Sorry guys, I had a PSAT to take, two papers to write, and an all-weekend choir thing to go to recently, lol. Anyway, here ya go. Please enjoy, and let me hear from you! Thanks!

Chapter 3

By the time Cameron wandered into her lab a couple of hours after Vala had, Sam still hadn't been able to push the strange conversation from her mind. She tried to write it off as Vala being Vala, missing Daniel like the rest of them, but it wouldn't leave her alone. Something seemed wrong.

"Hey, baby," he smiled, leaning on the table across from her.

"Hi…" she said, and rolled her eyes a little.

"What's new?"

Sam sighed and dropped her work again. "Have you seen Vala since she came back inside today?"

"Yeah. She came into the commissary, grabbed a snack, and left with it. Usually she eats in there, but she looked totally distracted. Why? Did you see her too?"

She nodded. "She was upset about something, and she was bringing up…Daniel. It was a year last month," she swallowed, not happy of the reminder.

"I know," Cam sighed. He stood, walked around the worktable and wrapped his arms around her from behind. "I still miss him, too, but it doesn't look like he's coming back this time."

Sam leaned into him for a moment, savoring the warmth that brought some small amount of comfort. They were silent for a minute or two, before she remembered where they were.

"We're at work, Cam," she said, pulling away suddenly.

"Okay, okay," he relented, going back around the table and leaning on his elbows again. "But you know somebody besides Vala and Teal'c is going to find out eventually. We might as well tell Landry. We're still the same rank, so no one's going to kick our butts."

"No, but they will make one of us move to a different team."

"That wouldn't be so bad. It wouldn't change much. Besides, it was your team first; I'll switch. Then we won't have to worry about anything. Besides, SG-1 was a three-man team once before. Can't you and Teal'c hold down the fort with Vala as well as you did with Daniel?"

She covered his hands with hers and smiled. "I guess we could." She sighed. "I appreciate the sentiment, Cam, but I don't think that's necessary right now."

"Hey, don't get me wrong; I don't want to be on another team, but I don't want to put anyone in danger either. Those rules are in place for good reason."

"I know that," she said slowly. "But…I think for now we should just see where this goes." Though they couldn't deny what they had grown to feel for each other over the past several months, the relationship was still entirely platonic. Sam knew Vala was under the impression that there was more, but that was Vala; it was useless to try to convince her otherwise.

Cam shrugged and squeezed her hands. "Okay. I guess you're right. Anyway, I better get goin. You want me to come over this afternoon?"

Sam's thought returned Vala, her words, and the haunted look on her face. She shivered. "Yeah. I think I'm going to need a movie break tonight."

The wormhole was even more dizzying than usual as Vala's friends and teammates rushed her back through it. Teal'c was holding her up on one side, and Cameron was on the other, using his other hand to keep the gauze from the emergency medical kit pressed to the side of her head as Sam had told him to. She had gone just ahead of them, to make sure there was a gurney waiting.

The lights in the gate room seemed glaring, and she squinted as they stepped onto the grated metal ramp. Sam was waiting at the bottom of the ramp, and Carolyn was coming in with a nurse, pushing the requested gurney.

"Guys, really, I don't think I need that," she protested. But Teal'c and Cameron all but picked her up off of her feet to get her down the ramp. Teal'c picked her up and sat her on the gurney.

"Maybe not, but there's no reason to take any chances. Just relax; you'll be fine," Sam told her.

Mitchell crossed his arms. "Of course, it would have been better if you'd avoided an accident in the first place."

Vala sighed and laid back, letting the nurse pull away the gauze so Carolyn could get a look at the head wound as they started back for the infirmary with her. She closed her eyes against the pounding in her skull. She heard her friends footsteps following the gurney, and decided to take the chance to retort.

"Well, excuse me, but I'm not usually looking for bobby-traps in a temple."

"Vala, you didn't notice you'd stepped on some kind of trip wire until the log smacked you in the head! You were staring into space, and we weren't close enough to warn you in time. You're lucky it wasn't spiked or something and that you're not dead. What's been up with you?"

"Nothing," she said defensively, glaring at him briefly before closing her eyes again. I mean really, we're SG-1, not Indiana Jones and friends."

"You've seen those?" Mitchell asked curiously.

She snorted. "Yes, well, Daniel wasn't here to discourage me from watching them, so I succumbed to curiosity and borrowed them from muscles here."

"You have the Indiana Jones DVDs?" Sam asked of Teal'c.

"Indeed. I enjoy many more of actor Harrison Ford's works beyond Star Wars."

"Huh…you know Daniel would have killed you if he'd known."

Vala opened her eyes again, and she saw Sam and Mitchell looking at Teal'c, who's expression grew sad.

"That is why he did not know," the jaffa said quietly.

They were all quiet after that.

Vala had to close her eyes again to keep the tears she felt coming on from being seen. She didn't want them to wonder.

She'd tried to obey the apparition in the woods.

She really had.

Daniel wouldn't have hidden from them if he was alive. What possible reason could he have? It had to have been her imagination. There was no other explanation.

That was what she told herself, anyway, but the thought that it might have been real—that Daniel might be out there somewhere, alive and well without them, without her….it was too much to think about. The doubt ate at her heart, and had been doing it for more than a week. She had been too confused to risk going into the woods again, because part of her was afraid of what she would find.

Vala pushed that part of herself aside. She'd had enough of this.

She had to know the truth; she would go back to her spot in the woods.

Daniel had told the Cullens he had to take care of a few things, and he'd left. He'd been here ever since, in the woods outside of the SGC, for over a week. It wasn't hard to stay here around the clock, since he needed no sleep or food save an occasional small animal to keep him satisfied enough until he had time to get back to Washington and hunt some bigger game.

But he wouldn't leave here until he had seen Vala again.

