Spoilers for "Family Ties"
How do you make up for leaving your only child? Ice cream? Well, that one probably doesn't work when she's old enough to buy her own ice cream. Buy her a car? She already has one that's a whole lot nicer that he could ever buy her. Both she and her husband have government jobs, and even with five children they seem to be doing more than just making ends meet. He left his only kid, and never paid a dime of child support, and he couldn't seem to quite make ends meet.
The best thing he could think of to do was to spend time with her. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the only thing that she didn't want him to do. She didn't trust him any farther than she could throw him, and frankly, it showed.
The kids were easier to win over. Rya'c wasn't around much. He spent most of his time with the women he would be marrying next month and her three children. When he was around, he was as silent as his father, so whatever disapproval there was, at least Mr. Dunn didn't have to hear about it.
Tammy was accepting of him. It turns out her real father, as well as the few other father figures she'd had in her life whenever her mother and her real father had been separated, had been creeps of the first order. As long as he didn't abuse her, it seemed as if he was a winner in her eyes. Of course, she did have the one good example of fatherhood, or at the very least that was how she seemed to view his daughter's husband, the giant that they called Teal'c.
Her little sister Becky was a bit more leery. The girl was closer to both of her guardians than her sister was. She sensed that neither of them was willing to let down their guard around them, and therefore, she was not willing to either. There was no way that he was going to make any headway winning the girl over until he was able to win over one or both of the adults in her life.
The twins, of course, were easy. So long as he was able to raid a quarter vending machine for some gaudy stickers or a bouncy ball before he came over, they were putty in his hands.
One night, Shelby went upstairs to put the twins to bed, and was somewhat surprised to see her father still downstairs when she returned. She had figured that with the attitude that she was giving him, he knew he was more or less only allowed around for the sake of the children.
He smiles at her for a long minute before he says, "You had that same facial expression when you were a baby, too."
"Which one?" she asks.
"The one that you wear whenever you are in the same room as me. It meant something different when you were a kid, though. Well, at least I hope it did! When you were a kid you used to make that face every time that someone was going to tickle you, or play hide-in-seek, or laugh at some joke you didn't have the vocabulary to understand. I always used to call it your disapproving look."
"What makes you think that the meaning's changed?" Shelby says, feeling free to insult the man a little bit when none of her family is close enough to scold her.
"Oh, now it means 'please don't hurt me, I can't take any more'. Honestly, Shel, I don't know how you survived it all. Of course, I don't have the slightest clue what 'it all' really is. I only have little hints and whispers that you've let out. I can tell by your face that it was bad, though. That it was really bad. I wish that I could have saved you from it. I would do anything in order to be able to go back and time, and make it so that all of it never happened."
"You could have saved me," Shelby says, trying so hard to keep the mask firmly on her face. She is afraid that the littlest crack will make the whole thing break, like a small hole in a large dam.
"I know I could have. I wish I had. But I swear to you, I didn't know. There was nothing that could have made me suspect, and I can't do anything to save you now."
"Now? I don't need saving now. I saved myself, and then Teal'c saved me, and then I saved my sisters. I don't need anyone now," she quickly amends her words which sound childish and untrue to her, "I don't need you." That, at least, is true.
"I know, that was my point. You don't need me now, and I can't go back to all the times that you did need me," he says softly.
"You were my father. You should have showed up and checked on me. Yeah, she was my mom. She cheated on you. I can get why you wouldn't want to be with her anymore. Hell, I didn't want to be with her anymore. That doesn't exactly explain why you didn't want to be with me. I wasn't even two years old, what unpardonable sin did I commit?"
"Oh, sweetie, you didn't do anything wrong," he says holding out his hands to her.
"No, I must have. I must have done something awful, otherwise you never would have left me with the monsters."
He wants to defend himself once more. He feels the desperate urge to remind her that he never knew about the monsters, that he would never leave her to that on purpose. He has noticed that this conversation does not make sense. That it's gone beyond logic, and he knows what he has to say. It is his first unselfish act toward her. He tells her what she needs to hear, even though it isn't what he wants to say, "Is there anything that your kids could do? Anything that would make you leave them and never look back?"
"NO!" she shouts out all of her anger at him into a single piercing word.
"Then it wasn't you, was it? It was me that was wrong. I am the one who screwed up."
Then Shelby hugs him and sobs, because that she can understand. It is easy for her to forgive a sin that is confessed. Christians are used to loving the broken sinner.
One Week Later
"Vala, do you know this man?" General Landry asks her as the team looks at the man on the video screen. Daniel really hopes this isn't another one of her age-inappropriate romances. He's been meaning to ask her for a complete list of sexual encounters before he entered her life. He's just a little bit afraid that they wouldn't make enough paper to hold it, or that their relationship would endure the question. It's best to close his eyes, and just be grateful that he really and truly isn't worried that there have been any sexual encounters with anyone else than the two of them got together.
"A little bit, he's my dad," Vala says, and Daniel's breath catches for a whole second. He never asked about her parents. He knew that she had a stepmother that she didn't get along with, only because she'd named her daughter after her. Other than that, he knew pretty much nothing about any member of her family. Maybe there was a whole extended family that his children were missing out on getting to know. There was certainly this one person.
He puts his hand in hers, and she squeezes it, desperate for comfort.
-0-
"Vala, we have to at least ask him to dinner."
"Really, and why would that be?"
"He's your father," Daniel says with a role of his eyes.
"He donated some sperm, Daniel. That doesn't make him my father."
