Spoilers for Momento Mori
One Month Later
"Fancy," Vala says, looking around the restaurant that Daniel has just taken her too. If he hadn't already declared in no uncertain terms that he was never going to marry her, she might be preparing herself for a proposal.
"Well, we don't get out of the house much, so I thought I would take you to somewhere nice," Daniel says, moving the vase so he can get a better look at Vala.
"Well, I don't mind telling you that I've been looking forward to this little date all week."
"We date all the time," Daniel defends himself.
"No, we live together, but we don't actually go out to date."
"I'm sorry," he says, sounding wounded.
"No, it's ok. I mean, the kids come first," Vala says, wishing that she hadn't hurt the man that she loved.
"You're important, too," he says, putting a hand across the table to her. "I'm going to have to start making more time for you. We'll have to try to get out a couple of time a month, at least."
Vala grins.
The waiter comes up, and says, "Can I start you off with a drink? Tonight's featured martinis are the chocolate, passionfruit, and shochu plum."
"They sound wonderful. So one of each then?" Vala says.
"Yeah, I think we are going to pace ourselves. She'll do the passionfruit," Daniel says.
When the waiter leaves them alone Daniel and Vala start to talk at the same time. Vala waves for him to go first.
Daniel says, "Um… Look, I know it hasn't been easy for you adjusting to your new life here, learning to trust other people and, most importantly, refusing the temptation to fall back on your old ways. But you have worked hard to make a place for yourself with us and… and dinner tonight is my way of saying thank you. Thank you for… for proving me right when I said we could take a chance on you. And thank you for giving us a chance for us to build a life together."
"I don't know what to say," Vala says, sounding touched.
"Why don't you say what you were going to say before I interrupted?" he asks.
"Okay, I need to go to the bathroom."
Daniel obviously crumbles under her response. He points over her shoulder, and Vala gets up to leave.
-0-
She's gone. He was on a date with her. At the very least he should be able to protect the women he loves when he's out on a date with her.
But she slipped through her fingers, and got kidnapped. Everything in him feels like he's going to fall apart, like he did when Janet died. He can't do that again. His children deserve better than that, and Cassie is too busy to catch his mistakes this time.
When he goes home, he expects his children to ask where Vala is. They don't, though, because even though she spends a lot more time with them than she does in her quarters on base, she doesn't live with them. There are days when she doesn't come, and they think it's just one of those days.
It is three days before her absence is noticed, and then Olivia quietly asks, "Did you and Vala break up?"
"No," Daniel says, trying to get more words through the lump in his throat.
"She's not here," Olivia states.
Daniel nods.
"Dad?" Oliva questions with fear in her voice.
"She was kidnapped. We're looking for her." Other people might have said something more comforting. More than likely something like, "Don't worry, we'll find her." Daniel wasn't willing to risk lying to his children.
Oliva starts to cry, and Daniel pulls her close so her tears fall on his shoulder.
"If she dies, are you going to disappear again like you did when Mom died?" she asks him.
"That's never going to happen again," he assures her, without any qualms about possibly lying.
A Week Later
She doesn't remember who she is, but apparently they do. There was the man in the hotel room who told her that she was an alien. She didn't so much believe him. This man, standing before her, is a whole lot easier to believe, "Vala, I know you are scared. But we are not here to hurt you. We are here to help you remember."
She's surrounded, and they are pointing weapons at her. She still knows that she has the upper hand. Her weapon is one that can kill, while she knows that his is not.
"Get out of my way," she commands the man in front of her.
He shakes his head at her.
"Get out of my way or I will shot you," she tells him again.
"You may not remember who you are, but I do, and I know that you are not going to shoot," he tells her with absolute certainty. She can't remember the last time she's been that certain about anything, let alone another human being, and that's not just because of her recent amnesia.
"If I let you go, I know you're going to make yourself disappear. You've been running for so long that it's almost second nature to you. You don't remember it, but you made a decision to stop running. It's over, now it's time to come home."
A few flashes come to her. All of these people, around a table, talking about important things (she remembers that they did that a lot). Leaning on Daniel's shoulder as he helped her into an elevator; she'd been lying to him, she wasn't nearly as tired as she'd been pretending to be. A little girl with blond pig tails (she'd started wearing them so that she would be more like Vala) hiding behind a very large, and very dry-looking book. Two little boys handing her toys.
"Daniel, the kids?" she breathes out. How could she leave them? What kind of mother was she to take off and leave her kids? Even with her memory gone, she still should have known. There should have been some sort of maternal instant or something that made her stay.
"They're fine," he assures her, pulling her into a hug.
"I'm so sorry," she tells him, melting into his strong arms.
"It's going to be all right, everything is going to be all right."
