When she was nothing more than a voice inside her own head, lying still and quiet and praying to the gods she couldn't stop believing in, Vala had learned to think so deeply even she wasn't aware of it. She keeps the habit now, one of many she has not been able to set down since the day her body became her own again. She forms her impressions of people quickly, purified down to a single word, a sense-feel more than a sentence: the shape and weight of them all burned in the crucible of her unconscious mind, rendered down into a synaesthetic shining star.

She does it still. Teal'c's word is righteousness: it tastes of spring on a planet she's never set foot on, and small green shoots searching out the sunlight from between the cracks of a rock. Sam's word is discovery, the world a glittering toy to be reached for with both hands and the sense of wonder in every breath, finally fully realized. At first she thought Cameron's word was eagerness, the bad kind of eagerness, the kind where every experience is something to be snatched for and beaten to death against the rocks of some underlying need, but when she finds her way back to them, she is startled to find that she was wrong: Cameron's word is strength. Bedrock run deep, stable and steady. Something changed him while she was away.

Everyone has a word; Vala holds them close inside, deep in her chest, where she's the only one who can taste them. She can't explain them to anyone. She tried, once, fitting clumsy words into place in an attempt to explain to a former partner why he was mercurial: pale and luminous like a second moon rising over a grassy plain. She's learned not to try anymore. She thinks in a concatenation of all the languages she's learned; they spill over each other, separate and recombine and encode for all the sense-memories she can't consciously remember. She has learned not to unpick them too closely.

The word for Daniel, she thinks, is one of those no person but she would ever understand. It has sharp edges, sharp like a knife that will cut you deep to the bone but only so you can heal clean. There's rounded edges too, and the memory of tears, and a deep breathless challenge, unfamiliar in its audacity, glittering like diamonds and just as precious.

The word for Daniel is benevolence.

*

Vala has loved three men in her life; all three of them have hurt her, but in different ways. Her father cared too little; Tomin cared too much. Daniel? Daniel cares precisely, a measure weighed out against the dictates of the world he's bound by. She finds him familiar in his strangeness. He wears his skin like it's someone else's, the same way her body has not been her own since the moment Qetesh claimed her. Even now -- long after Qetesh is dust, after the Ori have had done with her -- she wakes sometimes and must touch: her hand resting against her cheek, her thighs pressed together, the simple motion of one foot rising and being set down again under her own volition. Because she can.

She wonders what nightmares live behind Daniel's eyes; she knows he will never tell her. What she's learned of him, she's had to piece together, bits and scraps whispered down the hallways, rumors and echoes and reverberations. She's seen him wake from the dreams -- on a hundred different planets, in the middle of the night, sitting bolt upright so smoothly she'd think he had simply trained himself to wake when he wished, were it not for the fact that she knows the traces nightmares leave behind. He will never tell her, but someday she will find the courage to ask him anyway; the ways in which he chooses not to tell her will provide as much of an answer as she will ever receive.

Daniel's body isn't his own any more than hers is; she can tell, looking at him, that he considers himself only its custodian. That he forgets, sometimes, to be penned in its confines. She wonders if he dreams himself infinite again.

She finds it a comfort, in a way she can't explain. To him, or to anyone. She thinks, sometimes, that she would like to have been Ascended: to know the mysteries of the world, to return with that secret knowledge slumbering underneath her breastbone. She's chasing after something else entirely (safety, security, home) but knowledge, well, you can bargain it or trade it or just hold it close.

She likes the way she looks, reflected in Daniel's eyes. She thinks, sometimes, that Daniel could re-make the world just by believing it so. When he looks at her, it's a challenge; it's a thrown gauntlet (a charmingly martial metaphor she found while helping him with his research) and an unspoken dare. He believes in her, and that belief helps strengthen her conviction that she can be the person he sees looking back at him.

His belief in her is so strong that when he disappears, it's weeks before she even begins to lose sight of that Vala, Daniel's Vala, the Vala he and SG-1 brought forth from the darkness behind her eyes. And even then, it's nothing more than a ghost-whisper in the dead of night, the sour taste of old bad habits flooding her mouth before she can remember who she's always wished she could be.

When Sam goes too, Vala feels a little bit like drowning. Like it's all coming undone beneath her hands, the knots and promises binding her to herself all unraveling one by one. Cameron tries, but he's too solid, too steady. He doesn't understand how the shifting sands of identity can blow over and cover what you're trying to remember. She sits with Teal'c, candle-fire flickering over his face (he is molten like wax to the shape of her tongue, pliable but never pliant, soft with a core of steel beneath) and tries to bring her mind to stillness. She is bad at stillness; stillness is like death. But Teal'c does not hold it against her. He understands too, she thinks. Enough.

General O'Neill, when he comes, brings with him the taste of apples and the weariness of a hard road, long travelled. Vala has always liked him. He's a kind man, kinder than he ever lets himself be. He's there for Cameron, she thinks, and to close Sam's apartment, and she delivers him up to Cameron with a bit of relief, because somehow she thinks that Cameron needs a kindness nobody here can give.

But the General comes back afterwards, with Cameron nowhere to be seen, and knocks on Teal'c's door with the backs of his knuckles a bare breath before letting himself in. Vala is sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back braced against the foot of Teal'c's bed, with him strong and silent at her side; if she mirrors his perspective, she can sometimes mirror his strength. The candles' flames flutter in the breeze of the General's entrance. Teal'c opens his eyes; his face does not move, but she can feel the umbrella of his awareness -- already stretched to enfold her -- widen further.

"Hey," the General says, soft and understanding, and oh, Vala will never understand the roads they've walked together, but she doesn't have to; she knows what it means when Teal'c tips his chin like that, so subtly no one who wasn't watching would see. There's a whole conversation in their eyes; she averts her own, because it's not something they need her watching. But she can see, out of the corner of her eye, the General fixing his eyes on her, and that makes her look back up.

In the instant between when she lowered her eyes and when she looked back, he seems to have gained a storehouse of energy; he bounces on the balls of his toes like a child, like someone is leashing him when all he wants to do is run free. "You kids want an evening out?" he asks. "Picked up pizza and a beer with Mitchell already, but I could use some company for the rest of it."

Her first thought is oh gods, yes; the weight of the mountain over her head threatens to choke her sometimes. But she hides it, the way she always hides it. If they don't know how much she values it, they won't be able to withhold the outside from her: as punishment, as negotiation. She's about to toss her head and allow that she could see fit to coming along with them -- already preparing the line about how any girl could use two handsome escorts, or maybe something about how an evening always goes better with a little grace and charm added -- when Teal'c stirs slightly and says, "I am content to remain here, but you and Vala Mal Doran need not concern yourselves on my behalf."

Something shifts in the General's face. She can't read it -- too deep for that, too fleeting -- but she gets the sudden sense that Teal'c is giving the General instructions. She just can't tell why. It makes her nervous, and she pushes herself to her feet (ever graceful, ever posed; it is her body, hers, and she will make it do what she requires of it) and leans one hip against the footboard.