On the eleventh day, he finally had some luck.

He saw her come out of the mountain. He'd been keeping an eye on the entrance; he could resist the human smell fine from that distance, no matter how many of them were outside at once, such as in the mornings and evenings. He could even be in close proximity to one or two at once, he knew for sure. He never tried it with more, but the Cullens had trusted him enough to let him stay and meet Bella's father the last time he had come for a visit.

That, and he hadn't killed Vala when she'd hugged him. Daniel figured that was a good sign, when it came to his developing self-control.

Daniel ran back to where he knew she was headed, and jumped up into the branches of the more dense trees near the rock Vala had been sitting on last time he had seen her, as high as he could be without his weight bending the trunk. He hid there, waiting for Vala to get there, wondering just what he was supposed to do. He'd thought he knew, but now she was almost here…

His heart couldn't beat and his skin couldn't sweat, to tell him that he was nervous, but he knew it anyway. It was something he felt to his core that almost shook him at his bones—or whatever indestructible substance he had in their place now that passed for bones.

Why? Why did he feel this way all of a sudden? Vala was one of his friends from his old life, someone to talk to, and that was the only reason he was here. He missed all of them, but he couldn't see all of them. It was too dangerous. But the accidental meeting in the woods over a week ago had made this partial possible, almost necessary, and he was going to take what he could get. He would tell vala the truth so that she wouldn't say anything to the others, and maybe he would come to see her every now and then, so that he wouldn't feel completely disconnected.

That was all.

It had to be all. Anything else was too dangerous. There was the Cullens' past to be learned from, after all. Being associated with Edward and knowing his secret….it had put Bella in so much danger, when she was human.

He wouldn't do that to anyone.

Vala came over the rise craning her neck, already looking for him, it seemed. She walked slowly to the rock and stopped, still looking around her. She pulled her coat around her and called out.

"Daniel? Are you here?" She paused. "I know I wasn't dreaming the other day. You were here. If you're now, you will be." She sat down on the rock resolutely. "I can wait."

He fought with his feelings, with his doubts. Was he doing the right thing?

Vala had been silent for a long moment. "Please," she said more quietly, and this time he heard the pain in her voice. "Please come back."

That was when he realized what he had done to her by running away.

Daniel swallowed hard and dropped from the tree.

Vala jumped to her feet in surprise at the sound. Her eyes widened when she saw him there, at the base of the tree where he hadn't been a moment ago. She glanced up, then, down, then up again, and finally looked back at him, obviously trying to process where he had come from. Her eyes grew wider as she seemed to figure it out.

"Daniel—"

She took a quick step forward as if to run to him, but he put out a hand out.

"Wait."

She stopped short, and he could see now that her eyes were damp. "What?"

"Let me come to you. I want to be careful; I don't want to…hurt you…"

"What?" she said again.

Slowly he closed half of the distance, and took a breath. When he was sure that her scent wasn't going to make him do anything stupid before he could stop it, sure that he could safely be here and talk to her, he stopped and smiled sadly. "You might want to hear a little more before you decide if you want me any closer," he explained.

Vala let out a pent up breath and almost laughed as a tear slipped out and trickled down her cheek. "Daniel, that's ridiculous. I'm just glad you're alive. But I would like to know why you've been hiding from us—" Her breath caught at the end of the sentence, and she bit back a sob.

Daniel winced at the pang that gripped his chest at that. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to…but you'll understand once I can explain. I hope."

She wiped away the tear and tried to smile. "Okay. What, then? What would have made you do that?"

"I had to do it to keep you safe—all of you."

"What could be so dangerous that it would keep you from us?" she scoffed.

He sighed. "Please, just let me explain."

Vala looked at him for a long moment, and then sat down on the rock again. "Fine. Explain."

In the past week he'd run a thousand scenarios through his mind, trying to figure out how he would tell her, but he had no idea which one to use. His eyes closed for a moment, and he pulled himself together and took another couple of steps forward. When he open his eyes again, he held his arms out wide.

"I'm different now. I guess you've noticed."

At first he thought it strangely that she smiled mischievously at that, but then he remembered that she was Vala. "Yes, and except for the cold skin and the eyes, it's mostly for the better." The flirtatious grin disappeared. "I miss your eyes."

Yet another reminder that he would never be who he had been. If he could have cried, Daniel's vision would have been blurring at that. He let out a breath that came out sounding more like a sob.

"What is it?" Vala asked, suddenly concern. His eyes closed tightly in pain. He had hurt all of them by being gone for so long, and here she was worried for him because of one small reaction. He didn't deserve it.

"Vala…I'm not human anymore," he said, his voice as strangled as was probably possible in this type of body.

There was a short silence. "That's already rather obvious," Vala said quietly then. "So what happened?"

He opened his eyes again, but he stared at the ground. He watched a few ants crawling by with their booty, and he could bee every one of them as clearly as if they were the size or roaches.

"What dragged me off that day we were out here…it wasn't the escaped alien animal we were looking for."

"Of course not. I hardly think an overgrown rabbit-like creature with hooves could have harmed you. Besides, another search team found it the next day, dead." She paused. "While we were looking for you."

Daniel looked up suddenly. "How did it die?"

"There was a bite mark on its neck; I'm not sure what around here could have hunted down that thing without superior intelligence, as large and fast as it was…"

"It was probably the same thing that attacked me," he said dryly. "And it wasn't an animal; it did have superior intelligence.

Vala frowned in confusion. All right, so what was that?" He hesitated, and she huffed loudly. "Daniel, I've seen plenty of strange things in my lifetime; I'm not even from this planet though most of its people still think they're alone in the universe. I think I can handle whatever it is you have to tell me."

She was right, of course. She might not believe him at first, but there was only one way to tell her. He took a breath and let it out.

"It was a vampire."