He knocks on her door. Olivia opens it eagerly, and then her face falls when she sees who it is. "I'm sleeping," she says, turning back to her room, and shutting the door behind her.
He opens the door again, and follows her in.
"Didn't you hear me say that I was sleeping?" she asks with a snarl in her voice.
"Yeah, I did, but I didn't believe it. We really need to talk."
"Whatever," Olivia says sitting on her bed.
"It's about Vala," he says.
Olivia glances up at her father with cold terror in her eyes, but she doesn't say a word. There is no way that she is going to betray the secret, and lose so much as a minute with her mother-figure.
"She's pregnant," he says.
Olivia looks down.
"Honey, I know that you've known about this for a while. I also know that Vala told you something that isn't true. Something that she believed was true, but which would never ever happen. Honey, Vala is going to keep living with us forever. She's a member of our family."
"So what? You convinced her to give the baby away?" Olivia asks, with hot tears running down her face.
"No! Of course not! We're keeping it. It's our baby, Livy-Lou. We love it."
"She said that you didn't want any babies," Olivia says, continuing to cry.
"Ok, so yes, I did tell her that I didn't want any more kids. That is not the same as telling someone that they have to move out if they accidently get pregnant."
"So your plan is to continue to live together, and she has a baby that you really don't want her to have? That so does not sound like a recipe for a happy marriage. You're still going to end up apart. You're going to be too sad to even look at each other, just like Vala said."
"Whoa, what did Vala say?" he asks with eyebrows shutting up.
Olivia looks down at her bed.
Daniel looks away, and swallows a lump in his throat, "Olivia, sometimes Vala forgets you're a kid."
"I'm thirteen."
"Like I said, a kid. When she was thirteen, she had already been abused, neglected, and taking care of herself for years."
"I took care of myself."
"Right, in a museum for a couple of days. That's plucky, Livy. Vala, however, had already fought of sexual assault, escaped from slavery, and maybe killed a man, I'm never sure if that part of the story is true. So, she was maybe just a bit more grown-up than you are."
Olivia stares at her father in horror, never having been given any details on Vala's past, particularly these, the most hidden ones that Vala only told Daniel late at night when he hugged her out of a nightmare.
"Sometimes, Livy, Vala forgets you are a kid, and that you probably don't need to know how much it would suck if we broke up. It would be bad. It would break our heart. That's all you need to know. Well, that and that it's not going to happen. I am happy about this kid. In case you didn't notice, I really like kids. That's why I have four of them. I wasn't planning on having any more kids, but that wasn't fair to Vala. She deserves to hold a tiny baby in her arms, and know that she made it. It was wrong of me to deny her that. You know what else? I really want to see what a little Vala Mal Doran looks like. It was wrong of me to deny myself that."
"You're really ok with the baby?"
"Ecstatic," he grins in a way she can't doubt.
"So you and Vala aren't going to get a divorce?" she asks wearily.
"I'm not going to lie to you. We obviously have some issues to work out. Particularly those that involve honesty, and trust, but we're going to be all right."
Olivia wants to stay the surly teenager, but she just can't let herself. So she flings her arms around her father's neck like a small child, and squeezes him tight.
The Next Day
"Thanks for taking us in last minute like this," Daniel smiles at the nurse who shows them to an exam room. It's the sort of smile that can make women melt in their socks. Vala would hate him for doing it, if only he had a clue what effect he had. As it was, he thought he was just being friendly, and he treated men the same way. Not that he didn't have enough men swooning over him, as well.
"No problem. Can you give us the name of the previous doctor, so that I can get the records?" the nurse asks.
Vala rolls her eyes, "I haven't been sick."
"No, I mean, your obstetrician," the nurse says.
"Well, I haven't been obstructed either," Vala says, thinking that this conversation got personal quick. The healers of her home world would have at least engaged in a little chit chat before assuming you had bathroom issues.
Both Daniel and the nurse seem to be working their faces extremely hard to keep from cracking up.
"Obstetrician means a doctor who deals with pregnancy, honey," Daniel says. Then to the nurse he says, "She hasn't been to the doctor about her pregnancy." The nurses eyebrows go up, looking at her very pregnant belly. "She's from another country, and didn't know you were supposed to," he explains.
"They don't have pre-natal care in Australia?" the nurse says dubiously.
"Ah, she's not from Australia, despite the accent. Her mom was, but she was actually raised in a couple of different places around the world. None of which had our lovely tradition of going to the doctor when you were pregnant."
"I see," the nurse says, in a way which clearly shows that she doesn't. "How come you didn't let her in on our quirky way of doing medicine in the civilized world?" she asks with a strange mix of sarcasm and superiority.
"Oh, Daniel didn't know I was pregnant until last night," Vala says in a way that she honestly believes is helpful. It takes everything that Daniel has got to avoid smacking himself in the head.
"You didn't let your husband know that you were having his baby until you were this far along?" the nurse says.
"Oh, Daniel and I aren't married," Vala asks.
"I see," the nurse says in a way which plainly shows that she thinks she does. The life the nurse now thinks they lead is something even a bit more sordid than the life Vala actually led before she met Daniel.
