Sunset ^beta

Teyla slips one hand under the cold, metal table and taps a grounding rhythm against her palm; a desperate attempt to stop herself from reaching over the water jug and stabbing the hand of the man smirking at her with the ornate pen he keeps clicking with his thumb. John warned her this would be a challenge, and Sam had spoken at length about the differences between Athosian and Earth hierarchical cultures, but she had not been prepared for this.   

This man—this “bureaucrat”, as Rodney called him—just can’t stop gaping at her, even as he rejects everything she says and talks over all of her replies to his incredibly intrusive questions. She’s never been so utterly dismissed while being so thoroughly scrutinised before.   

It. Is. Infuriating. But Teyla takes great pleasure in imagining what Ronon will do if this James Coolidge calls him “Honey”. 

Vala doesn’t take much notice when Daniel gets all excited about visitors from Atlantis, other than to consider how likely it is he’ll sneak himself into someone’s backpack on the return journey through the ‘gate. They are, after all, in regular contact these days, and the Milky Way has enough of its own problems since the fall of the Ori without everything she has heard about the Wraith on top. 

But when she hears chatter in the mess about an alien being interrogated in the debriefing room, she’s both curious and concerned. Nothing fun ever comes from being questioned for hours by an Earth man in a suit, Vala knows this first hand, so when she overhears in the lunch queue that the alien is a woman from Pegasus, she hands her meal tray to the marine behind her and heads to the elevator. 

“Excuse me,” she says as she squeezes past a group of airmen in the corridor. “Coming through.” 

It’s time for an intervention. 

Teyla bites the inside of her cheek after she repeats her answer a third time, taking care not to expand or elaborate lest she give this man any reason to prolong their interaction. The sooner he gets bored, the sooner she can leave, though the way he keeps asking the same thing in a slightly different way has her bracing for a lengthy extension to the meeting. 

She’s tired and hungry and annoyed. It was late afternoon on Atlantis when she left, early morning here when she arrived, and she's had trouble sleeping of late between the changes to her body and the turbulence in her mind. With the hours stretching so far ahead of her, her patience is starting to wane, so when she hears the door opening behind her, the warm, unapologetic voice is a very welcome interruption. 

“Oh dear,” says Vala, scoping out the room. As she expected, one man in a suit, one woman in an uncomfortable chair, and two glasses of tepid water. “Have I interrupted something?” 

She knows she has, but before the suit can admonish her, the woman in the chair twists around and says, “Not at all. I believe we have overrun our allotted time by several hours.” 

The woman’s face is inscrutable, but Vala remembers what it’s like to sit in that chair, to repeat herself over and over and have no one listen to the alien of questionable intent. She’s a comrade in arms. A kindred spirit. A damsel in distress. 

And Vala is nothing if not a knight in shining armour. 

“Anyone for lunch?” 

“Thank you,” says Teyla the moment the transporter doors shut. There’s a vibration in the floor as they are relocated, and it is disconcertingly different from the transporters on Atlantis. 

“You are very welcome,” replies the woman with the voice of liberation, her smile a sincerity even as her manner is a frippery. “You must have a temperament forged in steel to have kept from overturning the table, or at the very least a chair.” 

“I must admit, I found myself wondering if my people’s alliance with the SGC was worth another hour in that room.” 

"It is," says the woman, "and it isn't. The good news is that the briefing room is in use for the rest of the afternoon. If Mr Coolidge wants to call you back in, he'll have to make his case to General Landry, and I have it on good authority that he is indisposed for the next, oh, twenty-four hours." 

Teyla feels some of her tension dissipate as the doors finally open onto another level. “I will have returned home long before then,” she says, and despite her best efforts, she can’t keep the smile from her face. 

“Mmmm, what a shame," says the woman, her mouth curling at one corner. She leads Teyla down a narrow, utilitarian corridor and holds open a swing door at the end. "Don't worry, I don't intend to monopolise your time," she says as she lets Teyla in ahead of her. "Much." 

Vala watches the Pegasian woman break apart her sandwich and eat it one torn piece at a time. There is something very physical about the way she eats, very handsy. She’s present for every mouthful in a way that the people of Earth rarely are. Today’s menu isn’t the best the SGC has to offer, not by a long shot, but the woman has the air of someone who knows what a series of missed meals feels like, and she doesn’t even blink at the rubbery approximation of cheese or the bread that tastes more like the packaging it was stored in than anything that has been grown in the ground. 

“Vala Mal Doran,” Vala says once the woman has finished the last pallid crust, remembering belatedly that with a woman from Pegasus, her reputation does not precede her.   

