A/N: Reader take note, the many miseries plaguing migraine sufferers are detailed in this story! Anyone with emetophobia (if you don't know it, you probably don't have it) should proceed with caution! ;-)
Chapter One: When She was Good...
"Oh no." Daniel dropped his pen, blinking with dismay at the report in front of him. "Not this."
"What's wrong, Daniel?"
Aaand so it gets worse, he thought sourly.
He'd forgotten Vala was there, sitting at the other end of his desk. Hard to believe but true, she'd been unusually quiet as they both finished up their reports from SG-1's last mission.
"Daniel?"
He blinked some more, tilting his head a various angles. Nope, no use. "Migraine," he stated.
Vala peered at his report in confusion. "What's a migraine?"
"A kind of headache." He pulled off his glasses, rubbing at his right eyebrow. "From the Greek, hemikrania: pain on one side of the head." He sighed. "There's no pain there yet, but there will be."
She frowned. "And how are you seeing it on that boring report?"
He blinked now at an empty spot on the wall. "Not on the report, in my eyes, a scintillating scotoma," he said, knowing he was being irritatingly obscure, but helpless to stop. "It starts as a disruption of the visual field. Right at the center of focus. Damn it." He tossed his soon-to-be useless glasses to one side.
For Daniel the 'aura' he perceived was actually rather beautiful: bright sparkly geometrical shapes that shimmered and flashed in a rainbow of translucent colors, spreading out and taking over his visual field. A beautiful shining harbinger of pain and anguish. Not unlike Vala herself, he reflected.
"It'll grow bigger and bigger until I can't see a thing," he continued. "It'll go away eventually, but the headache part will start in an hour or so and I'll be worthless at that point."
"You're never worthless to me, darling," Vala assured him.
Daniel looked at her, wincing at the unsettling view of her lovely face blurred by a kaleidoscope of crazy color, bouncy pigtails above and snug tank top below still intact. Um, not that he cared about how lovely her face was. Because he didn't. At all.
"Just sit down for a while, it'll go away," she claimed breezily. "I mean how long can it last?"
Daniel gave a hollow laugh. People who'd never had a migraine were uniformly clueless. "The worst one I ever had was four days long."
"Four days?" she asked in alarm.
"Yeah." He sighed. "Four days of lying in a dark room most of the time and vomiting my guts out the rest of the time."
"Let's get you to the Infirmary."
o-0-o
Both Mitchell and Sam had joined them by the time Dr. Lam finished her useless exam. There was no actual foolproof 'cure' for a migraine. Daniel sat on a gurney, squinting at everyone through the psychedelic haze clouding his vision, the first hint of what would soon be a world of pain was just beginning to tweak to life behind his right eyebrow. He shut his eyes with a wince, the bright lights in the Infirmary starting to bother him. Light sensitivity, right on schedule. Sensitivity to sound and smell would be following soon.
"A 'sick headache' huh?" Mitchell said, peering at Daniel like he was a specimen in a petri dish.
"A neurovascular disorder is the accepted definition," Dr. Lam said dryly.
"My ma and grandma both used to get them," Mitchell continued. "Be out for a couple days at a time."
Lam nodded knowingly. "Yes, the condition does affect more women than men for reasons not entirely understood."
Daniel waited for a typical cruel jab from Vala but none came. He crack an eyelid to see if she was still in the room. He could barely make out the grin she flashed him that was somehow both innocent and impish, but she didn't say anything.
"It's been a while since you had one," Sam remarked with a concerned frown.
"Yeah, I'd hoped they were starting to go away."
Lam nodded knowingly again. "Yes, people tend to outgrow them over time."
Okay, Lam and her knowing nods were starting to get irritating.
"Bad one?" Sam asked.
"Yeah, feels that way," Daniel confirmed.
"Could it be your reading glasses?" Lam began. "Eye strain can sometimes-"
"New prescription," Daniel said flatly.
"Isn't there a pill for this?" Vala asked.