"What did you have in mind?" she asks. Knowing it will be read as sultry, as inviting. It's better than being read as lonely and scared.

There's the faintest hint of a twitch around the underside of O'Neill's left eye. "Oh, I dunno," he says. He's pretending just like she's pretending, she thinks. He's pretending at calm. The things that are not being said in this tiny room are enough to drown in. "'Nother beer, maybe, catch whatever game is on. Or if you wanted to do something else. Doesn't matter to me; I just figured nobody's busted you out of jail for a while."

He understands, she realizes. Teal'c has clearance to sign himself in and out; she knows that clearance was hard-fought-for, that O'Neill was the one to first draw the battle lines. She can see, now, in O'Neill's offer, in the surprising grace and generosity of it: he'd be willing to start that battle over again on her behalf if he were here more than he is. But he isn't, and all he can do is offer her an evening out.

But she can also see -- in the weight of his face, in the lines around his mouth, in the sadness in his eyes -- that he is making the offer not just for her, but for himself: that what he is saying to Teal'c is don't make me be alone tonight, and what Teal'c is saying in return is I will not, my brother, but you will be better suited if it is not I by your side, and she feels like she's choking, like she's smothering underneath the weight of the sand that's shifting beneath her feet, and all she wants to do is get out.

"Why don't I just go pack a bag," she suggests, bright and boundless, and gets herself out of there before she can say anything else. Before anyone can say anything else. The history tastes so bitter she thinks she might choke on it.

She's not sure what she expects. She doesn't expect O'Neill to be standing (alone, but that much she would expect; Teal'c would not have followed) outside her quarters when she emerges after an interval carefully timed to give the impression she packed her bag instead of picking up the one she always keeps at hand. (She heard Cameron refer to his "go-bag" once, full of things he would need if he were to need to leave a place in a hurry; she was startled that someone who had lived such a sheltered life would feel the need, but Cameron is a practical man.) O'Neill has his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, and he's leaning against the wall; he does not smile when she steps out, just nods his head, takes her bag, and waves her to fall into step beside him.

"Mountain gets heavy after a while, doesn't it," he says. It isn't an invitation to conversation, just a statement with which she fully agrees. It's odd to hear it voiced by someone who has always been able to come and go as he pleases, but she thinks there is something about the vastness of O'Neill that chokes at wearing chains of anyone's forging, including his own.

She can read the smirk on the security officer-of-the-day's face, and knows what he's thinking. Her pride hurts at it, so she makes herself twice as outrageous; if he is going to talk, let him have something to talk about. She fits herself up against O'Neill's side and smiles wide. Something stops her from curling her arm around O'Neill's waist, but she tucks her hand into his elbow; something, she thinks, amuses him about it, even though his face doesn't move.

She doesn't know Colorado Springs very well yet. When Daniel and Sam take her out, it's always to somewhere; Cameron is more willing to simply let her explore, but Cameron has many pressures on his time. She knows the route to Sam's house, to Cameron's apartment. She realizes, when O'Neill pulls into a parking space in a lot downtown and takes her go-bag out of the backseat, that they are not bound for a hotel; she realizes, when O'Neill pulls out a keyring and unlocks the door to the steps leading upstairs, whose apartment this must be.

"Toss your shit anywhere, make yourself at home," O'Neill says. He illustrates by dropping his keys on the hallway table, kicking off his shoes. There's a flashlight on the table; he picks it up and opens the hallway closet, shining it inside and fiddling with the circuit breakers until the hall-table light comes on.

She stays where she is, just inside the door. O'Neill moves like this is his home, but she knows it isn't. The walls are stark and white, but everywhere she turns there is something else to look at: wood carvings, artwork, artifacts. There is no dust anywhere her eye falls. She can only see the hallway, stretching out and turning the corner, but there is no doubt that this is where Daniel lives, when Daniel lives anywhere, and it feels wrong to be here without being invited.

But O'Neill seems to believe he has the right to invite her, and perhaps it's even true. He carries her bag down the hallway, and she trails along behind him -- the hallway turns into the kitchen; the kitchen fades into the living area; beyond there, another turn and a closed door, which she assumes must be the bedroom. Daniel's apartment is strangely, or perhaps not-so-strangely, labyrinthine. O'Neill waves a hand at the refrigerator (the door standing open and dark; she can see a six-pack of beer as its only occupant) and walks through the kitchen, through the living room, to open the bedroom door and set her bag down on the floor there.

"Thanks for coming out with me," he says. It is the first time, she realizes, that she has ever seen him when he is not surrounded by the trappings of duty. He is somehow both more and less weighed down without them: free of the burdens that compress him, but also left without the boundaries to define himself by. The thought comes into her mind as she looks at him: this fight has made him old. It is the first time she can ever recall using that word for him.

There's no lie in him, no pretense -- not in voice or face -- and so she matches him honesty for honesty. "It's the least I could do. You came all this way to hold us together."

Surprise registers on his face, and a little bit of shock, and she thinks she can see the faintest hint of a sudden understanding. "Used to that part," he says. "One year, ten years, ten thousand. Some things don't change."

And perhaps the shock and the understanding go both ways, because suddenly the words he's not saying take shape and flavor. "You're his home," she says. "That's why we never have team night here. It doesn't feel like home to him without you."

She can see him registering a greater shock, and pain, and a hint of anger. Then he locks down his expression to calm neutrality. The shock tells her she got something right; the pain tells her she got something wrong. "Looks like both of us have hidden depths," he says, and crosses by her to take two warm beer bottles out of the quiescent refrigerator.

"I'm sorry," she says. She doesn't know what she's apologizing for, but the lines of his shoulders tell her she's trod over a boundary.

He waves a hand at her. "Old shit. Not yours. Not your fault."

It is an odd night, and she is feeling out of her depth. That's her excuse for why she allows herself to blurt out, "Let me help."

It startles them both. She can see, as he turns around to face her, that he believes for a bare second that she is propositioning him, but that's all right, because for a bare second, she believes she is also. But their eyes lock, and they both realize she means something else -- something deeper, something broader, something so amorphous the words don't even have echoes behind them.

She feels dizzy, like she's breathing pure oxygen, and she sits down on a kitchen chair and feels like she should be putting her head between her knees. Somehow it's easier to remember who Daniel thinks she is when she's surrounded by all these pieces of a life that don't even seem like they belong to him.

Some mercy moves in O'Neill's face. She doesn't know how he keeps secrets; his eyes alone are an open book. "We can both forget you said that if you'd like," he offers.

She presses the flat of her hand up underneath her breastbone. Her heart feels like it's going to flutter out of her chest: like a bird, like a butterfly. "I should say some line about being unforgettable," she says, small and soft, and then the words keep spilling: it has been so long since she has spoken truth that it comes out almost like a wail. "I don't know what you people have done to me."

The last bit of suspicion O'Neill is holding collapses. "Daniel," he says, in a tone that indicates it is an explanation for a universe's worth of variance. She supposes it is. She knows that much, at least. She wonders what boundaries of O'Neill's Daniel has rewritten over the years, for him to be looking at her with such compassion in his eyes.