-0-
This wasn't how Daniel intended to reintroduce Vala to his kids. Vala had been out of his children's lives for over a month. He wasn't exactly planning on just dropping in on them with her in tow. He planned on sending Sam or Cam or Jack ahead to let them now that she had been found, but that all of her memories were still a little bit fuzzy.
If he was perfectly honest with himself, he knew that her memories were probably a lot more than 'a little bit' fuzzy. She tried to pretend that she knew a lot more than she did, but Daniel could tell that her memories right now consisted of little more images.
Dr. Lam assured them both that she was likely to make a full recovery, especially now that she was around things that she was familiar with once again.
"Well, then we'd better get home," Vala says cheerfully, with a huge grin on her face.
"Right, home," Daniel says. He's pretty sure that she never called his house that before she lost his memory. It's possible she thought it all the time, and the memory loss is serving more as an inhibition lifter than anything else, but he doesn't really find that all that likely.
As they sit in the car he knows that he has to tell her. He has to explain it to her. "Vala, I have to be honest with you about something, but you have to understand that I really don't want to tell you this…"
Vala is terrified by his face, "Daniel, did something happen to the kids?"
"No, nothing happened to them, but it is about them," he says awkwardly, and then he lets the silence fall upon them for a good long moment. "Vala, they're not really your kids. I mean they are, it's just that technically they're not. I mean…"
Vala laughs, actually laughs at them. "You thought I didn't know that they were just my step kids? Man alive, you had to be nervous!" Then suddenly her laughter dies at a fresher memory. "Except, they're not really even my step kids, are they?"
"They really are," Daniel says softly.
"No, I remember, we're never going to get married. It's ok, though." The first time when she'd said that, he'd believed her. She'd been taken so much by surprise, that her voice sounded genuine when she said it. The second time, there is no mistaking what she is saying for the truth. It is not ok that he wouldn't marry her. Why should it be?
He puts a hand softly on her knee, and turns into his drive way. When they enter the house, the kids barely look up from a craft they are doing with the nanny for a long second. Then Olivia sees her. She gets up, spreading glitter far and wide, and runs half way into Vala's arms. Then she pauses, and looks a bit bashful.
"You were gone a long time," Olivia says.
"I was, honey, but it wasn't my choice. They took my memory away. I would have much rather been here with my family."
It's enough of a reason for Olivia, who flings herself into the women's arms and starts to cry.
"I missed you so much," she says, hugging the girl close, and losing no small amount of moisture out of her own eyes.
"Did you miss me?" Drew asks tentatively at her elbow.
"I did indeed," she says, giving a huge hug before moving on to his older brother.
Will has taken steps away from, instead of toward her. "I missed you, too, sweetheart," she says, extending her arms to him. She doesn't want to push things. She remembers all too well the abrupt way that her own mother-in-law had entered her life. She had never forgiven the women for the first few minutes that she had known her.
"Are you going to leave again?" the little boy asks.
"I am going to do my very best never to leave like that again. I'm still going to go on little trips like your Daddy does, but I don't plan on being gone that long ever again."
The boy slowly walks over to her, and buries his little nose into her shoulder, "That's alright, little man. Everything is going to be ok," she assures him.
-0-
Daniel stands awkwardly in the bedroom as Vala finishes up her nighttime routine. "Are you coming to bed?" she asks, tapping the spot next to her.
"I don't know how much exactly of your memories have come back. If you'd rather that I spent the night on the couch, I wouldn't mind."
"I have enough memories back that I really miss what you and I do when we are in the same bed," she says with a wicked grin.
A grin comes to Daniels' face as well, but then he schools it away. "I want it to mean something. If it's just sex to you, right now, I want to wait until you have enough memories that it's something more."
"I thought we established that it was never 'just sex' between the two of us the first time that we were together," she says.
"Well, all right, then," Daniel says, crawling toward her across the bed on his knees. Their mouths are just about to touch when Daniel feels someone jump on to the bed behind him. It's Drew. His brother is standing tentatively at the door.
"Drew woke up, and wouldn't believe me that Vala really came home," he explains.
"Come on, then, into bed with you," Vala says sweetly. Daniel just barely manages to stifle a frustrated groan.
Will bounces into bed, and Daniel turns to see Olivia at the door, "I heard them get up, and I know I'm way too old to crawl into my parent's bed, but…"
"Well, if your sister wasn't too old at eighteen, I don't supposed you've made the mark yet, honey," Daniel says, extending his arm to her.
There is a lot of rustling and jostling in the next few minutes as five people strive to make themselves comfortable in a king bed.
Suddenly, just as Vala is about to drift off to sleep for the first time she realizes something. She has a family, a real, proper family for the first time in her life. They are a family of orphans, really, but it works, and it's more beautiful perhaps that way. They all understand the glory of a family when they have all had ones shattered before.
"I love you," she says, and there is not a person in the bed who isn't sure that it was meant for them alone.