Four Days Later
The first time Aaliyah spoke was the day that Cassie took the girl's to see the new apartment. The little girls took off running through the house, trying to claim the bedroom that was would be theirs. There were only three bedrooms, and the girls didn't seem to take Cassie into account in their reckoning as they squabbled for the best one.
They'd forgotten the PECS system in the car, and Aaliyah had planted herself firmly on the floor of the master bedroom, and said, "Aaliyah!"
"Is this Aaliyah's room?" Cassie asks.
Keisha lets out a chorus of "no fair's" which threaten never to end, and Jayla looks like she's about to work herself into a tantrum.
"I'm sorry, but this is actually MY room. Keisha and Liyah are so grown up that they are going to share the big girl room, and little Miss Jayla gets one all to her own."
One Week Later
The next time that Liyah speaks she doesn't even realize that she is doing it, and Cassie is afraid to point it out for fear it will make the girl stop. She jabbers to herself as she moves her belongings into the new room, naming each of the objects.
"Book."
"Teddy bear."
"Brush."
"Shirt."
Each and every word is said in a sing-song voice, and with a huge smile on her face.
That night at supper, when Liyah hands over the PECS proclaiming her request she adds the words to it. "I want chicken, please," she says in the same sing song voice. Cassie gives her a tiny piece, requiring the use of more language to get more. Each bite of her dinner is a reward for the spoken, "I want more chicken please," or "I want more bread, please," or the one whose repeated sounds made Keisha giggle every time, "I want more peas, please."
When the words started coming, everything got easier. She started to listen more, especially when she could run her fingers across the request in solid form. Her bathroom accidents disappeared, tooth brushing was no longer a struggled, and she would say in Cassie's bed at night, and listen to her new mother read stories with her younger sister's. Sometimes she would reach up, and touch Cassie's chin as she formed the words, like she was still trying to puzzle out this odd little thing that humans did to the air from their lungs with their mouth and tongues.
When she carried three sleepy children to bed at the end of a long day, Cassie couldn't help but think, this is what she had been born for.
Two Days Later
Jacob can't get out of bed today; he just doesn't have the strength.
"You ok, Dad?" Sam asks softly. The way he is acting is reminding her of when he had cancer, but she's not going to think about that. She's not going to ask about that. If she never mentions it, then it's not going to be true.
"I'm sorry, Sammy," he says.
Her lip quivers, "I'll call someone, a doctor; they'll get it figured out."
"I've been to the doctor, Sam."
"You beat it before," Sam insists.
"Not this time."
She lies down on the bed next to her father, and puts her head on his shoulder.
"I love you, Daddy."
One Month Later
For the last couple of weeks, Jacob has been surrounded by family and friends; that's what you do when someone you love is in the hospital.
When he dies, he's all alone. It's the middle of the night, and he is dreaming of a family dinner and love.
Two Months Later
The whole time Vala had been pregnant, she had been terrified that Tomin would find out that the baby wasn't his. Then the priest went and told him, and she thought for sure that she was going to be burnt at the steak now. Not that they hadn't already tried to kill her in the name of the Ori, more than once.
So she tells him the truth; at least mostly. He says that he believes her. He doesn't think that he's cheated on her (which she hadn't), and that this baby must really be the will of the Ori.
It's a non-event really, just like pretty much everything is when you're married to Tomin. They never speak of it again.
Still, there are tiny changes that let her know that there is something different between them. He looks at her less when they are sitting across the table. He stops brining her little treats, but that could just be, because they are traveling through space, and little treats are a lot harder to get. He doesn't hold her when she goes to sleep anymore. She doesn't know if it's, because he is in awe of her, because he has stopped loving her, or simply because her belly is too big to allow it.
Her growing belly is her only comfort. Inside of her is her baby. Her love. When she holds it in her arms, nothing else will matter.
So when labor starts, she can't wait to meet her little child.
Then they take her daughter away from her, and then she grows up at an unbelievably quick speed, and Vala is still alone.
Her arms ache for the little baby who will never fill them.
Two Months Later
There were a few things on Earth that Vala had really enjoyed the last time that she was here – bubble baths, and ice cream, and movies. These were all things that she planned on enjoying as soon as she got back to Earth, well that and a good cry.
She is alone in her room just finishing with the first cry (she's not crazy enough to think it's going to be the last) of the night, and about to run a bath when she hears a knock at the door.
It's Daniel.
"I just want to see if you needed anything," he says softly.
"I'm fine," she says. The last thing she wants to see is someone who has four children, when she was not even given one. Why shouldn't joy and pain be distributed fairly through the world? Why should some get all of one, and none of the other?
"I'm sorry about what happened to your daughter," he says, looking anywhere but her face.
His eyes are old, and sad. He's seen grief, and he's not going to leave when he knows that she must be falling apart.
"It's not like she's dead," Vala says. That's something she's been repeating to herself over and over. She can't grieve for her daughter, because her daughter is fine. She's going to save her… somehow, some way.
"No, but I'm still sorry," he says.
She doesn't know what to say to that, and they stand there as the awkwardness grows around them.
"You should come to my house," he states.
It's not wise. Being around all the kids so healthy, and well, so… not bent on intergalactic domination might be too much for her. Yet… at his house, there would be children to hold, and she could use a hug of a little one right about now.
"There will be beer," Daniel adds.
Well, she can't turn that down. Nods her head, and the two of them walk off together.