"I've tried a few over the years, but they don't really work for me," Daniel said. "Plus I tend to just throw them up anyway."
"What about a sub-lingual pill?" Lam suggested.
"The dissolving ones?" Daniel asked with a shudder. He remembered the last one he'd tried, the way it turned to chalky grit under his tongue. "They make me sick even faster."
Lam shrugged. "Not everything has a cure."
Lovely bedside manner. "How about an induced coma?" he snarked pointedly.
The medical doctor gave a sour smile. "Not generally advised. You've lived with this for years, the best expert at getting you through it, is you."
"Yeah," he sighed. "All I need is privacy and an ice pack."
"You need someone to take you home and stay with you," Sam countered.
"Jack did that a couple times," Daniel said. "Of course he mostly just sat in the living room and watched hockey."
Sam grimaced. "He's not around and I'm not sure who we can spare at the moment."
"Oh! Pick me!" Vala shouted, jumping up and down with her hand raised like a crazed kindergartner offering to pass out cookies. "I volunteer!"
"No no no!" Daniel protested immediately. "That's okay, you don't-"
"You sure, Vala?" Sam overrode him. "He's pretty whiny when he's sick."
"I'm not whiny and I don't want-!"
"Pish!" Vala flapped one hand dismissively. "I've had experience handling even the youngest of children."
"I am not a child and I can-!"
"You don't have anything going on for the next couples days?" Mitchell interrupted to ask Vala.
"Nope. I was already scheduled to be at Daniel's disposal." She aimed what was probably a lascivious wink in Daniel's direction, made all the more disturbing by the fever-dream fog he currently viewed the world through.
"No, I can drive, I'm fine!" Daniel insisted. He stood up, taking one blind step and crashing into Dr. Lam's tray of very noisy metallic medical supplies. He rebounded, overcompensated and stumbled off in the other direction until Mitchell caught him.
"Whoa!" Mitchell said, holding Daniel steady. "Settle down there, Chainsaw!"
"I can drive as long as all I need to see is..." He squinted some more. "Um, five to ten percent of the road..."
"Right, Jackson," Mitchell drawled, guiding Daniel back to the gurney. "The Highway Patrol might have a different opinion." He turned to Vala. "Princess, go grab your gear, you got a invalid to minister to here.
"Oh, goody! A road trip! Give me a minute to pack!" Vala left the Infirmary at a run.
Daniel plopped back down on the gurney like a thwarted toddler. "Sam, can't you drive me?" he pleaded.
"No, I promised General Landry I'd have that Gate overhaul done two weeks ago."
"Mitchell, what about you or Teal'c?"
"No can do, Jackson, the big guy and I are breaking out our Sodan moves on some unsuspecting newbies."
"I don't want her," Daniel whined.
"Then stay here," Sam said, exasperated.
"Too many people come knocking when I'm in my quarters," he said with a pout he couldn't contain.
Sam threw her arms up in despair. "So stay in the Infirmary."
"You kidding? Too noisy and crowded in here." He crossed his arms like a sulky second grader.
Sam placed her hands on her hips. "Holy Hannah, Daniel, how old are you!?"
He gave her a sidelong glance, trying to spear her with his best mournful puppy-dog eyes. "Can't remember. Head hurts."
Mitchell snickered as Sam sighed. "Seriously?" she asked, her voice distressingly unsympathetic.
He firmed his crossed arms with a huff. "Fine. I'll get an Airman to drive me home."
"You need someone to stay with you," Sam insisted.
"I don't need a nurse."
"No, you need a babysitter."
He could do no more than glare at Sam through squinted eyes, then Vala bounced back into the room, her bags consisting of a child's koala bear backpack and a neon-pink duffle.
"Ready to go, darling?"
His glare at Sam turned wounded and accusing, "How will Vala wrapping my Jeep around a telephone pole help anything?"
"Don't be silly, darling, I would never crash even that orange monstrosity of yours. Muscles trained me to drive any Tau'ri vehicle."
"Oh, joy." Daniel hung his head, massaging his temples in defeat.