Vala grabs at the tattered shards of her self-control and presses them firmly into place. She can't come undone: not here, not now. Not in front of him, no matter how much she is beginning to believe that he would not think any less of her for it. "I'll be right back," she says, and O'Neill watches her stumble back into the hallway where they entered, where she dimly remembers passing a bathroom on the way.

The face of the woman in the mirror is pale, and her eyes are wide and luminous. She leans over the sink and lets cool water run over her hands, presses it against her cheeks. They're burning. She doesn't even know why she's upset.

It takes her a few long minutes before she feels like she's ready to face the world, or at least General O'Neill, again, and she waits a few minutes longer than she thinks she needs, just to walk the line between giving herself enough time to get settled and giving herself so much time that she can recognize it as putting things off. She's gotten a little bit of her color back, at least. That's saying something.

She puts a little bit of extra swing in her hips as she saunters out of the bathroom, just enough to feel like she's back in control. Turns out to be wasted effort; O'Neill isn't in the kitchen anymore, and she can hear the sound of the television (turned low) down from the living room. She squares her shoulders and makes her way on over.

He's sitting on the couch; there's only one light on, and it's nothing more than a gentle glow. It and the television play across his face, which is serene in the darkness; she gets the impression he's grateful for her disappearance giving him time to compose himself as much as she's grateful she took the time to compose herself. He's got a bottle of beer to hand, and another one sitting on the coffeetable, parked right next to where he's got his feet settled. He doesn't look up at her.

Her first impulse is to swagger across the room, drop down at his side and re-establish herself as a center, a focus of attention. Something to be admired, to be desired. Because it's her first impulse, coming so soon on the heels of what she can only describe as a temporary loss of sanity, it's suspect. She checks it down to nothing more than a little bit of extra swish. She leaves a careful hand's-length between them; somehow it's different, here, than it was in the mountain. It's just the two of them here.

O'Neill accepts the silence, nudging the beer fractionally closer to her with one foot. She leans forward and picks it up. Squints at the screen. She has never cared much about the watching of sports, but she has learned to hold her own in a conversation with the SFs about them. "Are we cheering for the Avalanche or for the Islanders?" she asks.

His answer is so automatic it feels as though he's given it a hundred times. "We're cheering against the Islanders," he says. Then blinks. "You follow hockey?"

"Some," she says. Then adds, "Mostly so I can win large sums of money off people who believe that an alien can't understand Earth sports well enough to recognize a winning proposition."

He snorts into his beer. "Must be the new guys. The old hands figured out quick that they shouldn't ever bet against Teal'c, at least."

It makes her smile. "Well, I have been asked to make several bets on his behalf. He offers a generous commission, at least."

"That's my boy," O'Neill says. When he grins at her, it's like he's inviting her to share a secret. It's bright and surprisingly boyish; she finds herself grinning back before she can help it.

*

She doesn't know what she was expecting, but it winds up being a surprisingly domestic evening. He doesn't seem inclined to conversation, and she doesn't try; she just curls up against the arm of the couch, tucking her feet up and to her side, and splits her time between watching the television and watching him. His face is animated in the darkness; she likes watching the thoughts go by, even if she can't read all of them. He's thinking of calm things, she thinks, and not at all of disasters that might be brewing.

It reassures her. She's not entirely sure why, except that there is something about this man that strikes her as an emotional bellwether. If he is not worried, there is no need to be worried. As an afterthought, she rests her bare toes up against his thigh. He doesn't pull away; indeed, when she flexes her toes against his jeans, he drops one hand to cover the arch of her foot. Not to push her away. Just to leave it there. It's the only sign she can find of what he might be thinking; he doesn't look at her, but the way he strokes his thumb over her arch feels shockingly intimate.

She's just starting to wonder if it's a sign or a cue, if she's supposed to make the next move or if he isn't interested in anything more, when he says, quietly, "You can take the bed; I'll sleep out here. Won't bother me if you stay up for a while."

It's a lie; she knows that without having to probe further. He'll be the type who sleeps with one eye open whenever there's someone unfamiliar in his radius. She knows too many of them. She's not sure how anyone could ever believe the impression he likes to project of being harmless; this man is so far from being harmless that she wonders how long he's been at war. A very long time, she thinks. Still, perhaps it's a polite fiction he likes to maintain; he's certainly beloved enough at the SGC for them to defend that fiction for him.

He also, she thinks, doesn't want to be left alone with his own thoughts. He brought her here because he doesn't want to be lying in the darkness in Daniel's apartment. In the apartment where he and Daniel have done... what? She's still undecided about what they've been to each other; she hasn't seen them together enough to be able to read them properly, particularly since Daniel breaks all of her experience of somatic cues. Still, she thinks that whatever ties hold them together, those ties are strong enough to bring him here, looking for some small thread of connection with a man no one is even sure is alive anymore, instead of to an anonymous hotel room where he could sleep with as much ease as he ever manages to.

She flexes her toes against his thighs again. "Yes, it will," she corrects.

He turns his head to look at her and raises an eyebrow. She likes his face; it's the kind of face that someone actually lives in. She hasn't seen that often so far on Earth. She thinks, maybe just a little, that Sal reminded her of O'Neill in some ineffable way, and that's why she was drawn to him. "Yes, what will?"

"Yes, it will bother you if I stay up for a while. You don't sleep if there are people awake around you." She isn't sure why it's important that he knows she can read him. It just is. Maybe he needs to know that with Daniel gone, there's still someone who can see him. She isn't sure why she knows that Sam doesn't see; she isn't sure why she knows that Teal'c politely refuses to look.

Vala knows a lot of things about a lot of people, and she keeps ninety percent of those things held close to her chest, like a hand of cards she hasn't yet decided whether or not she's betting.

"Huh," he says. "You're awfully sure of yourself."

She holds his eyes and doesn't back down. "I'm not wrong."

"No," he says. "You're not."

It sounds like he's trying to cut off the conversation at the knees, but she doesn't let him; she digs her feet under his thighs and finishes off the last of the second round of beer he brought back half an hour ago. "You've never slept on this couch before," she says. Daring; she actually isn't positive. But it's a likely bet, and she's never liked it when people lie to her, even if they're just lying by implication. "Or if you have, it hasn't been for a very long time."

She isn't sure what she's expecting. She certainly isn't expecting the way he grabs her wrist, hard and sharp enough to bruise. "You've been listening to gossip again," he says. His voice is dangerous.

She can feel her heart pounding in her chest again, knows that he can feel her pulse fluttering underneath his fingertips, but she makes herself tip up her chin and keep her gaze steady. "I don't have to. I'm not an idiot, no matter how much some people persist in treating me like one, and we are, after all, sitting in an apartment owned by someone who's very possibly dead. One needn't be a genius to put two and two together."

"Daniel isn't dead," he says. Hard and fast and certain. It isn't the automatic contradiction of someone who refuses to face reality; it's the bone-deep conviction of someone who knows, knows beyond measure, that he is correct. She takes comfort from the strength behind his voice. It feels like the sun-warmed naquadah of a Gate left in the sunshine.

