. From them he gathered that another war had broken out. The Pioneers and the People were battling it out. The People for dominance and the Pioneers just to survive. At this rate, he wondered if it would end before everyone had killed each other. Most likely not.

In the faces of these nomads, Daniel saw not hope or possibility, but despair. These people had just been caught in between the clashing of world leaders' egos. These scraggly, hungry, struggling men and women were the result of the fall of what he had been fighting to rebuild. They weren't able to stop what had ruined their lives, their homes, their world. The power of survival was now the only power they held. Animals left to walk across the face of the earth.

Maybe Daniel was a pessimist. Maybe he should have realized that things could get better. But at that moment, as he was walking down the highway that had been cracked by the heavy burden of too many tanks, he just could not find it in himself to see the good that was still left in the world. The weight of his situation had finally broken him. And that's how he ended up near what was once the Texas/Mexico border, on a dirt road, smoking a stale cigarette.

There had always been the possibility that Vala would come after him, find him somehow. But he never thought she'd have the power to bring him back. The more he thought about it all on the bus though, the more he came to realize that he shouldn't have been surprised. If there was one person left in the world that could save him, in every possible way, it was her.