Sam finally took pity on him, giving his shoulder a sympathetic rub. "Daniel, I know how awful these headaches are for you, that's why I want someone with you. Now be a good boy for Vala."
He was all but blind now and the pain over his right eye, already noticeable, was only just starting to ramp up. "But Saaa-aam..." he whined, his utter pathetic-ness no longer an act at this point.
But the Colonel simply waved Vala over. "He's all yours, Vala," she pronounced. And Daniel could just make out the words Sam added in a fervent undertone to the alien woman, "Good luck."
o-0-o
Daniel maintained a sulky silence in the Jeep. No, it was a dignified silence.
The light was bothering him so much he had borrowed a pair of aviator sunglasses from Mitchell, not having a pair of his own that wasn't designed to be attached to his regular glasses. But no matter how "cool" Mitchell claimed the "shades" made him, he still felt like a fool wearing them indoors walking through the SGC corridors. It was dicey letting someone guide him along when he could barely see. He'd never forgiven Jack for the time he let Daniel slam into an opening elevator door. The jerk had giggled all the way up to the surface.
With Vala, however... Daniel didn't mind the way she helped him along the corridors and up to the surface. She was actually pretty nice about it, guiding him with a gentle hand to his elbow, not too inattentive, but not too overbearing either. Who knew she could be so nice? Um, probably just eager to get out of the Mountain and drive a car, he assured himself.
But then there was the way she smelled. He never really noticed before. With a migraine, the slightest scent could usually set him off, but her floral perfume was...nice. Well, not really nice nice. It was...unobjectionable.
He needed to get ahold of himself. Migraines always made him loopy, almost like being drunk.
Daniel couldn't handle the walk through the hot sunny parking lot, so Vala had left him next to the security station, fetching the Jeep and coming back to him where he leaned dejectedly against the wall, hiding in the biggest patch of shade he could find.
Vala drove efficiently, concentrating on the traffic and the GPS. Thank god Daniel didn't need to give directions, he didn't want to open his eyes more than a crack.
Leaving the car in the driveway, Daniel let Vala guide him to the front door of his house even though his sight was almost back to normal by now. It wasn't that he needed her hand on his arm, he just...didn't want to trip over the porch steps.
Once inside, he paused at the edge of the foyer, one hand on the wall propping himself up, the other slipped under the sunglasses he still wore, rubbing at his temple.
"You don't really have to stay here, you know, no matter what Sam said," he offered.
"I'm staying," Vala insisted.
"Fine. Okay, uh, there's a guest bathroom down the hall there." He gestured to a hallway that branched off to the left. "I'd prefer that you didn't use the master bath for the time being."
She cocked her head curiously, looking like she was trying to decide if she should be offended or not.
"I might have to get in there in a hurry when I'm nauseous, in order to, uh, you know." He gestured vaguely at his mouth, not wanting to be crude.
"Toss your cookies?"
He grimaced. One guess as to who taught her that phrase. "Mitchell's a national treasure," he grumbled. "Anyhow, kitchen's through there." He waved at the living room in front of them, to the kitchen bar counter barely visible off to the left. "It's actually pretty well stocked at the moment. I'm sure you can figure out anything you want to eat."
"What about you, shall I fix something for you?"
He shook his head. "I won't be eating for a while. Maybe some crackers eventually. But when you do eat, please could you stay out here and don't come near me? The smell of food is revolting right now and sounds of someone eating..." He shuddered.
She arched a brow.
"Uh, sorry, nothing personal."
Her arch look dissolved to a smirk. "Eat out here, and chew with my mouth closed. Got it."
His responding smile ended with a wince. Even his face hurt at this point. "Uh, for sleeping there's the couch there," he pointed at the living room again, "or there's a futon in one of the spare bedrooms," he waved down the hall again, "linen closet here for sheets and towels and pillows."
He squeezed his eyes closed, rubbing harder at his temple, the thrum of pain ratcheting up the longer he stood and talked. Let's see, Vala got bored so easily, he better stave off that fight before it got started. "So, entertainment," he stated. "Lots of books and magazines around, uh, television, uh-"
"Daniel, I'm here to help you, not to be entertained or waited on."