He drops her wrist. She does not rub it; she's won a little bit of ground, and she doesn't want to lose it. "You love him," she says.

"It's none of your business."

"You made it my business when you brought me here."

Vala doesn't know why she's pushing the matter so hard. There is no doubt in her mind that this is one of the topics of conversation that is not acceptable; the cold clear set of his face makes that much plain. But she'd offered her help, and she is not so unaccustomed to providing comfort that she has forgotten that often the first step is to establish the parameters in which you will work. Daniel has made her remember that, with his stubborn insistence on saying all the things polite people let pass unsaid.

"You're something else," he says to her. She thinks it might be admiration, might be disbelief.

She laughs. "What was it you said? We both have hidden depths, General."

"Jack," he says. Automatic. The sound of someone who may love his rank, but hates some of the responsibilities that go with it.

"Jack," she repeats. Soft and quiet, testing out the shape of the name. Jack, she thinks, is someone entirely different than O'Neill is.

"I'll get you some sheets out of the linen closet," he says, and stands up. One of his knees cracks loudly; she can hear it over the television, and she winces in sympathy. Part of her itches to liberate the Goa'uld healing device and set to work, but she knows that if he hasn't asked someone to take care of it for him already, he probably has a very good reason.

She stands up as well and trails along behind him. The linens he produces -- with an unerring hand; she has not seen him be uncertain about the location of anything yet -- look well-worn and comfortable. She leans against the door-frame. He's flipped on a light-switch; the color of the light, the brightness after so many hours in the dim, hurts her eyes. She tries not to look too closely at Daniel's bedroom -- she has wanted to be here, but not like this, and it feels far more like an intrusion than she would have expected -- but things keep catching her eye: a bookshelf full of priceless editions, a throw that looks hand-woven, brightly colored, carefully folded and left on an intricately carved rocking-chair in the corner.

"I can do that myself, you know," she says, as he starts shaking out the sheets and making up the bed with neat corners. "And don't change the subject."

"Were we having a conversation?" he says. "I hadn't noticed."

He uses his sarcasm like a weapon. She folds her arms across her chest and studies him. There's something here, something she can't put her finger on. He and Daniel have a long history. She can feel it in his every movement. "Believe it or not," she says, still daring, "you aren't the only person who loves him. I won't say a word."

That makes him laugh. "You don't know him," he says. It should be bitter, but it's just sad instead.

"I know enough," she says. She does. Loving someone doesn't mean you're not blind to their faults; she knows Jack understands this. If she thinks about all the things Jack understands, it will keep her from realizing what she has just said aloud.

He looks up, and in that moment, when their eyes meet again, she thinks he's doing his own version of reading faces to find the secrets underneath, testing the strength of her convictions by testing the shape of how the words live under her skin. She only realizes she's not breathing after he looks back down to where his hands are smoothing down the sheets, mechanical and perfect.

"Daniel's a hard person to love," he says. It takes her a moment to unpack the meanings behind his sentence: he does not mean that it is difficult for someone to love Daniel. Daniel collects affection from the strangest of corners; she's seen it happen, has always wondered at it. People who don't know Daniel at all love him for what they think he is; people who know Daniel a little find him intolerable. People who know Daniel well would die for him. If anyone knows Daniel well at all.

What Jack means is that loving Daniel is a difficult thing: wholly undeniable, wholly insufferable, wholly transformative and uplifing and containing both salvation and damnation. She understands what he means. She wonders what scars loving Daniel has left him, and what scars it's healed.

"We all are, I think sometimes," she says. "It's what happens when the universe keeps trying to break you."

She realizes, a moment after she speaks, that Jack has not tried to tell her that she could not possibly feel what she feels: that his statement was not intended to contradict or invalidate her emotions, not trying to give the impression that she's missing some vital piece of information that only Jack could know. He's just trying to warn her.

He finishes tucking in the top sheet and crosses the room to unfold the throw and spread it out on the bed. "Hasn't managed to finish the job yet," he says. There's something a little bit joyous in his voice, hidden underneath all of the sad.

She wants to touch him. She wants to touch him so badly her hands ache with it; she can imagine the wire and bone beneath the cushion of flesh, beneath the soft threads of his shirt. She puts her hands in her pockets instead, and says, "For none of us."

"Yes," he says. "You'd know, wouldn't you."

There's admiration in it, and a little bit of understanding. He knows her history; he has never acknowledged it to her face, but she knows he would have moved heaven and earth to find out about her when he knew she was being offered a place on SG-1. They will always be his team. She knows this, and has always known it. It had taken her a period measured in days, not weeks or months, to realize that he was the nucleus around which SG-1 orbits, will always orbit, even if he is long since gone. She's studied his history, too, although she will never tell anyone. They are his team; he made them.

She thinks she might like who she is in his eyes, too. When he looks at her, he doesn't see victim; he sees survivor. It's an identity she's comfortable wearing.

"Stay in here tonight," she says. They're the same words she would use to make an offering of her body, but she makes them carefully neutral, scrupulously asexual in a way she oh-so-rarely tries to be. He raises an eyebrow, opens his mouth to comment. She overrides whatever he's about to say. "With me."

She sees him consider a response and discard it between one blink and the next, but she can't tell what that response would be. "I snore," he says.

She can't tell if it's a negative answer or just a warning. "I kick," she says. "And I steal the covers. And I'm warm and I'm human and I can't be a replacement for anything, but I can keep you from having to remember that he's not here. For a little while, at least."

He doesn't bother denying it. They've moved past that, she supposes. "I don't do one-night stands," he says.

She nods. "I wasn't offering," she says. She'd spread her legs for him in a heartbeat; she has always been attracted to capable men. But she isn't interested in being just another pretty face. She thinks he has enough of those already.

"They don't give you enough credit," he says. It leaves her puzzled; she can't tell what made him decide to say it. She can't see him meaning the rest of SG-1, but she can't figure out who he could mean instead.

She ignores it. He won't elaborate, she knows that much. Instead, she crosses to the bedside, pulls her t-shirt over her head and turns away from him to unhook her bra. It feels odd to be undressing for a man while trying to be less alluring, not more. She isn't used to it. She can feel the weight of his eyes, hot and painful like a cramp in her belly. He's watching her to see what she means by her words, by her actions, she thinks, and he's a little surprised that she's trying so hard.

"I'll lock up," he says, and she can hear his footsteps recede. The front door is too far away for her to hear anything more, but he's back in a moment: doors locked, lights out. She's pulling the sheet up to hold it against her breasts, but she stays sitting up; she doesn't want to concede too much ground.

Daniel's sheets are soft and worn, like they've been washed a thousand times before. They're curiously homey. She wouldn't have expected it, but so much of Daniel's space is unexpected. She wonders how much of it can be traced back to Jack.

Jack douses the bedroom light before he comes over to the other side of the bed, but it's a full moon, or near to it -- she always has trouble reading Earth's skies, and she doesn't get enough practice for it to be familiar -- and she can see clearly enough as he strips off his own shirt, pushes down his jeans. His dogtags swing against his chest as he sits down on the side of the bed to tug his legs free of his pants. She can see the alabaster strength of his shoulders, the splay and shift of muscle and sinew beneath his skin. He leaves his boxers on; they look well-worn and comfortable, and she would steal them in a heartbeat if given the chance.