“Teyla Emmagan,” says the woman, “daughter of Tagan.” 

The name is familiar to Vala. “You’re Athosian, yes?” she asks. 

“I am.”   

Vala opens one of the little milk cups on her tray and empties it into her mug. “Daniel has mentioned you,” she says, stirring her coffee with a spoon. “Many times. As well as a man called...Hallen?” 

“Do you mean Halling?” asks Teyla, and though Vala often feels like she’s being told off when she forgets something important, like a person’s name, there’s no malice in Teyla’s gentle correction. 

“Yes, that’s the one.” 

“He will be pleased to find out he is fondly remembered by Doctor Jackson. He enjoyed recounting our people’s history when he visited.” 

“Daniel has something of an insatiable appetite for historical knowledge. Even now, after everything he has seen and done, he has a child-like wonder in all things predating his birth.” 

“You are close?” 

“Yes.” Vala spins her mug in her hands. “We’ve been through many trials together. Most were of my own making.” 

“Oh.” Teyla’s gaze drops to the table as she picks up her tea cup. When she looks back at Vala, there’s no scorn in her eyes, but something that could be sympathy. “You are the mother of Adria?” 

“I am,” Vala admits. “Or I was? There’s no easy answer to that question.” 

Teyla nods. “I understand,” she says, and Vala wonders how deep her own regrets lie. 

Teyla is a little surprised by the buzz of activity in the mess. In Atlantis, meals are served at designated times, but though it’s past lunch, there are still people coming and going for food and companionship. She recognises that it has been a difficult few years for the people of the Milky Way, but she is glad to see that things are returning to normal. The conversations around them are jovial and carefree, soldiers and civilians making jokes and plans for the future, both immediate and far away.   

It is hard to call anyone a civilian in the Pegasus galaxy these days, and Teyla is afraid for her people, both Athosian and Earthen alike. She worries that she is losing her humanity a little bit at a time with each difficult choice they face, some that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, but this war has a foe that she has always feared and has only begun to truly understand since they collectively awoke. 

That she has to justify every decision made, every action taken, to a stranger in a strange land who seems unable to even imagine the horrors of the Wraith is another battle she never expected to have to fight.   

“How’s Samantha?” asks Vala, when the silence draws out a little too long. 

Teyla blinks, and it takes her a few seconds to respond. "She is well. She seems to have settled into her position comfortably. I have to admit that I miss Elizabeth, but Colonel Carter is a very experienced leader, and she takes the threat of the Wraith seriously.” 

“You and Doctor Weir were friends?” asks Vala, because even she can see the depth of pain when Teyla says her name. Perhaps Elizabeth is Teyla’s Adria. 

“We were...her absence is a great weight in my heart, but each day it is a little lighter.” 

Her heart. Oh. 

“I am sorry for your loss,” says Vala automatically, because Daniel has drilled into her a sense of social propriety, but she finds she means it. There’s nothing that can heal a loss except to share it with others. With friends. Vala didn’t always know what it meant to have a friend, or to be one, but she’s already willing to share these things with Teyla. 

She doesn’t even know her, and isn’t that something? 

Teyla watches Vala as she returns their lunch trays. She’s an interesting woman, and Teyla is grateful for the way she rescued her from the debrief with nothing but feigned absentmindedness. It was a masterful deception, quick and blameless, though by now she imagines even Mr Coolidge will likely have figured it out. Perhaps not. Perhaps it is more easily appreciated from an outside point of view, and the view Teyla currently has is an intriguing one.   

Vala is leaning on the counter on her elbows, chin in one hand, the other reaching behind the screen as she distracts the airman on lunch duty with a story and a smile. It’s bold, brazen, more guileless than overtly sultry, and Teyla figures that both Rodney and John have either completely misread this woman, or her seductive ways are wishful thinking on their parts. When she has pilfered whatever it is she had her eye on, she leans in one last time to impart a final quip that has the airman laughing and shaking his head. When she returns to the table, she crosses her arms and asks, 

”Wanna get out of here?” 

It’s warm and hazy up on the surface, the afternoon sun past its zenith, and it reminds Vala of the planets she often favoured before she settled down on Earth.  

The moment they slip out of sight of the airmen guarding the entrance, Teyla tilts her head back, basking in the rays, her eyes closed and her entire being more relaxed than it had been in the mountain. The breeze is rippling through her bronze hair, making it shimmer in the sunlight like something rare and priceless. Vala thinks she looks like a goddess. A real one, from the many and varied fables she has heard all across the Galaxy, not like the false one that used to inhabit her, nor the false one she bore. Ethereal and regal, yes, but also physical and imperfect and suddenly so exquisite Vala feels ungainly and unworthy, and something like envy. 