"Okay. Good." That was promising, maybe she'd actually take this seriously. He found himself just standing there for a moment, staring at Vala, thinking how nice it was that he could see her face now, her pretty grey eyes...
"Daniel?"
He blinked. He always got dopey when he got a migraine. "Uh, I'm going to go lie down now." He gestured off to the right, to the master bedroom entrance.
"You do what you need to. I'll just settle in on my own."
"Okay. Good," Daniel repeated. He stood there a moment more to gather his strength, then walked slowly into his bedroom.
The first thing he did was close the window blinds, making it as dark as possible despite the sunny day outside. He changed into a pair of old sweatpants and a long sleeved t-shirt, then padded barefoot to the en suite master bathroom to check that there were no obstacles in the way of what was sure to be a mad dash sometime soon.
Lastly, he went to a footlocker he kept filled with wintertime supplies. Riffling down to the bottom, he found an old and worn flannel blanket with a faded design of red and yellow blossoms interspersed with pale green leaves. He took it back to his bed and eased himself down with a sigh, lying on top of the bedspread, flipping the blanket out to cover himself. He realized the blanket only landed on half of his body and he still wore the sunglasses, but he couldn't be bothered to move. He just lay there, breathing and feeling the thrum of agony build in his head.
"Knock, knock," Vala called, entering the room through the open door. Her steps were soft so she must have taken her shoes off. "I must say, Daniel, your house is a tad on the austere side. Did thieves steal half your furniture?"
"We never have team nights over here, so I never bothered."
"Hmm. It looks like they stole half your bed. Why is it so small?"
It was a twin bed someone at the SGC had passed down to Daniel after he Descended. He'd always meant to get a bigger one, but just never got around to it. "How big does it have to be to hold one person?" he griped, then regretted the remark. There was a definite note of pity in the short silence that followed from Vala.
"Well," she continued brightly. "Let's get you situated." She plucked the sunglasses off his face, Daniel flinching in surprise, his head giving an answering throb. She tidied the blanket, jostling both the bed and him.
"Ah! Vala, stop it! You're making it worse!"
She reared back, honest contrition on her face. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."
He rubbed his forehead. "No, I'm sorry. This just...makes me short-tempered."
She regarded him with cocked head. "I know you're no stranger to pain, Daniel. You've been hit with a hand device and shrugged it off like a stubbed toe. Why is this worse?"
"That simply hurt," he said. "This...this is misery." He let his arm flop back down to the bed.
"All right, what can I do?" she asked, enunciating every word with quiet care.
"Um, well, I usually make an icepack."
"I can do that," she stated, cheerful again. "Crushed ice from the refrigeration unit?"
"From the freezer, yeah, but don't crush it, that makes it melt faster and it doesn't last as long or stay cold enough. Just put some cubes in a plastic bag and wrap it up with a damp washcloth."
"Got it," she said after a pause, walking out of the bedroom.
Crap, he was being kind of rude. "Uh, please and thank you!" Daniel belatedly called, then winced at the throbbing that effort caused.
When Vala brought the icepack in a few minutes later, he made sure to say thank you, but she just smiled. "It's okay, Daniel, I knew what I volunteered for. I'm not expecting you to play host to me."
"Good," he muttered. "Because I'm going to be the worst host ever." He grabbed the icepack greedily and pressed it against his right eyebrow, engulfing the whole area including his eye in blessed relief, sighing with satisfaction.
He could hear the frown in Vala's voice as she said, "Daniel, you'll get frostbite."
"Don't care."
"You don't care if your eyeball freezes into an ice cube?"
"I just wish I could get the ice into my head somehow, that would be great," he said, then mused, "Maybe some kind of Asgard beaming technology?"
There was a pause. "Daniel, you're starting to scare me."
"I used to fantasize about getting a super sharp icicle and stabbing it into my skull."