"I look like her, don't I," she says. It shocks her to hear her own voice. She never imagined she would ask anyone that question, but she cannot ever ask Daniel, and Jack is the only other one who could answer.

He doesn't need to ask which "her" she means; in Daniel's bed, even without Daniel present, there can only ever be one antecedent to that pronoun. Vala tried so very hard to project ignorance when Daniel finally told her of his wife; she'd promised herself well ahead of time that she would, if he ever decided to trust her enough to tell her personally the things she had learned, the gossip haunting the corridors of the mountain like a ghost.

He's surprised by the question, though. "A little," he finally says. "The hair. And the eyes." And then he laughs: not amusement, not precisely, but fondness of a sort she's never heard before. "And bits and pieces of the attitude."

"I think I would have liked to have known her," she says, and presses the sheet to her breastbone a little more firmly, clutching at its folds. "I think I would have liked to have known the Daniel who knew her."

Jack pauses. "It was a long time ago," he says. "We were all younger then."

She nods, even though he's not looking at her. Her heart feels too big in her chest, and she couldn't explain why. "I try so hard not to hurt him," she says. It's important that Jack understand.

He sighs, and his shoulders ease a bit. "I know," he says. It sounds like an ending, like punctuation, and he stretches out on the bed next to her; she thinks it's his way of ending the conversation. But he surprises her again. "Come here."

She turns her head, startled. The moonlight picks out his cheekbones, makes them stand in sharp relief. He pats the bed at his side, indicating. She hesitates for only a half-second more before lying down next to him, holding herself apart from him in careful distance. He makes a rotating gesture, and she hesitates again.

"Turn over," he says, out loud. She does. He fits himself up against her, warm and solid. Her skin cries out at the contact.

He smells like sunshine and gunpowder and plain clean soap. He keeps his hands on the outside of the covers, chaste and asexual, draping his arm over her hip. She sighs and softens back against him. It feels so good to be held.

"Don't try too hard not to hurt him," he says. His breath stirs the hair at the nape of her neck. "Sometimes it's the only thing that keeps him from flying away."

She understands what he means. She has read of angels in her studies of Earth's culture; she cannot understand how the stories of such terrible, beautiful otherness have been boiled down and had all their mystery stripped away, turned into smiling children with white robes and golden halos. She has read their Bible; in it, the first words an angel must say is fear not. When she looks at Daniel, when Daniel has forgotten to put on his mask for public viewing, sometimes she can envision him saying that. There is something pure and untempered about Daniel: not beauty, not power. Just other. Like he has one foot set in a world none of them can ever understand, can never hope to experience. It's comforting to know she's not the only one who sees it.

What she cannot understand is why Jack is telling her this. He sounds resigned, like he wouldn't be surprised to find that she has found herself back to this bed by Daniel's invitation. She is suddenly not sure at all whether Jack and Daniel are lovers or not. She thought she knew, but the sound in Jack's voice is the sound of a man who has no lasting claim, and that's wrong for what she's seen.

"I don't want --" she starts, but she can't figure out how to end it. His hand tightens on her hip. She sighs. It's dark and it's quiet, and she may never get this chance again. "I didn't realize he was yours."

"He isn't anybody's," Jack says. "He won't let himself be. If you can't live with that, just walk away."

He doesn't mean walk away from SG-1; he means walk away from Daniel. From making of herself an offering-up to Daniel. Because of course he knows she has; of course he knows she wants to. He is not a stupid man, and, she thinks, he cannot conceive of a world where someone would not want Daniel; his own want blazes so brightly it colors it all.

She thinks she can see the shape of their tragedy, finally. Around the edges. The outline of it, at least, and oh, she knows he would not accept sympathy, but he has hers anyway.

She turns, under the sheets and under his hand, to face him. Her breasts press up against his chest. "Let me help," she says again. This time it doesn't scare her to say it.

He looks at her. His face is serious, calm. "Old hurts," he says. He's trying to be casual, but it doesn't quite work. "They're livable."

No, she thinks, looking at his face in the darkness. They're not. He's decided to live with them, but there's a long gap between deciding to live with something and it being livable. For the first time in hours, she thinks of Teal'c's face, strong and silent, as he sent her away with Jack. She wonders how much Teal'c knows. She knows it's always more than most people might think. She wonders what it means that Teal'c sent her; she wonders again what that facial conversation she couldn't read between the two was really saying.

The knowledge that Teal'c sent her away with his blessing, the knowledge that Teal'c knows her -- understands her, believes that he can predict her actions with greater accuracy than most people could manage -- is what makes up her mind. She is careful to telegraph her moves, careful to give Jack a clear picture of what she intends. He doesn't pull away. She tips up her face, keeping her eyes on his, and -- softly, carefully, moving with calm deliberation and a grace and benevolence she didn't know she could command -- presses her lips against his.

His mouth is soft; his lips are warm. A quick shock runs through his body; she can feel it through her chest, pressed up against his. For a minute, he holds himself otherwise still, and she thinks that she's made a horrible miscalculation. Then he shudders again, and with a small choked noise, he's kissing her back, dark and hungry.

She knows better than to think sex is a solution, but this is the first time she's ever intended a kiss as nothing more than comfort. She hopes he can read it in the way she means.

He kisses like it's the end of the world and she's his only comfort. It makes her heart pound, makes her cunt tingle, and she's tempted, so tempted, to roll over onto her back and pull him on top of her. But then Daniel's disapproving face swims before her closed eyes, and she breaks off and pulls back, breathing hard.

Jack rests his forehead on hers. His fingers close on her hip, rough and demanding, but she thinks he might have forgotten about them. She can feel the heat of his erection stabbing into her thigh.

"I'm sorry," she says, quietly. He's moved closer. She can feel her breath reflected against his lips. "I didn't mean to --"

"Be quiet," he says. Sharply. Then he's kissing her again. His hand leaves her hip, rubs -- hard -- up her back. Digs into the muscles of her shoulderblade, then tangles in her hair. She can hear herself making a tiny whimpering noise as he pulls her head back to expose her throat for his tongue.

She closes her eyes. Her hips are rocking against his, and oh, gods, she wants: wants the comfort, wants the presence, wants the touch. "Jack," she says. A warning. "Jack."

He looks up at her. His eyes are two dark wounds. "I said, be quiet," he says. "Unless you're telling me that I'm sleeping on the couch."

She brings a hand up and rests it against his cheek. "We shouldn't," she says. "It isn't the answer."

He laughs. It sounds like the sound of a heart breaking. "Depends on the question," he says, and rolls over so that he's sitting on her hips.

The sheet tangles between them. She can feel the heat of his thighs; the moonlight catches the dogtags around his chest and glimmers there. His weight is a reassurance, a comfort. This isn't her bed.

It isn't his, either.

