"Is your homework done, Livy Lou?" Daniel asks cheerfully.
"Whatever," Olivia says getting up, and walking out of the room with a roll of her eyes.
"Hey, get back here young lady!" he calls after her, but gets no response. "What has gotten into that girl lately? She used to be sweet didn't she?"
Vala shrugs, even though she knows exactly what got into the girl. Olivia started giving her dad that attitude the exact moment that she found out her step mother was pregnant, and was going to have to leave as soon as Daniel found out. "I'll go talk to her," Vala says.
"Right, and grounding. Is grounding the right thing? You know, I don't think I've ever actually punished Olivia before. Once and a while I just give her the stern look, and that's it. She came to us mostly finished. Well, at least apparently until she hit her teenager years."
"I'll take care of everything," Vala says giving her husband a quick kiss before following the girl. But she knows full well that she is not going to punish the girl. She doesn't have the heart to punish someone who is only defending her.
Two Weeks Later
There were a lot of fights leading up to the marriage. Cassie has a feeling that if the two of them had been married only a few years before there would have been a whole bunch of more arguments. Every time that Teal'c talked mentioned some tradition, Bra'tac would inform him that it had fallen out of favor with the free Jaffa.
In the end, Casie and Rya'c's weeding turned out more like a traditional Earth wedding than a traditional Jaffa wedding.
"Which is ironic," Cassie told her new husband, "Because neither of us are from Earth."
"Oh, we're both from Earth, now," Rya'c says looking at the three Earthling children which have just become his step-children. "You grew up here, and I choose this place."
Cassie sighs contented, "Well, I may never consider myself an Earthling, but I am quite content to spend the rest of my life here. After all, this is where my family lives."
-0-
Daniel and Vala are lying in bed, face to face. There arms are wrapped around each other, pulling each other as close together as they can physically get. Vala is already fast asleep, and Daniel is just about to join her in dream land when he feels a kick.
It's not from Vala, it's from something inside of Vala.
My God! How could I be so dense! He thought.
He pulls away from her in shock, and she wakes up at the motion.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks into the darkness.
She wasn't awake for the discovery, and is still fully awake, "What didn't I tell you?" she says stupidly.
"You did worse than not tell me! You lied to me! Stomach virus? Alien freaking stomach virus that covered every freaking symptom of pregnancy. I mean, I knew you were a con artist. I knew that going in, I just didn't think that you would try and con me!" he shouts.
"I'm sorry," Vala says standing up quietly beside the bed.
"You're sorry? That's all you have to say? How pregnant are you?" Vala starts to cry, and that take the wind out of his sails. "I'm sorry, come here."
"No," she sobs, "Don't be nice to me, it's hard enough without you being nice to me!" she says with venom.
"Do you want me to be mean to you? How is that going to make it better?" Daniel asks in confusion.
"It's going to be a lot easier to leave if you aren't nice to me," she says turning her back to him, and going over to pack. She starts with the drawer, the first one that he'd ever given her.
"Leave?" he asks in shock and horror.
She turns him in in surprise, and anger, "Don't you do that, now! Don't you act like it's my idea to leave."
"Why are you leaving me?" he asks with breath coming at a panicked quacking speed.
"I'm pregnant," she says confused as to how that doesn't explain everything.
"You're taking my kid away from me?" he asks.
"You told me when we got married that there would be no kids. I swear, Daniel, I didn't get pregnant on purpose. I wasn't trying to trick you or trap you. I hated having to choose between the two of you. Trust me it was close, it was the hardest discussion that I ever had. But I choose my kid. I'm sorry, I couldn't kill it."
"Kill it? Vala, I never asked you to have an abortion," Daniel says befuddled.
"You said no kids!" she says in frustration. She feels like the two of them are having completely different conversations.
"I said no kids in theory, but that doesn't mean that when we had a kid, already existing, right here," he says crossing the room to put his hand on her stomach, "that I wouldn't love it. That I would want you to get rid of it. You said that you choose between me, and the kid. You didn't give me a choice. Even if I really, really, didn't want a kid, I would still choose you with a kid over no you and no kid. The idea is growing on me though. I think that it's right for the two of us to have a kid. I was selfish when I said no. I knew you wanted a kid and I let you settle. Maybe this is nature's, or God's, or whatever higher alien being is in charge of these things', way of fixing my stupidity."
Vala is too shocked to take in the whole discussion, "Not leaving?" she asks holding a handful of socks that she'd been attempting to pack.
"God I hope not," he says taking her into his arms.
She starts to sob, and he rubs her back, "Vala, my love we are forever. You could do a hell of a lot worse than give birth to my baby, and I still wouldn't leave you."
"It is your baby," Vala quickly says.
"Well of course it is, there was not question was there?" Daniel asks with no panic in his eyes as he says it. The only way he is going to question that the baby is his, is if she tells him that it isn't.
"Olivia thought there was," Vala says without even thinking about what else she is revealing with her words.