"That's horrible! Isn't that called a lobotomy?"
"Yeah. That was the downside."
"All right, hands off the pack. I'm positioning it myself and you're not arguing."
Vala peremptorily lifted the pack up. Daniel glared but had trouble maintaining it in the face of Vala's own glare, which was at least three times more threatening than his. Hard to believe those soft grey eyes could turn so steely when she was angry. And she definitely had a height advantage considering she was standing at his bedside.
"Now. Exactly where does it hurt the most?" she inquired with the patience people normally reserve for dealing with recalcitrant preschoolers.
Glare dissolving into a pout he pointed to the inner part of his right-hand eyebrow.
Squeezing the icy cloth-wrapped bag into shape, Vala carefully placed it on his forehead, just barely covering where it was needed.
He started to reach for it. "If I could just-"
"Touch that and I cut your hand off," she stated flatly.
He stopped abruptly. "You're worried about me getting frostbite but you're going to cut my hand off?"
"Yes," Vala confirmed, grey eyes growing steelier by the second.
Daniel huffed, dropping his hand back down to the bed in surrender. Well, she did get the ice on the right place, and 'just barely covering' was still technically covering. And he supposed that it was safer this way.
"I'm going to remove it every ten minutes to make sure your skin's blood flow isn't compromised."
He gave a petulant grunt, pointedly closing his eyes.
The bed shifted as she stepped back. "All right, what now?"
"Nothing," he sulked. "I lie here for as long as it takes 'til the stupid headache goes away."
"You just lie here in the dark?"
"Yep."
"In pain?"
"Misery."
"And you did this for four days once?"
"Oh yeah. Good times."
"It...it doesn't seem fair. I wish there was something more I could do-well, something more your doctors could do."
Daniel opened one eyelid a slit and peered out. Vala looked as concerned as she sounded. "I did ask Dr. Sunshine for an induced coma but she refused," he said.
Vala struggled and failed to suppress a smile. "Carolyn did the best she could, I'm sure."
"I know." Daniel closed his eyes again, shifting to get comfortable, relishing the way the ice was beginning to take the edge off the sharp pangs coursing through his head, slowly dulling them to mere throbs.
It was nice that Vala was concerned, but there truly wasn't much anyone could do. Sam was just being overprotective. All he could do was lay there in a dark room and think, think about how much his head hurt and how long this was going to last and how much time he had until the nausea started. It was always the same, he couldn't read, he didn't feel like talking, the TV was annoying, the stereo was too much trouble, and the radio never played anything he wanted to listen to. There was absolutely nothing to distract him from-
"Shall I read to you out loud?" Vala suddenly offered.
That...would be a distraction. "I...I guess so," Daniel said tentatively.
"Such a charming invitation, darling, how can I resist?"
"Only if you don't mind."
"I don't, or I wouldn't have offered. Now what do you have here?"
He could hear her looking at the books on his bedside table.
"Hmm..." she mused, then to the tune of thuds, thumps and snaps of covers being shut, she rattled off her verdicts: "Too heavy. Too boring. No pictures. Paragraphs too long. In unknown and probably boring language-"
"Ow," he groaned at one especially loud thump. "Can you trash my library a little more quietly?"
"Sorry, darling, but you have the most appalling taste when it comes to books. Oh, what's this one?"
"Kind of hard to tell when my eyes are closed."
"It has paper covers and a cutout of an upside-down dog on the cover. It's called 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time'."
"Oh yeah, Sam gave me that at Christmas but I never looked at it," Daniel said. "I don't really read fiction, but she said it was good."
Vala recited the blurb: "'Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.'"
"That's the one," Daniel confirmed.
"Well, if Samantha recommended it, it must be good."
"Whenever I recommend a book you change the subject," he complained.
"Didn't you say speaking was painful?" came Vala's dismissive reply.
"Humph."
He heard a long scrape as Vala pulled the padded wooden chair he kept by his dresser over to the left side of the bed. "May I turn on the beside lamp so I can see enough to read?" she asked.