He looks down at her like she's a sentence written in a language he doesn't speak. She pushes herself up to her elbows; her hair spills over her shoulders. The apartment warmed up hours ago, after he turned the heat back on, but she still feels cold enough to shiver. Or maybe it isn't the cold. She doesn't know this man, but she understands him anyway, and she understands that he'll hate himself in the morning. But he won't hate her.

Maybe it's enough. Maybe nothing would be enough. She doesn't know. She can't guess at what's going on inside his head, what's making him cup her breasts in his hands and flick callused thumbs over her nipples. Her breath catches in her throat, but she fights the urge to let her head fall back. The cold's not only in the room; it's also in the pit of her stomach, like a living thing. "I won't be your amnesia," she says.

He stops. For a second, she sees rage in his eyes. He locks it down quickly, but it makes that gaping hole in her chest get bigger. "Not what you said a few minutes ago," he says.

And that brings her own anger up: up past the desire, up past the loneliness, up past the uncertainty. "You know what I mean," she says. "You know what I meant. You will not use me to run away."

She's suddenly aware that he has her pinned, as effortlessly, as casually, as Qetesh ever had. Except he can only control her body, never her mind, and maybe that's the difference that keeps her from fighting.

"Oh, honey," he says, and there is nothing of kindness in his voice. "You have no clue."

"No," she says. "I might not. But if you're touching me, you're touching me."

For a second, she thinks he might strike her. Might roll off her and stalk out, might walk away and never be seen again. Might put his fist through a wall or into her face. Then he laughs again. Razors, this time, and knives that cut you deep. "Deal," he says, and he seals it with his mouth.

His skin burns like the way it burns to hold lightning in your hands and harness it. He makes her think of Qetesh standing up her body with spine held straight and arm extended, forcing someone to kneel. It's the same kind of elemental force; her only defense is that he's not taking anything she isn't willing to give. Vala has fucked men and she's fucked women, alone and together, as comfort and as weapon and as healing and as advantage. This is the first time she's fucked someone who was just as dangerous as she is.

It gives her chills. She wants to struggle, wants to regain some ground, but he's got a hand twisted in her hair again, his ankles hooked backwards over her knees, and she can't move anything but her arms. So she grabs his tags, wraps the chain around her palm, and pulls, because she's not going to be the only one in this bed who's leashed.

He hisses against her mouth. She licks at his lips (open up, open up for me) -- it's cold in here, and she's shivering, and he's going to think that means she's scared. She's not scared. She's a little bit angry and a hell of a lot turned on, and she wants to reach inside his mouth and pull out all the words he's hiding, see what they taste like.

"Little con artist," he's saying against her skin. "Thief and schemer and liar."

It takes her a minute for the words to start to make sense. They cut through places she thought were well-defended, flay her down and open underneath his hands. She lets his tags drop, pushes at his chest. He captures her wrists, one-handed, like an afterthought. His other hand goes behind him, pushes aside the hem of her panties.

She snarls at him, but he's still speaking. "That's why I let you have them. You know what it means to fight."

So he didn't mean it to be cruel, but it cuts anyway. "Go fuck yourself," she says.

His fingers circle her clit. She shudders against his touch, but he doesn't back off. "Oh, sweetheart," he says, and the worst part is, it's tender. "I have been."

She goes over the edge spitting and snarling, and his eyes don't leave her face. "Come on, honey," he says, his voice a benediction, a blessing, a dare. "Let it go for me."

"Fuck you," she says, through clenched teeth, but her hips are trying to rock up, trying to welcome his fingers in. His hands are made for touching things, for holding things that don't want to be held. She'd call his touch gentle, but it's the kind of gentle that's going to leave bruises anyway. She'll feel it in the morning, the burn of muscles that aren't used to pulling against restraint.

"Yeah," he says. "We'll get to that."

Gods of stars and space, she has no idea how she could have ever thought he would be safe. He's got her wrists pinned, her hips snug between his thighs. She could free her hands if she wanted to. Maybe. She doesn't want to. He's holding on to her, and he's holding close to her, and he's touching her like she's real. Like she's solid. Like she isn't going to fade away to water or dust.

She didn't know how much she needed this until she was here, but oh, gods, his hands, they burn. He circles his fingers around the edges of her cunt, sliding through the wetness there, teasing her until she's ready to scream. She's probably screaming already. "Bastard," she says, and he smiles (quick flash of teeth in the moonlight) and leans back a little more. It's a horrible angle, but neither of them seem to give a damn, because when he sinks his fingers into her and grinds his thumb against her clit, she comes again, hissing words in languages she knows he's never heard before.

She's pulling her wrists against his grip, rearing up off the bed and rocking. He's fucking her so deep she's going to feel it for days, like a stamp, like a brand. He shifts the hand that's holding her wrists, timed like they choreographed it so she doesn't slip free. It's not a restraint. It's an anchor, and she's never needed anything more.

"Come on, sweetheart," he says, so soft and rhythmic he might not even know he's speaking. His hands are demanding, but his voice is like a caress, like he's fitted his palm against her cheek to cradle it. Her own voice is loud in her ears, sobbing with relief. "Come on. I'm not letting go. It's all right."

She arches her back and curls up to meet him, and he laughs when she sinks her teeth into his wrist and screams.

He leaves her limp and drained, against the bed, and lets go of her wrists to press his palm against her chest. Her heartbeat thumps in her ears. He lets the fingers of his other hand slip free, swabbing them dry against the cotton of her panties. She feels like the inside of her head is a cathedral: wide and open and silent, fucked clean and calm.

She doesn't want to be that kind of woman. But he's looking down at her, and she doesn't see anything there but acceptance. "Little con artist," he says, and it's the most affection she's heard from anyone's lips in years. "Don't try too hard to be who he wants you to be. You've still got time."

She pushes herself up on her elbows again. She feels slow, like she left her wits ten light-years behind her. It's a dangerous way to be. "What?"

"To decide for yourself before he decides for you." His eyes are hot on her face, and his smile is sad and edged all at once. "You might be the only person I've ever met who can hold up against it."

There's something there that she doesn't want to think about, lurking in his shadows. She puts it aside. She'll pick it apart later. She licks her lips and shifts her hips -- his weight is starting to grow uncomfortable. He catches the motion and rolls with it, sliding off of her to sit next to her on the bed. There's a part of her that misses the connection already.

"Why?" she asks. There's a hundred things she could mean: why bring her here, why tell her this, why break his own rules to touch her, why open up. She thinks he might hear all of them. She hopes he can; she's too tired to elaborate.

He puts the palm of his hand against the muscles of her thigh and presses downward. He knows right where it hurts; the weight seeps down into her bone and soothes the ache. "Because you love them all, and it's going to put you back together and break you apart all at once."

There are tears in her eyes; she hadn't noticed. She blinks them away, furiously. She'd asked. She'd told him to see her, not whatever half-formed ghosts are living in his head, and she should have known better, because if there's one thing her years have taught her, it's to phrase her requests carefully.

"Now go to sleep," he says. Like he's gotten what he wants from her. Like the need he brought to this bed was to take her apart, get his hands on her and read her thoughts from her skin like it's a carved tablet. Like he brought her here to give her something he thought she needed, and get back something else entirely in return.