But then Teyla turns her face from the sun to Vala and thanks her again in a voice so sincere, her attention unwavering, and Vala realises it is something else entirely.   

“So beautiful,” says Teyla closing her eyes again, and she could be talking about the trees, the mountains, the birds, or the fluffy white clouds, but Vala wonders if maybe... 

Teyla inhales the sweet, fresh air deep into her lungs as Vala leads them through trees so dense she can taste the needles and the sap on her tongue. Too often these days any trek at all has a purpose, an urgent one, and it is such an indulgence to be able to take her time and listen to the sounds of nature, even with the background hum of urban life somewhere below them. 

It becomes even more of an indulgence when they settle under a tree that stands taller than all the rest and Vala reaches into her pocket and presents her with a cupcake in a paper wrapper. It looks much like the one that Rodney bought her when she told him she was with child, pale sponge and paler frosting, and she remembers fondly the multi-coloured sugar sprinkles that seem to melt into the buttercream. 

“For you,” says Vala, and Teyla takes it and splits it, crumbs spilling out of her hands and onto the grass as she hands half back. 

They sit with their backs against the tree trunk, and Teyla devours the cake with the kind of pleasure she hasn’t indulged in for far too long. She feels Vala’s eyes on her, but far from feeling self-conscious, she feels seen in a way that she only now realises she has been longing for. 

Kanaan is a good man, he will be a good father, but their match is heavy with the burden of responsibility. She doesn’t begrudge the time he spends with others, but she has regrets over the things she has missed and lost in her commitment to the war with the Wraith. It is a very long time since someone looked at her with such uninhibited interest, or perhaps it has simply been a long time since she has slowed down enough to notice. 

Vala can’t take her eyes off Teyla. She is glowing. There’s frosting on her cheek and a leaf in her hair, and somehow the way she is talking around a mouthful of cake is alluring. She’s so carefree, a far cry from the pent-up ball of stress that Vala rescued from the briefing room, and there’s something familiar and comforting about her alienness. Vala likes everything about Earth, likes its people and its places, and its bizarrely contradictory nature, but though it has become her home, there are things about her person and her life that she struggles to acclimatise. Being with Teyla reminds her of who she is, where she’s come from, all the roads that have led to here, and all the roads she might take next. 

Endless opportunities, infinite possibilities. If she would only reach out and grab a hold. 

“You have, uh,” says Vala, and before she can second and third guess it, she’s wiping the frosting off Teyla’s cheek with her thumb. 

Teyla beams at Vala, and for a moment there’s a pressure in Vala's chest, tucked right up against her ribcage. The pressure builds and builds until she finds herself doing something reckless. 

Vala’s lips are soft, the kiss a question, inviting and uncomplicated. It's so easy for Teyla to answer with her own kiss, and she reaches out, invites Vala closer, and pulls her down onto the soft, grassy earth. 

The leaf in Teyla's hair is forgotten and then joined by many others. And maybe neither of them is truly a god, but Vala thinks she still knows how to worship one all the same. 

Teyla props her head up on her arm and watches Vala’s chest rise and fall. She’s not quite asleep, not quite awake, lit by the dappled rays of the setting sun, her dark hair dishevelled and her pale skin shimmering with perspiration. She’s beautiful, in a very different way than Elizabeth was, or perhaps still is. She has layers, not of measured diplomacy but of habitual deflection. She smiles when she finally feels Teyla’s eyes on her, turns onto her side, and rests her head on her bent arm. 

“It has been a very long time since I shared my body with a stranger,” admits Teyla, feeling not awkward, but a little uncertain. 

“But we are hardly strangers,” says Vala, and she moves her arm the scant inches between them and presses the back of her hand to Teyla’s. “And I think we could be the very best of friends.” 

Teyla turns her wrist, and Vala slips her hand in Teyla's, palm to palm, fingers interlocked. Her skin is warm, both soft and gun-callused. Teyla wonders what her life was like before the SGC. Before the Goa'uld that held her captive. She cannot imagine a prison so awful as one’s own body. It should be a temple, not a cage. 

“It is getting late,” says Vala, lifting Teyla’s hand to her mouth and kissing her knuckles sweetly.   

Teyla feels a pang of regret that this thing between them will have to come to an end so soon, but Vala has other ideas.   

“I’m not sure about you,” says Vala, “but I don’t want this to be a single moment in time.” 

“How about a beginning?” asks Teyla, and though there are a thousand things that could get in the way, the squeeze on her palm is all the promise she needs.