-0-
She snuggles down in Will's bed, with one of the boys at each of her sides. They are in footy pajamas and snuggled under blankets that have silky edges. They rub the edges against their mouths, and tuck teddy bears under their arms. Earth is such a wonderful place to have invented all of these cuddly things.
"Story," they beg.
She starts to tell a story involving the biggest space ship that she ever stole, but Daniel cuts her off before she even gets started.
"I think it would be safer if you told one from a book," he says, handing her a volume of nursery rhymes.
It's funny; these things are from Earth of course, and the ones that she learned when she was little had nothing to do with these things, and yet there was something about them that was the same. Maybe childhood was the same everywhere.
By the time she has read twenty pages of the short poems, both of the boys seem to be asleep. She starts to get up, and when she moves Will mutters, "I love you," without fully waking up.
Vala rushes from the room, and is barely able to get out of earshot before she starts sobbing. Daniel doesn't ask her what's wrong, he just slides on the floor, and sits next to her. When the sobbing finally slows down he says, "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," she says, thinking that he's apologizing for the fact that she didn't get the baby she's longed for.
"I shouldn't have asked you to come. I thought it would make it better, but it just made it worse," he says, so guilty that she has to tell him the truth.
"It didn't make it any worse," she confesses.
They sit in silence for a moment before she says, "I really wanted her, you know. I know it was stupid to want her, but I did none the less."
"It's not stupid to want your child," he says softly.
"But the way she came about… I knew there was something weird going on. I should have known better than to get attached. It's not like things that good ever happen to me, not really," she says mournfully.
There is a long pause before Daniel says, "I know I shouldn't complain. Good things have happened to me. A lot of good things. Do you ever feel like it's just not fair? That some people get all the pain the world, and other people get all the joy?"
Vala nods her head.
They sit in silence next to each other for a long time. Vala longs to reach out and take his hand in hers. It would be so easy; the hand is right there, and this is the nicest, the softest that he has ever been to her. She fears to ruin the moment by her presumption, so she does nothing.
They sit there, miles or inches apart, depending on your perspective.
The Next Day
When Vala shows up at his house the next evening with a large bag, Daniel figures she's got something for the kids in it. He's a little surprised when she doesn't reveal its contents right away, but he quickly forgets about it.
It's nice to have another adult in the house. Nicer yet to hear laughter from his boys in the living room. There just hasn't been enough laughter in the house since Janet died.
After the kids are in bed, he sees Vala moving toward her beg, and figures that she's leaving. "Have a good night," he tells her.
"I hope we will," she says, pulling a bottle of wine out of the bag.
He freezes and stares at her, horrified.
She knows that she must have done something horribly wrong, but she has no idea what it is. If beer was OK last night, why is wine forbidden?
"No, it's just Janet…" his voice trails off as something that sounded a little bit like a sob came out of his mouth.
"It's always the weirdest things that remind you, isn't it?" she says, understanding grief completely.
The therapist that Daniel still sees frequently tells him that he needs to open up more if he wants to really make headway on his therapy. Yet, somehow, the words just come spilling out to this almost-stranger. "It was back when Janet and I first started dating. She had Cassie, so we couldn't go out a lot. I would show-up at her house to hang with Cassie. Then, after Cassie went to bed the two of us would share a bottle of wine," he says sitting down on the couch in the same spot that he used to sit. Vala takes Janet's place… in only a physical, not metaphorical sense, of course.
"The bottle of wine doesn't have to be anything but friendship, unless you want it to," Vala says, curling her feet under her on the couch.
Daniel pauses so long that she hides the bottle of wine behind her back, like that would make him forget that it was there, "There doesn't even have to be a bottle of wine."
Still no words come pouring out of his mouth.
"You know what? I'll just go," she says hurrying to her feet, and willing
"Stay," he says.
She pauses in the middle of the living room debating how seriously to take his words. She finally decides on pretty seriously, and sits back down the couch. She lets the wine bottle sit unopened on the floor of the living room.
He never answers her question about whether they are going to be friends to one another, or something more. But after listening to him talk for a couple minutes all doubts that she should just get up and leave flee from her mind.
"Janet and I went through a rough patch a few years back. I was a workaholic, and ignoring her. We started re-instating our wine nights. We'd just sit in the living room, and talk. It saved our marriage."
Vala remembers the fact that she's still married. She shouldn't have even been thinking that she could come over here with a glass of wine, and make Daniel fall in love with her. It would be wrong even if she could manage it somehow. She knows that she and Tomin would never have deep soulful chats over wine.
Well, maybe she couldn't have a marriage with Daniel; or sex, or even wine. But she'd be damned if she wasn't going to get the deep soulful chat.
"On the planet where I grew up, there was arranged marriage. After your mate was selected when you were 12 you began writing them letters; matches always lived in another town. You didn't get to meet until you were sixteen. My fiancé's first letter to me was only about six sentences long. I was the sort of thing a seven-year-old could have composed."
He laughs. Then he remembers what she told him about the village where she grew up.
"What happened? When you came back?"
"He called me Qetesh, and led the torture brigade," she mutters.
"That must have been horrible for you," he says, getting as close to holding her hand as she had gotten a few days ago to holding his.
"It wasn't his fault. He didn't understand what had happened to me, and I heard the villagers were quite cruel to him, because of his association with me."
"Still," Daniel says.
"Still," Vala replies.
There is silence for a few more seconds, but this silence is a great deal less awkward than the silence of only a few moments ago.
"Well, I think if we're going to keep having discussions this intense we're going to need some wine to do it by," Daniel says, getting up and grabbing the wine bottle from the floor in one fluid motion on his way to the kitchen.