The sound of her palm against his cheek is stark and brutal in the air between them. He didn't see it coming. He covers it up well, lifting the back of his hand to his cheek and raising a pointed eyebrow, but there's surprise and a curious approval, written across his face right along with the mark that'll stay there until morning at least. She didn't put too much weight behind it, but she didn't have to. She knows how to make her displeasure known.

"When you decide to give me advice," she says -- fighting to keep her voice even, fighting to keep from showing him how badly the thought of being manipulated makes her want to cry or to scream -- "you do it without being a condescending prick."

She's scored another point; it's plain as day. Apology flashes in his eyes. For a second, she almost even believes in it. "Wasn't trying to --" he starts, and then closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Lets it out. "Yeah," he says. "Sorry. Out of practice."

And suddenly they're right back where they started, with her wondering what habits Daniel's trained him into. What methods Jack's learned to make his points and get the hell out of the way before the storm breaks. And she realizes what he's doing.

"You're trying to fix me," she says. It should upset her. It should infuriate her. It doesn't. It makes a small soft blossom of warmth unfold in her chest.

He can't meet her eyes. "Force of habit."

She pushes herself up onto her knees and takes his face between her hands. He fights it, but only for a second, though he still won't look directly at her. She drags his chin up until his gaze comes with it, and once she's caught that gaze, she uses everything she's ever learned of fascination to keep him there for her to study.

She learned more about Daniel from standing in his living room and observing the space he's made for himself than she learned in weeks, in months, of trying to get him to talk to her. She's learning more about Daniel from sitting here next to this man (and there is no doubt in her mind anymore that the proper word is lover, but it's crisp and brown and sere like autumn) and observing the spaces Daniel has left in him than she would have if she'd studied Daniel for the rest of their lifetimes.

She's not entirely certain she likes what she's seeing.

"Look at me," she says, to Jack, to the secrets he carries. She's powerful now; she's seen the lines of his broken places. He's let her see them. She doesn't know why he let her in this far, but it's a weapon, and she'll use it. "Look at me."

"I am," he says, his voice an undertone.

She shakes her head. Her hair brushes against her bare shoulders, spills down her back. She strokes her thumbs along his cheekbones. "If you want to try to fix me, you have to put up with me trying to fix you as well."

That makes him laugh, although she's not sure why. He closes his eyes for a fraction of a second longer than a blink. When he opens them again, they're almost merry. "Sweetheart," he says, "I gave that up for a lost cause years ago."

"Well, too bad," she says. "You brought me here."

Here, to Daniel's apartment, to Daniel's bedroom, to Daniel's bed. Because it's where he feels comfortable; because he's trying to reclaim it; because he didn't know where else to go. All of them, or none of them. She's not sure. All she knows is that he wouldn't have brought her here if it wasn't an outstretched hand, and all his attempts to try to yank that hand back have been nothing more than the reflexes of a man who doesn't see any road to redemption.

Vala has never been anyone's redemption before. And she knows better than to think one night, one hour, can provide it. But it's a start. She's figured out enough about who Vala is (what Daniel has tried to make of her) to be able to catch that outstretched hand and hold on to it.

She shifts her weight. He's sitting down, and she's kneeling up; it puts them on a level, or close enough to it. Enough that she doesn't have to crane her neck. She kisses him like an offering, like she's the goddess Qetesh always wanted to be in the silence of their shared mind: benevolent, beloved. He holds himself still -- again; she is seeing the pattern, of someone who has learned to be wary. To test the waters before he commits.

She strokes her hands down his cheeks, skims them over his chest and down his sides, and he sighs and softens and melts beneath her touch. She tries to put her promises into it. Not the kind of promise her American magazines and American talk shows tell her she should be giving, but the kind of promise she thinks he'll understand better instead: no strings. No surprises. Just this.

His cock is only half-hard beneath her palms, but she can feel the dampness of the thin material of his underwear stretching over it, and she strokes him with the lightest of touches, waiting to see if he's one of the men who find it more ticklish than arousing. He groans against her mouth, though, and she can feel him straining to hold on to something: some fact, some secret, some memory he doesn't want to let go.

And she remembers. I don't do one-night stands.

And she thinks it's all right, because she loves him a little -- loves all of them, a little and more than a little, and her heart feels like cracking with the weight, with the way it expands and unfolds -- and she knew what she was walking into. Knew it where she wouldn't let herself see. But Teal'c sent her here, and suddenly she knows (is conscious of knowing) why. Because Teal'c would die for Jack, and Jack would die for Daniel, and Teal'c is doing all he can to make sure that Jack won't die of Daniel.

Maybe she won't be the one to save Jack. But she can damn well be a rope, thrown for him to catch or to discard as he will, and the prospect of being tied to someone -- being tied to him, being connected -- doesn't scare her in the least. It makes her want to pull him closer.

Vala's never had anyone she'd die for. Or anyone who'd die for her. She's never been tied or bound so tightly, never wanted to be held so near. But right now, all she wants to do is to climb up into his skin and hold him, let him hold her. Let him see that there's other answers to a question he's not even conscious of asking.

"Come here," she says, her voice low and throaty, and he breathes out like he's been punched in the stomach and lets her roll them both over until they're lying down again. She runs her hands up his sides, and he settles between her thighs. His hips grind against hers; she can feel his cock stirring, filling.

She can feel the ridges of invisible scars along the lines of his back. It's a metaphor, she thinks. A memorial. He buries his face in her shoulder and breathes like he's been running for years. She wraps her arms around him and holds, so tightly she thinks she will mark him, and the thought of him walking away with her fingerprints on his skin is a triumph not of ownership, but of care.

"I'm not letting go either," she says, and his head comes up so he can search her face again. She doesn't smile. She's lied to too many men by smiling at them, and there isn't room for anything but truth in this bed.

"You don't --" he says, but she shakes her head and he falls silent, as if bidden.

"Yes," she says. "I do. I am. Come here." She licks her lips. "Please."

And maybe these people place too much weight on manners, or maybe he's just been waiting to be needed, because he shivers again and then he's pushing himself up: up to slide out of his boxers, up to skin her out of her panties, to tuck his fingers in their bikini strings and tug so deftly she barely has to lift her hips for him to pull them free. He opens the bedside table (and oh, his hand falls unerringly into its depths, surfaces with a little red packet; another sign) and kneels between her legs while he rolls the condom on with the ease of long practice.

"Not pity," he says. She's not sure which one of them is supposed to be pitied, her or him, but either way, she nods.

"It's all right to let go," she promises. Because she can tell he needs to. And he fits his body back over hers, all weight and skin and desperate quiet energy, and she lifts up her hips and welcomes him in.

*

It's hours before they are finished with each other, until her whole body is humming with quiet exhaustion and a bone-deep satisfaction. Jack sleeps like a baby, draped over her side with his forehead tucked in the curve of her shoulder. She combs her fingers through his hair until it's too much trouble to move; she is still thinking about the meaning of the promises she's made when sleep catches her and pulls her under.