"We're committed, though, together," Daniel covers, quickly going red at the nurse's judgment, and wishing they'd gone to the base. Sure, they didn't deal with a lot of pregnancy at the base, but at least they understood their unique position there, and he wouldn't have had to deal with so much awkwardness.
He suddenly remembers the question that the nurse asked before, "I didn't know, because I've been traveling, for the Air Force." It wasn't a lie. It just wasn't the reason he didn't know. After all, Vala had been traveling with him. He couldn't believe that she'd been going through the gate all that time while pregnant. Then, suddenly, he understands Vala's reason for not wanting to go to the base. She think she's still going through the gate.
"I see," the women says again.
"You'd make a good drinking game," Vala points out, and Daniel just barely fights the urge to clasp his hand over her mouth. Not that it would do any good. He'd done that once in an attempt to keep her from revealing a detail of their sex life to his teammates. She'd gotten him to let go by licking his hand.
The nurse glares at her.
"Not like you would drink during pregnancy, though, right, honey?" Daniel says.
"Seriously, you take away my coffee this morning, and now you're telling me no alcohol?" Vala asks.
"Please, please, please tell me you are joking, right?" Daniel asks, turning to her with wide frantic eyes.
"Well, it's not like I've drank a lot. You know me, and I never drank a lot. I actually like to be in control of my actions, thank you very much," she says, letting Daniel know that this is a remnant still of her time with a Goa'uld in her. "But I didn't know I wasn't supposed to, so yeah, I've had a couple of drinks. I didn't hurt it, did I?" she asks, turning nervously to the nurse, and putting a hand over the belly.
"Well, no, probably not. New studies show that one or two drinks a week are probably not harmful to the baby," the nurse says.
"What?" Daniel says, turning away from the nurse, "Look, no more drinking ok?"
"She says its fine," Vala says.
"I don't care! We're not taking risks with our kid," he says.
"So this coffee is an evil thing, is it fact or fiction?" Vala asks, looking at the nurse.
"No more than a cup a day," the nurse nods.
"Ha!" Vala says, turning to Daniel.
"None, Vala, none," he mutters.
"I should probably get your medical history down and let the doctor handle the rest of your questions," the nurse says. The poor women has obviously been made uncomfortable by their bickering. Most people are the first couple of times that they encounter Daniel and Vala in action. It's only when they see how far from serious the pair of them are that they can relax.
-0-
"I thought we were going home," Vala says as they pull up in front of a jewelry store.
"We're making a stop on the way."
"You're buying me something pretty?" she asks with a wide mischievous grin on her face.
"It's the least I can do; after all, you are having my baby," he tells her.
"Well, if this is an Earth tradition, let me just say it should be more widely advertised on your media. If I get a piece of jewelry for having your babies, I think we should have a dozen."
"Let's just stick with one," he says, kissing her before getting out of the car.
Up until now she had figured he was teasing her, now she doesn't know quite what to do. "Daniel, you know that you seriously don't have to buy me anything right? I mean, this baby was an accident, and the fact that you are letting our relationship continue is honestly enough."
"That is so not enough, Vala, and the fact that you think it is… well, that just reminds me how many people have treated you oh so badly over the years. I am not about to be one of them."
"Daniel you aren't, you are a prince," she says, grabbing his arm in the parking lot.
"Then marry me," he says with his face inches from hers.
"What?" she asks, her stomach dropping out from under her in hope and fear that she is misunderstanding what he is trying to say. He couldn't mean it, could he? Not really?
"This whole cutsie not-a-husband thing, I'm over it, aren't you?"
Her brain kicks in, and she realizes why he is saying all of these things, and why she can't let him marry her right down. Damn. "Daniel, you can't marry me just because some nurse was a jerk to us because we're not married."
"Vala, it's not just going to be her. This not-a-wedding thing, that was before kids were in the picture. Now you're pregnant, and people are going to continue to be jerks to you as long as you are not married."
"That's their problem, Daniel, they are the ones that need to change, not us."
"Yeah, well that's probably true, but they aren't going to change. Then, before too long, there is going to be a kid in the picture too. I'm not going to let people treat my kid like crap just, because I am some stupid superstition that putting a ring on your finger is going to kill you. This isn't some fairy tale, Vala, and I'm not eight anymore."
"I still haven't heard a good enough reason for you to marry me," she says.
His lips quirk into a smile, "I love you."
"That's the one," she says, and he picks her up on impulse, and twirls her around. She giggles.
"So, we're getting married?" he asks.
"Yes," she agrees with a nod of her head, "But we're not doing some big ceremony. We already did that once, and we really were married before, mostly. We'll just get it done as quickly, and quietly as possible and go about our lives. I declare that we consider our not-a-wedding as our anniversary."
"Is that because it's almost here?" he asks.
"I am not about to wait a whole year for my present."
He takes her hand, and they walk toward the jewelry store together, "Are you sure that you are OK with a city hall wedding? If you are not, we can do something fancier."
"Please nothing fancy, in the past year we have had a wedding and so has your daughter. I am weddinged out for a while," she says.