"Can you move it so it doesn't shine in my eyes?"
There was another smaller scraping sound and when she turned on the light he barely noticed the difference. "That's great, thanks," he said.
"All right, settle down for story time," Vala announced brightly. "Chapter Two- Wait, what? Why is it starting with chapter two?"
"How should I know, I just said I haven't read it."
"Don't be snarky, Daniel, it's not attractive."
Rolling one's eyes when they are closed is rather useless, so Daniel resisted the impulse. "What're the next few chapters' numbers?"
"Hmm." He heard the sound of pages flipping. "Three, five, seven, eleven-"
"Oh, prime numbers," they both said at the same time.
"Why bother asking me if you knew the answer," Daniel grumped, but even the throb in his head couldn't stop him from giving a hint of a smile and Vala only laughed.
She began to read: "It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears's house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog."
Vala paused, saying reflectively, "I think I'm beginning to understand what 'autistic' means."
She continued on with the reading, Daniel gratefully following along with the story. The grinding pain was just as bad as ever, but it was nice to have something else to concentrate on, something totally outside of himself and his pain, namely, the fictional Christopher and the well-intentioned inquiry which was helped and hindered in equal parts by the boy's autism.
The migraine, however, could not be denied, and not even Vala's vibrant voice could keep it at bay forever. Waves of nausea swelled and ebbed like a vicious tide, swelled and ebbed, every time getting just a little stronger. This was the old game the migraine played. He knew he'd end up being sick, that was not in doubt, but he didn't want to get up too soon, it just made the headache worse, but he didn't want to wait too long, that lead to nasty accidents.
At some point he lost track of the story, although just the sound of Vala's voice was a lifeline. He must have been lying especially quiet and tense because Vala stopped reading and asked, "Are you all right?"
"Fine," he said shortly.
"Shall I keep reading?"
"Yeah."
God, the nausea made him feel so helpless, he hated it. The thought that he could control it just by holding still was ridiculous, like a six year old thinking holding the covers over his head would save him from monsters.
Another sickening crescendo came and went, so strong that he was afraid moving an inch or making a sound would result in disaster, and he lay there rigid as a board, dreading what was about to happen, latched onto Vala's voice like it was an anchor. But when the next bout started he knew he no longer had any choice.
Daniel lurched up, dodged past the chair where an astonished Vala sat, stumbled around the bed, groaned inarticulately in answer to Vala's worried query, and hit the bathroom at a dead run. He skidded to the right, past the double-sink vanity and into the tiny toilet alcove. He barely had time to fling the cover and seat up and drop to his knees before he was heaving, spewing the first load with a disgusting splash, the second heave coming immediately, barely able to breath between, trying not to choke, the Commissary's scrambled eggs even less appetizing now and that was saying quite a lot...
The toilet alcove was small, but Vala squeezed in behind him. Daniel wanted to tell her to get out, he could only imagine how sickened she must be, but every time he opened his mouth, what came out wasn't words.
On one level he was glad she stayed, he had never had help before. Vala flushed occasionally, handed him toilet paper to wipe in the mere seconds between heaves, kept a cool hand to his sweaty forehead.
The agony seemed never ending, Daniel retched so long he was convinced Vala's hand was all that kept him from pitching face-first into the horrible mess, his stomach roiling until only burning bile came up, searing his throat, mouth and nose, and through it all, his head never stopped the vicious throb.
At the end all he could do was hang onto the porcelain with shaking hands, coughing, gagging and spitting weakly.
"Is it over, darling?" came Vala's quiet voice. "Do you feel better?"
"No," he croaked, spitting one last time and hauling himself up onto quivering legs. He stumbled to the sink. Using one unsteady hand, he cupped water from the faucet, and rinsed and spat, rinsed and spat for a long time. Vala passed him his toothbrush, pre-loaded with toothpaste, and with murmured thanks he brushed the nasty grit of bile out of his mouth, brushing even his tongue, cautiously so as not to trigger his gag reflex.