She wakes, in the morning, to the smell of coffee and the sounds of someone moving about just at the edges of her awareness. It takes her a moment to remember where she is, and then she slides out of the bed and picks up Jack's t-shirt from the floor where it's still lying. It smells like his skin, but that's all right; so does she.

"Morning," he says, when she emerges from the bedroom, her fingers working at the tangles of her hair. He's sitting in his boxers at the kitchen table, newspaper propped up against a mug of coffee. She wonders where the newspaper came from. She doesn't need to wonder where the coffee came from; it is Daniel's apartment, and even if there is nothing else in the cupboard, there is coffee.

"Morning," she echoes. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for some sign that he's realized what they've done and regrets it.

"Coffee's up, if you want some," he says. She hesitates in the doorframe, but the coffee smells heavenly.

He stretches out one arm as she goes by, curling it around her waist and tugging, lightly. She goes where she's steered, and spills into his lap. He releases her as soon as he's sure she won't fall; it's a sign, she realizes. A symbol. A way of saying it's all okay, and that everything past here is up to her.

So she kisses him, light and sweet, like the way she's learned to drink her coffee. He's smiling at her when she pulls back again. This time, it even reaches his eyes. "Good morning," she says again, and rests her palm against his cheek. She was wrong; there's no mark from where she slapped him. She's grateful for that much, at least.

Maybe he's different in the daylight. Maybe they both are.

"I'll run you up to the mountain as soon as we both catch a shower," he says. "You in any hurry?"

"No," she says, truthfully. Daniel is gone, and Sam is gone too; they are doing nothing more than biding their time. If she's late, nobody will care, except perhaps Cameron, and Teal'c will tell him where she is. She's been taking the evening shifts of Sam-sitting, talking to empty air in the lab where Sam disappeared, keeping her company (because they will not believe she is gone entirely). Somehow, Vala thinks Sam would understand if she's a little bit late.

Jack raises an eyebrow. "How much not a hurry?"

She raises her eyebrow right back in mimicry. "I suppose I needn't show up at all, as long as I let someone know not to expect me. Did you have something in mind?"

"Haven't been to the zoo lately," he says. "I'll buy you some cotton candy."

She considers the offer. It's not what it looks like on the surface; she's starting to realize that Jack is both exactly what he appears and nothing like what he appears, simultaneously and eternally. But she's pretty sure that what he's offering is a chance to step out of their lives for a few hours, to see whether -- without all the pressure of the roles they have to play -- there is something they can build into a connection.

He is offering her, she realizes, a chance to take a look at Jack O'Neill. Or at the other side of Jack O'Neill, the side she has always known must be there, the side he's managed to hold on to with tooth and claw in the shadow of the Jack she spent last night facing down. He's offering her a morning of courtship, of freedom from responsibility, of settling in and testing the boundaries and seeing whether or not she wants to spend more time with him.

"I'd love to," she says quietly. To all of it.

He doesn't smile, but he nods. "I'll write a note for the principal," he says. "We'll play hooky together."

She has no idea what he's talking about, but it's all right; she can gather the drift. She rests her fingertips on his lips. "Thank you," she says. For all of it.

He strokes his hand over her hair. Tugs lightly at a knot -- her hair is hopelessly matted and tangled, but he was the one to tangle it, and she knows some men find that a trophy. But he only undoes the snarl. "Thank you," he corrects.

"I don't know what I want," she says. It's suddenly important for her to be honest: brutally, shamefully honest. "I don't know what I'm looking for. I have no idea what I'm capable of giving."

"It's all right," he says. "It's more than you think."

And this, this is faith. Daniel believes in her, but Jack has faith. It's like mirror-twins: Daniel sees possibility, but Jack sees reality. She thinks that might be the essence of who they are, the essence of why Jack seems more at home here than she can imagine Daniel ever being, the essence of why Jack needs someone to hold on to in the middle of the night. Someone who won't slip away if he turns his attention aside for a moment.

The shape of Jack's strength stretches in front of her, spread out like diamonds scattered across dark cloth. It's a hard curse to bear, to see the universe as it actually is, instead of as you'd like to see it. She came to terms with that one a long time ago.

There's so much history here, and she might never understand it. But there's a space for her, and she thinks she might like the boundaries and the confines it offers.

She still isn't sure why now, why her. But it doesn't matter. Maybe it's just the way it's supposed to be.

"I'll take a shower," she says. But she doesn't move. His arm has come to settle around her hip, and his cheek is resting against her shoulder, and she can feel the prickle of his beard-stubble through the t-shirt she is wearing. His t-shirt. She hasn't combed her hair or done her makeup or even washed away the sweat or the lube that her thighs are sticky with. He's still looking at her like she's beautiful, like it doesn't matter.

She wants, sharply and with all her heart, to kiss every scar that made him who he is. Not to make it better, but to tell him that it's all right to let them heal. She wants to stay here in this sun-drenched kitchen all day and spin out tales of every struggle she's triumphed over, watch his eyes for approval and let him soothe every inch of her skin with patient hands. The depth of her wanting scares her like nothing's scared her in years.

"There's time still," he says. His hand tightens against her hip again. She thinks she understands. She thinks it frightens him too. She thinks all he's ever wanted are these moments of quiet domesticity, of freely given affection and the promise of no responsibility for a while. She thinks it's a tragedy that the universe has maneuvered him into a place where it's nigh-impossible for him to receive it.

She thinks: this is what it feels like, to know that you could fall in love.

The thought makes her want to retreat, to laugh it off, to say something cutting and witty and casual. She stops herself. That's for the people who don't matter. Instead, she rearranges her weight on his thighs, planting her heels on the cross-bar underneath the chair, and fits herself up against his chest. He's right. There's time still, and they, neither one of them, have taken that time for a while.

He undoes each of the knots in her hair, one by one, with a touch so gentle she barely registers it as anything at all. She breathes in the smell of him, rich and rounded, and thinks: maybe it's all right to take a few moments to remember to be happy.

*

He walks her down: down through each security checkpoint, through every elevator, through corridors and doorways. She can smell fresh air and sunscreen, and her lips taste of pink cotton candy and his mouth. He delivers her to Teal'c, who is sitting watch in an empty lab in silence. Teal'c's eyes fall on Jack's hand, resting in the small of her back, and then move away. She thinks she can see a hint of relief in the way he inclines his head, but she still can't read the conversation he and Jack are having in the air between them.

Jack is gone by evening, flown away back to his Washington, leaving her alone with her team. His team. He does not kiss her again before he leaves, but she wasn't expecting him to. He is O'Neill in the mountain, and O'Neill won't reach for her. It's all right. They all have masks they have to wear.

The word for Jack is security. It tastes like spun sugar in the sunshine and the promise of something so real as to be frightening. It's the burn of her thighs and the knowledge that neither he nor she will break. It's the unspoken offering and the knowledge that they're both waiting for someone, for more than one someone, to come home.

She does not see him off. She has better things to do than to watch him walk away, and she wants to see what he'll do when he comes back.

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