"Olivia knows you're pregnant?" Daniel asks with eyebrows raised, but without withdrawing the tiniest bit of his support from Vala's sobbing.
Vala nods into his shoulder.
"I assume she also thinks that I am making you leave."
Vala pulls away, and looks at his face as she says, "I swear I thought you were making me leave. You can't really call it lying if you thought you were telling the truth."
He smiles at her, "No, I don't suppose you can. This explains the attitude lately."
"I told her that she had to knock it off. I really did. I didn't punish her though. I mean….she had a right to be mad."
"I should say she did! If she thought that I was kicking your pregnant ass to the curb I would be disappointed with her if she wasn't mad! Hopefully this means that she'll be putting away her teenage attitude, at least for a while."
"I really am sorry about getting pregnant," Vala says.
"I'm not! Happy accidents! Now how pregnant are you?" Daniel asks looking at her bulging stomach, and wondering once more how he could have possibly not known.
"Six months," she confesses.
"I've missed it. I've missed most of the pregnancy."
Guilt overwhelms her. If only she hadn't been so stupid, if only she hadn't believe for one second that Daniel could be so cruel, he could have experienced the whole pregnancy with his child. Not only that, but she could have had support.
"I'm sorry," she says.
He puts his hand on her cheek, and turns her toward him. He probably meant the motion to show how much he loved her, but in reality, she just gets a little bit better view of his pain, "No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you ever for a second believed that I wouldn't love you no matter what. That must have been horrible."
Vala sits down on the edge of the bed.
Daniel follows her motion, "When Janet was pregnant, both times, she was seriously ill. I was so worried the whole time, about her, about the baby, about whether or not putting her through this was the right thing to do. This would have been…different. At least I hope so, you haven't been really sick have you?" he asks suddenly worried that if he didn't even know that she was pregnant he might not know anything else about his wife either.
"No, I was barely sick at all," Vala assures him.
He nods his head, and wraps an arm around her, and she allows herself to snuggle into her side letting all the tension of months of secret keeping fall from her.
"Do you have the ultrasound picture laying around? I'd love to see my baby," Daniel asks.
"The what?" Vala asks still nestled in his side.
"You know, the picture the doctor takes with the machine."
"Oh, I told you that I haven't been sick. I didn't go to the doctor."
He pulls away her so that he can see her face, "You're messing with me right? This is another one of you fool Daniel moments right?"
"No, I really honestly haven't been sick dear," she says.
"But you've been to the doctor right? I mean, no way are you six months pregnant, and never having been to the doctor."
"You go to the doctor when you are sick," Vala says confused.
"No, honey, you go to the doctor when you're having a baby too. It's called pre-natal care."
"Um…that's stupid."
Daniel shakes his head, "Its fine, we'll just go to the doctor tomorrow."
"Daniel darling, I have had a baby before. I didn't go to the doctor with Adria."
"Well, we all saw how well that turned out," he says. When her face crumbles he feels like an ass once again, "I'm so sorry that was uncalled for."
"Right, I'm sure that a few glamor shots of the unborn would have forced my child not to turn all evil. I might have a lot of faith in fashion, but even I don't believe it is that powerful."
"They do other things there, beside take a picture. They check for diseases, and stuff."
"They can cure sicknesses before the child is even born?" Vala says impressed.
"Well, sometimes."
"What good would it be to know about all the diseases that they couldn't cure?"
"I don't know, this is probably a good question to ask the doctor. Or maybe I could look it up in one of the pregnancy books."
Vala stares at him in shock.
"What?" he asks in his 'please have mercy' voice.
"They have entire books on pregnancy? Now you have got to be messing with me."
"Please do not tell me that you are six months pregnant, and have not read a single pregnancy book."
"Look, I'm not from around here. Not only did I not know what I was supposed to do, but I'm not sure that I even agree that these things need to be done. How could there possibly be so much to pregnancy that they write a whole book about it?"
Daniel sighs, "Ok, well tomorrow I will make a doctor's appointment, and right now I am going to go get you a pregnancy book from the den to read."
"Ugh, I was never good at school. Can't I read a book about how to make babies instead?"
"There is a chapter on that in the book," Daniel says.
"Oh goody, let's start with that one."
"Well, we don't need to do we, because we've already made the baby? Besides, I can assure you that you already know a whole lot more about that than the people who write pregnancy books," Vala grins at this compliment.
Daniel is still making his way to the door when he hears Vala's voice call him back plaintively. "Daniel, can't it all wait until tomorrow?"
He turns to her, and sees that there is still a lot of fear in her eyes, and says, "Ok."
"Let's re-enact the making of chapter," she winks at him.
"Yes, that sounds great, however….I need to go talk to Livy first," he says. He realized when he saw the lingering fear in his wife's eyes that there had been absolutely nothing done to quench the fear in his daughter's. He was not going to let her spend another second worrying.