After yet another round of rinsing and spitting, Daniel was finally able to answer the alien woman fully, his voice hoarse, his tongue feeling thick and clumsy: "No, no better. That's the joy of a migraine. The nausea never goes away. It's not like food poisoning, when you get rid of the bad stuff and feel better. This is the gift that just keeps giving."
Putting the toothbrush away he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, flinching at the specter he presented: eyes like dark wounds in a face white as bone; he looked like a day-old corpse.
Using the vanity like a crutch, Daniel began his long trek back to bed, hobbling on shaky legs out of the bathroom. He launched himself unsteadily from the door frame, shuffled one step of the seemingly vast distance to the bed when Vala took his arm, the strong and active woman supporting him easily, a small part of him jealous of her vitality, but most of him extremely grateful for her help.
o-0-o
The time until sundown was spent pretty much the same. Vala would refresh his icepack, she'd read another chapter or so, and then Daniel would lurch up and run for the bathroom. His third bout at the toilet, however, was not as bad as usual; he remembered times when he heaved so hard on an empty stomach he thought he'd get an aneurism.
It was dark now outside behind the closed blinds when Daniel hobbled back to bed with Vala's help. He curled up onto his left side, scrunching his blanket up against his chest to act as support for his arm, totally wrung out.
"Do you need a new icepack?" Vala asked.
"No, thanks. I think I'll be okay for while, try and get some sleep." He did feel marginally better, head still pounding but not quite as bad as earlier. The distraction of Vala talking and the endless supply of icepacks seemed to have helped.
"Shall I keep you company for a while or do you want to be alone?"
"You could stay," he said, twitching his right shoulder in a shrug. "If you want. It's nice, uh, I mean I don't mind you here."
"Good, because I've been meaning to ask you about that torn up old blanket you seem to be using as a teddy bear."
He squinted out a vicious glare, but she only continued to regard him with sympathetic curiosity. Besides, how vicious could a man clutching a blankie really be? "It's... I've had it forever. It's followed me to every placement and foster home and dormitory I've been to."
Vala studied the worn cloth and faded flowers. "Was it your mother's?" she asked softly.
"I, uh, I don't know, I wish I did," he said, too washed out to even think about watching his words, hiding his emotions the way he usually would. "I'm pretty sure I already had it when I left the first temporary placement after my parents died, but I don't remember how I got it. My parents' effects? A caseworker? My grandfather?" He sighed. "Maybe a foster mom gave it to me later and I just got the timeline mixed up." He twitched his shoulder in another shrug, feeling the worn flannel rub against his cheek. "Stupid, I know, but it's been one of the few constants in my life."
"Not stupid at all," Vala contradicted gently. "We all need reminders of the comfort of childhood."
She picked up the book again and began to read, her voice softer than ever. Daniel tried to push his pain to the back of his mind, to concentrate on Christopher's determination to question his neighbors about the dog and the autistic boy's bravery as he stepped out of his comfort zone in an effort to help someone else. At some point the words and Vala's voice mixed and tumbled together into nonsense and Daniel fell into a fitful dose.
o-0-o
Daniel surfaced from sleep for a few vague minutes sometime later. He could still hear Vala speaking but not to him, she seemed to be talking quietly on her phone, pausing occasionally to listen to the other side of the conversation.
"He's finally asleep. ... Yes, it truly is dreadful for him, Samantha, I wish I could do more. ... It's not fair that he should suffer so much with something that has no cure. ... I think it's still there, he's frowning in his sleep." After this pause to listen she gave a soft laugh. "I know, he's so cute! All curled up, you should see him!"
He wasn't cute, he was a grown man, he thought dazedly. And of course he was frowning, he was in pain. Daniel wanted to stop frowning and give them a piece of his mind...although that would probably make him frown all the more...
Vala gave another quiet chuckle, saying, "Good idea."
As his muddled mind puzzled through his 'frowning' conundrum he thought he heard a click, then Vala was moving away, her voice fading and Daniel was immediately pulled back down into sleep.
tbc