Room: Temple Room (with redfive_wizard)

Inventory: In a military issue bag: three changes of clothes, make-up, hair curlers and hair accessories, a pocket knife (complete with a flashlight, nail file, and screwdriver), a lock pick, a lock-cutter, a glass cutter, a wire cutter, and pliers.

Mobile Frequency: 8.412

Vala has given her number to:
Dairine Callahan

Vala has programmed in her mobile:
Dairine Callahan

The first sunset I ever see on Earth, I am with Daniel.

I spend the afternoon, begging for him to take me out of the mountain. It occurs to me, at this time, that I have seen so much of the universe, so much beyond the Stargate, but so little of this rock they so lovingly call Earth. I grow restless and weary of the dark walls of the complex and the artificial glow of the television, a pass-time Teal'c wishes I would grow much fonder of.

As suppertime approaches, Daniel caves and promises to take me out. No one else wants to come. Sam fiddles with some charts in her lab and tells me she's far too into her study of something that I couldn't possibly pronounce. Teal'c assists her in his quiet and gentle way. I look at Daniel across the table, and in his eyes reflects a certain discomfort that I fear is caused by his realization that it's going to be me and him.

Like a date.

I don't bring it up because I'm smarter than that, I know the dirty look he is bound to give me so I'll save it for the next time he and I go somewhere alone. But this, I know, is our first date, and the heavy silence that bears down on us as he drives to the restaurant is stifling. But, I can't shake that feeling that I get when I am alone with him. Like the world has stopped spinning and it's him and me and nothing else but the gentle lull of him breathing and the dark brown specks in his eyes.

The air is warm; summer is beautiful on this world, not much like mine at all. My world is often cold and mostly barren, and my father could never take me to a restaurant. On my world, only the wealthy and well-bred eat outside their homes. Here on Earth, it's different. Daniel and I sit on a patio outside, the air hangs heavy with spices and warm laughter, and over the horizon of the buildings the sun is setting. Red, oranges, blues, purples; all the colours I can dream splash across the warm air, and Daniel is quite as I watch my first Earth sunset, in the first warmth I have felt in ages, so different from the cold of space.

I turn to thank him but the look in his eyes tells me it is unneeded, that I must not break my charade, I must not care and I must not falter, I must not show a weakness to beauty because then he will know I am a lie.

In silence, I bask in the summer warmth, the glow of the sunset and the reflection of Daniel's dark eyes in the dusk.

Vala does not remember much of who she was before she became who she is. She remembers her father, his face coarse and stiff beneath her own plush, sticky child-like fingers. She remembers her stepmother's dark eyes, not unlike her own, but always different enough to remind Vala that she was born of another woman.

Memories of her birth mother come and go in waves. Often a smell, or sound, or feeling. Roses on Earth remind her of the essence that her mother often wore. Vala could close her eyes and feel the soft, fragile cloth of her mother's blouse tickle her cheek. She would lay her head in the crook of her mother's neck, enveloped by that smell, and the soft pat-pat-pat of her mother's frailty beating heart.

Sometimes, alone in the commissary or in her quarters at night she falls into these memories like a trap. Often it is when Daniel speaks of various religions that make her vaguely wonder of her mother's fate. She believes that her own faded memories are simply those of a traumatised child who lost a parent too soon; she wants to believe that they are really the spirit of her mother watching over her.

Vala can recall the stories that her stepmother would tell her of the world after; stories of peace and eternal love. But Vala didn't understand either of these things, and they were lost to her long before she could ever really know them. She fell into a world of thievery and loneliness, but she always had those memories; the smell of her mother stinging playfully in her nose, the lull of a heartbeat.

She wants to believe that her mother's spirit hovers above her, like the angels that Earth religions speak of. But she wakes up to often in the night to the fleeting smell of dying roses, and she remembers she is alone.

First post, slightly older challenge. Spoilers for "Flesh and Blood."

So what next?

Daniel and I are sitting in the canteen. He's avoiding me, but he has scooped up the same spoonful of Jell-O three times now and has yet to meet my eyes. I'm tugging on a strand of hair as I stare down at half-eaten pie. The mess hall buzzes around us, flashes of green and blue streak past the corner of our eyes.

He finally sets down his spoon.

( Read more... )

Vala Mal Doran
Stargate SG1
455 words

These seems to have been finding thier way around the SGC. Not that I have been mucking about in Daniel's e-mail or anything.

( Poor SG-1 )

( Well Teal'c... )