"Vala, sweetie, I'm here for you. I know you have a lot of Daddy issues. Maybe he is the biggest ass in the universe like you seem to think he is. You still have a dad. I lost mine a long time ago."
She looks at him and sighs, "Ok, but I'm not letting those little kids of yours fall in love with him, you hear me?"
-0-
"So this is your husband?" Jacek asks, extending his hand to Daniel.
Daniel takes it, but gives the man a look which plainly says he doesn't believe everything about the man.
"We're not exactly married," Vala says.
"You couldn't make an honest women of her, eh?" Jacek teases Daniel.
Daniel smiles at Vala, "Oh, I already did that. It wasn't hard to make her honest, she just needed someone she could count on. It's true we're not married, but we are in it forever. She's a great mother."
"Mother?" Jacek says in shock. Then he glances at her stomach with a tiny smile. Her stomach is small enough that by looking at her, you would never know for sure if she was pregnant or not, but he figures the word of hint is a revelation.
"Stepmother, to be technical," Vala says.
"Well, not technically if you're not married," Jacek points out.
"That has nothing to do with Vala," Daniel quickly says, glancing at the women beside him quickly to see if her father's words had hurt her in any way. She looks like they haven't, but Daniel knows with Vala, that would be true whether they had caused her harm or not.
"What, you've got a secret wife locked up in the attic or something?" Jacek teases.
Daniel face shows a second of shock, the man having come closer to the truth much faster than Daniel would have expected from him.
"He's married? Vala, I thought I raised you better than that."
"You didn't raise me. Mother did. And his wife died; well, both of them did, actually."
Jacek looks at Daniel with sympathy, but doesn't stop his questions, "Does this country have some sort of law against widowers marrying?"
"No," Daniel says taking his wife's hand, "We're married. I just didn't do the paperwork, because I thought it was bad luck." The reason feels silly and foolish when it's said out loud in front of a stranger who is his father-in-law; well, almost.
"How many times have you been married?" Vala asks her father pointedly.
"So, not only does Vala have a family, but she's doing pretty great professionally," Daniel says. Vala turns to him, and grins. He isn't a professional peacekeeper for nothing.
"That's no surprise. She was only eight years old when I took her to the waterfalls of Godesh," Jacek says.
"Well, I'm not exactly a pickpocket anymore," Vala says quickly.
"I'm sure not. You're allied with the great warriors of Earth. There has to be pretty good loot associated with that," Jacek says, with something that is either genuine pride, or his usual sucking up; Vala can't tell.
"We don't exactly pay her in loot. She has a salary. She is fighting against the Goa'uld, and now that they are gone, she is fighting against every other nasty thing in the universe. She's a force for good. She's making the world a much better place to be," Daniel says.
Holy crap, her husband is as great at BS as her father. None of that is true. She blushes, and scolds, "Daniel."
"It's true," he says, turning his blue eyes too her, and suddenly she can't doubt that Daniel believes the lie. Daniel doesn't lie on purpose.
"Well, I'm proud of you," Jacek says.
"No," Vala says.
"Honey," Daniel warns softly.
"No, this is what he does, Daniel! You might not be able to see through it, but that's just because you haven't lived with you all these years. I used to believe him too, but I have been burned so many times that there is no way that I am going to believe it anymore! He was never there for Mother, even though you always expected us to be there for you, whenever you needed a place to hide, or capital to set you up with one of your latest scams. My life has been a constant struggle against the personal issues that you seeded. And now that I am at Stargate Command and finally happy with who I am, you think you can come along and jeopardize everything that I have worked so hard to achieve. Under no circumstances will I allow you to screw that up for me, and I certainly am not going to allow you to hurt these children that I love," Vala says, standing up from the table.
Daniel stands up after her, in a show of solidarity.
"Aren't we even going to eat this nice pie that you bought me?" her father asks, with an eyebrow raised.
"I've said everything I needed to say," she says.
"Well if that is all that you needed to say, then you could have just sent a letter," Jacek points out.
"I asked her to come see you; I think that family is important."
"Before you go, I want to give you this," he says holding up a shiny necklace for her to see, "I got it from a trader on Meronet. You know, that little world with the two suns that I used to take you too."
Vala looks softer than she has since she's seen her father. Softer than Daniel's ever seen her unless she has one of his kids in her arms, "I remember Meronet."
"Do you still have that treasure box? The one where I used to put your gifts that I got you when you were a little girl?"
Vala looks at her father after shuffling around a bit, and then says, "No, I got rid of that a long time ago."
Daniel can tell that she is lying, and he wonders if her father knows her that well. He should, even though he was very much in and out of her life he was there for most of her life. Daniel can tell, and he's only knowns her for a couple of years.
"Ah, well, I understand," Jacek says with a sigh, "Well, I appreciate you sitting down with me, and buying me this meal. Even though it is too late, I want you to know… that I am sorry."
One Week Later
"Are you all right?" Daniel asks Vala.
"Great, yeah, wonderful. Everything went according to plan. Jacek scammed us, we scammed him better."
Daniel sighs, "Ice cream?" he offers, holding up a gallon and two spoons.
Vala grins, "You know me well."
"Right, well, I was going to go with wine. Wine would be the proper reaction to what your father did to you, but ever since you got a bacteria infection, wine has not been your friend, so…"
"Ice cream is great," she says, grinning a little uncomfortably.
She knows that she is not going to be able to hide her pregnancy much longer, and she also knows that leaving a guy as good as Daniel is going to break his heart.